Hi
I have lived in Nottingham most of my life. Mapperley Hospital was the City asylum and Saxondale the County Asylum. I am a bit surprised that he was from Sutton which I would class as North Notts and I thought they would have had an asylum up there.
Anyway I worked at Mapperley and was there when they had the centenery and therefore got quite interested in the old ways. For Saxondale see
http://www.countyasylums.com/mentalasylums/saxondale01.htmI had a relative there in the 1970s.
To get back to your relative. There are some easy reasons and some harder reasons to get your head round so don't get too upset if I say things that you do not want to know. This is the problem with family history.
Saxondale was an asylum, ie a mental hospital. He would not have been there for bronchitis, lung disease or any other physical illness although that may have been what finally killed him. If he was from Sutton was he a miner? This could account for the lung disease.
He may have been epileptic, depressed, schizophrenic or bipolar disorder (both probably not recognised then) or he may have had a sexually transmitted disease such as syphilis (I knew you would not like this). I became quite attached to the story of my great grandad who looked great in his photos but died in Saxondale at the age of 40 in 1915. I was told he died because he needed some medicine and the war broke out and could not get it any more. It turned out it was syphilis which without antibiotics caused fits and psychiatric symptoms. Penicillin was not available to the masses until after the 2nd world war in the late 40s and 50s and several of the older patients in the hospital when I started in the mid 1970s were there because if they were male they had syphylis or if they were female they had an illegitimate child. Unbelievable these days.
As far as the epilepsy and other mental illnesses don't forget that the modern drugs for epilepsy, mental illnesses and depression also did not exist. There was virtually nothing before the late 1950s and 1960s with great advances in each decade of the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s. The drugs before the 1950s were barbiturates which just sedated the patients. When they became agitated it would have been more barbiturates or paradehyde to sedate them even more. There was also Electro Convulsive Therapy for depression.
There are of course many other reasons but unfortunately the records are closed I think for 100years. Notts Archives have the records so if you really want to know contact them and if you are the nearest relative you may be able to access them if you fill in enough forms.
http://www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/home/leisure/archives.htmThe staff there are very helpful but are bound by the rules and quite rightly so.
I hope this helps and is not too depressing.
Kind regards
Jane