William Ernest Jones (psychiatrist)

As Inspector General, Jones was quick to criticise issues such as overcrowding and under-resourcing in Victoria's mental health institutions. He recommended that improvements be made to buildings and was a proponent of newer attitudes and approaches to the treatment of mental health.^[1] Notwithstanding, in 1926, he would himself be criticised by a royal commission on the grounds of failing to have made improvements to the overcrowding and general state of Victoria's institutions.^[3]

Jones was a proponent of eugenics and, ostensibly as a result, a racist. Around 1911, Jones began to develop his ideas around eugenics. At the time, Australia, and particularly Victoria, had a relatively high incidence of lunacy in relation to England and other of its realms. Jones concluded on that basis a preference for limited immigration from southern Europe in favour of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic settlers.^[4]

In 1928, he conducted an inquiry into mental deficiency in the Commonwealth, on behalf of the Bruce federal government, and was criticised for delays in producing his report.^[4] To this end, he conducted a survey of more than 1 million children throughout the country, and, while admitting his report contained errors, he considered it a sufficient basis upon which the federal government should develop immigration policy with a view to reducing mental defectiveness amongst the population and thereby to protect and enhance Australia's economy.^[4]

Having survived his wife by some five years, Jones died on 1 May 1957, and was privately cremated.^[5]