A Middlesex University resource by Andrew Roberts
Recommended web address http://studymore.org.uk/mhhtim.htm

Mental Health History Timeline

 
A mental health history including asylum and community care periods, with links to Andrew Roberts' book on the Lunacy Commission and other mental health writings, and the asylums index and word history. Centred on England and Wales, it reaches out to the rest of the world with links to the general timeline of science and society, America timeline, crime timeline, and the (embryo) sunrise, earthcor, and local London timelines. Seeks to include views from mental illness and learning disability consumers, patients, users, clients along with views on madness and disability. Also bibliographies and biographies of commissioners
introducing the lunacy commission lunacy

home page to
Andrew
Roberts'
web site home

mental health
and learning
disability path

 

Therapeutic periods
Genesis of asylums From 1377
Asylum Care From 1840
Community Care From 1940s

Partial alphabetical index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Also mental health words: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

pre-history   historical times   ancient Greece   1188   1285   1290   1350   1377   1403   1409   1464   1470   1495   1500   1518   1530   1536   1538   1546   1547   1557   1559   1570   1600   1601   1611   1615   1621   1630   1636   1649   1654   1655   1656   1660   1670   1690   1692   1696   1700   1713   1714   1723   1725   1728   1730   1738   1744   1746   1749   1751   1752   1754   1761   1762   1763   1765   1766   1767   1770   1774   1776   1777   1782   1784   1786   1787   1788   1789   1791   1792   1794   1796   1797   1800   1801   1806   1807   1808   1810   1811   1812   1813   1814   1815   1816   1817   1818   1819   1820   1823   1824   1825   1826   1827   1828   1829   1830   1831   1832   1833   1834   1835   1836   1837   1838   1839   1840   1841   1842   1843   1844   1845   1846   1847   1848   1851   1852   1853   1857   1858   1859   1860   1863   1864   1867   1870   1871   1872   1873   1876   1877   1880   1881   1882   1883   1884   1885   1886   1888   1890   1892   1893   1894   1895   1896   1897   1898   1899   1900   1901   1902   1903   1904   1905   1906   1907   1908   1909   1910   1911   1912   1913   1914   1915   1916   1917   1918   1919   1920   1921   1922   1923   1924   1925   1926   1927   1928   1929   1930   1931   1932   1933   1934   1935   1936   1937   1938   1939   1940   1941   1942   1943   1944   1945   1946   1947   1948   1949   1950   1951   1952   1953   1954   1955   1956   1957   1958   1959   1960   1961   1962   1966   1967   1968   1970   1971   1972   1973   1974   1975   1976   1977   1978   1979   1980   1981   1982   1983   1984   1985   1986   1987   1988   1989   1990   1991   1992   1993   1994   1995   1996   1997   1998   1999   2000   2001   2002   2003   2004   2005   2006   2007   2008   2008   2009   2010   2011   2012   2013   2014   2015   2016   2017

The government of asylums
1774 Physician Commission A local government unit
1828 Metropolitan Commission A local government unit
1842 Inquiry Commission Transitional
1845 Lunacy Commission A central government department
1913 Board of Control A central government department
1959: merged into Ministry of Health

Pre-history

"The first psychiatrist - the witch doctor - as portrayed by a prehistoric artist in the Cave of
Trois Frères, Ariège, France" according to Alexander and Selesnick 1966 The History of Psychiatry. (-:   The image belongs to what was once known as the age of the reindeer.

Katherine Darton's Notes of the history of mental health care (archive)
(on the Mind website) begins in 10,000 BC. She says "in prehistoric times there was, as far as historians can tell, no division between medicine, magic and religion." She refers to Stone Age evidence of trepanning, "study of cave drawings" of "mesolithic people" and "A cave painting in Ariege, France" that "shows a strange being with human feet and hands and antlers who has been identified as a 'psychiatrist (witch doctor)', but it is not clear how this identification has been made.

History of the Conceptualizations of Mental Illness (archive) by Jessie in Japan (archive) begins in "prehistoric times" when "mental disorders" were thought of as "supernatural phenomena". They were disorders of the mind representing "a breakdown of the magical-religious system" due to taboos being violated or rituals neglected, or to "demonic possession".

History of Mental Illness (no longer available) at the University of Derby begins some 10,000 years ago with trepanning - possibly to let evil spirits out, but this was before written records.

about 5000BC The scull of a 50-year-old man buried at Ensisheim in France "had two holes" " clearly the result of surgery, not violence". Other sculls with holes thought to indicate surgery include Gadevang Man

A history of Mental Health (archive), by an unknown nursing student (1992), begins in "primitive times" when people blieved that "mental illness was created by evil spirits entering and taking over the body".

Historical times

The Disability Social History Project's Disability Social History Timeline begins with an account of the fitting of an artificial limb from the Rig-Veda (sacred poem of India) which it says was "written in Sanskrit between 3500BC and 1800BC. 1700BC to 1100BC are more conventional dates for the Rig-Veda's oral composition and transmission to writing.

15 When in the time of night, in Khela's battle, a leg was severed like a wild bird's pinion,
Straight ye gave Viśpāla a leg of iron that she might move what time the conflict opened.
16 His father robbed Rjrāśva of his eyesight who for the she-wolf slew a hundred wethers.
Ye gave him eyes, Nasatyas, Wonder-Workers, Physicians, that he saw with sight uninjured.
See

The disability timeline then jumps to 355 BC

Menes of Egypt: The Society of Laingian Studies' Timeline in the treatment of Madness begins in 3,100BC when "Menes, the founder of the 1st Dynasty writes The Secret Book of the Heart, describing 3 kinds of healers, the physician, the priest and the sorcerer".

Moses: Leviticus 21 prohibits anyone who has a blemish from priestly service making offerings. He could, however, eat the bread. This included "a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous, Or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded, Or crookbackt, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken."

David: Ed Brown's annotated cases at Brown Medical School - archives
begins with the feigned madness of David who became king of the Jews (9th century BC)

Nebuchadnezzar or Nabonidus (whichever), king of Babylon, in the 6th century BC,
is the earliest in Joan's mad monarchs series (archive)

Indian medicine S N Kothare and Sanjay A Pai's chapter on Evolution of Psychology and Psychiatry discusses Ayurveda medicine which derives from the compendiums of Sushruta Samhita and Charaka [External links to Wikipedia], which date back to about the 6th century BC

480 to 60BC Gadevang Man - bog body. Denmark. The skull shows signs of surgical trepanning.

Ancient Greece and Rome

Larry Merkel's History of Psychiatry begins with a discussion of pre-classical (Egyptian, Middle-Eastern, Judaic) influences on classical Greek and Roman theory and practice.

Drama Therapy and Psychodrama History begins with plays of Sophocles in 404BC

Socrates (in Plato's The Republic) recommends that "the offspring of the inferior, or of the better when they chance to be deformed, will be put away in some mysterious, unknown place, as they should be"

355BC Aristotle said those "born deaf become senseless and incapable of reason." (Disability Timeline)

Galen, Greek physician

AD 129 Galen born in Pergamum, in what is now Turkey. He died about AD 216. His massive writings on medicine included the theory of the humours or body fluids (like blood) whose preponderance had a marked affect on a person's health and personality. (See melancholy - emotion).

External link: Hospitals in Islamic History by Dr Hossam Arafa "The first known hospital in Islam was built in Damascus in 706AD". Social Science History. See also origin of word hospital. Bagdhad Hospital after 750. Al-Fustat Hospital, Cairo, 872.

European hospitals heritage (PAPHE) chronology begins in 912
Michael Warren's health in Britain chronology
begins in 1066

From the late 11th century, Hunain ibn Ishaq's Arabic translations of Galen, commentaries by Arab physicians, and sometimes the original Greek, were translated into Latin. These became the basis of medical education in the European universities that started in the late 12th century

1100 Date given for "an asylum exclusively for sufferers from mental diseases at Mets" (Metz, northern France) (Catholic Encyclopedia)

1188

King Henry 2nd bought land next to Newgate (the gate looking west from the City of London towards Westminster) for a prison. Newgate prison occupied this site until 1881. The Old Bailey (Central Criminal Court) now stands there.

1201 St Nicholas Hospital in Carlisle claims to have been treating lepers in 1201 - to have passed to the City as a (general) hospital in 1477 - Some local historians link this forward to the opening of a fever hospital in 1809 and the Cumberland Infirmary in 1828. Frank Walsh in Union journal 1970

Bethlem before:

See English Heritage

Warren R. Street says: 23.10.1247 The priory of St Mary of Bethlehem, later to become Bethlehem Hospital, was founded on land donated by Simon FitzMary at Bishopsgate Without, London. This original site is now located under the the Liverpool Street railway station. Bethlehem Hospital, or "Bedlam," later became notorious for its neglectful care of people with mental illness. The priory was first used to house "distracted persons" in around the year 1377. [See 1300 - 1346

The priory of St Mary of Bethlem was founded in 1247 as a priory in Bishopsgate Street, for the order of St. Mary of Bethlehem, by Simon Fitz Mary, an Alderman and Sheriff of London. The Catholic Encyclopedia says it was a hospital (place of refuge) from the begining 'originally intended for the poor suffering from any ailment and for such as might have no other lodging, hence its name, Bethlehem, in Hebrew, the "house of bread."'

The web appendix to Noteworthy events in American Psychology begins with the founding of St Mary of Bethlem on 12.10.1247. (Not, of course, in America, and not receiving distracted persons until 1377). See also 1478 (inquistion) - 1586 (Bright) - Noteworth events reaches America in 1650

1284 Al- Mansuri Hospital, Cairo opened. At some time,
this had music therapy for its mental patients.
Dave Sheppard's Development of Mental Health Law and Practice
begins in 1285 with a case that linked "the instigation of the devil" and being "frantic and mad"

1290 (See 1324: 17 Edward 2 cap. 9)

De Praerogativa Regis, the Act giving the King (or, possibly, regulating and already established) custody of the lands of natural fools and wardship of the property of the insane, may have been drawn up between 1255 and 1290. This is part of feudal law relating to the idea that all land is by gift from the highest lord (in England, the King). Until the English civil war and interregnum, all land reverted to the king on the chief tenant's death, to be reclaimed by any lawful heir on payment of a fee. The King's Officers, throughout the country, who regulated these affairs were called "Escheators" (See external link). The Escheators also held the inquisitions to determine if a land holder was a lunatic or idiot.

A timeline of Learning Disability Nursing starts with the Royal Prerogative

1292

"A lunatic who had burned a man's house was convicted by the justices but released on their authority."

Argued that before 1400 Bethlem was a religious institution focusing primarily on collecting and distributing alms. By the fourteenth century (1300) "the main beneficiaries, apart from the Hospital and its staff, were probably poor people who lived locally, rather than the Order of Bethlehem. As the social and political changes of the mid-fourteenth century onwards made alms-collecting more difficult, the Hospital started to concentrate ever more on the care of the sick, and in particular on the care of the mad. Typically, this happened at just the moment when other English hospitals were abandoning or cutting back this type of provision severely." ( Andrews etc 1997 (Kindle Locations 2563-2568).

1310 Date given for a German madhouse at Elbing near Danzig. Ackernecht, E. H. 1959 (ch.3 p.21-22) mentions 14th century German mad houses at Elbing, Hamburg and Nurenberg.

16.2.1312 at York: Pardon to Richard Sharpe of Malteby, for the death of Agnes his wife, as it appears by the record of John de Insula and the others justices of gaol delivery for York, that he was mad when he killed her. (Calendar of Patent Rolls Reign of Edward the 2nd p.431 5 Edward II Part 2... Membrane 20 - From John Alan Longbottom)

1340 14th? year of Edward 3rd's reign.

Bethlem before:

Warren R. Street says:

15.10.1346 The impoverished priory and order of St Mary of Bethlehem, later to become Bethlehem Hospital ("Bedlam"), was taken under the patronage and protection of Richard Lacer, mayor of London, and the citizens of London. The act brought to an end a century of "disaster, poverty, and failure." [But see below 1377 (king) and 1546 (city)

1347-1350 Black Death (Bubonic Plague) in Europe. "In England it reached a peak in July 1349".

1349 23rd year of Edward 3rd's reign

1371 Date given for royal licence to Robert Denton, chaplain, to use his own house in Tower Street ward in the parish of Barking, near the Tower of London, as a hospital "for the poor priests and for the men and women in the sad city who suddenly fall into a frenzy and lose their memory, who were to reside there until cured; with an oratory to the said hospital to the invocation of the Blessed Virgin Mary". See Tuke, D.H. 1882 pages 53-55 (source Stow, Survey of London, 1603 "written in 1598") and Catholic Encyclopedia - source Sir William Dugdale Monasticon Anglicanum, London, 1655-1673

Tuke also takes from Stowe a story of a madhouse near Charing Cross [later called the Stone House] which "a king" took objection to and had its lunatics removed to Bethlem - thus starting that hospital's connection with insanity. This house is of uncertain origin and may have been much older than the one in Tower Street ward.

Margery Kempe, who was born in Lynn, Norfolk, about 1373 and lived to 1438, dictated a book of her spiritual experiences (1436) which shows how she went "out of her mind" after childbirth, was bound in a storeroom to prevent her from self-harm, suspected of demonic possession, but escaped burning, had visions of angels and visions of men's sexual parts and was seen as both holy and heretic. Through hearing holy sermons and books, she "ever increased in contemplation and holy meditation, but learnt through divine visits to her during and after "cursed thoughts" and "pain" that "every good thought is the speech of God". (See Peterson, D. 1982) [External link to Margery Kempe pages on the Luminarium web]

1375


1377

21.6.1377 to 30.9.1399 Reign of Richard 2nd. Aged ten when he became king. "Richard was said to have been tall, good-looking and intelligent. Though probably not insane, as earlier historians used to believe, he may have suffered from what modern psychologists would call a "personality disorder"" (Wikipedia)

The religious priory of St Mary of Bethlem, in London, was confiscated by King Edward 3rd in 1375, and used for lunatics from 1377. (Jones 1972 p.12). The year 1377 is the year O'Donoghue calculated that lunatics were moved from the Stone House to Bethlem

History of Bethlem before it was used for lunatics

In 1403/1404 it had just six insane patients and three who were sane. (Scull 1972 p.19). This old Bedlam was a small institution (on a site south of what is now Liverpool Street Station), even in the 17th century when it had about 30 patients. Its showy replacement, the Moorfields Bedlam, opened in 1676.

about 1393 Margery Kempe went "out of her mind"

1403

Report of a Visitation which had enquired into the deplorable state of affairs at Bethlem Hospital (Michael Warren). There is a report of a Royal Commission, in 1405, as to the state of lunatics confined there. (Catholic Encyclopedia)

Spain has been described as the cradle of humane psychiatry because of the treatment at asylums such as Valencia, Saragossa, Seville, Valladolid, Palma Mallorca, Toledo (the Hospital de Innocents) and Granada. Valencia, opened at the beginning of the century, is said to have removed chains and used games, occupation, entertainment, diet and hygiene as early as 1409

Warren R. Street says:

24.2.1409 The founding of the world's first mental hospital was inspired. On this day in Valencia, Spain, Father Juan Galiberto Jofré came upon a crowd harassing a "madman." Wealthy citizens, led by Lorenzo Salom, responded to a sermon calling for a hospital for the insane. The Hospital de Nuestra Doña Santa Maria de los Inocentes was founded later in the year and is still in operation.

See Lopez Ibor 2006/2008 who reproduces (from an 1848 source) this part of the sermon:

"In this city, there are many and very important pious and charitable initiatives. However, one very necessary one is lacking, that is, a hospital or house where the innocent and frenzied would be drawn together because many poor, innocent and frenzied people wander through this city. They suffer great hardships of hunger and cold and harm, because due to their innocence and rage, they do not know how to earn their living nor ask for the maintenance they need for their living. Therefore, they sleep in the streets and die from hunger and cold and many evil persons, who do not have God in their conscience hurt them and point to where they are sleeping, they injury and kill and abuse some innocent women. It also occurs that the frenzied poor hurt many of the persons who are out wandering through the city. These things are known in the entire city of Valencia. Thus, it would be a very holy thing and work for Valencia to build a hostel or hospital where such insane or innocent persons could be housed so that they would not be wandering through the city and could not hurt nor be hurt."

1425 Saragossa

1436 Seville

1436 Margery Kempe dictated a book about her spiritual experiences.

1464: Examples of people being granted custody of an idiot and his or her property.

Warren R. Street says:

1.11.1478 Pope Sixtus 4th issued a papal bull extending the power of the Inquisition to Spain. The Inquisition, established in some countries in the thirteenth century, was responsible for the torture and execution of many people with mental illness. In Seville, inquisitors Miguel de Morcillo and Juan de San Martin burned about 500 people in three years. In Aragon, inquisitor Thomas de Torquemada was said to be especially ruthless in the pursuit of deviance.

19.5.1487 Heinrich Kramer and Johann Sprenger's Malleus Maleficarum (The Witch Hammer), the Inquisition's guide to the diagnosis, behavior, trial, and punishment of witches, was endorsed by the Faculty of Theology at the University of Cologne. The Malleus went through 19 editions in the next 2 centuries and provided a basis for gruesome tortures of people with deviant behavior.

1489 Valladolid

1494 Ship of Fools. Michel Foucault suggests that the publication of Brant's illustrated narrative poem marks a point in European culture where a dialogue between reason and unreason became central.

1495 Syphilis, possibly introduced from the new world, broke out amongst troops in Italy and rapidly spread across Europe, reaching England and Holland in 1496. It reached India in 1498. In 1500 there was an epidemic of syphilis across Europe and in 1505 it reached China. The connection between syphilis and general paralysis of the insane was not demonstrated until the 20th century.

1500- words

Zilboorg writes of some sixteenth century writers as "The first psychiatric revolution" and (Ackernecht 1968, p-) writes of the "magnificent developments of psychiatry" in the 16th century. The writers are: Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535), Delia Porta, Cardano, Paracelsus, Lemnius, Reginald Scotus and Johannes Weyer (1515- 1588). Their achievement was to offer a natural alternative to ideas of demonic possession. Ackernecht argues that "the increase of witch hunting" and the natural (scientific) alternatives "are aspects of the Renaissance" due to the disintegration of mediaeval society.

Science Time Line 1518

1518
In 1518 King Henry 8th, on the advice of his court physician, founded the Royal College of Physicians (London) to control who practised as a physician in London and so protect the public from quacks.

External link to Royal College of Physicians history
Madhouses: See 1754

1520

A small book by Paracelsus, written about 1520 and published 1567 was called (English translation of title) "Diseases which lead to a Loss of Reason". The introduction makes it clear that these are not caused by spirits, but are natural diseases. (Ackernecht 1968, pp 22-23)

1527 Granada

1528: Copernicus

Birth of the City of London Bedlam

Until the 1530s, Bethlem stood in open ground

1536

First Act of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Although the religious foundations were closed, any "hospital" (refuge for the homeless poor) attached might continue. (The hospital of St Bartholemews in London, for example, continued when the priory closed). Continued existence would be precarious, however, unless civic authorities sought to preserve it.

1538

The City of London unsuccessfully petitioned the King to give them five hospitals plus their endowments. The hospitals included Bethlem, St Bartholomew and St Thomas. They were needed to house:

"the miserable people lying in the street, offending every clean person passing by the way with their filth and nasty savours" [savour here means smell]
1539 Juan Ciudad Duarte

1543

"The interpretation of strange words, used in the translation" from Italian of Joannes de Vigo The most excellent works of surgery by Barthomew Traheron, included crisis meaning a sudden change in a disease


1546

27.12.1546 King Henry 8th signed a document giving Bethlem Hospital and St Bartholomew to the City of London. The name "St Bartholomew" being changed to "the House of the Poor in West Smithfield" (although this name was only used legally). On 13.1.1547 he signed a document giving their endowments (most of their medieval property) to the City of London. (Medvei and Thornton The Royal Hospital of Saint Bartholomew 1123-1973) 1974, p.24)


1547

1557

From 1557, Bethlem was managed by the governors of the Bridewell House of Correction (established 1550). The governors were chosen by the City of London. Bethlem was controlled by the City of London until it was transferred to the National Health Service in 1948

1377 1559

Bedlam shown on the earliest surviving map of London. This is a copper plate engraving of Moorfields, discovered in 1962, and bought by the London Museum.

The map is in pictures and was probably drawn in 1558 by the Dutch artist Anthonis van den Wyngaerrde in 1558, and engraved by Franciscus Hogenberg in 1559

[External Link to copy on the Rootsweb site. There is a clearer image of Bedlam on the London Museum web exhibit (archive copy)]

1569 Bethlehem churchyard created by enclosing about an acre of Bethlem's land by a wall. It was to be used for burying people for whom there was inadequate room in their own parish.

1562-1563 Thomas Colwell (London printer) licensed to print a play called Dyccon of Bedlam. This may be the same play as he published in 1575 as Gammer Gurton's Needle in which the wandering beggar "Dickon the Bedlam" appears.

1583 Philip Barrough (1560-1590) The method of physic, containing the causes, signs, and cures of inward diseases in man's body from the head to the foot.

Warren R. Street says:

23.5.1586 Timothie Bright, the physician of St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, wrote the forward to his book, the Treatise on Melancholy. Bright's book was the first book in the English language on the subject of mental illness. Some of the phrases Bright used in his descriptions of disordered behavior appeared later in the plays of William Shakespeare.

1592 An account of a trial for conspiracy to kill the King, written by Richard Cosin, contains discussion and definitions of the terms applying to the various "degrees" of insanity. See furor, delirium and dementia

Ackernecht (1968, p.29) speaks of "magnificent developments of psychiatry" in the sixteenth century, fading out on the 17th. His judgement appears to be based on Michel Foucault's claim that absolutist governments resolved a social crisis by incarcerating all the poor.

The Elizabethan Poor Law
1598
1598 Poor Law Act (39 Elizabeth chapter 3)
Every parish was to appoint overseers of the poor to find work for the unemployed and set up parish-houses for poor people who could not support themselves. [See Blackstone on overseers]
1601
1601 Poor Law Act (43 Elizabeth chapter 2) or Old Poor Law
Act usually known as the Elizabethan Poor Law or Old Poor Law

Mental Health and the Poor Law 1654

John Stow, 'Bishopsgate warde', in A Survey of London. Reprinted From the Text of 1603, ed. C L Kingsford (Oxford, 1908), pp. 163-175

Next vnto the parrish church of S. Buttolph, is a fayre Inne for receipt of Trauellers: then an Hospitall of S. Mary of Bethelem, founded by Simon Fitz Mary one of the Sheriffes of London in the yeare 1246. He founded it to haue beene a Priorie of Cannons with brethren and sisters, and king Edward the thirde granted a protection, which I haue seene, for the brethren Miliciae beate Mariae de Bethlem, within the Citty of London, the 14. yeare of his raigne. It was an Hospitall for distracted people, Stephen Geninges Marchant Taylor gaue 40. li. toward purchase of the patronage by his Testament 1523. the Mayor and Communalty purchased the patronage therof with all the landes and tenementes thereunto belonging in the yeare 1546. the same yeare King Henry the eight gaue this Hospitall vnto the Cittie: the Church and Chappell whereof were taken downe in the raigne of Queene Elizabeth, and houses builded there, by the Gouernours of Christes Hospitall in London. In this place people that bee distraight in wits, are by the suite of their friendes receyued and kept as afore, but not without charges to their bringers in. In the yeare 1569. Sir Thomas Roe Marchant Taylor, Mayor, caused to bee enclosed with a Wall of bricke, about one acre of ground, being part of the said Hospitall of Bethelem, to wit on the banke of deepe ditch so called, parting the saide Hospitall of Bethelem from the More field: this he did for buriall, and ease of such parrishes in London, as wanted ground conuenient within their parrishes. The Lady his wife was there buried (by whose perswasion he inclosed it) but himselfe borne in London was buried in the parrish church of Hackney. From this hospitall Northwarde vpon the streetes side many houses haue beene builded with Alleys backward of late time too much pesterd with people (a great cause of infection) vp to the barres.

Notes

164, l. 24. the ditch. On Agas's map the ditch appears clearly, and is shown to widen here to a point where a stream flows into it from the north. On Faithorne's map (prepared 1643-7) the ditch has completely disappeared. See further Archaeologia, lx. 197-200 with illustration. Recent excavations have proved the accuracy of Stow's statement as to the filling up of the ditch with soilage and other filthiness (id. lx. 202).

l. 37. purchased the patronage. From a document in Letter-book F, 154, it appears that on Oct. 15, 1346, the House and Order 'Fratrum milicie beate Marie de Bethlem' were taken under the protection and patronage of the Mayor, Aldermen, &c., of the City of London. See also Letter-books F, 163, and H, 338, where it is claimed in answer to a royal writ that the patronage and appointment of a keeper rested with the Mayor and citizens. In 1406 Henry IV again claimed the patronage and right of visitation (C. P. R. Henry IV, iii. 231).

165, l. 10. banke of deepe ditch. In the foundation charter of Bethlehem Hospital mention is made of the 'fossatum quod vocatur Depediche' (Mon. Angl. vi. 622). Recent excavations revealed a part of its course near Blomfield Street, and showed it as a deep, sluggish, stagnant stream. It was ten feet below the base of the original Walbrook, which was somewhat further west. It is the stream referred to in the last note but one. See Archaeologia, lx. 206-7 with plan.

9.11.1604 The Honest Whore, Part 1 was entered into the Stationers' Register. The author on the cover printed later that year is Thomas Dekker. Thomas Middleton collaborated. Part 2 (Dekker only) was entered into the Stationers' Register on 29.4.1608, but not published (printed) until 1630. The plays are set in Milan, Italy. The final scene of Part One takes place in "Bethlehem Monastery" where marriages are conducted and mad people kept. (External link to text and notes). Part two concluded with "comical passages of an Italian Bridewell"

1611 Authorised (King James) version of the Bible. The bible was a major source for ideas about virtually everything in the 17th century, and later. In her Notes of the history of mental health care (on the Mind website), Katherine Darton outlines some of its influences in her consideration of the Jewish tradition. (Scroll down from 2,000BC). (archive)

about 1603 Macbeth "Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain and with some sweet oblivious antidote cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart?"

about 1615

Giles Earle His Booke, a manuscript collection of lyrics in the British Museum, contains the first known written version of the English Folk lyrics "Tom o' Bedlam's Song" (see Bedlam weblinks)

1620

Complaints about Bedlam

1621

visit Charles and Mary Lamb First edition of Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy. What it is, with all the kinds, causes, symptoms, prognostics and several cures of it... Philosophically, Medicinally, Historically opened and cut up. By Democritus Junior published in Oxford. The 1628 edition had a ten picture engraving that was explained by a poem in the 1632 edition. The verse for the engraving of the maniac is:

But see the Madman rage downright With furious looks, a ghastly sight, Naked in chains bound doth he lie, And roars amain, he knows not why. Observe him; for as in a glass, Thine angry potraiture it was. His picture keep still in thy presence; 'Twixt him and the there's no difference.

Origins of la Pitie-Salpetriere and le Bicetre France
External link Histoire de la Pitie-Salpetriere
1612 In place of an old tennis court, Marie de Médicis created a beggars' hospice: l'hospice Notre Dame de la Pitié
6.6.1636 Purchase of land under Louis 13th for the Petit Arsenal or Salpêtriere to make gunpowder. Closed after fifteen years, Louis 14th offered it to the duchesse d'Aiguillon to set up a hospice for beggars with the help of Vincent de Paul.
A pdf file at http://www.ifrns.chups.jussieu.fr/ifrns.pdf contains The History of the Neurosciences at La Pitié and La Salpêtrié in French and English.
1633 to 1642 Building the Hôpital Bicêtre in Paris
The Bicêtre was originally a military hospital. It was incorporated into the Hôpital Général in 1656 and used successively as an orphanage, a lunatic asylum and a hospital. external link

October 1636 Commenting on the physics of Galileo, Thomas Hobbes wrote "the motion is only in the medium and light and colour are but the effects of that motion in the brain". Hobbes was to apply the idea of studying motion in matter to the study of light meeting the eye and ideas in the mind. In Leviathan he laid the foundations for assocationist theories of thought.

30.1.1649: English king beheaded

1650s Working with the Bible, it was possible to calculate that something spectacular was likely to happen in the 1650s. For example, it could be calculated that the great flood that destroyed all life not in the Ark took place 1,656 years after the creation - So 1,656 years after the birth of Christ could be equally significant. (Usher's chronology put the creation in 4004 and the flood in 2349. 4004- 2349 = 1655). The execution of a King was woven into speculation that Christ could be due to return to establish his kingdom.

9.8.1650 An "Act against several atheistical, blasphemous and execrable opinions derogatory to the honour of God, and destructive to human society" made said that people "not distempered with sickness, or distracted in brain" professing certain beliefs were to be "committed to Prison or to the House of Correction, for the space of six months, without Bail or Mainprize, and until he or she shall have put in sufficient Sureties to be of good behaviour for the space of one whole year." The execrable opinions started with anyone maintaining "him or her self, or any other mere creature, to be very God, or to be infinite or almighty, or in honor, excellency, majesty and power to be equal, and the same with the true God, or that the true God, or the eternal majesty dwells in the creature and no where else; or whosoever shall deny the holiness and righteousness of God, or shall presume as aforesaid to profess, that unrighteousness in persons, or the acts of uncleanness, profane swearing, drunkenness, and the like filthiness and brutishness, are not unholy and forbidden in the Word of God, or that these acts in any person, or the persons [so] committing them, are approved of by God...". George Fox was imprisoned under this Act on 18.10.1650.

October 1650 Rapturous quakers

1651

Winter 1651 George Fox's vision of blood in the streets of Lichfield

1654

Petition respecting John Pateson at Ormskirk Quarter Sessions, who had fallen into a sullen, sad, melancholie and would not go indoors or eat or wash himself. [Described in more detail]. The churchwardens and overseers were ordered to make an assessment and provide out of poor rates for his care until he recovered or died.
compare America see America
1655

Meric Causaubon's Treatise concerning enthusiasme, as it is an effect of nature, but is mistaken for either divine inspiration or diabolical possession.

1656

Alleged internment of Rev. Mr George Trosse (Account not published until 1714)

The 5th Monarchy Men believed that 1656 could be the year when Christ would return to earth. The year after, and again in 1661, the 5th Monarchy Men undertook an armed uprising to bring about his kingdom.

Friday 24.10.1656 James Nayler (Quaker) entered Bristol accompanied by a small group of followers. They led him on a horse singing 'Hosanna' and 'Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Israel'. (see enthusiasm). The following purports to be a copy of his examination before a Bristol magistrate: Nayler: "I did ride into a town : but what it's name was, I know not ; and by the Spirit a woman was commanded to hold my horse's bridle ; and some there were that cast down clothes and sang praises to the Lord, such songs as the Lord put into their hearts ; and it's like, it might be the song of holy, holy, holy ..." Magistrate: "Whether or no didst thou reprove those women?" nayler: Nay ; but I bad them take heed, that they sang nothing but what they were moved to of the Lord". Magistrate: "Dost thou own this letter, which Hannah Stranger sent unto thee?" Nayler: "Yea I do own that letter." Magistrate: "Art thou, according to that letter the fairest of ten thousand?" Nayler: "As to the visible, I deny any such attribute to be due unto me ; but if as to that which the Father has begotten in me, I shall own it". Magistrate: "Have any called thee by the name of Jesus?" Nayler: "Not as unto the visible, but as Jesus, the Christ, that is in me". Magistrate: "Whether art thou more sent than others?" Nayler "As to that I have nothing at present given me of my Father to answer". Magistrate: "Art thou the everlasting Son of God?" Nayler: "Where God is manifest in the flesh, there is the everlasting Son, and I do witness God in the flesh. I am the Son of God, and the Son of God is but one". Magistrate: "Art thou the Prince of peace?" Nayler: "The Prince of everlasting peace is begotten in me". Magistrate: "Art thou the everlasting Son of God, the King of righteousness?" Nayler: "I am, and the everlasting righteousness is wrought in me : if ye were acquainted with the Father, ye would also be acquainted with me". Magistrate: Did any kiss thy feet?" Nayler: "It might be they did ; but I minded them not." [Original source: The sad and lamentable cry of oppression and cruelty in the city of Bristol : Relating to the prosecution of certain dissenting- Protestants in some passages most notorious to the grieved inhabitants of the said city. London : Printed for John Alexander. 1682. Quoted by Samuel Sayer

Nayler was in prison until 1659. Conflict between Quakers over performances like this was a stimulous to the creation of a collective discipline that, over a century later, made them the pioneers in the control of insanity.

France Opening of Hôpital Général, Paris: hospital, poorhouse and factory
The hospital (as it was spelt in the 17th century) was the putting together of a number of buildings for the relief of the poor. These included La Salpétrière (for women) and Le Bicêtre, which later became the Paris asylums for the insane.
meaning of hospital
Foucault: The Great Confinement
external link (scroll down for English translation
external link


1657

5th Monarchy rising headed by Thomas Venner.

Bethlem:

Warren R. Street says:

21.4.1657 English diarist John Evelyn recorded the details of his visit to Bethlehem Hospital in London. He saw "several poor miserable creatures in chains; one of them was mad with making verses."

See 1678

1660: Restoration of English Monarchy In 1661, the Royal prerogative over idiots and lunatics moved from the Court of King's Wards to the Lord Chancellor. Charles 2nd's Lord Chancellor was Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon. The papers of the Clerk of the Custodies of Lunatics and Idiots went back to the days of Lord Clarendon. (J. Lowry Whittle, Registrar of Lunatcs in 1882 - who inherited the papers)

1660

From November 1660 (arrested) to 1672, John Bunyan, a Baptist preacher, was imprisoned almost continuously in Bedford Gaol for preaching outside the established church. In prison he wrote Pilgrims Progress and his religious autobiography Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. Grace Abounding described religious experiences that sound like diseases mad doctors were soon to identify.

1.1.1661 to 4.1.1661 Venner's Rising. This began with about fifty believers in the imminent return of Christ (the fifth monarch) occupying St Paul's Cathedral. The 5th Monarchy rising was suppressed and Veneer and the other leaders executed on 19.1.1661. A hundred 5th Monarchy Men and some 4000 Quakers were imprisoned. "The first official declaration of absolute pacifism was made by the Quakers in 1661, after a number had been arrested after Venner's unsuccessful rising". (Hill 1972, p.241) [Presented to the King on 21.1.1661]

Different dates: Sunday 6.1.1661 - Monday 7.1.1661 In the night another 5th Monarchy rising headed by Thomas Venner. (see Pepys)

11.5.1662 Arrests following the Quaker Act - 19.5.1662 Act of Uniformity.

Sunday 7.7.1661 or possibly Sunday 7.9.1662 Quaker women demonstrate with blood in (old) St Paul's Cathedral a few days after a Quaker man had run naked through Smithfield market with burning coals of fire on his head.

1665

May 1665: First case (St Giles, Cripplegate) of the London Plague. By the end of July, more than 1,000 Londoners were dying each week. During August it reached many provincial towns. In London, it got worse in September, but then lessened as the weather became cooler. London returned to some degree of normality during the winter. Many provincial towns were badly stricken in 1666. [external link - archive] [Solomon Eccles may, or may not, have run naked as a sign during the plague]

1666

Sunday 2.9.1666 for five days: Great Fire of London.
After the Great Fire, Robert Hooke was appointed city surveyor and designed the new
Bethlem (Bethlehem Hospital) in Moorfields. This opened in 1676. It was replaced by the St George's Fields Bethlem in 1815. The Moorfield's Bethlem had 130 patients in 1704.

blind mania
At the door of the new Bedlam the visitor was confronted with sculptures commissioned from the Dutch artist Caius Gabriel Cibber (1630-1700). One (above) of mania or raving madness, the other of melancholy. Those who pass a theatre or a strip-joint today are tempted in by photographs of the performance. This drama had a hundred year run and its actors were involuntary exhibits.

Pay to View Insanity

The new Bethlem was a place for display, set in gardens and modelled on the Tuileries, the palace of the French King. This is the Bethlem where the lunatics were displayed to visitors for a fee (until 1770). Londoner's on holiday could visit the zoo animals at the Tower of London and then stroll up to Moorfields to see the humans.

Thomas Tryon complained in 1695 about the public being admitted on holy-days:

"It is a very undecent, inhuman thing to make... a show... by exposing them, and naked too perhaps of either sexes, to the idle curiosity of every vain boy, petulant wench, or drunken companion, going along from one apartment to the other, and crying out; this woman is in for love, that man for jealousy. He has over-studied himself, and the like."

The life sized collection boxes, one male (clothed) and one female (topless) used are now on display in the Science Museum.

France   France saw the last plague epidemic in 1668, until it reappeared in 1720. Foucault precedes his discussion of the Panopticon with a description of measures to be taken at the end of the seventeenth century "when the plague appeared in a town". These specific orders were for Vincennes.

1669 In Salem, a Quakeress known for signing with her nakedness,
is found to have a distempered mind
America

1670
In England the earliest records of private madhouses on a regular basis are from 1670 onwards. [See Clerkenwell, below - Hoxton House (1695) - Irish's (1700)]. From the beginning, madhouses were automatically subject to the common law of England. One could apply to the courts for redress against wrongful imprisonment in a madhouse as anywhere else. When inspection of madhouses was introduced (in 1774), it was mainly to assist the courts.

Old Manor House. Clerkenwell Green Clerkenwell Green is on the road from London to Islington. Here, in 1672, James Newton cured his first patient "a woman, put to me by the churchwardens... who was much given to swear and tear, having a very sore breast, and many other grievous sores made by binding her in bed with cords, though she was with weakness not able to stand without hold, yet was she and all her sores perfectly cured in three weeks." By 1678, Newton had established a madhouse in the former Manor House of Clerkenwell. The "Madd House" is shown on Stow's 1720 map just on the edge of the built up area of London. (Hunter, R.A. and Macalpine, I. 1963 pp 200-201) See 1750

Bethlem:

Warren R. Street says:

18.4.1678 Evelyn visited "new Bedlam hospital, magnificently built, and most sweetly placed in Moorfields since the dreadful fire in London." The public was allowed to tour Bethlehem hospital as a means of education and entertainment.

1679

Habeas Corpus Act

1690

In his An Essay Concerning Understanding, John Locke said there is a degree of madness in almost everyone. This is because emotions force us to persist in falsely or unreasonably associating some ideas. Madness is the inability to let reason sort out ideas by relating them correctly to our experiences.

Locke's ideas set a pattern for 18th century English views of reason and unreason. Madness was seen as a persistent inability to associate ideas correctly.

1692

6.3.1682 John Moore, Bishop of Norwich, preaches before the Queen a sermon afterwards published as Of Religious Melancholy

1695

Hoxton House became a private madhouse

1696

Bristol Poor Act established a Board of Guardians who used a building near St Peter's Church, Bristol as a workhouse for 100 boys. The addition of "infants, the aged, infirm, and lunatics" (by 1700?) changed its character and it became St Peter's Hospital. In the 18th century this had lunatic wards. In the 19th century (1832?) it became a lunatic asylum.

Eighteenth Century Asylums

English asylums in the eighteenth century were small and they were not run by the state. The best known and the largest was Bedlam or Bethlem in the city of London. This had 130 patients in 1704. There was a growing number of private madhouses - Probably about 40 in 1800. After 1774 private madhouses had to have a licence and it is from the surviving licence records that we can estimate how many there were. Charitable asylums were opened in the eighteenth century in eight English towns: Norwich (1713), London (1751), Manchester (1766), Newcastle (1767), York (1777), Liverpool (1792), Leicester (1794) and Hereford (1797). The ninth opened in Exeter in 1801.

Eighteenth Century Psychiatry

Ackernecht (1968, p.) argues that psychiatry "reached the status of an independent science" in the eighteenth century. But not due to "developments in medicine but to the philosophy of enlightenment which pervaded the whole century". Reasons were: Belief in "possession by evil spirits" came to be regarded as "superstition". Reason was the highest good for the philosophers, so they sympathised especially with those who lost their reason. He argues that:

"Since the concept of the immortal soul was of no importance in this philosophical system, mental disorders could be viewed as disorders of the mortal brain or thinking apparatus and as such could now at last be studied on a scientific basis. At the same time it became possible to give up a purely somatic viewpoint and to introduce psychology deliberately into psychiatry. Cartesian philosophy, no doubt, played a part in this development."

1700

David Irish in his madhouse near Guildford, Surrey, claimed to cure by good food and comfort, and would care for those who were not curable for life, if paid Quarterly:

"allowing them good fires, meat, and drink, with good attendance, and all necessaries far beyond what is allowed at Bedlam, or any other place that he has yet heard of and cheaper, for he allows the melancholy, mad, and such whose consciences are oppressed with a sense of sin, good meat every day for dinner, and also wholesome diet for breakfast and supper, and good table-beer enough at any time." Irish, D. 1700 pp 53-4, quoted Hunter and Macalpine 1963 p.279)

1713

Norwich Bethel opened. The first known charitable madhouse in England (apart from the special case of Bethlem). It is also has the longest history in one place. Norwich was then England's second largest city. The Bethlem was established by an individual private bequest. It had 28 patients in 1753. The Norwich Incorporation of the Poor had been established by Act of Parliament in 1712.

1714

The 1714 Vagrancy Act is thought to have been the first English statute to provide specifically for the detention of lunatics, but Blackstone argues that it was based on common law. [See also my introduction to Mental Health and Civil Liberties and Valerie Argent's discussion of the law on confinement]

1723

Lunatic Wards to Guys Hospital opened

1724

Trial of Edward Arnold for the murder of Lord Onslow established the wild beast test

1725

Richard Blackmore's Treatise of the Spleen and Vapours

1728

James Monro was resident physician at Bethlem Hospital from 1728 to 1752

1735


Rake 8 Publication of the prints of

A Rake's Progress

1. Sudden wealth - 2. French manners - 3. a brothel - 4. escapes arrest - 5. marries for money - 6. gambles - 7. a debtors' prison - 8. Bedlam

1738

Wednesday 31.5.1738: Alexander Cruden escaped from Wright's madhouse, Bethnal Green, and successfully applied to the Lord Mayor to prevent his recapture. He published an account in 1739 (The London-Citizen Exceedingly Injured) "as plainly showing the absolute necessity of regulating Private Madhouses in a more effectual manner than at present"

May 1738 Conversion of Charles and John Wesley. See Evangelical Revival - Methodist Hymns - Enthusiasm

Wednesday, 17.9.1740 John Wesley's journal entry about Peter Shaw.

13.12.1740 [Date taken from Susanna Wesley : The Complete Writings, 1997, edited by Charles Wallace]. Susannah Wesley wrote to her son John (founder of the Methodists) about a man with "more need of a spiritual, than bodily physician" who was sent to a Chelsea madhouse by "that wretched fellow Monroe", the physician to Bedlam. [The letter is reproduced in Hunter and Macalpine 1963 p.423 with the incorrect date 13.12.1746. G.E. Harrison in "Son to Susanna" (p.119) says Susannah Wesley was buried in Bunhill Fields on 1.8.1742.]

1744

1744 Vagrancy Act

Construction of naval hospitals at Gosport (Haslar), Plymouth and Chatham authorised. [Plymouth was built 1758-1762, Chatham, not until 1827-1828] The Haslar hospital was built between 1745 and 1761. "The hospital catered for a full range of illnesses and included wards for medical, surgical, fever, flux, smallpox, consumptive, scorbutic and recovery as well as lunatics. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Haslar was one of the most important naval hospitals in the country. It became the main lunatic asylum for the navy as well as providing for infectious diseases between 1898-1902" (PAPHE external link) - The navy placed lunatic patients in Hoxton House, at least until 1818, but also had insane patients at Haslar

1746

8.8.1746 George 2nd granted a Royal Charter to St Patrick's Hospital, Dublin, Ireland, founded from the legacy of Jonathan Swift. Swift had been found of unsound mind by a Commission of Lunacy in 1742.
"St Patrick's was built by architect George Semple following Dean Swift's detailed and painstaking instructions. It is now the oldest, purpose built psychiatric hospital continuously functioning on its original site in these islands and one of the oldest in the world." (external link)

1747

11.6.1747 Preface to Primitive Physic: Or, An Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases by John Wesley

1749

David Hartley's Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his expectations linked the association of ideas theory of human mind to the nervous system. Sensations set up vibrations in our nerves which move rather like sound waves through air. Thought is the association of these vibrations (ideas) when they meet. Hartley's theory, although rarely accepted without critical modification, was influential in philosophy, in the scientific study of mind, and in medicine. Some connection of thought to the body was necessary (at this time) for it to be considered a medical issue, and considering the nerves as conductors along which thought waves run provided a possible connection of mind and body. At the turn of the nineteenth/twentieth century, theories such as those of Sigmund Freud provided a means for medicine to include psychological "functional" disorders as well as "organic" ones.

1750

The Gentleman's Magazine reported that a Dr Newton "keeper and physician to a private madhouse, near Islington turnpike" had died. About this time, William Battie acquired premises in Islington Road for private patients and in 1754 took over Newton's madhouse in Wood's Close. (Hunter, R.A. and Macalpine, I. 1963 pp 200-201 and 402-403). (See below and 1776)

1751

Saint Luke's Hospital for Lunatics opened in Upper Moorfields, opposite [??] (see sketch map) Bethlem Hospital on the north side of what is today Finsbury Square. William Battie was its physician to 1764. He also acquired premises for private patients. Saint Luke's had 57 patients in 1753. It moved to Old Street in 1786

1752

John Monro was physician at Bethlem Hospital from 1752. He also opened a private asylum at Brooke House Hackney in 1759 and took over the house at Clerkenwell in 1776

1753

Saturday 20.1.1753 John Wesley wrote in his journal that he had "advised one who had been troubled many years with a stubborn paralytic disorder to try a new remedy. Accordingly, she was electrified and found immediate help." Electricity had cured two people of inveterate pain in the stomach and another of a pain in his side he had had since a child. Wesley wondered about doctors and apothecaries decrying such cheap and easy medicines "as they do quick-silver and tar-water".

Sometime in the mid 1750s: a magistrate secured the release of Mrs Gold's daughter from Hoxton House (madhouse), where she had been confined by her husband.

1754

In December 1754, The Royal College of Physicians declined a suggestion that they should be an authority for regulating madhouses in London.

1755

"Pourquoi l'homme seul est-il sujet à devenir imbécile?" Rousseau asked in his discourse on the origin of inequality. Cole translates imbécile as dotard:

"Why is man alone liable to grow into a dotard? Is it not that he returns to his primitive state; and that, while the brute, which has acquired nothing and has therefore nothing to lose, still retains the force of instinct, man, who loses, by age or accident, all that his perfectibility had enabled him to gain, falls by this means lower than the brutes themselves?" [See degeneration theory]

1758

"A Treatise on Madness By William Battie MD. Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London, And Physician to St Luke's Hospital"

Madhouses for the Rich: When the very rich were lunatic or idiot, their relatives could afford to confine them as single lunatics - as the British Royal Family did in 1788, 1801, 1811 and 1916. One motive for this was secrecy. Madhouses for two or more inmates were more vulnerable to the risk of exposure, because more people were involved, and because the registration of inmates was required from 1774, but they might provide more humane custody at a lower price. Physicians and others who arranged single confinement, would also refer people to private madhouses, in which they would have some financial stake. Some of these catered especially for the rich. Irish's in Guildford, already advertised good conditions in 1700 . (We can trace a continuous line from Irish to Stilwell's in Hayes in the mid-19th century). Whitmore became a madhouse in 1757. Thomas Warburton's association with Willis, building up its aristocratic clientele, probably dates from the 1790s, before the second episode of the King's madness. Rev Willis became Dr Willis in 1759 - which gives some indication of the start of his business. John Monro opened Brooke House in 1759. Ticehurst may have opened in 1763, Cleve Hill (later Brislington) in 1794. Sidney House (later Manor House) admitted its first patient on 1.8.1829. An article by Harriet Martineau in 1834 argued that rich lunatics would be better cared for in asylums than singly. The case for the "domestic" (single) treatment of some patients was argued by Dr Edward James Seymour (1831/1832). Those who managed asylums for the rich usually also provided single houses as an option.

Mencap's history of changing attitudes
begins by discussing attitudes before and
after the industrial revolution

1760

John Wesley's The Desideratum, or Electricity made Plain and Useful by a Lover of Mankind and of Common Sense was based on his use of electricity in free medical clinics he established for the poor in Bristol and London a decade earlier. (source). Wesley lists disorders cured by electricity and says "a great part of these are of the nervous kind; and perhaps there is no nervous distemper whatever, which would not yield to a steady use of this remedy".

1761

1762

5.9.1762 to 4.10.1762: Mrs Hawley confined in a Chelsea madhouse. Her release was secured by a writ of habeas corpus.

1763

The 1774 Madhouse Act was based on the recommendation of the 1763 Select Committee of the House of Commons on Madhouses that history of the 
lunacy commission

"the present state of the private madhouses in this kingdom, requires the interposition of the legislature."

A large part of their report was an examination of the issues raised by the (eventually successful) attempts of a Mr La Fortune to secure the release of a Mrs Hawley (confined in a Chelsea madhouse 5.9.1762 to 4.10.1762) by writ of habeas corpus. They were specifically concerned with the extent to which madhouses were used to confine people who were not lunatics.

1764

William Battie retired as visiting physician to St Lukes, becoming, in the same year, President of the Royal College of Physicians (for just one year).

1765

1765 to 1769 William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England published by the Oxford University Press.

1766

Manchester Lunatic Asylum opened

1767

Newcastle Lunatic Asylum opened as a Subscription Hospital for patients from Newcastle, Northumberland and Durham. It became a licensed house in which Newcastle Corporation maintained a financial interest.

September 1767: English Prime Minister described as "a lunatic brandishing a crutch" by Junius, the anonymous author of letters to the Public Advertiser. William Pitt (the elder), Lord Chatham, was physically incapacitated by gout and, from about March 1767, was in a state of mental withdrawal described by Daniel Hack Tuke (p.106) as a "dismal and complete eclipse" for "upwards of a year" of his "mental powers". There was no morbid illusion of the fancy, but there was utter prostration of the intellect". [As the first Junius letter was published January 1769, and the last in January 1772, I assume the reference is to a letter that made public Chatham's state in September 1767.]

1771 John Wesley's Sermons on Several Occasions contains his sermon "The Nature of Enthusiasm" in which he says "if you aim at the religion of the heart, if you talk of 'righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost,' then it will not be long before people describe you as "beside yourself" and say "much religion hath made you mad". He argues, however, that madness and true religion are very different.

1772 Pageant: James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw's life narrative

1774

23.1.1774 The "legge sui pazzi" (law on the insane) established in the Italian Kingdom of Tuscany by King Leopold. A few years later Leopold began building a new hospital, the Bonifacio, with Vincenzo Chiarugi at its head. banned the use of chains and physical punishment.

history of the 
lunacy commission The 1774 Madhouses Act established a
commission of the Royal College of Physicians
summary of the 
commissions
to license and visit private madhouses in the
London area. (see law)

Each September, from 1774 to 1827, Royal College of Physicians appointed five of its Fellows commissioners for the year. They met in October to grant licences. They could not refuse or revoke a licence. (see law)

At least once in the year they visited each madhouse, making a minute of its condition. Any keeper refusing admission forfeited his licence. (see law)

A Secretary to the Commissioners was to be sent a notice of the admission of every lunatic who was not a pauper to any licensed house in England and Wales. He kept registers of these in which he also entered commissioners' visiting minutes and those sent to him by the clerks of the county visitors (County Clerks). (see law)

The RCP President, in the name of the Treasurer was to prosecute anyone (in the London area) who kept an unlicensed house, admitted any patients without a medical certificate or failed to notify the Secretary of the admission of a non-pauper. (see law)

The commission could not release a patient improperly confined. This was the traditional role of the High Courts at Westminster, for whose benefit the registers were principally kept. The Westminster courts could also order special visits and reports, and examine those engaged in the execution of the Act. (see law)

Private individuals could apply to the commission to find out if someone was registered as a patient and, if so, where he or she was detained. (see law)

The commission was financed entirely from fees charged for licenses, from which the Treasurer paid every commissioner one guinea for each house visited (irrespective of the time taken) and the Secretary an annual salary. (see law)

Outside London, houses were to be licensed and visited by the Justices of the Peace. (see law)

Medical cartificates were required for the detention of a person as a lunatic. (See law)

1776 The Olney Hymns published. Written by John Newton and William Cowper. Cowper was deeply melancholic and had periods of insanity. In his best known hymn, he pleads for "a closer walk with God, a calm and heavenly frame". But he has lost it: "What peaceful hours I once enjoyed! How sweet their memory still! But they have left an aching void, The world can never fill". Cowper's life and poetry were influential in suggesting associations between mental distress and creativity. For me his most beautiful poem is one he wrote in the autumn of 1793 To Mary (Mrs Unwin) who cared for him for many years and who, being herself reduced to dependency, Cowper cared for in turn. (See Ashley's 1845 assessment and Rossetti's 1870s assessment) ... and visit the Cowper and Newton Museum

William Battie died in 1776, and the Clerkenwell madhouse was taken over by John Monro. His son, Thomas, relinquished it in 1803, when it became a boarding school. (Hunter, R.A. and Macalpine, I. 1963 pp 200-201). The site was used in the 1890s to build the Northampton Institute (external link) (Now part of City University).

1777

York Asylum opened

lunatic sent to madhouse for matricide

1780

"In the sultry, early June days of June 1780, the Lord George Gordon No- Popery Riots rolled through town". On Tuesday 6.6.1780, William Blake was caught up in the riot, and witnessed the sack of Newgate prison. On 12.6.1780 William Cowper wrote to John Newton congratulating him "upon the wisdom that witheld you from entering yourself a member of" [George Gordon's] "the Protestant Association". When Charles Dickens made a novel of the riots, his leading character combined lunacy and weak-mindedness.

1782

The Royal College of Physicians was advised by the Attorney General that its funds were at risk if it prosecuted someone for running a madhouse without a licence.

1784

William Walker, a pauper who murdered his wife

1786

Margaret Nicholson attacked the king with a knife

Saint Luke's Hospital moved from Moorfields to Old Street. Thomas and Mrs Dunston were Master and Matron. The visiting physician was Samuel Foart Simmons. St Luke's had 298 patients in 1815. On an 1832 London map it stretches along Old Street from Bath Street to City Road. Simmons resigned as physician in 1811 and was succeeded by Alexander Robert Sutherland, also licensee of two private houses: Blacklands House, Chelsea. and Fisher House, Islington. John Warburton, another private asylum owner, was also physician from 1829 and Sutherland was succeed by his son AlexanderJohn Sutherland from 1841 to 1860. Henry Monro, also a private asylum owner, was a physician from 1855 to 1882. In 1881 the address was St Lukes Hospital For Lunatics, Old St, City Road, London, and the Resident Medical Superintendent was George Mickley

1787

William Perfect M.D., proprietor of West Malling asylum, published Select Cases in the Different Species of Insanity, Lunacy or Madness, with the modes of practice as adopted in the treatment of each.

Mathew Clay, insane burglar, discharged to the care of his father

1788

St. Bonifacio, Florence opened. Described as "one of the first sites of humane care of people with mental illness". The first director, Vincenzo Chiarugi (born 20.2.1759) had been appointed by the Grand Duke Leopoldo I to plan the new hospital. (Italian link). (Ackernecht)

Wedneday 5.11.1788 Newspaper article revealed that George 3rd, who was ill, had been "delirius". That evening, the King's personal physician, Sir George Baker, found him "under an entire alienation of mind". Other physicians called in to advise included: William Heberden, Richard Warren , Henry Revell Reynolds and Lucas Pepys.

Most of the doctors had experience in the Royal College of Physicians' Commission for Visiting Madhouses, but they were not specialists in mental disorder. At the end of November, Dr Anthony Addington, a society doctor who had treated William Pitt the elder's disorder and had once run a private madhouse, was called in to advise.

The King was removed from Windsor to Kew, for a more therapeutic confinement and to be closer to London doctors, and was there (Friday 5.12.1788) introduced to Rev. Dr Francis Willis, the owner of a private madhouse in Lincolnshire, who took control of the King's treatment.

10.12.1788: The House of Commons published a Committee report containing the evidence of Royal Physicians on the state of the King's mind.

1789

23.4.1789 Services of thanksgiving throughout the country to celebrate the recovery of King George 3rd from insanity. "Britons Rejoice. Your King's Restored"

insanity The king's behaviour (which we know about now) was what the layperson would call insane. The doctors argued that it was delirium - deranged behaviour produced by fever, and, therefore, not insanity. I suspect the public just thought the king had been very ill. It would be interesting to know when, and to what extent, a public perception formed of the king as having been mad. Even on his death, in 1820, one has to read the long obituary in the Annual Register very carefully to glean that his illness included any serious disturbance to his mental faculties. If you have any thoughts or evidence on this issue, please share them with me


March 1790: Decree that within six weeks "all persons detained in fortresses, religious houses, houses of correction, police houses, or other prisons, whatsoever...so long as they are not convicted, or under arrest, or not charged with major crimes, or confined by reason of madness, will be set at liberty". The mad were to be examined and either set at liberty or "cared for in hospitals indicated for that purpose".

In Paris: arrangements were made for insane men to be sent to the Bicêtre and insane women to the Salpétrière (200 insane women moved there in 1792). After an initial period of confusion, the two institutions became reserved for the insane.

France Philippe Pinel was appointed physician superintendent of the Bicêtre in 1793. He decided to unchain the lunatics. He was put in charge of the Salpêtriere in 1795

John van Wyhe's History of Phrenology on the Web (archive) begins in the early 1790s with Franz Joseph Gall's system of organology and brain anatomy in Vienna. (See Combe's Elements of Phrenology in 1824)

1790

"psychiatry as an organised, independent discipline dates back only as recently as the last decades of the 18th century" (External link to Henry Rollins' article "Psychiatry at 2000 - a Bird's Eye View"

France 31.1.1790: Report to the National Assembly by the Comité de mendicité (Poverty Committee) asserted that society must provide for the legitimate needs of the indigent including their health care. The draft legislation mandated free treatment at home for poor people by state salaried doctors who would also supervise wet-nursing, collect statistics on public health, and innoculate against smallpox. (See Dora Weiner 1993)

John Frith tried for treason (penalty hanging, drawing and quartering) for throwing a stone at the King's coach. He was found unfit to plead.

1791

Jeremy Bentham published Panopticon; or, the Inspection-House: Containing the Idea of a New Principle of Construction Applicable to Any Sort of Establishment, in which Persons of Any Description Are to Be Kept Under Inspection.

Parliament backed the scheme, 
as a prison plan, in 1794. 
Foundations were laid. But, 
in January 1803, Bentham was told
the Government could not find the funds
Although Bentham's star plan was not much used, the principle of the "all seeing eye" of the superintendent was. It was the basic principle, for example, of John Conolly's The Construction and Government of Lunatic Asylums in 1847 - See also asylum forms - Bevans 1815

13.3.1791 Ellen Riggott was christened at Chesterfield in Derbyshire. Her father was Charles Riggott, her mother is not recorded. She may have entered the Ashover Poorhouse at birth. In 1828 she was recorded as a "female idiot, not dangerous, disordered from infancy". Ashover closed in 1838. In 1851 Ellen was one of two women admitted "thinly clad and very dirty" to the new Derbyshire County Asylum from Haydock Lodge. The asylum case book records a picture of her. She died 7.6.1853.


1792

Liverpool Lunatic Asylum opened

Daniel Hack Tuke claims that the only asylums for the insane open in England in 1792 were:
Liverpool Royal Lunatic Hospital, which was associated with the Royal Infirmary and Manchester Royal Lunatic Hospital, associated with its Royal Infirmary, York Lunatic Hospital, Bootham; St Peter's Hospital, Bristol; Fonthill-Gifford, Hindon, Wilts; Droitwich Asylum, Belle Grove House, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Bethel Hospital Norwich
In London or the surrounding counties: Bethlem Hospital, St Luke's, The Lunatic Ward of Guy's Hospital. Plus private houses: Brooke House, Clapton (Dr Monro's); Hoxton Asylum. To these we should add Bethnal Green, Whitmore House, Holly House (just opened). Possibly Fisher House. There would have been other private houses, many very small (two or three lunatics). The list of London houses licensed in 1815 was 25.
Surrounding counties: Lea Pale House, Stoke, near Guildford; Ticehurst, Sussex.


1.2.1793 France declared war on Great Britain
Claims for poor relief increased as a result of the war (see Speenhamland and St Marylebone). The authorities sought to reduce social unrest by responding generously to the claims of the dependent poor and harshly to any form of insurrection.
1794

Leicester Lunatic Asylum opened

Susanah Millicent steals a petticoat

1795

Miss Broadric, who murdered her lover

1796

June 1796 The Retreat, a hospital for insane Quakers and those they recommended, opened by the Religious Society of Friends in York. The Society of Friends had developed a powerful collective discipline of its members. At the Retreat, this was adapted to the control of insanity, replacing many physical restraints with moral restraints. In the 1830s, the Tuke family, who founded the Retreat, went on to reform the internal discipline of the Society of Friends. [ External link to Retreat website]   words

Mary Lamb September 1796

Mary Lamb murdered her mother in a fit of insanity.

