Storthes Hall Asylum

[zetlander]

A forebear's Death Certificate gives cause of death as Lumbar Pneumonia and Epilepsy. The place of death is Storthes Hall Asylum Kirkburton.  Why would this person - married with a young family end up in an asylum?  The year is 1929.

[CaroleW]

The epilepsy may be the reason. 

https://www.epilepsysociety.org.uk/our-history#.WO1NNbi1tdg

[mirl]

It seems the West Yorkshire Archives Service in Wakefield may have patient records from that period.

http://www.catalogue.wyjs.org.uk/calmview/Overview.aspx

[Ruskie]

You may find that patient records are closed for 100 years, so you may not be able to access them.

[J.R.Ellam]

Hi

CaroleW is right. Your Forebear might have gone in for treatment for their Epilepsy when so got pneumonia so could have been short term patient and not long term.

John

[ThrelfallYorky]

I seem to recall being told as a young child that a neighbour who was mentally very unstable had been taken to Storthes Hall, and spent several years there. The implication was that it was a sort of mental asylum. Looking back, that neighbour had become a mother not a long time before, yet again, so it might have been connected with post partum depression. Could that be the case?
I think it's currently something to do with a student village now, probably for Huddersfield.

[J.R.Ellam]

Yes that is right it was a place for people with mental problems and part of it is used by the University of Huddersfield.
It had people with long and short term mental conditions, some there for a few weeks to them that spent the rest of their lives there. A several of the patients would be from out of the Huddersfield area, and a lot of people from the Huddersfield area would go to one out of the area.
It was also a farm and part of the therapy was to let the patients help with the farm and it would even make a profit but another of the treatments used was elector therapies which weren't very nice.

John