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General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: zetlander on Saturday 30 March 24 21:05 GMT (UK)
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In the 1980's I had close links with a large hospital for patients (app. 100) who had a severe disability - both mental and physical. These patients came from all over England.
In the five years I was there I can recall only about four patients having occasional visits from relatives.
I wonder how many were 'put away' and abandoned by their relatives - how many had relatives that didn't even know they existed.
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It was about the same time that I worked in a home for children, aged no more than 7, who also had a mental or physical incapacity, usually both.
The only visitors they had were social workers.
It was rewarding looking after them; I only left because we moved house.
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Sorry, but what an horrendous topic! :-X :-X You should be ashamed!
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Ashamed? Why? Do you think such people should be ignored, hidden, never spoken or written about? Unfit to be mentioned on RootsChat? They are members of our collective family tree and should be recognized as such.
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Ashamed? Why? Do you think such people should be ignored, hidden, never spoken or written about? Unfit to be mentioned on RootsChat? They are members of our collective family tree and should be recognized as such.
Totally agree Erato.
We shouldn't be able to pick and choose who we include in our Family Trees.
During my time at the Hospital six patients died - each one was buried in the local cemetery in a communal grave reserved for this hospital. No family member came to the funerals and there was no effort made to have them buried in their family plot.
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Hi Bumble B
What was it about the topic that offended you, can you say?
Maybe I missed something, but didn’t the remarks of zetlander, Billy F and Erato express great compassion for individuals who had to endure total loss of family connection?
Isn’t that kind of suffering deserving of compassionate discussion?
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Apologies - my thoughts are that the "putting away" of these people is terrible. :-X
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Personally, I think this is a great topic, which gives much food for thought. Definitely a topic deserving of reflection and compassionate discussion.
I do think though that this might be an emotive and sadly, even a painful one for some people. Especially, if there may have been direct experience of such situations.
No doubt it would have been very painful for relatives, to have someone in their family 'put away'. I think perhaps the only way people might have been able to cope might have been to convince themselves that things were hopeless and that this was for the best to sever all connection. It might be painful now for some people to consider this might not have been the only solution after all when they had been sold that it was.
It might also be very painful if someone may have been put away themselves and felt the pain of family and society rejection. The criteria historically seems to have been quite diverse.
In my growing up years, I knew and met an in law of my sister who had be been 'put away' after an abusive marriage led to a breakdown and she spent the rest of her life in the asylum/hospital. She was someone I will never forget. It was very sad as I think that if such a thing happened today with the right treatment and support now available she may well have got her life back.
I do know that some branches of her descendants were lied to and given to understand that she had died as a young woman when in fact she lived to her eighties.
Those who started the lie may have thought they were doing it for the best, I suppose.
But to me I think the truth should be known, she is long dead and the truth of her life deserves remembering and recording not the airbrushed version. I think she deserves that.
To add, I have read that people could be put away for socially objectionable reasons such as being an unmarried Mother or in some places and times, even 'excessive reading' - I could have been put away for that alone. ::)
I think this subject should not be brushed under the carpet. This is nothing to be ashamed of. We can learn from the past.
I once read about a well known man in the media who had a child with Downs Syndrome. Apparently when the child was born this man's Father cried for a week and thereafter had nothing to do with his Grandchild. I do not think this man was heartless. I rather think that perhaps, a man of his times, he imagined a hopeless situation and he was at a loss about knowing how to cope. If only, he had lived in these times and could have had access to a more positive outlook such as shown on the below site.
https://www.worlddownsyndromeday.org/end-the-stereotypes
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It is awfully sad when you find a poor soul like this when researching.
I recall from nurse training back in the early 1980s visiting a local hospital for children and adults with learning difficulties, now long closed. I was quite shocked although it seemed a happy place.
My great uncle , Percy, was sent to a Darenth school for mentally defective children in 1904, aged 8. Later he was sent to the Fountain asylum- in 1911 he is recorded as a congenital imbecile of unknown cause. I can find little more. His mother was the informant of his death at 21 in 1917 ( his father, having joined up,) so I hope there was contact. My mother was the source of much of the information about my dad’s side as he died a long time before I started family history research and she said my dad had a cousin who had been put away (possibly with epilepsy) who came to stay sometimes for a holiday. I like to think this is a little confused and it was actually Percy visiting with his family including my grandfather, his brother
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A slightly happier story about one of my mother's sisters, born 1915. When I knew her in the 1950s she was to some extent part of the family, but she was nervy and a little odd. Piecing the story together since, a cousin confirmed that she was quite intelligent and I suspect she was autistic. She had an illegitimate child about 1940, which may be when she first went into a mental hospital. I don't know how the adoption of the child happened, but another aunt kept in close touch with her and her adoptive parents.