She was confined in Fisher House, Islington for a period and lived in the care of her brother for the rest of her life, sometimes being cared for in a licensed house or a single house.

1797

Hereford Lunatic Asylum opened as an offshoot of Hereford General Infirmary (founded 1776). Founded as a public subscription hospital, it became a licensed house in 1802. It was the centre of Parliamentary enquiry in 1839 and closed in 1853. Hereford General Infirmary became Hereford General Hospital.

Dr John Mayo was Secretary to the Physician's Commission from 1797 to 1807. He was the first physician to be Secretary. Mr Wall the previous Secretary, was probably a lawyer. The Commission was subservient to the Westminster Courts and designed to facilitate the operations of Chancery, and enlarge its power. Keely, T.S. 1944 says that the staff involved in the Lord Chancellor's lunacy jurisdiction in 1798 included a Secretary of Lunatics a Clerk of the Custody of Idiots and Lunatics and five Commissioners for Lunatics

1798

The Education section of The Label Game begins in 1800 with Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron, and the efforts of Jean-Marc- Gaspard Itard to apply the ideas of John Locke and Abbé de Condillac to his education.
Nineteenth Century Asylums

The nineteenth century opened dramatically with a pistol shot, and the gun fingers of Hadfield and McNaughton were to trigger the opening of many asylums. The state entered the field in a big way. By the end of the century there were 74,000 patients in public asylums. The early period of state asylums was custodial, out of it developed a period of therapeutic optimism that reached its height in the 1840s, and declined into therapeutic pessimism in the second half of the nineteenth century.

1800

15.5.1800 The ball of a pistol fired at George 3rd by James Hadfield just missed by a foot. Hadfield was detained as a criminal lunatic.

28.7.1800 The 1800 Criminal Lunatics Act aimed at the safe custody of criminal lunatics, especially any who threatened the king. The consequent long term detention of lunatics in county gaols triggered the 1808 County Asylums Act. [[Fear of lunatics, heightened by the publicity about Hadfield and the Act, may be reflected in the life of Mary Lamb]

See Counter-Revolutionary Panic and the Treatment of the Insane: 1800 by Valerie Argent

1801

St Thomas's Hospital, Exeter, Devon opened. This was the last of the series of asylums constructed in the eighteenth century by voluntary subscription, as the 1808 County Asylums Act provided the opportunity to combine money raised by rates with subscriptions.

February to June 1801 The second crisis over King George 3rd's sanity. The Willis family held the king captive with the assistance of keepers from Thomas Warburton's aristocratic Hoxton madhouse business.

1802

1803

April 1803 Resumed war between Britain and France
External link on the threat of invasion - archive.

1804

June 1804 James Norris could not be afforded an extra cell at Bethlem because naval and army lunatics were "pouring into" Bethlem as a result of the war. ( John Haslam). In 1808 the Navy's lack of provision for clothes at Hoxton House meant (some of?) its lunatics wore only a piece of blanket. Lunatic wards for sailors opened at Haslar in 1818 and for soldiers at Chatham in 1819

1805

Work began on Fort Pitt, between Chatham and Rochester, in 1805 and on Fort Clarence in 1808 (external link - archive). Which, in retrospect, seems rather late - Coastal defence of Britain seemed unnecessary after 1812. After the war, Clarence became a military prison and lunatic asylum.

1806

January 1806 The short lived Ministry of All Talents (1806-1807) shifted the political landscape enough to allow in lunacy legislation in 1808. After that, however, changes were blocked by the Lords until 1828.

1807

Before renewing the licence for Great Foster House, Egham, Surrey County magistrates required a pledge from Richard Browne, surgeon that he would remove chains used to chain disturbed patients to the floor in the bedrooms and other rooms when keepers were absent. They suggested more attendants and "less violent means". (see law)

One of the Surrey physician visitors was Sir Lucas Pepys. It seems to have been sometime in the following three years that Alexander Morison was appointed visiting physician

March 1807 Portland Ministry replaces Ministry of All Talents. Spencer Perceval was Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons. "With the Duke of Portland old and unwell, Perceval was effectively the Chief Minister and even lived at 10 Downing Street. In 1809, he formally succeeded the Duke of Portland as Prime Minister." (source) - Introduced Regency 1811 - Assassinated 1812

1808

23.6.1808 The 1808 County Asylums Act was the first Act permitting counties to levy a rate to build asylums. It was promoted by Charles Watkins Williams Wynn. Its main purpose was to remove lunatics from gaols and workhouses to buildings where they would be easier to manage. I found nothing in the preparation of the Bill referring to asylums as places for cure.

5.10.1808: Order of Bedfordshire Justices that a notice be placed in the Northamptonshire Mercury and County Press of their intention to provide a lunatic asylum for the County. (Quarter Session Rolls, Bedfordshire and Luton Archives)

Nottingham (already planned) opened 1811, Bedford in 1812, Norfolk in 1814, Lancaster in 1816, Stafford and Wakefield in 1818, Lincoln and Cornwall in 1820, Gloucester in 1823. See also 1827.

Dr Richard Powell was Secretary to the Physician's Commission from September 1808 to 1825, replacing John Mayo

1809

4.10.1809 Spencer Perceval became Prime Minister, but also remained Chancellor of the Exchequer.

1810

Suicide is not a crime in the French Penal Code of 1810. It remained a crime in England and Wales until 1961

2.11.1810 Death of Princess Amelia aged twenty-seven (Kathryn Kane's account). Grief is said to have precipitated Gorge 3rd's final descent into madness.

1811

29.1.1811 Spencer Perceval met with the King to explain the need for a Regency Bill. The King (and Queen) accepted this, subject to restrictions on the Regent changing the government during the first year. (Kathryn Kane's account)

6.2.1811 George, Prince of Wales, became Regent, after the final descent of George 3rd into insanity. For the rest of his life (he died 29.1.1820) George 3rd remained in confinement at Windsor under the control of Dr Robert Darling Willis. The King's own physicians (including Henry Halford) were unable to see him without the permission of Dr Willis. The Prince Regent became the patron of the planned Cornwall County Lunatic Asylum.

June 1811 The Royal College of Physicians considered that the 1774 Madhouse Act needed revising, but appears to have been deterred by the expense of private legislation. The cause was picked up by George Rose in 1813

Heinroth appointed associate professor of psychic therapy at Leipzig University. Like some other German romantics, he regarded insanity as God's punishment for sin.
See Clapham (London) example 1828

The General Lunatic Asylum for the Town and County of Nottingham, at Sneinton, opened

"It was the first institution that came under the Asylum Act of 1808 and Sneinton was notable in being the first public mental hospital in the country to be created from monies raised by rates. The original Sneinton asylum opened for 60 patients... and it is still possible to see part of the original wall near Sneinton Market" Dave Ogden

1812

Mixed reactions
to the
assasination: Coleridge and Charles Lamb
Monday 12.5.1812, about 5.15pm, Assassination of Spencer Perceval, the Prime Minister, by John Bellingham, an alleged lunatic who was rapidly hanged (Monday 18.5.1812). At his trial (Friday 15.5.1812) the arguments for his insanity were dismissed without time for witnesses to be called. With luddite attacks internally and war with Napoleon externally, dramatic action was necessary. William Cobbett was watching the crowd as Bellingham was hanged

"I heard the unanimous blessings... bestowed by Englishmen upon a murderer... the act was unjustifiable... but, the people did not rejoice because a murder had been committed... but because his act...had ridded them of one whom they looked upon as the leader amongst those whom they thought totally bent on the destruction of their liberties"

Bellingham had come to London from Liverpool, where he lived with his wife, Mary, and three children. He married Mary Nevill, (from a Quaker family), about 1803. Funds were raised for her support after the execution.

Much more substantial funds went to the support of the Perceval family. Spencer Perceval junior, the eldest son of the assassinated Prime Minister, became an MP and an honorary lunacy commissioner. His religious enthusiasm led to a description of him as having "gone mad" in the House of Commons in March 1832. John Thomas Perceval, a younger son, was confined as a lunatic in 1831 and helped to found the Alleged Lunatics Friend Society in 1845.

The St Neot's Assassin: BBC Cambridgeshire external link

June? 1812 Bedfordshire County Asylum opened. The intention to provide was announced in 1808. The first county asylum for paupers only. Its first superintendent (to 1818) was a house painter with experience of caring for a lunatic. The House Surgeon at the Bedford Infirmary attended to the occasional medical needs of asylum patients. From June 1823 this was a Mr Harris. James Harris was licensed to open a nearby private asylum in 1827. He resided there, and (from 1828) acted as non-resident medical superintendent to the County Asylum.

1813

Asylums were opened at Edinburgh (1813) and Glasgow (1814). The Edinburgh Asylum included funding from the government and from an international subscription. The Glasgow Asylum was constructed in the shape of a star - Following Bentham's Panopticon Plan

2.3.1813 Mr Roberts, solicitor to the Royal College of Physicians, visited Mrs Foulkes at a house in Ivy Lane, Hoxton, owned by Mr Dunston, Master of St Luke's to ask why she was detaining four lunatics there (some in strait-waistcoats) without a licence. The college successfully prosecuted her.

May 1813 Description of the Retreat, an institution near York, for insane persons of the Society of Friends, by Samuel Tuke

"To encourage the influence of religious principles over the mind of the insane is considered of great consequence, as a means of cure."

7.7.1813 House of Commons granted Rose leave to bring in a Bill to repeal the 1774 Madhouses Act and make other provisions in its place. [Bills to reform the Madhouses Act were promoted, unsuccessfully by George Rose in 1813, 1814, 1816 and 1817. In 1815, he moved for and chaired the 1815-1816 Select Committee of the House of Commons on Madhouses. The impulse for Rose's Bill may have come from the Royal College of Physician's, which had decided in 1811 that it could not promote its own Bill for revision.]

December 1813 William and Samuel Tuke (of the Retreat) and Godfrey Higgins, a magistrate, bought their way onto the York Asylum Board of Governors to break through the asylum's secrecy.

December 1813 to April 1814 Correspondence between William Hone, James Bevans and Edward Wakefield about a possible London Asylum. [external link to Kyle Grimes 1999]

1814

Wednesday 18.5.1814 Norfolk County Asylum opened near Norwich. Unlike Nottinghamshire and Bedfordshire, Norfolk had a hundred year history of asylum provision, and the new asylum was supplementary to existing provision.

William [or James] Norris
7.6.1814 7.6.1814 Patient, William [or James] Norris, sketched in his harness in Bethlem Hospital. The etching was based on the drawing which had been done at the request of Edward Wakefield. William Hone got George Cruikshank to etch the drawing in 1815, which he then published from his new Fleet Street bookshop. [external link to Kyle Grimes 1999]

"a stout ring was rivetted round his neck, from which a short chain passed to a ring made to slide upwards or downwards on an upright massive iron bar... Round his body a strong iron bar about two inches wide was rivetted... which being fashioned to and enclosing each of his arms, pinioned them close to his sides.... bars... passing over his shoulders, were rivetted to the waist bar both before and behind..." (Edward Wakefield to Select Committee in 1815)

26.12.1814  A fire at York Asylum killed four patients and prevented effective investigation of the asylum.

1815

The Moorfields Bethlem was replaced by one at St George's Fields, South London, in 1815. Following a Select Committee Report in 1807, the Government made an agreement with Bethlem's Governors that the new asylum should have two wings for 60 criminal lunatics. By 1852 Bethlem contained over 100 of the country's 436 criminal lunatics. They were moved to Broadmoor in 1863. The present Imperial War Museum is the administrative block of the Moorfields Bethlem. The dome was added in 1846.

James Bevans, "Architect of Grays Inn Square", put before the 1815 Select Committee on madhouses a "Panopticon Plan" for a proposed London Asylum, which was never built. This asylum had a chapel for the patients, whereas four other plans that Susan Piddock looked at, the new Bethlem, Wakefield, Hanwell and Devon did not. Under William and Mrs Ellis, however, religion and work, were features of Wakefield and Hanwell from the start.

6.7.1815 Suicide of Samuel Whitbread, leading Whig politician, social reformer and theatre goer. See 1818 and 1822

11.7.1815: First Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Madhouses

Act regulating private asylums in Scotland

1816

26.4.1816 to 11.6.1816: Further Reports from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Madhouses

July 1816 John Haslam dimissed from Bethlem Hospital. Thomas Monro, the visiting physician, was also dismissed, but succeded by his son, Edward Thomas Monro (see 1852) in a joint appointment with Sir George Leman Tuthill.

Sunday 28.7.1816: Lancashire County Asylum (1st), Lancaster Moor opened. Administrative records start in 1810

1817

1817 Friend's Asylum, Philadelphia opened in imitation of the Retreat America

Jonathan Martin, the mad Methodist, attempted to shoot a Church of England Bishop. See 1829

1818

30.7.1818 Pembroke House officially opened for East India Company Lunatics. Possibility that they to had been confined at Hoxton House previously.


English Heritage: Royal Naval Hospital, Haslar, Gosport, built 1745-1762 as the first hospital for Royal Naval sailors

August 1818 The Royal Naval Asylum. Haslar, opened at Gosport, near Portsmouth in 1818. The naval officers in Hoxton House were removed to Haslar. Relatives appreciated this as the treatment at Haslar was good, but were distressed when deductions from pensions were made as a contribution to costs (Hansard 16.7.1844). [The Naval Hospital opened at Yarmouth, in Norfolk in 1811 was very short lived as a hospital. However, it was used as an army lunatic asylum from 1844 to 1854 and became a Naval Lunatic Asylum in 1863/1869 [ Kathryn Morrison (7.1995) says "the former naval hospital at Great Yarmouth became the naval lunatic asylum in 1869, and special mental units were added to Haslar in 1908 - 1910, and to Plymouth in 1905"]

1.10.1818: Staffordshire County Asylum opened. Administrative records start in 1812.

2.11.1818 Suicide of Samuel Romilly, lawyer and radical MP who had been at the front of the campaign to reduce the number of capital offenses

23.11.1818: West Riding Yorkshire County Asylum, Wakefield opened. The Committee's minutes date from 1814

1819

Bethlem was used by the army and navy for some of their lunatics. In 1819, the army converted Fort Clarence, Chatham (Rochester, Kent) to a military prison and lunatic asylum (separate parts). The asylum, like Pitt and Netley which succeeded it, was situated in a naval port where soldiers could be received from abroad. From there they might be moved to other asylums. Clarence, Pitt and Netley were the receiving asylums (or lunatic wards). Separate military asylums were created for long-term care and custody at Yarmouth (1846-1856) and Bow and Coton Hill. Military pensioners were also kept in non-military asylums throughout the country.

1820

23.1.1820 Spanish Act (amended 6.2.1822) that transferred Spanish lunatic asylums to municiple boards. They, however, lacked the means to maintain the asylums. (Lopez Ibor 2006/2008)

29.1.1820 Death of George 3rd, who had been confined at Windsor since December 1811

20.4.1820 Lincoln Lunatic Asylum opened. Originated in a bequest made in 1803

August 1820 Cornwall County Asylum opened. Notice of intention to build had been published in October 1810

1820-1821 Dundee Royal Lunatic Asylum opened. external link

1821

Under the 1821 Irish Lunatic Asylums for the Poor Act, eight or nine District Asylums opened in Ireland (by 1835) at (eight of them) Armagh, Connaught, Carlow, Clonmel, Limerick, Londonderry, Maryborough, and Waterford

1822

Dr Thomas Turner was Treasurer to the Physician's Commission from 1822. Turner became a Metropolitan Lunacy Commissioner in 1828 and a Lunacy Commissioner in 1845, eventullly retiring, aged 82, in 1855.

Monday 12.8.1822 Suicide of Robert Stuart, Viscount Castlereagh, the Foreign Secretary. An evening paper in London reported he had died of an attack of gout in the stomach. The Times, the following morning, reported that he had "been suffering under a nervous fever, accompanied by a depression of spirits". He "refused to have his bed made on Sunday night, expressing an apprehension of taking cold". "Yesterday morning... During the absence of his servant, it appears his Lordship had got possession of a razor or some sharp instrument, which he applied to his throat..." William Wilberforce thought that if Castlereagh, Romilly and Whitbread had been observers of the Sabbath they might not have collapsed under the strain. (Howse 1953 p.17)

1823

Commencement of lectures on mental diseases by Alexander Morison (1779-1866). An outline of these was published in 1825. They are described by Hunter and Macalpine as "the first formal lectures on psychiatry". Morison was physician visitor to Surrey madhouses from (about) 1808/9/10, and (non-resident) physician to Hanwell from 1832, Bethlem from 1835 to 1853 and Surrey County Asylum from 1841. From about 1824, Nic Harvey (1996) says Morison developed an extensive private practice recommending and organising a full range of domestic and asylum care for private insane patients.

The first Gloucester Asylum 24.7.1823

Gloucester County Asylum
opened

Now known as Horton Road

1824

George Combe's Elements of Phrenology published. Phrenology was the identification of an individual's faculties by feeling the shape of the skull. Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) was one of the first to carry out anatomical dissections of the human brain. He argued that mind was based on the brain, that different characteristics of mind would give different shapes to the surface of the brain (variations in the size of lobes) and that the shape of the brain imposed itself on the skull. Johann Kasper Spurzheim (1776-1832) combined this theory with the idea that the individual's environment should be adapted to his or her faculties. This could be done in institutions such as schools and asylums. Amongst those who followed the science of phrenology were the educational pioneer, Robert Owen, the medical journalist, Thomas Wakley and the medical superintendents of many lunatic asylums, including William Browne , William Ellis, John Conolly and Samuel Gaskell. Phrenology provided the scientific basis on which moral management could be considered a medical issue. The Edinburgh Phrenological Society was established by George and Andrew Combe in 1820. Philadelphia Phrenological Society (the first in the USA) started in 1822. The London Phrenological Society was established by John Elliotson (and others) in 1823, In December of the same year, the Phrenological Journal (of Edinburgh) started (the first). In 1825, William Ellis established the Wakefield Phrenological Society. George Combe (1788-1858) bequethed his money to scientific education and, in 1906, it was used to fund a psychology lectureship and laboratory at Edinburgh University. John Stuart Mill (an associationist) argued in 1843 that the "latest discoveries in cerebral physiology" suggested that phrenology was untenable.

1825

First Act regulating private asylums in Ireland

Dr John Bright was Secretary to the Physician's Commission from 1825. Replacing Richard Powell. Bright became a Metropolitan Lunacy Commissioner in 1828.

Siegburg asylum, near Bonn opened. This was the base of Dr Jacobi who wrote on the management and construction of asylums. Other asylums opening in central Europe in the 1820s were Prague (1822), Dusseldorf (1826), Hildesheim (1827) and Colditz (1829)

1826

The autumn of 1826 saw the onset of John Stuart Mill's "dull state of nerves" which was cured by poetry.

1827

29.6.1827: Report from the Select Committee on Pauper Lunatics in the County of Middlesex and on Lunatic Asylums presented by Robert Gordon

The madhouse and county asylums Acts that followed this report are an inter-related product of the concern about the management of Middlesex Pauper Lunatics. They are legislation by and for London (Middlesex) magistrates and the magistrates who built Hanwell were also an integral part of the Metropolitan Commission that regulated the private houses - including the large pauper houses.

1828

Science Time Line 1828

1828 "Insanity is the scourge brought down on sinful men by the wrath of the Almighty" (George Man Burrows, opening words of Commentaries on the Causes, Forms, Symptoms, and Treatment, Moral and Medical, of Insanity 1828. Quoted Kraepelin 1918, pages 38- 39 (See 1811)

The 1828 County Asylums Act

history of the 
lunacy commission The 1828 Madhouses Act established:
The Home Secretary's Metropolitan Commission:
summary of the 
commissions

Five physicians, including the Secretary and Treasurer of the Physician Commission; six Middlesex JPs and ten other honorary commissioners, were appointed by the Home Secretary in August 1828 to form a commission specifically to control London's madhouses. The medical commissioners were paid one pound an hour, the others were not paid.

A lawyer was appointed the Commission's Treasurer-Clerk (London Clerk) to establish an office and keep (national) registers.

New commissioners were appointed as and when necessary. With a few exceptions, the honorary ones needed replacing relatively often, but all but one of medical commissioners served until 1845 (and some beyond).

The commission was funded, in excess of licence receipts, by the national Treasury. It only licensed houses if it saw fit, and the Home Secretary could revoke a licence on its recommendation.

Quarterly licensing meetings were held, to which applicants had to submit, in advance, written details of proposed houses.

Commissioners (usually two medical and one honorary) visited each house at least four times a year and their reports were taken into account before the (annual) renewal of the licence.

The Westminster courts could no longer order visits and reports and did not have statutory access to registers. Instead the commission had power to release a patients on its own authority.

Biographies of Unpaid and Medical Commissioners begin in 1828
The Chart of the Metropolitan Commissioners begins in 1828

1829

1.1.1829 Suffolk County Asylum opened.

1.2.1829 Jonathan Martin, the mad Methodist, set fire to York Minster. See 1817 and "Methody parsons" in 1844..

August 1829 Chester County Asylum opened.

Therapeutic Optimism: The optimistic period in the history of asylums runs from about 1830 to around 1860. It was at its height in the 1840s. Asylums built under the 1808 and 1828 County Asylums Act tended to be left to the management of doctors. As the theories and techniques of managing lunatics in asylums developed, so did the belief that this asylum treatment itself was the correct, scientific way to cure lunacy.

Signs of the therapeutic change can be seen in the changing legislation. The 1828 Madhouses Act, unlike the 1774 Act, was concerned about conditions in asylums. These included the moral conditions. Official visitors were required to inquire about the performance of divine service and its effects. In 1832, this inquiry was extended to include "what description of employment, amusement or recreation (if any) is provided". (see law)

1830 revolution in France, riots in England
survivors' history
Wednesday 25.8.1830 The Superintendent of Bethlem, and current President of the London Phrenological Society, Dr Edward Wright was found at night with female patients. He denied wrong doing, but was dismissed after an inquiry.
"After Bethlem Wright spent some time in Syria where, according to one writer, 'he became rather spoiled for regular practice'. A fondness for grog always seemed to catch up with him. He had returned to London by 1834, but soon left for Australia.

1831 survivors' history

In January 1831, John Thomas Perceval, a son of Spencer Perceval, the assassinated Prime Minister, was confined in Brislington House Asylum. In May 1832 he was moved to Ticehurst Asylum. He may have been taken to Brislington by his brother, Spencer junior, an enthusiastic Metropolitan Lunacy Commissioner and a Member of Parliament, who shared John Thomas's religious enthusiasm. Spencer Perceval was, at this time, campaigning for national days of fasting and humiliation. Soon after John Thomas was discharged from Ticehurst, he visited Esquirol in Paris to discuss the reform of the lunacy system. (Hunter and MacAlpine say this was "presumably in 1835"). In 1838 he published the first volume of his book about the treatment of the insane, which contained the account of his own insanity and the way he was treated (see extracts)

14.2.1831 Spencer Perceval introduced a motion in Parliament (withdrawn) calling for a day of fasting, public humiliation and prayer. He said

"the whole country is in a complete state of disorganisation; all the elements of society appear to be loose and disjointed; there is no attachment on the part of the people to their rulers ... The ancient and venerable institutions of the country ... which were once the proud boast of every Englishman, are now viewed with disregard ... My conviction is ... that a scourge is going forth over all lands ... that great troubles, tumults, convulsions and struggles are about to take place all over the world, and that they are inevitable. "

He blamed "the very essence of liberalism which walks abroad" which "has shown itself in the late French revolution most distinctly"

Monday 16.5.1831 First Middlesex County Asylum at Hanwell opened. See Harriet Martineau's article, June 1834

October 1831 Cholera reached Britain (external link) - It returned in 1848 - 1853 - 1865. These cholera outbreaks were important in the development of the germ theory of diseases

in 1831 and 1832 "many thousands perished of this new disease...although it was a time of great political excitement, and a year of election riots, the people nowhere in England entertained the dreadful suspicions of occult poisoning which excited the populace to madness and to murder, not only in Hungary, but in Paris" (Farr, W. 25.7.1868, p.ix)

See John Snow in 1849 and 1854 and Cholera and the Thames by Westminster Archives.

1832 Parliamentary reform
survivors' history

February 1832 A National Fast announced in Parliament after the Strangers' Gallery had been cleared; a speech deplored the sins and state of the nation, the 'houses of the nobles and gentry entered and robbed'.

21.3.1832 National Day of Fasting and Prayer. Sermon: "the disease ... was proof of the judgement of God among us". See working class protests.

1.8.1832 Dorset County Asylum opened

history of the 
lunacy commission The 1832 Madhouses Act established:
The Lord Chancellor's Metropolitan Commission:
summary of the 
commissions

Appointment of the commissioners was transferred to the Lord Chancellor as custodian of the property of lunatics. The number of professionals was increased by the appointment of two barristers as legal commissioners, paid (under the
1833 Madhouses Amendment Act) at the same rate as the physicians. The honorary commissioners were reduced and, because legal commissioners could take their place, they were no longer essential for licensing and visiting. Although largely responsible to the Lord Chancellor, the commission retained some responsibility to the Home Secretary.

1833 survivors' history

1.1.1833 Kent County Asylum, Barming Heath, Near Maidstone opened

1834 survivors' history
history of the 
lunacy commission Under the 1834 Poor Law, workhouses for paupers were established in every part of England and Wales. In part, the growth of asylums and other institutions was a consequence of this Act, as many of those who became settled residents of the workhouses were children (schools needed), sick (hospitals needed), mentally ill or with a learning disability (lunatic asylums needed) or old (old people's homes needed).

1835 survivors' history

A Treatise on Insanity, by James Cowles Prichard was the main textbook on the subject for many years. In it he elaborated the concept of moral insanity that he had previously outlined in articles.

Statistics: Colonel William Henry Sykes, a founder member of the London Statistical Society, became an Honourary Metropolitan Commissioner in September 1835. A considerable interest in the scientific (statistical) analysis of the death rates in asylums developed over the following years.



July 1835 Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year; or, Memorials of the great pestilence in London, in 1665 ... A new edition ... revised, and illustrated with historical notes by Edward Wedlake Brayley with engravings from drawings by George Cruikshank, the elder. published London : Thomas Tegg and Son 1835. xviii and 376 pages

Amongst Cruikshank's drawings is this one of Solomon Eagle

This book is republished shortly after cholera arrived in Britain.

1836 survivors' history

August? 1836 A Madman's Manuscript in Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers

1837 survivors' history

In England and Wales, universal registration of births, deaths and marriages began in 1837. ""as the cause of death are recorded, the registers contained the particulars of every death" (Farr, W. 25.7.1868, p.x)

In 1837, John Elliotson, founder (1823/1824) of the London Phrenological Society, Professor of Practical Medicine at the (new) University of London and a founder of University College Hospital, was converted to mesmerism by the experiments of Baron Dupotet at Middlesex Hospital. The theory of mesmerism, at this time, was not psychological, but physical. Electricity was held to effect the "animal magnetism" within the human nervous system. Unlike phrenology, mesmerism did not gain medical credibility. Thomas Wakley was unconvinced, even by a personal demonstration at his home in August 1838. In the Winter of 1838, Elliotson resigned from University College when ordered to stop the practice. In 1843 he founded Zoist, a journal about "cerebral physiology and mesmerism and their applications for human welfare" and in 1846 his Harveian Oration (on mesmerism) at the Royal College of Physicians was the first to be given in English instead of Latin.

# May 1837 William Alexander Francis Browne, medical superintendent of the Montrose Royal Lunatic Asylum, addressed the book version of his lectures What Asylums Were, Are, and Ought To Be. The book was dedicated to Andrew Combe in recognition of the benefits of applying Phrenology to insanity.

14.5.1837 New Leicestershire County Asylum opened

Thursday 20.6.1837 Death of William 4th. Victoria began reign. Rev William Barnett thought he had occasioned her death - but she came alive again.

21.10.1837 Editorial on The Regulation of Lunatic Asylums, from The London Medical Gazette reproduced on the Rossbret site

1838 survivors' history

France "In 1838, France passed a law mandating the internment of lunatics at public expense in every French department" (Richard Keller 2001)
French text of Loi sur les aliénés number 7443 du 30 juin 1838

"The French legal code of 1838 relating to mental health administration...is the first comprehensive legislation in this field (a partial law had existed in England since 1828" according to Ackernecht (1968, p.50), who says the law was "designated" by Esquirol. This, he says, served as a model for similar legislation in Switzerland (also 1838), England (Ackernecht says 1842, but I think this would only apply to the 1845 laws) and Norway (1848) - click for my discussion of influence on English/Welsh legislation

Also in 1838: Le Traité des maladies mentales considéré sous le rapport médical, hygiénique et médico-légal by Esquirol

Railways made the national government of lunatic asylums and a national trade in pauper lunatics possible. In September 1838 the London to Birmingham Railway opened. The first main line in the world. 112.5 miles long from Camden to Birmingham, it linked to the Grand Junction at Curzun Street, Birmingham, and this linked to the Liverpool and Manchester north of Warrington, near Newton.
At this junction, which all the trains from London to Liverpool or Manchester passed through, two officers of the New Poor Law (one no longer serving) established in 1843/1844 a private asylum to receive pauper lunatics from all over the country. (See 1846). the train from
London
The all rail route of 206 miles London to Liverpool took just over eight hours and this speed of travel made the national inquiry into the treatment of pauper lunatics, in 1842, possible. The railways and the electric telegraph, taking messages along the side of railway line may be the main reason why legislation in 1828 was for a Metropolitan Commission in Lunacy, and in 1845 for a national commission. (See reciprocal development)

1839 survivors' history

May 1839 John Connolly visited Lincoln Asylum where Robert Gardiner Hill had abolished mechanical restraint of patients in a small asylum. On appointment to Hanwell, Connolly proceeded to abolish it in a large asylum. Several English asylums were practising non-restraint by 1844.

Select Committee of the House of Commons Hereford Lunatic Asylum. A madhouse proprietor tried to work the system, and focused the attention of parliament onto the counties.

4.6.1839 First patients admitted to the Crichton Institution, Dumfries, Scotland (external link). The first asylum for Scotland south of Edinburgh and Glasgow. The building had a Bible for a foundation stone.



ASYLUM CARE 1840s:

In the hungry-forties of the 19th century many believed that by moving mentally unstable people from a community disturbed by poverty, depravity and social unrest to a closed, humane, but disciplined environment in a lunatic asylum early in the development of their insanity they could be cured and the accumulation of chronic lunatics on poor relief halted. Laws to make every part of England do this were passed in 1845.

But the creation of a Lunacy Commission, justified by this ideal, was not a conscious plan worked out in advance by reforming politicians and professionals, but the result of people rising to meet forces that took them by surprise. Forces that were, once again, symbolised by a bullet.

1840 survivors' history

1840 Major changes in London's three large private pauper houses at Hoxton - Bethnal Green - and Peckham. The Metropolitan Commission's report for 1.6.1840 to 31.5.1841 says

"the Commissioners have issued express direction that a sufficient number of keepers shall in all cases be employed, so as to obviate the necessity of personal restraint, except in extreme cases; and they have also endeavoured to establish some system of classification" (separating convalescent patients from violent or confirmed mania) "... "these endeavours have been seconded by the proprietors and superintendents of the three large houses, where classification is chiefly necessary... these persons have lately bestowed much attention on this subject, and have, in fact, incurred much expense... The number of keepers has been greatly increased... a greater number of rooms has been appropriated to the reception of patients, and, in some cases, new buildings have been erected..." Since May 1840 "a considerable number of pauper lunatics" had been moved from Hoxton, Bethnal Green and Peckham to "the Surrey County Asylum", and others to Hanwell - so the total number of patients in London private asylums was falling, although the Commission did not expect this trend to continue "not... from any increase in insanity, but from... more case becoming public, and greater care being bestowed on persons afflicted with the disease"

10.4.1840 A date given for the start of the construction of Pentonville Prison. It was opened in 1842. Another source says it took less than 18 months to construct. The semi-radial plan has some similarities to the Devon County Asylum. The heating and ventilation system was adopted by the Derbyshire County Asylum (See Conolly, J. 1847). The prison was known as the model prison as providing a pattern for future prisons. In 1835 and 1836, the Poor Law Commissioners had published a variety of model workhouse plans (Outlined on Peter Higginbotham's site. A hospital that performed a similar function as a model for hospitals was the Royal Herbert (1865). It is harder to pick a model asylum, but John Conolly (1847) focused on the plans for the Derbyshire County Asylum (1851)

1841 survivors' history

A community for epileptics founded at Bielfeld, in Germany.
This became a model for similar communities. (Jones and Tillotson)

February 1841: The London Statistical Society announced that it intended to collect lunatic asylum statistics during the year

13.2.1841 The first installment of Charles Dickens' Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty, about the 1780 no-popery riots, began to be published weekly in the Clock. Barnaby has charactersitics of idiocy and lunacy. In chapter forty seven, his mother and Barnaby met a "country gentleman" in the "commission of the peace" who tries to horse-whip Barnaby. The widow pleads that "her son was of weak mind".

"An idiot, eh?" said the gentleman, looking at Barnaby as he spoke... "There's nothing like flogging to cure that disorder. I'd make a difference in him in ten minutes, I'll be bound". "Heaven has made none in more than twice ten years, sir." said the widow mildly. "Then why don't you shut him up? We pay enough for county institutions, damn 'em. But thu'd rather drag him about to excite charity - of course."

14.6.1841 Surrey County Asylum opened - But see above

Asylum doctors: 19.6.1841 circular from Samuel Hitch MD of the Gloucestershire County Asylum to other asylum officers, which led to 44 out of 83 doctors agreeing to belong to an asylum officers association. [ External link to Royal College of Psychiatrists website]

August 1841 Isabella Thackeray suffered from intense suicidal depression (following the birth of her third child, Minny Thackeray, in 1839). She spent the rest of her life in care as a mad woman. When Charlotte Bronte dedicated the second edition of Jayne Eyre to William Makepeace Thackeray, she did not know about his wife Isabella. [See Hilary Marland. Maternity and Madness: Puerperal Insanity in the Nineteenth Century - archive]

21.9.1841 In an effort to get Parliament to discuss the "treatment of lunatics", Thomas Wakley MP, editor of the Lancet, opposed continuing the Metropolitan Commission for more than a year.

The Madhouse System published by Richard Paternoster. Much had already been published as newspaper articles.

Dickens on USA asylums
Hanwell in the USA
America

1842 survivors' history

The 1842 Licensed Lunatic Asylums Bill was brought into Parliament on 17.3.1842 by Granville Somerset, as a government measure. He had the half-hearted support of Lord Ashley, the de facto chair of the Metropolitan Commission and was opposed by Thomas Wakley MP. The medical opposition inside and outside Parliament, and Ashley's conversion to the new system of non-restraint with moral management, led to the initial Bill being completely reformed into a Bill for a National Inquiry into the teatment of lunacy.

history of the 
lunacy commission The 1842 Licensed Lunatic Asylums Bill proposed a
Barristers' Commission
summary of the 
commissions
as it was thought that county licensing and visiting was defective, it was proposed that the two legal commissioners should visit and report on county houses supplementary to the county visitors. The House of Commons rejected this proposal and an amended bill became the Inquiry Act.

history of the 
lunacy commission The 1842 Inquiry Act established the
Inquiry Commission:
summary of the 
commissions
Two medical and two legal commissioners were added to the commission, and the number of honorary commissioners further reduced. No new commissioners were appointed during the Inquiry. One of the new medical commissioners was a psychiatrist, the other a medical statistician.

The medical and legal commissioners jointly visited and reported on public asylums and licensed houses throughout England and Wales. Already much extended in response to the challenge of moral management, the inquiry became even more general in response to the national panic about dangerous lunatics when McNaughton was found insane in 1843. In 1844 the commission published a 300 page report with recommendations for changes in the law aimed at curing and controlling. It included a national register of the insane, controls on the discharge of lunatics, extended asylums provision and regular monitoring of lunatics not in asylums.

10.7.1842 Jabez Jackson, aged about 25, and Hannah Beardmore were married in Chesterfield. The birth of Jabez Columbus Jackson was recorded in the Belper district of Derbyshire in the December quarter of 1845. In 1851 Jabez senior was brought from Belper to become the Derbyshire County Asylum's first patient. He was then paralysed and had to be carried from the cart to a padded room, which was used because of his helplessness rather than his violence. His hips, back, shoulders and knuckles were "extensively excoriated" and was very sore. This was put down to his having been "the subject of mechanical restraint". Extreme debility and "paralysis about the sphincters of his bladder" made him unable to keep himself clean. He was said to be epileptic. The asylum was dedicated to non-restraint principals and by September 1851 Jabez was clean in his habits and working somewhere in the ward, kitchen or garden. In the summer of the following year he died. His son became a potter's printer in Staffordshire, married to Jane, a potter's transferer from Wales. They had two sons.

1843 survivors' history

France Annales médico-psychologiques du système nerveux founded by Baillarger and others in France. It is the oldest surving journal of psychiatry. (website)

3.3.1843 Trial of Daniel McNaughton in the midst of revolutionary fear.

McNaughton was found insane. Later that year, the Metropolitan Commission's inquiry was extended to visit workhouses where dangerous idiots and lunatics might be living, but free to leave when they chose. In the following year it extended to Wales, where dangerous idiots and lunatics were reported to be living on outdoor relief. The fear engendered by McNaughton created the political will to build asylums for the lunatic poor and create a department of government to oversee their detention and treatment.

1844 survivors' history

The 1844 Lunacy Report and the Census of the Insane
The report was published early in July. On 12.7.1844, Ashley startled the Home Secretary by announcing that there were over 12,000 pauper lunatics outside asylums, many of them "absolutely dangerous"

Non-restraint The 1844 Report recorded public and private asylums employing the non-restraint system (see 1839) and others that used mechanical restraint, but were not using any at the time of their visit. The non- restraint asylums were: Lincoln, Northampton, Hanwell, Lancaster, Gloucester, Haslar and Suffolk in the public sector, Fairford and Denham Park in the private. The new Haydock Lodge private asylum was also committed to non-restraint. Asylums not committed to non-restraint, but where non was in use when the Commissioners visited were: Cornwall, Dorset, Nottingham, Norfolk, The Retreat at York and Radcliff Infirmary. The Lancet in 1842 contained that on 10.6.1842 no patient in Bethlem Hospital was under restraint.

1845 survivors' history

March 1845 Shropshire and Wenlock Borough County Asylum opened. Union with Montgomery (Wales) in 1846 made it the first County Asylum provided for Welsh patients
19.5.1845: Sir Thomas Freemantle introduced the Bill that was to establish a Central Criminal Lunatic Asylum in Ireland. This was opened at Dundrum in 1850. Renamed the Central Mental Hospital in 1961, it has been described as "the oldest forensic secure hospital in Europe" [external link]
July 1845 Devon County Asylum opened

history of the 
lunacy commission Two linked Acts were introduced by Lord Ashley: summary of the 
commissions

The 1845 County Asylums Act compelled every county and borough in England and Wales to provide asylum treatment for all its pauper lunatics and Lord Ashley told Parliament that this would "effect a cure in seventy cases out of every hundred" (Hansard 6.6.1845 column 193).



history of the 
lunacy commission
The 1845 Lunacy Act established the Lunacy Commission:
The Act named eleven Metropolitan Commissioners as Lunacy Commissioners. Six (three medical and three legal) were to be employed full time at salaries of 1,500 pounds a year. The other five were honorary commissioners whose main function was to attend board meetings. The Permanent Chairman had to be an honorary commissioner, but otherwise they were not essential to the commission's operations. The only Metropolitan legal commissioner not appointed as a Lunacy Commissioner was named in the Act as Secretary.

The Lunacy Commission had national authority, under the Lord Chancellor and Home Secretary, over all asylums (except Bedlam until 1853). It shared responsibility with the poor Law Commission/Board etc for pauper lunatics outside asylums. Its principle functions were to monitor the erection of a network of publicly owned county asylums, required under the 1845 County Asylums Act, and the transfer of all pauper lunatics from workhouses and outdoor relief to a public or private asylum; to regulate their treatment in private asylums, and (with the Poor Law Commission) monitor the treatment of any remaining in workhouses or on outdoor relief.

The Lunacy Commission was also to monitor the regulation of county asylums and county licensed houses by JPs, and to regulate the conduct of hospitals for the insane. With the JPs it monitored the admission and discharge of patients from all types of asylum. It collected, collated and analysed data on the treatment of lunacy and advised on the development of lunacy law and policy. It also continued to license London's madhouses.

1846 survivors' history

1.8.1846 Oxfordshire and Berkshire County Asylum opened

Haydock Lodge leaflet In the summer of 1846 it became scandalous public knowledge that officers of the Poor Law Commission (acting privately) had profited by the shortage of asylums by establishing a low cost asylum at Haydock Lodge in Lancashire for pauper lunatics from all over England and Wales. See Poor Law Commissioners and the Trade in Pauper Lunacy

"Haydock Lodge is full of lunatics and we have Methody parsons amongst them".

November or December 1846: General rules for County Asylum construction circulated to Asylum Committees by the Lunacy Commission

Louisa Nottidge was confined in Moor Croft House asylum in 1846 but released on the orders of the Lunacy Commissioners eighteen months later (external link)

1847 survivors' history

20.5.1847 Death of Mary Lamb who spent the last decade of her life being cared for in a single house in St John's Wood.

Wednesday 7.4.1847 East and North Riding and York Yorkshire County Asylum opened

October 1847 Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre published. It contains an entirely unsympathetic image of a mad wife confined in the attic by a husband defrauded into marrying her in ignorance of her tainted inheritance:

"I daresay you ... inclined your ear to gossip ... the mysterious lunatic kept there... is my wife ... Bertha Mason ... is mad; and she came of a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three generations. Her mother, the Creole, was both a madwoman and a drunkard! .. I invite you all to ... visit ___ In the deep shade ... a figure ran backwards and forwards ... whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face... A fierce cry ... the clothed hyena rose up, and stood tall on its hind-feet... The maniac bellowed: she parted her shaggy locks from her visage, and gazed wildly at her visitors ... that purple face ... those bloated features... 'she has no knife' ... 'One never knows ... she is so cunning' ... Mr Rochester flung me behind him: the lunatic sprang and grappled his throat viciously, and laid her teeth to his cheek... more than once she almost throttled him..." [etc]

this is not a passage that made Jayne Eyre my favourite novel

November 1847 The Lunacy Commission release Mrs Henry Howard from confinement in a single house in Kensington.

John Conolly's The Construction and Government of Lunatic Asylums

1848 survivors' history

Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology, edited by Forbes Winslow (1810-1874). Quarterly?. 1848-1860.
Twelfth night dancing at Hanwell The first number was quoted in The Illustrated London News for 15.1.1848.

"Seven years have elapsed since the experiment of non-restraint has been fully tried in the Hanwell Asylum; and Dr Conolly, in the spirit of a Christian philosopher, thanks God, with deep and unfeigned humility, that nothing has occurred during that period to throw discredit on the great principles for which he has so nobly battled".

Twelfth night dancing at Hanwell
The Illustrated London News feature said that "Dr Conolly has just published a very interesting volume on The Construction and Government of Lunatic Asylums, and Hospitals for the Insane

Wednesday 1.3.1848 Somerset County Asylum opened

June? 1848 Volume seven of The half-yearly abstract of the medical sciences (January to June 1848), edited by William Harcourt Ranking, included, for the first time, a "A Report on the Recent Progress of Psychological Medicine". This was written by Charles Lockhart Robertson

17.8.1848 Norwegian parliament passed Act for the Treatment and Care of the Mentally Ill. The act was the work of Fredrik Holst and Herman Major. Norway's first lunatic asylum, the Gaustad Asylum, was established in 1855. (external source)

"The cholera reached London in the new epidemic form about October 1848" (Farr, W. 25.7.1868, p.ix). See Ashley

Tuesday 14.11.1848 North Wales (5 counties) County Asylum opened

Anna Wheeler died about 1848. It was alleged by Edward Bulwer-Lytton that she died insane. (source)

1849 survivors' history

29.8.1849 On the Mode of Communication of Cholera by John Snow, M.D (external copy), setting out the theory of transmission in the water supply rather than directly from patient to patient, or by polluted air. The importance of the polluted air theory of disease transmission, before Snow's publications of 1849 and 1854, is evident in John Conolly's (1847) The Construction and Government of Lunatic Asylums, where much attention is paid to clean air and little to clean water.

The New County Lunatic Asylum now building at Mickleover near Derby

There are many persons now living who can remember passing the gates of old Bethlehem and hearing, as they passed, the cut of the lash and the screams of its victims. That was the old treatment inspired by the "wisdom of our ancestors".

... within these few years, men have arisen who have paid more regard to the dictates of common sense and common humanity, than to the routine of tradition - ... - and have considered that insanity is a physical disease, to be treated as a disease and not as a crime, and that it would be just as reasonable to lash a man who could not run when both his legs were broken, as to flog him for not being reasonable when his faculties of reasoning were gone.

The Architect of the building, under consideration informed himself of these circumstances, and has been, we believe the first to design an Asylum which shall facilitate and be adapted to the recent treatment of the insane by means of kindness, companionship, and watchfulness, rather than coercion, punishment, and confinement.

1850 survivors' history

1850s In 2010, "Truth and Reconciliation in Psychiatry" called for "an official Apology for damaging treatments since psychiatry's origins circa 1850s" - See index of official starts

Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine's Three Hundred Years of Psychiatry 1535-1860, page x, says:

"We end with the decade 1850-1860 when the foundations of modern psychiatry were laid and its scope was extending beyond the care of the insane, when 'psychological medicine' had become an acknowledged speciality and the main lines of modern research were at least indicated; when neurology had split off as a speciality with a hospital of its own at Queens Square; when the comprehensive Lunacy Legislation of 1853 had put a period to the past by consolidating the many advances in the provision for and protection of the the insane; when the Medical Act of 1858 had ousted quacks from treatments; when psychiatry had acquired its own periodical literature, its first modern textbook, and become international; the decade in which Kraepelin, Bleuler and Freud were born who were to shape its future".

1851 survivors' history

Medical and social institutions distinguished: A French law of 7.8.1851 (loi du 7 Août 1851 relative à l'organisation des secours hospitaliers) distinguished between a hôpital (for treatment) and a hospice - See dictionary (Discussed at external link)

1.1.1851 Lancashire County Asylums (2nd and 3rd), Rainhill and Prestwich, opened. As a result, Lancashire magistrates were able to close Haydock Lodge. It reopened shortly afterwards as an entirely private patient asylum. This did not last for long. Pauper patients returned to Haydock Lodge in 1854

1851: Census: A column asking about disability introduced. It had mental disability added in 1871. This heading is from the 1861 census, but I believe it is the same as in 1851. I have, however, seen census forms for the same year with different wording.

17.7.1851 Second Middlesex County Asylum at Colney Hatch opened

21.8.1851 Jabez Jackson entered the Derbyshire County Asylum as its first patient. Ellen Riggott arrived on 31.10.1851.

19.9.1851 Wiltshire County Asylum opened

1.12.1851 Monmouth, Hereford, Brecon and Radnor County Asylum opened

1852 survivors' history

District Asylums opened in Ireland at Cork, Kilkenny and Killarney

30.6.1852 Warwickshire County Asylum opened

9.8.1852 Lincolnshire County Asylum opened

11.8.1852 Worcestershire County Asylum opened

13.12.1852 Hampshire County Asylum opened

Critical report by the Lunacy Commission on Bethlem Hospital. The physician, Edward Thomas Monro, refused to resign, so was made "consulting physician". When he died, in 1856, it ended the four generation Monro dynasty at Bethlem

1853 survivors' history

17.1.1853 Buckinghamshire County Asylum opened

23.9.1853 Essex County Asylum opened

When these opened, every county in England and Wales, except four, had (jointly or singly) an asylum for pauper lunatics. Four counties without probably had contracts with licensed houses. There was a lull in the opening of new asylums after 1853. The building of asylums for the remaining four was probably prompted by the 1853 County Asylums Act

A District Asylum opened in Ireland at Omagh

Scotland

Introducing the 1853 Lunacy Bills, the Earl of Shaftesbury lamented that he could not

"extend the bills to Ireland and Scotland, for I believe that not in any country in Europe, nor in any part of America, is there any place in which pauper lunatics are in such suffering and degraded state as those in Her Majesty's Kingdom of Scotland"

In September 1854, Dorthea Lynde Dix came to England, stayed with Samuel Tuke at York, and then visited Scotland. By visits and intimations that she would report to London, she caused alarm. To make sure she got her case in first, she caught the night train to London and reported to the Home Secretary (Palmerston) the next morning. Shortly afterwards a Royal Commission was appointed to enquire into the asylums and lunacy law of Scotland (1855). This was followed by the 1857 Lunacy and Asylums Bill, Scotland. (Hunter, R.A. and Macalpine, I. 1963 pages 911-912)

The Act established The General Board of Commissioners in Lunacy for Scotland (1859-1913) which became the General Board of Control for Scotland (1913 -1960) and then the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland. Mental Welfare Commission website.

At the time of the Report, there were asylums established by Royal Charter at Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Montrose, Dumfries, and Perth and a pauper asylum at Elgin. The Act required the construction of publicly financed District Asylums throughout Scotland.

20.8.1853 Royal Assent for the 1853 Charitable Trusts Act "for the better Administration of Charitable Trusts", under which "The Charity Commissioners for England and Wales" were established.

In September 1853 it was officially announced that a cholera epidemic was claiming victims in London and other parts of the country (external link)

1854 survivors' history

Haydock Lodge private asylum in Lancashire relicensed to receive pauper patients. It continued to do so at least until the 1880s. Increasingly, however, the private side of the business was developed and, by about 1900, Haydock Lodge advertised itself as "for the upper and middle classes only"

11.12.1854 Second, much enlarged edition, of John Snow's On the Mode of Communication of Cholera (external copy)

1855 survivors' history

Society physician Dr Thomas Turner retiring, aged 82, from the Lunacy Commission, was replaced by a second asylum surgeon James Wilkes. Two asylum doctors and one society physician became the norm for the Commission.

District Asylums opened in Ireland at Mullingar and Sligo

1856 survivors' history

April 1856 Daniel Dolly, a patient in Springfields Lunatic Asylum, died after being treated with a shower of about 600 gallons of cold water over 28 minutes, followed by a tartar emetic. The Lunacy Commission tried, unsuccessfully, to prosecute the medical superintendent, Charles Snape, for manslaughter.

1857 survivors' history

France Bénédict Auguste Morel's Traité des dégénérescences physiques, intellectuelles et morales de l'espèce humaine et des causes qui produisent ces variétés maladives became the classic text of degeneration theory.

"Hereditary taint" was used for a family in which at "intervals almost every form of madness appeared" in Wilkie Collins short story The Queen of Hearts (page 34). This was published as a collection 1.10.1859, but the original story may have been published in 1855. (external link)

English asylum doctors clashed over how to deal with wet beds. The ideas of Samuel Gaskell laid the foundations of psychiatric nursing, but this interference with the autonomy of asylum superintendents was a threat to the British Constitution.

1858 1858 cases survivors' history

17.7.1858 Rosina Bulwer-Lytton, estranged wife of novelist and cabinet minister Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and daughter of Anna Wheeler, released from Inverness Lodge asylum, Brentford, where she had been confined at the request of her husband. The release followed a newspaper scandal. (source)

During 1858 two patients in private asylums were found to be sane by commissions of lunacy. One was Mrs Turner at Acomb House near York, the other Mr Ruck at Moor Croft House, Middlesex.

20.8.1858 "The increase of lunacy in Great Britain" New-York Daily Tribune reporter Karl Marx:

"public indignation has been lately raised by the kidnapping of Lady Bulwer into Wyke House, and the atrocious outrages committed on Mrs. Turner in Acomb House, York. A Parliamentary inquiry into the secrets of the trade in British lunacy being imminent, we may refer to that part of the subject hereafter. For the present let us call attention only to the treatment of the 2,000 lunatic poor, whom, by way of contract, the Boards of Guardians and other local authorities let out to managers of private licensed houses"

1858-1859 Patients moving into the Durham County Asylum as it was constructed

1859 click for table of private asylums receiving paupers
survivors' history

April and August 1859 and July 1860: Three reports from a Select Committee of the House of Commons "on the operation of the Acts and Regulations for the care and treatment of lunatics and their property"

27.5.1859 Suusex County Asylum opened

Northumberland County Asylum also opened in 1859

John Stuart Mill's On Liberty criticised the operation of writs de lunatico inquirendo:

"the man, and still more the woman ...[who indulges] in the luxury of doing as they like... [is] in peril of a commission de lunatico, and of having their property taken from them and given to their relations"

26.11.1859 to 25.8.1860 Wilkie Collins The Woman in White, about a villainous confinement in an asylum, serialised in Charles Dicken's All the Year Round. The book was dedicated to Bryan Waller Procter [Lunacy Commisioner]

1860 survivors' history

1860 Three Counties: Bedford, Hertfordshire and Huntingdonshire County Asylum (Arlesey) opened

Therapeutic Pessimism: The pessimistic period in asylum history developed during the second half of the nineteenth century. Medical theory was strongly influenced by social darwinist beliefs that insanity is the end product of an incurable degenerative disease carried in the victim's inherited biology, and the experience of asylums, and reanalysis of their statistics, undermined the earlier beliefs in their therapeutic value. In the late 19th and 20th centuries, the pessimistic period in asylum history ran gently into a backwater period. Most progress in mental health policy took place outside the asylums, in specialist hospitals like the Maudsley, or in outpatient departments, and the asylums became the quiet back wards where chronic patients live.
1861 survivors' history

1862 survivors' history

Edgar Sheppard (born Worcester about 1820) was medical superintendent of the male department of Colney Hatch from 1862 to 1881. In this enormous asylum he became well known for innovations, including daily Turkish Baths as therapy on a large scale, an asylum band, theatre, concerts, readings, lectures and a revival of restraint...
His method of locking dirty and destructive patients in side rooms "in a nude state" for weeks at a time where they "slept on the floor without either bed or pillow, being supplied only with strong quilted rugs", packing violent patients in wet sheets, or retraining them by belts, wrist straps and locked gloves, was condemned "in the strongest manner" by the commissioners in lunacy (..1867;..1870;..1862) and led one of their members to blackball Shepherd at the Royal College of Physicians" [of which he is not listed as a member] (Hunter and Macalpine 1974 p.84)

He was appointed King's College Hospital's first professor of psychological medicine in 1871 and published his seven lectures as Lectures on madness in its medical, legal, and social aspects in 1873. His continued support for restraint led to his not being appointed as a Lord Chancellor's Visitor in 1875

1862 Cumberland and Westmoreland asylum Carlise opened. This completed the programme of building a public pauper lunatic asylum (jointly or singly) for every county in England and Wales.

1863 survivors' history

Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum opened, in Crowthorne, Berkshire. The criminal lunatics from Bethlem were moved to Broadmoor in 1864 and Bethlem became a hospital for the 'superior class'. Pauper patients were presumably moved to the City of London Lunatic Asylum which opened at Dartford, Kent on 16.4.1866.

Royal Victoria (Military) Hospital at Netley, on Southampton Water, opened - Its asylum opened in 1870. The new Yarmouth Naval Lunatic Hospital opened.

March 1863-December 1863 Charles Reade's Hard Cash also about a villainous confinement in an asylum, appeared as installments in Charles Dickens's magazine All the Year Round.

I am not convinced that the medical and lunacy commissioners (Dr Eskell and Mr Abbott) in Hard Cash are modelled on actual commissioners. But if you want to speculate, consult the charts of commissioners
Yahoo weblinks: Charles Reade (1818-1884)

1864 survivors' history

20.5.1864 John Clare died in Northampton Asylum in 1864. During the many years he spent there, he wrote some of the most beautiful poetry ever spoken in English. Bird's Nests is one of his last poems. See also The Nightingale

Wednesday 10.2.1864 Date on a very long letter from Rosina Bulwer Lytton which appears to have been sent to Charles Reade. In 1880 it was published (she claimed without her permission) as the core of A Blighted Life, telling the account of her conflict with her husband and her confinement.

7.4.1864 Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) lectured at the Sorbonne against the theory of spontaneous generation of disease and in favour of contagion by germs - External links on spontaneous generation experiments - Pasteur's experiments. Identification of micro-organisms: see malaria 1880 - tuberculosis 1882 - cholera (1854 - 1884) - bacilliary dysentery 1897 - syphilis 1905.
Pathology laboratories: USA 1878 - Claybury

1865 survivors' history

1.11.1865 The Royal Herbert Hospital opened. This military hospital (physical diseases) was the first built on the pavilion plan favoured by Florence Nightingale. It may have influenced the echelon plan that became the main style for asylums.

There were outbreaks of cholera in England in the autumn of 1865. The disease abated, but there was a localised (but substantial) outbreak in London in July 1866 (Farr, W. 25.7.1868, pp xii-xiii). The London outbreak was significant in that it had been thought cholera could be controlled in London. The report of William Farr showed why this had not happened and confirmed the effectiveness of clean water supplies.

1866 survivors' history

District Asylums opened in Ireland at Castlebar and Letterkenny

1867 survivors' history

1867 Metropolitan Poor Act

Metropolitan Asylums Board set up to oversee relief to London's sick and infirm poor, so that the workhouses could be freed to discipline the able-bodied. To deal with the sick poor suffering from smallpox, fever, or insanity, London became one Metropolitan Asylum District under the Board, which first met on 22.6.1867. The Board proposed two new asylums for chronic lunatics and idiots at Leavesden and Caterham. Fever and smallpox hospitals were built at Stockwell in south-west London and Homerton in north-east London.

The Metropolitan Asylums Board was abolished in 1930,
when its functions were transferred to London County Council

April 1867 The Lancet published an article by Joseph Lister (1827-1912) On the Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery. [Copy at Bartleby]

1868 survivors' history

District Asylums opened in Ireland at Ennis and Enniscorthy

1869 survivors' history

District Asylums opened in Ireland at Downpatrick and Monaghan

1869 Sedative effects of chloral hydrate explored by the German pharmacologist Oskar Liebreich (1839-1908). It was tried in Warley (Essex - UK) in 1870. Kraepelin in 1918 describes the effects of this and similar drugs on wards for the insane.

Charlotte Mew   15.11.1869 Charlotte Mew born. Her grandfather's firm designed asylums for Essex - Sussex - and Dorset. Her earliest published work (1894) concerns mental debility in the family. Her brother, Henry, was confined in an asylum before 1890 and her youngest sister, Freda, was certified insane in 1898. See 1901 - 1902 - 1909 - 1913 - 1915 - 1916 - 1924 - 1928 - Poetry Links - 1.3.1958

1870 survivors' history

"The time has come when the immediate business which lies before everyone who would advance our knowledge of mind, unquestionably is a searching scrutiny of the bodily conditions of its manifestations in health and disease" (Henry Maudsley in Body and Mind)

[The journal Brain was established in 1878. In 1895, Frederick Mott was appointed to head a central laboratory for London County Asylums at Claybury]

October 1870 St Lawrence's, Caterham, Surrey and Leavesden, Abbots Langley, Watford, Hertfordshire opened. Each with 1,500 beds. These two custodial asylums were designed to relieve London's other asylums and workhouses of incurable lunatics at the least possible expense. (See 1971 and 1981)

"In May 1871 there were 1,600 patients at Leavesden and nearly 1,400 at Caterham. Not only did this ease the strain on workhouse accommodation, but a great number of incurable and harmless cases were able to be removed from the two large Middlesex County Asylums... nevertheless, the Home Secretary had to ask Middlesex to build another..." (Hodgkinson, R. 1966)

1871 survivors' history

2.4.1871: Census: In 1871 (See 1870 Act) the established column about disability also asked if the person was "imbecile or idiot" or "lunatic". The disability column continued until 1911 (not 1921), but the wording was varied in 1891 and 1901.

In Italy, Cesare Lombroso was in charge of the insane asylum at Pesaro from 1871 to 1878. He became professor of forensic medicine and hygiene at Turin in 1878.

1872 survivors' history

22.11.1872 Louisa Lowe's case before Queen's Bench in which she charged the Lunacy Commission with concurring in her improper detention at Brislington House and The Lawn, Hanwell.

1873 murder
survivors' history

21.5.1873 On a visit to Fisherton House in Wiltshire, Robert Wilfred Skeffington Lutwidge, uncle of Lewis Carol, and a Lunacy Commissioner, was murdered by William M'Kave, a patient.


Lunacy Law Reform Association founded 1873. "The first report of the Lunacy Law Reform Association" London 1874. (external link) - In 1879 listed at 61, Berners-street, Oxford-street. - Office days: Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays from 2 till 4 p.m. Subscription: Essential to membership, amount optional. Object: To obtain increased safeguards against wrongful incarceration of the sane, with ameliorations in the treatment of lunatics. Kathleen Jones says that Louisa Lowe was secretary of the "Lunacy Laws Amendment Association", which supported Georgina Weldon [They appear to be different societies]


1874 survivors' history

31.10.1874 British Medical Journal: "LUNACY LAW REFORM ASSOCIATION. The Council of the above Society have just issued their first report, in which they make a series of charges all round, of brutal cruelty, political influience, anid criminal negligence on the part of medical men in signing lunacy certificates." offline)

1875 survivors' history

1876 survivors' history

The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony in Eight Fits, by Lewis Carroll, published

External links to biographies of Alfred Woodhurst and James Woodhurst of East London, who were admitted to Middlesex asylums.

