Summary

Well-worn and battered dessert spoon standard size with "Vict. Govt." stamped in a scroll on the handle. Collected from a Victorian psychiatric institution during the 1950s. Dates from circa1940.

Physical Description

Well-worn and battered dessert spoon standard size with "Vict. Govt." stamped in a scroll on the handle. The bowl of the spoon is battered out of shape and it also seems to have been banged on a hard surface as the top of the bowl is flattened. The spoon has now been polished and is shiny. The bowl is pitted at the back.

Significance

An example of dining equipment used by mental health hospitals in Victoria Australia circa 1940. This is one of a number of pieces of cutlery that were collected by Dr Charles Brothers as he moved throughout the Victorian Mental Health institutions in the early 1950s, as part of his work of reforming the system. Like most of the others, this item shows extensive wear, tribute to the poverty of the system where implements were used for many years, rather than being replaced when they were worn. The spoon is marked 'Vict. Govt'. on the handle. The Government tried to keep control over equipment within institutions such as psychiatric hospitals by stamping or labelling things when this could be done. This was an attempt to control pilfering from the institutions by staff and possibly patients: a problem that was substantial during the 1930s and 1940s.

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