A Tribute to Allen Bartholomew
| Author | David Biles |
| Published date | 01 April 2005 |
| Date | 01 April 2005 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1375/acri.38.1.1 |
| Subject Matter | Obituary |
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THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY
VOLUME 38 NUMBER 1 2005 PP.1–3
OBITUARY
A Tribute to Allen Bartholomew
Dr Allen Austin Bartholomew, MB BS (Lon), MRCS, LRCP, DPM, FRCPsych,
FRANZCP, MAPsS, who died in Melbourne on June 19, 2004, was a distin-
guished forensic psychiatrist who made a unique contribution to the development
of Australian criminology. In fact, it can be confidently asserted that were it not for
him this journal would not now be in its 38th year of publication, nor would there
be an Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology of the same age.
Allen was born in Palestine on October 23, 1925, the son of a Royal Air Force
officer who later became an Anglican clergyman in England. Allen was educated in
England, initially at Caterham School in Surrey and later at Westminster Hospital
in London, where he studied medicine. He then spent some time in the British
Navy and later studied psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital, where his mentors
included the eminent authorities Peter Scott and Denis Leigh. After completing
his training he joined the English Prison Service and for the next few years worked
in a number of different correctional institutions, including Broadmoor and Brixton
Prison. During this period he became increasingly interested in the relationship
between psychiatry and the law and the ways in which the two disciplines could
cooperate to assist in the understanding of the psychological and medical aspects of
crime and the reform of offenders.
In 1959 he was recruited from the English Prison Service to become the first
Psychiatrist Superintendent of Pentridge Prison in Melbourne and head of the
Alexandra Clinic, a nonresidential mental health facility. He was also to be responsi-
ble for a newly established telephone service that provided advice and assistance to
people who were mentally ill. He later accepted a number of part-time positions
including those of honorary lecturer in the Department of Psychological Medicine at
Monash University, senior consultant psychiatrist to the Royal Australian Navy,
member of the Board of Studies (and part-time lecturer) in Criminology at the
University of Melbourne, and senior associate in the Department of Psychiatry at the
same university. In many of these positions he demonstrated that he was a highly
gifted teacher, as well as an insightful clinical interviewer of patients or prisoners in
front of mixed groups of medical, psychology and law students. He had these inter-
views both in Pentridge and, after his retirement, in his private consulting rooms.
Richard Fox from Monash law school often told his students before these sessions,
‘You will never forget as long as you live what you are going to see today’.
He was also a formidable expert witness in the courts, whether appearing for the
prosecution or the defence. He appeared in many Victorian Supreme Court and
County Court criminal cases involving mental state defences and was highly regarded
by judges for his ability to express his psychiatric diagnoses in acceptable legal terms.
He seemed to know how judges thought and what they wanted of him, which was a
rare gift for a psychiatrist. He was no doubt a brilliant diagnostician and communica-
tor, but it has been said of him that he was a frustrated lawyer who much preferred
appearing in court to the routine psychiatric work of clinical treatment.
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