J. Langdon Down, On the education and training of the feeble in mind A reprint of a paper read at the Social Science Congress of 1867 (printed the same year in the Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science) published H.K. Lewis, London, 1876. (17 plus 8 pages. Printed paper cover)

1876 Slavery in England : an account of the manner in which persons without trial are condemned to imprisonment for life : with illustrative cases, by an Eye-Witness Lunacy Law Reform Association. London : W.H. Guest, 95 pages [From 1877 SCHC Evidence, 1881 census and other sources, the author appears to have been John Langley Plumbridge (c.1829 - ), Foreign Fruit Merchant, living in Kent, of Plumbridge and son Foreign Fruit Merchants St Botolph Lane London] - See 1873.

1877 survivors' history

The third Middlesex County Asylum was opened at Banstead, in Surrey, in 1877, thus continuing the trend (evident in the location of Metropolitan Asylums Board asylums) of sending people to asylums far from their home. Under community care policies, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, special measures had to be taken to enable relatives in inner London boroughs to visit patients in distant hospitals.

12.2.1877 House of Commons appointed a committee under Thomas Dillwyn "to inquire into the operations of Lunacy Law so far as regards security afforded by it against violations of personal liberty"

The Lancet fact-finding commission on "The Care and Cure of the Insane"

Evidence 7.5.1877: James Billington Secretary of the Lunacy Law Amendement Society... "established by certain individuals who have suffered from the disadvantages of the present system of administering the law." "This society has been established about seven months, but the whole of the committee has been connected the Lunacy Law Reform Association (of which Mrs Lowe is now the secreatry)which has been established five years. It is really an old society with a new name.

1878 survivors' history

April 1878 Brain Volume 1, issue 1. Editors: Drs. Bucknill, Crichton Browne, Ferrier, and Hughlings-Jackson.

Music therapy at Worcestershire County Asylum

1879 survivors' history

HenryHawkins Reverend Henry Hawkins and friends start the After-care Association for Poor and Friendless Female Convalescents on Leaving Asylums for the Insane. See 1893 - 1894 - 25.2.1913 - Mental After Care Association name - 1926 - 1932 - 1939 - 1950s - 1983 - 2005 (became "Together"). (external link to History) - Leaflets about: Henry Hawkins - history - The archives are kept in the Contemporary Medical Archives Centre in the Library at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine (ref SA/MAC) - Current address and contact details
In the 1880s, a committee of women worked to "find temporary homes in cottages and other homes and look for potential placements in service for women coming out of asylums". By 1889, 143 cottage homes had been inspected and about 50 people a year were being helped, from 18 different asylums in England and Scotland. The Association also placed "some people at risk of becoming insane" in cottage homes

1880 survivors' history

1880 - 1882 Dr Joseph Breuer (1842-1925) and his patient Bertha Pappenheim or "Anna O" (1859-1936) invent the "talking cure".
At this time Freud was a medical student raising money for his studies by translating from English into German. Read his 1909 account of what Breur and Anna O. did

1881 survivors' history

2.8.1881 40th anniversary of the Medico-Psychological Association. Daniel Daniel Hack Tuke outlined the progress of psychological medicine.

1882 survivors' history

Daniel Hack Tuke's Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles. His history, the first draft of which was published in 1854 is the first attempt at a comprehensive one that I know, and the last until the work of Kathleen Jones

See mental health history subject list

The Subliminal Self
The development of ideas about levels of consciousness and the unconscious mind was associated with theories about the spiritual

France 13.2.1882 Charcot presented a paper on the diverse nervous states determined by the hypnotisation of hysterics (Sur les divers états nerveux déterminés par l'hypnotisation chez les hystériques) to Le Académie des Sciences in Paris. The acceptance, by the Academy, of his paper was also the acceptance of hypnosis as a scientific practice and of diseases of the mind as distinct from mental disorders caused by physical disorders. See also 1885 and 1887

8.4.1882 British Medical Journal " AMENDMENT OF THE LUNACY LAWS.- A meeting, convened by the Lunacy Law Amendment Society for the purpose of furthering their views, took place this week at the Holborn Town Hall, Mr Torrens occupying the chair.- Mr. Commissioner Miller moved the first resolution:- "That the lunacy laws are highly unsatisfactory, and urgently need reform." He said that the present system of incarcerating a man as a lunatic, upon the certificate of two medical men, required altering. He contended that the soundness of the medical opinions should be tested by public examination, as no man's opinion was worth having unless it would stand the test of skilful cross- examination.- Mr Moseley, in seconding the motion, denied that it would be casting a stigma upon a person should he be publicly examined for the purpose of ascertaining whether he is a lunatic or not, Was it fair to the public that a family, in which there was hereditary insanity, should not be known to have that taint? Ought persons to be allowed to contract marriages with them? For his own part, he considered secrecy as contrary to the public welfare; while, again, proprietors of public asylums had a direct pecuniary interest in still keeping patients after recovery. After some further discussion, the resolution was passed, as were all others calling for an inquiry into the lunacy laws, and adopting a petition to the Houses of Parliament." offline)

25.4.1882 Proposal in UK Parliament that "That all lunatics ought to be committed to the keeping of the State". Negatived.

1883 survivors' history

Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926) published Kompendium der Psychiatrie (later editions: Psychiatrie: Ein Lehrbuch für Studierende und Ärzte - Psychiatry: A Textbook for Students and Doctors) which established an orthodox classification of psychiatric diseases based on clusters of symptoms (syndromes) with underlying physical causes. Kraepelin regarded each mental disorder as distinct from all others, having its own aetiology, symptoms, course and outcome. His major groups were dementia praecox and manic-depressive psychosis. - In 1960 Ronald Laing published a criticism of the disease approach to psychosis in which he used Kraepelin as the example.

La découverte des neuroleptiques : une chronologie begins in 1883 with the synthesis of a phenothiazine.


Cane Hill Pauper Lunatic Asylum
Cane Hill Asylum, Surrey, opened in 1883. It was enlarged to accommodate 2,000 patients by the end of the 1880s. Click on the picture for more information. The picture is from a postcard in the collection of Nigel Roberts. It has "J.T.Carey's real photos... Cane Hill, Asylum. 5024" written at the base of the card. The same picture appears on the urban explorations site with a note that it was taken in 1912.

1883 Association for the Care of Girls founded in Cambridge to help and protect vulnerable girls.

1883 The Bastilles of England: or, the lunacy laws at work by Louisa Lowe LATE HON. SECRETARY OF THE LUNACY LAW REFORM ASSOCIATION. London : Crookenden, 1883. 153 pages

Included the following notice:


LUNACY LAW REFORM ASSOCIATION.
FOUNDED 1873.
HON. SECRETARY.
HERBERT NEWMAN MOZLEY, Esq., M.A.,
BARRISTEE-AT-LAW.
22 and 70 Chancery Lane, London.

OBJECTS.

1. To direct public attention to the serious defects of the existing Lunacy Laws, and the grave abuses in their operation, with a view to remedial legislation.

2. To assist persons who are or may be wrongfully incarcerated, whether in public or private asylums, to obtain liberty and redress.

3. To secure a better method of treatment for all Lunatics, and to set in motion the machinery of the law for the punishment of all persons who maltreat them.

4. To procure the gradual substitution of public for private asylums.

Further Particulars may be had on Application.

1884 survivors' history

Mrs Georgina Weldon sued Dr Forbes Winslow over an attempt to examine her and have her confined in an asylum at her husband's request. This case was a prelude to the 1890 Lunacy Act, which required alleged lunatics to be examined before a magistrate. The confinement of Elizabeth Packard in the United States relates to similar changes there.

The second Gloucester County Asylum opened at Coney Hill.

May 1884 Robert Koch and his team returned to Berlin from Calcutta where they had isolated the cholera bacillus. Koch was received as a national hero. See Who first discovered vibrio cholera? (external link) which argues that Koch's (re-) discovery of the cholera bacillus began to turn the tide of international scientific opinion away from the miasma theory. However, the article is not clear if the issue was water (rather than air) transmission or the germ theory of the cause of the disease.

Paraldehyde Vincenzo Cervello's "Recherches cliniques et physiologiques sur la paraldehyde" was published in Archives italiennes de biologie in 1884. It is, therefore, after this date that it became the sedative "so useful for the noisy and troublesome patient that it tended to br over-used in hospitals... given intramuscularly (10-15 cc) in the treatment of acute and grave psychoses.." (Sargant and Slater 1963)

October 1884 George Henry Savage, of Bethlem Royal Hospital, signed the Preface to the first edition of his Insanity and Allied Neuroses: Practical and Clinical - offline - . He thanked "W. Haigh, Esq., who has not only corrected my proofs, but has by criticism aided me much in the legal chapters; and Dr. F. Beach, who has contributed to the chapter on idiocy."

1885 survivors' history

# 1885: First edition of Handbook for the instruction of attendants on the insane. Prepared by a sub-committee of the Medico-Psychological Association. 64 pages. Baillière & Co.: London. (online history at Royal College of Psychiatrists) [See 1891 Nursing Certificate] - May 1902 exam - Model Answers 1928]

1886 survivors' history

25.6.1886 The 1886 Idiots Act allowed rates to be raised for building an "idiot asylum" or "mental deficiency colony".

1887 survivors' history

13.1.1887 The case of Louisa Lowe against Charles Henry Fox for confining her, reached the House of Lords. She lost the case and had to pay costs. Lord Halsbury, in giving judgement, said "we have nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of the statements" in the certificates of the doctors or the order for the person's detention.

"all that which the keeper of the asylum has to regard is whether the statements which are made in the order are such as to justify him in exercising the powers given to him under the statute, of detaining in confinement the person committed to his charge."

The statute law at issue here (and in several previous cases) was that access to the courts over the substantive issues of a confinement had been removed in 1845. The 1889 Lunatics Law Amendment Act provided for the truth of allegations to be tested legally before the confinement.

France Une Lecon Clinique a la Salpetrie, a painting by Andre Brouillet, in 1887, shows Jean Martin Charcot demonstrating on Blanche Wittmann (the lady fainting). Click on the picture to see why her faints were a turning point. - See also 1882

1888 survivors' history

After care association Scrapbook 2: 1888-1902 SA/MAC H1/2

Following the 1888 Local Government Act (which created London County Council), the old Surrey County Asylum in south London became a Middlesex County Asylum and the London County Council took over from Middlesex a project to build an asylum at Claybury, in Essex. Claybury Asylum opened in 1893.

Colonies for epileptics were opened in different parts of England and Scotland from 1888. Some, such as the Ewell Colony, were short lived. Eleven were still operating as epileptic colonies in 1962: the Maghull Homes, near Liverpool (founded 1888); Meath Home, Godalming (1892); Chalfont Colony (1894); Lingfield Training Colony, Surrey (1897); St. Elizabeth's, Hertfordshire (1903); David Lewis Colony, Cheshire (1904); Langho Colony near Blackburn (1905), Bridge of Weir Colony, Renfrewshire, Scotland (1906); St David's Hospital, Edmonton (1916); St Faith's Hospital Brentwood (by 1930), and Cookeridge Hall, Leeds. (Jones and Tillotson)

1889 survivors' history

April? 1889 1888 Local Government Act came into force and English and Welsh asylums passed from the magisterial control of the Justices of the Peace to the democratically elected control of newly created county and borough councils.

30.7.1889 House of Lords debate proposed notices of rights in asylums

Henry Mew   Sometime before 1890, Henry Herne Mew was certified insane and confined in an asylum. As it was before the 1889 Lunacy Laws Amendment Act came into force, and as he was a private patient, his detention would not have required the approval of a magistrate. Charlotte Mew

Science Time Line 1885
See 1840s, 1920s, 1940s

1890s: By the end of the 19th century the failure of asylum therapy had convinced people that insanity is largely (but not entirely) incurable. At Claybury, in 1901-1902, there were 426 admissions, 201 deaths and 148 patients were "discharched recovered". The insane were sent to even larger asylums for custody, to be protected from exploitation whilst society was protected from them. "In spite of this", Alexander Walk says, many improvements followed the asylums becoming the responsibility of County and County Borough Councils in 1888.

Postmortems were carried out on the brains of the majority of patients who died in the asylum in search of the cerebral lession that many thought was the basis of all insanity. This cross-section is from a collection of clinico-pathological photographs taken at Colney Hatch Asylum between 1890 and 1910. (Hunter and Macalpine 1974 p.244) say that it shows multiple tumours and that such cases accounted for the high mortality amongst newly admitted patients. See below, 1895.

"In the 19th century nearly 10% of them died within 3 months of admission from advanced systemic or cerebral disease causing mental symptoms initially"

1890 survivors' history

1890 Lunacy Act.

The 1890 Lunacy Act was a major consolidating Act that remained the core of English and Welsh Lunacy Legislation until it was repealed by the 1959 Mental Health Act

New rules for private admissions

The major change associated with the Act (actually made in 1889) was that it said private patients, apart from chancery lunatics (whose cases were dealt with by the Court of Chancery) should not be detained without a judicial order from a Justice of the Peace specialising in such "reception orders". Pauper patients already required an order from the magistrates to be detained - although that provision was probably originally an authorisation of public funds rather than a safeguard of liberties as the reception order was intended to be. (Click here to read the summary of the law about admission to an asylum from 1828 - here for 1890 - here for emergency procedures under the 1890 Act). The law respecting the admission of private patients under the Act is outlined in a booklet for the private asylum at Haydock Lodge.

Restricted growth of private asylums

Section 207 placed such severe restrictions on the granting of licences as to virtually prevent new private asylums or the enlargement of established ones.

Public provision for private lunatics

Section 255 allowed the county and borough asylums to build wards or separate buildings for private patients. Private units were built at the new Isle of Wight County Asylum and Derby Borough Asylum, at Dorset County Asylum and at Park Prewett, Hampshire, amongst others. London County Council made provision for private patients at Claybury and The Manor, Epsom. Shropshire had 28 private class patients in 1911. - Registers of private patients at Netherne (Surrey) survive from 1909 to 1919 - The West Riding of Yorkshire provided a separate asylum (Scalebor Park) exclusively for private patients. (See 1927 list)

Absence on trial and boarding out

Section 55 provided for a pauper lunatic to be "absent on trial" with an "allowance" "not exceeding the charge in the asylum" . Provisions for the absence on trial of private patients were also made. Section 57 provided for the "boarding-out" of pauper lunatics with relatives or friends. [See 25.2.1913]

"Add to [the number of criminals] the number of indoor paupers and lunatics ... 78,966 - and we have an army of nearly two million: belonging to the submerged classes. To this there must be added at the very least, another million, representing those dependent upon the criminal, lunatic and other classes... and the more or less helpless of the class immediately above the houseless and starving. This brings my total to three millions, or, to put it roughly to one-tenth of the population." (William Booth, 1890, in his chapter on The Submerged Tenth) - See 1904-1908 - 1929 - 1943

1891 survivors' history

5.6.1891: Census: The column asking about disability had a different heading.

1891 "Examination for the Nursing Certificate" of the Medico- Psychological Association established. [See 1885 Nursing Handbook

1892 survivors' history

Special Schools Leicester Education Authority the first in England to provide special instruction for backward and weak-minded children.

The National Society for the Employment of Epileptics (NSEE) was launched in 1892

Prince of Wales Hospital Fund for London started 1892 - A royal patron raising money for London's voluntary hospitals. It became the the King Edward's Hospital Fund for London in 1902. The National Health Service made many of its functions redundant after 1948 and it developed a new role developing "good practice in the NHS". - lost source - 1999 web archive - 1999 history - full web archive - See 1980s and "social care"

1893 survivors' history

Claybury in Essex, the first compact arrow asylum, opened

After care association established its first residential care- home, at Redhill in Surrey, with room for nine people.

1894 survivors' history

After care association renamed After Care Association for Poor Convalescents on Leaving Asylums for the Insane as it now helps men as well as women.

A short story Passed is the first known published work of Charlotte Mew. The writer, walking in a poor area of London (Clerkenwell?), visits a church. She sees a gospel that the priest at the alter does not:

"Two girls holding each other's hands came in and stood in deep shadow behind the farthest rows of high-backed chairs by the door. The younger rolled her head from side to side; her shifting eyes and ceaseless imbecile grimaces chilled my blood. The other, who stood praying, turned suddenly (the place but for the flaring alter lights was dark) and kissed the dreadful creature by her side. I shuddered, and yet her face wore no look of loathing nor pity. The expression was a divine one of habitual love. She wiped the idiot's lips and stroked the shaking hands in hers, to quiet the sad hysterical caresses she would not check. It was a page of gospel which the old man with his back to it might never read. A sublime and ghastly scene."

The description may shock (See also 1916), but compare with Jayne Eyre in 1847 and the Care of Children Committee in 1946. The outstanding difference is the compassion.

23.8.1894 "Thyroid feeding in insanity : a summary of thirty cases treated by thyroid extract in the Derby Borough Asylum" by S. Rutherford Macphail and Lewis Campbell Bruce read at the annual meeting of the Caledonian Medical Society, at Inverness. It was published in Cretins and idiots: a short account of the progress of the institutions for their relief and cure Glasgow : Alex. Macdougall, 1894. Freda Mew received thyroid treatment in 1902. The treatment was advocated for cases of insanity where doctors had run out of options, and not just for cases of thyroid deficiency. It is an early form of treatment by fever. See later development of malarial treatment. There are similarities with the later use of insulin in that a good result was patients eating and putting on weight.

Thursday 8.11.1894 Meeting of the Scottish Division of the Medico-Psychological Association in Edinburgh at which Lewis C. Bruce read a paper on "The Effect of Thyroid Feeding in some Forms of Insanity" (offline). In the discussion, he commented

"At present he only advocated thyroid treatment in patients who had not benefited by the ordinary routine treatment of insanity. In such cases it is only just to give the patient a chance of recovery by inducing a feverish condition and hoping for a beneficial result during the reaction subsequent to the fever." (Journal of Mental Science - offline).

1895 survivors' history

Frederick Mott was appointed in charge of the London County Council Asylums' new central Pathological Laboratories at Claybury. His Archives of Neurology from the Pathological Laboratory of the London County Asylums, Claybury, Essex was published from 1899

1896 survivors' history

The National Association for Promoting the Welfare of the Feeble-minded founded. See 1898 - See 16.10.1909 - Later became National Association for the Care of the Feeble Minded - See 1912 - Promoted formation of Central Association for the Care of the Mentally Defective in 1913.

April 1896 "The fact has long been recognised that improvement or recovery from mental disease not uncommonly coincides with, or follows, a fever or other physical disorder." J. Keay, District Asylum, Inverness. "A Study of Forty-four cases of Fever occurring in the Insane". Journal of Mental Science

1897 survivors' history

Richard von Krafft-Ebbing injected syphilis into nine patients suffering from General Paralysis Of the Insane. None of the patients said they had ever had symptoms of syphilis, but they did not develop syphilis sore after the injection, suggesting they had had syphilis in the past. (external link) (Or 1884? External Link)

In Japan, Kiyoshi Shiga identified the bacteria responsible for one form of dysentery - the form that was often found in asylums and, therefore, known as asylum dysentery.

1898 survivors' history

1898 Inebriates Act

10.6.1898 Meeting on behalf of The National Association for Promoting the Welfare of the Feeble-minded held at Stafford House. Association office: 49, Victoria Street, S.W. (See British Medical Journal report 18.6.1898

Freda Mew   Freda Mew (19) became insane early in November 1898. She was admitted to the new private block of the Isle of Wight Asylum on 4.2.1899 and remained in the asylum until her death (78) on 1.3.1958. Her case notes survive for 1898 to 17.11.1909 - After which she is largely lost to history. Charlotte Mew

1899 survivors' history

"The Defective and Epileptic Children Act of 1899 empowered local authorities to spend money on children suffering from these handicaps, and opened the way for colony schools. The Act of 1914, which was mandatory on local authorities, improved the position still further." (Jones and Tillotson p.6)

1900 survivors' history

beautiful baby In Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud interpreted the symbolism of dreams in a way that he presented as a scientific exploration of the unconscious mind.
"sexuality, the factor to which I attribute the greatest significance in respect of the origin of these nervous affections which I am trying to cure."   See 1905
In 1900 it was decided that the new asylum for Belfast, at Purdysburn would be constructed as detached villas around the country house that was to be its core. This is one of the earliest examples in Britain and Ireland of a move away from a large unified building as the asylum. In the United States of America, Maryland had begun constructing a "cottage" plan asylum in 1896.

1901 survivors' history

"We often hear it said that the care we bestow on the hopelessly sick, the insane, and the feeble-minded is in opposition to what Darwin taught about the Survival of the Fittest, and that it does harm; but Darwin perceived that it is of such importance to a community that feelings of unselfish affection and public spirit should be strengthened by having to care for the weak, that this more than makes up for any injury done to the efficiency of a community by the artificial preservation of lives not strong enough to fight their own battles" Caroline A. Martineau Voices of Nature and Lessons from Science The Sunday School Association, Essex Hall, Essex Street, Strand, WC. (Second edition) pages 119-120"

Henry Mew   22.3.1901 Death of Henry Herne Mew, aged 34, from tuberculosis, in Peckham asylum. Charlotte Mew's In Nunhead Cemetery may grieve his death and celebrate his life. Charlotte Mew



31.3.1901: Census: The column asking about disability had a different heading.

October 1901 Francis Galton lectured on The Possible Improvement of the Human Breed under the existing conditions of Law and Sentiment. G. R. Searle, (1976 page 20) calls this "launching his project of race improvement". The initial concern was about physical deterioration. - Contrast above. See Eugenics - 1904 - 1907 - 1910 - 1922 - 1931 - 1933 - 1947 -

1902 survivors' history

1902: National Institution for Persons Requiring Care and Control founded by Harold Nelson Burden, an Anglican chaplain. Incorporated in 1914. See The Burden Trust

Freda Mew   4.2.1902 Freda Mew under Thyroid treatment Charlotte Mew

May 1902 Five hundred and forty-three people in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, applied to take the May examination for the Nursing Certificate of the Medico- Psychological Association. Twelve withdrew, 352 passed and 179 failed. Examinations were also held in November. The questions were about: the composition of fresh air - the construction of the pelvis, and the organs within it - the urine of patients - suicidal attempts by patients - special risks of injury to which epileptic patients are liable - bedsores - treating attacks of apoplexy; syncope (fainting); and choking - feeding paralytic and helpless patients - guarding against and discovering escapes; precautions against homicidal impulses; and "special observation" - poisons and cases of suspected poisoning.

25.7.1902 Annual Meeting of the Medico-Psychological Association, Liverpool. T. S. Clouston, M.D., opened a discussion on the "possibility of providing suitable means of treatment for incipient and transient mental diseases in our great general hospitals."

Friday 1.8.1902 Dr. F. W. Mott (London) opened a discussion on Syphilis as a Cause of Insanity... "Dr Mott concluded by adopting, for the purposes of raising a discussion, the thesis, No syphilis, no general paralysis". (external link See below and 1916)

1903 survivors' history

1903 Sidelights on Convict Life: Broadmoor "There are something like 120 women now confined in Broadmoor, out of a total of less than 200, who had murdered their own child or children. In fact, homicide, with attempts to murder and maim, would appear to be the crime to which the great majority of criminally-inclined lunatics are most prone" (See 1919 and 1922) - "If Society itself were to become quite sane it would recognise that crime and insanity are practically the same thing" - Proposed sterilisation

26.6.1903 Croydon Mental Hospital (not "Lunatic Asylum") opened

Late 1903 A pamphlet of about 30? pages: Proposed sterilisation of certain mental and physical degenerates. An appeal to asylum managers and others by Robert Reid Rentoul, a Liverpool doctor, (born Ireland 1855, died Liverpool 1925) published: Walter Scott Publishing Company, London, 1903. A brief notice in the British Medical Journal in 9.1.1904 may be the first time that journal used "sterilisation" in this sense as distinct from sterilising milk (etc). The appendices to the pamphlet are 1. Marriage law. State of Minnesota, U.S.A., chapter 234, s.f. no. 185 - 2. Marriage of degenerates. Extract from the annual report of Dr. F.H. Craddock. 3. Extract from a woman's letter. 4. Doctor Lombroso on the increase of insanity. - See 19041908 - 1910 - USA 1907 - USA 1909 - 1913 - USA 1921 - Australasia 1923 - 1933 - 1934 - USA 1959 - 2004 -

1904 survivors' history

14.2.1904 "first comprehensive law on mental health in Italy"

16.9.1904 Francis Galton addressed a Sociological Society meeting (chaired by Karl Pearson) on eugenics. "From then onwards eugenics quickly developed into a political movement" (G. R. Searle, 1976 page 80). He spoke again in February 1905.


Lancaster
Picture postcard of County Asylum Annexe Lancaster postmarked Lancaster 6.15 pm 25.10.1904. One of several asylum postcards in the collection of Nigel Roberts.

1905 survivors' history

1905 The spirochaete responsible for syphilis identified. The Wasserman reaction provided a test for it in 1906. This was first used at Colney Hatch Asylum in 1912. Of forty patients diagnosed as suffering from General Paralysis of the Insane, 38 gave a positive reaction. Using the test it was calculated that one tenth of the male patients suffered from General Paralysis of the Insane. In the last half of the 19th century, when other conditions were included because of similar symptoms, the percentage had been calculated as one in five. (Hunter and Macalpine 1974 p.211)

Mental Deficiency: The mid-19th century asylums were developed to treat insanity. However, although congenital idiots and imbeciles were not considered treatable, many were sent to lunatic asylums for custody or control. As the century developed, they tended to be sent to the new, cheap, asylums. Those who were considered physically and morally harmless often stayed with their families, were placed with a substitute family or were kept in workhouses.

Fear of racial degeneracy dominated policy in the early 20th century. It was feared that a "submerged tenth" of the population would outbreed the rest. The Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble Minded (1904-1908) reported that mental defectives were often prolific breeders and allowing them so much freedom led to delinquency, illegitimacy and alcoholism. They rejected sterilisation as a solution, and called for separation and control.

22.6.1905 Deutsche Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene by Alfred Ploetz in Berlin. His brother in law Ernst Rüdin was a founding member.

12.7.1905 Birth of John, youngest son of George (later King George 5th) and Mary. John died, aged thirteen on 18.1.1919. Prince John suffered from epilepsy and from learning difficulties that suggested he was mentally deficient. His existence was kept secret and, from 1916, he was cared for at Wood Farm, Wolferton, near Sandringham, Norfolk by a nurse Mrs 'Lalla' Bill and a male orderly. In February 1996 (?) a photograph of John wearing a sailor suit, holding hands with Queen Mary and his sister Mary, was discovered in a photograph album and later published in British newspapers. An internet biography of him was published by Britannia later in 1996 and a romanticised drama of his life The Lost Prince, written by Stephen Poliakoff, for BBC1 Television was broadcast in January 2003.


Napsbury
Picture postcard of Napsbury (opened 1905) that is thought to date from the first world war, when Napsbury was a war hospital.

beautiful baby Sigmund Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality followed, according to Anna Freud, by "outbursts of indignation"

See 1900 - 1908 - 1918 - 1923 - 1938

1906 survivors' history

1907 survivors' history

1907 A new system of statutory registers to be kept by asylums and hospitals for the insane in England and Wales introduced by the Lunacy Commissioners. Consisting of seperate Medical Registers, Civil Registers, Registers of Deaths and Registers of Discharges. Information previously recorded in one Registry of Admissions Book (admission register) was now dicided between Medical and Civil Registers. This new system meant that the medical information could now be more easily accessed and standardised through systematic coding. The idea behind these changes was to provide a more accurate and consistent basis for asylum statistics.

Separating the Medical and Civil registers meant that while the Civil Register could be filled in immediately and more time taken over diagnosis for the Medical Register. Medical and Civil Registers remained in use until 1948, although after the 1930 Mental Treatment Act separate series (or separate sections of registers) were maintained for certified, voluntary and temporary patients. Medical coding during this time remained the same, except for one addition in the Schedule of Forms of Insanity/Mental Illness.

See 1939 example

Autumn 1907 The Eugenics Education Society founded. It changed its name to the Eugenics Society in 1909. By October 1908 its President was Francis Galton.

David Heron: "A first study of the statistics of insanity and the inheritance of the insane diathesis" Eugenics Laboratory Memoirs; 2 London: Dulau.

Departmental Committee on the Operation of the Law Relating to Inebriates and Their Detention in Reformatories and Retreats: In England and Wales about 20 licensed retreats [homes] and 13 reformatories [asylums], as well as others not licensed. At about the same time, Scotland had three licensed retreats and six reformatories and Ireland one retreat and two reformatories. (external link)


Portsmouth Borough Asylum
Picture postcard of Portsmouth Borough Asylum postmarked 1907 copied from Stephen Pomeroy's website. Other postcards of asylum's about this time include Lancaster (1904) - Cane Hill (1912) - Napsbury (1914-1918?)

1908 survivors' history

beautiful baby 1908 English translation from German: The Sexual Life of Our Time In its Relations to Modern Civilisation by Iwan Bloch (First German edition was in 1907). The authorised readership of the English edition was, for many years, restricted to lawyers and doctors.

Sometime in 1908: A Mind that Found Itself

July/August 1908 Opening of Observation Hospital - "Acute Hospital for the treatment of persons who fear they may become Insane" - in the grounds of the Hudson River State Hospital for the Insane.

America

1908 Report of the Royal Commission for the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded

The Cambridgeshire Association for the Care of the Feeble-Minded inaugurated. At first it was a sub-committee of Charity Organisation Society organised by Mrs. F. A. Keynes and Ida Darwin.

September 1908 Alfred Frank Tredgold (1870-1952) Mental Deficiency (Amentia). Published: London : Bailliere, Tindall and Cox. 391 pages: 26 plates. Also published New York : Wood, 1908. [In 1908 Tredgold also published a 17 page pamphlet Some account of the report and recommendations of the Royal Commission on the care and control of the feeble-minded, 1908. Tredgold's A Text-Book of Mental Deficiency (Amentia) (title from 1937) was "largely re-written" in 1929. A twelfth edition Tredgold's Mental Retardation, revised by others, was published in 1979.

Tredgold argued that there is "a clear relationship between amentia and other forms of mental abnormality and disease". He argued that "family history inquiries show that defectives, persons suffering from pre-senile forms of dementia, and others suffering from psychoses and psychoneuroses often come from the same stocks... in many instances these various conditions may be merely different clinical manifestations of one and the same germ abnormality" (Seventh edition, 1947, page 370)

1909 survivors' history

"one person in every 118 of our population is mentally defective, being either mad, idiotic, or feeble-minded" (Francis Galton The Problem of the Feeble-Minded An abstract of the report of the Royal Commission, with commentaries. Quoted Jones, K. 1960, p.65)

16.10.1909 Morning Post "there exist to-day, apart from certified lunatics who are under restraint, 150,000 mentally defective persons, and of these no less than 66,000 are considered to be " urgently in need of provision, either in their own interest or for the public safety." It is difficult to express with sufficient force the gravity of the danger to national life which the existence of these persons uncontrolled in any sufficient manner implies. For from these unfortunate men and women the ranks of paupers, drunkards, and criminals are continually recruited." [Reprinted as a leaflet by the The Oxford branch of the National Association for Promoting the Welfare of the Feeble-minded ]

Freda Mew     17.11.1909 Freda Mew showing signs of recovery. She "has a funny way of getting up suddenly and dancing across room or airing court - has been up daily and is all the better for it." [Last entry in recovered case notes]   Charlotte Mew's Ken Charlotte Mew

1910 survivors' history

Rampton Hospital, Nottinghamshire, opened as England's second Criminal Lunatic Asylum. In 1920 it became a State Institution for mentally defective people considered dangerous.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton began writing against eugenics in 1910
Work not published until
1922. A particular concern for Chesterton was the extension of the traditionally limited concepts of lunatic and idiot to include a much wider section of the population who are "feeble-minded" - See 1909, for example

14.2.1910 to 23.10.1911 Winston Churchill Home Secretary. Churchill was a strong supporter of sterilisation. His proposals for the forcible sterilisation of 100,000 moral degenerates were considered too extreme and so sensitive that they were kept secret until 1992.

"The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble- minded classes, coupled with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks constitute a race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate. I feel that the sources from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed up before another year has passed" (Winston Churchill to Prime Minister Asquith, 1910, quoted by Clive Ponting, in The Guardian Outlook 20.6.1992)

On 14.9.2004 a statue of Churchill in a straitjacket was used to protest against the stigma of severe mental illness.
Eugenics and sterilisation in the USA
meaning of eugenics.

Are talking treatments the way out of therapeutic pessimism?

Tuesday 19.4.1910 There is a "general idea that nothing is done in the way of treatment in asylums" - "treatment does not appear to have yielded many results: the recovery rate has not increased during the past thirty years." Dr Street, of Haydock Lodge, advocated "a higher form of moral treatment than the usual occupation, recreation and amusement; a more intimate knowledge of the mental condition of every patient, and particularly a more frank and open method of dealing with it. He believed in discussing a patient's mental symptoms freely with him, whether they were delusions or suicidal inclinations".

10.7.1910 George Gibson, an attendant at Winwick Asylum, and other disgruntled Lancashire asylum workers, formed the National Asylum Workers Union, which soon spread through the United Kingdom, including Ireland, with a branch secretary in most asylums. The union affiliated to the Labour Party in 1914 and was active in Labour Party affairs. It became the Mental Hospital and Institutional Workers' Union in 1930. In 1946 it merged with the Hospital and Welfare Services Union to form COHSE, the Confederation of Health Service Employees. Since 1993 it has been UNISON Phil Watkins' COHSE History site


1911 survivors' history

" With regard to insane criminals, it must be remembered that every form of mental alienation assumes a specific criminality." (Lombroso Ferrero 1911)

After care association Scrapbook 4: 1911-1927 SA/MAC H1/4

Eugen Bleuler, (1857-1939) Dementia praecox, oder Gruppe der Schizophrenien published Leipzig. [Translated into English in 1950 as Dementia praecox: or, The group of schizophrenias. (In 1910 Bleuler had coined the word schizophrenie, from Greek words for split and mind, as an alternative to dementia praecox). See 1923

8.7.1911 The first national conference of the National Asylum Workers Union was held at Pitmans Hotel, Birmingham Delegetes came from Winwick Asylum, Banstead, Bexley, Bodmin, Caterham, Cardiff, Chester, Claybury, Exminster, Hellingly, Lancaster, Leavesden, Macclesfield, Maidstone, Menston, Norwich, Prestwich, Rainhill, Storthes Hall, Wakefield and York. Apologies were received from Abergavenny, Talgarth, Colney Hatch, Darenth, Hanwell, Aylesbury, Haywards Heath, and Narboro. (Michael Walker, Unison)

1912 survivors' history

1912? Phenobarbitone (luminal) introduced into the treatment of epilepsy.

April 1912 - Asylum chapels Of the 94 lunatic asylums in England and Wales, only seven were without a chapel. Two because they are at present incomplete and two are old and small asylums. The West Riding of Yorkshire was resisting providing chapels at the Menston, Storthes Hall and Scalebor Park asylums. (See Hansard)

17.5.1912 Debate on second reading of the Feeble-Minded Persons Control Bill - "to put it briefly, the object of this Bill is to regularise the lives, and, if possible, to prevent the increasing propagation of half-witted people"... "if the only class of persons you can bring into this Bill are those who are dangerous to themselves and to others, you exclude from the purview of the Bill the bulk of the feeble- minded and specially those whom associations such as the National Association for the Care of the Feeble-Minded are anxious to deal with. We know the great interest that is aroused in this question particularly in regard to illegitimacy." (Hansard)

1913 survivors' history

From 1913, local authorities could provide free treatment for people suffering from tuberculosis. I believe some of this was provided by adding verandas to asylum wards (as at Brentwood in Essex). In the early 1970s I was shown how the bed space of the original Derby County Asylum had been tripled, first by converting galleries to dormitories and then by adding verandas for people with tuberculosis.

25.2.1913 Annual Meeting of the After-Care Association at which Dr C. Hubert Bond, "Commissioner in Lunacy" read a paper on "After-care in cases of mental disorder, and the desirability of its more extended scope" (Abstract on Royal College of Psychiatrists website) - About 7,000 people were discharged from public asylums in England and Wales each year. After-care would benefit all of them, but for least 1,500 it was "urgently required". However, only about a quarter were being helped by the Association. He proposed branches of the Association corresponding to each local lunacy authority and that asylums notify the local branch of discharges and trial discharges. He suggested the Association's rules be amended to allow it to help patients on trial under section 55 of the Lunacy Act. The income from such patients would assist the Association's finances.

13.6.1913 Special Committee of the After-Care Association commented that "funds would be better employed helping trial cases than many of those on whom they are at present spent".

1913 or 1914 After care association renamed Mental After Care Association for Poor Persons Convalescent or Recovered from Institutions for the Insane [Although not clear when it became just the Mental After Care Association, the short title is used in 1927]

1913 Asylums built under the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act (Royal Assent 15.8.1913) were not hospitals, but "colonies" designed to separate defectives from the gene- pool of the nation. In 1934, the Brock Committee recommended voluntary sterilisation as a cheaper means to the same end. See the collection of forms used under the Act.

The 1913 Mental Deficiency Act also established The Board of Control. This was the old Lunacy Commission with extended functions with respect to mental deficiency. The Board of Control continued to regulate the mental health system until 1959, but with reduced responsibilities after the National Health Service Act.

15.11.1913 The National Association for the Care of the Feeble Minded called a meeting at Denison House, London, S.W. of representatives of organisations "engaged in voluntary philanthropic work for defectives". This constituted a Central Association for the Care of the Mentally Defective which would work with the Board of Control and local authorities throughout the country. Leslie Scott (1869-1950), a conservative MP and lawyer with knowledge of the new Act, was President and Chairman of the Association from 1913 to 1947. Evelyn Fox (15.8.1874- 1.6.1955) was its honorary secretary. Its name changed to the Central Association for Mental Welfare in 1922 (Ruth Rees Thomas, 1971/- , Oxford DNB, under Evelyn Fox). In 1947, Leslie Scott and Evelyn Fox became founders of the National Association for Mental Health, into which the Central Association for Mental Welfare merged. (See British Medical Journal report 22.11.1913 - (Jones, K. 1972 p.267) - Oxford DNB under Fox and Scott.

Charlotte Mew     Autumn 1913 Charlotte Mew offered to address envelopes for the new Medico-Psychological Clinic "to provide... different forms of treatment, both medical and psychological... for functional nervous diseases".

1914 survivors' history

Pellagra shown by Joseph Goldberger (1874-1929) to be caused by a nutritional deficiency and not by an infection.

1.4.1914 [April Fools Day] The English and Welsh Mental Deficiency Act 1913 came into operation except with respect to the Board of Control [1.11.1913]


First publication of
Rachel Grant Smith's experiences:
15.7.1914 "Law Made Lunacy" in Truth
22.7.1914 "The Insufficiency of the Petition" in Truth
29.7.1914 "Madhouse Horrors" in Truth

the great war for civilisation
1914-1919

One side of a medallion, found with others, in the attic

World War Part One: Science Time Line 1914- 1919

Bert Roberts signed up in the Royal Army Medical Corps very early in hostilities. His fiancee, Lily McKenzie, often saw the postman as she left for work in the morning. There were no letterboxes. He had to knock to deliver the letters. One morning he looked green and he told her he was close to turning his job in: "They have gone over the top at Gallipoli". His hand held a bundle of brown envelopes containing the official messages of the dead, the missing and the injured to deliver to Dickenson Street, Warrington. [British landings at Gallipoli were on 25.4.1915. The British withdrew 9.1.1916.]

The twentieth century's first encounter with mass slaughter on a world wide scale was traumatic.

The World War One Document Archives' medical titles on psychiatry include Shell Shock and its Lessons by Grafton Elliot Smith and Tom Hatherley Pear. Manchester University Press, 1917.
Freud and War Neurosis (A Freud Museum link)

The Oxford book of Twentieth Century Words lists shell-shock from 1915, defining it as "a severe neurosis originating in trauma suffered under fire. A term particularly associated with World War 1, in which soldiers on the Western Front were subjected to a seemingly incessant barrage of shell-fire". It compares it with bomb-happy (1943) in the second world war. But shell-shock was used by the medical profession, whereas bomb-happy was colloquial. (See later rejection of shell-shock as a medical term)

At the start of the 1914 war, Charles Stanford Read says, any officer or private showing what might be "psychotic" symptoms was sent to "D" Block, Netley, the Mental Division of the Royal Victoria Hospital. "Convoys of such cases reached there from France, Belgium, Italy, Salonika, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and India. The first cases

"were dealt with according to the ordinary King's Regulations, which necessitated discharge from the army because of insanity and transference to their district asylum, where their status was no different from the other inmates."

It was then decided to equip special War Mental Hospitals where soldiers would stay for up to a year (reduced to nine months) under observation and treatment without certification.

1915 survivors' history

January 1915 Army Council estimated an additional 56,000 beds would be required to cope with wounded and sick troops. The Asylum War Hospitals Scheme, worked out with the Board of Control, moved civilian inmates out of certain asylums to provide accommodation for military medical, surgical and (from February) mental casualties. (Read, C.S. 1920 - Cullen, S. - and Barham, P. 2004, pp 44-45)

The asylums during the war

Many asylums were used as troop hospitals. (external link: Military Hospitals in the United Kingdom)

Conditions in some asylums during the war were very bad - leading to a high death rate (See Brentwood below)

Hospitals (asylums?) during world war one: -

Military: - See Netley - Naval: See Haslar

War Mental Hospitals: "The dropping of the word asylum was specially undertaken to obviate, if possible, the stigma that might be felt to attach to the name, which stigma does exist, rightly or wrongly." (Read, C.S. 1920) - See civil use 26.6.1903 - 1920 - 1930 -

10.11.1915 Royal Assent for the 1915 Naval and Military War Pensions Act - See below - See Charlotte Mew

November 1915 Latchmere Special Hospital for (Army) Officers "if markedly psychotic, they were transferred to a special hospital set apart for this purpose near Richmond, Surrey". (Read, C.S. 1920 p.46)

1916

     
survivors' history

Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases recommended free diagnosis and treatment. It was estimated that 10 per cent of the population in large cities were infected with acquired or congenital syphilis

The successful identification of General Paralysis of the Insane as an end product of syphilis raised hopes of finding an organic cause for all mental illnesses (See Frederick Mott). The following poem suggests that it also re-inforced belief in degeneration theory as the overall causal explanation.

Charlotte Mew   May 1916 Publication of the major volume of Charlotte Mew's poetry (The Farmer's Bride) whose dialogues with insanity included this in On the Asylum Road

"Theirs is the house whose windows...
Are made of darkly stained or clouded glass:
...
The saddest crowd that you will ever pass.

But still we merry town or village folk
Throw to their scattered stare a kindly grin,
And think no shame to stop and crack a joke
With the incarnate wages of man's sin."

10.12.1916 Labour leader, George Barnes, became the first Minister of Pensions. The Ministry of Pensions was created to handle the payment of war pensions to former members of the Armed Forces and their dependants. Pensions to ex-service lunatics were used to create the category "service patients" who were paid for from public funds, but counted as private patients. See 18.8.1919 - Citizen Soldier - 2.2.1921 - 1.1.1922 - 16.2.1922 - 1.1.1927

1917 survivors' history

1917 525 patients died in Brentwood County Asylum during the year. This was only ten less than the number of admissions. By 1919 the number of deaths had fallen to 346.

1917 Malarial treatment of general paralysis Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1857-1940), in Austria, injected nine people suffering from General Paralysis of the Insane with the infectious blood of malaria patients. The theory was that the consequent fever would cure the G.P.I. and this appeared to be the case. Subsequently, experiments were carried out in many countries. See the 1924 reports on "The Malaria Treatment of Paretic Dementia". This may have become a standard treatment. See Scalebor Park,   1924,   Horton 1924,   Brentwood 1926   Nobel prize 1927   1929,   Penicillin 1941 - 1963

Survival chart for 115 patients mainly with general paralysis admitted to Winwick Hospital between January 1923 and September 1926
45 who did not get malaria from the treatment mostly died in the first year.

Of the 70 who did get malaria, 33 lived over ten years. Of these long-term survivors, 20 were in the hospital and 13 at home at the end of the ten years.

From "A follow-up study of general paralysis with special reference to malarial therapy" by Dr. J. Ernest Nicole and Dr. G. J. Harrison. Sectional Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine Volume 30 page 628 (Sectonal page 13). 8.12.1936 - offline

Emil Kraepelin's Hundert Jahre Psychiatrie : ein Beitrag zur Geschichte menschlicher Gesittung [One Hundred Years of Psychiatry: A contribution to the history of human civilisation], written 1917, published in Berlin by Springer in 1918. 115 pages, illustrated. This was translated into English by Wade Buskin and published in 1962 as One Hundred Years of Psychiatry. The translation contains a short epilogue by H. Peter Laqueur, MD, reflecting on the years 1917-1962.

Kraepelin wrote "in Germany in the middle of a raging war" (p.154). A single paragraph, towards the end of the book, praises chemicals in the control of patient behaviour (after "protracted baths")

"We should not fail to note that the solution of many difficulties faced by the older doctors is the contribution of the chemical industry which in the last decade has created an imposing list of new soporifics and sedatives. The first sedative was chloral hydrate, recommended by Liebreich. Almost every other drug with similar effects was first manufactured and administered in Germany. Such agents are rightly considered expedients, however, and their use opens the door to many dangers. Still, for countless patients they are an immeasurable blessing, and they are mainly responsible for bringing the quiet atmosphere of the hospital into the wards for the insane and removing much of the horror that still feeds the imagination of the lay public" (pages 143-144)

1918 survivors' history

influenza epidemic "flu pandemic" America
Said to have killed 250,000 people in the United Kingdom and 40 million people world wide. (And there were plenty of other things killing people at this time - See Charlotte's web)

Encephalitis lethargica followed the flu pandemic. This affected up to five million people worldwide. One third died quickly, one third recovered, the remainder bore the aftereffects for years or decades. Encephalitis lethargica "vanished" in 1928. - External links: Encephalitis lethargica: BBC archive - History of narcolepsy - Can the flue cause Parkinson's Disease? archive - Lancet 1956 archive

In 1917 Constantin von Economo in Vienna reported a small outbreak of an illness in which the main features were fever, stupor, and ophthalmoplegia. Of his 13 patients died and at necropsy there was evidence of inflammation of the brain substance. "Report of an enquiry into an obscure disease, encephalitis lethargica" published HMSO London in 1918. "During the next two years a great many similar outbreaks were recorded and by 1921 the disease had reached epidemic proportions in almost every country in Europe". In spite of perplexing variations in the clinical picture from case to case, locality to locality, and even from season to season, it soon became clear for practical purposes a new clinical entity had appeared. In 1924, 5039 cases of encephalitis lethargica were notified in England and Wales alone. See 1927 Mental Deficiency Act. However, by the beginning of the next decade (1930s?) confirmed cases of this dangerous disease had become sporadic and by 1939 they were extremely rare.

beautiful baby 16.3.1918 First edition of Married Love by Marie Stopes.

See also 1905 Freud - 1923 Men, Women and God


1919 survivors' history



In 1919 Siân Busby's great-grandmother, Beth Wood (1878-1957) drowned two of her children and was sent to Broadmoor. The murder and the shame affected the whole family down to the present with fears about hereditary insanity and an inability to parent. The Cruel Mother: A Family Ghost Laid to Rest (2004), an investigation of what happened, is partly the author's attempt to cope with the consequences.

See 1903 and 1922

Margaret Macdowall: Simple beginnings in the training of mentally defective children London: Local Government Press Co. (R. T. Leach), 1919 116 pages: illustrated. bibliography and index

18.8.1919 Right of patients classified as "service patients" to wear their own clothes - Others wore "pauper clothes" - Reported Hansard

Charlotte Mew   Saturday 27.9.1919 The Westminster Gazette published The Cenotaph by Charlotte Mew

Ministry of Health Act 1919 established a Minister of Health to secure the health of the people including the treatment of physical and mental defects.

1920 survivors' history

By an Order in Council of 1920 the Minister took over the Home Secretary's powers under the lunacy and mental deficiency laws. These included appointing the non- legal members of the The Board of Control.

Science Time Line 1920
See 1840s, 1890s, 1940s

1919 1920s 1930s

In the period between the two world wars, Freudian theory shed a faint glow of hope on the outskirts of the custodial asylum. Talking treatments (not necessarily influenced by Freud) were an aspect of change in psychiatry that encouraged out-patient treatment. New physical treatments may have encouraged the idea of shorter stays in hospital.

From shortly after the first world war moves were made

  • away from in-patient treatment
  • towards outpatient treatment,
  • towards treatment without certification
  • towards treatment near to patients' homes.
But these moves only touched the edge of the mental health system.

1920 The Board of Control took over Rampton as the first English State Institution for mentally defective people considered dangerous. Broadmoor now specialised in the insane as part of the Home Office prison system and Rampton was part of the Board of Control's remit to control mental deficiency.

"from about 1920 onwards, the term "mental hospital" came into general use, though it did not receive legal recognition until 1930." (Alexander Walk 1962

24.3.1920 "Lunacy Law Scandals" in Truth

12.4.1920 Question in the House of Commons about "Military Hospitals (Asylums)" - Ashurst - Ewell - Springfield - and Winwick were still military hospitals. Maudsley - Maghall - Monyhull - and Craigleith were Ministry of Pensions Hospitals, but Maudsley was due to be handed back to the London County Council in July 1921.

Link to Jonathan Toms' review of Peter Barham's Forgotten Lunatics of the Great War, a book that argues that the concept of citizen soldier help to change the public perspective on the mentally ill.

"in the aftermath of the war... ex-servicemen were drawn into recording their embittered experience at the hands of official agencies such as the war pensions authorities" (p.7)

Go to details of the book
There is a cultural conflict between the concept of citizen patient - compatible, for example, with the provision of asylums by socialist local councils such as
Goodmayes, and the apparent science of eugenics and the threat to the race of degenerates. A partial resolution of the conflict could be achieved by distinguishing real degenerates (including real lunatics) from the others. See, for example, Eugenics and Other Evils by G.K. Chesterton

29.4.1920 First private conference on lunacy reform, Minerva Cafe

19.5.1920 Second private conference on lunacy reform, Minerva Cafe - Followed by formation of the National Council for Lunacy Reform. "objects: to promote research into the causes of mental instability; to investigate the present system of care and treatment, and its results; to secure the provision of hostels for early cases; to safeguard the liberty of the subject; to reduce the burden of ever-increasing asylum expenditure; and to educate public opinion on the subject of mental disorder.". Members included J. E. Parley and Montagu Lomax. (Hervey, N.B. 1986) - Nic Hervey gives its addresses as 32/33 Avenue Chambers, Southampton Row - 90 Avenue Chambers - and 44 Wimpole Street. He says it became the National Society for Lunacy Reform

1920 Ernest Parley Life in a madhouse Independent Labour Party (Great Britain). Pamphlets. New Series ; No.27. 24 pages

12.12.1920 Question in the House of Commons suggesting the £7,900,000 spent each year on asylums could be reduced if councils ran run hospitals for early uncertifiable mental cases entirely unconnected with lunacy administration.

Linda Woolf's Chronology of the Holocaust begins in 1920 when the Nazi platform was drafted.

28.11.1928 59th Assembly of the Swiss Psychiatry Society. Jakob Klaesi outlined his sleep cures: Dauerschlaf (continuous sleep, hibernation) or Dauernarkos (continuous anesthesia). In 1921 Jakob Klaesi published "Ueber Somnifen, eine medikamentöse Therapie schizophrener Aufregungszustände" in the Schweizer Archiv für Neurologie und Psychiatrie. 8:131. Somnifen was a barbiturate. The sleep cure was "a drug therapy for schizophrenic States of excitement". Other names for the treatment ar continuous narcosis and deep sleep treatment. See also insulin coma. Three out of the 22 original patients died. Henderson and Gillespie (1944, p.418) say

"It has been claimed that by adding insulin and glucose to the treatment by narcotics, the danger to life which attends the method (from collapse, respiratory complications, etc), producing sometimes a death rate as high as 5 per cent, has been minimised"

1921 survivors' history

1921 Ernst Kretschmer (1888-1964) published Körperbau und Charakter (body-build and character), translated into English as Physique and Character arguing that body types match characters and pre-dispositions to types of mental illness.

1921 Montagu Lomax The experiences of an asylum doctor : with suggestions for asylum and lunacy law reform, based on his experiences at Prestwich. A "popular edition" was published in 1922.

1921 Cassel Hospital admitted its first patient. External link to web archive

1921 West Park Asylum at Epsom opened. Referred to by David Cochrane as "the eleventh and the last great asylum built for London's insane". But the new hospitals in the 1930s had London catchment areas.

15.1.1921 La Ligue Française de Prophylaxie et d'Hygiène Mentale formed by Edouard Toulouse. Recognised as a "utilité publique" in 1922. Renamed la Ligue Française pour la Santé Mentale (LFSM) in 1996. (web history)

2.2.1921 Letter in The Times from G.K. Chesterton (and others?) saying that the treatment of mentally distressed servicemen had "opened the eyes of the public to the fact that the life of patients in asylums is often one of prolonged misery" (Barham, P. 2004 p.358)

1922 survivors' history

Eugenics and Other Evils Essays by G.K. Chesterton, published London: Cassell. 1922. Re-published New York by Dodd, Mead and Company 1927. "bulk of preliminary notes about the science of Eugenics were written before the war".

1922 La Ligue Nationale Belge d'Hygiène mentale formed by Auguste Ley (1873-1956). See 11.12.1922. A ladies committee formed in 1924 specialised in activities such as working with children hampered in their normal development.

Sunday 1.1.1922 number of ex-service men classified as "service patients" by the Ministry of Pensions, by asylum.

Monday 9.2.1922 "charges similar to the charges made by Dr Lomax are being repeated almost daily by responsible persons in the public Press; that some 6,000 ex-service men are being detained under the system thus openly attacked" (Charles Loseby MP. Hansard)

Wednesday 15.2.1922 Question in the House of Commons suggesting a Royal Commission.

Thursday 16.2.1922 Hansard: Partial explanation of what a "Service Patient" is.

Wednesday 22.2.1922 "The care of the insane : an address delivered at the Guildhouse, Eccleston Square, on February 26th, 1922 by Maude Royden ; with a foreword by Dr. Montagu Lomax". Published by the National Society for Lunacy Reform.

1922 Rachel Grant Smith, (pseudonym) The Experiences of an Asylum Patient ... With an introduction and notes by Montagu Lomax. London : G. Allen & Unwin

27.3.1922 Letter from Courtauld Thompson about the foundation of a National Council for Mental Hygiene.

4.5.1922 Founding meeting of a National Council for Mental Hygiene in Great Britain. (British Medical Journal report) - See October 1929 and November 1946

June 1922: Begining of Harnett v Bond and Adam case in which a jury awarded enormous damages to an escaped mental patient in his case against a lunacy commissioner.

31.7.1922 Ministry of Health Departmental Committee on the Administration of Public Mental Hospitals

1923 survivors' history

31.1.1923 The London County Council Mental Hospital called The Maudsley opened.
"The Maudsley which will be opened by the L.C.C. on January 31, is the first municipal institution for early treatment of lunacy and scientific research into causes of insanity." (British Journal of Nursing, 27.1.1923, p.60)

Medical School later Institute of Psychiatry See external history - archive

1923 John Thomson, M.D. (editor of "Edinburgh Hospital Reports") Opening doors: a little book for the mothers of babies who are long in learning to behave like other children of their age Edinburgh and London: Oliver & Boyd, 1923. Twenty pages.

1923 Bleuler's Textbook of psychiatry authorised English edition by A.A. Brill London : Allen & Unwin. (offline)

1923 The Handbook for Mental Nurses being the seventh edition of the Handbook for the instruction of attendants on the insane by the Medico-Psychological Association, with a new title. A further revision was begun in 1932 but the eighth edition did not appear until 1954

beautiful baby 1923 Men, Women and God: a Discussion of Sex Questions from the Christian Point of View by Arthur Herbert Gray.

See National Marriage Guidance Council

The National Society for Lunacy Reform may have started in 1923. But see National Council for Lunacy Reform - See Royal Commission evidence "National Society for Lunacy Reform" - See "National Society for Lunacy Law Reform" 1929 - 1931 - Dr James Samuel Risien Russell (1863-1939) chaired the "National Society for Lunacy Reform" in the 1920s. His his private practice was at 44 Wimpole Street from the 1900s. His web biography says "he was often a witness in legal cases involving lunacy, notably Harnett v. Bond (1924-5)".

2.5.1923 to July 1923 Clifford and Clara Beers tour of Europe: Gheel in Belgium - Paris - London.

12.7.1923 6,900 patients receiving treatment for war neurosis

12.7.1923 House of Commons discussion of men who have sex with children - "if it cannot be proved that they were mentally deficient at the age of three they cannot be classified under the Mental Deficiency Act as being mentally deficient." [See amendment 1927] "I heard the other day of a man of 63 who for 40 years had lived a life of continually committing these offences, being repeatedly sent to prison, and released, and then committing the offence again. He had done that continuously for 40 years. That man ought to be looked upon as a mental degenerate and treated as such". (Margaret Wintringham)

17.11.1923 "Asylum reform: an address: (delivered at a conference in Mortimer Hall, London, on November 17th, 1923) by Montagu Lomax." Published: London: National Society for Lunacy Reform, 1923.

1924 survivors' history
1924 Ministry of Pensions Mental Hospital opened at Storthes Hall in Yorkshire.

1924 Der deutsche Verband der Psychohygiene formed by Robert Sommer. See 1927 - 1928 - 1932 - 1933 -

1924 Branthwaite Report on the diet of patients and Bond Report on nursing service in mental hospitals published by the Board of Control.

3.3.1924 Hansard: Calls for a Royal Commission following Harnett v Bond and Adam case.

May 1924 "The treatment of general paralysis of the insane by malaria" by Henry J. Macbride and W. L. Templeton published. The paper had been delivered on 12.12.1923. Summary - See Malaria treatment

June 1924 Joint Departmental Committee on Mental Deficiency (the Wood Committee) set up. It reported in 1929. Members included: A.H. Wood - Cyril Burt - A.F. Tredgold - Douglas Turner - Evelyn Fox - Mrs Hume Pinsent. Initially concerned with children. Adults added early in 1925. From 1925 to 1927 Edmund Oliver Lewis, from the Board of Control, carried out an investigation into the incidence of mental deficiency in six areas, which became part of the 1929 Report.

Tuesday 24.6.1924 composition and the terms of reference of the Royal Commission on Lunacy and Mental Disorder published. Reported 1926

Thursday 26.6.1924 Valentine McEntee asked for "adequate facilities be given to the inmates of asylums to bring to the notice of the Royal Commission circumstances and conditions which, owing to the secrecy prevailing in lunacy institutions, do not usually come under the cognisance of the medical officers in charge thereof". (Hansard)

7.10.1924 First hearing of evidence by the Royal Commission [20 days of hearing to 10.2.1925] [22 days of hearing 24.2.1925 to 11.12.1925]

19.10.1924 la Lega italiana per l'igiene mentale founded at Bologna, Italy, by Giulio Cesare Ferrari (1867-1932) on the model established by Clifford Beers. Ferrari had met Beers in Paris in 1923.

Review of Nervous and Mental Diseases see America

29.11.1924 Editorial in British Medical Journal suspected there were too many semi-popular books on psychoanalysis even though public interest was great. Reading them suggests psychoanalysis is fraught with danger because of the transference mechanism which could induce signs of violent love in the patient towards the analyst.

Charlotte Mew     December 1924 Charlotte Mew met Siegfried Sassoon and the Untermeyers. Louis Untermeyer later described her as an exceedingly reticent and hermit-like poet.

1925 survivors' history

17.1.1925 Public hearing of evidence by the Royal Commission from Mr H. W. Holman (former patient). Hearing continued 26.1.1925. (Reported British Medical Journal 31.1.1925 offline). Then on 27.1.1925. On 25.2.1925 the commission announced that further hearings from ex-patients would be in private.

21.4.1925: Board of Control Conference on what to do about the nursing service in mental hospitals

Board of Control Conference to consider ways for increasing mental hospital accommodation in England and Wales

21.5.1925 Question in the House of Commons about grant for councils running hospitals for early uncertifiable mental cases.

