The suicide of Thomas Wentworth Wills Thomas Wentworth Wills was the most important Australian sportsman of his time. He captained the Victorian colony at cricket and was the first hero of Australian Rules football. Although his picture now adorns the conservative Melbourne Cricket Club, he died in 1880, an isolated, destitute alcoholic, after stabbing himself in the heart. Wills embodied a tradition, as prevalent today as it was over 100 years ago, that weds sport with alcohol in Australian culture. Gregory M de Moore |
MJA 1999; 171: 656-658 | |
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Introduction -
Alcohol abuse, delirium tremens and suicide -
Acknowledgements -
References -
Authors' details
Illustration: an 1870 oil painting of Thomas Wills. | ||
| Introduction |
Thomas Wentworth Wills was born near modern-day Canberra on 19 August
1835. In 1840, his father, Horatio Spencer Wills, a wealthy
pastoralist and strident nationalist, moved from New South Wales to
the Western District of Victoria, where Tom spent his early years.
Wills' father, who later became a Victorian parliamentarian, exerted a dominating influence on his son's life. In 1850, Tom was sent on the long voyage to England to attend Rugby School. There he became a champion all-round sportsman, but not the studious academic his father had hoped for.1 He later played for the Cambridge XI against Oxford, in one of the cricketing season's highlights, before returning to Melbourne in 1856.2 | |||||||
"... (drink), the curse of these colonies - the demon which has desolated so many homes and blasted the fair fame of thousands - got its hold upon him" 3 | ||||||||
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Wills soon became the champion cricketer of the
colony, leading Victoria to a series of successes against
NSW.4 It was a time of intense
intercolonial rivalry and sport provided a prominent arena for the
playing out of social and political quarrels. The "older" NSW colony
defended itself against the upstart "younger" Victorian colony, the
latter boosted by the gold finds of the 1850s.
In his famous letter of July 1858 to a Victorian sporting paper,5 Wills extolled the virtues of fitness and suggested that a football club be formed. This letter was to change the course of sporting history in Australia. From this, a new style of football developed, later to be christened "Australian Rules" football, which is now the most popular spectator sport in the country. Wills was an early champion of this game and helped to shape its rules. In a young country seeking a nascent independence, he was the key figure in the creation of this indigenous sport. Independent and of a roving disposition, he was soon playing cricket and football for clubs throughout Victoria and the other colonies. In 1861, Wills' father summoned him from Victoria to the recently purchased family property of Cullinlaringo, in Queensland. On October 17 that year, his father, along with 18 others, was killed in a conflict with the local Aboriginals. This was the greatest number of Europeans killed in a single battle with Aboriginals in Australian history. Tom, who was fortunately not with his father at the time of the attack, survived. Intriguingly, and despite this traumatic event, he later coached an Aboriginal cricket team.6 That team, from western Victoria, captained by Wills on Boxing Day 1866, played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground to the applause of up to 10 000 spectators. Further games played by the team throughout Sydney and major provincial centres in 1867 created tremendous excitement. As on numerous other occasions, Wills fell out of favour with organisers of the cricket tour. By the time the Aboriginal team toured England in 1868, he had been usurped as the team's captain and coach, and consequently did not accompany them. | ||||||||
Alcohol abuse, delirium tremens and suicide | ||||||||
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Wills was charismatic, at times narcissistic, with a flair for
conflict and a prickly, creative temperament, but he was passionate
about sport. However, accusations of "throwing" in cricket, the
effect of alcohol on his behaviour on the sporting field, and his
tempestuous nature were subjects of public gossip and controversy.
The link between sport and alcohol was never far away. In the 1850s to
1870s it was common for the drinking of alcohol to influence the course
of a game. Champagne lunches were frequently held, even if they
delayed the game's commencement. Some newspaper reports of
intercolonial and local games gave nearly as much space to the
celebrations and after-match festivities as they did to the match
itself. In fact, the use of a "nobbler" to soften the opposition was
deemed a not unreasonable tactic. It was in this environment that
Wills played sport. The heavy use of alcohol in colonial life was
frequently commented upon in the newspapers, and it would be
difficult to overemphasise the competing forces of alcohol abuse and
temperance in the daily press.
