Cecil Cook (physician)

As part of his MD studies, Cook conducted a major epidemiological study of leprosy in Australia. He began his study at Sydney's Prince Henry Hospital and researched leprosy and granuloma venereum over three years.[2]^:10–11 He published this report as his MD thesis The Epidemiology of Leprosy in Australia in 1927. The newly established Federal Health Council subsequently adopted leprosy as one of its concerns.[3][5]

Cecil Cook worked to assimilate "half-castes", an old term used to describe a child who had an Aboriginal parent, usually the mother, and a white parent, and Aboriginals into "white society" through marriage licenses and employment opportunities. As Chief Protector of Aborigines, Cook was involved in marital affairs concerning "half-caste" women. With support from the North Australian Workers' Union, he was able to prohibit their request for marriage if he deemed it necessary.[6] Cook advocated for marriages between "half-caste" women and white men under his policy of “breeding out colour” and the assimilation of Aborigines into white society.[6] He believed by the fifth or sixth generations "half-caste" children would not display any Aboriginal characteristics.[7][8] During his time as Protector, 69 of these marriages took place.[2]^:79 Cook also had the ability to deny full citizenship to "half-castes" when they turned 21.[6]

Cook wrote to the Head Administrator of the Northern Territory in 1933 about the idea of sterilising "half-castes". He wrote mentally defective "half-caste" children were an economic burden,[7] and he could not see them being able to marry a white man and therefore their children would be costly to the government. Cook went on further to ask the Crown Law Officer if he had the power to give consent for a "half-caste's" sterilisation.[7] Ultimately, Cook's request was denied.

Cecil Cook worked with pastoralists to improve the working conditions for Aboriginal employees.[2]^:72–73 In 1930 Aboriginal employees were given additional rations for relatives who were residents on pastoral properties and money was transferred into personal trust accounts.[2]^:72–73 Cook helped to set up an Aboriginal Medical Benefit Fund, which ran from 1932 to 1933, whereby the employers of Aborigines would contribute funds.[9]

In his role as Chief Protector, Cook extended his duties to the criminal justice system. In a 1934 tribal spearing case an aboriginal man, Tucker, was sentenced to the death penalty but was let free of his charges after Cook fought for the case to be taken to the high court.[2]^:84–90

Cook supported Aboriginals having the right to the ownership of their land. He suggested that mining companies at Tennant Creek in 1934 should pay royalties to the Warumungu people.[10] This did not take place, but the miners were banned from entering settled areas.

Cecil Cook continued to advocate for the assimilation of "half-castes" and Aborigines into white society. In 1935 he requested the government erect residential areas for Aboriginals in a policy proposal that urged the government to integrate "half-caste" and Aboriginal society.[2]^:99–100 The first institute, the Bagot Aboriginal Reserve, was established in 1938 and was populated by Aboriginals from the Kahlin Compund.[9] These areas were designed to help non tribal Aborigines assimilate into society by having proper accommodation, education, sanitation and trained skills for employment opportunities.

Cook integrated 400 "half-castes", predominantly females, into the Kahlin Compound and other "half-caste" homes whilst he was Chief Protector of Aborigines.[2]^:66 He advocated for the standard of education to be increased to the same quality found in the public schools in Northern Australia and he began to train some girls at the Kahlin Compound in nursing.[11] Through his assimilation policy, Cook found employments for the female "half-caste" residents in private homes, as trainee nurses and in the Compound and other similar homes where they worked before becoming married.[2][8]^:75  For male "half-castes" he found 25 apprenticeships in the pastoral industry.[2]^:75

In 1929 the Australian Government began to censor films shown to Aborigines.[8] Cook publicly supported Chief Censor Walter Cresswell O'Reilly of the Commonwealth Censorship Board. Cook had already restricted Aboriginal access to the cinemas to two nights a week and banned attending the circus altogether. In addition to their restricted access, Cook further organised for a permit and identification system for Aborigines and "half-castes" to present when attending the cinema.[8]