Nurse Jessie Millar dismissed from "Garlands Mental Hospital" for striking Elizabeth Foster (aged 70), a feeble patient who was "constantly getting in and out of bed", on the head with a stick of firewood. At Carisle, on 14.11.1925, Jessie Millar was fined £2 and 10/- costs. "For the defence, it was stated that the nurse lost her patience through nervous exhaustion. She had to attend during the day to a mother who had since died, and during the night she had the care of 31 patients" (Asylum Workers Magazine December 1925)

11.12.1925 Concluding hearing of evidence by the Royal Commission

Child guidance in Scotland In 1925 James Drever set up, within the Psychology department at Edinburgh University, "the nucleus of a clinic for the study of delinquent children. This soon developed into a Child Guidance Clinic, staffed on a voluntary basis by the members of the Psychology Department working in collaboration with psychiatrists and social workers. This pioneer voluntary clinic led to the establishment of child guidance clinics in Edinburgh and other parts of Scotland." (source)

1926 survivors' history

Report of the Royal Commission on Lunacy and Mental Disorder Summary from Michael Warren:

[argued] that there is no clear distinction between mental and physical illness, defining mental illness as "the inability of the patient to maintain his social equilibrium"; recommended a community service based on the treatment of patients in their own homes wherever possible with a strong preventive element; certification should be a last resort, not a preliminary to treatment; there should be no distinction in the methods of certification used for private and pauper patients; local authorities should established outpatient clinics, provide observation beds in general hospitals and fund after-care services provided by voluntary agencies; mental hospitals should not exceed 1000 beds [See also voluntary boarders] "The keynote of the past has been detention. The keynote of the future should be prevention and treatment".

1926 Mental After Care Association providing for 400 people in "cottage homes" and 150 people with work placements. Another 1,450 received home visits.

Hydrotherapy: At Warley, "Hydrotherapy became a vogue in 1926 that lasted until the war" - In the management of "turbulent patients" the main resources mentioned by MacPhail in 1928 are seeking the cause, separation and/or seclusion, continuous baths and sedation. A "continuous bath, with the use of a cover to the open bath, with an aperture therein for the patient's head" was one of the five means of "mechanical restraint" permitted by the Board of Control.

1926 An appeal to The Commonwealth Fund (New York) by Cyril Burt and Amy Strachey, (born Amy Simpson 1866) "Mrs St Loe Strachey" for funds to start training psychiatric social workers at the London School of Economics (see below) and support for Child Guidance.

AIM25 contains "material relating to the Mental Health Course, 1926-1957, including papers of the Child Guidance Council, the Commonwealth Fund and the Mental Health Training Committee; material on the teaching of Statistics and Computing Methods, Insurance, Social Studies, Latin American Studies, Management and Management Studies." - A grant is recorded to "London, University of, 1926- 1968" in the Commonwealth Fund archives.

1927 survivors' history

1927 A Text-Book of Psychiatry for Students and Practitioners by D.K. Henderson and R.D. Gillespie first published - (extracts)

1927 statistics
1.1.1927 74 County Mental Hospitals and 24 County Borough Mental Hospitals in England and Wales = 98 Mental Hospitals. The total number of patients was 110,701. 101,031 were "rate-aided". 9,670 were "Private (including all Criminal patients)". The majority of the private patents were ex-service men. There were 2,888 females in the private patient column and 6,782 men. 5,376 of the men were ex-service men. 4,898 were "paid for by the Ministry of Pensions, and classed as
'Service' patients". 478 were "paid for by the Board of Control, and classed as 'ex-service' patients. (1.1.1927 List)

early in 1927 a Mental Deficiency Act brought in a new, looser, definition of mental deficiency which made it easier to confine people with encephalitis lethargica or epilepsy or other diseases. A circular issued by the Board of Control emphasised that "mental defect ... may exist in persons of some - or even considerable - intellectual capacity."

early in 1927 the London based Child Guidance Council was formed out of the amalgamation of organisations concerned with child mental health.

William Moodie (13.3.1886-24.5.1960) was enabled by the Commonwealth Fund of America to go on a fact-finding tour of the United States in 1927 with a view to introducing child guidance to the United Kingdom.

Child Guidance in England "developed from an American model. Child Guidance services were originally staffed by specially trained social workers.... Bowlby (1987) records the first introduction of psychiatrists and educational psychologists into a London (Canonbury) Child Guidance clinic in 1936." (Baldwin, L. 2008 p.22). As an indication of the importance of child guidance in the 1930s, see the address of the President of the The Royal Medico-Psychological Association on 6.7.1938. Also see the rise and fall in the use of the term and mental health history dictionary.

The East London Child Guidance Clinic, funded by the Jewish Health Organisation, opened in 1927 (evening consultations). The London Child Guidance Clinic or Canonbury Child Guidance Clinic, funded by The Commonwealth Fund, was founded in Islington in 1929, by William Moodie, and the Notre Dame Child Guidance Clinic opened in Glasgow in 1931. See Child Guidance Council. The Association for the Scientific Treatment of Criminals (1931) appears to have focused on work with children and young people.

25.3.1927 "Report of the sub-committee appointed to consider the details of the proposed Demonstration Clinic, and to report to the" [Child Guidance] "council.." The clinic's chief objects would be:

  1. to demonstrate the need and the possibility of specialised scientific training for those who have to handle delinquent and difficult children.

  2. to demonstrate to parents, officials, social workers and the public generally the importance and value of making an individual study of such cases by scientific means.

  3. to demonstrate the importance and value of scientific research upon the general problem involved

25.3.1927 Report quoted (Stewart, J. 9.2009, p.410

2.6.1927 The organising committee of the International Committee for Mental Hygiene met in Paris at the same time as a three-day celebration of the life of Philippe Pinel. Clifford was instrumental in ensuring German representation.

Nobel October 1927 Announcement that Julius Wagner- Jauregg was awarded the Nobel prize in medicine was for his "discovery of the therapeutic value of malaria inoculation in the treatment of dementia paralytica" (weblink). The next psychiatric Nobel was Moniz in 1949

MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS,
November, 1927.

ALL MEMBERS OF THE NATIONAL ASYLUM-WORKERS' UNION ARE URGED TO WORK AND
Vote for the Labour Candidates

1928 survivors' history

1928 The Child Guidance Council [An explanatory leaflet] published by the Child Guidance Council (London). See 1935 - 1937 - Provisional National Council for Mental Health. See also Child Guidance

Model Answers to Questions for Mental Nurses by Hector MacPhail
1928 - 1932 - 1940 - 1944
Question 66: Causes of mental disease are hereditary predisposition - age - physical disease - disease of the central nervous system - trauma or head injury - syphilis - disease of the endocrine system - effect of special experience - over-education

25.2.1928 Joan Hughes born

24.3.1928 Charlotte Mew drank half a bottle of disinfectant, from which she died.

1928 Zeitschrift für psychische Hygiene the journal of the Deutscher Verband fur Psychische Hygiene was published as a supplement to the journal of the German Psychiatric Association. From 1935 (volume 11) it was the journal of the Verband Deutscher Hilfsvereine fur Geisteskranke [German Association of Societies for the mentally ill] and part of their combined journal. ISSN: 0372-9745

20.9.1928 The first Deutsche Tagung für Psychische Hygiene was held in Hamburg. It was intended to have papers giving an overview of the entire field of mental hygiene. Its report was edited by Hans Roemer (1878- 1947).

1929 survivors' history

Meagher's Report on treating General Paralysis of the Insane by inducing malaria, published by the Board of Control

1929 With money from The Commonwealth Fund, a Diploma in Mental Health started at the London School of Economics to train Psychiatric Social Workers. The fund's Director, Barry Smith, had written in 1928 that "the training of psychiatric social workers is an essential and fundamental part of [a] child guidance program." (source)

January 1929: Our Baby - For Mothers and Nurses page 126 lists Idiocy under Congenital Defects:
"This is a term for mental weakness which dates from birth. It varies in degree from a mere feebleness of intellect, to a state in which the mind seems wholly absent. Should a child fail to answer to most of the tests of normal progress given on page 88, it must be considered backward, and the child should be taken to a doctor, as systematic training should be begun very early, considerable improvement being then almost always possible. (See list of recommended books page 177)"

The relevant recommended books are MacDowall and Thomson. As far as I can tell from library lists, there was not much more available.

The National Society for Lunacy Law Reform: ... justice for the helpless by Lord Henry Cavendish Bentinck, Eight page pamphlet. London, 1929. Wellcome catalogue lists a file on the society "1923- 1932". Reference SA/EUG/D.142 [See The National Society for Lunacy Reform

The Wood Committee report was presented on 24.1.1929. The section dealing with adults had not been published on 26.3.1929 (Hansard)

Wood Report on Mental Deficiency published by the Board of Control

"the majority of the feeble-minded are to be found within a relatively small social group, a group which may be described as the subnormal or social problem group, representing approximately 10 per cent of the whole population. Most of the parents in this subnormal group are themselves of poor mental endowment, and would no doubt have been classed, when children, among the dull or retarded. Similarly the dull children of the present generation, who form a large majority amongst children in this subnormal group, are the potential parents of many feeble-minded in the next generation. Therefore, from the standpoint of the prevention of many social evils it is of the utmost importance that the problems of the education and social care of the borderline retarded child should be effectively tackled....

Let us assume that we could segregate as a separate community all the families in this country containing mental defectives of the primary amentia type. We should find that we had collected among them a most interesting social group. It would include, as everyone who has extensive practical experience of social service would readily admit, a much larger proportion of insane persons, epileptics, paupers, criminals (especially recidivists), unemployables, habitual slum dwellers, prostitutes, inebriates and other social inefficients than would a group of families not containing mental defectives. The overwhelming majority of the families thus collected will belong to that section of the community which we propose to term the " social problem " or " subnormal " group. This group comprises approximately the lowest 10 per cent in the social scale of most communities"

20.4.1929 Letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association about the establishment of the London Child Guidance Clinic

See Robina Addis - Bowlby 1936 - Tavistock 1967

America

30.10.1929 to 2.11.1929 Conference on Mental Health convened by the Joint Committee of the National Council for Mental Hygiene and the Tavistock Square Clinic. Held in Westminster. [See Lord, J.R. 1929/1930

Minutes of the Home and School Council of Great Britain, 1929-1950s held by Institute of Education, University of London.

Science Time Line 1930

1930 survivors' history

1.4.1930 Under the 1929 Local Government Act, councils took over functions from the poor law guardians. This brought to an end (by incorporation into local councils) the separate structure of government established under the 1834 Poor Law and subsequent Acts

5.5.1930 to 10.5.1930 First International Congress of Mental Hygiene held in Washington. An estimated 4000 people (psychiatrists, psychologists, health planners and others) attended. It was organised by the "International Committee for Mental Hygiene"

The 1930 Mental Treatment Act
Royal Assent 10.7.1930

The 1930 Mental Treatment Act modernised, without replacing, the Lunacy Laws. It reorganised the Board of Control, made provision for voluntary treatment and psychiatric outpatient clinics and modernised the terms used. The intention appears to have been to make voluntary treatment available for all classes, not just those who could afford fees:

"I think it is a great charter for the poor of this country, and for the first time it gives the poor as great a chance as the rich. I think the Bill gets away from the spirit of detention to that of prevention and treatment." (Dr. J. H. Morris-Jones, M.C. Labour - Denbigh, the last speaker in the Debate on the third reading in the House of Commons)

However, a 1939 Guide to Middlesex County says of voluntary patients under the Act: "these private fee-paying patients in the majority of cases pay a higher maintenance rate than that received for the rate-aided patients". (Radcliffe, C.W. 1939 pages 153-154)

22.7.1930 and 23.7.1930 The Board of Control held a Conference on bringing into effective operation the powers conferred by the Mental Treatment Act. The report was called Mental Treatment

The last of the (large) mental hospitals to be built in England or Wales were the new Bethlem in south London (Kent), Shenley, in Hertfordshire, and Runwell, in Essex. No new ones were built after the second world war. Mental deficiency colonies (then hospitals) continued to be built. The last to open was Bryn-y-Neuadd in 1971.

The new Bethlem Royal at Beckenham in Kent was completed in 1930. The old Bethlem at St George's Fields became the Imperial War Museum. 9.7.1930 Formal opening of the new hospital by Queen Mary.

Moss Side, Maghull, Liverpool, was opened in the 1930s as England's second State Institution for mentally defective people considered dangerous. (See Rampton). It had been serving as a hospital for soldiers.

1931 survivors' history

Hedley Report on colonies for mental defectives published by the Board of Control

1931: Admission Units for "recent cases, wholly separate from the main building in which are housed patients of confirmed mental disorder"

Carlos Paton Blacker (1895-1975) was General Secretary of the Eugenics Society from 1931 to 1952. See 1942 - 1944 - Historical background to community care - 1946 - 1952

July 1931 Association for the Scientific Treatment of Criminals - renamed the Institute for the Scientific Treatment of Delinquency in July 1932

Friday 16.10.1931 South London Press LETTERS TO THE EDITOR - ILL-TREATING MENTAL PATIENTS - "Their Complaints Are Only Regarded as Delusions" - Sir.-Many workers in the field of Lunacy Reform will rejoice over the smart fine inflicted on the dismissed mental home attendant who gave a patient a black eye. The Board of Control by bringing the case show that they are just beginning to realise that their normal function is not to serve only the sectional interests of the doctors and nurses. Cases of ill-treatment are seldom brought to notice as patients' complaints are regarded by the authorities as "delusions." It is not unusual for an attendant to provoke a man to violence, so as to get the opportunity of paying off old scores, but the stomach is generally the target and not the face, where marks are so conspicuous. Violence is all too frequent. Only just recently an old man died in a London asylum suffering from eleven broken ribs after being crushed in a straight-jacket! The National Society for Lunacy Law Reform has been exposing these abuses for some ten years or so, and sympathisers would be doing good work by supporting them. VINDEX - Herne-hill.

1932 survivors' history

1932 The Mental After-Care Association provided a part time social worker for Brentwood Mental Hospital from 1932 to 1944.

21.5.1932 The second Deutsche Tagung für Psychische Hygiene was held in Bonn, with the main theme: "the eugenic tasks of mental hygiene". An audience of 200 in the University's main auditorium heard Ernst Rüdin and other discuss, in detail, the results of psychiatric eugenic practice and legal issue (now and in the future) respecting measures such as sterilisation. (Anna Plezko 2011)

1932-1933 Robina Scott Addis (1900-1986) took LSE course in Mental Health, qualifying as a psychiatric social worker. Followed by a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship for research into enuresis - which possibly meant a year in he USA. From 1934 to 1939 she worked in London Child Guidance Clinics. During the war she was a Welfare Officer for the Mental Health Emergency Committee. - From 1951 she worked at the National Association for Mental health's HQ in London. papers - (Wellcome biography)

1933 survivors' history

Science Time Line 1933

1933 Benzedrine inhalers, the first pharmaceutical drug that contained amphetamine, introduced in the USA. See Benzedrex. Benzedrine was used by Stephanie Allfree as a mind-changing drug in the 1940s.

England

1933 Stoke Park monographs on mental deficiency and other problems of the human brain and mind. No.1 ... "Dedicated to the memory of the late Reverend Harold Nelson Burden - Founder and first Warden of the Incorporation of National Institutions for Persons requiring Care and Control."

On 5.5.1933 the first residents of Borocourt Certified Institution for Mental Defectives moved into a converted Victorian mansion


Borocourt: See 1966, 1981

Germany

The case for eugenics (breading healthy people) and euthanasia (humane killing) reached an extreme under the National Socialist (Nazi) regime in Germany. The Nazi party came to power on 30.1.1933 , committed to the construction of a racially pure "Aryan" Germany. In addition to the attempted elimination of Jewish people, attempts were made to eliminate mentally and physically degenerate Aryans.

2.6.1933 Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick announced the formation of an Expert Committee on Questions of Population and Racial Policy (Sachverstandigen-Beirat für Bevolkerungsfragen und Rassenpolitik). Members included "Alfred Ploetz, father of racial hygiene; Friedrich Burgdorfer, editor of Politische Biologie and a director in the Reich Statistics Office; Walther Darre, Reich Farmers' Führer and ... Ernst Rudin, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Genealogy in Munich;...." (Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis. Robert Proctor)

14.7.1933 Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses (Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring) passed. It came into force on 1.1.1934.

In September 1935 the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour forbade marriage or sex between Jews and "citizens of German or cognate blood".

1959 comment: "It is obviously useless to sterilise idiots and imbeciles, as was widely done in Germany... from 1933 to 1940, because they do not in any case have offspring except in the rarest cases" (Penrose 1959, p. 102) - But not so "obvious" at the time (see below)

16.7.1933 Ernst Rüdin replaced Robert Sommer as chair of the Deutscher Verband für psychische Hygiene. Hans Römer remaining the managing director of the association. This appears to have been an effective merger of the association with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene. The new organisation was called Deutscher Verband für psychische Hygiene und Rassenhygiene. Sommer and Weygandt were made honorary members. In 1935, the Nazi government (through Rüdin) brought about the merging of the German psychiatrists organisation and neurologists organisation into one group the, Gesellschaft Deutscher Neurologen und Psychiater. The new group came under the Deutscher Verband für psychische Hygiene und Rassenhygiene meaning that this group and Rüdin were the sole representatives of German mental health. (Anna Plezko 2011) [Note journal: Zeitschrift für psychische Hygiene offizielles Organ des Deutschen Ausschusses für Psychische Hygiene der Gesellschaft Deutscher Neurologen und Psychiater und des Verbandes Deutscher Hilfsvereine für Geisteskranke, ISSN: 0372-9745 [Journal of Mental Health: official organ of the German Committee for Mental Hygiene and the Society of German Neurologists and Psychiatrists of the German Association of Societies for the mentally ill] which ceased publication in 1944.

1934 survivors' history

England

1934 Laurence George Brock, chair of the Board of Control, published his committee's report on the voluntary sterilisation of mental defectives, with memoranda on what was happening elsewhere in the world.

March 1934 Otto Shaw started a school in "Red Hill House" in West Chislehurst, Kent. This moved to Charlton Court, East Sutton in early July 1935. The school was later described as being a residential grammar school for the education and psychological treatment of maladjusted boys who are of high intelligence. See website and 1951 newspaper cutting.

The first Google Ngram below charts the relative rise and fall in the use of the terms juvenile delinquent, maladjusted and child guidance in digitalised English books over 100 years.
The second Ngram charts the relative use of the terms delinquent, maladjusted and child guidance over 200 years. Maladjusted and child guidance rise to a succession of peaks between about 1933 and 1959.

May 1934 King George 5th opened Shenley Mental Hospital in Hertfordshire. Middlesex County planned this in the neighbouring county as a small town in the countryside, composed as a network of villas of 20 to 45 beds, with 2,000 patients and 500 staff. The Middlesex Colony at Shenley, on land to the north of the main Shenley Hospital estate, had been opened by the Minister of Health in 1933. Its reception hall was opened during Jubilee Week in 1935. (Radcliffe, C.W. 1939 pages 153-154)
MPU On this 1980s Ordnance Survey map, I believe the hospital to the west of London Colney is Napsbury, opened in 1905. This was the first of the Middlesex in Hertfordshire mental hospitals and colonies. That to the south of the map is Shenley, and north of that Shenley Colony. Please tell me if I am wrong. Leavesden was north of Abbotts Langley, further west. Hill End, Hertfordshire's own Mental Hospital, was near St Albans to the north. The MP for this area in the 1970s and 1980s was Cecil Parkinson. A report of the Parkinson Committee, published in part in 1981, triggered the closure of the mental hospitals.

1935 survivors' history

The first antibiotic was sulfanilamide, which Time magazine dated from February 1935. penicillin followed and then streptomycin. Sulfanilamide from sulphur , aniline and amide.

Child Guidance Council Executive Committee minutes November 1935 to June 1937 held by Warwick University, Modern Records Centre - See Child Guidance [?] - Feversham 1936 - new constitution

12.11.1935 In Portugal, Egas Moniz performed a new psychosurgery procedure, later called leucotomy, or lobotomy. Tentatives opératoires dans le traitement de certaines psychoses (Tentative methods in the treatment of certain psychoses) published Paris, 1936. La leucotomie préfrontale. Traitement chirurgical de certaines psychoses (Prefrontal leucotomy. Surgical treatment of certain psychoses), published Turin, 1937.

1936 survivors' history

Metropolitan observation units In 1936 there were six observation wards in general hospitals run by the London Council Council. These were at Fulham - St Pancras - St Clements - St Alfege's (Greenwich) - St Francis (SE22?) - St John's (Wandsworth?). In 1936, 6,233 patients were admitted to the London observation wards of whom 3,117 were transferred to mental hospitals (only 10 per cent of these went as voluntary patients) and 1,054 discharged to the care of relatives. (source)

Wilson Report on hypoglycaemic shock treatment in schizophrenia published by the Board of Control, followed in 1938 by a report that also dealt with cardiazol shock treatment

1936 "The London Child Guidance Clinic" (Islington - Canonbury) "trained educational psychologists, social workers and child psychiatrists. Each year three fellowships in child psychiatry were advertised - they were half-time fellowships for one year". John Bowlby was appointed to one in 1936. (Bowlby, J. 19.10.1977) - See Tavistock 1946 - 1951 - A Two Year-old Goes to Hospital


Neues Volk 1.3.1936 p.37. Wir stehen nicht allein: "We do not stand alone". Shield: Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses.
in force: United States (1907? 1912?)

Denmark (1929)

Norway (1934)

Sweden (1935)

Finland (1935?)

sterilization laws were being considered: Hungary - United Kingdom - Switzerland - Poland - Japan - Latvia - Estonia

Scan taken from Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), page 96. Wikipedia


8.4.1936 Lord Feversham (Charles Duncombe, 3rd Earl of Feversham) chaired a preliminary meeting of a committee of representatives (two from each?) from the National Council for Mental Hygiene - the Central Association for Mental Welfare - the Child Guidance Council and the Home and School Council of Great Britain. Committee formed to inquire into the extent of mental disorder in England and Wales and the measures taken to deal with it by statutory and voluntary agencies. The inquiry was conducted with the sympathy and assistance of the Board of Control and other parts of central and local government. It reported in 1939

24.9.1936 Lennox Castle Certified Institution for Mental Defectives (external link) opened in Dumbartonshire, Scotland. See also Glasgow archives: "It had 1,200 beds when it opened... and was the largest mental deficiency hospital in Britain"

1937 survivors' history

March 1937 circular letter about a new Child Guidance Council Constitution and membership (Warwick University, Modern Records Centre) - Also Child Guidance Council "Memorandum re Amalgamation prepared for the Feversham Committee" (dated March 1937)

Monday 19.7.1937 to 24.7.1937 (Second) International Congress on Mental Hygiene held in Paris. On the Monday morning, Clifford Beers, "secretary-general of the International Committee for Mental Hygiene reported on the activities of the committee since the first congress in 1930 and Dr George Genil Perrin, secretary-general of the congress, made a brief report. The themes of the afternoon session were Eugenics and Sterilization in Relation to Mental Hygiene, and Mental Hygiene in Relation to Sex. Ernst Rudin spoke first on the "Condition and Role of Eugenics in the Prevention of Mental Diseases". He argued that "the only method of extirpating hereditary mental disorders was by preventing the propagation of tainted sex-cells". Bernard Sachs complained to to Beers that Rudin was "the most outspoken and rabid Nazi protagonist... who heads a whole group of men who are now openly making eugenic doctrines conform with the race purity doctrines of the present German regime". The choice of speakers, however, was not something that Beers had any control over. ( Psychiatric Quarterly Volume 12, Number 1. March 1938 - offline - and Dain, 1980)

1937 Official opening of Runwell Hospital, Wickford, Essex. (Jones, K. 1960 p.357) says that this already had a "patient-population of 1,010". Administrative records in Newham Public Libraries start in 1934. General records start in 1937. Kathleen Jones (who does not mention Shenley) says

"Runwell was a completely new hospital - the first to be planned since the First World War, designed to embody new ideas in mental treatment. Larger than Bethlem, it had at the time of opening in 1937 a patient-population of 1,010; but this total was broken down into small units, each largely self-contained. Runwell is the only English mental hospital to be built entirely on the villa system - Small one - or two - storey blocks with flat roofs were scattered over a wide are of garden and parkland. Parole patients, who required relatively little supervision, were housed in units for twenty to twenty-five persons... Separate blocks were constructed for patients' clubs, where resocialisation through group methods could be tried out; and a research wing was built and equipped for the examination of the biochemical and neurological bases of mental disorder" (Jones, K. 1960 pages 130-131)

1938 survivors' history

beautiful baby 1938 UK's National Marriage Guidance Council founded by Arthur Herbert Gray, Marjorie Hume, Edward F. Griffith, David Mace and others.

April 1938 Rome: "S.E.", a thirty nine year old man diagnosed schizophrenic, was chosen by Ugo Cerletti as the first human to have convulsions artificially induced by an electric shock through the brain. The origin of Electro-Convulsive Therapy. See Europe below - Eric Irwin - 1950 - 1968 - 1972 - 1974 - 1977 - 1983 - BNAP 1983 - 1988 - 1988 criticism - 1994 - 1997 - 2004 - 2005 - 2014 - 2015

6.7.1938 The President of the The Royal Medico-Psychological Association spoke of the change in psychiatry from pessimism to opimism since Maudsley published The Pathology of Mind in 1879:

" The great work of Sigmund Freud has cast a brilliant, if necessarily unequal light upon the dark places of psycho-pathology. General paralysis would now appear to be largely under our control. Schizophrenia is being attacked with renewed hope since recent therapeutic knowledge and research have brought insulin and cardiazol and other agents to our aid. Wider fields spread before the psychiatrist than ever before. In out- patient dispensaries, in child guidance clinics, in juvenile courts he finds an increasing welcome. Psychological factors in industry, in unemployment, in the aetiology of war invite his co-operation."

29.7.1938 to 2.8.1938 10th International Medical Congress for Psychotherapy held at Baliol College, Oxford - Its first meeting in an English speaking country. Sargant and Slater 1963 (page 165) say that reports were presented of the trial of insulin coma treatment in several countries. Manfred Sakel had carried out the experiments putting schizophrenic patients into an insulin coma since 1927. See deep sleep treatment - 1947 - 1948 - 1950 - 1952 - St David's 1956 - Croydon 1956 - 1963 - 1968 - 2009

1938 A Cerebral Atlas by Richard J. A. Berry, Director of Medical Services to the Incorporation of National Institutions for Persons Requiring Care and Control, Stoke Park Colony, Bristol. 425 pages with 430 photographs. 1938. London: Oxford University Press Ltd. £5 5s. Reviewd in the British Journal of Surgery in April 1939

1939 1939, The UK Scottish Office Scottish headquarters building established at St Andrews House in Edinburgh. Scottish Office was divided into departments dealing with specific matters: Agriculture, Education, Home and Health.

1939 survivors' history

The following is a typed copy of the medical register entry for a patient who died at Saxondale Hospital, Nottinghamshire in 1939. This, like other medical registers, uses a code for the type of illness and the cause of the illness. To work out what the codes mean, see 1925 forms
Aetiological Features:
Principle L2

Form of Mental Illness: I16

codes

The code L2 is part of the Schedule of Causes and Associated Factors of Insanity. It is used to designate Cardio-Vascular Degeneration, which is classed as 'other bodily affections'. The second code relates to the Schedule of Forms of Insanity. However the code I16 does not appear on this schedule. It is possible, however, that the code in the original register may actually have been I1b. If this is the case, the designated condition would be 'Congenital/Infantile Mental Deficiency (Idiocy or Imbecility) occurring as early in life as it can be observed: I16: Intellectual, without Epilepsy'.

1939 Jubilee book for Middlesex divides care of mental defectives into community care and institutional care

"In 1939, Kalinowski began a tour to advertise ECT" [Electro- Convulsive-Therapy] "around the globe, visiting the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, England, and the United States." (Sabbatini) - It was introduced at Warley in 1941. In 1957 it was described on television as an exciting new advance in medicine, and this created a consumer demand for it.

Steven Jenkusky (1992 - Writing about the USA) says that throughout the 1940s ECT had dangerous side effects from the seizure itself causing fractures (including to the spine" and that muscle injuries could also occur. He also says that the prospect of being subjected to an electric shock and seizure while fully awake was terrifying to patients and traumatic to the staff administering the therapy. See Eric Irwin.


Germany In Spring 1939, a Reich Committee for Scientific Research of Hereditary and Severe Constitutional Diseases was established that oversaw the killing of an estimated 5,000 'deformed' children in a 'euthanasia' programme that finished in November 1944. In July 1939 planning of the 'T4' programme of 'mercy killings' of the insane began. Experimental gas chambers were tried out at Brandenburg euthanasia centre in late 1939. An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 people were killed before the T4 programme was 'stalled' in August 1941 after public protest. Experiments in humane extermination continued in occupied Poland. In September 1941, 250 mental patients and 600 Russian prisoners of war were gassed at Auschwitz. During the war, about six million Jews from all over Europe were exterminated in the Polish death camps, notably Auschwitz 2 (Birkenau), Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka. See entry into Belsen (concentration camp) 1945

January 1939 Mental Welfare Price 10d - Annual Subscription Post Free 3/6 - January 1939 - Vol. 20, No.1 - Published by the Central Association for Mental Welfare Incorporated - 24 Buckingham Palace Road, London, S.W.1

Early 1939? A Mental Health Emergency Committee established by voluntary organisations to address the "problems of mental health, mental deficiency, and community care in time of war". Address 24, Buckingham Palace Road. [Address of the Central Association for Mental Welfare] (Hansard 29.2.1940)

July? 1939 The Voluntary Mental Health Services: The Report of the Feversham Committee published by the committee. 16 introductory pages. 268 main pages. - "Mental Health Council - Feversham Committee's Proposal" Yorkshire Weekly Herald 28.10.1939 headline to article on the report of the committee, which it said was published "yesterday"

Second World War 1939-1945
Community Care

Sunday 3.9.1939 Britain declared war on Germany

"The Emergency Medical Service was introduced as soon as war broke out, and gave central government a right of direction over both voluntary and municipal hospitals which it had never before possessed. Patients were discharged or evacuated from the hospitals in central London in preparation for a wave of air-raid casualties which did not materialise" (Geoffrey Rivett)

Hospitals during world war two: - Belmont - Sutton - Netherne - Surrey - Hellesdon - Norfolk - Rooksdown House - Hampshire

1940 survivors' history

Possibly sometime in 1940 that Donald Winnicott (1896-1971) said at a meeting of the British Psychological Society "There is no such thing as a baby" [infant] emplaning that "if you set out to describe a baby, you will find you are describing a baby and someone." He discusses this in "Anxiety Related to Insecurity" read before the British Psychoanalytic Association 5.11.1952 saying it was "about ten years ago". Masud R. Khan (1975) Introduction to Winnicott's Collected Papers (p.xxxviii) gives the date as 1940. Other sources say "Winnicott, 1947".

Having been sent to Northampton as a Mental Health Emergency Committee Welfare Officer to care for child evacuees, after Dunkirk, Robina Addis cared for adults billeted in the Northampton area who were psychiatric casualties

The Blitz, sustained bombing of London and other British cities 7.9.1940 to 10.5.1941.

1941 survivors' history

1941 Gregory Zilboorg's History of Medical Psychology published in New York.

The mass-production of Penicillin was developed in the United States from 1941. A recent medical website (archive) describes General Paralysis of the Insane as "a syndrome of madness and weakness occurring in tertiary syphilis, which is now very rare because of treatment with penicillin". Penicillin's use in connection with general paralysis is after 1945.

The annual death rate (England and Wales) fell steadily from 2.272 in 1901 to 68 in 1957. (Hare, E.H. 1959). Although treatments by malaria or penicillin do not show any marked influence of the curve of the decline, I would think the statement that it has become rare because of treatment with penicillin is correct.

1941, Withymead near Exeter established by Irene Champernowne, a Jungian psychotherapist, and her husband Gilbert. "The Jungian Community for the Healing Arts", a pioneer therapeutic community, treated 240 adults between 1942 and 1954 in a residential setting supported by the Elmhurst's of Dartington Hall. See Stevens, A. 1986

In one industrial concern more than three times as many work- days per man were lost in 1941-1942 owing to neurosis than had been lost in a pre-war year. (Aubrey Lewis 4.3.1942)"

January 1941 Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham opened the Children's Rest Centre in Hampstead (Hampstead Wartime Nurseries) with financial support from the American Foster Parents' Plan for War Children. The first children (some with their mothers) came from the East End of London. Sometime in 1941, Joyce Robertson was employed to care for children and James Robertson "to organize the maintenance and fire-watching services" (Robertson and Robertson, 1989, p. xiii). All staff members reported their observations about the children's behaviour on cards that were later used in weekly group discussions. (Horst and Veer 2009b p.941). James qualified as psychiatric social worker at the London School of Economics in 1947 and started training in psychoanalysis. He move to the Tavistock Clinic in 1948.

1942 survivors' history

Long-term hospital patients were moved to residential homes to make room for injured soldiers. By 1942 the Mental After Care Association (MACA) was running fifty homes. The war established the residential care-home model and, by the 1950s, MACA had several of its own properties, where up to 50 people lived as many as five to a room.

4.3.1942 Memo from Aubrey Lewis to the Director General of the Emergency Medical Services - Surprisingly few cases of overt neurosis had resulted from the air attacks, but psychiatric stresses appeared to be increasingly felt, especially in industry. Called for an investigation of the extent of neurosis and allied states, and the facilities for consultation and rehabilitation.

April 1942 Term Lack of moral fibre (LMF) adopted by the Royal Air Force to stigmatize aircrew who refused to fly without a medical reason.

21.10.1942: Carlos Paton Blacker was seconded to the Ministry of Health as adviser on population and medico-social problems to undertake. with the Medical Research Council, a survey to obtain information on the adequacy of psychiatric out-patient facilities to deal with the psychiatric troubles of a civilian population subjected to more than three years of war. The publication of the Beveridge report in December 1942, however, suggested that the survey might also consider "how the psychiatric services of this country might be improved after the war." (Bolby)

The Mental Health Emergency Committee lent their Regional Representatives to the survey: Mrs D. Hardcastle (two regions from Derbyshire to Essex) - Miss E.M. Findlay (Oxfordshire to Dorset) - Miss H.E. Howarth (Wiltshire to Cornwall) - Miss L. Shaw and Miss E.C. Selley (Warwickshire to Herefordshire) and Miss Robina Addis (Kent, Sussex and Surrey). [Robina Addis became Regional Representative in October 1942]

1942? Mental Health Emergency Committee became the Provisional National Council for Mental Health, divided into 13 areas, based on Civil Defence Regions [??] - Provisional National Association for Mental Health Annual Report 1943/1944 and Provisional National Council for Mental Health (incorporating... Child Guidance Council...): Ad hoc Committee on the extension of clinical training (Play Therapy) ['Inter-clinic Comm'] minutes February 1944 to May 1944, held by Warwick University, Modern Records Centre.

October 1942 to February 1944 A series of Scientific Meetings of the British Psychoanalytical Society discussing the differences between the theories of Anna Freud and her colleagues and Melanie Klein and hers. After the war, this led to a led to a three way division of training in the Society by Kleinians, Anna Freudians and the Middle (or later Independent) Group.

1943 survivors' history

"They Called It Shell-Shock: Approximately one-third of the men invalided from the army have been discharged on psychiatric grounds. In the last war they called it shell-shock. The term was used to cover almost all types of psychological illness arising in association with, or as a result of, enemy action. The true significance of psychological factors was not appreciated. It was assumed that these disorders were the results of actual damage to the brain or nervous system caused by the effects of high explosives, and comparable in their origin and effects to actual head injury and concussion. It was a confusing and unfortunate term and is not now accepted as a diagnosis. For psychiatry has come a long way since then, and its influence in the Army is very considerable. There are ten special Army mental hospitals with, so far as possible, one Army Psychiatrist to fifty patients, and up to about four hundred patients. These beds have never been completely filled, though some hospitals have had a big and quick turnover. The average stay in hospital is about six weeks.... " (Major) Anthony Cotterell R.A.M.C. [Royal Army Medical Corp] Hutchinson, no date, but probably about 1943

Our Towns: A close-up - A study made in 1939-1942 - with recommendations by the Hygiene Committee of the Women's Group on Public Welfare, chair Amy Sayle, (in association with National Council of Social Service). Preface by Margaret Bondfield.

"The effect of evacuation was to flood the dark places with light and bring home to the national consciousness that the 'submerged tenth' described by Charles Booth still exists in our towns like a hidden sore, poor, dirty, crude in its habits, and an intolerable and degrading burden to decent people forced by poverty to neighbour with it.

With this group are the 'problem families' always on the edge of pauperism and crime, riddled with mental and physical defect, in and out of the courts for child neglect, a menace to the community, of which the gravity is out of all proportion to their numbers"

3.2.1943 Neurosis Questionnaire distributed to Regional investigators.

15.11.1943 Final report on neurosis questionnaires received back from regional investigators.

Hospitals are for Healing:
The origin and context of community-care policies

1940s and 1950s: Historical Background to Community Care
The therapeutic asylums planned in the
1840s failed monumentally, the monuments being a network of large asylums full of long-stay patients with little or no hope of rehabilitation. In post war Britain the National Health Service inherited these asylum which still stood in open countryside outside the towns, or had been engrossed by the expanding suburbs.

Post war Britain provided a new moral culture for disabled people. Eugenics and social darwinism were discredited by their association with the Nazi policies and extermination camps. The fears of "racial degeneracy" that had shaped pre-war public policy for mental defectives were no longer acceptable, even though they still dominated important texts such as Blacker (1946) and Tredgold (1947). In the absence of an acceptable conceptual framework, mental defect became a health issue. The 1946 National Health Service Act defined a hospital as an institution for "the reception and treatment of persons suffering from illness or mental defectiveness" (section 79) and transferred local authority hospitals to the Minister of Health (section 6).

1944 survivors' history

December 1944 Carlos Paton Blacker signed his preface to Neurosis and the Mental Health Services

Glenside Hospital Museum: Dr Donal Felix Mary Early, a consultant psychiatrist, worked at Glenside Hospital, Bristol, from 1944 to 1979. With Dennis Griffiths and volunteers he began collecting artifacts during this time, and placing them into storage. After some time, the hospital granted the use of the balcony overlooking the dining hall at Glenside. The collection gradually built up, as people donated artifacts to the museum.

When the Hospital closed in 1994, the use of the derelict chapel was given to the Museum. The chapel was repaired by volunteers. The museum gradually developed with Dr Early as the guiding light, forming the exhibits, and telling the story of the Hospital.

1945 survivors' history

Miss Lucy G. Fildes, Provisional National Council for Mental Health listed as an appointee to the Committee on the Treatment of Children Deprived of a Normal Home Life (National Archives)

26.7.1945: Election results: Labour Government (to 1951)

September 1945 International conference in Zurich of S. E. P. E. G.; Semaines internationales d'eïtude pour l'enfance victime de la guerre. International Study Weeks for Child Victims of the War. Robina Addis was [the?] British representative.

1945 The psychoanalytic study of the child (An Annual. Vol. I, 1945.) edited by Anna Freud, Heinz Hartmann, Ernst Kris, and an editorial board of twelve (1945).

Hospital children 1945

December 1945 Andrew Roberts (aged almost two) admitted to Hornsey Central Hospital with suspected meningitis, which turned out to be pneumonia. Being before the National Health Service, he would have been pushed to the hospital in a pram if his father had not agreed to pay Middlesex County Council £2 for an ambulance. The hospital charged his parents 35/- a week. He was on the danger list (expected to die) for a week and his parents were allowed to visit three times a day. He was treated by the new antibiotic M+B 693. Total time in hospital five weeks. After hospital, his behaviour was disturbed (fearful and excitable).

Sometime in 1945 The first daughter of Joyce and James Robertson "became desperately ill and was rushed into a London teachng hospital in the middle of the night. With minutes to to spare, her life was saved... but we were not allowed to visit for ten days. Our daughter was transformed from a confident toddler to a very insecure little peoson, a condition lasting for years". (Quoted Cohen, 1964, p.63).

1946 survivors' history

1946 Special Educational Treatment Great Britain. Ministry of Education. Pamphlet No. 5. London : H.M.S.O., 1946. 36 pages. ["S.O. code no. 27-265-5." Text on inside covers]

See Geoffrey Rivett for the history of the National Health Service

March 1946 National Health Service Bill introduced

April (or earlier) 1946 Neurosis and the Mental Health Services by C. P. Blacker, 218 pages, published by Oxford University Press, 1946. Price, 21/- "The influence of the report of the Feversham Committee will be apparent to all readers" (Author's Preface, p.vii)

November 1946 The 1946 National Health Service Act passed. This stripped the Board of Control of nearly all its functions except those of providing an inspectorate of mental hospitals, especially with respect to compulsory detention, and managing Rampton and Moss Side. The Act came into force on 1.7.1948

23.10.1946 "Conrad Ormond, General Secretary, Provisional National Council for Mental Health, 39 Queen Anne Street, London, W.1" witnessed the signatures to a list of "names, addresses and descriptions of subscribers". [I will call these founding members]
Mind History website - archive
[Date of foundation (below) is the date the three constituent bodies formerly merged. - Confirmed by Rachael Twomey at the Mind Information Office]

25.11.1946 Foundation of the National Association for Mental Health (now Mind). This was a combination of existing organisations, partly merged in 1939 as the Mental Health Emergency Committee for war-time coordination. This had become the Provisional National Council for Mental Health. Its components were the Central Association for Mental Welfare (formed in 1896 as the National Association for the Care of the Feeble Minded), the National Council for Mental Hygiene (founded 1922) and the Child Guidance Council (founded 1927 . Only the National Council for Mental Hygiene "had any real interest in the mentally ill" (Mary Applebey 1976). The Association worked closely with the Ministry of Health and the Board of Control. - See Mind and the Users Voice -
Evelyn Fox "The grandmother of it all was Dame Evelyn Fox" (Mary Applebey 1976) - Picture left: Dame Evelyn Emily Marion Fox by Elliott and Fry bromide print, 1947. copyright National Portrait Gallery, London

In 1971 there was a pastel portrait, made after her death, in the council room of the National Association for Mental Health at 39 Queen Anne Street (DNB) - Mind moved to 22 Harley Street in the early 1970s. It moved to 15-19 Broadway, Stratford, London E15 4BQ in 1993/1994

NAMES, ADDRESSES AND DESCRIPTIONS OF SUBSCRIBERS
G.E. HAYNES, 26 Bedford Sq., W.C.1, Secretary.
J M MACKINTOSH, Greenogne, Chiltern Hill, Chalfont St. Peter, Bucks Physician
FRANK BODMAN, 7 Windsor Terrace, Bristol, Physician
ALAN MABERLY, 3 Devonshire Place, W.1, Physician
H.C. SQUIRES, 93 Harley Street, W.1, Physician
R.G. GORDON, 23 Queen Sq,. Bath, Physician
EVELYN FOX, "Annette," Laughton, Nr. Lewes, Spinster
LESLIE SCOTT, The Red House, Sotwell, Wallingford, Lord Justice of Appeal
MAY HOPE, 69 Courtfield Gardens, S.W.5, Widow
PRISCILLA NORMAN, Thorpe Lodge, Campden Hill. W.8, J.P.
LUCY G. FIELDS, 9 Culverden Avenue, Tunbridge Wells, Spinster
J.A. HADFIELD, 4 Upper Harley Street, N.W.1, Physician
W.J. GARNETT, Quernmore Park, Lancaster, County Councillor
NOEL K. HUNNYBUN, 12 Osbourne Mansions, Luxborough St., W.1, Psychiatric Social Worker
F.H. TOSH, 2 Lawn Road, Stafford, Mental Welfare Officer
O.NIEMEYER, Cookholme, Sharpthorne, Sussex, Banker
LOIS MUNRO, 23 Downing Court, Brunswick Sq., W.C.1, Physician
GORDON HOLMES, 9 Queen Anne's Gardens, W.4, Company Director
ERIC W. SCORER, Coombe Hurst, Lincoln, Clerk of The Lindsay County Council
J. EWART SMART, 21 Hart Grove, Ealing Cm., W.5, Boro. Education Officer
DORIS M. ODLUM, 56 Wimpole Street, London W.1, Medical Practitioner
A. HELEN BOYLE, 10 Adelaide Crescent, Hove, Sussex, Medical Practitioner
AMY STRACHEY, Harrowhill Copse, Newlands Corner, J.P.
ALNESS, Merton, Milner Road, Bournemouth, Ex-Lord in Waiting
D.H. HUGH THOMAS, Pemberton, Pewsey, Wilts, Physician
AUBREY LEWIS, Maudsley Hospital, London S.E.5, Physician.
Dated this 23rd day of October, 1946,
Witness to the above Signatures -
CONRAD ORMOND,
General Secretary,
Provisional National Council for Mental Health,
39 Queen Anne Street,
London, W.1.

Conferences, AGMs and [events]: [1939] - [1942] - [1946] - [1951: Mary Applebey] - [Kenneth Robinson] - [1957: Christopher Mayhew and The Hurt Mind] - [1960 Scientology] - 1961 - [Mental Health Film Council 1963] [1969] - [1970] - [1971] - 1973 move and AGM - 1974 - 1975 - 1975 - rights - 1976 - 1976 AGM - 1977 - 1978 - 1980 - 1981 - 1982 - 1983 - [description of target audience] - October 1984 - 1984 - [World Mental... July 1985] - 28.11.1985 - 1985 - NW Mind at Crawshawbooth - 1986 Conference - 1986 AGM - planning for 1987 - 1987 - [ECT 1988] - [International 26.9.1988] - 1988 - (See also 1988) - 1989 - 1990 - 1991 - 1992 - [evidence] - 1993 - [Breakthrough] - 1994 - 1994 AGM - [Bill] - 1998 - 2001 - 14.11.2002 - March 2005 - 16.3.2006 - 6.9.2006 - March 2007 - 6.11.2007 - [Mind blog - 2009] - Mind archive

National Association for Mental Health Directors, etc:

1946 Medical director: Dr Kenneth Soddy. (27.7.1911-10.4.1986). Author of articles on "Some lessons of war-time psychiatry" in Mental Health July 1946. Kenneth Soddy worked with John Rawlings Rees in founding the World Federation for Mental Health.

1946-1951 General secretary: Miss M C Owen

1947-1951 Medical director: Dr Alfred Torrie (18.5.1898-21.4.1972). In 1951, Torrie became superintendent to the Retreat at York

1951-1974 Mary Applebey ran the National Association for Mental Health for twenty three years. The picture was taken in the early 1970s.

  Mary Applebey

Mind Directors/chief executives: 1974 Tony Smythe - 1982 Christopher Heginbotham - 1989 Ros Hepplewhite - 1992 Judi Clements - 2001 Richard Brook - 2006 Paul Farmer

Archives: Main archive and National Association for Mental Health (later Mind) collection in the papers of Robina Addis - international Internet Archive - UK web archive -

Local Associations - Mind and the Users Voice

1946 Social Psychotherapy Centre established in Hampstead by Joseph Bierer with day places and night places (closed weekend). It was known as the Marlbourough from 1954 and adopted the title "Day Hospital" shortly after the term was used in 1958 by Cameron in the United States. The centre used community and group therapies. Historians have sometimes confused the Marlborough with Paddington Day Hospital.

Psychiatry Today Photograph is enlarged from the back cover of the 1952 edition of Psychiatry Today 1946? David Stafford-Clark (17.3.1916-9.9.1999) began studying at the Maudsley Hospital. At some time, Allen Lane of Penguin Books enquired about a writer for a popular book on psychiatry. Aubrey Lewis recommended David Stafford-Clark, who finished writing Psychiatry Today in July 1951.

An anonymous obituary in The Times (10.9.1999) said "Stafford-Clark did more than almost anyone to dispel long-held prejudices about "lunacy" and "mental deficiency" and to remove the stigma from being mentally ill".

See 1952 - 1957 - 1963

Out of sight - Out of mind - Stigma and taboo

The stigma of disability was intense. In the early 1940s, for example, a mother who attempted to meet other parents of handicapped children to form a playgroup had her advertisement refused by her local paper because of the "shame and disgrace" of having a handicapped child.

In 1946 The Association of Parents of Backward Children (now Mencap) was formed by parents concerned about the lack of support to help them maintain a child at home, and the isolation and poor facilities of the deficiency hospitals that were the main alternative. [For changing names, see below) Mencap History website archive 2001-2006 - current link

The 1946 Report of the Care of Children Committee complained about the "motley collection" of people it found in workhouses. In one room, with children of workhouse inmates, there was "a Mongol idiot, aged four, of gross appearance, for whom there was apparently no accommodation elsewhere. A family of five normal children, aged about six to fifteen... were sleeping in the same room as a three year old hydrocephalic idiot, of very unsightly type, whose bed was screened of in the corner... We found a number of institutions in which normal children were sleeping with low grade mentally defective children..." (Cmnd 6922 paragraphs 140 and 142).

Compare the revulsion expressed with 1847, 1894 and 1916. Some of the same may have been involved in the refusal to show patients faces in The Hurt Mind in 1957. However, The Hurt Mind and the previous 1954 Archers programme, were deliberate efforts to break through the taboo of silence on mental health issues.

1947 survivors' history

pre-frontal leucotomy and insulin coma - See Warley 1946

1947 Pre-frontal Leucotomy in a thousand cases by Isabel Wilson and E.H. Warland published by the Board of Control.

about 1947 to 1953 A period during which "practically every mental hospital in the country" (England and Wales) used insulin coma treatment. (Sargant and Slater 1963 p.170 commenting on 44 deaths from the treatment reported to the Board of Control in that period (W. Maclay, 1953 "Deaths due to treatment" Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 46, 13)

National Association for Mental Health "Film Visiting Committee" formed in 1947 to "help in relation to producing, and also in avoiding inaccurate presentations which would tend to vulgarise psychology and give the public a false idea of its possibilities" (Mental Health, 1967, 7 (2), 47, quoted Crossley, N. 2005 p.78. This joined forces with members of the British Film Council in 1948. Eventually gave rise to the Mental Health Film Council (Crossley, N. 2005 p.78)

"Euthanasia:... with regard to the 80,000 or more idiots and imbeciles in the country... These are... incapable of being employed... their care and support absorbs a large amount of the time, energy, and money of the normal population... many... are utterly helpless, repulsive in appearance, and revolting in manners... In my opinion it would be an economical and humane procedure were their existence to be painlessly terminated... It is doubtful if public opinion is yet ripe for this to be done compulsorily; but I am of the opinion that the time has come when euthanasia should be permitted at the request of a parent or guardian" A Text-Book of Mental Deficiency (Amentia) by A. F. Tredgold, Consulting Physician to University College Hospital, London. Seventh edition 1947. Page 491. [My copy ex "Bangour Village Medical Library"] - See 1933 and Historical background to community care

The 1947 Annual Report of the National Council for Civil Liberties refers to a woman released from a mental ward after the NCCL proposed applying for a writ of Habeas Corpus as she appeared to have never been certified. Another woman was made a voluntary patient after NCCL began enquiries, and released herself. Both women had had illegitimate children.

"Not until after the Second World War did the Council concern itself with the most important liberty of all - the loss of total liberty when a person is wrongfully imprisoned in a gaol or institution. The first mental deficiency case which came to the Council's notice was brought to them in 1947 by a retired solicitor's clerk who, enraged by the circumstances of a young girl unrelated to himself, waged such an excellent one man war that the girl was freed before the Council needed to list a finger. The second was brought to the Council's notice by a clergyman, the third by a London legal advice centre... [in 1958 there were] 860 mental deficiency cases on the Council's files, of which more than eighty concern patients... in Rampton.." (Roxan 1958, p.224)

See 1950 - 1951 - Peter Whitehead 1.11.1954 - Royal Commission 1954 - Peter Whitehead 1955 - 1956 - Roxan 1958 -

Science Time Line 1948
See 1930 and 1966.

1948 survivors' history

July 1948 National Health Service Act came into operation

The National Health Service (NHS) took over from county councils and boroughs the major responsibility for mental health. The reforms of the 1920s and 1930s had only touched the edge of the mental health system. The main inheritance of the National Health Service was a system of over 100 asylums, or "mental hospitals", with an average population of over 1,000 patients in each.

The integration of the mental hospitals into the National Health Service was possibly the most decisive factor leading to a general move away from institutional policies in the 1950s. See 1959. Andrew Scull (1977, chapter 5) refers to studies of individual English mental hospitals, including Mapperley Hospital, Nottingham where inpatient numbers fell from 1948 due to changes in administrative policy, including avoiding admission altogether and early discharge of those who were admitted. In-patient numbers at Mapperley fell from 1,310 in 1948 to 1,060 in 1956. They were down to 870 (with annexes) in 1960.

Manchester 1948: Manchester Regional Hospital Board established. Manchester local authority Mental Health Department established. About 1948-1949: Psychiatric out-patient clinic and provision of a small number of beds on medical wards at Hope Hospital

Salford 1948: Salford local authority Mental Health Department established.


1948 World Health Organisation published the Sixth Revision of the International Classification of Diseases. For the first time this included sections on mental disorders

The first international classification of diseases, the Bertillon Classification of Causes of Death was brought in in 1898. Revisions came into effect in 1918 (ICD2), 1922 (ICD3), 1931 (ICD4), and 1940 (ICD5). In 1948 the International Classification of Diseases in its sixth revision was extended to include non-fatal diseases. The ninth revision was adopted in 1975, the tenth revision in 1990. The tenth revision included a supplementary classification of impairments, disabilities and handicaps. external link to decoder


The history behind the World Federation for Mental Health includes Clifford Beers

11.8.1948 to 21.8.1948 "Der Monster Kongress" (Anna Freud's description of the 1948 International Congress on Mental Hygiene) in which 2.500 representatives of 42 countries met in London during ten days to evaluate what had been learnt about mental health during the war and to plan for peace. This is counted as the founding congress of the World Federation for Mental Health - External link to website

The founding meeting was held in London on 19.8.1948. Preparative work, led by John Rawlings Rees, assisted by Kenneth Soddy as his unpaid secretary, began in 1946. (Brody 1998 p.44)

The Rees Era: [Address: World Fedearation for Mental Health, 19 Manchester Street, W1. Welbeck 8126 in 1950,1958 and 1961 Telephone Directories]
See 1951 - 1954 - 1960 - 1961 -

The Geneva Secretariat: 1962- 1967 - The Working Presidents: see 1968 - 1973 - 1977 - 1979 - Baltimore and Washington see 1981 - After 1983 see 1983 - Brighton 1985 - 1987 - 1989 - Mexico 1991 - [First World Mental Health Day] - 1993 - 1995 - 1997 - 1998 - 1999 - 2001 - 2003 - 2005 - 2007 - 2009 -

1948: First post-war International Congress for Psychotherapy held in London (England) with the theme "The problem of guilt in psychotherapy". The themes of subsequent congresses were: 1951 Leyden The affect contact - 1954 Zürich Transference in psychotherapy - 1958 Barcelona: Daseinsanalysis and psychotherapy - 1961 Vienna: Psychotherapy and clinical medicine - 1964 London: New development in psychotherapy - 1967 Wiesbaden: Psychotherapy, prevention and rehabilitation - 1970 Milan:Psychotherapy and human sciences - 1973 Oslo: What is psychotherapy? - 1976 Paris: Psychotherapeutic process - 1979 Amsterdam: Research and training - 1982 Rio de Janeiro: Psychotherapy and culture - 1985 Opatija: Health for all by the Year 2000 - 1988 Lausanne: Culture and theory - 1991 Hannover: Psychotherapeutic health care = 1994 Seoul: Psychotherapy: East and West (Integration of psychotherapy) - 1998 Warsaw: Psychotherapy at the turn of the Century (from past to future) - 2002 Trondheim: Crossroads of clinical practice and research

1949 survivors' history

1949 Foundation of the Mental Health Trust and the Mental Health Research Fund. These merged in 1972 to form the Mental Health Foundation (website) - information on charity - Database of Archives of Non-Governmental Organisations. The Research Fund was started by Dr Derek Richter (1907-1995) because there was so little research in the field. Dr Richter was at the Neuropsychiatric Research Centre, Cardiff from 1950 to 1983. - Published histories 1984 and 2009 - website archive from 1.6.1997

1949 Publication of E. Jacobsen and O. Marten-Larsen's "Treatment of alcoholism with tetraethylthiuram disulphide (Antabuse)" published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 139, 918. Jacobsen and Marten-Larsen reported on trials in Denmark in 1948

Benzedrex 1949 Propylhexedrine replaced amphetamine sulfate as the active ingredient in over the counter Benzedrine, renamed Benzedrex, due to reports of widespread abuse, psychosis and sudden death. See Thomas Ritchie

15.3.1949 Kenneth Robinson entered the United Kingdom Parliament as the member for the Borough of St Pancras (North Division). Sometime chairman of the mental health committee of the North-West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board (DNB) and vice-president of the National Association of Mental Health before 1964 (Robinson v Church of Scientology 1973), he frequently asked mental health questions in the House of Commons. In 1958 he published a Fabian Society pamphlet Policy for Mental Health. See Mental Health Film Council (1963) and 25.7.1968.

1.10.1949 Full implementation of post-war open door policy at Dingleton Hospital. Melrose, Scotland. "It appears to be the first mental hospital with open doors in the world" (Ted Hayes). The medical superintendent, Macdonald Bell (G.M. Bell) published a paper "A mental hospital with open doors" describing it in an early issue of the International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 1955, 1 pages 42 to 48). The open door system was also adpted in England at Mapperley, Warlingham Park and other hospitals

Nobel See Wagner Jauregg in 1927 October 1949 Announcement that the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for 1949 would be shared by Walter Rudolf Hess of Switzerland for "for his discovery of the functional organization of the interbrain as a coordinator of the activities of the internal organs" and Egas Moniz of Portugal "for his discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses". See Controversial Psychosurgery Resulted in a Nobel Prize by Bengt Jansson on the Nobel website.

1950 survivors' history

By the 1950s, the Mental After Care Association (MACA) had several of its own properties, where up to 50 people lived as many as five to a room.

"residential homes in the 1950s and 1960s were more homely than the old hospitals, but seem institutional by today's standards." (Together History Leaflet)

MACA's first hostel offering short-term care opened in Ipswich in 1961.

Mind's Key Dates: "1950s Day hospitals began to be established, increasing flexibility in psychiatric services and reducing the use of hospital beds. Hostels and therapeutic social clubs were set up to provide support for discharged patients. The introduction of neuroleptic drugs helped to shorten the length of new admissions to hospitals and encouraged the discharge of many into the community. Some new district psychiatric services were developed in general hospitals, ceasing to use beds in the regional mental hospitals, providing a model for future changes."

1950 Smith, Kline and French introduced Drinamyl (Dexamyl in the USA), combining dextroamphetamine and amobarbital (previously called amylbarbitone) as an antidepressant, anti-anxiety and diet drug. Known as "purple hearts".

Henry Rollin (born 1912) became medical superintendent at Horton Hospital [May be incorrect. His obituary says "from 1948 until 1975, he was the Deputy Superintendent of Horton Hospital".

May 1950? "In 1953, three years after a [Women's Institute] resolution on permitting family hospital visits for sick children was passed, less than a quarter of hospitals allowed daily visiting. In 1957, the [National Federation of Women's Institutes] sent evidence to the Platt Committee on the Welfare of Children in Hospital which, in its report the following year, said that parents should be allowed to visit sick child in hospital whenever they can, and to help as much as possible with the child's care. Platt's report is considered highly influential in the development of modern hospital practices."

British Epilepsy Association 6.7.1950 Meeting that set up the British Epilepsy Association The original members held their first meeting on 5.9.1950. The association was registered as a charity on 512.1950.

The brightly burning candle was chosen as the emblem in 1952. Abandoned by the British group in 1993, it still burns world wide.

The aims of the British Epilepsy Association (1962) were:

  • to assist all those who suffer from epilepsy, both as individuals and families
  • to improve the understanding of epilepsy so that those who suffer from this disability shall not also suffer from the ignorance and prejudice of those around them
  • to encourage and assist research into the causes and treatment of epilepsy
  • to share our knowledge and experience with people in all parts of the world who wish to work for the welfare of the epileptic.
  • See Epilepsy Action History Wall 1950- 2010 - offline. The British Epilepsy Association adopted the working title "Epilepsy Action" in 2002. See website

    18.9.1950-27.9.1950
    Le Premier Congrès International de Psychiatrie
    Paris
    The picture (from the collection of the Henry Ey Foundation) shows the opening ceremony the First World Congress of Psychiatry in the Grand Amphitheatre of the Sorbonne, Paris
    (external source) [The World Psychiatric Association began as an association for organising these congresses]

    Sargant and Slater 1963 (page 165) say that the value of insulin coma treatment was "generally accepted" at the Congress "as the best available treatment of early schizophrenia". They say this "began to alter radically" in 1953 "with the use of the new tranquilising drugs, such as chlorpromazine"

    October 1950 Labour minister of education George Tomlinson appointed a committee: "To enquire into and report upon the medical, educational and social problems relating to maladjusted children, with reference to their treatment within the educational system." Reported October 1955.

