Betz, Dr. Johann and Ludwina Betz-Korte

Two medical missionaries associated with Beagle Bay from 1935 to 1937 as part of Bishop Raible’s plan to extend the Pallottine mission effort in the Kimberley.

Table of Contents

In December 1935 the newly consecrated Bishop Raible returned from Europe with a new vision for the Kimberley vicariate. He had brought with him two more Brothers, the linguist Professor Nekes, [4] three seminarians for a new Pallottine missionary training college in Melbourne, and two tropical medicine experts.

Missionary medicine

Raible wanted to establish a hospital and medical service, particularly to address the growing problem of leprosy in the Kimberley, and had recruited Dr. Johann Betz and Ludwina Betz-Korte from the Würzburg Institute for Mission Medicine [5], a Catholic college founded in 1922. Fr. Worms and Fr. Hügel had already received some training there.

Earlier in the year Raible had informed minister Kitson (going over the head of the Chief Protector) that Dr. Betz was undertaking ‘a postgraduate course at Edinburgh in order to obtain his medical certificate for the British Empire’ and had been contracted for twelve years to the Kimberley to work at Beagle Bay [6] and Rockhole [7].¹ The Bishop asked for a government subsidy of £1,000 and board at 1/- per day for patients. The Minister for Health Coverley followed up with a supportive note.²

Chief Protector Neville put the brakes on again: ‘such duty should not be in the hands of a sectarian body and since we are to establish a clinic at Moola Bulla and have a travelling medical officer it seems unnecessary to comply with Father Raible’s request’.³ The travelling medical inspector was appointed that year, and the idea of a clinic at Moola Bulla was also new. Neville bargained for time by arguing that the matter should be held over until after the Moseley Royal Commission report. Buoyed by the Moseley Report, Neville quickly opened a miniature clinic at Moola Bulla, close to Rockhole, to stave off Raible’s hospital plans for Rockhole.

The Pallottines had taken over the Kimberley vicariate, had brought in more than twenty new staff, had purchased a cattle station (Rockhole) without consulting the Chief Protector, and were now running a wheat farm in the south (Tardun). When Raible introduced his new team to the Chief Protector in the presence of the Minister A. A. Coverley and chief medical officer Dr. Atkinson, the latter advised that Mrs. Betz-Korte would not gain registration as a medical practitioner, and Neville informed them that no funding would be made available in the short term. Moreover, anyone conducting research on Aboriginal reserves required permission to enter onto the reserves and to take photographs.⁴ Read more - [8]The West Australian, 24 September 1935 [9].

Neville buried not only the idea of a medical centre at Rockhole, but the whole Rockhole project. He made it difficult for the Pallottines to bring in any of their indigenous supporters from Beagle Bay, considering the ‘advisability of permitting natives to be transferred to and from a leper area’.⁵

The Sisters in Broome had long declined to run a hospital in addition to their other duties. They were often stretched to the limits such as when Sister Alphonse dealt with an outbreak of whooping cough that swept through the Beagle Bay dormitories.⁶ Fr. Worms complained:

The Sisters in Broome don’t have a hospital, ‘and they don’t want one because then they would have to take on midwifery. But that is against their holy rules, Amen, Hallelujah.’ That’s what his most reverend Monsignor just told me. But I cannot understand such an attitude.⁷

However the Sisters apparently agreed to staff a leprosarium and Raible’s repeated offers to establish one were turned down by the Chief Protector, although 147 new cases of leprosy were notified in the North between 1933 and 1935.⁸ Patients were rounded up and either brought to a makeshift lazaret in Derby or put straight on a boat to Darwin. A number of them were brought to Beagle Bay by police. In 1933 Fr. Worms received a letter from Beagle Bay resident Gregory Howard who had been placed on the Rolland for a leper transport to Darwin.

I would like that you came and see in what way we are packed, we haven’t got the least of room to move about and the front part of the boat’s deck is leaking like a bucket. It’s two nights that we slept with water, all our stuff is wet. Wherever we have to move we must walk over each other ….⁹

Fr. Worms took the letter to Minister for Health A. A. Coverley to demand an investigation, and Zucker believes this led to the commission of inquiry headed by Henry Doyle Moseley in 1934. (Though the Moseley Commission dealt with a broad range of issues.)

The Moseley Commission

There was much trouble in the Kimberleys and humanitarian protests kept the treatment of Aboriginal people in public view. Leprosy was spreading, while police brutality and reports of massacres, such as at Forrest River in 1926, added fuel to the fire of public concern. The Department’s only executive arm were the police, and Chief Protector Neville stated that despite his attempts to train those who had been appointed as local protectors of Aborigines under the 1905 Act, most remained ignorant of their duties.

