Like many returned World War I soldiers, five men who were buried at the Beechworth Cemetery suffered from misunderstood mental illness.
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Their symptoms were wrongly attributed to their characters and they were admitted to Mayday Hills - where they died.
The final resting place of these men was unmarked for decades, but that changed through the dedication of the Beechworth Cemetery Trust and genealogist Eileen Clark.
"So much stigma was attached to mental illness, that in some cases, people were completely estranged from their families before they even went there [to Mayday]," Ms Clark said.
"The cemetery trust has got excellent records; they knew who was buried in which plot, it's just that the plots had no identification."
The first soldier Ms Clark profiled, Dudley George Tong, spent 35 years at Mayday Hills and was diagnosed with alcohol-induced brain damage.
"For Dudley in particular, the staff used to say, 'He ought to have a plaque on his grave to show his Army service'," she said.
"The staff formed such a bond with him.
"I only knew he came from Melbourne and had Chinese heritage.
"Once I got his Army record, it was relatively easy to start tracing back through births and deaths records.
"He fought at Mouquet Farm, which was a terrible battle for the Australians.
"They got surrounded and that's how he got shot in the back."
A distant relative was found for Tong.
"It is very hard to write to somebody you don't know, to say, 'Did you have an uncle who fought in the war?'," Ms Clark said.
"That particular relative said, 'Oh yes, I've heard all of the stories about Uncle Dudley, and how we died in the war' ... I had to say, 'Well, in fact he didn't'."
Ms Clark found relatives for another of the five patients, Edward Albert Gibbs.
"Teddy's family knew all about him," she said.
"His wife had six children and he was committed to hospital around the time the sixth child was born.
"She faithfully, every six months, made the journey from Melbourne up to Beechworth.
"When he died, the family didn't have enough money to pay for a headstone.
"They left a very small notice, 'fondly remembered by his grandchildren', with the names - from that, I was able to contact one of them."
They came to Beechworth in November to see the new tombstones paid for by the Department of Veterans' Affairs.
IN OTHER NEWS:
The four-year story culminating in the graves being formally marked was told to 60 people at the launch of Collections from the Asylum on Wednesday night.
She said having visited the Asylum when it was fully operational in 1978, as part of an arts and sociology degree, it's history was confronting.
"We're much more aware now that mental illness is a part of life," Ms Clark said.
"Although institutions like Beechworth were often regarded as horrible places, the staff were on the whole very compassionate - they did the best they could under the circumstances."