    National Council for Civil Liberties: "The most important campaign which took place under" [Elizabeth Acland] "Allen's leadership began in earnest in 1950 and sought the reform of the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913. Under the Act, people could be labelled as 'moral defectives' on wide-ranging and questionable grounds, and abuse of the mental health system was therefore common. The campaign was driven forward by Frank Haskell, who joined the NCCL in 1946 as head of the Mental Deficiency Department. After a decade of conferences, publications (including the pamphlet 50,000 outside the law), legal action in individual cases and finally the submission of evidence to a Royal Commission, the NCCL achieved the abolition of the 1913 Act. Under the new Mental Health Act of 1959, Mental Health Review Tribunals were set up to reconsider individual cases. Volunteers organised by the NCCL acted on behalf of patients, securing the release of 1000s of people. This campaign ensured, amongst other things, that women were no longer at risk of being incarcerated for mental deficiency simply for giving birth outside marriage." (source)

    1951 survivors' history

    Second World Federation for Mental Health congress held in Mexico

    about 1951 Dr Donald McIntosh Johnson, an eccentric member of the Sutton and Cheam Conservative Party and later MP for Carlisle was "wrongly certified as a result of a criminal plot". He and Labour MP Norman Dodds joined together for the reform of the mental health laws. See 25.10.1956

    May 1951 2nd International Congress for Psychotherapy held in Leiden-Oegstgeest, (Netherlands) with the theme "The affective contact.".

    25.10.1951 Conservative government in United Kingdom

    See 2008

    1951 John Bowlby's Maternal Care and Mental Health published in Geneva by the World Health Organisation, in London by Her Majesty's Stationery Office and in New York by Columbia University Press. An abridged version: Child Care and The Growth of Love (2nd edition, 1965) was published by Penguin.

    1951: 50,000 Outside the Law: an examination of the treatment of those certified as mentally defective published by the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL). 40 pages. Second impression in 1952.

    National Council for Civil Liberties history website - an Open University website

    The pamphlet dealt with 200 cases of alleged wrongful certification and detention. It said the law was being administered "in a far from humane manner" and that patient labour in institutions, and release on licence to employers, created an economic motive to continue certification.

    Many patients were humiliated, required to work without wages, dressed in institutional clothing and left without education and training. Young women were often dressed in children's clothing, which "assisted in the appearance of backwardness. Those released on licence were forbidden to associate with a person of the opposite sex. 'Victoria', one of NCCL's clients, had to stay another four years in an institution after she went to the cinema with a young man.

    Mary Applebey 1951 Mary Applebey became Director of the National Association for Mental Health in place of the original General Secretary: Miss M C Owen and the Medical director since 1947: Dr Alfred Torrie

    The picture of Mary Applebey is taken from the 1972/1973 Annual Report

    1951 Robina Addis moved from Northampton to London to became Head of the National Association for Mental Health's Social Services Department. From 1954 to 1965 she was Deputy General Secretary.

    1952 survivors' history

    "In 1951, the great majority of hospitals either forbade visiting by parents altogether or restricted it to, say, once a week. James Robertson played a very very big part in changing that". (John Bowlby).

    July/August 1952 James Robertson (who had never made a film before) shot A Two Year-old Goes to Hospital in order to demonstrate to professional audiences the truth of what he said happened to children separated from their parents in hospital. - See Robertson Films website

    See
    Anna Freud 1941 - Hospital children 1945 - Bowlby 1948 - Bowlby 1951 - Platt - 1958 - Mother Care for Children in Hospital - Mary Barnes - Whats Wrong with Hospitals


    Social Psychiatry: A Study of Therapeutic Communities by Maxwell Jones and others, foreword by Aubrey Lewis, published London: Tavistock Publications, 1952. Republised in the USA in 1953 as The Therapeutic Community - A New Treatment Method in Psychiatry

    1952 First edition of David Stafford-Clark's Psychiatry Today published by Penguin. The inside cover blurb begins:

    "For better or worse, psychiatry is news today: it is also frequently a feature of entertainment on the films, on television, on the radio, and provides a theme for books and a plot for plays. Although it is one of the fundamental branches of medicine it has always received notoriety more readily than fame, and seems all to often to promise more than it can perform. What was once a forbidden mystery is in danger of becoming a popular fad"

    The corresponding blurb for the second edition in 1963 began.

    "Since... the first edition of Psychiatry Today was published, the general public for which it was specially written have brought over 130,000 copies. It has been translated into French, Dutch, Spanish, German, Italian, and Greek"

    Chapter 7: A Consideration of Treatment "...the method of treatment most closely associated in the public mind with psychiatry... is that of psychotherapy". In this he includes "forms of reassurance, support, understanding, and guidance" of varying depth - occupational therapy - social measures, which are "the province of the trained psychiatric social worker" - a "series of interviews" including "a complete life history of the patient" - "periodic advice and supervision over some time" - psychoanalysis and other forms of psychotherapy aimed at providing the patient with insight - brief methods of analytical psychotherapy, including hypnosis - group therapy. He then indicates that "in the opinion of most psychiatrists" "physical methods have a greater part to play" in the treatment of depression and schizophrenia. [See St David's 1956]

    The discussion of physical treatment begins with general physical health (for example, nutrition) and the treatment of physical disorders underlying such mental illnesses as acute toxic confusional states and general paralysis of the insane by Penicillin. The drugs discussed are sedatives (for abreactions and for continuous sleep treatment) - amphetamine - and antabuse. The combination of benzedrine and ephedrine in treating children who wet their beds is discussed.

    The three physical treatments that had "radically altered the whole outlook" for patients suffering from depression and schizophrenia "previously beyond the power of psychological medicine to control" were electrical treatment - deep insulin treatment - neuro-surgery

    The major changes in the 1963 edition were the introduction of the drugs chlorpromazine (and derivatives) - meprobamate (and derivatives) - and the antidepressants

    1953 survivors' history

    1953 Mental £millions. Almost half the National Health Service's hospital beds were for mental illness or mental defect. Hospitals generally were in old buildings, but those for mental illness included some of the worst buildings. From 1953 the government set aside substantial, if inadequate, sums of money for their improvement - The Mental £ millions. Spending on this sector in West Yorkshire reached a peak of 37% of the hospital budget in 1955/1956. Government thinking appears to have been precipitated into community care policies by the prospect of spending even larger sums on renovating the old asylums.

    End of Hospital Farms: The Ministry of Health decided that hospitals were not to continue farming or market gardening (Laidlaw, E.F. 1994 p.151) - See Derby

    France 3.4.1953 After moving from place to place for two weeks, psychiatrist Jean Oury (born 5.3.1924), a group of staff, and thirty three ambulant patients, settledin the old ruined castle of La Borde. Here they established what, in English, would be called a therapeutic community: applying "les principes de la psychothérapie institutionnelle, les patients et les soignants se constituent en commissions chargées des divers aspects matériels de la vie collective". (French Wikipedia). Oury was a member of Lacan's Freudian School of Paris from its inception. Jean Claude Polack worked there from 1965. Polack's La Médecine du capital in 1971 argued that a medicine in the service of the people could only come with the disappearance of capitalism. Polack worked with a collective of patients on the magazine Cahiers pour la Folie from 1970 to 1974. - Clinique de LA BORDE
    120 route de Tour en Sologne
    41700 Cour-Cheverny
    website

    Autumn 1953 An article (not in the Lancet) described the three British mental hospitals with open door policies: Dingleton Hospital in Scotland, Mapperley, Nottingham and Warlingham Park Hospital, Croydon. David Clark became medical superintendent at Fulbourne, Cambridgeshire on 1.8.1953. He began by re-locking the admission ward that a consultant had opened. In the spring of 1954 he visited Warlingham Park to investigate the new methods. (external link to the relevant chapter of his book) . In 1954 out-patient nurses were appointed at Warlingham Park to visit out- patients and in-patients who had been discharged. (external link to Mind's key dates). Saxondale (Nottingham County) also introduced the open door system and Graylingwell, West Sussex, is mentioned as one of the hospitals that David Clark visited. (Some information from an email from Ted Hayes in Canada, who is researching open door policy)

    September 1953 was the centenary of Brentwood Mental Hospital, which was renamed Warley Hospital. The centenary was celebrated by a booklet, published in May 1953.

    September 1953 World Health Organisation report The Community Mental Hospital - "the need to provide more psychiatric hospital beds is being over-emphasised at present in some countries of western Europe and North America to the detriment of the provision of other services which would reduce the need for the admission of patients into psychiatric hospitals or alternatively reduce the length of stay of those patients who must be admitted."

    November 1953 The Samaritans movement was started in 1953 at St. Stephen Walbrook, by the Reverend Chad Varah. It was incorporated as a Limited Company in 1963. "Chad Varah took the first call to Samaritans on 2 November 1953. We were the first 24-hour helpline in the world." history on website

    22.10.1953 Winston Churchill (UK Prime Minister) announced a Royal Commission on the law relating to mental illness and mental deficiency. The names of the Chairman and other members to be announced later. (Hansard)

    1954 survivors' history

    1954: Peak of numbers resident in English and Welsh Mental Hospitals. In the hospitals that pioneered community care, the numbers had been falling since 1948. Now the movement to avoid hospital admission and shorten in-patient stay began to effect overall numbers.

    Mind's Key Dates: 1954 "The first out-patient nurses were appointed at Warlingham Park Hospital, Croydon. Their duties included visiting out-patients, supporting in-patients who had been discharged, helping find jobs and accommodation for them, and being available to give advice at out-patient clinics or therapeutic social clubs."

    1950 Phenmetrazine (Preludin) introduced into clinical use in 1954 in Europe as a weight loss drug without the side-effects of amphetamine. Known as "Prellies" by the Beatles, who used it to keep themselves awake.

    Royal Commission on the Law Relating to Mental Illness and Mental Deficiency (1954 to 1957), under Lord Percy. 4.5.1954 First day of evidence: Ministry of Health and Board of Control (jointly). The National Council for Civil Liberties gave evidence on Day 22.

    21.7.1954 to 24.7.1954 3rd International Congress for Psychotherapy held in Zurich, Switzerland with the theme "Transference In Psychotherapy".

    14.8.1954 to 21.8.1954 Third World Federation for Mental Health congress held in Toronto, Canada on the subject, "Mental Health in Public Affairs". In conjunction with this, The International Association for Child Psychiatry held an "International Institute on Child Psychiatry" on August 13th and 14th with the theme "Emotional Problems of Children Under Six"

    Chlorpromazine is sometimes written "CPZ". This drug started being sold in 1954 or 1955. In France and the United Kingdom it was called Largactil. Largactil. In America it was called Thorazine. It was the first of the anti-psychotic phenothiazines. In a "psychotic", as opposed to a "neurotic" illness, the patient is held to have lost contact with reality. The phenothiazines controlled the symptoms of many patients without having the sedative effects of previous drugs. They controlled, not cured, and were sometimes called "chemical straight-jackets". Use of phenothiazines could make the established movement towards community care easier and less risky. Their effect, in this respect, became clearer with the introduction of long acting phenothiazines in the 1970s.

    Chlorpromazine was the first of the modern range of psychiatric drugs - anti-psychotics - anti-depressants and minor tranquillisers - that control distressing symptoms rather than just sedating patients. Although the dominance of drug-treatment in psychiatry starts with chlorpromazine, it took a decade or more to become established. See 1968

    Lunacy, Law and Conscience
    from a recent reprint cover
    Kathleen Jones' Lunacy, Law and Conscience. 1744-1845 begins her attempt to create a comprehensive history - The first since Daniel Hack Tuke's Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles.

    The book was developed from her 1953 thesis Lunacy legislation and administration in England 1744-1845. Although published in 1955 its Preface is dated "The University of Manchester, March 1954"

    See 1960 and 1972

    1955 survivors' history

    1955 onwards: Substantial sums of money for construction of new hospitals

    1955 to 1962: "Community methods of treatment and ward management" established at Claybury Hospital in Essex.

    The Association of Parents of Backward Children changed its name to the National Society for Mentally Handicapped Children in 1955. The society's history says it shortened its name to Mencap in 1969, but I have not found this name used in 1970s references, although it was in use in 1981 ("Mencap - The National Society for Mentally Handicapped Children and Adults").

    The last burial in the Horton Hospitals' cemetery was in 1955. Unlike farms, the use of hospital cemeteries appears to have been a matter for local rather than national policy.

    Meprobamate (Miltown) launched in the United States in 1955. Effects described in Cosmopolitan as "safe and quick, Miltown does not deaden or dull the senses, and is not habit forming. It relaxes the muscles, calms the mind, and gives people a renewed ability to enjoy life" (source) - (Wikipedia)

    1955 NCCL Mental Health Files U DCL/84 1955-1964 10 files:
    Case file MD/432 Mary Betteridge 1955-1957
    Case file MD/434 Lilian Whittle 1955-1958
    Case file MD/438 Olive Denman 1955-1956
    Case file MD/443 Kathleen Rutty 1955-1956
    Case file MD/444 James Warren Bell 1955-1959
    Case file MD/447 Kathleen Bradley 1955-1959
    Case file MD/475 Josephine O' Shea 1955-1964
    Case file MD/511 Mary Thompson 1955-1956
    Case file MD/559 Audrey Stocks 1956-1958
    Case file MD/571 Eileen Rose Hood 1956-1957

    1.3.1955: Charity known (from 1979) as The Tudor Trust established by a gift of shares in the construction company, George Wimpey. (external source) In 2006/2007 it helped to fund the National Survivor User Network

    2.9.1955 Christopher Mayhew, Labour MP and Television presenter, took the hallucinogenic drug Mescaline as part of a BBC Panorama documentary that was never broadcast. (weblink)

    October 1955 Report of the Committee on Maladjusted Children (external link). The committee had been appointed in October 1950.

    See the rise and fall in the use of the term

    October 1955 "Seeking material directly related to mental-health problems in the mass media is like looking for a needle in a haystack". America

    1956 survivors' history

    St David's Hospital Carmarthen 1956-1958

    "I saw the doctor in charge and was foolish enough to tell him about my voices... I was... moved to a ... ward where patients were given insulin. Before moving I had read on the walls of the admission ward, notices about rights of appeal to the local M.P., but decided this would be a waste of time.

    ... the lady psychiatrist ... tried very hard to persuade me to sign a "voluntary form". This seemed a farce to me and I refused."

    "my shouting and yelling disturbed the other patients... I was forcibly stripped (except for a sanitary towel!), fighting and struggling, turned over and injected in the buttocks. The last I remember was someone saying "Sit on her". Then I passed out."

    "I was given about 4 E.C.T.s and about 4 to 6 weeks insulin. I said I was not going to physically fight... The (man) doctor said 'Doesn't she think she ought to feel grateful for having treatment?'"

    "I expected psychiatrists to talk to their patients". [See Stafford-Clark 1952] "I hardly ever saw (five times in two years) the man in charge of me, except passing in the corridor."

    Nurses did far more than they were paid to do, taking patients to their own homes, to the pictures etc. There was much kindness in this hospital, but it has taken me years to get over it, and the fear of going back is strong".


    Published 1962
    A survey by the Institute of Community Studies of over 80 Bethnal Green patients who were sent to Long Grove, on the other side of London, in 1956 and 1957. They were interviewed in 1958 and 1959. (Mills, E. 1962 p.3)

    Enid Mills' interviews with them and their relatives show what happened, their reactions and impressions. She describes and discusses the difficulties of changing from a remote mental hospital system to a community service centred on local hospital such as the St Clement's Observation Unit (as it was before 1959).

    1956 The Central Health Services Council appointed a committee chared by Harry Platt to investigate "arangements made in hospital for the welfare of ill children". Report published as The Welfare of Children in Hospital: Report of a Committee of the Central Health Services Council. London: HMSO, 1959. See Womens Institutes 1957 - James Robertson 1958 - Mother Care for Children in Hospital 1961

    21.2.1956 Twenty-four year old Kathleen Rutty discharged from certification as a mental defective by the High Court, following a writ of habeas corpus from the National Council for Civil Liberties. Kathleen was out on licence from Rampton. Under her licence she was barred from having boy-friends, or going to the cinema or to a dance. Afterwards she said "Now there will be no more fear that someone will be looking over my shoulder to see if I break the rules" (Roxan 1958 pages 226 and 231). Peter Whitehead was discharged directly from Rampton in December, whilst a writ was before the High Court.

    "there had been some publicity about Rampton... 1956 or 1957 - I'm not sure which... exactly what was going on I'm not sure... We were not, of course, allowed to see the write- ups, so I cannot be certain... A hockey match was put on" [for the journalists] and a whole lot of other bull... the institution fooled the News of the World, but not the Empire News" (Noele Arden 1977, page 82)

    25.10.1956 Mrs Harriet Thornton released from Cane Hill into the care of her uncle after a campaign led by Norman Dodds MP (Labour) and Donald Johnson (Conservative) - MP's Win Mental Patient's Freedom "Dr Johnson was himself wrongly certified five years ago as a result of a criminal plot"

    1957 survivors' history

    Breaking through the taboo of silence
    On the wireless, the Archers had featured a mental hospital in 1954.
    The Hurt Mind, in January 1957 was the first television programme to do with a mental hospital. Christopher Mayhew persuaded the BBC to record this film. The camera's were not allowed to film patients' faces, only their hands or feet. Christopher Mayhew was the only one who was allowed to be filmed in person. [See filmed demented]

    The five episodes were 1.1.1957 "Put Away" - 8.1.1957 "Breakdown" - 15.1.1957 "Psychological Treatment" - 22.1.1957 "Physical Treatment" - 29.1.1957 "Your Questions Answered". The BBC monitored the effects of the series, with a survey of viewer's attitudes before and after. This was published in May 1957: The Hurt Mind: An Enquiry Into Some of the Effects of Five Television Broadcasts about Mental Illness and its Treatment. Audience Research Report, B.B.C. May, 1957.

    In books, a mental patient could look you straight in the eye

    May 1957: Royal Commission on the Law Relating to Mental Illness and Mental Deficiency (1954 to 1957) reported

    The key themes of the Percy Report were:

    • That mental disorder should be regarded "in much the same way as physical illness and disability" (paragraph 5)
    • That hospitals for mental illness should be run as nearly as possible like those for physical disorders.

    Percy wanted mental disorder to be a normal health issue. Part of making it normal was absorbing the Board of Control into the Ministry of Health. See do we need a commission for mental health? for extracts.

    8.7.1957 House of Commons debate on the Report of the Royal Commission on the Law relating to Mental Illness and Mental Deficiency. (Hansard). "The second general mental health debate that there has been in this House in the last twenty-seven years" (Christopher Mayhew)

    15.10.1957 Lifeline, with David Stafford-Clark, first televised by the BBC (source). This series of programmes continued to 1963. See 1959 - 1961 - 1962 -


    Antidepressants Both Iproniazid (Marsalid), the first Monoamine Oxidise Inhibitor, and Imipramine (Tofranil), the first tricyclic antidepressant, were introduced into psychiatry in 1957 (Sargant and Slater 1963). The oldest Monoamine Oxidise Inhibitor still in general use is Phenelzine (Nardil). William Sargant (1960 onwards) suggested Nardil as the treatment of choice for reactive depression. My memory suggests that these antidepressants were coming into general use from about 1963.

    "after taking [Nardil] for a week, I felt so well ... that I said that I would like to leave hospital and start applying for new work." (Joan Hughes 1965)

    Tranquillizers (sedatives) and sleeping pills (hypnotics)

    1.10.1957 Contergan (Thalidomide) available as a cross-the-counter tranquillizer (sedatifum) and sleeping pill (hypnotikum) in West Germany. From 1.8.1961 to 27.11.1961 it was prescription only.
    Considered as a hypnotic sedative that could produce deep sleep, but which, unlike barbiturates, had no risk of dependency and had no hangover effects the next morning. The drug was generally believed to be nontoxic to humans. (source). Thalidomide was available on prescription in the UK from 1958 as Distaval. It was marketed to doctors as the safe sleeping pill: ".. the dangers of barbiturate poisoning are a source of very real concern... [so] more and more doctors are turning to 'Distaval'..." Barbiturates were the "conventional" sleeping pill and children investigating bottles of pills were taking them. A "child's life may depend on the safety of Distaval" .. "a sedative and hypnotic which is both highly effective ... and outstandingly safe" (source).

    In 1961 William McBride reported in the Lancet an increase in the number of deformed babies born at his hospital, all to mothers who had taken thalidomide. The drug was withdrawn in Germany later the same year.

    The Patients Association was formed in 1963

    In 1968 The UK manufacturer (Distillers) reached a compensation settlement after a legal battle with some of the families affected.

    In 1972 The Sunday Times risked contempt of court proceedings for publicising the history of the drug. £28 million was paid out by Diageo (previously Distillers) during the 1970s.

    In 1975 Hackney Mental Patients Union published its Directory of the side effects of psychiatric drugs


    Brother Lunatic. Paul Warr exposes the unbelievable conditions in Britain's mental hospitals published at the end of 1957 by Neville Spearman (London). Paul War is a pseudonym. This concealment, the publisher claimed, was "made necessary by the law of defamatory libel". The author said he was a journalist, disillusioned by Picture Post in the Korean War, who went to work for Peace News under Bernard Boothroyd (Editor 1949-1951) who urged him to "live solely by my own conscience". He became a nurse in a rural mental hospital in the south of England, but found he was the only person motivated by idealism.

    Nuffield Provincial Hospital Trust funding
    Mental health project funding started in 1957

    1957:

    27: care, education and treatment of maladjusted adolescents by the National Association for Mental Health

    28: cost of mental illness by Cheadle Royal Hospital and Manchester University Department of Social Administration. This led eventually to Mental Hospitals at Work. The core work on costs began before Kathleen Jones joined the project.

    1958:

    34: mental health in the Oldham area

    36: effect of incentives in the rehabilitation of long-stay patients and day centre for long-stay patients and industrial workshop by Cheadle Royal Hospital

    41: Anglesey survey of mental health needs

    42: Netherne Hospital study of the value of active work in the rehabilitation of mental patients

    43: Manchester University study of the employment and training of adult mental handicapped

    1959:

    44: Crichton Royal Hospital study of a mental hospital and the community

    46: Aberdeen University epidemiological studies of mental health - operational studies of Scottish mental health services - collation of data for the psychiatric case register by special interviewers

    47: British Epilepsy Association study of epileptics in colonies. See Jones and Tillotson 1962

    54: Institute of Psychiatry study of emotional disorders among school children in Buckinghamshire.

    55: Aberdeen University studies of Scottish Mental Health services

    57: Littlemore Hospital, Oxford, study of the prevalence of mental illness in the community.

    1960:

    65: study of the work of the plymouth Community Mental Health Centre

    67: Fulbourne Hospital, Cambridge, study of the discharge of chronic psychotic patients.

    69: Swansea Community Mental Health Centre

    70: Salford study of the selection of patients mental hospital admission and a study of an industrial workshop.

    71: Political and Economic Planning studies of community mental health services.

    Scientology in the United Kingdom

    In June 2008 it was decided that Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, should not have a blue plaque on 37 Fitzroy Street, London. It is said that Hubbard based himself at Fitzroy House from 1957 until 1959 and wrote many of his works there. (Telegraph 29.11.2009).   Time Out wrote in 1973 "by 1955 the movement was establishing itself in Britain, opening a new centre in Notting Hill Gate" (Ian Sandeson reports 30.11.1973-6.12.1973 edition Time Out page 15.

    The global headquarters of the Scientology movement from 1959 to 1966 was Saint Hill Manor in East Grinstead, Sussex,

    12.8.1967 Sea Org established. In 1975, the church sold the Sea Org's ships and moved the organization to land bases around the world, (Wikipedia article on Sea Org

    "Hubbard left the UK permanently in 1969, moving Scientology's world headquarters to a fleet of ships. The Home Office told him not to return." (Wikipedia article Scientology in the United Kingdom

    1958 survivors' history

    1958 Young Children in Hospital by James Robertson with a foreword by Ronald Mac Keith published London: Tavistock Publications. xiv and 103 pages. This was based on his evidence to the Platt comittee.

    Freda Mew   1.3.1958 Freda Kendall Mew died, aged 78 at Whitecroft Hospital, Newport. She had lived there for almost sixty years. She had received no communications for very many years. Charlotte Mew

    June 1958 to June 1959 Research at three English mental hospitals in Cheshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire by Kathleen Jones and Roy Sidebotham which led to the publication of Mental Hospitals at Work in 1962.

    The Lancashire hospital ("Northtown") was either Rainhill or Prestwich. The Yorkshire hospital ("Moordale") was Scalebor Park. The Cheshire hospital ("Crown Lodge") was Cheadle Royal

    First week of September 1958 4th International Congress for Psychotherapy held at Barcelona University with the theme "Psychotherapy and Existential Analysis".

    1959 survivors' history

    By 1959 only 12% of admissions to mental illness hospitals were compulsory, and the trend was towards shorter periods of in-patient treatment and towards outpatient treatment. Whilst in 1930 there had been practically no outpatients, by 1959 there were 144,000 attendances at outpatient clinics. ( Maclay, W.S. 1961, p.98)

    It is the above change that people are generally referring to when they speak of the therapeutic revolution of the 1950s.

    Two years after the Percy Report, the 1959 Mental Health Act sought to create a legal framework within which the hospital treatment of mental disorder could approximate as closely as possible to that of physical illness. Its two main objectives were:

    • To allow admissions for psychiatric reasons to be, wherever possible, as informal as those for physical reasons.
    • To make councils responsible for the social care of people who did not need in-patient medical treatment.

    The 1959 Mental Health Act abolished the Board of Control.

    The 1959 Mental Health Act excluded promiscuity or other immoral conduct (alone) as grounds for detention.

    Section 4 (5) of the 1959 Act says:

    "Nothing in this section shall be construed as implying that a person may be dealt with under this Act as suffering from mental disorder ... by reason only of promiscuity or other immoral conduct"
    The 1890 Lunacy Act's grounds for confinement were that the person is a "lunatic, idiot or person of unsound mind". The 1959 Act uses a similar catch-all phrase: "any other disorder or disability of mind" - but the exclusion clause restricts it.

    Between the 1890 Act and the 1959 Act there was a great expansion in the power to confine people on moral grounds. This was under the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act which brought in the concept of moral defect and feeble minded. The 1957 Percy Report explained that, in practice, these concepts had been applied to people of normal intelligence who behaved unconventionally.

    1959 Wentworth Stanley Hall, with stage, opened at St Clements Hospital Bow as it became an exclusively psychiatric hospital - in the inner city. In the same year, the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association started, linking the old asylum at Longrove to the East End of London from where its patients came.
    The picture is a 21st century one. To some patients and friends, the social activities in Wentworth Stanley Hall (now demolished) became the symbol of
    "humane treatment - not drug tyranny". Ravaged Wonderful Earth was launched her in 2013.


    1959 Dr Russell Barton's Institutional Neurosis outlined the symptoms of a disease that often (but not always) developed as a result of being in an institution. (See dictionary)

    In 1959 BBC Lifeline included programmes on Leucotomy "Surgery of the brain" - "Fear" - "Hypnosis" as a means of examining the unconscious - a discussion with L. S. Penrose about the "Mongoloid child" - and "Battle for the mind" about the techniques used by "orators as diverse as Hitler and John Wesley".

    1959 Richmond Fellowship founded by Elly Jansen, a young theology student from Holland, who invited patients from Long Grove Hospital to leave and live with her in the community in Richmond, Surrey. Many Richmond Fellowship houses developed as therapeutic communites. Registered as a Company Limited by Guarantee 20.6.1960 by The Bishop of Southwark and Bruce Reed "Director of Christian Teamwork", witnessed by N. Ely Jansen, S.R.N. Social Worker, 21 Lancaster Park, Richmond, Surrey (Signatures 14.6.1960). offline.

    October 1959 Patricia Hornsby Smith spoke about the 1959 Mental Health Act in an election broadcast on behalf of the Conservative Party.

    October 1959 J.C.Batt, Physician Superintendent, St. Ebba's Hospital, Epsom: "Clinical Trial of 'Stelazine' in Treatment of Chronic Schizophrenia" - On 28.2.1959 Roderick Macdonald and T.P. Shields Watts of Holloway Sanatorium published an article on its use in Paranoid Schizophrenia. In December 1959 K. Kropach wrote about treating acutely agitated senile patient. In October 1959 A. R. May, J. Stuart Whiteley and B. G. Gradwell considered its use in Psychoneuroses. Stelazine was a phenothiazine that could be used, in different doses, as either a major tranquilliser for psychosis (see Janet Cresswell 1965) or a minor one for neuroses (see Andrew Roberts May 1971).

    1960s

    In 1960s there was a breakdown in the taboo of silence about mental health in the press and TV. Radio had sowed seeds in 1954. On television, the seeds were sown by The Hurt Mind, in January 1957 and the Lifeline series from October 1957 to 1963. Man Alive (1965? on) showed people with conditions usually regarded as taboo talking about their own experiences. A famous example in the press was an Observer reporter, John Gale, who had a mental breakdown, re-covered and was re-instated to his position as a feature and news reporter. He described his subjective experiences in an Observer feature in 1966.

    Along with the new openness about mental illness came the possibility of open debate. In America, The Myth of Mental Illness (1961), by Thomas Szasz was published. It contained a theoretical basis for arguing that the states of mind described as "mental illness" are not "illness" but actions for which the mentally distressed person must be held responsible. [See Mental Health and Civil Liberties].

    In France Michel Foucault's Histoire de la Folie told the history of unreason in an age of reason in a way that the English speaking world was not yet ready for. (extracts)

    - In Italy Franco Basaglia (1924-1980) was in charge of the Gorizia psychiatric hospital, near Trieste from 1961. He moved to Trieste in 1970. "Psichiatria Democratica" was founded in 1974. The law that has been called "Basaglia's law" was passed in 1978, the same year that a press conference caused a media sensation by announcing the closure of Trieste's old asylum. Franco Basaglia spoke at a Europe wide "Alternatives to Mental Hospitals" conference, shortly before his death. Members of Psichiatria Democratica visited London, Sheffield and Manchester in April 1984, stimulating the creation of "Asylum - a magazine for democratic psychiatry" in 1986. Harpurhey Resettlement Team 1987 - 1988 - May 1993 visit £300

    1960 survivors' history

    The First World Mental Health Year 1.1.1960 to 30.6.1961

    The year was designated by the World Federation for Mental Health at its annual meeting in Copenhagen in the summer of 1957. The year would culminate in the Fifth International Congress on Mental Health, to be held in Paris in August 1961. (source)

    "First world mental health year: a record" (160 pages), edited by Arthur C. L. Paton, was published: [London] by the World Federation for Mental Health in 1961, and with a supplement in 1962.

    The eighteen month period was modelled on the International Geophysical Year of 1957-1958.

    February 1960 Chlordiazepoxide (Librium), the first benzodiazepine, marketed in the United States. Diazepam (Valium) was marketed in 1963. I think the heyday of the benzodiazepine tranquillisers was the early 1970s. See Phobics Society 1970 - 1975 directory - Cherry Allfree 1976 - Asylum 20003

    Mental Health and Social Policy

1845-1959 Kathleen Jones Mental Health and Social Policy 1845-1959. The Preface is dated The University of Manchester, May 1960.

    Originally intended to cover the century from 1845 to the National Health Service, making a neat sequel to Lunacy, Law and Conscience. 1744-1845. However, in view of developments "of such lasting importance" (p. xvii) two extra chapters were added on "Problems and Experiments, 1948-59" and "The Mental Health Act, 1959"

    See 1972.

    R. D. Laing's The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness.

    Alfred Hitchcock's black and white film Psycho ... in a lonely hotel, vicious murders take place... "This young man... being dominated by an almost maniacal woman was enough.."

    In 1960 BBC Lifeline included programmes on "Hallucinations and delusions" (were Joan of Arc and Francis of Assisi suitable cases for psychiatric treatment?) - and "Obsessive compulsions" in which David Stafford-Clark spoke to former patients.

    The National Association for Mental Health "keeps an eye on all 'fringe medicine' which purports to help people suffering from mental disorder of any kind, and in 1960 it duly noted the arrival of the scientology movement at Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead". (Rolph 1973 chapter 8) [Ron Hubbard purchased Saint Hill Manor in 1959 and lived there until early 1966]. See 1964 - 1965 - 1966 - 1966 - 1969

    1961 survivors' history

    1961 Eric Cunningham Dax's Asylum to Community: The Development of the Mental Hygiene Service in Victoria, Australia, Cheshire: Melbourne 230 pages, published with assistance from the World Federation for Mental Health

    1961, The Historical Development of British Psychiatry Volume 1 18th and 19th century by Denis Leigh, Physician Royal an Maudley Hospitals, London.

    Begun in 1969, when Leigh found Hack Tuke's Daniel Hack Tuke's Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles "frankly boring" and Gregory Zilboorg's History of Medical Psychology "too large a pattern" (Preface)

    January 1961 Long term planning of hospital services begun

    Thursday 9.3.1961: Enoch Powell's Water Tower Speech:

    The full scope of the community care policy for the mentally ill adopted in the 1960s was revealed in 1961 when the Minister of Health, Enoch Powell, opened the annual conference of the National Association for Mental Health with a speech on how his forthcoming Hospital Plan would affect psychiatric services.

    The Percy Report contrasted community care with hospital care. Phrases like in the community have generally been used to mean outside hospital. However, from the Water Tower speech until the 1980s, community care policy was to have as its central feature, the transfer of hospital treatment from isolated mental hospitals to local hospitals. (See diagram). The two main features of the policy were:

    • That hospital treatment should be in Psychiatric Units in District General Hospitals.
    • That as much care and treatment as possible should be provided outside hospital.
    Kathleen Jones says that newspaper placards in London said Mental Hospitals to Go - Powell (Jones in Mind October 1980, p.17). Compare the speech, which expresses his inclination that most (not all) old style hospitals should eventually disappear, with the provision of the Hospital Plan (below), which he was discussing.

    Kathleen Jones says that she "was present when Powell made his speech. He was determined, as Minister of Health, to cut public sector spending, and I thought that the Government had no intention of introducing a good community care service. I had just finished writing up a research project, later published as Mental Hospitals at Work, and I prefaced it with twelve reasons why he was wrong."

    15.1.1961 - 22.1.1961 - 29.1.1961 - 12.2.1961: Articles in The Guardian and Observer by James Robertson about children in hospital. The last was titled "Now Over to the Mothers".

    1961 Mother Care for Children in Hospital founded by Jane Thomas, a young mother living in Battersea. "We used to chat about his articles, pushing our prams round Battersea Park". (Quoted Cohen, 1964, p.65). This became the National Association for the Welfare of Children in Hospital in 1965. Core aim: to get the Platt Report's recommendations around unrestricted hospital visiting and overnight stays implemented. See Alex Mold

    February 1961 The whole three days of the Quarterly Meeting of the Royal Medico-Psychological Association, in London, devoted to a conference on "Hallucinogenic Drugs and Their Psychotherapeutic Use". Proceedings published in 1963.

    2.3.1961 Debate on second reading of the suicide bill - "the law of England and Wales is almost alone in treating suicide and attempted suicide as criminal offences... they are not criminal offences under the law of Scotland; and ... in the other countries of Western Europe they are regarded as constituting essentially a psychiatric problem". See Suicide Act

    April 1961: Official opening of Balderton Subnormality Hospital by Enoch Powell. [See policy]

    4.5.1961 to 24.5.1961 An exhibition "Bristol in the evolution of mental health. 1696-1961" at the Royal West of England Academy - "the first of its kind and scope to be held in Great Britain".

  • Sharples Gallery: A general survey of the history of mental health

  • Winterstoke Gallery: The Bristol Hospitals and Institutions and their associations. Mental nursing.

  • Gallery 3: Art and the Psychiatric Patient. Creative Activity in the Aged.

  • Gallery 4: Techniques of investigation and treatment. Architecture.

  • Gallery 5: Mental subnormality. Bristol Local Authority Services.

    See asylums index - Bristol index - The exhibition introduction is signed "R.E. Hemphill", who was the Medical Superintendent of the (new) Barrow Hospital. The catalogued exhibits for the "Glenside/Barrow Hospital Group" (pages 36 to 43) show some relation to the Glenside Hospital Museum exhibits.
  • August 1961 Fourth World Federation for Mental Health congress held Paris.

    21.8.1961 to 26.8.1961 5th International Congress for Psychotherapy held in Vienna (Austria) with the theme "Psychotherapy and clinical medicine".

    3.8.1961 Royal Assent for the Suicide Act (England and Wales)
    section one "Suicide to cease to be a crime. The rule of law whereby it is a crime for a person to commit suicide is hereby abrogated." See suicide

    27.11.1961 Thalidomide was withdrawn in Germany, but continued to be used in other countries. By the end of July 1962 (eight months later) there was an abrupt end to the epidemic of limb and ear malformations in Germany. Other countries had to wait until eight months after Thalidomide was withdrawn. About 40 per cent of thalidomide victims died before their first birthday. (Dr Widukind Lenz 1992). Withdrawn UK 2.12.1961 [See Patients Association], Canada was one of the last countries to withdraw it (2.3.1962). In Japan it was finally withdrawn in September 1962.

    International Bureau for
Epilepsy 1961 International Bureau for Epilepsy founded. It was run from the British Epilepsy Association's London head office for the next 12 years.
    International Bureau for
Epilepsy 2015 The logo is still basically the same. See website.

    In 1961 BBC Lifeline included programmes on Epilepsy "The sacred disease" (an electrical storm in the brain which still carries stigma and fears) - the problems of an autistic child, called "Schizophrenia in children" - and several programmes on the unconscious, especially as uncovered by hypnosis, including a woman who "meets and talks in the studio to people who exist only in her own mind" -

    1962 survivors' history

    January 1962: The Hospital Plan

    Envisaged:

    cutting mental illness beds from 151,899 (in 1960) to 99,090 by 1975

    increasing mental handicap beds from 59,840 (in 1960) to 63,620 by 1975

    a "considerable" increase in psychiatric units in general hospitals - for short stay (three months or less) patients (outlined in circular HM(61)25)

    even greater reductions in the number of mental illness beds with alternative community provision.

    closure of thirteen of the existing 109 mental illness hospitals with 400 or more beds by 1975

    possible closure of another nine of the large hospitals after 1975

    leaving 87 to continue indefinitely. Most long term care would be in these old hospitals. The size of most would be reduced, but 25 would still have 1,000 or more beds by 1975.

    Oxford region planned wards for medium or long stay patients near District General Hospitals

    Sheffield Region planned to build Crookhill Hall, a "new psychiatric hospital at Conisbrough" (in the countryside outside Doncaster) for 420 patients and, later, "a long-stay psychiatric hospital at Sheffield", as well as (eventually) closing three of its nine large hospitals. [It changed its mind on Crookhill Hall (Hansard 1.3.1965)]

    1962 Paddington Clinic and Day Hospital established in Harrow Road. Its initial parts were 1) A child guidance clinic with an established history - 2) A newly founded day hospital (Paddington Day Hospital) involved in rehabilitating patients from Horton. A department for adult out-patients joined in 1965. In the early 1960s, Basil Gregory introduced a therapeutic community approach. In 1965 he brought in staff from Henderson. - See 1972. In 1974 the building was renamed the Paddington Centre for Psychotherapy. See Baron 1987 and Spandler 2006

    1962 Mental Hospitals at Work published

    1962 Living with Mental Illness. A study in East London by Enid Mills published

    26.9.1962 to 28.9.1962 Third British Congress on the History of Medicine and Pharmacy. The papers for this were published as The Evolution of Hospitals in Britain, edited by F. N. L. Poynter, Librarian, The Wellcome Historical Medical Library, in 1964. The paper on "Mental Hospitals", by Alexander Walk, M.D., D.P.M., "late Physician Superintendent, Cane Hill Hospital, Coulsden" has been made available by Jeremy Jones at
    http://jeremyjones.0catch.com/EVOLUTMH.DOC
    -

    In 1962 BBC Lifeline included three programmes on "Children under stress"

    1963 survivors' history

    1963 Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine's Three Hundred Years of Psychiatry 1535-1860 "This book is...an endeavour to present original sources and through them trace clinical and pathological observations, nosologies, theories and therapies, and the care of the insane as well as social and legal attitudes to mental illness" (pp ix-x). Over 1,000 pages of documents, scrupulously indexed, each with a detailed historical introduction. Richard Hunter and his mother provided foundations for every other historian to build on. History subsequent to 1860 was covered, in a different way, by Psychiatry for the Poor in 1974

    1963 UNAFAM (Union des Amis et Familles de Malades Psychiques) [Association of friends and families of the mentally ill] formed in France

    1963 The Patients Association formed in the UK, by Helen Hodgson, a part-time teacher who was moved to do so by "reports on thalidomide babies, wrong patient operations and tests on patients." (A letter from Helen Hodgson in the Sunday Times 25.11.1962, quoted by Alex Mold 2013 See Rights 1970 .

    1963 Second edition of David Stafford-Clark's Psychiatry Today published by Penguin, taking into account "important new techniques" developed in the "ten years" since first publication (1952).

    The main change in the treatments section since 1952 is the new prominence for drug treatment. The drugs discussed (not indexed) are

  • meprobamate and derivatives (the "most successful" tranquillisers) - new
  • chlorpromazine and derivatives, which, used with electrical treatment, "have virtually replaced deep insulin treatment" in the treatment of schizophrenia - new
  • amphetamine and derivatives (the "symptomatic anti-depressant preparations" - also in the 1952 edition.
  • monoamine oxidise inhibitors and imipramine and derivatives (the "basic anti-depressant medicines") - new
  • antabuse - also in the 1952 edition.
  • April 1963: Health and Welfare [The community care equivalent to the Hospital Plan.

    June 1963 Mental Health Film Council founded (see above) "following a meeting called by the National Association of Mental Health to bring together "representatives of organisations involved in the use or distribution of mental health films". The First Chairman was Kenneth Robinson MP. Became Mental Health Media, charity 286467 on 11.3.1983. First Mental Health Media awards 1994. National Headlines 1998 , Launched Media Bureau in 2002. Removed from register 1.1.2010., but probably continued as part of Mind. website history (archive) - First website archive 20.5.2000

    4.9.1963 Death of Lord Fevershem. He had been the chairman of the National Association for Mental Health since it started. He was succeeded by Robin (Lord) Balniel (Conservative MP). "While we could call on his support from the right we could also look to Kenneth Robinson on the left" (Mary Applebey 1976)

    "Because general paresis is now so easily treatable by neurologists, it is a pleasure to omit the whole chapter relating to it from the present edition. We look forward to seeing how an efficient physical treatment such as penicillin can put an end to a disease which caused so much mental illness and so much misery for generation after generation. We are sure that this pattern will be repeated again and again, as more and more mental disorders become simply and easily treated by medical methods" (Sargant and Slater 1963), page ix

    1964 survivors' history

    1964 Alexander Walk wrote in his The Evolution of Hospitals in Britain "we owe a great deal to the scholarly work in this field in recent years of Drs Kathleen Jones, Richard Hunter and Denis Leigh. They will forgive me if now and again I differ from their conclusions."

    Manchester Mental Health Department opened Victoria Park Day Centre in Daisy Bank Road Manchester in 1964 - Forrester House, for women, in 1965 - and Plymouth House, for men, in 1966.

    "It seems to me that 1964 marked the beginning of a mood of disillusion. It was then that the Church of Scientology saw fit to attack psychiatry in general and the NAMH in particular. That they were not synonymous was the first misapprehension. That if the NAMH platform was secured psychiatry would be routed was another" (Mary Applebey 1976) [I have not found anything to explain 1964 as the start. The date may be an error]

    April 1964 What's Wrong with Hospitals?, a Penguin special by Gerda L. Cohen (200 pages at 3/6d) included
  • The patient's long, long day
  • Whose rules?
  • Children in hospital
  • At life's beginning
  • Evironment
  • Caring for the mentally ill
    [Debit and credit]
  • At life's ending
  • 24.8.1964 to 29.8.1964 August: 6th International Congress for Psychotherapy held in London, with the theme "New development in psychotherapy"

    15.10.1964 Labour Government

    1965 survivors' history

    1965 Report of the Board of Enquiry into Scientology by Kevin Victor Anderson, Q.C. published by the State of Victoria, Australia [See Scientology] "From time to time attempts were made by the scientology interests to widen the scope of the Inquiry into a general investigation of the medical profession, or more particularly the practices of psychiatry and psychology," (Chapter one)

    Saturday 5.6.1965 Mary Barnes first visit to Kingsley Hall led to her becoming the first (and last to leave) resident in the new asylum.

    4.11.1965? First Man Alive on BBC Televison. People sometimes allowed to speak openly about taboo subjects such as agoraphobia - phobias - suicide

    1966 survivors' history

    1966 First edition of the journal Social Psychiatry published. It later called itself Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. (website)

    1966 statistics
    In 1966 there were 107 mental illness and 66 mental handicap "hospitals and units with 200 or more beds". (Hospital Statistics 1975, pp 5+7).

    In 1966
    Borocourt Subnormality Hospital was a well equipped one. Few subnormality hospitals had anything but Victorian type institutional wards, but the largest Borocourt one had only 30 beds. In the late 1960s Oxford Regional Health Authority spent 1.25 million pounds at Borocourt on nine completely new wards, upgrading old wards and building a school, a gymnasium and a workshop.

    The Mental Health Association of Ireland began in 1966, with this logo. It kept the logo when it became Mental Health Ireland. But, in 2008, it decided the logo must change. The World Federation for Mental Health held is congress in Dublin in 1995.

    1966 Trends in Psychogeriatric Care published by Political and Economic Planning. First published as Planning, 32, no 497. Prepared by Frederick Morris Martin (1923-1985) 31 pages. This was reviewed by D.M. Bevington in the second issue of Sociology in May 1967 (volume 1 no. 2 p.214) offline. Martin became the Professor of Social Administration at the University of Glasgow in 1972 (to his death).

    12.1.1966 BBC Man Alive programme "The Frightened Ones" about agrophobia, in "which victims talk about their illness and a doctor and a psychiatrist discuss what can be done for them".

    7.2.1966 UK House of Commons: Lord Balniel asked the Minister of Health whether he will initiate an inquiry into the scope and practice in this country of so- called Scientology, and the practice of psychology for fee or reward by persons who have no medical or psychological qualifications. Kenneth Robinson replied "No, Sir.". Balniel: "Would not the right hon. Gentleman agree that the commercial practice of psychology by unqualified persons could be very dangerous indeed for certain mentally disordered people? In view of the scathing criticism by an official board of inquiry in Australia into the so-called practice of Scientology, surely the right hon. Gentleman considers that it is in the public interest to hold a similar type of inquiry in this country?". Robinson: "I am prepared to consider any demand for an inquiry, but I have not had one yet. I am aware that extravagant claims are made on behalf of Scientology, which are not generally accepted, and for my part I would advise anyone who is considering a course of this kind to go to his doctor first."

    11.2.1966 Ron Hubbard established a "Committee for Sane Psychiatry" under the direction of Fred Hare, Executive Secretary Communicator [World Wide?] of the Hubbard Communications Office. It would bring attention to "the brutal treatment and sex orgies in institutions and drive psychiatry into accepting lawful regulation by Parliament and Congress". "Case histories of brutal savage treatment are to be collected and the lurid nature of 'treatment' is to be fully documented".

    5.6.1966 Mental Health Week
    The Observer Colour Supplement began a three part coverage on changing attitudes to madness down the centuries. The third part was John Gale's personal account. As it became acceptable for professional writers who had been mental patients to describe the experience in print, so some people's minds turned to the possibilities of listening to patients in mental hospitals.

    1967 Declaration of a summer of love

    Stanley Solomon Segal, Headmaster, Franklin Delano Roosevelt School, London. No child is ineducable - Special Education - Provision and Trends Commonwealth and International Library. Pergamon Educational Guides. 332 pages.

    3.5.1967 Man Alive programme "Living with Fear" talked to "some of the half million people in Britain who suffer from apparently illogical phobias - including fear of birds, dogs, visitors and leaves."

    24.5.1967 Man Alive programme "A case of suicide" looked at "how people who commit suicide might have been helped to stay alive by those near them and those who have had to live with the suicide of someone near to them."

    21.10.1967 and 21.10.1967 Lacanian study days on childhood psychosis in the Maison de la Chimie (a scientific conference centre) in Paris, organised by Maud Mannoni. The conference brought French and English theorists together as it was attended by Ronald Laing, David Cooper and Donald Winnicott. (See France)

    1967-1972 HOSPITAL SCANDALS:

    The 1960s concentrated attention and resources on the treatment of short term mental illness. There was a corresponding neglect of long-stay patients, along with a failure to implement the community care side of the new policies. The scandals of the late 1960s and 1970s shone a light on the consequences.

    1967 Sans-Everything - A Case to Answer
    July 1968
    Report of Government Inquiry into the Sans Everything allegations

    Sans-Everything was a collection of articles edited by Mrs Barbara Robb that dealt with the condition of elderly residents in institutions. It included accounts of individual cases of ill-treatment in psychiatric and geriatric care. The official report into its allegations substantiated many of them.

    The establishment in 1972 of a Health Service Commissioner ("Ombudsman") to investigate complaints of individual ill-treatment, followed suggestion made by Professor Abel-Smith in Sans-Everything


    July 1967: Allegations of misconduct at Ely
    26.2.1968 Shelton Hospital Fire
    December 1968 Police investigate Farleigh Hospital
    March 1969 Ely Hospital Inquiry Report
    June 1970 Farleigh Hospital Inquiry appointed
    November 1970 Farleigh Hospital Inquiry Report signed
    February 1971 Whittingham Hospital Inquiry appointed
    April 1971 Farleigh Hospital Inquiry Report presented
    October 1971 Whittingham Hospital Inquiry Report signed
    February 1972 Whittingham Hospital Inquiry Report published
    5.7.1972 Fire at Coldharbour

    The light shone into mental subnormality (handicap) hospitals with the publication of official reports into Ely Hospital, Cardiff, in 1969; Farleigh Hospital, Somerset and Coldharbour Hospital, Sherbourne, Dorset, in 1971.

    Richard Crossman, Secretary of State at the time, responded to Ely as a personal challenge. He launched a programme of additional resources to the mental handicap hospitals, established (November 1969) a Hospital Advisory Service to visit hospitals - especially long-stay ones - and advise him on their condition, and started a re-appraisal of plans that eventually surfaced as the white paper Better Services for the Mentally Handicapped

    The National Association for Mental Health (1969/1970 Annual Report) had a "perverse" regret that there had not been a scandal on the same scale as Ely in a hospital for the mentally ill whilst Crossman was Minister, to stimulate an "accelerated re-appraisal of their needs and progress". It was coming, but by the time the Whittingham Inquiry reported the government had already announced its intention to scrap the old asylums and replace them by "comprehensive psychiatric services" in each district.

    1974 - 1976 TREATMENT AS PUNISHEMENT SCANDAL

    April 1974 The St Augustine's Hospital critique

    1976: A COMMUNITY SCANDAL

    1976 Birmingham scandal

    1981 HOSPITAL SCANDALS:

    1981 Silent Minority

     

    1968 survivors' history

    1968 Fifth World Federation for Mental Health congress held in London

    1968 Questions and Answers on Mental Nursing for Pupil Nurses by John Michael Andrews, Principle Tutor, Claybury Hospital. Edward Arnold:

    "Question: Name some physical methods of treatment for mental disorder".

    "Answer: Drugs - electroplexy (electro-convulsive therapy, ECT) - pre-frontal leucotomy and other cerebral surgery - prolonged narcosis - modified insulin therapy - deep insulin coma therapy (rare now) - hydrotherapy - occupational and industrial therapy".

    Insulin treatment is not even mentioned in Insight - A Guide to Psychiatry and the Psychiatric Services in 1973.

    25.7.1968 Statement by Kenneth Robinson of steps to protect the United Kingdom public from the "pseudo-philosophical cult" of Scientology, described by its founder as "the world's largest mental health organisation".

    The monthly Scientology newspaper Freedom started as a response to this. The first edition was a "single flat sheet".

    August 1968 The first edition of Time Out gave a prominant position to
    "Art and Mental Health: an exhibition of paintings, clay models and ceramics by psychiatric and subnormal patients and maladjusted children"
    Edward Adamson wrote "Art and Mental Health" for the catalogue of the exhibition.

    1969 survivors' history

    23.8.1969 Miss Janet F. Henderson of Craigiemichael, Innellan, Argyll, argued in a letter in TheTimes that

    "There is no mystery about the cause of any deteriioration of conditions in any British mental hospital. In 1948 the progress toward better attitudes and circumstances was suddenly brought to a stop by the loss of the work of His Majesty's Commissioners in Lunacy. Their wide and intimate knowledge of each of these institutions throughout the country was available everywhere as expert advice, their criticism a powerful stimuls to improvement.

    Their visits were always unannounced so that any attempt to cover up deficiencies was forestalled. (notices of patients' rights to complain viva voce or by writing to these Commissioners were posted up permanently in every ward.) All this wise protection was lost to patients when they were given over to the care of committees Management and Regional who, however well-intentioned, had all to often no practical experience of this pecuiarly difficult and complex hospitalisation, especially that involving realationships betwen patients and staff.

    I cannot see any hope for improvement unless Mr Crossman restores promptly a similar peripatetic expert body"

    The quality control functions of the Board of Control (previously Lunacy Commission) had been assumed by the Management Committees of the National Health Service. Its civil liberties functions had continued to 1959. The Hospital Advisory Service (1969) could be seen as reinstating independence for quality control advice and the Mental Health Act Commission (1983) as reinstating central civil liberties functions.

    November 1969 Establishment of the Hospital Advisory Service, an independent arm of the Department of Health that advised the Secretary of State on the quality of care in hospitals - especially those for long-stay patients. In its first report (external link) (archive) it said its visits concentrated on hospitals for the mentally handicapped and the mentally ill, for geriatric and chronically ill patients. The main problem was a lack of co-ordination between hospital and community social service departments.

    The National Association for Mental Health welcomed the Hospital Advisory Service but "still feels strongly... that there should be an independent inspectorate of hospitals, publishing report of its investigations and answering to the Lord Chancellor, rather than to the Department of Health and Social Security. (Annual Report 1969/1970 p.9)

    In 1976 the Hospital Advisory Service became the Health Advisory Service, so that its reviews would cover community as well as hospital services.

    Local hospitals for everyone -
    Out with the distant asylum

    Sir Keith Joseph's 1971-1972 Memorandum proposals for the replacement of mental illness hospitals by comprehensive local services.

    In the late 1960s Hospital Boards were informed of a change in government thinking. Instead of just acute, short stay, psychiatric units, they were asked to provide a comprehensive service for all patients at District General Hospitals (Ham, C. 1981 p. 129). This changed thinking was incorporated into Hospital Services for the Mentally Ill in December 1971.

    Fluphenazine (Modecate). The first long-acting anti-psychotic phenothazine was tested at All Saints Hospital, Birmingham in 1969. By one injection every few weeks it was now possible to ensure people were medicated even whilst living outside hospital. Patients needed to be readmitted only if they refused their injection. If a patient did not keep an appointment at the "Modecate clinic", a psychiatric community nurse would visit to see what was happening.

    Scientologists and the National Association for Mental Health 1969- 1970

    "In 1969, the Scientologists branded orthodox psychiatry as a system of murder, sexual perversion and monstrous cruelty, and the NAMH as a criminally motivated 'psychiatric front group'. In October 1969, a number of Scientologists applied for membership of the Association, and it became apparent that they were trying to take over. Their membership was withdrawn and, after a court case, the matter was resolved in the Association's favour."

    12.11.1969 The National Association for Mental Health was unable to hold its Annual General Meeting due to an injunction secured by eight Scintologists who had been requested to resign. Legal and other proceedings meant the Annual General Meeting did not take place until 3.7.1970 when "Lord Balniel" stepped down as Chairman in favour of the Chaiman elect, Christopher Mayhew.

    "Mary Applebey, who was director from 1951 to 1974, said ... in a speech for Mind's 30th birthday in November 1976, "Scientology represented in an exaggerated form one aspect of disillusionment with the official mental health line"".


    4.7.1969 International Times became "Insanity Times" for an issue that featured Georg Groddeck arriving by space craft, Michael Barnett from the "operations room" of "People for a New Psychiatry", Ron Hubbard on Dianetics, Ronald Laing in an interview that begins with meditation and ends with a plot to infiltrate the police to change society, and "Alan" on his experinece of depression and Horton hospital. People for a New Psychiatry became People Not Psychiatry.


    1970 survivors' history

    - 1970 In Italy, Franco Basaglia moved to Trieste.

    1970 Les murs de l'asile (The walls of the asylum), a 90 page pamphlet by Roger Gentis, Series: Cahiers libres; 163. Paris: Maspero,
    "The asylum is a mosaic of small fiefs, a conglomerate of feudal entities. This is so stupid and so bad that everyone feels alone in the world, and the first guy that you trust. a semblance of authority, he believes that it happened and now he begins to govern, to legislate and annoy the neighbours .... You can have 100 houses in a hospital, you will get 100 baronies, not one less and the head of the pavilion, on a war footing and mocking the neighbouring house ... Silence, routine, immobility is the currency of asylum, it is gently eternity ... Chronicity, institutionalisation, must be measured in weight, inertia"

    It is not enough to close the buildings, if we do not change society "we will quickly re-create the asylum elsewhere "family or any hospital in the world or the private sector if it pays enough or in the community as the English say"

    A Declaration of Human Rights for Mental Patients.

    Proposed by the Church of Scientology, January 1970

    A No person, man, woman or child, may be denied his or her personal liberty by reason of an mental illness or deficiency, so called, without a fair jury trial by laymen and with proper legal representation. This to be supplied by Lagal aid if such is available and required.

    B If properly committed in a fair jury trial by layman, and with proper legal representation, a mental patient has the following necessary right and may not be deprived of any civil, political, personal or property rights without the process of law.

    B consisted of a list of twenty five rights, followed by a concluding statement about them.

    The Schizophrenia Association of Great Britain (SAGB) was started by Bill and Gwynneth Hemmings in 1970 (Archive of home page). It closed on 15.6.2007 (Archive of closure notice)

    9.5.1970 Times article "A Case of Schizophrenia, by a Correspondent", written by journalist John Pringle about his son. - History on Politics website - Led to formation of National Schizophrenia Fellowship - See The Early Years

    June 1970 Conservative Government
    From being a Labour Minister, David Ennals became the first Campaign Director of the National Association for Mental Health in August. The campaign was called the Mind Campaign and I collected this 1969/1970 Report at its 1971 "Crack Up" exhibition. It includes "Scientologists and the NAMH 1969-70" - "Protecting patient's rights" and - "Crisis over handicap"

    July 1970 Meeting at the Henderson that initiated the Therapeutic Community Round Table. It met at Ingrebourne in October 1970. It also met at Halliwick. This was followed by the Association of Therapeutic Communities (website). Principle founders of the Association were Drs Whiteley, Robert Hinshelwood (Marlborough Day Hospital) and Nick P. Manning. ATC Newsletter Number 2 (the first distributed) was published in June 1972. An ATC Research Group first reported in the Newsletter in 1974. (Millard, D.W. Summer 2008). The Association met at Paddington Day Hospital in 1975. In Spring 1981, launched the International Journal of Therapeutic Communities, which became Therapeutic Communities - ( bibliography project - website)

    Patients' rights

    In January 1970, the Church of Scientology proposed "a declaration of human rights for mental patients". During 1970, the Patients Association intensified a campaign for informed consent before patients were used for teaching purposes. The National Association for Mental Heal and the National Council for Civil Liberties (jointly) began a three year experimental project providing lay help and guidance to patients appealing against detention. The NAMH expressed concern about the lack of control over medical treatment given to formally detained patients without consent. (see 1983 Mental Health Act) It thought it was important to make a distinction between reversible and irreversible decisions. Efforts were made to bring professional associations, unions and other organisations together to discuss a "codes of practice" for nursing in subnormality and psychiatric hospitals.

    The NAMH welcomed the Hospital Advisory Service (November 1969), but wanted something answerable to the Lord Chancellor. The Scientologists argued that the government would have been better advised to establish legal rights based on a jury trial with legal representation before someone could be committed and legally enforceable rights for patients who were detained.

    1971 survivors' history

    1971 Science Time Line

    1971 Statistics
    In 1971 St Lawrences had 1,850 patients from all over London - mostly mentally handicapped - from young children to men and women who had grown old in the institution. (See 1870 and 1981)

    1971 Implementation of 1970 Local Authority Social Services Act and establishment of new Social Services Departments

    Royal College of Psychiatrists the new name for the Medico-Psychological Association

    In the 1960s the British Consumers Association broke taboos with its Consumers Guide to Contraceptives. In 1971 it broke another taboo by making mental health a consumer issue, publishing Treatment and Care in Mental Illness

    In April 1971 Local Education Authorities became responsible for the education of all mentally handicapped children, however severe their handicap, under the 1970 Education (Handicapped Children) Act. As a result of the Act some level of education had to be provided for every child from five to fifteen years old. As well as providing education for the children, this meant that parents of severely handicapped children were relieved of their care during the day. The Jay Report in 1979 thought this had had such an impact on the lives of families with severely handicapped children as to partly explain why far fewer children went into residential care in the 1970s.

    Better Services White Papers
    There were two Better Services White Papers. The one on Mental Handicap in 1971, and one on
    mental illness in 1975.