In the 1870s, reports of Wills' activities petered out as his once-transcendent sporting achievements declined. The last few years of his private life are scarcely recorded in contemporary documents. In his final years he was living with his partner, Sarah Theresa Barbor. Tom and Sarah, both heavy drinkers, drifted into social decline away from the eyes of a previously adoring public and an increasingly alienated family. | ||||||||
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The events of the next few hours have, until recently, remained a
mystery. A previously undiscovered half-page entry from Dr
Moloney's casebook recording Wills' hospitalisation reveals his
mental state as it was less than 24 hours before his death: ". . . patient
admitted in a semi Delirium Tremens state . . . tremulous movements of
hands -- was rather obstinate -- refused to remain in
hospital."12 He absconded at 5 pm.
Although described as "obstinate", this may have been a reflection
not so much of his character as of the delusions and hallucinations
that were to culminate in his act of self-destruction.
At 9 pm, to Sarah's surprise, he was found in an agitated state by a neighbour near his home in Heidelberg. He was experiencing paranoid delusions and making threats to himself and others. He was heard to mutter "Shall I murder her or not? No, I won't."11 He argued with non-existent companions, hid beneath his bed and experienced visual hallucinations. Fearing that a calamity was at hand, his attendants removed all objects with which he might harm himself or others. A labourer was employed to closely guard him. Nevertheless, at one o'clock the following afternoon he managed to elude his attendants. Grasping a pair of scissors, he plunged them into his chest three times, despite Sarah's frantic attempts to stop him. The inquest, on 3 May 1880, conducted by Dr Richard Youl,13 found that Wills "committed suicide while of unsound mind from excessive drinking". One can speculate that he was responding to auditory hallucinations instructing him to take his life, or persecutory delusions that rendered the world an overwhelming threat to his sense of safety. Although stabbing is an uncommon method of self-destructive behaviour, psychotic symptoms (such as hearing voices urging the infliction of self-harm) and alcohol abuse are common features.14 It was notable that at times he appeared to act in a more normal manner, and this was the case just before taking his life.13 This almost certainly refers to the fluctuating behaviour that can occur in delirium and its perhaps misleading message to an observer that the patient is improving. The ferocity of the behavioural manifestations of delirium tremens was well recognised at the time of Wills' admission. A review of the common treatments for delirium tremens appeared in the Australian Medical Journal in 1856.15 The role of a warm climate such as in Australia was postulated as not only encouraging imbibing but as also inducing a "peculiar condition of the blood" which helped induce delirium tremens. The wide array of recommended treatments included "morphia, chloroform, aperients, strong beef tea and application of cold water to the head and spine". There were descriptions of the "great restlessness [and] frightful mental illusions", requiring a patient to be guarded with scrupulous care and, if necessary, controlled by "the force of several attendants".15 A perusal of the Melbourne Hospital's casebooks for 1880 reveals that absconding from the hospital, sometimes while delirious, was not an uncommon method of discharge. On Wills' death certificate it was reported that his parents were unknown. This was an extraordinary pronouncement for the son of a prominent Victorian family and a "household name",4 and probably reflected the shame surrounding his suicide. The reaction to his suicide was perhaps predictable. His funeral was private and attended by only a handful of people. Sarah Barbor was paid by the family to remain away thereafter. Family correspondence in the following years barely acknowledges his existence. | ||||||||
Acknowledgements | ||||||||
| Mr Peter Gill, genealogist; Ms Gabby Haveaux, archivist, Royal Melbourne Hospital. Photograph of Thomas Wills courtesy of Australian Gallery of Sport and Olympic Museum at the Melbourne Cricket Ground; Melbourne Cricket Club Museum and Library. | ||||||||
| References |
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| Authors' details |
Department of Psychiatry, University of Sydney at Westmead
Hospital, Sydney, NSW.
Gregory M de Moore, MB BS, BSc(Med), FRANZCP, Clinical Lecturer and Director of Postgraduate Studies in Psychiatry.
Reprints will not be available from the author.
©MJA 1999
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