Phillip Black and his wife Drusilla Black are “overwhelmed” the Rangitīkei District Council is honouring 116 unmarked graves of people who died at Lake Alice Hospital. Photo / Fin Ocheduszko Brown
Phillip Black and his wife Drusilla Black are “overwhelmed” the Rangitīkei District Council is honouring 116 unmarked graves of people who died at Lake Alice Hospital. Photo / Fin Ocheduszko Brown
Rangitīkei District Council will mark the graves of 116 people who died while in care at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital.
Across the council-owned Mt View Cemetery near Marton and Clifton Cemetery near Bulls, there are 116 unmarked graves related to Lake Alice, according to the council’s cemetery database.
On February21, a memorial plaque was unveiled at the Lake Alice tower, on Lake Alice Rd, to honour the child and adolescent unit victims.
The fund enabled local authorities to memorialise, remember and honour those who died in care and are buried in unmarked graves, in ways that are appropriate for local communities.
A memorial seat and plaque will be installed at Mt View Cemetery.
The 116 recumbent plaques for the currently unmarked graves will list the family name and first name initials, followed by the date of death.
A memorial was unveiled at the Lake Alice water tower for the victims of the child and adolescent unit at Lake Alice Hospital. Photo / Fin Ocheduszko Brown
Rangitīkei Mayor Andy Watson said the project was “about seeing justice done”.
“It was a request from a number of families, and it was absolutely the right thing to do,” Watson said.
He commended the “highly moving” words from Stanford at the memorial and was looking forward to completing the final steps of the project.
“It has taken a lot of work and the commission, as principal funder, has made it possible,” he said.
“It’s still going to take a while until action ... but it is underway and will happen.”
The council expects the project to be completed by June 30.
‘They are owed it’
Phillip Black, whose grandfather died while institutionalised at Lake Alice, said it was overwhelming to hear the graves would be marked.
“That is all we ever wanted, we’re absolutely over the moon that they are doing it, really, really pleased. The seat sounds wonderful – it sounds great,” Black said.
“I think they are owed it. They should have had something from the start.
“I think every cemetery should be marked. I mean, crikey, it’s just horrible.”
Black’s grandfather, Rockley Gifford Lowry, lay in an unmarked grave at Mt View Cemetery for 58 years.
Black began his research on Lowry in 2023.
Because his grandfather died before Black was born and was not spoken about in his family, he was curious to find out more about him.
He discovered Lowry was institutionalised at Lake Alice for 13 years, after relocating from the Porirua Mental Clinic in 1951 because of overcrowding.
Lowry had become depressed after he split with Black’s grandmother and was sent for treatment.
Black suspected Lowry also had some trauma from when he was about 8 and his father was fatally shot in front of him and his brother while on a hunting trip.
All Black knows beyond that is that Lowry died in 1964, aged 54, from a heart attack and pneumonia after being institutionalised for 17 years.
“We don’t know what happened there, whether he was one of the ones that got tortured,” Black said.
“I know nothing about it; I don’t know what his life was like there.”
Despite having “tried and tried and tried” to get more information from various organisations, Black had no luck, so he had to rely on online information.
When Black contacted the cemetery to find Lowry’s exact whereabouts, he was told his grandfather was not there.
Lowry’s name was spelled incorrectly on records as “Rockly Lourie”.
The plaque for Rockley Lowry has been installed by Phillip Black and his wife, Drusilla Black. Photo / Fin Ocheduszko Brown
In 2023, Black installed a small recumbent plaque on Lowry’s grave, which read, “No one chooses to have a mental illness, it unfortunately chooses you.”
While at the cemetery, Black said, it “really struck a nerve” to see the number of unmarked graves, and he wanted something done about it.
“You walk along and you see all of these graves – it’s quite eerie really; it’s really, really sad.
“You walk over them and they are buried and forgotten.”
Black was going to install individual plaques for every unmarked grave, but moving to the South Island and timing issues prevented him from doing so.
Black felt it was important to recognise history, even if it was sobering.
“If we still managed the mentally ill today as they did back then, then we would need far more mental health facilities than all prisons and hospitals put together,” he said.
“At the end of the day, we are just pleased that the Lake Alice patients who lie in those unmarked graves will finally have their graves identified.
“It’s something the Government should have funded years ago.”
Fin Ocheduszko Brown is a multimedia journalist based in Whanganui.