    June 1971: Better Services for the Mentally Handicapped
    This White Paper proposed a U-turn in public policy - a pronounced shift in the balance of provision away from hospitals towards non-medical services in the community. Better Services for the Mentally Handicapped took the unprecedented step of setting targets for the number of places in hostels, schools and training centres that local councils would need to supply if the new policy was to be successful.

    Campaign for Mentally Handicapped People

    The White Paper fell short of what members of Crossman's working group desired. One of them, Peter Townsend, published his disagreements in the Sunday Times on 27.6.1971, the week after the paper was published. He believed the hospitals should have been phased out altogether and that the proposed 25 bed hostels for those who left hospital were:

    "a system of minor isolated barracks put up by local authorities in pale imitation of the larger Victorian barracks which are at present run by the hospital authorities"

    Townsend wanted mentally handicapped people to live in small houses resembling private housing. A similar position was taken by the Campaign for Mentally Handicapped People (CMH), a group started in 1971 in the belief that people with a mental handicap:

  • had a right to live lives as close as possible to those of other people

  • should participate as much as possible in the decisions that affect their lives

  • should use the same services as everyone else

    This policy of normalising the lives of disadvantaged and stigmatised groups has since been called normalisation. It is the converse of the Social Darwinist policy of segregation. Social theory, though not social reality, had turned full circle

    Scottish mental patients unite See London
    26.7.1971 "Petition for the Redress of Grievances put forward by the patients in Hartwood Hospital, Shotts Lanarkshire". The signatories to which are counted as the founding members of SUMP (Scottish Union of Mental Patients) formed by Tommy Ritchie and others. This was the first "union" of psychiatric patients in the United Kingdom that I know of.
    Associations of psychiatric patients under other names are older. See
    1845 - 28.5.1963

    2.8.1971 Lawrence Andrews (40) was sentenced at the Old Bailey to three years on each of ten counts of indecently assaulting educationally subnormal boys (aged between 15 and 20) under his supervision when deputy- warden of the National Association for Mental Health's Fairhaven Community Home in Blackheath from 1969 to 1970. Freedom (Scientology journal) highlighted the case as evidence that "the NAMH is no fit body to supervise young people"... "the NAMH wanted to sweep ... scandals under the carpet at a time when it is embarking on a vast public fund raising campaign (Freedom September/October 1971 pages 1-2)

    The changing image of the National Association for Mental Health, which had appointed David Ennals as its first Campaigns Director in 1969. Mind and the Mind Archive have used this poster (1971?) as the symbol of the change, which took a few years. The Association became MIND in 1972. The Mind Capaign lasted three years, culminating in 1973
    The
    Mind archive includes the "original 1971 fundraising booklet. The focus is on the effect mental health issues can have on people of all ages... It is the campaign's personal appeal that makes it so successful, the images of people look like anyone that a 1970s reader could know, a neighbour, a brother or a friend. As the campaign text urging donations says: 'your family may be the next in need'".

    The scientologists depicted David Ennals, Mary Applebey and Christopher Mayhew as manipulating images to fund a lavish life-style (Freedom September/October 1971, page 3.)

    19.10.1971 2pm Andrew Roberts visited the MIND CAMPAIGN Exhibition "CRACK UP" held in a large bell tent in the court yard of St Martin's in the Fields, and took extensive notes. I spoke to David Ennals, John Paine, and Mary Appleby. John Paine told me about NAMH press cuttings files kept by Mrs Ryan who worked Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. I contacted her and later spent a lot of time in NAMH offices reading these files.

    filmed demented: 19.10.1971 Mary Applebey, NAMH Director, told me about the problems getting Hurt Mind broadcast in 1957. She commented that "last week a patient was filmed who was frankly demented".

    December 1971: Hospital Services for the Mentally Ill
    This stated that the development of psychiatric methods, and increase in psychiatric units, had brought things to a point where it was thought possible:
      to accelerate developments...towards the eventual replacement of the large separate mental hospitals by a service based on general hospitals"

    People go into hospital ... and they are cured

    "Psychiatry is to join the rest of medicine... the treatment of psychosis, neurosis and schizophrenia have been entirely changed by the drug revolution. People go into hospital with mental disorders and they are cured, and that is why we want to bring this branch of medicine into the scope of the 230 district general hospitals that are planned for England and Wales"

    This statement is credited to Keith Joseph by Kathleen Jones. It is not in Hansard for 7.12.1971, as referenced, and (in the 1980s) Keith Joseph could not recall saying it (which is not surprising). It may have been taken from a newspaper report.

    Friday 24.12.1971 "Christmas Day in the Nuthouse" edition of Time Out (guide to London events) gave a detailed preview of Family Life, along with other material, in a nine page feature by Neil Lyndon. Included photograph of a wall with the slogan "PSYCHIATRY KILLS".

    1972 "touchy-feely"
    survivors' history

    Kathleen Jones' A History of the Mental Health Services. See 1955 and 1960

    William Ll. Parry Jones: The Trade in Lunacy. A Study of Private Madhouses in England in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Good reading for anyone who wants to know about the range of private houses: good and bad, rich and poor etc. I use this regularly for the asylums index

    13.1.1972 The film Family Life told a story of Janice who, as a consequence of family conflict, received two types of psychiatric treatment. Group therapy helped her, but drugs and electroconvulsive therapy broke her spirit. The film (and the television play that preceded it) dramatised the theories of Ronald Laing and David Cooper. The Paddington Day Hospital Protest involved Family Life in its campaigning.

    This way to previous scandals   previous scandals
    THE WHITTINGHAM HOSPITAL REPORT.

    February 1972: Whittingham Hospital, just outside Preston in Lancashire, had 3,200 beds in 1953 and 2,045 in 1971. It was one of England's largest mental hospitals, though shrinking as active psychiatry was moved to District General Hospitals in Preston. Allegations of ill-treatment and the conviction of a male nurse for the manslaughter of a patient, led to an inquiry, which reported that for many of Whittingham's patients "the therapeutic revolution of the 1950s" never happened. Almost half had no occupation during the day, but sat around "becoming cabbages". On one ward, 126 patients were cared for by just six nurses. Doctors did not visit long stay wards, but concentrated on acute work and their work outside the hospital. The inquiry conclude that the English mental health system was dividing into "well staffed 'acute' units and 'long stay dumps'".

    This way to the next scandal   next scandal

    Patients join protest

    The establishment of Psychiatric Units in General Hospitals was also squeezing out community therapy. Community therapy aimed to develop patient self-determination. It was perhaps, not surprising, that squeezing led to patients taking part in the protest. See 30.11.1971 - 10.12.1971

    3.3.1972: "800 people crowded into a meeting at Sidney Webb college on 3rd March to discuss the threatened closure of the Paddington Day Clinic, a therapeutic community. The opening of a psychiatric unit in a nearby general hospital has been given by the Regional Hospital Board as the reason for making the hospital redundant. The patients and staff of the P.D.H. have formed a protest group to oppose this proposal because they feel the work done in this hospital is concerned with increasing the individuals awareness of the problem rather than blotting out the symptoms it may produce". First paragraph of an article signed by Nicky Road, Anna Chadwick and Keith Venables in Politics of Psychology Newsletter 12.3.1972

     

    26.3.1972 Sunday Times "Brain surgery on mental patients is now causing strong public controversy in America. Dr Peter Breggin, a Washington psychiatrist, says a second wave of psychosurgery is gaining momentum around the world. Oliver Gillie reports some disturbing features of this surgery as it is practised under the National Health Service in several hospitals in Britain" - "Every year more than 200 mental patients in Britain have brain operations to blunt their emotions".

    Easter Sunday 2.4.1972 Rose Nuttall on Radio 4 "The World this Weekend" "After fourteen years of a severe depressive illness, coupled with anxiety and five years spent in and out of hospital of ECT, psychotherapy and drugs, I finally had a COMPLETE cure following a prefrontal leucotomy... sixteen years ago". Rose's story was told alongside that of "the wife of a man whose operation had failed" [Letter MPU files]

    6.5.1972 A letter in the British Medical Journal, from Drs. S. E. Browne and N. L. Short of Dartford in Kent, stated that many GPs valued the services of "psychotherapeutic units such as the Ingrebourne Centre and the Cassel Hospital when orthodox psychiatry using physical methods of treatment has completely failed to be of assistance" and expressed concern that present "plans for basing psychiatry in district general hospitals may not only fail to provide more badly needed facilities for group psychotherapy, but . . . lead to the closure of existing centres."

    July 1972: National Schizophrenia Society founded by (amongst others) relatives of people with schizophrenia. It became the National Schizophrenia Fellowship in January 1974. - See 1975 - October 1979 - February 1980 - March 1982 - 9.4.1982 - Judy Weleminsky - National Voices Forum - opinions 1988/1989 - The fellowship's web archive dates from 11.11.1998 - See 23.2.2000 - In July 2002 the fellowship changed its name to Rethink - Present website - archive

    Schizophrenia Ireland was founded in 1975. National Schizophrenia Fellowship (Scotland) was founded in 1984.

    24.9.1972 Sunday Times article "Our Thalidomide Children: A Cause for National Shame" footnoted that it would trace how the tragedy occurred in a future article. It was restrained from doing so by contempt of court proceedings. (See European Court Judgement 26.4.1979)

    October 1972: Services for Mental Illness Related to Old Age

    November 1972 The place to go in London for encounter groups, and similar alternative therapies, was called Hole in the Wall. About November 1972, Ken Smith set up an unusual therapy there called "foot massage"

    Mental patients unite in London See Scotland - Manchester
    December 1972: A group of people in the London area produced a pamphlet on
    The Need for a Mental Patients' Union arguing that "psychiatry is one of the most subtle methods of repression in advanced Capitalist society". This was circulated to psychiatric hospitals and various places where ex-patients were likely to congregate, together with notices of a meeting to be held during March 1973 to discuss the formation of a union.

    1973 survivors' history

    The Future

    "The National Health Service is only 25 years old and the Mental Health Act that gives a legal basis to our services was only passed in 1959... pressure from voluntary association like the National Association for Mental Health and the National Society for Mentally Handicapped Children has brought about promises for further reforms... Once successful treatments are proven, the stigma of mental disorder will wither away. Like tuberculosis, mental disorder will cease to be surrounded by an aura of mystery and dread... we need public interest in our work. Public attitudes are at the root of all the difficulties of psychiatric practice... Only patients and relatives can tell us what they need at particular times during the progress of an illness... it is patients themselves who are the most likely people to influence future developments. Who better to advise how to make the struggle for sanity easier than the people who have been through the experience of modern madness and survived it?"

    Bill Kenny (Psychiatric Social Worker) and Tony Whitehead (Consultant Psychiatrist) in the final chapter (The Future) of Insight - A Guide to Psychiatry and the Psychiatric Services (1973). Library of Eric Irwin.

    MPU Wednesday 21.3.1973
    About 100 people attended a meeting at Paddington Day Hospital to discuss forming a mental patient's union (MPU). The majority were patients or ex-patients. Most lived in London, including people who had previously formed the Scottish Union of Mental Patients. People were present who had tried to form a Union in Oxford and a message was received from another group in Leeds. The MPU was formed with full membership reserved for patients and ex-patients.

    The large attendance was substantially due to an item on the Today programme in which Michael Sheils interviewed Andrew Roberts, one of the ex-patients involved. Today originally asked a social worker to speak. They were told that the speaker for the group would have to be a mental patient. We waited a few hours whilst they decided if they could risk this.

    A working party of some two dozen full members was formed and not long after set up office in a London squat. This nucleus was given the task of producing a statement of the union's intent and drafting a proposed organisational framework for MPU.

    "I have done many things in my life which I would not have been allowed to do if the people concerned had suspected I had mental symptoms. (Until recently, I kept them to myself). I think that many people could do a lot more if society let them, and that the more you can achieve, the healthier you will be."

    Villa 18B Shenley "My family do not visit me. The last time... was 1963. An ex-patient who lives locally visits another friend and me most Sundays."

    9.6.1973 British Medical Journal "Changing the Patient's Personality" discussion in "New Horizons in Medical Ethics" series. Problems related to "drug therapy and psychosurgery". (online)

    Autumn 1973 Out of Mind by David Ennals. An Arrow action special. London : Arrow Books. 96 pages : illustrated.

    "Mental illness is not only to be found in mental hospitals. Every year tens of thousands of ordinary people break down under the stress of everyday life and they and their families have to cope. These are the casualties of our society. But they are not a race apart."

    28.10.1973 to 3.11.1973 "MIND WEEK, the highlight of the MIND Campaign and te last in a series of three" (Mind Out Autumn 1973, p.3.

    21.11.1973 Mind AGM at the Royal Institute of British Architects. At the beginning of November, Mind had moved from 39 Queen Anne , W1M OAJ to (cheaper) accommodation at 22 Harley Street, W1N 2ED

    1973 World Federation for Mental Health 25th Anniversary Congress held Sydney, Australia with the theme "Cultures in Collision"

     
    Better Services in Harder Times:

    The end of sustained economic growth and Labour's shift in emphasis to positive community care in Better Services for the Mentally Ill (1975)

    Economic crisis and cuts: Community care policies from 1961 to 1972 assumed continuous economic growth, from which they would be financed. The Arab- Israeli war of October 1973, and the Arab oil embargo, signalled a long period of economic problems. The (Conservative) government responded with drastic cuts in health and welfare capital expenditure, and the cuts were continued and later increased by the subsequent Labour government.

    1974 survivors' history
    We are people first see America

    - 1974 Franco Basaglia and his colleagues founded "Psichiatria Democratica" as a loose association of professionals fighting for radical change in Italian psychiatry.

    28.2.1974 Labour Government. Christopher Price, Labour, (1932 - 2015) elected for Lewisham West. He served until June 1983. A critic of psychosurgery and electro-convulsive therapy, he facilitated the development of PROMPT. On 26.3.1974 he asked "how many fit psychiatric in-patients are at present being kept in hospital because of the shortage of hostel and other sheltered accommodation?". See 21.1.1976 and Frightening 1976 for ECT and psychosurgery - Links with PROMPT established by 1977 - 4.11.1977 - PROMPT Petition 1979 -

    28.2.1974 to 1.3.1974 Mind's Annual Conference , on the theme ""New Knowledge in Mental Health" held at Church House, Westminster.

    1974: Mind Report: Co-ordination or Chaos?

    Secure accommodation

    April 1974: Interim report of the Butler Committee. As a result of this, a network of Regional Psychiatric Secure Units was planned for England and Wales. (external link)

    By the 1970s, Broadmoor was seriously overcrowded. On a visit, I looked through a window and saw a sea of short haircuts so close that one could have walked across the room from one head to another. Partly to relieve this pressure, a new "Special Hospital", called Park Lane, was built on land next to Moss Side. The first 35 patients moved in in 1974.

    This way to previous scandals   previous scandals
    THE ST AUGUSTINE'S HOSPITAL CRITIQUE.

    April 1974 St Augustine's Hospital, Chartham Down, near Canterbury, Kent - A Critique Regarding Policy by Brian Ankers and Olleste Etsello

    "Drugs were given almost automatically to new admissions...ECT (Electroconvulsive therapy) was sometimes used as a punitive measure - although it was not openly admitted. I have heard the term 'punitive ECT' used in the hospital in reference to "that is what a patient needs". Some psychiatrists had a certain faith in ECT and at times patients were threatened with it" (page 14)

    This way to the next scandal   next scandal

    1974 Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine's Psychiatry for the Poor. 1851 Colney Hatch Asylum-Friern Hospital 1973. A medical and social history. continued their history of psychiatry in a completely different form. "in the story of this one hospital, Drs Hunter and MacAlpine have managed to encapsulate the whole history of psychiatric care for the masses between 1851 and 1973" (David Delvin, General Practitioner 7.11.1975). To my mind, the best book if you want to know "what asylums were like". To look at the asylum from the patient's point of view, you could read Tongue Tied by Joseph Deacon and A Mad People's History of Madness. For patients views on this site see Joan Hughes on Rubery Hill and Valerie Argent on Essex Hall and her friends in Hackney Hospital. There is also an outsider's view of Broadmoor.

    1975 survivors' history

    1975 Schizophrenia Association of Ireland launched. Later changed its name to Schizophrenia Ireland - old website - Changed its name to Shine-Supporting People Affected by Mental Ill Health on 20.1.2009 - new website - Phrenz groups are mutual support and social groups for people with mental ill health. May have begun in the early 2000s. Schizophrenia Ireland

    February 1975: Barbara Castle's Mencap speech. See below

    9.5.1975 to 10.5.1975 Mind's Annual Conference , originally advertised as "Can We Afford Mental Health?", altered (same content) to "Psychiatry and Alternative Support Systems" held at YMCA Central Club, WC1. Organiser John Barter (Mind Out 12.1975 p.16 - 2.1975 p.15 - 4.1975 p.12 survivors' history


    The Patients Protection Law Committee "was formed to ensure the protection of patients and to firmly establish their rights under law. It is mainly concerned with medical experimentation of an unethical or objectionable nature". Chairman: Alan Saint. Address 31 Brim Hill, N2 0HD [The home of Mrs Rita Bright, who became Secretary)]. Doctors [Andre] Khilkoff- Choubersky and T.S.G. Davies, and Mrs W.M. Baran were also Directors.

    24.5.1975 The Lancet Volume 305, Issue 7917, Page 1175 "Psychosurgery on Trial". Editorial said the Royal College of Psychiatrists "has drawn up a workable design and the question being asked is certainly important and unresolved in any country; the trial deserves support".

    Several Community Health Councils objected that there was not enough information about how patients would be protected and the Schizophrenia Association condemned the trial and advised its members "most strongly against psychosurgery"

    25.9.1975 Doctor. Weekly Newspaper for the Family Practitioner "Brain surgery plan causes a headache"

    September 1975 Patients Protection Law Committee first became aware of Royal College of Psychiatrists application to the Medical Research Council for £50,000 to assess the value of psychosurgery using a sample of 200 patients in British Hospitals, 2.10.1975 Letter of protest from Patients Protection Law Committee. See Joyce Butler petition February 1976.

    3.10.1975 London Evening News "Mental Guinea-Pigs for Surgeon's Knife"

    Undated note from Terry [Nash] at the National Council for Civil Liberties to MPU, forwarding a photocopy of BMJ discussion on ethics of psychosurgery - "MIND has refused to support (or comment on) The Patient's Protection Law Committee's campaign of opposition to psychosurgery due to professional pressure on them!"


    October 1975: Butler Committee Report and Better Services for the Mentally Ill

    The ninety one page White Paper Better Services for the Mentally Ill was nicknamed Castles in the Air by COPE when it was presented by Barbara Castle, the Secretary of State at the Department of Health and Social Security, in October 1975. It was long term strategic document, pointing out the general direction the Government wanted services to take, prefaced with a statement that little progress could be made until the economic situation improved.

    Its emphasis was on providing a comprehensive range of local services in place of asylums, before asylums closed:

    "... our main aim is not the closure or rundown of the mental illness hospitals as such; but rather to replace them with a local and better range of facilities. It will not normally be possible for a mental hospital to be closed until the full range of facilities described has been provided throughout its catchment area and has shown itself capable of providing for newly arising patients a comprehensive service independent of the mental hospital. Moreover, even then, it will not be possible to close the hospital until it is no longer required for the long stay patients admitted to its care before the local services came into operation" (par.11.5)

    A Directory of the Side Effects of Psychiatric Drugs (October 1975)

    31.10.1975 and 1.11.1975 Special Mind Conference on "Rights of patients and staff in the mental health services" held at Church House, Westminster. Organiser Kathy West (Mind Out 10.1975). Corresponding with the launch of A Human Condition

    The elements of community care before the 1980s included hospitals. The local psychiatric unit was considered part of the community. Community care was a package of local provision, distinct from the distant asylum care. During the 1980s, care in the community came to mean care outside hospital, as distinct from care in hospital. In the 1990s, support in the community moved towards meaning care outside hospitals, hostels or day centres. Notice, however, the development of secure units which substituted, in part, for the custodial provision in the old asylums.
    click for origin of the term community care
    This diagram, that I drew just before the change took place, shows the facilities provided by the National Health Services and Local Authorities that should be part of the community care packet. Underneath I drew a Bargain Basement which contained the possibility of alternative provision by the voluntary sector. In the 1980s and 1990s, the bargain basement grew and developed a private sector department.

    1976 survivors' history

    1976 Peak in mental hospital admissions (falling since)

    The actual numbers in hospital had been falling since 1954

    Between 1970 and 1975 the population of mental illness hospitals was reduced from 107,977 to 87,321. The population of mental handicap hospitals was reduced from 55,434 to 49,683 (In-Patient Statistics 1975, tables A8 and B10).

    The statistics were said to reflect the success of care in the community, but some argued that the fall had been achieved by discharging patients to families ill-equipped to cope with them, to private hotels that exploited them or, in some cases, onto the streets.

    Better Services for the Mentally Ill acknowledged that such things happened, and said:-

    "the public... cannot be expected to tolerate under the name of community care the discharge of chronic patients without... after-care... who perhaps spend their days wandering the streets or become an unbearable burden on the lives of their relatives... Such situations do not occur very frequently; but where they do, the whole concept of community care is placed at risk" (par.2.27)

    This way to the previous scandals   previous scandals
    THE BIRMINGHAM SCANDAL.

    On January 12th 1976, the Daily Mirror sensationally questioned the claim that discharge from hospital without inadequate care was infrequent. It ran a feature by John Pilger sub-headed:

    Dumped on the streets and in the slums -
    5000 people who need help

    Birmingham was headlined as

    The city of lost souls

    A West Midlands Health Official said the DHSS had "applied the screws" to mental hospitals to "decant" patients. Pilger commented that "to be decanted is to be dumped", if you have not got families or friends to take you. The Midlands organiser of MENCAP told him:

    "In a few years... you'll be able to see them dying in the streets"

    Pilger's report showed a seamier side to this policy. In Birmingham, an array of guest houses, hotels and boarding houses flourished on the trade in ex-patients. One landlady told Pilger:

    "We pick them off the streets or the hospital rings us up and says 'can you take a few?'"

    She had

    "a cupboard filled with... prescribed tablets... to keep them quiet".

    Although this was one of the better hotels, residents still sat all day

    "looking blankly at each other... or at the television" [or went] "to St Agnes's hall to stuff toys - 'occupational therapy'"

    In one of the worst establishments patients had been slept

    "nine in the attic some of them less than four feet from the ceiling" [and fed on "two slices of bread and dripping and a third of a sausage roll"

    A councillor reported seeing guests

    "with scabies and lice. They had dirty clothes and ten men had no vests and underpants"

    A Birmingham Social Services' spokesman said it was not uncommon to find "disturbed and frightened people" wandering about the railway station:

    "having just arrived with a travel warrant from hospitals as far afield as London and Scotland. The word seems to have got out that Birmingham has places that will take them."

    Hundreds were said to be "just wandering". The Salvation Army hostel said "up to 30%" of the people it took in "from the streets" were ex-patients. "The overwhelming majority" of those who queued "in the cold every night" outside a Catholic refuge were "psychiatric patients".

    Whose fault was it? According to Pilger, Birmingham Social Services blamed the hospitals and the hospitals blamed Social Services.

    This way to the next scandal   next scandal

    A debate in the House of Commons on better services for mentally ill people was moved for by the Conservative opposition in January 1976. Shortly before the debate, the shadow health minister, Norman Fowler, asked Cecil Parkinson MP to form a Conservative Party policy group on the progress that had and could be made towards community based services for mentally ill and mentally handicapped people. It was an issue of special interest to Mr Parkinson because his constituency, Hertfordshire South, contained three large hospitals for mental illness and two for mental handicap, only one of which served the constituency - the others received their patients from North London.

    Parkinson's group drew on considerable expertise from outside party politics. It met regularly for three years and completed its investigations in spring 1979, just as the Conservative Party moved from opposition into Government.

    21.1.1976 Christopher Price asked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether she has studied the article in the British Journal of Psychiatry (1973, 123, 441-3) which concludes that ECT can cause cumulative and irreversible brain damage; and what guidance she has given to the NHS hospitals as a result. Written Answer from David Owen.

    20.2.1976 Joyce Butler MP presented "a petition from the Patients' Protection Law Committee, which is concerned about psychosurgery experiments on patients who are mentally ill and which seeks to uphold the rights of patients in relation thereto. Despite the specialised and unusual subject of the petition, this small voluntary organisation has succeeded in a short time in obtaining 1,500 signatures to the petition, which shows that "the Royal College of Psychiatrists intend to carry out experiments in psychosurgery on two hundred mental patients; that psychosurgery is a dangerous procedure which causes irreversible damage to the brain; that last year a court decision in Michigan, USA, held that the therapeutic effectiveness of limbic brain lesions was unproven and the potential risks very great and that lack of knowledge about these questions made informed consent virtually impossible; and that in these circumstances experiments of this nature are unethical." "Wherefore your Petitioners humbly pray that this Honourable House will forbid the use of public funds for these experiments." PROMPT was a party to this petition.

    March 1976:
    Priorities for Health and Personal Social Services
    A Consultative Circular on Joint Planning and Finance was issued at the end of March.

    Priorities was, amongst other things, an effort to advance such causes as Better Services for the Mentally Ill by giving them more money at the expense of other areas.

    The 1975 White Paper had said that investment on the scale needed to achieve its ends would not be possible "over the next three or four years" (par. 11.5), but by giving deprived sectors priority of general and acute hospital provision, Priorities proposed a rate of development which, "if maintained", would enable the Better Services aims to be achieved over most of the country within twenty-five years.

    Monday 29.3.1976 Five Oscars for the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest dramatised the 1962 novel by Ken Kesey about the way asylums change the personalities of people who become their in-patients. The novel and film popularised the theories of Erving Goffman, in Asylums (1961)

    The Listener (first week of April?) contained an article by Christopher Price Christopher Price (Labour MP, Lewisham West) "It's more than a bit frightening", reviewing Yorkshire TV's Tuesday (30.3.1976 or 6.4.1976?) programme on psychosurgery directed by Chris Goddard "It's A Bit Frightening".
    Also mentioned during the week - "revelations about St Augustine's" - Horizon (BBC2) on schizophrenia and its possible chemical roots and the
    five Oscars.

    9.7.1976 to 10.7.1976 Mind's Annual Conference with the theme "Prevention in the field of psychiatric disorders" held at Bedford College, London. Organiser Edna Tyrell (Mind Out 3/4.1976 p.24 - 5/6.1976 p.17)

    Autumn? 1976 Mind's 30th Annual General Meeting - Mary Applebey gave a talk about her memories which was published in the January/February edition of Mind Out (pages 8-1) as "Thirty years on".

    1976 Publication of the first Disability Rights Handbook: A Guide to Income Benefits and Certain Aids and Services for Handicapped People of All Ages. 1977, editor Peter Townsend, by the Disability Alliance (5 Netherhall Gardens, London, NW3 5RJ]) and ATV Network Ltd. 32 pages.

    1977 survivors' history

    Beech Tree House, Hertfordshire, was established by the Spastics Society in 1977 to demonstrate that even the most severely disturbed children from mental handicap hospitals could be successfully educated given sufficient resources and the right approach.

    The Good Practices in Mental Health (GPMH) project was started, on a three year experimental basis, by the International Hospital Fund in 1977. "The idea is to describe and publicise local mental health services which have been found to work well". The first report "Good Practices in Mental Health in the City and Hackney Health District (Teaching)" was published in July 1978. From 1980 to 1983 the project was financed jointly by charities and the Department of Health and Social Security. From 1983 it was funded mainly by the DHSS and "has come to be seen as a process in mental health planning and development rather as a time limited project" (SSC 1985 volume 2, page 143). Initiated and run, at first, by Edith Morgan. In the mid 1980s, GPMH turned its attention to the development of user-only forums. The final director was Edi O'Farrell, who worked closely with Peter Campbell and Survivors Speak Out. GPMH ran out of money about 1997 and had to close. Edi O'Farrell died in 2008 (email from Thurstine Basset)

    1977 World Federation for Mental Health congress held Vancouver, Canada, with the theme "Today's Priorities in Mental Health: Knowing and Doing". This was the regular biennial world congresses.

    10.1.1977 "Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment" on The Ramones' album Leave Home. Described as a "sing-along mental-illness ode" in Schinder and Schwartz (2007) Icons of Rock (source Wikipedia).

    I was feeling sick, losing my mind
    Heard about these treatments by a good friend of mine
    He was always happy, smile on his face
    He said he had a great time at the place
    Peace and love is here to stay and now I can wake up and face the day
    Happy-happy-happy all the time, shock treatment, I'm doing fine
    Gimme-gimme shock treatment
    Gimme-gimme shock treatment
    Gimme-gimme shock treatment
    I wanna-wanna shock treatment ...

    In "Shocked Treatment" (Spring 1985) Frank Bangay describes patients dancing to this: "... everybody pogoed up and down. The 'hospital' was never a nice place, electrodes plugged in and the damage is done. Some days I want to explode in anger and frustration. Are we really the sick ones?"

    May 1977 HC(77)17 second circular on Joint Care Planning

    6.6.1977 Jubilee Bank Holiday Monday - Andrew Voyce's view "inside Hellingly asylum"

    SEPTEMBER 1977 THE WAY FORWARD

    13.10.1977 to 14.10.1977 Mind's Annual Conference with the theme "Rehabilitation and resettlement of mentally disordered people" held Westminster. Organiser Edna Tyrell (Mind Out 5/6.1977 p.24 - 7/8.1977 p.24)

    November? 1977 Royal College of Psychiatrists "Memorandum on the use of electroconvulsive therapy" British Journal of Psychiatry 131: pages 261-272. This was produced as a consequence of the findings of abuse of ECT at St Augustine's Hospital. Mind archive contains a typescript report showing that Mind representatives visited two unnamed psychiatric hospitals to find out how the practical administration of ECT compared with the formal guidance.

    4.11.1977 Christopher Price in the House of Commons: "I have recently been making some remarks on television about electro-convulsive therapy, and I have received a bigger response than to any other subject I have mentioned on television in the years I have been a Member-with a short gap-since 1966. The response so shattered me that I have gone a great deal further into the matter."

    4.11.1977 "Teenage Lobotomy" on The Ramones' album Rocket to Russia.

    Lobotomy, lobotomy, lobotomy, lobotomy!
    DDT did a job on me
    Now I am a real sickie
    Guess I'll have to break the news
    That I got no mind to lose
    All the girls are in love with me
    I'm a teenage lobotomy
    Slugs and snails are after me
    DDT keeps me happy
    Now I guess I'll have to tell 'em
    That I got no cerebellum
    Gonna get my Ph.D.
    I'm a teenage lobotomy...

    1978 survivors' history

    - "In Italy a new National Health Service (NHS), providing free health care to all Italian citizens, replaced the existing national insurance system. The new NHS also incorporated the public psychiatric system, which had just undergone a radical reform under Law 180. According to this law, all psychiatric hospitals were closed to new admissions (and, after three years, also to readmissions) and were replaced with community-based services and psychiatric units based in general hospitals. The new system was intended to provide care and support to all types of patients, without back-up from public mental hospitals, where only existing long-stay in- patients could remain" (external source)

    - "in 1978 we held a press conference, announcing the closure of the mental hospital" [at Trieste] "This created a big sensation in Italy for the situation had not been recognised until then" (Franco Basaglia - March 1980)

    April 1978: Maureen Oswin's Children Living in Long Stay Hospitals was the report of a study financed by the Spastics Society. It described the lives of children in eight hospitals chosen to give as representative a sample as possible. These were severely handicapped children who were found, in the main, to be relegated to a tedious, impoverished existence on back wards.

    May 1978: The Warnock Report

    Although the 1970 Education Act had made local education authorities responsible for educating all children, education for many handicapped children was still in separate "special schools". The Warnock Report on the education of handicapped children recommended that special classes and units should be provided "wherever possible" in ordinary schools (paragraph 7.35) and that "firm links" should be established between ordinary schools and the remaining special schools in their vicinity (paragraph 8.10).

    12.10.1978 to 13.10.1978 Mind's Annual Conference with the theme "Positive approaches to mental informity in elderly people" (Mind Information Bulletin June 1978 p.9)

    On Our Own. Patient-Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System by Judi Chamberlin gave Judi's "patient's view of the mental health system", an account of her own treatment, and an account of communities run by their users. The book drew on the work of colleagues in Mental Patients' Liberation groups in North America, but also used some United Kingdom material. Judi Chamberlin

    see America

    1979 Science Time Line

    1979 survivors' history


    The Borocourt Hospital League of Friends donated an outdoor play area for severely handicapped patients to use in good weather. It was a wirenetting fence surrounding a spacious area with a large cedar tree and toys for patients to play on.

    March 1979 The Jay Report

    The campaign for a normal life won its first major victory with the publication of the Jay report into mental handicap nursing and care. This did much more than examine the training of staff. It made radical proposals for community care however severe a person's handicap.

    "Mentally handicapped people" [they wrote] "have a right to enjoy normal patterns of life within the community" [but] "too often... the concept of 'as normal a life as possible' has tended to stop short of those... with severe problems. It is still unfortunately assumed that if a mentally handicapped person has additional physical handicaps or severe behaviour disorder he must live in hospital." (paragraph 86)

    May 1979 Thatcher Government

    The New Conservatives and market forces:
    Their confusion followed by clarity - followed by my confusion

    Spring 1979; The Parkinson Report (see 1976) was produced for the Conservative Party, but it was kept secret until 1981. The report strongly endorsed community care and called for a determined programme of hospital closures, linked to a statutory duty and financial incentives for councils to make community provision.

    It said that, although all governments since 1959 were committed to community care policy, there was little real progress in creating services in the community. Amongst hospital staff, they found considerable resistance to the policy and "a strongly held belief that successive governments had not meant what they said."

    Cecil Parkinson suggested that the policy had been discredited "because it is not really being implemented". Patients left the hospitals, but the money and skills stayed in them, so patients went into the community without the support they needed.

    Confusion The first two years of Conservative rule (May 1979 to July 1981) were years of confusion and uncertainty about the direction mental health policy was to take.

    21.6.1979 New Scientist article by Ed Harriman "The brains behind the operation" - "Scientist who operate on the brain to relieve symptoms as disparate as aggression and anorexia nervosa hardly understand why their operations are - sometimes - successful. They even disagree about how to measure success and which patients to operate on. In these circumstances, are controls on psychosurgery adequate?" Available on Google Books

    July 1979: Royal Commission on the National Health Service Report

    "We are certain that there is a continuing need for most of the mental illness hospitals, and we recommend that the health departments should now state categorically that they no longer expect health authorities to close them unless they are very isolated, in very bad repair or are obviously redundant due to major shifts of population. It should be made clear that they will be required throughout the remainder of this century and for as long as it is possible to plan". (paragraph 10.60)

    8.7.1979 to 13.7.1979 World Federation for Mental Health congress held in Salzburg, Austria, with the theme "The Mental Health of Children and Families"

    27.7.1979 11.4 a.m House of Commons Debates 1979 volume 971 c1247. Christopher Price MP for Lewisham, West, presented a "petition appertaining to electro-convulsive therapy and psychosurgery which has been signed by 15,960 of my constituents and others in the Greater London area. I shall read the petition... which shows "that both electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) and psycho-surgery are largely empirical procedures; that ECT treats the symptom and not the cause and that it has been shown to cause cumulative and irreversible brain damage and to produce memory loss; that psycho-surgery also causes irreversible damage to the brain; and that the World Health Organisation has stated that psycho- surgical interventions are ethically doubtful. Wherefore your Petitioners humbly pray that this Honourable House will forbid the use of ECT and psychosurgery in the National Health Service".

    autumn? 1979 Patrick Jenkin to Mind [a letter quoted by Tony Smythe in a speech to the Social Services Conference 19.11.1979)]: This Government is as

    "firmly committed to the principles of community care" [but] "we differ from previous governments ... in our overriding determination to secure substantial retrenchment in public expenditure... this retrenchment will have an adverse effect on progress towards the new pattern of services... In some places it may be proved difficult to avoid retreating a little"

    October 1979 The National Schizophrenia Fellowship appointed a group development officer was appointed for the North East based in Newcastle.

    DECEMBER 1979 PATIENTS FIRST

    [December 1979?] National Development Group for Mental Handicap to be axed as a "QUANGO".

    1980 survivors' history

    About 1980 that Robert James Maxwell became Chief Executive of the King's Fund. "Under the 17-year leadership of Robert J. Maxwell, the Fund also widened the scope of its activities to look at social care and public health." (web history) - Robert J. Maxwell was chief executive of the King's Fund from 1980 to 1997 - Barbara Stocking was Director of the Kings Fund Centre for Health Services Development from 1987 to 1993. - See An Ordinary Life 1980 - allies - Preston event - Speaking from Experience 1985 - initial funding of Survivors Speak Out - Minstead Lodge 1986 - Barnet Action for Mental Health 1986 - Collaboration for Change 1988 - services for black community 1991 - Survivors Speak Out funding 1992 - Black Health Foundation 1995

    1980 The Therapeutic Community: Outside the Hospital edited by Elly Jansen. Published: London : Croom Helm for the Richmond Fellowship. Based on papers presented at the Richmond Fellowship International Conferences, 1973 - 1975 - and 1976. The book is about the therapeutic community in both its narrow sense and as community care outside hospital. It was revied in Mind Out in February 1981.

    January 1980: The Nodder Report published: Working Group on Organisational and Management Problems of Mental Illness Hospitals. Set up in March 1977. Held it last meeting in February 1979. The delay in publication was due to the change in government and, for the same reason, there was a "substantial gap... between the agreed committee draft and the report as published".
    Although about half the 200 or so Health Districts had a District General Hospital Psychiatric Unit giving "a fairly comprehensive service" to at least part of the district (par.4), many of the others either had no local psychiatric service or a very selective one.

    On the other hand, 50 of the 103 mental hospitals with over 200 beds served three or more Health Districts, only 13 served a single district and 21 were actually outside any of the districts they served. The situations some of these hospitals were in was "so complex as to defy any hope of an efficient management structure. So, a "first essential" was to reduce the complexity.

    The committee recommended a strategy of first developing comprehensive local services in districts furthest away from a mental hospital and from there moving towards a situation where the mental hospital only served the district in which it was situated. (pars 4.9 to 4.10)

    25.1.1980 Patrick Jenkin promises "priority"

    DHSS Press Release 80/16: The Secretary of State expressed his determination "even in times of acute economic restraint" to maintain the established "priority" of services for the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped whereby the Department of Health and Social Security attempted to "steer funds" into these "Cinderella" services. He wanted to maintain progress towards the "new pattern" of facilities

    February 1980 The National Schizophrenia Fellowship appointed a group development officer (David Lynes?) for the North West based in Warrington - This appointment led to differences of opinion concerning autonomy. Mind had opened a North West regional office in October 1978

    March 1980 An Ordinary Life. Comprehensive locally based residential services for mentally handicapped people. Kings Fund Project Paper 24,

    31.3.1980 to 3.4.1980 European workshop, in Belgium, on "Alternatives to Mental Hospitals" - Speakers included from Italy, Franco Basaglia - Belgium: Daniel Coens - Sweden: Ebba Neander - France: René Descartes - Holland: C. Trimbos - United Kingdom: David Towell

    May 1980: The Future Pattern of Hospital Provision [DHSS Consultation Paper]

    "It is now clear that in 70 or so districts which have a well sited mental illness hospital this will have to continue to provide all in- patient care and be the focus for the service in its own district often for many years to come. Only in this way can proper attention be paid to districts at present served by a distant or otherwise unsuitable mental hospital" (page 18)

    Jimmy Savile conducts the
band 18.9.1980 "The opening of the Interim Medium Secure Unit at Bethlem in 1980 was preceded by discussions with local residents to allay fears. Jimmy Savile OBE, television presenter, was invited to open the unit, an event that, despite the bad weather, was regarded as 'a most successful exercise in public relations'."
    "Jimmy took over the conducting of the R.A.M.C. band to everyone's delight"

    20.10.1980 to 21.10.1980 Mind's Annual Conference with the theme "The Future of the Mental Hospitals" held at Kensington and Chelsea Town Hall. (Mind Information Bulletin, October 1980, p.1)

    Patrick Jenkin invited to open:

    "The Royal Commission said that the hospitals should stay unless they are obviously unsuitable; whereas the Government says that some could stay for many years if they are still needed and if they fit in with the desired pattern. This may seem a matter of semantics but it is more than that. It is a recognition first of the primacy of the district services, and secondly of the need, within that, to make the best use of existing services"

    DECEMBER 1980: MENTAL HANDICAP: PROGRESS, PROBLEMS AND PRIORITIES (A review of mental handicap services since the 1971 White Paper)

    1981 Science Time Line

    1981 Statistics
    By 1981, deaths and discharges from St Lawrences had reduced the number of patients to 1,300. It was one of seven English hospitals with the least money to spend on patients. (See 1870 and 1971 and Silent Minority (below))

    1981 survivors' history

    The International Year for Disabled People which "includes people who are physically handicapped, deaf, hard of hearing, blind, partially sighted, speech impaired, mentally handicapped or mentally ill. It also includes handicaps such as epilepsy and psoriasis; and disabilities linked to ageing. It also includes children who are disabled."
    (external link to Hansard debate)

    1981 Special Education Act

    February 1981: Care in Action

    31.3.1981 House of Lords debate "The Earl of Longford rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will take urgent steps to provide a more effective system of mental after-care."

    9.5.1981 10 minute "Maybury - A Preview" shown at 11.45pm on BBC2 in which "Patrick Stewart shows that psychiatric wards are not places of gloom and despair but hope and humour". The first series of this soap/drama based in a psychiatric ward ran from weekly from 12.5.1981 to 4.8.1981. The second series ran from 24.6.1983 to 5.8.1983. The series was given technical support by psychiatrists in Hackney who advised actors how to play people with specific mental health problems realistically. Ruth Boswell, the producer, spoke at a City and Hackney Association for Mental Health meeting on the programme in Homerton Library on 16.10.1981 and attended (as part of the audience) a Community Care Workshop on Hackney's Psychiatric Units at Centerprise on Wednesday 21.10.1981. Also a book.

    May 1981 European Symposium on Old Age and Mental Health held in Helsinki, Finland, concluding with the "Helsinki Resolution on Mental Health and Old Age" (Mind Out 7.1981 pages 8-9)

    This way to the previous scandals   previous scandals

    10.6.1981: Silent Minority
    This television documentary was shown in peak viewing hours with a warning that some of the scenes might prove disturbing. The scenes were of what happened out of view in two understaffed hospitals for the mentally handicapped,
    St Lawrences and Borocourt. The hospitals had cooperated with making it "in the hope of conveying...the message that hospitals for the mentally handicapped are seriously understaffed and under-financed", but one of the messages of the documentary was that hospital asylums were the wrong place for mentally handicapped people to live.

    Silent Minority concentrated its attention on the most severely disabled patients - those that Government policy still believed would always need "the special facilities of hospital care". It contrasted the understaffed wards at St Lawrences - where children were clean, fed and dressed, but bored and lonely - with
    Beech Tree House.

    It suggested that the intensive education of children in a small unit at Beech Tree House prevented them becoming disturbed, frightened and frightening adults like some who were in a
    wire compound during daylight hours at Borocourt. Many of the Borocourt patients were sedated with Largactil - but, even so, the hospital had seven seclusion rooms. A man described by the hospital as "one of its most aggressive patients" was said on the television programme to have spent almost six months in almost continuous solitary confinement. A member of staff claimed that, as a result of solitary confinement, the patient seemed "on the edge of almost total madness".

    Press headlines gave the impression that Government Ministers reactions to Silent Minority were apoplectic - Film Biased, says Jenkin (The Guardian 11.6.1981) - Fowler raps 'Biased Silent Minority Film' (Nursing Mirror 4.11.1981)

    Ministers' reactions contained more positive elements, the most important of which was that the Under Secretary of State, George Young, insisted his civil servants put some urgency into producing the Green Paper Care in the Community.

    The effect of Silent Minority that seemed most important to me was its effect on the public, but a friend who lobbies governments disagreed with me when I wrote that "Silent Minority probably did more to create a popular demand for community care than a decade of official policy statements". She was more conscious of what goes on in government. I just experienced what was happening in Hackney.

    Relatives and friends of mentally handicapped people from Hackney living miles from home in St Lawrences, and other asylums around London, had simmered with anger and anxiety about them for several years. Silent Minority helped to bring their concern to the boil, and in January 1982 families, professionals, voluntary groups and articulate local people with a mental handicap formed HAMHP (Hackney Action for Mentally Handicapped People) to press for local services that would give all mentally handicapped people from Hackney a chance to live as part of our own community.

    Silent Minority can still be seen. It can be bought or rented from Concord Video and Film Council. On their web site, click on education, then learning difficulties, and scroll down.

     

    In the spring of 1981, Andrew Roberts was working on a pencil version of his thesis on The Lunacy Commission. He gave up in the summer for family reasons. The pencil thesis, with some gaps filled in, became his online text. This Mental Health History Timeline is an extension of a feature in the thesis - Which is why it is referenced as "1981-" (1981 onwards)

    Care in the Community and the Parkinson Report

    July 16th 1981:
    Care in the Community was the title of a Green Paper that suggested ways of moving money and care from the National Health Service to local councils and voluntary associations. It was a way of implementing the (hitherto secret) Parkinson Report, and seven days later the Conservative Political Centre published The Right Approach to Mental Health, an edited summary of the Parkinson Report.

    Care in the Community began by saying:

      "Most people who need long-term care can and should be looked after in the community. That is what most of them want for themselves and what those responsible for their care believe to be best".
    Care in the Community applied especially to mentally handicapped, mentally ill and elderly patients (in that order).

    It suggested that 20,000 long-term patients (15,000 in mental handicap hospitals and 5,000 in mental illness hospitals) could be discharged "immediately" if funds could be switched from the Health Service to local authorities (paragraphs 3.1. and 3.2).

    Opinions were sought on seven possible ways of moving money and patients. On July 28th 1982 the Government said it had decided to adopt three main proposals:
    • The maximum period for which the NHS could pay for schemes under joint finance would be extended from seven to thirteen years for projects to move people out of hospital, and the NHS would be able to pay 100% of the money for up to ten years.
    • District Health Authorities would be allowed to make guaranteed annual payments to councils and voluntary bodies for ex-patients they provided for in the community.
    • Fifteen million pounds would be set aside from joint finance money to develop and assess a series of pilot projects.

    July 1981 World Federation for Mental Health congress held in Manila, Philippines, with the theme "Mental Health, Cultural Values and Social Development: A Look into the '80s". Eugene Brody took office as President. "I suggested the organisation of an 'Atlantic basin' meeting to be held the next year in England as a way of bringing consumers and self-help organisations into our framework" (Brody 1998 p.368) survivors' history
    see America

    Autumn 1981 Mind's Annual Conference with the theme "Psychiatric Treatment - Art or Science?" (Reported Mind Out 11.1981 pages 9-11)

    1982 survivors' history

    1982 The World Health Organisation's Collaborating Centre for Drug Statistics Methodology established.
    Based at the Department of Pharmacoepidemiology at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo. It is funded by the Norwegian government. It maintains what it calls an Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical classification system and defined daily doses for the drugs classified. [See
    bibliography].
    In simpler terms, this is described as an international language for drug utilization research

    1981 EAMH (Edinburgh Association for Mental Health) set up initially to take over some flats then rented for ex-patients by the Royal Edinburgh Hospital. Began by working from a desk in the offices of the Barony Housing Association, before moving in 1984 to 40 Shandwick Place Edinburgh. See history.

    "While sociologists and sociologically-minded historians cast a baleful eye over the global history of mental treatment in the last two centuries, others - consultants, administrators or psychologists, present or past members of psychiatric hospital staffs - prove willing to devote much toil to the writing of detailed, often scholarly and always affectionate accounts of the origins and development of their own respective institutions..." Alexander Walk, 1982
    Although numbers in the old style hospitals had fallen considerably, by 1982 the only mental illness hospitals to close were St Ebbas, Epsom (converted to a mental subnormality hospital in 1962) and The Holloway Sanatorium, Virginia Water, Surrey (closed December 1980). In November 1982, the only definite closure proposals were a plan to close Banstead and concentrate services at Horton in 1986; and proposals by North East Thames Regional Health Authority to close two of its six large mental hospitals (not then identified, but Claybury and Friern were chosen). The only large mental handicap hospital planned to close was Darenth Park. (Information mainly from D. Glassborow, DHSS Mental Health Division, 18.11.1982)

    Draft of closures to March 1994
    1962
    St Ebbas, Epsom (conversion to a mental subnormality hospital)
    1980
    The Holloway Sanatorium, Virginia Water, Surrey (December 1980)

    28.7.1982 Government adopts ways of moving money with patients


    July 1983: Plan to close Friern and Claybury announced.

    1985
    Exminster, Devon 1985
    The Lawn, Lincoln 1985
    1986
    Banstead October 1986
    Coppice Hospital, Nottinghamshire 1986
    1987
    Saxondale, Nottinghamshire 1987
    Autumn 1987: Proposal for a "Penguin Special" on closing the asylums

    1988
    Horton Road, Gloucester 1988
    Naburn, York 1988
    1989
    Pastures, Derbyshire 1989?
    1990
    St John's, Lincolnshire 1990
    Whitecroft, Isle of Wight 1990
    Summer 1990: The writing of After the Asylums

    1991
    Mendip Hospital, Somerset 1991
    1991: publication of After the Asylums

    1992
    Long Grove - April 1992
    Cane Hill 1992
    St Augustine's, Kent 1992
    Herrison, Dorset 1992
    August 1992: publication of Closing the Asylum

    1993
    Moorhaven, Devon 1993
    Friern - 1993
    Rubery Hill, Birmingham 1993
    1994
    Hellingly, Sussex (1994)
    Glenside, Bristol (1994)
    St Mary's, Burghill, Hereford (1994)

    Most the 1994 closures are still on the March 1994 list of ones that are open:
    Brookwood (1994)
    Netherne (1994)
    Mapperley Hospital, Notttingham (1994)
    Clifton, York 1994
    Hollymoor, Birmingham

    Closure index: See 1994 - 1995 - 1999 - 2002 - 2006 -

    Peter Sedgwick's Psychopolitics, published in 1982, criticised the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960s/1970s theoretically and politically. Sedgwick's political criticism of the Myth of Mental Illness idea was that it undermined efforts to secure community care resources for those who suffer from mental distress.

    We Can Speak for Ourselves. Self-Advocacy by Mentally Handicapped People, by Paul Williams and Bonnie Shoultz. This American book said that mentally handicapped people usually had decisions made for them about every detail of their lives, but that through the Self-Advocacy Movement many were learning to formulate their own needs, to put forward their demands and to campaign to win them.

    A Mad People's History of Madness compiled by Dale Peterson. The British authors included are Margery Kempe, George Trosse, Alexander Cruden, Samuel Bruckshaw (1774), William Cowper, Urbane Metcalf, John Thomas Perceval, Marcia Hamilcar (1910), Thomas Hennell (1938), John Cunstance (1952) and Morag Coate (1965)

    March 1982 Extraordinary General Meeting of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship, in Friends House, Euston Road, London, attended by 500 people, decided to to close the Regional Offices (Newcastle and Warrington). The Warrington group then (1982) formed the autonomous North West Schizophrenia Fellowship which later changed its name to Making Space weblink

    1982 to 1991? Judy Weleminsky director of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship - Bharat Mehta joined NSF as Director of Development in 1989 and became its Chief Executive in 1993

    7.6.1982 CHAMH meeting at Homerton Library with Dr Leonard Fagin (Claybury), the author of Unemployment and Health in Families (1981).

    21.7.1982 to 23.7.1982 Cosponsored Mind and World Federation for Mental Health conference in London, "Professionals and Volunteers: Partners or Rivals". Organised and chaired by Edith Morgan on the stimulus of Eugene Brody's suggestion, but "in keeping with her own concerns of that time" (Brody 1998 pages 129 and 399) survivors' history
    see America

    25.10.1982 to 26.10.1982 Mind's Annual Conference (Kensington Town Hall) Theme "Working Together? Voluntary and Statutory Mental Health Services" - Norman Fowler, Social Services Secretary, having said, earlier in the year, that the voluntary sector was in a unique position to provide "real community care". [A4 flyer]

    28.10.1982 The 1982 Mental Health (Amendment) Act received Royal Assent. "Its provisions will, for the most part, take effect from 30 September 1983, by which time it is hoped that all the amendments made to the 1959 Act will have been consolidated in a new Mental Health Act"

    25.11.1982 and 26.11.1982 "Cinderella No More. A Conference about the development of Comprehensive Psychiatric Services"

    December 1982 First meeting of the "Getting to Know You" core group at Springfield Hospital, North Manchester.

    The Rising Tide: Developing Services for Mental Illness in Old Age National Health Service, Health Advisory Service, 1982.

    1983

    4.1.1983 Under Secretary of State wrote "to all chairmen of regional health authorities and chairmen of social services committees commending the Health Advisory Service report, and encouraging the setting up of comprehensive integrated psychiatric services for elderly people with mental illness. An extra £6 million is being made available over the next three years to help with the build-up of 'Administration Development Districts', which will spread ideas about the creation of the right sort of services in response to local circumstances and needs." Hansard

    1983 Representation of the People Act

    "A home, encouragement and a future"

    The Mental After Care Association image from the Annual Reports of 1983 and 1984


    1983 newspaper cartoon -
    Preserved by my father.

    Challenge - The Good News Paper. February 1983

    11.3.1983 Registration of charity number 286467 Old Name Mental Health Film Council - Working Name: Mental Health Media. Operated throughout England and Wales. Closed (Removed from the Register) with a transfer of funds (probably to Mind) 1.1.2010. Objects: "To educate the public generally in the effective use of television programmes, radio programmes, videotapes, on-line media, films and other communications and information technologies (hereinafter collectively referred to as the "media") about mental health or about people who experience emotional or mental distress or mental disorder ("the objects") and thereby to counter discrimination and prejudice on the grounds of mental health".


    9.5.1983 Royal Assent 1983 Mental Health Act. Under the 1959 Mental Health Act it is legally unclear whether a legal order to detain in hospital, against a person's wishes, empowers the hospital to impose medical treatments. If it does (which was generally accepted), there were no controls in the Act of the treatments imposed. The 1983 Act places legal controls on the application of medical treatments, particularly surgery, electro-convulsive therapy and mood- altering drugs.

    Section 114 introduced the approved social worker (ASW), specially trained and qualified in mental health. An approved social worker (rather than any social worker) was qualified to make applications for formal admission. patients used to train
approved social workers

    Section 117 imposed a duty on local Social Services Authorities as well as Health Authorities to provide aftercare services for some mentally disturbed patients who have ceased to be detained and who leave hospital.

    Section 121 established the Mental Health Act Commission See discussion of need for in 1976 and 1978, 1981; provisons in 1983 and way the commission interpreted these (1985). - Reports - 1985 - 1987 - 1989 - 2003 Strangers - 2004/2005 website - 2009: absorbed by Care Quality Commission - National archive


    July 1983? Announcement of closure of Friern and Claybury

    7.7.1983 Constitution of the Afro-Caribbean Mental Health Association. Registered as charity number 287829 30.9.1983). Formed to provide services in Wandsworth and the surrounding area. (external link). Objects: "a) to relieve and prevent suffering caused by mental illness by establishing a counselling and voluntary visiting service for the benefit of inhabitants of wandsworth and the surrounding area and in particular people of afro-caribbean origin and (b) to relieve poverty and advance education in connection with other social problems as they appear." At some time changed its name to African-Caribbean Mental Health Association. Removed from charities list 23.9.2009 as no longer operating.

    22.7.1983 to 27.7.1983 World Federation for Mental Health congress held Washington, DC, USA with the theme "Personal and social responsibility in the search for mental health: Collaboration between volunteers, professionals and governments in the formation of mental health policy and the delivery of services". This congress was announced as a celebration of the work of Clifford Beers and the first International Congress on Mental Hygiene held in Washington in May 1930. However, as the title indicates, there was little space for the voices of users.

    For a mental health organisation, to be awarded the task of hosting a world congress was something like a country being awarded the Olympic Games. So Chris Heginbotham, the new director of Mind was very pleased to secure the congress for Brighton in 1985.

    20.9.1983: Hackney Workers Educational Association introductory lecture on Mental Distress in Old Age given by Dr Tony Whitehead from Brighton. Building on in depth consultation with users, carers and providers the series ran for over a year and published an interim report in June 1984 and a final report in November 1985

    Late 1983 Common Concern: MIND's manifesto for a comprehensive mental health service 63 pages. See Simon Hebditch October 1983

    29.11.1983 House of Lords debate Mental Health: Richmond Fellowship Inquiry

    National Health Service Management Inquiry Report. London: DHSS, 1983 (Not 1984, I think). ISBN: 0946539014. Sometimes referred to as the first Griffiths Report.

    Psychiatric Services in Transition From 1983 and 1987, The King's Fund, with support from the DHSS and NHS Training Authority, ran workshops and projects about managing the transition to community care. The main papers produced by the process were published as "Managing Psychiatric Services in Transition" in 1989

    1984 survivors' history

    John Illman and Malcolm Lader's Pathways to the mind : 25 years of Mental Health Foundation research (112 pages) published by the Mental Health Foundation.

    January 1984 Social Services Committee of the House of Commons decided to investigate community care with special reference to adult mentally ill and mentally handicapped people

    - 5.3.1984 to 16.3.1984 "From Hospital to the Community: The Italian Experience...A display of photographs, film-shows as well as discussions at the King's Fund Centre...also in Sheffield and Manchester at a later date...Italian mental health professionals who have been involved in implementing the changeover to community care will lead the discussion. Contact Ron Lacey or Teresa Morawiecka at MIND." (Openmind February/March 1984)

    - April 1984 four members of Psichiatria Democratica visited London, Sheffield and Manchester at the invitation of Alec Jenner and Shula Ramon. Alec Jener may be the psychiatrist who made a favourable report on the Italian experience to the Social Services Committee. He visited Italy in August 1985.

    Wednesday 25.5.1984 Robert Loudoun, David Friun, Sidney Crown and Katia Herbst from the Mental Health Foundation questioned by Social Services Committee. The memorandum submitted by the fund argued that community projects for mentally handicapped people were innovative in comparison with those for mentally ill people. (The same criticism was repeated in the evidence).

    "community organisations interested in mental handicap schemes are 'on the move' in imaginative and radical ways whilst community groups involved with mental illness schemes remain relatively stuck in the present 'tramlines'" (SSC 1985 volume 2, pages 243)

    July 1984 Ten day Social Services Committee visit to the United States - Its first outside Europe. Mostly about investigating the effects of de-institutionalisation.

    August? 1984 Valerie Argent's poem Inner Circle was written in a psychiatric ward at Hackney Hospital.

    22.10.1984 to 23.10.1984 Mind Annual Conference (Kensington Town Hall). Theme "Life after Mental Illness? Opportunities in an Age of Unemployment" - [A4 flyer] MIND Annual Conference
1984

    Dr Hugh Freeman was vice-chair of Mind from November? 1984 to November 1988. He succeeded Dr Douglas Bennett.

    1985

    Report of Social Services Committee on Community Care MIND Annual Conference
1984

    1.3.1985 The National Unit for Psychiatric Research and Development (NUPRD) established. On 12.5.1989 this became RDP Research and Development for Psychiatry. Matt Muijen director 1991. On 22.2.1994 the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health (Website - Internet Archive from 20.2.2001 - Complete publications list starts 1986.) "Founded in 1985 by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, one of the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts, from which it receives core funding. It is affiliated to the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College, London." See Towards Coordinated Care (1988) - In 2006, Gatsby cut its funding. It shed two-thirds of its staff and concentrated work on employment issues and criminal justice. In 2009 the staff were told that it should not expect to remain in its present form after 2010. Since July 2010, known as Centre for Mental Health. history on its website

    May 1985 The Team for the Assessment of Psychiatric Services (TAPS) set up to evaluate the transfer of care from psychiatric hospitals to district-based services. Its specific remit was (included?) an evaluation with respect to the closure of Friern and Claybury Hospitals. It was also involved at Warley and Tooting Bec - BBC link - 3.7.1999 - 2000 - summary

    5.7.1985 UK Secretary of State (Norman Fowler) announced £10,000,000 funding over the next three years for a new programme called 'Helping the Community to Care'. Its chief aim was to improve support for elderly people and for those who are mentally ill and mentally handicapped by helping those who help them, volunteers, friends and family members. (source). About 20 projects were funded, including Womankind in Bristol.

    Speaking from Experience
    14.7.1985 World Federation for Mental Health congress held in Brighton - hosted by Mind - with the theme Mental Health 2000 - Action Programmes for a World in Crisis. The congress was divided into six themes - each theme was planned with three workshops - each of these was to produce an item for a charter to be presented (printed) to the final session on 19.7.1985. See Charter Mental Health 2000 survivors' history

    - August1985 Alec Jenner's visit to Italy.

    October? 1985 Mental Health Act Commission First Biennial Report 1983-1985 - Opinion that the 1983 Act could not lawfully be used to produce the effect of a long-term community treatment order. Upheld in subsequent court cases.

