Joanna Henrietta Julia Eckhold

"Frederick Theodore Eckhold was a Lutheran potter born in Frankenhausen, a small town in today's Thuringia, Germany. At the age of twenty-seven, he married a young woman named Julia Hoppe in the Kyffhäuser region. They had four sons and one daughter. Facing discrimination at home and attracted by rumours of gold in Australia, the couple decided to sail for the Pacific with their five children. On 21 November 1847, the Eckholds embarked on the boat "Pauline" at Bremen. After 129 days, they reached Adelaide, capital of the British province of South Australia, which in this period hosted around 150,000 settlers, including 5,000 German Lutherans. Contrary to other parts of the continent, South Australia was a haven for free emigrants and did not originate as a convict settlement. European presence followed the plan of "systematic colonization" advanced by British diplomat Edward Gibbon Wakefield in the 1830s, without much consideration for aboriginal peoples who were forcefully displaced from their ancestral lands. In South Australia, which became a self-governing British colony enfranchising wealthy male citizens in 1856, Frederick Eckhold established a profitable "brick-making trade" using his skills in the manufacturing of "porcelain and glaze". For more than a decade, the Eckholds experienced modest success in Adelaide enriched by the profits of some gold diggings in nearby hills. They managed to buy a large "stone house full of good furniture" in the Hindmarsh neighbourhood and added two more children to the family. Theirs was a story of emigration and fortune during Australia's "boom and bust years", until domestic quarrels brought the couple to the brink of disaster. Around January 1860, Julia became increasingly worried about Frederick's jealousy. Feeling in danger for her safety, she convinced a local practitioner to examine her husband for the purpose of institutional treatment. Accordingly, she reached out to Ernest Heinrich Geyer, a thirty-three-year-old Prussian physician who had arrived from Berlin just a month before. Anxious to grow his private practice in the new city, Dr Geyer eagerly accepted the job and visited Frederick Eckhold on 26 February 1860. He stepped into the patient's house around 5:30 pm and remained there for not more than ten minutes. That was the first and only time he met Frederick, now a sixty-year-old man. As it turned out, it was a rather peculiar encounter. Dr Geyer entered the house in disguise—a strategy adopted by many practitioners to ease the examination process in cases of suspected lunacy. Worried about her husband's reaction, Julia advised Geyer to introduce himself as a client interested in making some restorations to his residence, so as to conceal the real purpose of the visit. This looked like a solid camouflage given Frederick's pottery business. Conversing in German, the two spoke about the hot summer in Adelaide and the number of bricks necessary for building a chimney. Frederick did not know Geyer personally, but he sensed that the enigmatic compatriot had come "for some other purpose". Revealing his identity, Geyer conceded that he had come to examine him. Frederick then wondered who had sent that doctor "to make inquiries about his head" considering that he was not his regular attendant. Geyer did not explain the reason behind his visit and went on asking general questions about Frederick's state of health, which he answered rationally. On making reference to the patient's jealousy, however, Frederick cut the physician short and warned that "it was no business of his to inquire into that matter". Right at that moment, Julia interrupted the interview. As she entered the room, Frederick reportedly "lost his ease, sprang from the seat he had been sitting on, looked at his wife with a look which could not compare to anything else than that of a maniac, and ordered her into another room". Such a reaction convinced Dr Geyer of the patient's derangement. Although that was his first encounter with Frederick, a single episode proved enough for declaring him insane. The day after this "examination", a vehicle came to Frederick's house in Hindmarsh. Under a false pretence, the driver brought him to the police station in Adelaide, where everything in his possession was removed and he was locked up in prison without food. Unaware of exactly what was happening, Frederick spent a night in a dark cell worrying for his life. The following morning, he appeared before a Justice of the Peace named Mr. Beddome. Frederick was not fluent in English and did not understand a word of the magistrate's questions. Persuaded by Geyer's written account, the JP signed an order of committal and sent Frederick to the Adelaide's Colonial Lunatic Asylum on 28 February 1860. The German brick-maker remained confined for five weeks and four days until the medical superintendent declared him "fit for discharge". As soon as he was released, he went straight to his residence to meet his wife and children. He found a bad surprise. Arriving at Hindmarsh, he realized that the house was locked. Managing to break through the kitchen window, he saw that all of the furniture had disappeared. Frederick rushed to the post office in Adelaide to see if the steamer was still at the harbour, but, to his despair, he received news that his family had left the city. He never saw them again. Four years later, Frederick Eckhold sought justice by suing Dr Geyer for "falsely and negligently giving a certificate of insanity". [During the ensuing trial, it emerged that Frederick Eckhold's wife, Julia Hoppe, had changed her identity. She now went by the name of "Julia Martin, an Englishwoman" and had moved to Victoria to live with another man together with her two daughters.]... Despite this verdict, it is very unlikely that Frederick Eckhold received any compensation. After the trial, he sold all his remaining property in Hindmarsh and moved to Melbourne to stay with one of his sons. He died just a few months later on 2 February 1865, at the age of sixty-three." Abridged from source: The Certification of Insanity: Local Origins and Imperial Consequences (2023) by Filippo Maria Sposini.