My grandfather must have been shocked when this happened, but she was never put away and forgotten. She was in and out of mental care, but also visited us quite often (I lived with my mother and grandfather) We even had a visit once from the now grown-up child, at which point mum had to tell me who she was!
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/non-fiction/review-undesirables-sarah-wise-law-locked-generation/
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I discovered the hospital records of a relative of my OH: she had lived a full and busy life, running her household and having 5 children. Then she began to behave irrationally (delusions, sudden passionate religious outpourings, failure to engage with her family). She was initially sent to the county asylum and returned home when they felt she was stable and fit to carry on her regular routine. Shortly afterwards she re-admitted herself and there she stayed for the remainder of her life, apparently quite content but unable to take up her responsibilities. I understand she was visited but had little desire to interact with her family, curiousity about the outside world or their lives.
At least she found a refuge - I felt sorry for the eldest daughter, who brought up her younger siblings.
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Mental Deficiency Act 1913
Reading the wording of this legislation shows it's potential for exploitation
https://education-uk.org/documents/acts/1913-mental-deficiency-act.html
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Happened at all levels of society. The late Queen had two cousins in an Asylum in Surrey, Katherine and Nerissa Bowes Lyon
http://www.rootschat.com/links/01t36/ (http://www.rootschat.com/links/01t36/)
But I found recently that someone adjudged to be a dangerous lunatic was recommended to be moved "some considerable distance" from his home area, as "it would be better" for both him and his wife. Visits from her seemed to upset him, which in turn made him violent.The staff thought he should have been in Broadmoor. This was around 1890.
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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4CFiT1E_S3w
This is a good film based on a true life event.
'10 Days in a Madhouse' - a female reporter, Nellie Bly gets herself admitted undercover.
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I used to work in a “Mental” Hospital.
My Boss used to say that you can easily tell which are the Patients, they wear odd socks.
The Nursing Staff dressed the Patients.
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Just click on the link in reply 12 BumbleBee, there`s plenty to be ashamed of there.
Thank goodness we have come along way from those sort of descriptions of people.
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I had a friend who was sent to a psychiatric hospital in 2002. He had been sent there in 2000 and was very groggy and sick due to new meds but was more stable and was released soon after and back to his old self but was put away again in 2002 for attacking someone. He also had learning difficulties. I used to go and see him regularly in the psychiatric hospital. He was later moved away and I lost contact with him.
I worked with a man who had intellectual disability, his mind was not always on the job and he was a bit of a slow worker but I think his ID was quite mild as he was a carer for his sister when she got ill, and he seemed to handle some tasks more adroitly than others.
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When I was growing up my parents had a guesthouse. I remember my mother being asked if she would allow a couple to bring their son who was retarded (their description), very few places would accept him. My mother said of course he was welcome, they came every summer for several years until my mother had to give up taking guests when my father became ill.
It was quite obvious by his appearance and the way he walked that the lad had severe problems, he was non verbal, could only grunt and drooled all the time. He had suffered severe brain damage when the midwife dropped him on his head when he was born and was classed as an imbecile. His only interest was picture postcards, he had lots of shoeboxes full of them, they always brought several boxes with them. I used to sit with him for ages while he worked his way through them, showing me each one. He got very excited when we gave him new ones we had saved for him. It was such a simple thing but it made him so happy.
I would often go with them to the beach, I found it very upsetting the way strangers treated him. They would stop and stare and point at him, often making nasty comments. On several occasions I remember people saying he should be ‘put away’.
Thank goodness most, if not all of society is more enlightened today.
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The phrase "Put Away" was frequently bandied about when I was growing up. Mothers frequently told their badly behaved Children I'll "have you put away" if you don't behave!! That was meant for a different institution in those days, Approved School or home for Juvenile Delinquents.
Carol
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Yes, that is true it was bandied about. I remember that Mothers would try to promote good behaviour using threats of the 'Naughty Children's Home' in the local area.
Sadly, I do not think they were naughty children in there. I think they were just unfortunate children whose family situations had broken down for one reason or another.
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It wasn't just children who were "put away".
I've come across a woman who was sent to a County Asylum in 1875. Her first child was four; her second died at four months old in 1874.
The poor woman died in the asylum in 1883.
However her husband abandoned her. He married again (bigamously) in London in 1876. He moved to Kent and had three children, with a fourth on the way, with this "other woman" by the time his actual wife died.