He successfully asked O’Rielly to increase the censorship to include films that displayed violence between a white person and a person of colour. Whilst he agreed with many of the banned films listed by the Commonwealth Censorship, Cook disapproved of films such as 'White Shadows in the South Seas' by Cosmopolitan Pictures, which was censored due to it displaying a relationship between a white man and a coloured girl. There were also films that were not banned such as the 1929 ‘The Pagan’ depicting a heroic coloured man throwing a white villain overboard, which Cook believed should have been censored.[8]

Before the end of his role as Chief Protector Cook had begun plans for a cinema that featured only censored films near the Kahlin Compound but this was never completed.[8]

Growing public criticism of the exploitation and abuse of Aboriginal people led to passing the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 in Queensland. This Act created the first official state control of Indigenous Australians in Queensland, including health. It authorised establishment of government reserves for Aboriginal people, and it led in 1904 to the appointment of a Chief Protector of Aborigines within the department of the Home Secretary. However its aims of protecting Aboriginal people were not realised: overcrowding, inadequate provisions and housing led to mortality rates which peaked at 13 per cent annually. While there were some improvements during the 1920s and 1930s, they remained triple the national average.[5]

However, there was also a widespread view among ruling white Australians at the time that aborigines were "unfit" to be counted among Australian society. Those of mixed race were considered especially difficult. The rise of the eugenics movement and "social Darwinism" about this time resulted in a good deal of pseudo-scientific commentary about the place of people of "mixed blood". As a government official, Cook was placed in the position of needing to appease these forces.[6]

Cook irritated Alice Springs residents by urging them to allow Aboriginal patients in a proposed hospital and by allowing a Catholic mission. He also sought to protect "full-bloods" from unauthorised visitors. However, he generally opposed church missions and favoured assimilation. Hence, when it came to Aboriginal people he argued for "breeding them out" and stated:

generally by the fifth and invariably by the sixth generation, all native characteristics of the Australian Aborigine are eradicated. The problem of our half-castes will quickly be eliminated by the complete disappearance of the black race, and the swift submergence of their progeny in the white.[12]

He also instituted the "dog tag" system of fingerprinting and medical examination of Aboriginal people.[13]

In 1946 Cecil Cook became the Commissioner of Public Health in Western Australia and in 1947 the state's Principle Medical Officer.[2]^:158,169 Through accepting the role of Western Australia's Commissioner of Public Health, Cook was able to join the National Health and Medical Research Council as well.[2]^:156 Early on into his role, Cook published his correspondence to the Minister of Mines and Health in the West Australian newspaper to publicise the lack of trained nurses and medical funding in Western Australia.[2]^:161–162

Cook formed the State Health Council in 1949 where he chaired meetings on health and medical issues. The formation of this council allowed Cook to correspond directly with the Health Minister.[2]^:171–173 In his role as Commissioner of Public Health he elevated the role of full-time health inspectors,  increased the assessment of still births to help determine the causation, proposed a bill on the safe production, sale and distribution of milk that was later passed, and he wrote major reports on North-West Australia and Native Health.[2]^{:175–177,186,204–205}

After his work in Western Australia Cook moved to Canberra where he was closer to his family. In 1950 he spent 7 weeks inspecting the health in 53 Aboriginal communities.[2]^:210 The survey and report he published of this inspection lead to the Native Welfare Conference in 1951.[2]^:214

In 1950 he became the Liaison Officer and Covenor of the National Health and Medical Research Committee.[2]^:243 He contributed to founding the Australian Institute of Aboriginal studies in 1962 and was part of the Human Biology Committee connected to it.[2]^:238 Cook was a senior member of the Commonwealth Department of Health from 1920 until his retirement in 1962.[2]^:206 In the year before his retirement, Cook fractured his tibia and both kneecaps in a car accident.[2]^:279

In retirement Cook was still a member of the National Health and Medical Research Committee. In addition to this work he joined Abbott Laboratories in 1962 to help create Erythrocin to the standards of the Nation Health and Medical Research Committee.[2]^:284–285 In 1963 the World Health Organization invited Cook to write a survey on the Public Health legislation in Bangkok and to inspect their administration and health services. Whilst there Cook assisted the Bangkok Municipal Council and recommended a development plan for public health.[2]^:288