Activist Mary Montgomery Bennett, teacher at Mt. Margaret Mission and bitterly opposing Neville, wanted missionaries and government officers rather than police constables appointed as protectors. She declared Neville’s policy bankrupt by citing his annual report that some 30 girls who had been sent out from the Moore River Native Settlement into domestic service returned pregnant within a year. Neville wanted to be able to control more Aboriginal people, including the mixed descendants, Bennett wanted more Aboriginal people to gain citizenship.¹⁰

The other major adversary in this battle was Bishop Raible, who hoped that Neville would be sacked as a result of the inquiry. Moseley covered 14,000 miles and was shocked at the barbarous and inhumane conditions he found at the desolate Moore River government settlement, funded at £5,000 per annum.¹¹ He also visited Beagle Bay in 1934 and his press release praised the mission and observed that native law had not been suppressed, and corroborees were still held, albeit a little distance from the mission.¹²

Such a comparison might have given Raible some mileage, but Moseley’s recommendations basically followed Neville’s plans to extend the reach of the department over mixed descendants, and formed the basis of new legislation in 1936. Without purchasing into the standoff between Raible and Neville, Moseley also recommended the opening of several native hospitals in the north.¹³

New Hospitals

Native hospitals were opened in Broome and Wyndham¹⁴ and the Department of Public Health transformed the lazaret attached to Derby into a state-of-the-art clinic in December 1936. In early 1937 it was staffed by St. John of God Sisters Gertrude, Brigid, Matthew and Gabriel, all siblings of the Greene family. Sr. Brigid had already cared for Theresa Puertollano [10] for one and a half years at Beagle Bay. Sr. Alphonsus Daly joined in 1944 and stayed for 36 years. In 1948 Brs Paul Ratajski and Frank Hanke were admitted and built a new church. Br. Hanke died from the disease in 1957 while Br. Paul returned to work but suffered a toe infection that brought him back there in 1977, and his leg was amputated.¹⁵ Like Howard Gregory, both had worked at Tardun.

Dr. and Mrs Betz took on the direction of the leper hospital in Beagle Bay and Fr. Hügel credited them with saving the mission, since '15% of our Christians were Lepers'.¹⁶ According to Zucker there were 17 new leprosy cases at Beagle Bay between June 1932 and December 1934.¹⁷ The Betzs arrived in 1935, and Nailon writes that the Betzs discovered 16 lepers within twelve months at Beagle Bay. ‘Both doctors were so concerned about the spread of leprosy that they kept the children of the lepers separate from the other Mission children.’¹⁸ However Dr. Betz's health failed under the influence of the climate, and on 19 August 1938 went home.¹⁹

Hans and Ludwina Betz Korte December 1935

Dr. Johann and Ludwina Betz on their journey to Australia, December 1935.
Source: A0063 P1041146 Society of the Catholic
Apostolate (Australia) Archives, Rossmoyne

1 Raible to Minister of Aborigines, 7 January 1935, in Establishment of a mission hospital for the treatment of natives and half-castes at Rockhole Station – Proposal by the Rev. Otto Raible SROWA 1939/0010.

2Coverley MLA to Kitson Minister for Aborigines, 2 February 1935, in Establishment of a mission hospital for the treatment of natives and half-castes at Rockhole Station – Proposal by the Rev. Otto Raible SROWA 1939/0010.

3 CPA, 12 February 1935, in Establishment of a mission hospital for the treatment of natives and half-castes at Rockhole Station – Proposal by the Rev. Otto Raible SROWA 1939/0010.

4 File note by CPA 19 December 1935, in Establishment of a mission hospital for the treatment of natives and half-castes at Rockhole Station – Proposal by the Rev. Otto Raible SROWA 1939/0010.

5 Establishment of a mission hospital for the treatment of natives and half-castes at Rockhole Station – Proposal by the Rev. Otto Raible SROWA 1939/0010.

6 Beagle Bay Mission, Broome, Western Australia, B77 PT1 A885, NAA. According to Elizabeth Fidelis Victor, Sister Alphonse Daly was the sister of Br. James Daly. Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005 (I):34.

7 Die Schwestern in Broome haben kein Krankenhaus “Sie wollen auch keins, weil sie sonst Wöchnerinnenpflege übernehmen müssten. Das ist aber gegen ihre hl. Regel. Amen Alleluja.” So sagte mir eben der hochwürdigste Herr. …. Verstehen tue ich aber solche Auffassung nicht.P Ernst Worms SAC to P Nekes, Broome 12 May 1933 in Nekes, Australien B7d,l(2) ZAPP.

8 Margaret Zucker From Patrons to Partners, A history of the Catholic church in the Kimberley, Broome, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994: 100-101.

9 Gregory Howard to Ernst Worms, 5 August 1933, Broome Diocesan Archives, in Margaret Zucker From Patrons to Partners, A history of the Catholic church in the Kimberley, Broome, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994: 99.

10 Anna Haebich For their own Good – Aborigines and Government in the South West of Western Australia 1900-1940, UWA Press 1988: 330-345.

11 Anna Haebich For their own Good – Aborigines and Government in the South West of Western Australia 1900-1940, UWA Press 1988: 330-345.

12 "Care Of Natives." The West Australian, 3 Jul 1934: 17. Web. 12 May 2011.

13 Anna Haebich For their own Good – Aborigines and Government in the South West of Western Australia 1900-1940, UWA Press 1988: 330-345.

14 Anna Haebich For their own Good – Aborigines and Government in the South West of Western Australia 1900-1940, UWA Press 1988: 343.

15 Margaret Zucker From Patrons to Partners, A history of the Catholic church in the Kimberley, Broome, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994:102.

16 P. Heinrich Menzel SAC ‘Zum Goldenen Jubiläum unserer Kimberley-Mission in Australien’ Pallottis Werk 1951/:16.

17 Margaret Zucker From Patrons to Partners, A history of the Catholic church in the Kimberley, Broome, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994: 92, 101.

18 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:121.

19 P. Heinrich Menzel SAC ‘Zum Goldenen Jubiläum unserer Kimberley-Mission in Australien’ Pallottis Werk 1951/:16. Zucker dates their return in 1936. Margaret Zucker From Patrons to Partners, A history of the Catholic church in the Kimberley, Broome, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994:92.