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Objective: The aim of this paper is to illustrate how a person's standing in a small, close-knit community can distort local medical and legal attitudes to their diagnosis. We examined various historical texts describing Edward Davies (1855-1904), Mayor of Fremantle, and the medical, legal and family responses to his illness. Conclusions: When Davies developed an apparently serious mental illness, his family was able to keep this behaviour hidden for some time. However, when evidence of his illness finally erupted into the public eye, it led to a ground-breaking 1903 case in the WA Supreme Court in Lunacy. It is clear that Davies' defenders wanted him to be diagnosed and treated as an alcoholic, when in fact he may have had late onset psychosis, complicated by alcohol abuse. With the increasing amount of historical material available through Australian digitized newspaper collections, new scope is opening up for retrospective diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]