    30.10.1985 Royal Assent to the 1985 Housing Act which established local authority responsibilities for single people who are "vulnerable", including people with mental health problems.

    28.11.1985-29.11.1985 Mind's Annual Conference 1985:
    From Patients to People
    [A4 flyer]

    MIND Annual Conference
1985

    4.12.1985 House of Lords debate "Lord Mottistone rose to call attention to the needs of mentally ill and mentally handicapped persons, with special reference to community care".

    "My knowledge stems mainly from being advised over the years since the passage of the Mental Health (Amendment) Act 1982 by the National Schizophrenic Foundation."

    Lord Mottistone (David Seely, 16.12.1920 - 24.11.2011) "first chairman of... SANE ... from 1986 to 2009".

    December 1985 Forgotten Illness Campaign started in The Times. This series of articles preceded the foundation of SANE, a year later.

    The Times 16.12.1985 In the first of a three-part investigation "Marjorie Wallace" reveals the burdens placed on relatives". 17.12.1985 "Through anopen door to despair"

    The Times 19.12.1985 Editorial "Ease a Tragedy, Stop a Scandal"

    The Times 23.12.1985

    1986 survivors' history

    Empowerment In 1986 the compilers of the Oxford Dictionary noticed that an old (1690) Quaker word had re-entered the vocabulary with a secular meaning. Individuals and groups were being "empowered" to be stronger and more confident in controlling their life and claiming their rights. The word must have spread quickly: The 1985-1986 Report of City and Hackney Community Health Council, for example, was called Empowering the Users of the Health Service. "Developments in mental health services", it said, will not work well unless they are supported by the people that use them and so the CHC believes they should have a say in planning them and a continuing say in how they are run". A similar theme ran through all issues. - See National Empowerment Center USA 1992.

    1986 Foundation of what is now Being Alongside, the "Association for Pastoral Care in Mental Health" "through the pioneering effort of Christian parents whose son was mentally ill. They wanted to raise awareness of the spiritual needs of people with mental health problems both in mental health services and in churches." website

    24.1.1986 Survivors Speak Out at Minstead Lodge

    Spring 1986 Asylum magazine

    3.3.1986 The Times "A survey conducted in 10 countries indicates that schizophrenia has a biological basis" by Marjorie Wallace. Styled as a preview of the forthcoming WHO report and as a critique of "anti-psychiatry movements" in the USA, West Germany, UK, Italy. Sweden and France, with a look at the "Eastern Bloc".

    8.7.1986 Disabled Persons Services Consultation and Representation Act. Under this Act, Social Services must assess the needs of disabled people on request for certain welfare services and local authorities must provide to meet those needs if they decide it is necessary. Including provision or help over telephone, television, radio, library facilities, holidays, recreation, access to education, transport to and from services, social rehabilitation and adjustment, occupational, social, cultural and recreational activities. Disabled means "Blind, Deaf or dumb or who suffer from mental disorder of any description or who are substantially and permanently handicapped by their illness, injury or congenital deformity"

    October 1986 Banstead Hospital closed

    November 1986 Psychological Medicine "Early manifestations and first-contact incidence of schizophrenia in different cultures. A preliminary report on the initial evaluation phase of the WHO Collaborative Study on determinants of outcome of severe mental disorders". Ciuntries studied (since 1977) were Colombia, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, India, Ireland, Japan, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union. PubMed. Co-author: Assen Jablensky.

    13.11.1986-14.11.1986 Mind's Annual Conference held in Hammersmith (London)

    Times articles (December 1985) by Marjorie Wallace were followed in late 1986 by her founding SANE (Schizophrenia: A National Emergency). . (External link to website). Lord Mottistone was the founding chair. - Registered as charity number 296572 on 10.4.1987 - - See SANE Poster December 1988 - London Alliance March 1989 - SANEline 1992 - Reclaim Bedlam March 1999 - SANE Service User Group March 2007

    1987 survivors' history

    survivors' history Angela Martin, "female werewolf", explored adolescent moods in You worry me Tracey, You really Do. See her website. In the beginning of the 21st century Angela illustrated user involvement in the health services.

    1987 Roy Porter A Social History of Madness: Stories of the Insane "The writings of the mad challenge the discourses of the normal... shore up that sense of personhood and identity which they feel is eroded by society and psychiatry".

    1987 Directors of seven Therapeutic Communities for children and young people, and other interested individuals, met in Charterhouse Square, London. The group continued, calling itself Charterhouse. In 1999 the group was incorporated as a Charitable Company. (2.3.2001 archive) It has since merged into The Consortium for Therapeutic Communities (TCTC)

    March 1987 Compulsory treatment of the mentally disordered in the community : the field of choice - a discussion document from the Mental Health Act Commission - See above

    April 1987 Community Treatment Orders - a discussion document prepared by the Royal College of Psychiatrists

    27.6.1987 "Sir, I feel I should declare that I have been diagnosed as a 'manic depressive' with schizophrenic tendencies. While this description may have helped the experts in prescribing me numerous 'drug cocktails' over the years, it has not proved a notable success on the dance floors of everyday life. One man's diagnostic tool is another three's insult." Peter Campbell. Letters to the Guardian

    July 1987 Mind Policy Paper "Compulsory Treatment in the Community"

    Autumn 1987 Peter Barham approached about writing a Penguin Special on the closure of Asylums. Serious work on it began about 1990 and it was pubished in 1992 as a straight Penguin.

    October 1987 World Federation for Mental Health congress held Cairo, Egypt, with the theme "The Many Worlds of Mental Health"

    October 1987 Mental Health Act Commission Second Biennial Report 1985-1987

    Asylum to
Anarchy October 1987 Publication of Asylum to Anarchy by Claire Baron. The title does not fit he content, which is a sociological analysis of the development of a "tyranny of the therapeutic" within Paddington Day Hospital (not named). It is grounded in participant observation from (roughly) 1975 to 1978 which was developed into a PhD Thesis in 1984. The book is presented as a theoretical development and critique of Goffman's Asylums. It stimulated the research for Helen Spandler's Asylum to Action

    November? 1987 Mind's Annual Conference held in Blackpool on the theme "In pursuit of excellence in community care" . ("Mind annual conferences were always in London and then they started going round the country" (Email Thurstine Basset 11.6.2009) - Harrogate? - Bournemouth 1988 - Scarborough 1989 - Brighton 1990 - Blackpool 1991 MIND Annual Conference
1985

    1988 survivors' history

    new-generation antidepressants Fluoxetine (Prozac) was introduced in 1988. It was the fourth selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) on the United States market. The "new-generation antidepressants" are fluoxetine, venlafaxine, nefazodone, paroxetine (Seroxat). source. Fluvoxamine was launched in 1984 and introduced in the United States in 1994 and in Japan in 1995. See 1994.

    1988 ECT Pros, Cons and Consequences: A MIND Special Report. The Mind archive relates this back to the Royal College of Psychiatrists guidance on use in 1977

    Sometime 1988: Conference in Trieste called "The Question of Psychiatry" sponsored by the World Health Organisation.

    1988 Josephine Grace Brand gave up psychiatric nursing to become a full time professional comedian after being asked to audition for the Friday Night Live TV show.

    February 1988 Conference on cordinating commnunity care organised jointly by the Department of Social Security and the National Unit for Psychiatric Research and Development. "Built on the research funded by the department in Salford, Southampton and Hackney to investigate the use of computers in case management systems". Lord Henley Hansard 10.5.1989). Reported as Towards co-ordinated care for people with long-term, severe mental illness by Paul Clifford; Tom Craig; and Liz Sayce (London 1988, 28 pages) National Unit for Psychiatric Research and Development

    March 1988 Community Care: Agenda for action report to Secretary of State for Health from Sir Roy Griffiths. London: HMSO, 1988 ISBN: 0113211309. [Sometimes referred to as the second Griffiths report. It was followed by white papers in 1989 and legislation in 1990] External link to review by J.K. Wing

    July 1988 Government guidance that by 1991 each health district in England must have developed a care programme to provide for people chronically disabled by mental illness. (See Hansard 1.12,1988)

    27.8.1988 Death of William Sargant - His death occasioned controversy Hugh Freeman wrote in the Guardian: "It is deplorable that the death of William Sargant should have been used by David Pilgrim (Letters Sept 7th) for an attack on psychiatry."

    Monday 26.9.1988 to Thursday 29.9.1988 Common Concerns: International Conference on User Involvement in Mental Health Services held at The University of Sussex under the auspices of Mind and Brighton Health Authority. Participants included Mike Lawson, a founder member of the Mental Patients Union and of Survivors Speak Out and Judi Chamberlin, author of On Our Own - Patient controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System. The conference was an important step towards the coming out of mental patients - It was also marked of an early stage in the development of the term "user involvement". The term survivor/user action is used by Pater Campbell (2006)
    No conference with such a title now would be taken seriously with so few openly declared patients on the platform.

    19.11.1988 At Mind's Annual General Meeting, a patient replaced a psychiatrist as the vic-chair

    LouisePembroke "first met Judi Chamberlin in 1988 at the start of my own activism at the annual Mind conference when her seminal text On Our Own was published by Mind ... then at a landmark conference in Brighton entitled Common Concerns"

    28.11.1988 to 30.11.1988 Mind's Annual Conference held in Bournemouth.

    SHE THINKS YOU WANT TO KILL HER

    YOU THINK SHE WANTS TO KILL YOU

    THEY THINK SHE'LL GO AWAY

    In December 1988, SANE launched a multimedia campaign aimed at raising public awareness of schizophrenia. The posters caused the most controversy. Some people thought they communicated the reality of severe mental illness and made people think about the adequacy of public policy. Others thought they communicated a stereotype of mentally distressed people and made it more difficult for those with a label of mental illness to live in the community.

    1989 survivors' history

    David Ennals was President of Mind from 1989 to 1995

    Banstead Hospital demolished

    In 1989 the Planned Environment Therapy Trust Archive and Study Centre was established to study and make available materials about therapeutic communities.

    In 1989 the Health Authority Archivists' Group was formed. It later became the Health Archives Group and in 2006 the Health Archives and Records Group

    In 1989 Eldryd and Helen Parry and Richard Southwell set up THET (Tropical Health and Education Trust). [Present company incororated 2006]. "THET was asked to support the training of psychiatric clinical officers in Uganda". Lancet December 2014) - See 2003

    January 1989 Department of Health Working for Patients survivors' history

    March 1989 Mind in Tower Hamlets launched its Black and Ethnic communities Mental Health Project.

    July 1989 Street poster showed a young women with spiders crawling through her hair and across her face, with the text "She has all the love in the world. But her life is a nightmare" (Rochdale). May have been North West Schizophrenia Fellowship.

    21.8.1989 - 25.8.1989 World Federation for Mental Health congress held in Auckland, New Zealand, with the theme "Mental Health - Everyone's Concern".

    17.9.1989 "The patients who choose loneliness" article by Jeremy Laurance in the Sunday Correspondent. Hackney patients preferred life outside hospital. 14.9.1989: Response letter from Adrian Lovett and Trevor Turner

    Sunday 10.9.1989 London Observer front page article on the containment of people in the psychiatric hospital on the island of Leros in Greece

    October 1989 When Mum Died and When Dad Died published by "Books Beyond Words". Forty titles have been published since 1989.

    Sheila Hollins (born 22.6.1946) looked for pictures to help people with learning disabilities cope with feelings. Almost nothing was available to help people talk about or understand adult feelings. She decided that she would put picture books together herself and publish them. She began work with a group of people with learning disabilities, illustrator Beth Webb, and consultant psychiatrist Dr Lester Sireling.

    November 1989 Department of Health and Department of Social Security Caring for People: Community Care in the Next Decade and Beyond Cmn.849 London: HMSO. 106 pages. ISN: 0101084927 Presented to Parliament by the Secretaries of State for Health, Social Security, Wales and Scotland by command of Her Majesty, November 1989

    November 1989 Mental Health Act Commission Third Biennial Report 1987-1989

    30.11.1989 to 1.11.1989 Mind's "Annual Conference and Exhibition" held in Scarborough. Title "Money and Mental Health, Financing the Future". Ros Hepplewhite was welcomed as the new Director. Left 31.12.1991

    1990 survivors' history

    May 1990 ICD-10 was endorsed by the Forty-third World Health Assembly in and came into use in WHO Member States as from 1994. The 11th revision of the classification will continue until 2015. See mental disorders

    Mid 1990 Elaine Murphy spent three months writing After the Asylums. Community Care for people with mental Illness (1991) to set out her ideas about what community care should be about.

    29.6.1990 1990 National Health and Community Care Act: The "purchaser/provider" split sprang from this Act. From 1991 health and social services were divided into units that bought services or provided them. Social Services Departments had to set up "arms length" inspection units. establish a complaints procedure and (by April 1991) prepare a Community Care Plan. Users became entitled to a Community Care Assessment of needs.

    A kind of market: Within the National Health Service and Local Social Services and along with voluntary and private organisations, the government tried to create a market to achieve the rewards promised by the new followers of Adam Smith, but with the basic services remaining in public ownership and control. The arrangements within the NHS were known as the "internal market".

    Health Authorities now "commissioned services" from GPs, NHS "Trusts", voluntary and private providers. Hospitals were rearranged as different Trusts, including some "Mental Health Trusts" or "Mental Health and Learning Disability Trusts". Some GPs became "GP fundholders". A similar division took place in Social Services

    For me, the most memorable feature of the period was that I could not work out who was who or who was responsible for what. Unfortunately, government has learnt the advantages of a fog of confusion.

    And there was also provision for user involvement in planning

    1990 Wellcome Trust History of Twentieth Century Medicine Group established to bring together clinicians, scientists, historians and others interested in contemporary medical history. In 1993 Wellcome Witness Seminars were introduced to promote interaction between these different groups, and to encourage the creation and deposit of archival sources for present and future use. external link

    19.9.1990 - 20.9.1990 A conference on the future of mental health services for the black communities held at the City University, London. Report (iii and 48 pages) compiled by Carol Baxter, and edited by Yvonne Christie and Linda Moore, published by the King's Fund Centre in 1991. Also published Is race on your agenda? : improving mental health services for people from black and minority groups by Yvonne Christie and Roger Blunden.

    October 1990 In 1990, the U.S. Congress established the first full week of October as Mental Illness Awareness Week (website) see America

    Tuesday 9.10.1990 to Thursday 11.10.1990 Mind's Annual Conference held in at the Royal Albion Hotel, 35 Old Steine, Brighton, Sussex - topic was "Advocacy, in all its varying forms" [Lisa Haywood and Jan Wallcraft took part in the planning]

    24.11.1990 Mind's Annual General Meeting at the Cavendish Conference Centre, London. (Mind members only)

    28.11.1990 John Major United Kingdom Prime Minister following the resignation of Margaret Thatcher.

    1991 survivors' history

    1991 Elaine Murphy After the Asylums: Community care for people with mental illness [See 1990 and Peter Barham 1992]

    April 1991 Mental Illness Specific Grant became available in the United Kingdom. See survey of impact in Scotland

    May 1991First Mental Health Services Conference held "back to back" with the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists conference in Adelaide. (history)
    21.7.1991 "British Prime Minister John Major has launched a citizen's charter to improve public services." BBC

    August 1991 World Federation for Mental Health congress held in Mexico, with the theme "People and Science: Together for Mental Health".

    October 1991 Madness: A Study Guide by David Herman and Jim Green (32 pages) Produced to accompany a three part BBC2 television series Madness, by Jonathan Miller, shown on 6.10.1991 "To Define True Madness" - 13.10.1991 "Out of Sight" - 20.10.1991 "Brainwaves".

    12.11.1991 to 14.11.1991 Mind's Annual Conference held in Blackpool. Theme "The Politics of Mental health" - speakers included Jeffrey Mason and Edna Conlan

    November 1991 Survivors' Poetry founded by Frank Bangay and others. From Dark to Night, an anthology edited by Frank Bangay, Hilary Porter and Joe Bidder, was published by the Survivors Press in 1992. In 1999, an illustrated collection of Frank Bangay's poems Naked Songs and Rhythms of Hope (1974 to 1999) was co-published by Spare Change Books, Box 26, 136-138 Kingsland High Street, Hackney, London, E8 2NS and Survivors Poetry, (then at 34 Osnaburgh Street, London, NW1 3ND). In 2001 A True Voice Singing, a CD of Frank Bangay reading fifteen of his poems to musical backgrounds, was published by CORE Arts. Frank Bangay can often be heard performing at the Krazy Kats n Dogs Klub

    31.12.1991 Ros Hepplewhite left Mind to join the DHSS as Chief Executive of the Child Support Agency. Jeff Cox was Acting Director until Judi Clements started in April 1992

    1992 survivors' history

    1992 SANE established SANEline - an out of hours (evenings) telephone helpline for emotional support and information for people affected by mental health problems.

    end of February 1992 Intention to set up a mental health task force announced.

    April 1992 Judi Clements became Chief Executive of Mind (To 2001), in place of Ros Hepplewhite, who had left in December 1991.

    9.4.1992 to 5.7.1995 Virginia Bottomley UK Secretary of State for Health

    August 1992 Peter Barham Closing the asylum: The mental patient in modern society Penguin. "Discusses NHS spending cuts and the recent drive towards closing mental hospitals and treating patients by means of 'community care'... speculates on the adequacy of community care and support." [See 1987 and Elaine Murphy 1991]

    September 1992 Mental Health Task Force set up by UK Government "to help unlock resources from the old, long-stay institutions and to help build up a balanced range of local services, based on best practice". (Hansard 17.12.1973. See also Hansard 2.4.1993). The full membership of the group and its support groups was still being finalised in January 1993. The task force was led by David King, assisted by Tony Day (Development Manager). The other eight members were: Alan Bell (Business manager), Martin Ede (Public Relations), Mary Mark (Administrator), Richard Moore (District Review Programme), Judy Turner-Crowson (Service Quality Programme). Stuart Fletcher (Service Users Programme), and Neil Huggins (Users Forum Co-ordinator) and Yvonne Christie (Black Users Programme). The Final Report of the Mental Health Task Force was published in 1995 See website of Tony Day.

    Early October 1992 Peter Lilley's speech to the Conservative Party Conference as Secretary of State at the Department of Social Security:

    "I've got a little list / Of benefit offenders who I'll soon be rooting out / And who never would be missed / They never would be missed. / There's those who make up bogus claims / In half a dozen names / And councillors who draw the dole / To run left-wing campaigns / They never would be missed / They never would be missed. / There's young ladies who get pregnant just to jump the housing queue / And dads who won't support the kids / of ladies they have ... kissed / And I haven't even mentioned all those sponging socialists / I've got them on my list / And there's none of them be missed / There's none of them be missed."

    World Mental Health Day 10.10.1992 First World Mental Health Day sponsored by the World Federation for Mental Health

    24.11.1992 to 26.11.1992 Mind's Annual Conference held in Bournemouth. Theme "Partnership"

    Christopher Clunis 17.12.1992 Jonathan Zito murdered by Christopher Clunis (left) on Finsbury Park station. It was an unprovoked murder of a complete stranger. Christopher Clunis was a mental patient. Jonathan's widow is Jayne Zito. The Zito Trust was established in 1994. The 2007 Mental Health Act removed its reason for being and it closed 30.3.2009.

    31.12.1992 Ben Silcock, a 27-yearold man, climbed into the lion's den at London Zoo where he was mauled by a lion.

    1993 survivors' history

    atypical anti-psychotics Risperidone was launched in the United Kingdom in 1993 - Clozapine (which has a long history) was released in 1990 - Sertindole and Olanzapine were launched in 1996. The claim for the atypicals is that they have less debilitating side-effects than Chlorpromazine.

    Homeless mentally ill people not ex-patients of the asylums. Who are they? Publication of a study by J. Leff following 278 patients who were discharged from two long-stay mental hospitals in north London, as part of closure programme. It was argued that as only seven patients (1%) were lost to follow-up, possibly becoming homeless, homeless psychiatric patients were not the result of hospital closure programmes. Paper on East Anglia University website has been removed, but see bibliography

    The Independent Wednesday 13.1.1993
    Letter: Physical causes of schizophrenia
    From Marjorie Wallace, Chief Executive, SANE, London, NW1
    11 January

    David Hill's views on schizophrenia are contradicted by studies from the World Health Organisation and other professional agencies which show that schizophrenia is a problem that affects all races and social classes. There is growing evidence that it involves a biochemical imbalance in the brain and is not simply used as a label to cover those who are socially disadvantaged. The recent case of Ben Silcock - an intelligent young man from an ordinary middle-class background - illustrates this point.

    If the existence of schizophrenia is denied, it is no wonder that sufferers such as Mr Silcock are not taken seriously, and denied care and treatment even when they ask for it.

    Details on the remaining large mental illness hospitals, with over 100 beds, were published in the mental health task force report, "Survey of English Mental Illness Hospitals, March 1993", copies of which are available in the Library (Hansard 22.2.1995)

    6.3.1993 "Italy retreats from community care for mentally ill" - "Chris Endean, Rome correspondent, European in News section of the British Medical Journal offline. Reproduced with the heading "Italian Psychiatry in Crisis. Italy retreats from Community Care for the Mentally Ill" in Asylum Summer 1993, followed by "In defense of law 180 - the story that isn't being told" by Mark Greenwood.

    28.4.1993 Health Committee of the House of Commons resolved to "examine the implications of any extension of legal powers under the Mental Health Act 1983 for the care of people with mental illness in the community"

    29.4.1993 David King of the Mental Health Task Force described his brief to users
    "To deliver management objectives on flow of capital and revenue for strategic planning...To look at other options/providers/cost structures in mental health apart from traditional health services ones...To get the concept of consumer satisfaction into the mental health arena which is difficult because of the underlying element of compulsory treatment... To bring in a notion of quality for users ..To inform what is going on - bringing discussion of hospital closure into the public arena, so people understand the issues (as) talk of hospital closures brings strong reactions, and lobbying from MPs."

    April 1993 Child Support Agency brought into operation. Ros Hepplewhite was the first director.

    26.5.1993 Evidence from Ian Bino and Lisa Haywood from Mind and from David Crepaz-Keay and Jan Wallcraft from Survivors Speak Out to the Health Committee Inquiry

    VISIT TO TRIESTE MENTAL HEALTH SERVICE
    MAY 2ND - 9TH 1993

    AN OPPORTUNITY TO TAKE PART IN AN
    ORGANISED VISIT TO TRIESTE TO SEE AT
    FIRST HAND THE WORK OF THE MENTAL
    HEALTH SERVICE

    COST APPROX. £300 (subject to fimalised costs)
    INCLUDES
    FLIGHT * ACCOMODATION *
    GUIDE/INTERPRETER

    Trip includes four day visit of service
    including mental health services,
    cooperatives, plus oportunity to visit Venice
    For further details write to TRIESTE '93, c/o
    MACC, Swan Buildings, 20 Swan st. Manchester
    M4 5JW Tel: 061 834 9823

    Asylum magazine Winter 1992/1993, page 7.

    11.7.1993 Julie Birchill in The Mail on Sunday

    "Last week saw the conviction of a schizophrenic released from the hatch only to rape three women; there have been 40 murders by mental patients in the two blood-drenched years since the grotesquely named Care in the Community con came into being. Not only have the lunatics taken over the asylum; thanks to this government they've now taken over the streets too, making them one big open prison. Open for them, prison for us."

    23.8.1993 to 27.8.1993 World Federation for Mental Health congress held Tokyo, Japan, with the theme "Mental Health: Toward the 21st Century"

    November 1993 Mind's Annual Conference held in Scarborough (?). Theme "Creating Diversity" ["Diverse Minds - Background and aims - In 1993 Mind published a policy on Black and Minority Ethnic mental health which highlighted major concerns about the impact of racism on people's lives, on their mental health and on the services they receive."] [Participants may have included Joe Brand]

    Friday 17.12.1993 Jayne Zito's account of her experience published in The Independent.

    1994 survivors' history

    1994 was a "difficult year" for Mind. About here it moved from Harley Street to Stratford, in East London. It faced an annual deficit of £250,000 and had to "re-structure" in a way that meant loosing many members of staff.

    February 1994 The report of the Inquiry into the Care and Treatment of Christopher Clunis presented to the chairman of North East Thames and South East Thames Regional Health Authorities

    The Zito Trust was set up after the Inquiry report. Registered as a charity in January 1995. The archive of its website does not start until 3.6.2002 - Current website

    Mental Health Task Force Calendar of Events March 1994

    Second tranche of small grants to be announced

    Training the trainers days for service users at Coventry, Manchester and Taunton.

    Conferences for service users at Northampton and Birmingham

    Conference for black service users Leicester

    Mental Health Task Force Calendar of Events April 1994

    Report on services and closure plans in three regions.

    Managing Transitional Costs - booklet to be published.

    Conferences for service usesr at Salisbury and Sheffield

    Support Group meeting

    10.5.1994 HSG(94)27 guidance stated that after any homicide by a person previously in contact with mental health services, the relevant health authority and/or social services should set up an independent inquiry and publish a report on the lessons to be learnt. There were over 120 inquiries by 2002. (Zito Trust website 2002)

    May 1994 Mind launched its "Breakthrough - Making Community Care Work" campaign. A petition said "Thousands of people with mental health problems are without proper care in the community. We the undersigned are asking Virginia Bottomley to provide them with rights to 24-hour crisis services, supported accommodation, secure provision, appropriate therapy and opportunities for employment". A Community Care Bill was presented to the UK parliament in January 1995 by Tessa Jowell. The campaign claimed that "the government has failed to provide sufficient funding to implement the Community Care Act" and that "More than a year after its official introduction, Care in the Community is still far from being an effective reality". The "official introduction" may refer to the Mental Health Task Force.

    Mental Health Task Force Calendar of Events May 1994

    Video of good practice on alternatives to hospital admissionn

    Conference for service users at Ipswich

    Conference for black service users Manchester

    Workshops for Directors of Finance commence

    Mental Health Task Force Calendar of Events June 1994

    Guidance for purchasers on services for people with severe mental illness

    Conference for service users at Eastbourne

    Conference for black service users at Leeds

    Summer [July?] 1994 In Listen To Me - Communicating the Needs of People with Profound Intellectual and Multiple Disabilities Pat Fitton shared what her daughter, Kathy, had taught her.

    July 1994 Bryan Bennett (aged 57), a client of Worland Day Centre, Newham, was killed by, Stephen Laudat (aged 26) who attended drop ins run in the centre. Stephen was paranoic and thought Bryan was one of the Kray twins stabbed Bryan 82 times. Stephen had a history of assault in prison and hospital, which had not been cmmunicated. Most of the Worland clients were white, Stephen's parents came from Dominica. Stephen's father said "As a black boy I know my son will be drugged up in your prison and hospital. I don't expect the best for my son, I expect the worst". Stephen was sent to Rampton (December 1994). The inquiry into the killing was chaired by Len Woodley, Britain's first black QC. Its recommendations influenced THACMHO in Tower Hamlets.

    Mental Health Task Force Calendar of Events July 1994

    Conference for service users at Preston

    Conference for black service users at Bristol

    Support Group meeting

    Mental Health Task Force Calendar of Events September 1994

    Video on servives for black and minority groups

    October 1994: In Finding a Place: A Review of Mental Health Services for Adults, the Audit Commission found that the favoured policy, of individual, locally based care within the community, was "struggling".

    Mental Health Task Force Calendar of Events October 1994

    World Mental Health Day

    National conference for black mental health service users

    1.11.1994 to 3.11.1994 Mind's Annual Conference held in Brighton. Theme "Break through: making community care work".

    12.11.1994 New Scientist "Drug brings relief to big spenders" contrasted a seasonal world wide "orgy of spending" before Christmas with the life of "some unfortunates" for whom "the obsessive urge to shop lasts all year long". "Now... there may be drugs that can cure compulsive shoppers". It reported pilot studies in Iowa and Cincinnati by Donald Black and Susan McElroy with Fluvoxamine. The article said "Compulsive shopping is probably closest in nature to "impulse control disorders", but "also resembles obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), a strange complaint that causes sufferers endlessly to repeat pointless tasks like washing their hands".

    Saturday 26.11.1994 Mind's Annual General Meeting held in Stratford Town Hall. David Peryer (one time Director of Social Services in Humberside) elected chair and Lisa Haywood Vice Chair

    Mental Health Task Force Calendar of Events November 1994

    National conference for service users

    Book on mental health and black and ethnic communities to be published

    Report on the future of the mental health market

    Final Support Group meeting

    December 1994 Launch of Schizophrenia Media Agency

    Mental Health Task Force Calendar of Events December 1994

    Handbook on advocacy to be published

    Concluding report

    See closure index
    Lords Hansard 26.10.1995 : Column WA128 Mental Illness Hospitals: In-Patients
    Lord Mottistone asked Her Majesty's Government:
    How many patients were, or are, cared for (on closure or now, if not yet closed) in each of the hospitals named in Table 2 of the Survey of English Mental Illness Hospitals March 1994-Monitoring the Closure of the "Water Towers".
    Baroness Cumberlege: The information available centrally is given in the table.
    NHS Hospitals in Table 2 of the Survey of English Mental Illness Hospitals March 1994-Monitoring the Closure of the "Water Towers":
    Numbers of In-patients at 31.3.1994
    Hospital In-patients all ages
    Barnsley Hall Hospital 57     [Worcestershire - 1903-1996]
    Clifton Hospital 100     [Yorkshire 1847-1994]
    Coney Hill Hospital 168     [Gloucestershire 1884-mid 1990s]
    Hollymoor Hospital 185     [Birmingham 1905?-1995]
    Mapperley Hospital 195     [Nottingham 1880-December 1994]
    St. Francis Hospital (Nottingham) 38     [???]
    St. George's Hospital (Stafford) 147     [1818-???]
    St. Crispin Hospital 121     [Northampton 1876-???]
    Scalebor Park Hospital 35     [Yorkshire 1902-1995]
    Central Hospital 95     [Warwickshire
    Claybury Hospital 361     [Essex 1893-1997]
    Countess of Chester Hospital 179     [Cheshire 1829- continuing]
    Hill End Hospital 153     [Hertfordshire 1899-1997]
    Maidstone Hospital 115     [Kent
    Netherne Hospital 57     [Surrey 1909-1994]
    Princess Royal Hospital 154     [Sussex
    Roundway Hospital 99     [Wiltshire
    St. George's Hospital (Morpeth) 312     [Northumberland
    St. Mary's Hospital (Northumberland) 247     [
    St. Matthew's Hospital 157     [Staffordshire 1864-1995
    Stanley Royd Hospital 277     [Yorkshire 1818-1995]
    Tone Vale Hospital 117     [Somerset 1897-
    Tooting Bec Hospital 96     [London 1903-1995]
    Whittingham Hospital 153     [Preston, Lancashire 1873-2002 MSU continuing]
    St. Nicholas' Hospital (Newcastle) 214     [
    Brookwood Hospital 311     [
    Carlton Hayes Hospital 249     [
    Littlemore Hospital 172     [Berkshire 1846-
    Middlewood Hospital 116     [Yorkshire 1872-1999]
    Napsbury Hospital 419     [Hertfordshire 1905-1999
    Shenley Hospital 424     [Hertfordshire 1934-
    The Royal London Hospital (St Clements) 99     [London
    Warlingham Park Hospital 143     [Croydon 1903-1999]
    All Saints Hospital 261     [Birmingham 1850-2000]
    Parkside Hospital 249     [Cheshire 1871-2002]
    Knowle Hospital 184     [1852-1996 RSU continuing]
    Fair Mile Hospital 212     [
    De la Pole Hospital 246     [Hull ]
    Fairfield Hospital 415     [
    Fulbourn Hospital 301     [Cambridgeshire
    Goodmayes Hospital 401      [Still open 2006]
    High Royds Hospital 346     [Yorkshire
    Horton Hospital 329     [London
    Lancaster Moor & Ridge Lea Hospitals 314     [Lancashire
    Park Prewett Hospital 245     [Hampshire
    Runwell Hospital 320     [1936- Essex - Still open 2006]
    Severalls Hospital 218     [
    St. Edward's Hospital 254     [Staffordshire
    St. Lawrence's Hospital 206     [Cornwall
    Warley Hospital 534     [Essex
    Winterton Hospital 375     [Durham
    Bexley Hospital 241     [Kent
    Cherry Knowle Hospital 320     [Sunderland
    Garlands Hospital 182     [Carlisle
    Rauceby Hospital 173     [Lincolnshire
    Towers Hospital 163     [Leicester
    Winwick Hospital 398     [Lancashire
    Graylingwell Hospital 249     [Sussex
    St. Andrew's Hospital (Norwich) 168     [Norfolk
    Springfield Hospital 429     [Still open 2006]
    St. James' Hospital 204     [Portsmouth - Still open 2006]
    St. Luke's Hospital 140     [Middlesbrough - Still open 2006]
    St. Clement's Hospital (Ipswich) 190     [Still open 2006]
    Stone House Hospital 98     [Kent 1866- Still open 2006]
    Wonford House Hospital 116     [Devon 1801-
    Highcroft Hospital 132     [Birmingham
    West Park Hospital 358     [Epsom 1903-2002/2005?]
    Barrow Hospital 212     [Bristol
    Bootham Park Hospital 107     [Yorkshire 1777 -
    Ealing Hospital 327     [London 1831 - continuing
    Hellesdon Hospital 258     [Norfolk - Still open 2006]
    Henderson Hospital 24     [Surrey
    Kingsway Hospital 285     [Derbyshire 1888 - Still open 2006]
    Lynfield Mount Hospital 119     [Yorkshire 1910/1948 -
    Maudsley Hospital 217     [1915/1923 - Still open 2006
    Old Manor Hospital 145     [Wiltshire 1813? -
    Prestwich Hospital 337     [Lancashire 1851 - 1996]
    Royal Shrewsbury Hospital (Shelton) 197     [Shropshire 1845- Still open 2006]
    St. Martin's Hospital 120     [Kent - Still open 2006]
    Sundridge Hospital 48     [Kent
    The Bethlem Royal Hospital 180     [Kent Still open 2006
    Warneford Hospital 70     [Oxfordshire Still open 2006

    79 hospitals in this list. 23 previously closed. Total 102. Lists do not include Welsh Hospitals (7?)

    Not listed: Springfield Manchester (before 1844-1995)

    1995 survivors' history

    January 1995 The Zito Trust registered as a charity (No. 1043754)

    1995 "The Black Health Foundation" started as part of the King's Fund. Became the Afiya Trust in 1997. See 1999 - See website and publications - Patrick Vernon - April 2009 Twitter - 2010 - 2011 - 2012 OBE

    24.1.1995 Tessa Jowell presented the Community Care (Rights to Mental Health Services) Bill to the House of Commons. Lisa Haywood, vice-chair of Mind, on the left - Judi Clements National Director in the centre - Tessa Jowell - David Peryer, chair, on the right.

    See closure index
    20.2.1995 Government asked in the House of Lords, how it judged the strength of local and family opposition to the proposed closure of the following long-stay hospitals for mentally handicapped people: Cell Barnes Hospital, St Ebbas Hospital, Turner Village Hospital, Llanfrechfa Grange Hospital, Northgate Hospital, Prudhoe Hospital, Meanwood Park Hospital, Ida Darwin Hospital, Calderstones Hospital, Leybourne Grange Hospital, Tilworth Grange Hospital, Clarefield Hospital.

    Spring 1995: Home at Last: How two young women with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities achieved their own home. by Pat Fitton, Carol O'Brien and Jean Willson

    8.11.1995 Royal Assent 1995 Mental Health (Patients in the Community) Act. See above

    1995 World Federation for Mental Health congress held Dublin, Ireland, with the theme "Time for Reflection".

    In its response to the Scottish Affairs Committee's Report on The Closure of Psychiatric Hospitals in Scotland in 1995, The Scottish Office committed itself to production of "A Statement of Aims and Points which we would expect to be covered in local strategies". The Framework for Mental Health Services in Scotland fulfilled that commitment.

    2.9.1996 A group of ex-squatters in south London registered a company (3244552) called Cooltan Arts. This became a registered charity in 1997 (1064231). Now described as "an arts in the community organisation providing a participant-run resource for people with mental distress including the provision of arts workshops and a gallery in Southwark". It obtained a Mind Millennium award "to set up an art group for women who had survived mental distress, sexual assault and trauma. The classes enabled women to share their experiences and develop their creativity in a safe space". (history)

    1996 survivors' history

    April 1996 First meeting of the "Standing Advisory Group on Consumer Involvement in the NHS Research and Development Programme" established by Director of Research and Development in the Department of Health. See first report 1.1.1998. Later known as "Consumers in NHS Research". In 2001 the Group widened its remit to cover public health and social care research commissioned by the Policy Research Programme of the Department of Health. See 2002/2003 Newsletter. Became INVOLVE in July 2003.

    9.7.1996 Lin Russell (45), her two daughters, Josie (9) and Megan (6) and their dog Lucy tied up and savagely beaten with a hammer in Kent. Only Josie survived. Michael Stone (who claims he was innocent) was convicted of the murder. Michael Stone having been previously diagnosed as psychopathic, but untreatable, prompted revision of the treatability requirement for legal detention. A "National Personality Disorder Development Programme" was introduced and ran from 2002 to 2011.

    1997 survivors' history

    26.3.1997 Afiya Trust registerd as a charity (Charity No: 1061596/0). Afiyah means Health: free from illness and grief. survivors' history
    See
    Lydia Yee and Valerie Amos
    The Afiya Trust became independent of the King's Fund in April 1999

    Early May 1997 After several months of breaking down, Joe Wick's, a character on BBC EastEnders, is diagnosed as having Schizophrenia - weblink - Adrianne Reveley (medical adviser)

    "Schizophrenia is the last great stigma. We have seen cancer, AIDS, and Alzheimer's disease accepted and admitted by a number of celebrities, and this has helped everyone else who suffers. We psychiatrists know there are celebrities who have schizophrenia - we treat them- but few feel able to "come out." That is why a story on a national soap is so important." (Adrianne Reveley)

    May 1997 Blair Government

    New Labour - New Community Care

    20 May 1997 After seventeen years, Robert James Maxwell was succeded by Rabbi Julia Neuberger as Chief Executive of the King's Fund - Press report

    1.6.1997 New website of the Mental Health Foundation first saved in International Archive.

    6.7.1997 to 11.7.1997: World Federation for Mental Health congress held in Lahti and Helsinki, Finland. The theme "Cornerstones for Mental Health" focused on "social, economic, environmental, ethical, physical and psychological issues of mental health". Topics were covered under five cornerstone themes: 1) ethics and values; 2) wellness: healthy body and mind; 3) social structures, culture and environment; 4) interaction, relationships and personal autonomy; 5) services for mental health: purchasing, providing, using. See users


    19.9.1997 A Framework for Mental Health Services in Scotland Scottish Executive (1997) Edinburgh: The Stationery Office.

    A framework for England followed in 1999 - for Wales in 2002 - and for Northern Ireland in 2003. In the United States, the Surgeon General made his "first ever" report on mental health in 1999

    10.10.1997 World Mental Health Day. - The Alliance for Psychosocial Nursing (APN) launched at Kensington Town Hall, London (England) where the Bethlem Hospital was celebrating its 750th anniversary and the Nursing Times was hosting the 6th International Congress on Mental Health Nursing. More than 400 nurses from 15 countries joined the celebratory launch.

    October 1997 Controversial BBC Panorama programme on mental health.

    1998 survivors' history

    1998 Mind's "Key dates in the history of mental health and community care" was compiled by George Stewart of Mind Information Unit. The first version was 1998. It was updated in January 2003. The first Internet Archive I have traced was 28.12.2005. Current location - The chronology starts in 1601. It has very extensive material about recent mental health history.

    Care in the community?: a history of the reprovision programme of Friern Hospital

    1.1.1998 Modernising mental health services safe, sound and supportive Department of Health (England). archived outline

    Friday 16.1.1998 "Is the media a friend or foe of psychiatry". Panel discussion organised by the Royal College of Psychiatrists at Maudsley Hospital. Chaired by Marjorie Wallace. Panel members: Anthony Clare, Raj Persaud, Rob Kerwin and Martin Deahl.

    Saturday 17.1.1998 "Care in the community is scrapped". The Daily Telegraph claims that statements made by Frank Dobson, the Secretary of State for Health, amount to the scrapping of the Care in the Community policy

    BBC: "The controversial policy of releasing mentally ill people from hospitals is to be scrapped by the Government. The Health Secretary, Frank Dobson, said the care in the community programme launched by the Conservatives in 1990 had failed"

    Sunday 18.1.1998 Frank Dobson told a BBC Radio 5 Live phone-in that there was a substantial minority of people who were either dangerous, or made such a nuisance of themselves that they needed 24-hour supervision - but that did not mean, as the Daily Telegraph reported on Saturday, that the entire care in the community scheme was to be abolished.

    Monday 19.1.1998 "Dobson denies call to scrap care in community" Anthony Bevins The Independent

    March 1998 First Big Alternative Conference

    May 1998: Audit Commission published Home Alone: The Housing Aspects of Community Care - archive

    July 1998 Catherine Eadie started her website Mental Health in the UK. "One of the first UK user-led mental health websites and still going strong to this day" (15.2.2014).

    Care in the Community has failed - Health Secretary, Frank Dobson repeated this statement several times. It is the misfortune of politicians that their most outrageous statements are remembered for ever. This one must rank alongside Margaret Thatcher's "There is no such thing as society". The statement is prominent in Modernising Mental Health Services. Safe, sound and supportive. As this also says that community care had brought "many beneficial changes", and as it shows no intention of abandoning community care, I would interpret it to mean that care in the community has failed for some, and in some respects and so the government was bringing in a new model of community care which would address the problems.

    29.7.1998 Frank Dobson Outline Third Way for Mental Health. (Press release) - First of two press releases alleging that care in the community has failed.

    School holidays - Summer 1998 Being bored, Andrew Tierney and friends decided to explore the site of the disused mental hopital at Cane Hill in Surrey, close to their homes. The site had been closed since 1992 and nothing constructive was happening to it. In May 1999 they explored nearby Netherne. This site was being re-developed. Later the same year Andrew started the_one.uk "the UKs only Urban Exploration website. Urban exploration is exploring tunnels, buildings and other "urban" things. It's popular in the US, Canada, and Australia". The first Internet Archive of this was taken on 21.1.2000. The site evolved into UrbeX UK - urban exploration in the UK in January 2002. (Internet Archive)

    25.9.1998 "Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik of Norway returned to work this week after a three-and-a-half-week sick leave for depression and insisted that he could handle the stress of the job". (The New York Times) - See January 2008


    7.10.1998 Launch of Changing Minds campaign by the Royal College of Pyschiatrists

    22.10.1998 to 24.10.1998 World Federation for Mental Health 50th Anniversary Symposium held Church House, Westminster in London, with the theme "Partners for Mental Health: Nations for Mental Health". - Highlights - offline.

    30.10.1998 Death of David "Rocky" Bennett, a 38-year-old African Caribbean, in the Norvic Clinic medium secure unit in Norwich after being pinioned face down on the floor for 25 minutes by a team of at least four nurses. The report into his death was published in December 2003


    October 1998 John Hutton was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. He became Minister of State with responsibility for Social Care at the Department of Health in 1999. - Minister for Health in 1999 - Minister of State for Health in June 2001. -

    3.11/1998 to 5.11.1998 Mind Conference in Brighton with the theme "An Effective Approach to Mental Health". Mind wanted "participants to share knowledge about delivering user-friendly" services, and ran a major consultation on what and who should be in the programme.

    The ministerial speaker was John Hutton: "Remember the infamous John Hutton speech "we will not tolerate a culture of non-compliance" [with medication] (Louise Pembroke). "I walked along the seafront and arrived just after Hutton had spoken to find lots of anger in the air. The rumour was that he had just been appointed as a junior health minister and was completely out of his depth just reading his script and apparently expecting most people present to agree with him." (Thurstine Basset) "Well he got a surprise didn't he! The outraged response from the audience was reported in the Argus the following day" (Louise Pembroke). [Email discussion 10.12.2009] See Beehive report relative to Mind Conference.


    Modernising Mental Health Services. Safe, sound and supportive
    8.12.1998 Strategy Launched To Modernise Mental Health Services (Press release) - Second of two press releases alleging that care in the community has failed.

    1999 survivors' history

    The Testimonies Project

    As the old asylum based hospitals were replaced with different models of treatment, there was concern that the stories of those who had spent time there would be forgotten. Between 1999 and 2004 a group of interviewers from a range of backgrounds went across England and Wales to record first hand accounts from individuals who had experienced life in such institutions. Testimony - Inside Stories of Mental Health Care gives you online access to video clips and transcripts of the interviews.

    See Press Release 22.11.2000

    Outside the walls of the asylum : the history of care in the community, 1750-2000

    April 1999 UK National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) established. It became the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence in April 2013. See also Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE)

    Monday 19.4.1999 "Religion and Severe Mental Illness Conference", arranged by Martin Aaron, chair of The Jewish Association for the Mentally Ill, with key speakers: Stephen Sykes, the Bishop of Ely - Dr Zaki Badawi, the Principal of the Muslim College - and Dr Jonathan Sacks, the UK's Chief Rabbi. BBC News - an archive

    April 1999 The Afiya Trust became independent of the King's Fund.
    See Peter Scott Blackman. His efforts and ability "were recognised by Barry Mussenden of the Department of Health and Lydia Yee, the then Chairperson of the Afyia Trust"
    Since May 1999 Afiya became the home of several vital projects involving carers support, community involvement and mental health. The objects of the charity are to advance education in subjects concerned with the health of persons from minority ethnic groups and institutions established to relieve sickness and to protect and preserve the health of persons from minority ethnic groups in the United Kingdom.

    Saturday 19.6.1999 I started this webpage

    3.7.1999 British Medical Journal Outcome of long stay psychiatric patients resettled in the community: prospective cohort study by Noam Trieman, Julian Leff, and Gyles Glover.

    17.7.1999 Richardson Report (to Ministers). Published November 1999 as "Department of Health.Review of the Mental Health Act 1983. Report of the expert committee. London: DoH, 1999") (external link to download)

    5.9.1999 to 10.9.1999 World Federation for Mental Health congress held Santiago, Chile, with the theme "Interfaces in Mental Health: Poverty, Quality of Life and Society".

    23.9.1999: Audit Commission published Children in Mind: Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services

    30.9.1999 National Service Framework for Mental Health: Modern Standards and Service Models Department of Health (1999) London: The Stationery Office.

    See closure index
    A written answer originally given on 17.7.1997, but updated 16.11.1999 by Secretary of State, Alan Milburn, identified hospitals listed as having recently been, or currently, the subject of consultation which could lead to the full closure. The psychiatric hospitals on this list included: Fulbourn , Goodmayes, Horton, Napsbury, Runwell, Shenley, Warley, Belmont, St. Andrew's, St. Mary's, Winterton Hospitals, All Saints, Ida Darwin, Sundridge Hospital, Highcroft, Monyhull, St. Edward's, Stallington,

    November/December 1999 "Current discussion is almost entirely preoccupied with service users as dangerous, murderous and threatening. Mental health service users have to change this." (Peter Beresford)

    survivors' history Bapu Trust was formally established in 1999, in memory of Bapu and from her legacy. archive of origin - Its project office Center for Advocacy in Mental Health (CAMH) was started in August 2000. (archive). The first issue of Aaina, its newsletter, was in January 2001. (archive). Its first editor was Jayasree Kalathil.

    2000 survivors' history

    Henry Rollins' article "Psychiatry at 2000 - a Bird's Eye View

    Community Care in the Making: A History of the Mental After Care Association 1879-2000

    January 2000: Audit Commission published Forget Me Not: Mental Health Services for Older People

    13.1.2000 Convention on the International Protection of Adults signed at the Hague. (external link)

    Spring 2000: Rossbret (hosted by Rootsweb) workhouse and hospitals (including asylums) mailing list established. (archives). Supported by people engaged in family history, the list and its website reflect a major change in social attitudes from the days when a relative in an asylum was a closely guarded secret.   More social history links

    Louis Appleby appointed as National Director for Mental Health in England in April 2000. He chairs the Mental Health Taskforce set up to implement the NHS Plan.

    1.6.2000 Press Release: Mental Health Czar begins the process of Reform for Mental Health Services (archive)   National Clinical Directors archive

    May 2000 Mental Health Foundation says this was its first Mental Health Awareness Week. Its web archives suggest that it was actually a theme developed for the established Mental Health Awareness Week.

    The first fifteen themes were : 2000: Stigma - 2001: Friendship - 2002: Out at Work - 2003: Work-life Balance - 2004: Mood - 2005: Exercise - 2006: Alcohol - 2007: Friendship (again) - 2008: Anger - 2009: Fear - 2010: Loneliness - 2011: Sleep - 2012: Doing Good - 2013: Let's Get Physical - 2014: Anxiety - 2015 Mindfulness

    24.5.2000 John Hutton on non-compliance with psychiatric medication.

    20.7.2000 Royal Assent to the Care Standards Act 2000

    16.9.2000 to 17.9.2000. Two-day workshop on developing a Wellness Recovery Action Plan. Colchester, England.

    September 2000 Basic Needs (UK based Trust) began operations in South India. See website - Basic Needs Review May 2004 offline

    22.11.2000 [Press release: "Survivors Add New Voices to Dark Chapter in Medical History" - [Our archive] [Mental Health Testimony Archive]

    1.12.2001 Mental Health Media seeking senior Public Relations Ofiicers for consultancy work. "Next year sees the launch of its Media Bureau, which is described as a 'one-stop PR shop'. It will provide media skills and support to those seeking dialogue with the media about mental health issues. The charity's media manager Emma Stewart will co-ordinate an advisory group consisting of PROs with mental health interests, journalists and mental health professionals. Those interested will work on a project-by-project basis, Stewart said."

    2001 survivors' history

    25.1.2001 Health Service Journal: " Judi Clements, chief executive of Mind for nine years, is leaving because of diabetes-related health problems and arthritis."

    Valuing People: A New Strategy for Learning Disability for the 21st Century Department of Health March 2001. The first white paper for people with learning disability since Better Services for the Mentally Handicapped in June 1971.

    • It says we should all be citizens with legal and civil rights.

    • It supports independence.

    • It supports having more choice.

    • It supports being included.

    The Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) was established by the United Kingdom Government in 2001 to improve social care services for adults and children. - website - See February 2007

    The National Schizophrenia Association's Self-Management Project was set up in 2001 - Also called its Recovery Project

    About May 2001 New, purpose built and clinically designed, mental health unit, Sevenacres, opened at Newport on the Isle of Wight.

    Friday 18.5.2001 "In her last speech as Mind's Chief Executive, Judi Clements addressed the audience at the Mind Awards today and questioned how far public and political understanding of mental health issues had moved on over the last few years." (Press Release)

    22.5.2001 Fifty-fourth World Health Assembly endorsed the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, (ICF).

    22.7.2001 World Federation for Mental Health congress held Vancouver, Canada, with the theme "Respecting Diversity in Mental Health in a Changing World" - Mad Pride march

    6.8.2001 "25 die in T.N. asylum fire" The Hindu 7.8.2001 - Wikipedia says "28 inmates of a faith-based mental asylum died in fire. All these inmates were bound by chains at Moideen Badusha Mental Home in Erwadi Village in Tamil Nadu." The chains were part of the faith healing process. - See Jayasree Kalathil 11.2007

    October 2001 The World Health Report 2001: Mental Health: New Understanding, New Hope

    October 2001 Launch of "Well?" The Scottish Executive's National Programme for Improving the Mental Health and Well-Being of Scotland's Population. See Well? on the web - 2006 archive

    22.10.2001 to 26.10.2001 Presentations by Mary Ellen Copeland "Mental Health Recovery Facilitator's Training" in Birmingham, England followed by "Mental Health Recovery Seminars" 30.10.2001 to 31.10.2001 Limerick, Ireland

    13.11.2001 to 15.11.2001 Mind's Annual Conference held in Scarborough. Theme "Caught in the Act? Working for services and law which meet users' needs"

    27.11.2001 Jack McConnell replaced Henry McLeish as First Minister of Scotland in the Labour/Liberal coalition government. He made a large number of number of changes to the Scottish Ministers, including replacing Susan Deacon as Minister for Health and Community Care with her Deputy, Malcolm Chisholm. survivors' history

    Between February 2001 and March 2002 Gary McKinnon is alleged to have hacked into USA military (and other) computers. McKinnon has been diagnosed as suffering from an "autism spectrum disorder compounded with clinical depression". (Wikipedia)

    2002 survivors' history

    Valuing People with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilites

    1.1.2002 Breaking the Circles of Fear A review of the relationship between mental health services and African and Caribbean communities by Frank Keating, David Robertson, Andrew McCulloch, and Errol Francis, published by The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health. archive copy - Research Gate
    "We have reached a point in the relationship between the Black communities and mental health services where there are truly Circles of Fear. Black people mistrust and often fear services, and staff are often wary of the Black community, fearing criticism and not knowing how to respond, and fearful of young Black men. The cycle is fuelled by prejudice, misunderstanding, misconceptions and sometimes racism."

    January 2002 Jeremy Jones of Norwich began his website (archive) - See also 1902 Medical Dictionary and 1962 history of mental hospitals

    20.2.2002 Sue Lou began her journal

    February 2002 Launch of The Social Perspectives Network for Modern Mental Health (SPN)
    December 2005 archive staff list

    March 2002 First edition of Service Standards for Therapeutic Communities published.

    Geraldine Bedell, The Observer Sunday 7.4.2002:

    "Today, fewer than 20 of the original 120 Victorian asylums remain"

    See closure index

    18.6.2002 The Early Years of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship published by Rethink. website - offline - Produced by The History Group: President: Cecil Kavanagh - Chair: Jenny Fisher - Group members: Nicholas Lines - Joy Major - David Morphet - Dorothy Silberston - Philip Wilmot - Editor: John Wing

    25.6.2002: House of Commons Mental Health Debate
    Liam Fox on Conservative reforms since Lord Ashley
    David Hinchliffe: Community Care has not failed

    25.6.2002 Draft Mental Healh Bill (England) published.
    Link to archive of Parliamentary reports 24.7.2002 to 14.10.2003
    Mind archive from 22.6.2003

    June 2002 National Institute for Mental Health in England (NIMHE) launched. "To improve the quality of life of anyone with a mental health problem." Part of Care Services Improvement Partnership. - See Experts by Experience April 2002 - Mental Health Research Network 2003 - Making a Real Difference 2005 - A website archive started 10.8.2006. Making a Real Difference 2006 - The National Institute for Mental Health in England was succeded by the The National Mental Health Development Unit in April 2009.

    17.8.2002 Ian Huntley held at Rampton. He was sectioned under the Mental Health Act just before he was charged with the murders of two 10-year-olds from Soham, Cambridgeshire. On 8.10.2002 he was found fit to stand trial and moved from Rampton to a prison. The Mental Health Alliance cancelled a march on 14.9.2002 because: "Fears were expressed that the alliance could not guarantee the health and safety of the march participants in the atmosphere of misunderstanding of people with mental health problems in the wake of events in Soham,"

    October 2002 The 'see me' campaign launched to challenge stigma and discrimination around mental ill-health in Scotland

    Victoria Helen Smith's website was online from October 2002 to March 2004 survivors' history

    21.10.2002 "Brain tumour causes uncontrollable paedophilia" New Scientist - BBC News. Account of case reported by neurologists Russell Swerdlow and Jeffrey Burns, of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, who "believe it is the first reported case linking damage to the region with paedophilia". "We're dealing with the neurology of morality here," says Swerdlow. pdf of Burns and Swerdlow 2003

    23.10.2002 Mental Health Alliance lobby of UK Parliament - Press Release

    Bexley Water Tower blown up 27.11.2002 Ceremonial blowing up of the water tower of Bexley Hospital. The plunger on the explosives was pressed by Linda Noyes, who trained as a nurse at Bexley Hospital. Click on the picture for partial archive of news release. Click here for a poem that Debbie Mayes wrote (22.12.1998) about being a patient in Bexley.

    "Executives have taken over the asylum: the fate of 71 psychiatric hospitals" by Robert Chaplin and Steve Peters, Psychiatric Bulletin 2003 analyses a sample of pre 1961 hospitals (closed and open) and shows that a large percentage of those preserved have been converted to luxury housing

    Adult Mental Health Services: A National Service Framework for Wales Welsh Assembly Government (2002) Cardiff: The Stationery Office.

    2003 survivors' history

    Fourteen collaborative art projects took place in hospitals across Edinburgh and the Lothians between 2003 and 2005. A creative and colourful report on all of them was published in 2005 as Extraordinary Everyday - Explorations in Collaborative Art in Healthcare
     

    2003: Last year of the Community Health Councils. - To disappear on 1.9.2003
    Long live the Campaign for Health Concerns! (Archive of rather short lived links site)
    January 2003: Patient and Public Involvement Forums archive set up. These include ones for mental health, such as the one for East London and City Mental Health - archive


    January 2003 Making Things Happen Better, the first annual report of the Learning Disability Task Force. archive copy - task force - Guardian Review online

    The Task Force was jointly chaired by Michelle Chinery an independent consultant who has a learning disability and Chris Davies who is in charge of Social Services for Somerset County Council

    January? 2003 Start of Mental Health Research Network set up by the National Institute for Mental Health in England (NIMHE). The earliest international archive of the website is 8.12.2003. There is an archive on this site of the earliest text archived. Service User Research Group England (SURGE) was its service user arm. The UK Mental Health Research Network is said to have been set up in 2004 - building on the above network. Also see October 2005 UK Mental Health Research Network launched (See NHS Archive) - current website

    21.2.2003 to 26.2.2003 World Federation for Mental Health congress held in Melbourne, Australia, with the theme "Partnerships in Health" (external link to website Consumers at Melbourne

    1.3.2003 Launch of the Mental Health in Higher Education website. 10.6.2003 archive - 23.10.2005 archive - Report of activity 2003-2004 - offline -
    current website

    Spring 2003: First publication of The Naked Bird Watcher by Suzy Johnston. The second and updated edition (ISBN 0954809203) was published in August 2004 by The Cairn.

    "The sanity birds glided seamlessly through my dream... Then one bird fell. Screaming it dropped from the clouds... Then another. And another, until the screaming was unbearable and even the clouds hurried to leave."

    website about Suzy Johnston

    International leadership exchange First Network Meeting in Birmingham, UK in May 2003. The result of a plan developed by Mental Health Corporations of America, Inc. (MHCA) to link their leaders with colleagues in England. The aim was to share experiences in service development and innovation in order to improve the quality of services for consumers. Network Meetings followed in 2004 in Washington DC (USA) - 2005 Wellington, New Zealand - 2006 Edinburgh (Scotland) - 2007 Ottawa - 2009 Brisbane (Australia) - 2010 Killarney (Ireland) - 2011 San Francisco (USA) - 2013 Auckland (Australia) - 2014 Manchester (England) - (website) [See 9.6.2014]

    May 2003 Start of three year Royal College of Psychiatrists study investigating the community lives of people who previously lived in a mental hospital. The "Living Project" will explore the social environment which replaced the fixed structures of a closed psychiatric hospital, investigating the problems ex-patients may experience, such as poverty and social exclusion. It hopes to provide a better understanding of the everyday lives of people with serious mental illness who live in the community

    On Sunday 4.5.2003 Gordon Tozer took a break from his work on the world of asylums to photograph what is left of Coney Hill Mental Hospital in Gloucestershire

    Click on the ruin to see Coney Hill as it was


    Gloucestershire Primary Mental Health is part of the structure of community care that has replaced the asylum.

    Click on the ruin to see
Coney Hill as it was

    July 2003 Consumers in NHS Research changed its name to "INVOLVE - promoting public involvement in NHS, public health and social care research". Members of the group - archive - in January 2009 include - Peter Beresford - Alison Faulkner and Mary Nettle

    23.9.2003 Sun headline
    BONKERS BRUNO LOCKED UP

    NOT "National hero and boxer Frank Bruno admitted,
    under a section of the Mental Health Act, to Goodmayes
    psychiatric hospital" (external source)

    October 2003:

    Annette Crawford elected vice chair of Mencap's national assembly (archive) "A woman from Northern Ireland has become the first person with a learning disability to be elected as vice chair of Mencap's national assembly".


    Tuesday 18.11.2003 "Black mental health in Britain" on Radio 4, with: PANELISTS   Paul Gray, a former patient - Mike Shooter, Royal College of Psychiatrists - Kamlesh Patel, "Delivering Race Equality: A Framework for Action" - Rosemarie Mallett, Brent Black African and Caribbean Mental Health Consortium - Kwame McKenzie, Psychiatrist   AUDIENCE:   Peter Scott Blackman, Afiya Trust - Claire Felix, Race Equality at Rethink - Julianna Fredericks, ISIS, SE6 - Shahid Sardar, Editor of Diverse Minds (Mind) - Cashain David, Southside Partnership Fanon Care - Celina Hudson-Momodu, Ebony Housing Association N18 - Bakhtiar Hormoz, Director of Songhaia (social housing) - Aadam Mohammad, a manager at Advance - Peter Ferns, author of Letting Through Light - Alex Gordon, Men of Vision - Sandra Griffiths, Co-ordinator of The Mellow Campaign - Eileen Phillips, A Better Way Ahead, a personal development programme for black people - Sidney Millen, Chair of Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health [Organisation] - Dominic Walker, "Director of Role Players Training Consultancy" - Malcolm Phillips. Oremi Centre, Goldbourne Road W10 - Tel 020 964 0033. The Nile Centre (an alternative to hospital) Foulden Road N16 - Bishop Burrell, New Testament Church of God - Melba Wilson, Centre for Mental Health Services Development - Dele Olajide, psychiatrist - Aggrey Burke, psychiatrist - Chinyere Inyama, solicitor - Wendy Lanham, Consultant Clinical Psychologist - Angela Linton Abulu, Black Women's Mental Health Project [Brent]


    Commission for Equality and Human Rights to replace Disability Rights Commission, Commission for Racial Equality and Equal Opportunities Commission. (Mind's response)

    10.12.2003 Placed Amongst Strangers The Mental Health Act Commission's Tenth Biennial Report. The Guardian report compares the Mental Health Act Commission to the Lunacy Commission. Visit the commission's website. The report takes its name from a passage from John Perceval

    "Instead of my understanding being addressed and enlightened, and my path being made as clear and plain as possible, in consideration of my confusion, I was ... placed amongst strangers, without introduction, explanation or exhortation..." John Perceval (1840) A Narrative of the Treatment Experienced by a Gentleman, During a State of Mental Derangement

    Wednesday 17.12.2003 Report of the Independent Inquiry into the death of David Bennett [Rocky Bennett] - online - archive

    Ireland index Promoting Mental Health: Strategy and Action Plan 2003-2008 Department of Health Social Services and Public Safety (DHSSPS) (2003) Belfast: The Stationery Office.

    Butabika-East London Link: A link between East London NHS Foundation Trust and Butabika Hospital in Uganda started in 2003 with an introduction from Tropical Health Education Trust. See website - Molly Meacher chair from 2005 to 2010 - Cerdic Hall Professional Development Nurse and Global Health Partnerships Co-ordinator at East London NHS Mental Health Trust from October 2005 to November 2012 - Heartsounds 2008 - Cerdic Hall chair 2012 to 2014 - Dave Baillie current chair (2016).

    Eddie Nkurunungi: "Around 2004 and 2005, Trusts were turning into Foundations, and it was a requirement for these Trusts to have service user votes on the board. One of the boxes to tick, like service user ###, develop a link with a developing country...

    2004 survivors' history

    The British Sociological Association's Medical Sociology Group established a Sociology of Mental Health Study Group in 2004

    16.1.2004 Draft Comprehensive and Integral International Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities

    January 2004 Debate on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Is it best considered as a cultural construct or a genetic disease? (Psychiatric Bulletin)

    Janury 2004 Changing Public Representations of Mental Illness in Britain 1870- 1970 by Vicky Long

    2.2.2004 BBC One Inside Out story alleges psychiatric patients "absconding" in large numbers. Make sure you read the Readers' Comments.

    May 2004 Mencap launches Ask Mencap website.

    14.6.2004 Results of Mencap's Breaking Point consultation published

    22.6.2004 The Guardian corrects itself for saying "the elderly and disabled" and announces that "This week is learning disability week".

    Friday 13.8.2004:
    Andrew Roberts finished his thirty-one year thesis on the Victorian Lunacy Commission

    August 2004 Film Afterlife stars Paula Sage whose "possible film roles" are "limited by her Down's Syndrome". "Paula is also competing in the 2005 Special Olympics in Netball"

    14.9.2004 Rethink put Winston Churchill in a straitjacket to protest against the public stigma on severe mental illness. In 1910 Churchill urged sterilisation so that "the sources from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off". The point of the straitjacket campaign, however, was that Churchill suffered from severe depression and Rethink thought Britain would have suffered if he had been prevented from running the country during the second world war.

    Late 2004 Scottish Recovery Network formally launched as an initiative within The National Programme for Improving Mental Health and Wellbeing - website - See April May 2005 - See recovery movement

    2005 survivors' history

    2005 Of 32,000 psychiatric care beds in the United Kingdom 7,600 were provided by the independent sector. This market was worth about £800 million. (see Affinity)

    January 2005 Mad Mary Lamb: Lunacy and Murder in Literary London by Susan Tyler Hitchcock will be published. This is a biographical companion to the writings of a madhouse patient who, having murdered her mother, was released to the community and became story teller and poet to generations of children.

    January 2005 When Jean Johnson's daughter, Suzy, had a mental breakdown at university she insisted on carrying on and succeeded in graduating. Then came another breakdown, even more devastating, and Jean had the fight of her life to understand what was happening to the daughter she loved. In To Walk on Eggshells, Jean shares what she discovered. Suzy has already told her story.

    January 2005 National Institute for Mental Health in England issued its Guiding Statement on Recovery - (See recovery movement)

    11.1.2005 Delivering race equality in mental health care, an Action Plan for reform inside and outside services; and the Government's response to the independent inquiry into the death of David Bennett (Copy at Manchester)

    25.1.2005 First internet archive of Mental Health Act Commission website.

    February 2005 Edward Shorter A Historical Dictionary of Psychiatry published by Oxford University Press.

    15.3.2005 to 17.3.2005 Mind's Annual Conference held in Harrogate. Theme "Stepping up to excellence".

    April 2005 Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Mental Health at Birmingham University began to recruit staff. The official launch was after a purpose designed building was completed.

    7.4.2005 Royal Assent to the English Mental Capacity Act 2005

    21.4.2005: Survivors' history People met in London to create a history and archive of mental health users/survivors

    19.7.2005: Together - the relaunch of MACA

    See Time Together magazine July 2008.

    July 2005 Hackney Action on Learning Difficulty, founded 1982 held its last monthly meeting - We ran out of money - Click here to see if we survive

    15.8.2005 Voluntary Sector Mental Health Providers Forum incorporated as a charitable company limited by guarantee (Company No. 5536120). It was registered as a charity on 24.7.2007. (Charity No. 1120222) - (website)

    26.8.2005: Person-centred planning leads to improved life experiences for people with learning disabilities, though not all, says new report - archive

    On 1.9.2005 it was the
    Manic Depressive Fellowship. On 3.9.2005 it was MDF The Bipolar Organisation. (Internet archive)

    28.9.2005: first ever national survey about the lives of people with learning difficulties - partial archive

    4.9.2005 to 8.9.2005 World Federation for Mental Health 28th congress held in Cairo, Egypt,with the theme "Equity and Mental Health".

    November/December 2005 Count me in Results of a national census of inpatients in mental health hospitals and facilities in England and Wales (a copy)

    2006 survivors' history

    The Equalities Bill, going through the UK Parliament, would establish a "Commission for Equality and Human Rights" in place of the Equal Opportunities Commission, The Commission for Racial Equality and the Disability Rights Commission

    "Our society is based on the belief that everyone has a contribution to make and has the right to control their own lives. This value drives our society and will also drive the way in which we provide social care. This is a vision for all adults. It includes older people and younger adults who need care and support, people who are frail, people with a disability or mental health problems..."

    "Services should ... support independence, not dependence and allow everyone to enjoy a good quality of life, including the ability to contribute fully to our communities. They should treat people with respect and dignity and support them in overcoming barriers to inclusion. They should be tailored to the religious, cultural and ethnic needs of individuals. They should focus on positive outcomes and well-being, and work proactively to include the most disadvantaged groups."

    Our health, our care, our say: a new direction for community services Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Health... January 2006

    16.1.2006 Aparna Sen's film 15 Park Avenue released in India

    Meethi, played by Konkona Sen Sharma, is the schizophrenic who imajines she lives in 15 Park Avenue.

    See critcal review by Jayasree Kalathil

    Spring 2006 Asylum to Action Paddington Day Hospital , Therapeutic Communities and Beyond by Helen Spandler. See also the MPU website.

    23.3.2006 UK Government Press Release: New shorter Bill to amend existing Mental Health Act (Press Release DH_4132068) -

    April 2006 National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) set up to coordinates and fund research for the National Health Service (England). History website. Followed on from Best research for best health: a new national health research strategy published 25.1.2006.
    Pilot "Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care" projects (CLAHRCs) were set up in 2008 and became England wide in 2014.

    Thursday 13.4.2006 Survivor's Poetry launched the full volume of David Kessel's Collected Poems (1970-2006 "O the Windows of the Bookshop Must be Broken" with emotional readings, by David himself, at the Poetry Cafe. Also launched: Lee Wilson: You've got an eyelash and readings from Dino Campana - Selected Works by the translator Christina Viti.

    Thursday 29.6.2006: Irish Mental Health Coalition (IMHC) launched its manifesto in Buswell's Hotel, Dublin. The coalition aims to campaign for the improvement and prioritisation of mental health services in Ireland. The organisers of the campaign are Amnesty International, Bodywhys - The Eating Disorders Association of Ireland, GROW in Ireland, The Irish Advocacy Network and Schizophrenia Ireland. "For the first time, Irish organisations are formally uniting with the aim of harnessing the support of all stakeholders to campaign for improvement in mental health services".

    4.10.2006 Official launch of the Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Mental Health at Birmingham University. launch video - A to Z of resources - See Suresearch - Glynn Rooms - Two decades of change conference 2.11.2006 - International seminar - 2010 seminars. current weblink 2017

    October 2006 Survivor Arts Project established at Birmingham University. Exhibitions from January to July in 2007 - 2008 (see video) - and 2009 (see video). - online

    It is not an asylum water-tower - It is the clock-tower at the University of Birmingham.

    go to Suresearch

    See closure index
    8.11.2006 Email from Peter Cracknell of http://www.countyasylums.com listing the county and borough asylums and public and subscription hospitals stiil open as psychiatric hospitals:

    Eleven English and four Welsh that were county or borough hospitals before the inception of the National Health Service. Seven other surviving hospitals were voluntary hospitals, or otherwise not county or borough asylums, before the inception of the National Health Service. Each of these currently has in-patient facilities still using the main asylum buildings. Excluded from the list are any where the site remains only in partial use such as villas in grounds or a fraction of main complex. Two, marked red, are due to close within one year. Others, marked brown, are proposed for closure.

    Goodmayes Hospital, Essex
    Hellesdon Hospital, Norwich
    Kingsway Hospital, Derbyshire
    Runwell Hospital, Essex
    St Clement's Hospital, Ipswich
    St James' Hospital, Portsmouth
    St Luke's Hospital, Middlesbrough
    St Martin's Hospital, Canterbury
    Royal Shrewsbury Hospital (Shelton)
    Springfield Hospital, London
    Stone House Hospital

    Wales

    Cefn Coed Hospital, Swansea
    Glanrhyd hospital, Glamorgan
    St Cadoc's hospital, Newport
    Whitchurch hospital, Cardiff

    Seven other English hospitals

    The Bethlem Royal Hospital
    Maudsley Hospital
    The Retreat, York [Not NHS]
    Bootham Park Hospital, York
    Wonford House Hospital, Exeter
    Warneford Hospital
    St Andrew's Hospital Northampton [Not NHS]

    Two hospitals use approximately half or more of the asylum property to include inpatient services:

    St Nicholas' Hospital (Newcastle)
    St Bernard's Hospital, London

    21.11.2006 Innovative Approaches in Mental Health Research Seminar at the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Andrew Roberts was invitedby Chris Fitch as a reward for running this timeline. (Thank you). This was the first of four ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) funded conferences (programme) - This one in London - next in Manchester - next in Nottingham (not invited) - Final one in Essex.

    An archive website is preserved, but it is no longer possible to download the soundtracks and slides. I have copies.

    1. Introduction by Chris Fitch and John Larsen, the London Seminar Organisers, and Sheila Hollins, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists

    These seminars emerged from discussions between members of the British Sociological Association Mental Health Study Group. See BSA Med Soc Sociology of Mental Health Study Group 2006/2007 2. Sue Estroff from the University of North Carolina. - "How to be a failure as a mental health researcher: strategies for success and failure"

    3. John Curran: "The anthropologist on call': using anthropology in everyday psychiatry". On SPEKTRA, the Cultural Consultancy Service. (See pdf factsheet on Mental Health and Ethnicity)

    4. Peter Barham Lived experience through historical method. - On his book Forgotten Lunatics of the Great War - (publisher's link)

    5: Diana Rose of Service User Research Enterprise (SURE) on User-Focused and Collaborative Research in Mental Health: Where do we go next?

    6. Tom Craig from the Institute of Psychiatry: Beyond epidemiology: combining quantitative and qualitative approaches

    7. Hester Parr "Collaborative film-making as method" on a film by LUNA

    8. Lisa Blackman Embodiment and voice-hearing on research she was enabled to do by the Hearing Voices Network -

    9. Summary: Sue Estroff and audience discussion


    The Department of Health's "What's New" webpage includes details of the new Mental Health Bill.

    survivors' history

    13.12.2006 General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This came into effect on 3.5.2008, when sufficient countries had ratified it. The Convention relates back to the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and subsequent conventions. - Wikipedia article

    2006/2007 The McPin Foundation was registered as company 6010593 on 27.11.2006 and as charity 1117336 on 20.12.2006. It is "a small charitable foundation that specialises in mental health research, championing people's lived experience in research so mental health is improved in communities everywhere. We deliver research in collaboration with partners, we provide public and patient involvement in mental health research consultancy and seek to influence the mental health research agenda. We work across England." - history website

    2007 survivors' history

    January 2007 The Fundamental Facts - The latest facts and figures on mental health produced by the Mental Health Foundation. Most of the data relates to "Britain" (England, Wales and Scotland) or to "England and Wales". It is arranged in sections: "Extent..." on how many people with different type of mental health problems - "Differences" on gender, age, ethnic group etc - "Factors related" on deprivation, family etc - "Treatment" on number of people treated and type of treatment - "Cost" including economic, health and violence.

    Tuesday 20.3.2007 Social exclusion, social inequality and mental health A one-day seminar funded by the Economic and Social Research Council at The University of Manchester. By clicking on the title link you can download all the presentations. [We seem to have lost that]

    28.3.2007 to 29.3.2007 Mind's Annual Conference held in Bournemouth. Theme "Moving and shaking: Making services work for all"

    1.4.2007 Stand to Reason launched - website - Disability Now article - Breaking glass ceilings January 2008 - 10.6.2009 - 30.4.2011

    Friday 30.3.2007 3rd Annual UWE Bristol, History of Health and Social Care Conference Health and Welfare in the Spaces of Confinement

    22.6.2007 "Mental Health and Human Rights: Sociological Perspectives" BSA Sociology of Mental Health Study Group symposium. University of Warwick. External link to report by Lydia Lewis new website - Mike Carpenter's presentation on human rights

    July 2007 National Review Workshop on Gender and Mental Health held at Velha Goa (Old Goa, India). See Bhargavi Davar 2015

    19.7.2007 Royal Assent to the 2007 Mental Health Act

    "After the legislation, things went pretty quiet at the trust" Michael Howlett of the Zito Trust

    19.8.2007 to 23.8.2007 World Federation for Mental Health congress held in Hong Kong, China, with the theme "East Meets West: Impact of Culture on Mental Health". website

    25.8.2007 £18m to combat mental health stigma. £16 million from the Big Lottery Fund plus £2 million from Comic Relief, to "Moving People" (which became Time to Change), a mental health charity partnership that includes the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, Mental Health Media, Mind and Rethink. "Based on a successful model run in New Zealand and Scotland".

    3.9.2007 The Lancet series global mental health, leading to Movement for Global Mental Health

    Friday 28.9.2007 The life world and emotional wellbeing [Link lost]. A one-day seminar funded by the Economic and Social Research Council at The University of Nottingham

    October 2007 Publication by Stefan Priebe, Rosemarie Mccabe, and others of experiment with Dialogue a structured patient-clinician dialogue to focus on patients' views. Questions asked how satisfied the patient was with his or her mental health, physical health, job situation, accommodation, leisure activities, friendships, partner/family, personal safety, medication, practical help received, and consultations with mental health professionals. See mental health partnerships

    10.10.2007 (World Mental Health Day). Announcement of National Health Service (England) initiative "Improving Access to Psychological Therapies". See Wikipedia and Nikki Llewellyn

    1.11.2007 Interview (Coventry University) with Shelley Jofre about her Panorama investigations on psychiatric drugs, in particular the antidepressent Seroxat - external - offline

    Tuesday 4.12.2007 an Wednesday 5.12.2007 "Unhealthy Professional Boundaries? Working Together in Health and Social Care" London, United Kingdom. An International Conference on Interdisciplinary Research and Interprofessional Practice in Health and Social Care. Held at Goodenough College. Offline programme shows sessions on user invlovment in health and well being and in interprofessional working. See Rohan Borschmann and others 2007.

    2008 survivors' history

    About 22.1.2008 Kjell Magne Bondevik of Norway spoke to UK members of parliament about his experiences. Launch of Stand to Reason's campaign "Breaking glass ceilings in mental health" focusing on Westminster as a workplace. - undated Press Release - Jeremy Paxman's blog and comments - Society Guardian - See 2.2.2011


    30.1.2008 to 1.2.2008 World Health Organisation meeting held in Geneva, Switzerland which reported as Maternal Mental Health and Child Health and Development in Low and Middle Income Countries

    "The impact of maternal mental health problems on infants in high income countries has been identified mostly in terms of psychosocial and emotional development, thanks to the groundbreaking early work of Spitz and of Bowlby, who studied the emotional needs of infants and mother-child attachment."


    20.6.2008 A New Vision for Mental Health - leading to A Future Vision for Mental Health on 7.7.2009

    Tuesday 22.7.2008 Last of the summer series of Radio Four's "All in the Mind". "The series will return in November. The presenter, Claudia Hammond is also making a series on the history of mental health care called State of Mind. If you were treated for a mental health problem in the 50s, 60s or 70s or worked in the field at that time she'd love to hear about your experiences - good or bad." (source)

    Reil July 2008 The British Journal of Psychiatry announced "Psychiatry's 200th Birthday" - an event that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. External link to issue contents - Link to 1808.

    Summer (July?) 2008 First issue of Time Together, Together's free magazine. It was described as a "relaunch" of the magazine Rapport and continued twice yearly until Winter 2011.

    The link and staff exchange programme between East London and Uganda was extended in September 2008 when service users from both countries met in Uganda.

    This collaboration inspired Joseph Atukunda to found Heartsounds Uganda. "Enkuba" means rain in Luganda. Mutima means heart. The whole phrase refers to the sound of your beating heart. Suzan Kerunen took part in the tour

    October 2008 (onwards?) Nine CLAHRC pilots established by the NIHR. The basic partnership was between NHS Trusts and Universities, but others were added. CLAHRC North west London was launched in February 2019.

    Afghanistan November 2008

    2009 survivors' history

    About 2009 to 2012 Patrick Vernon Chief Executive of the Afiya Trust.

    Sometime in 2009 Henk van Setten began his blog stay on top - coping with depression. In 2014 he bagan a second blog that is about the History of Mental Health.

    State of Mind   State of Mind broadcasting over 5 weeks from 7.1.2009, at 9pm on Radio 4 each Wednesday. - - BBC website -

    Synopsis : In any one year in the UK, one in four of us will suffer a mental health problem. Claudia Hammond explores how the treatment and understanding of mental illness has changed over the past 50 years, with the help of Radio 4 listeners who responded to an appeal for testimonies.

    See Judith - Daniel and Moyna's stories

    All those who were asked conceded that it's better to have a mental health problem now than at any other time in the last half century. Yet there were reservations

    7.1.2009 Total institutions episode
    Sound clips include Moyna Peters (patient) about Netherne Hospital, Surrey. - Patricia Hornsby Smith election broadcast - Peter Barham - Henry Rollin (Horton 1950) - Carole Thompson nurse about Rainhill in 1957

    11.1.2009 - 12.1.2009 - 18.1.2009 - 19.1.2009 Committed: 11th, 12th, 18th, 19th January 2008, 7.30pm, The Finborough Theatre. Poetry by John Clare, Robert Frost, Siegfried Sassoon, Charlotte Mary Mew, Ezra Pound, Rev Charles Smart, William Cowper, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop and others who it has been suggested were mentally ill. website

    20.1.2009 Launch of Time to Change - "England's most ambitious programme to end discrimination faced by people who experience mental health problems"

    Time to Change was formerly named Moving People. See Stigma shout survey - Nikki Llewellyn joined Time for Change in 2011. THACMHO event 19.12.2013

    February 2009 A brief history of the Mental Health Foundation [Researched (not stated) by Ed Halliwell] - See Mental Health Foundation

    3.2.2009 Living well with dementia: A National Dementia Strategy: "A vision for transforming dementia services with the aim of achieving better awareness of dementia, early diagnosis and high quality treatment".

    13.2.2019 The NIHR CLAHRC for Northwest London launched its community engagement programme at the Wellcome Trust in Euston. The health research programme, which will run over five years, is hosted at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and academically led by Imperial College London.

    Representatives from patient groups, community organisations and the local and national NHS came together to learn more about the specific patient and public elements of the programme. The CLAHRC will provide members of the public and patients with opportunities to shape health research into better patient care.

    The CLAHRC's patient representative, who has been instrumental in the development of the CLAHRC from the early stages, John Hunter, gave a speech emphasising the essential role of patient involvement in research to improve the quality of healthcare for patients in northwest London and beyond.
    (source)

    Alicia Renedo and Cicely Marston studied meetings and activities of North West London CLAHRC from 2009 to 2013 using various methods of observing the interaction of the patient and public members. They wrote about the way the participants did not just fit into a space that was provided, but found ways to negotiate alterations.

    It was not an average patient or member of the public who took part: Twenty two people were interviewed: "almost all were white, educated, and had professional backgrounds". Thirteen were retired and the mean age was 65 years. This was also the typical age. Codes of conduct included "wearing a suit" (p.495)
    "There was little evidence of involvees coming from 'hard to reach' groups, although in two cases, interviewees' first language was not English" (Renedo and Marston 6.2015 p.493)

    30.3.2009 Statement that the Zito Trust would close with effect from 31.3.2009 - offline - "Having achieved our original objectives" - "reforms" having been ... incorporated into legislation, principally the Mental Health Act 2007. extra powers to manage "safely and therapeutically" "those most at risk of harming themselves or other people" - community treatment orders - personality disorders to be included in NHS services - responsibility for individual patients given to psychologists, psychotherapists and senior nurses as well as psychiatrists to broaden the use of the range of treatments now available - improved rights for victims of mentally disordered offenders.

    31.3.2009 The Mental Health Act Commission ceased to exist but the Mental Health Act Commissioners continued to function as part of the Care Quality Commission. - Care Quality Commission website

    April 2009 Short lived English National Mental Health Development Unit (NMHDU) launched to advise on national and international best practice to improve mental health and mental health services. It succeeded the National Institute for Mental Health in England (NIMHE). NMHDU closed on 31.3.2011, but its publications and resources remained available on its website for a while, and may still be recoverable from the internet archive.

    6.4.2009 BBC Radio 4: Revealing the Mind Bender General - A programme about William Sargant's use of insulin coma - (offline)

    5.5.2009 Launch of This is Survivor Research

    14.5.2009 EastEnders' Stacey faces bipolar disorder (Press Release) - See Stacey Sectioned

    1.6.2009 Launch of what became Collective Voice North West "a regional network to develop service user, carer and public engagement". - website - A conference was held in Liverpool in July 2009 - feedback video - Another in Manchester in October 2009 - feedback video -

    23.7.2009 Publication of New Horizons: towards a shared vision for mental health - consultation - external - offline

    New Horizons claimed to be a total population mental health policy. Then when the Conservative-Liberal coalition government took over, the policy was initially stripped down to mere measurement, those biopolitical elements that had been included in the Labour policy, housing, support, poverty alleviation, education gone. Left was the bare measurement of 'well-being', the extended version of the utilitarian's 'happiness' , to be administered by the 'big society'" (Alastair Kemp, 16.4.2011 - From a draft of his thesis).

    [Welfare austerity? See Social Science History Timeline]

    14.7.2009 Shaping the Future of Care Together Green Paper published by the Department of Works and Pensions and the Department of Health (England and Wales). - external link - archive

    Shaping the Future of Care sets out government plans to get rid of Attendance Allowance and, depending on public reaction, also leaves the way clear to end the care component of Disability Living Allowance. It has prompted a campaign to "save Disability Living Allowance and Attendance Allowance". - external link archive

    Time to Change Summer Campaign (August) Two short videos - The Movie appearing as an advertisement on popular websites - and a You Tube (etc) clip in which a "schizophrenic man terrifies kids at party".

    6.8.2009 First posting on the new Mind blog - archive

    17.9.2009 Westminster Health Forum Mental Health: "New Horizons" - a new strategy for mental health and well-being. "With the ten-year national service framework for mental health drawing to an end, this seminar will look at the New Horizons strategy, what the priorities should be for the next mental health framework and what steps should be taken to improve public mental health" - External link

    2.9.2009 to 6.9.2009 World Federation for Mental Health congress to be held in Athens, Greece, with the theme "Working Together for Mental Health"

    Thursday 3.9.2009 "Schizophrenic 'cooked victim's brain'" London Informer - "NHS failure over cannibal killer Peter Bryan" Mirror. Report on Peter Bryan's discharge from a secure unit in Newham in February 2004 and murder of his friend Brian Cherry.
    Picture: Front page of London Lite - "Unbelievable he was ever thought safe" (Sub-editors precis - page 5 - of comment by
    Marjorie Wallace of Sane).

    10.9.2009 Consultation Pandemic Influenza and the Mental Health Act 1983 - offline A consultation on temporary changes to the English Mental Health Act 1983 that might be required in the event of severe staff shortages during, and in the aftermath of, an influenza pandemic.

    14.9.2009 The Sainsbury Trust has called for every NHS mental health trust to employ service users to promote recovery - (external link) - See 2005

    8.10.2009 Judy Fryd, a founder of The Association of Parents of Backward Children, was commemorated on a stamp as an eminent Briton

    Friday 9.10.2009 "during Eastenders tonight ... they were sectioning Stacey in front of our nation of 10 million soapwatchers" (Jill Goble) - See Stacey Press Release

    Saturday 10.10.2009 The Time to Change Dance in Regents Park, London.

    Making Recovery Real Roadshows in Thurso on 1.12.2009 - Oban on 24.2.2010 - Stranraer on 24.3.2010 - See brochure - offline

    Scottish Recovery Network definition: "Recovery is being able to live a meaningful and satisfying life, as defined by each person, in the presence or absence of symptoms. It is about having control over and input into your own life. Each individual's recovery, like his or her experience of the mental health problems or illness, is a unique and deeply personal process." Journeys of Recovery (2006)

    2010 survivors' history

    8.1.2010 First Association of Therapeutic Communities Research Workshop discussed quantitative research to assess therapeutic value of community treatment, and the value of qualitative research.

    13.1.2010 Mind announces that the March/April issue of Openmind will be the last.

    Campaign launched to save Openmind.

    11.2.2010 Disability Now article "Openmind Closure fear" by Sunil Peck. Paul Farmer, Chief Executive of Mind "refused to rule out retaining Openmind in its current form".

    11.2.2010 Dorothy Rowe:
    The Death of a Great Little Magazine

    May 2010 The Chief Executive of Mind wrote to subscribers: "I am pleased to announce that the publication of Openmind will recommence in Autumn 2010. The views of our readers were highly influential in this decision". See below.

    9.2.2010 Ajit Singh-Mahal (12 years old) found with fatal injuries inflicted by his mother Satpal Kaur-Singh. "Mother killed her autistic son, 12, by forcing him to drink bleach as she 'feared that social services would take him away'" (Daily Mail 16.11.2010)

    10.2.2010 Making the Case for the Social Sciences No. 1 - Wellbeing . Academy of Social Sciences and Economic and Social Research Council. Booklet

    Friday 19.2.2010 "Well, just to give you a clue, if someone gets murdered on TV, it often turns out to be the crazy person who dunnit...so who is the crazy person in Eastenders?" Sheila on UKsurvivors

    March 2010 Relaunch of Asylum - The magazine for democratic psychiatry

    19.3.2010 "A Pageant of Survivor History - Mental patients in poetry, story and song from the 18th to 21st century" - Tower Hamlets' Africans in the 18th century - Voices from the asylums - Mary Barnes and Kingsley Hall - Eric Irwin and Mental Patients Union - Frank Bangay of Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression - Peter Campbell of Survivors Speak Out - David Kessel of Hackney Union of Mental Patients - Sophie Mirrell from Core Arts - Eamer O'Keeffe: Irish women survivors -

    29.3.2010 UK Policy: "Building bridges to work: new approaches to tackling long-term worklessness" - 30.3.2010 Mind: "New benefit test will fail to spot illness and disability"

    Spring 2010 Achieving Equality in Health and Social Care - A framework for action published by the Afiya Trust - offline

    6.5.2010 United Kingdom General Election that led to the formation of a Coalition Government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. 26.5.2010 UK "Coalition government sets out radical welfare reforms" - 6.6.2010 Clare Allan "Let's assess this government's cynical ruse rather than the mentally ill" (Guardian articles) - 2.7.2010 Mind blog "Welfare reform - What we are doing"

    14.6.2010 Equality and Human Rights Commission calls in evidence on disability- related harassment in Britain

    30.6.2010 Mike Yeoman's analysis of the advantages and dangers of celebrity culture - (Time Together June 2010). "The real danger is in mental health being trivialised. The experiences of everyday people who experience mental health issues are vastly different from those of a celebrity."

    20.7.2010 Making the Case for the Social Sciences No. 2 - Ageing . Academy of Social Sciences with Age UK and the British Society of Gerontology. Booklet

    24.9.2010 Barbara Taylor read her paper "The demise of the asylum in late twentieth-century Britain: A personal history" at the Royal Historical Society.

    Wednesday 20.10.2010 "Comprehensive Spending Review hits the poor and spares the bankers" (Peter Beresford) - "Predictably it's 'the poor what gets the blame', while the rich are still lined up to get the pleasure".


    Street Art, Curtain Road, Tower Hamlets. Art used to advertise Mad Pride Demo Tuesday 26.10.2010

    26.10.2010 Mad Pride protest at speakers corner over the spending cuts

    Monday 1.11.2010 8.30 BBC 1 Panorama What Have the Drugs Done to Dad?. Panorama visited Spring Mount - a residential care home in Yorkshire that avoids relying on anti-psychotic drugs for dementia patients. They believe strongly in better staff training and coping techniques for their patients.

    Tuesday 16.11.2010 6.30pm "The Death of the Asylum in Late 20th Century Britain" Speakers: Peter Barham, Baroness Elaine Murphy, David Jones and Barbara Taylor. Room G03, UCL, 26 Bedford Way, London WC1H. Admission free.

    26.11.2010 "Time for a wedding! 10 good reasons for a marriage between Global Mental Health and the New Technologies". Roos Korste (Clinical psychologist - University of Amsterdam) launched her in2mentalhealth website for information from and between Mental Health Workers, NGO's, Institutes, Service Users and others who are interested in improving Mental Health in Low and Middle Income Countries. archive
    Global mental health inside stories began on 27.6.2013

    2011 survivors' history

    Wendy Maycraft Kall's The Governance Gap: Central-local steering and mental health reform in Britain and Sweden (Uppsala University PhD Thesis) compares the implementation of community care in Sweden and England and Wales. The Governance Gap relates to the relation between central and local government and Wendy Maycraft Kall examines why Swedish central government used soft steering strategies to get its way whilst the UK government used hard ones.

    2011 A Joint Special Interest Group for Psychosis formed by Valentina Short, Charles Fernyhough and Angela Woods in the Durham University and Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust. This aims to foster a dialogue between mental health professionals, service users, academic researchers and students. Its website is called Hearing the Voice - earliest archive 23.6.2012 says "we have been developing Hearing the Voice since 2010". See Voicewalks 2013.

    2.2.2011 UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg announced plan to repeal "Section 141 of the Mental Health Act" "which means that MPs at the moment are disqualified from being MPs if they have a mental health problem which goes on for more than six months"

    2.2.2011 No Health Without Mental Health: a cross-Government mental health outcomes strategy for people of all ages - a call to action. Four pages with a lot of signatures:

    Thursday 17.2.2011 and Friday 18.2.2011 "Health Rights in Global Historical Perspective" Conference at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Link to call for papers.

    27.3.2011 British Census 56 million residents in England and Wales, of whom 86% were White, 8% were Asian/Asian British and 3% were Black/African/Caribbean/Black British. Other sources say White British people represent only 72.5% of the inpatient episodes in mental health and learning disability trusts. (source)

    April 2011 The end of delivering race equality?: perspectives of frontline workers and service-users from racialised groups (a copy - archive)

    Tuesday 12.4.2011 "Mad Activism and Academia"

    19.7.2011 Memorandum and articles incorporating The Consortium for Therapeutic Communities (TCTC). Amended by special resolution registered at Companies House on 16.9.2011. Company Number 07710399. Registered as a charity (1143955) on 30.10.2014 (Open Charities) - website. See Who Cares website 30.11.2010 which says "The Charterhouse Group, the Association of Therapeutic Communities and the Planned Environment Therapy Trust have recently decided to merge"

    1.4.2011 to 31.3.2012 Afiya Trust received £325,017 and spent £462,829 - 1.4.2012 to 31.3.2013 the Trust received £263,276 and spent £306,213 - 1.4.2013 to 31.3.2014 the Trust received £22,846 and spent £52,957 - 1.4.2014 to 31.3.2015 the Trust received £5,000 and spent £3,595 - 1.4.2015 to 31.3.2016 the Trust received nothing and spent nothing. The Twitter account continued. - Charity Commission - Accounts 2011-2012 offline

    1.7.2011 Launch of Human Rights in Healthcare Website

    26.9.2011 Mind Daily Stigma

    18.10.2011 "The repugnant moral rhetoric about benefit claimants echoes Victorian prejudices about the 'undeserving poor'", writes Peter Beresford

    Early October 2011 First issue of a Quarterly Mind Membership News replaced a number of Mind publications including Mind Link Magazine and Diverse Minds. A relaunched OpenMind promised for November. External links to OpenMind - Mind membership - MindLink - Diverse Minds

    December 2012 New service models in mental health: emerging lessons. A SDO [Service Delivery and Organisation] Network Research Digest.

    2012 survivors' history

    1.1.2012 Disability Rights UK was formed through a unification of Disability Alliance, Radar and National Centre for Independent Living. survivors' history

    Saturday 19.5.2012
    First unofficial histories conference.

    21.12.2012 First archive of Irene Tuffrey-Wijne's website Breaking Bad News
    Irene was diagnosed as a breast cancer patient in April 2014, aged 50. She began blogging about it.

    2.10.2012 "'Like a Death Sentence' - Abuses against Persons with Mental Disabilities in Ghana". A Human Right Watch report.

    9.10.2012 Report that Patrick Vernon would be leaving Afiya "after nearly four years of leading the trust's work". His award of an OBE may be related.

    2013 survivors' history

    International Year of Statistics started by the UK Coalition and Labour opposition quoting different statistics about the relative rates at which welfare benefits and wages had risen. The Department for Work and Pensions statistics "show private sector wages rose by 12% on average over the past five years, while many working-age benefits climbed by 20%, in line with inflation." Labour published a report showing that in the past ten years, jobseeker's allowance rose 32%, while average wages rose slightly more, at 36%". Guardian

    January 2013 "Brian" started antidepaware.co.uk the antidepresants awareness website.

    2.3.2013 Sun says war on shirkers

    The Conservative Party came third, after the United Kingdom Independence Party, in a by-election at Eastleigh (28.2.2013). In 2006, David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Part, described UKIP as full of "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists". After Eastleigh, The Sun wrote "The "loonies", Mr Cameron, have already breached the walls of the asylum", and continued:

    Defence Secretary Philip Hammond bravely raises his head above the parapet to demand benefits should be slashed rather than troop numbers. The Sun wholeheartedly agrees. Benefits and tax credits will cost £209 billion this year - one in every three pounds the Government spends. As unemployment falls so should bloated, unsustainable welfare handouts. The MoD may have to slash £1.2billion extra from its budget. Mr Hammond points out it would take just a half a per cent from the welfare budget to match the saving. The Lib Dems will squeak. But it's time to make a firm stand for the world's best fighting forces.

    30.4.2013
    to
    4.5.2013
    Puna,
    India
    BAPU group
    "Transforming Communities for Inclusion of People with Psychosocial Disabilities: A Trans-Asia initiative" workshop with participants from Nepal, Bangladesh, China, India and the Philippines.

    16.4.2013 to 19.4.2013 The Consortium of Institutes of Higher Education in Health and Rehabilitation in Europe (COHEHRE) conference Education for Citizenship and Participation in Health and Social Care in Kuopio, Finland included Nyla Mehdi, Elaine Ballantyne and Kirsten MacLean: Mad People's History and Identity

    British Psychological Society's Division of Clinical Psychology Position Statement on the Classification of Behaviour and Experience in Relation to Functional Psychiatric Diagnoses - Time for a Paradigm Shift

    Sunday 12.5.2013 Causes of mental distress debated - Simon Wessely and Oliver James

    Psychiatrist Simon Wessely read the psychologists as saying that "psychiatry is gradually being taken over by the biologists, attempting to reduce human experience to the level of molecules and cells". This, he argued, was not true: "Psychiatry is the study of the brain and the mind. Psychiatrists look at the whole person, and indeed beyond the person to their family, and to society."

    Saturday 12.10.2013 Launch of Voicewalks, a special edition of StepAway Magazine, co-sponsored by Hearing the Voice at the Durham Book Festival. One of the entries, "Behind the Wall" by Roz Oates describes her experiences of hearing men talking about her and being unable to find them.

    #

    What is Mad Studies?

    6.8.2013 First posting on Mad Studies - Voor high-knowledge crazies in Nederland. Author: Stichting Perceval (Foundation Perceval). - 14.9.2013 - 22.2.2013 Four people visited consumer groups in New York before starting a discussion group in Holland. This "Empowerment Learning Experience" trip was organised by "social-psychiatric nurse Rokus Loopik as 'crash course in rehabilitation for people with psychiatric labels'", for the benefit of members of the MoleMann Tielens; Centre for Psychosis and related disorders in Amsterdam. Stichting Perceval (named afer John Thomas Perceval) was founded on 19.3.2014 and produced an Annual Report on 26.6.2014. - archive of page with posting -

    27.11.2013 Making the Case for the Social Sciences No. 9 - Mental Wellbeing Campaign for Social Science and British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. Booklet - Launch videos

    #
    4.12.2013 The Court of Appeal upheld a decision by the Upper Tribunal that the Work Capability Assessment discriminates against people with mental health problems. A victory for the Mental Health Resistance Network.

    2014

    survivors' history See Survivors Timeline for the countdown to the Campbell and Roberts book

    January 2014 CLAHRCs (Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care) ticking louder. Thirteen CLAHRCs around England, funded to 2018 were established by the National Institute for Health Research in place of the nine CLAHRC pilots established in October 2008.
    See CLAHRC Partnership Programme - CLAHRC South London - South London annual report

    26.1.2014 Lifetime achievement award for Archers's 'Peggy' amid praise of dementia storyline

    6.2.2014 Henry Rollin died in his sleep aged 102.

    Thursday 6.2.2014 The Last Asylum. A memoir of madness in our time Penguin.
    Buy your copy
    Barbara Taylor's journey through mental illness and the psychiatric health care system. A survivor historian's account of her battle with mental illness, set inside the wider story of the end of the UK asylum system.

    Tuesday 18.3.2014 6.30pm-8.00pm A launch event was held at Queen Mary, University of London. This was a public discussion of mental health care in Britain, past and present, featuring Peter Barham - Peter Campbell - Annette de la Cour - Antony Garelick and Barbara Taylor herself.

    A full summary of the discussion is being prepared here

    19.3.2014 UK budget cap

    From April 2015, the Government will only have a certain amount of money to spend on benefits like Disability Living Allowance, Personal Independence Payment and Housing Benefit. See Easy Read Guide to the full budget

    Friday 28.3.2014 "Developing Open Dialogue in the NHS" conference held in London. Open Dialogue was developed in Finland in the 1980s and has been adopted in the majority of Scandinavia, Germany and some US states, including the Parachute project in New York . See Alex Langford Open Dialogue: reflections on the model and the evidence - Open Dialogue at Feel

    1.4.2014 to 2.4.2014

    Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk's 52 mile walk from Ipswich to Norwich to raise awareness of cuts to services.

    Staff, users and supporters walk in unison through beautiful countryside.

    Wednesday 9.4.2014 - 11am "PROTEST - Justice for Victims of Psychiatric Assault" - Outside the Royal Courts of Justice. - The Strand - WC2A 2LL. - Nearest tube Temple - Wear wigs and gowns if available! Slogans requested!

    email circulated Sunday 30.3.2014 signed Sharon and Cheryl of Speak Out Against Psychiatry) - Left: Sharon states her case

    It is nigh on impossible to get a case into court for the physical and mental damage caused by psychiatry - coercion, restraint, psych drugs and Electroshock - ECT. Due to the low possibility of success, 'no-win-no-fee' solicitors will not take on your case. If you represent yourself you risk having to pay the costs for the other side which can exceed £50,000.

    9.4.2014 Disability hate crime rises by a third in London, research by people with learning disabilities finds

    30.4.2014 UK House of Lords launch of The Council for Evidence Based Psychiatry. - Link to article in Canadian Medical Association Journal 9.6.2014 "New UK Council to curb Psychiatry". See 2015.

    8.7.2014 "There seems to be no understanding of mental health issues and how these confusing things can make people feel. I have found the attitude of DWP staff to be awful; they don't deal with issues sensitively. When I have been at my lowest I was absolutely terrified of what was happening and tried to explain this to the member of staff who had phoned me about my money stopping due to failing the medical. I asked him what I was supposed to do next and he replied 'Not my problem.' I can't even tell you how that made me feel." (One day at a time: examining the cumulative impact of welfare reform on benefit claimants in Wales)

    1.10.2014 Black and dangerous? Listening to patients' experiences of mental health services in London by Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi, published by openDemocracyUK

    Tuesday 7.10.2014 "Mad studies brings a voice of sanity to psychiatry" by Peter Beresford in The Guardian

    Tuesday 9.11.2014 "Mad Studies" stream convened by Peter Beresford from Brunel University and Brigit McWade from Lancaster University at the Lancaster University Disability Studies Conference (Paper Session A: 1.30-3pm (90 minutes). Jijian Voronka, Kathryn Church and Lucy Costa took part in a symposium: "Making Mad Studies in Canada: process, practice, and contestations." - Mad Studies poster

    March 2014 Mad People's History and Identity in Edinburgh inspired by A History of Madness in Canada. The link between survivors in Toronto and Edinburgh goes back, at least, to 2001 and the link on mad history to October 2007

    Autumn 2014 Nothumbria University had a MAD studies course that ran 2014-2015. archive of syllabus. A tutor may have been Toby Brandon (Reader, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences). A Mad Studies North East background page contains more information.

    Wicked Fish on the hidden history of People with Learning Difficulties

    What is Mad Studies?

    November 2014 We're NOT all in this together: the story of the closure of the Independent Living Fund from Moore Lavan Films

    27.11.2014 Anne Cooke (Editor) Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia. Why people sometimes hear voices, believe things that others find strange, or appear out of touch with reality and what can help British Psychological Society. Division of Clinical Psychology.

    Launch report

    Mental Elf criticisms 27.11.2014 (of report on website 20.11.2014) - response - 26.2.2015 "Does Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia exploit, disrespect, and marginalize service users?" by James Coyne

    28.11.2014 The Guardian and Observer Christmas appeal 2014: mental health. "Helping to challenge stigma and create more positive attitudes towards mental illness is the theme of this year's appeal". The charities supported: Rethink Mental Illness - Mind - Star Wards - Mac-UK - Kidstime Foundation - Gardening Leave - the Samaritans - the Centre for Mental Health - Cooltan Arts.

    2015 survivors' history

    Work finishes on the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases. See 10th.

    January 2015 A fascinating edition of Neuropsychiatry News

    2.1.2015 UK Deputy Prime Minister looking for mental health heros.

    19.1.2015 Don't let money blues get you down published by the Money Advice Service in association with the English National Health Service.

    22.1.2015 Is mental health finally becoming a political priority? A King's Fund blog by Chris Naylor.

    Bethlem Museum of the Mind Wednesday 18.2.2015 Bethlem's new Museum of the Mind opened.

    On Saturday 28.3.2015 (2pm), Jennifer Walke spoke about her research into the history of the present Bethlem.

    Friday 20.2.2015 Inspector Michael Brown @MentalHealthCop tweeted "all the mental health law you need in your head in order to police, in under 500 words"

    26.2.2015 Care Quality Commission response to the Jimmy Savile investigation

    Friday 6.3.2015 "No voice unheard, no right ignored - a consultation for people with learning disabilities, autism and mental health conditions". Secretary of State for Health. Cm 9007


    "Killer pilot"
    "Don't stigmatise depression"
    Co-pilot Andreas Lubitz is alleged to have deliberately guided a German plane into the Alps on Tuesday 24.3.2015, killing all 150 on board, It was reported that he suffered from depression. On Sunday 29.3.2015 The Observer headlined a warning from Simon Wessely, president of the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists that " depression should not lead to a lifetime ban for commercial airline pilots".

    Wednesday 1.4.2015 "The Care Act heralds a new era for social care". (Richard Hawkes in The Guardian)

    10.4.2015 to 12.4.2015 "While we welcome people with direct experience of mental illness, the course is not suitable for those currently experiencing distress" (Towards a Quaker View of Mental Health - Course notice)

    16.5.2015 An International Day of Protest against Psychiatric Electroshock. Announcements state that it is "organised by three shock survivors: Ted Chabasinski from California, Debra Schwartzkopff from Oregon, and Mary Maddock from Ireland". Protests to begin in Rotorua, New Zealand, circle the globe, and end at an evening forum in New York City. (Link to "Mad in America" ECT blog)

    Pete Fleischmann May 2015 Mental health awareness week included "Zen and the art of knowing your rights" by Pete Fleischmann, Head of Co-Production at Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE)

    Ken Payne Ken Payne (61), speaking on behalf of dementia awareness week explained that he had always wanted to become a singer and perform on X-Factor.

    Then he was diagnosed with dementia.

    Then he become a singer and performed on X- Factor.

    Dementia awareness week 2015 Monday 18th May to Sunday 24th May

    20.5.2015 Patsy Staddon says Alcohol is a pleasurable and attractive drug, easily accessible and socially acceptable. - 1.6.2015 Death of Charles Kennedy, Scottish Liberal Democrat MP. - 3.6.2015 "Blurring the difference between a 'normal, fun life' and alcoholism is one of this country's defining features". - 5.6.2015 Alastair Campbell

    21.5.2015 Hackney Gazette - 8.6.2015 Hackney Citizen

    June 2015 Fifty years anniversary of the Kingsley Hall Asylum. In July Friends of East End Loonies reported on three memorial events

    2.6.2015-3.6.2015 Rights for Life: Supporting Recovery and Ending Discrimination national conference on human rights and recovery organised simultaneously online and in Glasgow by The Scottish Recovery Network, See Me, and Voices Of eXperience - Programme.

    Followed by the launch of the Rights for Life website. (archives)

    Graham Morgan was a keynote speaker at the Rights for Life event. The event led to the Rights for Life Declaration in February 2016.

    3.6.2015 Patsy Staddon's Women and alcohol: Social perspectives published as a paperback.

    Friday 5.6.2015 to Sunday 7.6.2015 Mental Health Matters "Equipping Churches to Respond" to "help make the church a welcoming, inclusive, understanding and caring environment". (Organised by Methodists)

    Wednesday 17.6.2015 The basic rights of people with a learning disability are threatened by welfare cuts - Being unemployed is a mental health issue

    Friday 26.6.2015 Keeping mental health in mind: Opening up the history of mental health in 20th Century Britain through the Mind archive
    At the Wellcome Library, London. By invitation only

    Speakers included Barbara Taylor, John Stewart (Glasgow Caledonian University), Teri Chettiar (Humboldt-Universität Zu Berlin), Jonathan Toms, Emma Hancox, Rhodri Hayward (Queen Mary University of London) and John Hall (Oxford Brookes University).

    Emma Hancox spoke on Cataloguing the Mind Archive - Rhodri Hayward on General practice and mental health - John Stewart on Child Guidance and the Mind Archive from the 1940s to 1970s - Teri Chettiar on Inherently Unstable: On the Emotional Dangers of Adolescence and the Natural Limits of Private Life - John Hall on Personal experience of Mind and forming mental health policy - Sophie Corlett on Mind's contemporary work - Jonathon Toms on The Problem of Authority and its Significance for the Mind Archive - and Barbara Taylor on the personal archive that helped her write The Last Asylum and on the future of survivor archives. This led to a discussion of the importance of collecting and recording survivors' testimonies in archives.

    Chris Millard has written a report of the day


    Friday 10.7.2015 to Sunday 12.7.2015
    New Forest Spectrum
    .

    A music festival for adults with learning difficulties at Lyndhurst in the New Forest, Hampshire, England.

    18.7.2015 Times Magazine article about Luke Montagu, Viscount Hinchingbrooke, and his trouble with antidepressants (Prozac and Seroxat) leding to the foundation of The Council for Evidence Based Psychiatry. See report (19.7.2015) on AntiDepAware website.

    25.7.2015 Google doodle marks the start of the 14th Special Olympics World Summer Games which runs in Los Angeles until 2.8.2015.

    16.11.2015 - 17.11.2015 First European Conference on Supported Education held in Groningen, the Netherlands. Organised by the Hanze University Groningen, Research Centre for Rehabilitation, in collaboration with members of the Dutch RAAK Supported Education project and organisations from Portugal, the Czech Republic and Norway involved in supporting young adults with psychiatric disabilities in education.

    Tuesday 17.11.2015 to Saturday 12.12.2015 "The Divided Laing, or, The Two Ronnies" a play by Patrick Marmion about the many faces of Ronald Laing, his colleagues, family, friends and enemies and Mary Barnes. Performed at The Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, London E8 3DL

    17.12.2015 ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation News) Melbourne, Australia: Mental health patient sues Box Hill Hospital for assault after 'shock therapy' against his will

    2016

    16.2.2016 Press Release from Speak Out Against Psychiatry "On February 20th, 2016, from 2pm until 5pm, there will be a protest at the Australian High Commission, Australia House, Strand, London, WC2B 4LA against the forced Electroshock of Garth Daniels purporting to be a psychiatric 'treatment'. Garth Daniels is being given Electroshock (ECT) to his brain against his will, against his Advance Directive and against his family's wishes. He has been given over 50 ECTs and it is ongoing. They want to brain damage him into submission. Garth has also been tied to his bed for 69 days straight. He missed his Tribunal as he was tied to his bed." Protests are taking place in London and Victoria, Australia

    22.2.2016 Rights for Life Declaration launched - (website) - Following the June 2015 event.


    for a Kinder world - human qualities which service users value include: warmth - empathy - respect - listening - treating people with equality - reliability - being non-judgemental (page 307)

    Wednesday 11.5.2016 All our welfare debate on the future of the welfare state and launch of book All Our Welfare: Towards a participatory social policy by Peter Beresford.

    The debate was chaired by David Brindle, public services editor of the Guardian, and the panellists were John McDonnell, Labour's Shadow Chancellor - Natalie Bennett, Leader of the Green Party - Chris Goulden, Head of Poverty Team at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Suzy Croft, Palliative Care Social Worker and Team Leader St John's Hospice London and Peter Beresford.

    The book argues that the theories and practice of welfare service-user involvement offer a blueprint for a new participatory social policy. Peter Beresford says

    "There have tended to be a limited range of relationships in public servive. There has been the traditional paternalistc/'doing good' model from charity; the public service approach of the post-war welfare state and, more recently, the exchange relationship of the market which has been grafted on to it. But another model has also begun to emerge from service users and their organisations... based on equality, shared experience and understanding." (All our Welfare page 306).

    Following the referendum vote to leave the European Community, Peter Beresford is concerned that what the people say they want may destroy

    "institutions we need and love, from the National Health Service and Universities like Essex, to the schools our children need and the libraries and public spaces that bring joy and meaning to our lives" flyer

    16.5.2016 Launch of "Heads Together" campaign at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Stratford, east London, by William, Kate and Harry Windsor. website - Mind website - Guardian article March 2017

    2017

    January 2017 Awake, magazine distributed in print and online by the Jehovah;s Witnesses, featured "Teen Depression. Why? What can help?"

    Wednesday 3.5.2017 "Aaron Lennon: Everton winger detained under Mental Health Act"

    2.9.2017 to 28.10.2017 "It's how well you bounce" exhibition at Bethlem Gallery. See events and BBC.

    2018

    If I am still here. But if not, why not write your own?

    2019

    2019 The new Medicine Galleries at the Science Museum in South Kensington are due to open. As part of this, the museum is seeking to form a small group of people with personal experience of the change in the mental health policy that occurred in the 1970s-1980s and resulted in the closure of asylums and a move into 'care in the community'.


     


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    Roberts, Andrew 1981-/timeline - Mental Health History Timeline <http://studymore.org.uk/mhhtim.htm>

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    (Roberts, A. 1981/timeline date).

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    1290: King's prerogative

    1312: Pardon

    1377 Bethlem

    1436: Margery Kempe

    1495 Syphilis

    1518 Physicians

    1538 London streets

    1601 Poor Law

    1621 Anatomy of Melancholy

    1636 Hobbes on motion and matter

    1654 community care

    1670 Private madhouses

    1676 Moorfields' Bethlem

    1690 Locke on reason and madness

    1696 Bristol Poor Act

    18th century asylums

    1714 Vagrancy Act

    1738 Cruden's escape

    1746 St Patrick's, Dublin

    1749 nervous vibrations

    1751 Saint Luke's, London

    1755 Rousseau back to primitive

    1774 madhouse medical inspection

    1788-1789: Royal madness treated and cured

    1792: all-seeing eye

    1796: Mary Lamb

    Gunshot and state asylums

    1800 Criminal Lunatics Act

    1808 County Asylums Act

    1812: Prime Minister shot dead

    1812: Philadelphia tranquilliser

    1815 St George's Bethlem

    1823: Lectures on mental diseases
    Gloucester asylum

    Phrenology

    1828 Home Office controls inspectors

    1832 Lord Chancellor controls inspectors

    1834 Poor Law

    Mesmerism

    Railway and telegraph

    non-restraint

    1840s Social unrest and asylum hope

    1841 Asylum statistics

    1841 Asylum doctors UK

    1842 National Inquiry

    1843: Daniel McNaughton fails to kill Peel

    1844 National Inquiry Report

    1844 Asylum doctors USA

    1845 Ashley's Acts and the Lunacy Commission

    1846 Haydock Lodge scandal

    1847: tainted blood

    Scotland 1853-1857

    Liberties

    Asylum nursing

    1863 Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum

    1867 Metropolitan Asylums Board

    1870 St Lawrence's and Leavesden

    1873 Murder

    1888 Epileptic Home

    1890s Asylum despair

    1900 Freud's dreams

    1905 Wasserman's test

    Mental Deficiency

    Sterilisation

    1910 Rampton State Institution

    1913 Mental Deficiency Act and The Board of Control

    1915: Shell-shocked

    1918: Chloral Hydrate effects

    Between world wars: Psychoanalytic glimmers

    1921: La Ligue Française ...

    1930: Voluntary fee-paying

    1930: Bethlem Royal

    1930s Moss Side State Institution

    1933 Borocourt Certified Institution for Mental Defectives

    Eugenics 1933

    1939-1945 not Shell Shock now

    1940s The asylum inheritance

    1946 National Health Service Act

    1948 National Health Service inherits asylums

    Fighting stigma

    1949 Scotland pioneers open doors

    1953 Mental £millions

    1954 Percy Inquiry into Mental Health Law

    Anti-psychotic drugs

    1957 Percy Report favours community care

    1959 Mental Health Act

    Breaking taboos

    local hospitals

    Asylum scandals

    Long acting drugs

    1971 Better Services for the Mentally Handicapped

    1973 mental patient's union (MPU)

    1974 Park Lane Special Hospital

    1975 Castles in the air

    1976 Birmingham scandal

    1979 Thatcher's (secret) Parkinson Report

    1981 Silent Minority

    1982 Little closed

    1983 Mental Health Act

    1986 Disabled Persons Services Act

    Empowerment

    1990 National Health and Community Care Act

    1991 Survivors' Poetry

    2001 Valuing People

    25.6.2002 Debate

    2003 Making Things Happen Better

    2005 Survivors' history









    Citation: see the referencing suggestion for advice on citing entries on this page.

    Have you tried the ABC Study Guide? try the ABC Study Guide

    or ABC Study Links?






    Mad Mary Lamb on Susan Tyler Hitchcock's web site
    Mad Mary Lamb: Lunacy and Murder in Literary London by Susan Tyler Hitchcock



    website about Suzzy Johnston
    ... a positive account of living with mental illness now





    Asylum to Action -
    Paddington Day Hospital , Therapeutic Communities and Beyond by Helen Spandler





    Listen to Me














    Information on Anna Wheeler and Rosina Bulwer Lytton from Kiera Chapman,
    whose
    Victorian Fiction website you may wish to visit




    to 31.3.2007: 259,990
    to 11.12.2006: 245,801
    to 16.7.2006: 215,674
    First four years: 13.6.2002 to 12.6.2006 (estimated): 211,502
    to 31.5.2006: 208,100
    to 31.12.2005: 162,913
    to 8.11.2005: 146,466
    to 18.9.2005: 129,975
    to 20.7.2005: 120,748
    on 20.3.2005: passed 100,000
    to 13.3.2005: 98,512
    to 31.12.2004: 86,454
    to 30.11.2004: 82,717
    to 22.10.2004: 76,084
    First two years: 13.6.2002 to 12.6.2004: 62,549
    to 7.4.2004: 55,145
    to 2.3.2004: 50,069
    to 25.12.2003: 42,569
    First eighteen months: 13.6.2002 to 13.12.2003: 41,849 unique visitors
    13.6.2002 to 16.9.2003: 30,652 unique visitors
    First year of counting: 13.6.2002 to 12.6.2003: 24,097 unique visitors
    You are all so welcome - Please come again.




    The icon above [no longer shown] is for Extreme Tracking statistics. I put it there on 18.12.2002. On 14.1.2003, on the 28th day, it recorded 1,588 new visitors, including 11 who visited on Christmas Day. (It recorded 24 on Christmas Day 2003 - 32 in 2004 - 67 in 2005 - 29 in 2006). Thank you for coming, and may 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 be a good time for all your mental healths. On Sunday 16.3.2003 (almost 3 months from the start) it recorded 6,308 new visitors. The highest daily being 132. The average daily since start being 70.

    [There was a subsequent peak of 138 on Wednesday 23.4.2003. New peaks of 175 on Tuesday 16.9.2003 [1000 new visitors in the week], and 180 on Monday 29.9.2003, 197 on Tuesday 4.11.2003. Then 219 on Tuesday 12.10.2004 and 230 on Thursday 14.10.2004] [November 2004 exceeded 5,000 visitors (a month) for the first time: over 5,286. The daily average since 18.12.2002 reached 100. The maximum daily visit was 262 on 29.11.2004. 14.3.2005: 286, which I expected to be the peak in the 2005 spring, but 5.4.2005 just reached 300. Outside the Christmas period, there are usually over 1000 visitors a week until the summer (June, July, August) when there are between 700 and 1,000. It went above 1500 in weeks 10 (1540), 14, 15 (1604), 16?, 17 of 2005, and again after week 36. (1619 in week 37, 2,117 in week 40, 2,985 in week 46 of 2005. Already up to 2,094 in week 1 of 2006). Day peak: 308 on 13.9.2005: 377 on 6.10.2005: 506 on 7.11.2005: 536 on 15.11.2205: 539 on 16.11.2205. This remains the daily peak. There was a substantial drop in the number of visitors (compared to previous years) in the autumn of 2006. 186 on 27.11.2006 was the highest day I actually noted, but there were probebaly higher days earlier in the month. August 2005: 4074; 2006: 4569 - September 2005: 7193; 2006: 6627 - October 2005: 10519; 2006: 7737 - November 2005: 11598; 2006: 7722]

    April 2005 6559
    April 2006 8176

    May 2005 5709
    May 2006 7515

    June 2006 3957
    June 2006 5339

    July 2005 3375
    July 2006 4240

    August 2005 4074
    August 2006 4569

    September 2005 7193
    September 2006 6627

    October 2005 10519
    October 2006 7737

    November 2005 11598
    November 2006 7722

    December 2005 7622
    December 2006 2978

    January 2006 9396
    January 2007 3933

    February 2006 9381
    February 2007 4754

    March 2006 10857
    March 2007 3850

    22.5.2003: 11,940 new visitors since 18.12.2002. [Add this to the 10,716 below, that is 22,656 since 13.6.2002].

    For six months I had a Dejacey counter here. On 17.12.2002, Dejacey closed all their counters down because of abuse by some users. I had, however taken notes of what it recorded: On Friday 13.12.2002, six months from starting using it, it recorded 10,716 new visitors. (There had also been 11,854 people revisiting). Thank you for coming, I hope you found something to interest you.