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Documentary on some long-time inmates of Britain's mental hospitals who, it is revealed as such hospitals are gradually being emptied, were sent away simply for being deaf, pregnant or unwanted.
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00:11Tonight, on First Tuesday, the scandal of mental patients wrongly locked away for decades.
00:19Women who had illegitimate children were popped into hospital and called moral defectives.
00:25As the asylums close, the truth emerges.
00:28I have been in the system for 50 years, but let me tell you, there are many, many more like
00:38me.
00:49Good evening. This is the year when community care comes of age.
00:54All over the country, the for sale signs are up on dozens of mental hospitals and asylums.
01:00The 72,000 people left in institutions have started coming out into the community at the rate of about 7
01:07,000 a year.
01:08It's all moving so fast, with so many worries about the adequacy of the new community care structures that people
01:15have begun to ask if the old system was really all that bad.
01:19Well, tonight, we meet five people who know just how bad it was, people who spent most of their lives
01:26locked up for no good reason other than that they were in the way.
01:30Over the last decade, they've emerged from institutions to try to reclaim something from those lost years, the years when
01:38they were out of sight, out of mind.
02:03The 72,000 people left in the country, they were out of sight.
02:23I wonder why it was that they never let me out. That's all I used to think, why was I
02:30locked up for all them years?
02:33I wanted to be a footballer or cricketer, never got the chance.
02:42When we were put away, and when I got there, and when I'd seen the nurses, I thought, what am
02:48I here for?
02:49There's nothing wrong with me.
02:52We shouldn't have never been there.
02:55Wasn't anything that I felt like, you know, it was really, really, my dad really, like, you know, he got
03:03put away.
03:07But what angers me, and I do get angry, raging, and raging, and unthinking of the power they have to
03:16do this to you,
03:17the fact that you know it's wrong, that there's no redress, and after all, you are sick.
03:30I have been in the system for 50 years, but let me tell you, there are many, many more like
03:40me.
03:491993. Our mental hospitals are closing, but turn back the clock, and a shocking fact emerges.
03:58Thousands of patients should never have been there.
04:02We used to look at them on the ward, and see how well they were coping, and wonder why.
04:07What are they doing here? Why have they been in all these years?
04:12It was just something that you accepted, just something that happened, and I don't know why we didn't question it.
04:18I don't know.
04:20Asylums like Stanley Royd in Wakefield are at the end of an era spanning almost 200 years.
04:26An era when all sorts of people were defined as mentally deficient, and often locked away for lifetimes.
04:34Among them were many thousands who suffered no mental illness, but the system didn't notice.
04:41I suppose you can go back to the 1920s and the century before that,
04:46when people were very judgmental on why people came into a hospital like Stanley Royd.
04:53The judgment was made by society, the judgment was made by families,
04:58the judgment might have even been made by legal professions.
05:03I would have thought something like 30% of our population slipped through the net,
05:09either because of a wrongful diagnosis, if such a thing existed in the early parts of the century,
05:15or simply because people wanted to see them locked away and not to have a constant reminder of bad behaviour.
05:24If 30% of Britain's asylum population slipped through the net earlier this century,
05:30then some 40,000 people were wrongly locked away.
05:39Once they were inside, they were labelled, and you were insane.
05:43You were in an asylum, therefore you must be insane if you were in an asylum.
05:51We can quite easily find endless numbers of people who have spent 5, 10, 20, 30 and more years
05:59living in situations that none of us would accept for ourselves.
06:05People were in fact popped into hospitals for all sorts of strange things.
06:10Women who had illegitimate children were popped into hospitals and called moral defectives.
06:17People who had limited ability, people who had physical disabilities,
06:22just popped into hospitals and, out of sight, out of mind, tended to be forgotten.
06:33Tea at the Deaf Club in Leeds.
06:36Geoffrey Abbott, who's profoundly deaf, has become a regular helper in the years since he left hospital.
06:43Deafness was once a common reason for locking people up.
06:46I would think you'd probably find in most of the major, fairly secure hospitals throughout the country,
06:54there would be one or two examples of profoundly deaf people
06:57who had found their way in there, with no good reason.
07:01Martin Smith set about finding people who'd been wrongly locked up.
07:06I went to Meadwood Park and said to the medical superintendent,
07:10could I please look at the deaf people who are here?
07:13The staff in the hospital broke out from the villas,
07:17in a very kind of primitive way, people that they thought were deaf.
07:22So, out came this sort of stream of people who, about 24, 25 people,
07:28who the hospital staff thought were deaf, and Geoffrey was one of them.
07:32Geoffrey has never had a mental disability.
07:36His family sent him to Meadwood Park Mental Hospital in Leeds
07:39because they couldn't cope with his deafness.
07:43He didn't get out again for 22 years.
07:48It was, um, it was at Meadwood.
07:52Why were you there?
07:53Oh, well, it wasn't my fault.
07:55It was my father, uh, signed a paper and put me away.
08:02And, and put me in, uh, into hospital.
08:05He just signed it.
08:08Well, this hearing, this hearing man, um, just put me in hospital.
08:13Um, and it was, and it was my father's fault.
08:18It was my father who was bad.
08:20It was wrong.
08:22Well, I, I didn't communicate, I didn't talk to them.
08:27It was full of hearing people, and I was, you know, by myself.
08:31And there were, like, warders there with keys that locked things up.
08:36And I really had to be quite patient.
08:41Well, I think it's a tragedy.
08:43I mean, if you look at somebody like Geoffrey with, with all his skills
08:46and his wonderful personality, which has maintained itself
08:50through those 22 young, long years, um,
08:54you can think of so many lives that have been wasted.
09:03John Sylvester wasted 66 years in the system.
09:06His nightmare began when he was six.
09:09I wasn't very old, because my dad came from the army,
09:14and my mother was alive then, and she died the 8th of January 1918.
09:20Take that, take that.
09:22Give the kiss, come on.
09:23John's father gave his two youngest children to Nantwich Workhouse.
09:28His sister Phoebe went first.
09:31John's long journey through institution and asylum
09:34began when a receiving officer collected him
09:37in the basket of his pushbike.
09:39It was a hoblong basket.
09:42It wasn't round.
09:43I could just fit me bottom in it, you see.
09:45I said, I want to turn round and see where I'm going.
09:48Oh, I said, we're not going that way, we're going that way, see.
09:51And then we get to the workhouse.
09:53And they give me a bath when I got there.
09:56Looked after me.
09:58He was taken into a hospital as a child of six.
10:03John spent the greater part of his three school year and ten
10:06in isolated and remote institutions,
10:08and he lost complete contact with his relatives
10:13for a greater part of his life.
10:14Even though he and his sister were living in the same institution at one time,
10:19contact wasn't allowed.
10:24You know, I didn't know much of my father.
10:26He used to drink a lot.
10:30I could smell it on him.
10:33So he wanted to get rid of Buck.
10:34Well, he got rid of Phoebe first, and then he got rid of me.
10:41I did miss home, going to see my own people.
10:46And, you know, I've been there so many months, I got used to it.
10:53I did about five years there.
10:56Came on for five years.
10:57In September 15th, I was moved to Stoke Park.
11:02I didn't know where I was going.
11:05Stoke Park Colony for Mental Defectives
11:08was 100 miles away near Bristol.
11:10It was 1926.
11:12John was not mentally ill.
11:15He'd lost his family.
11:17He was 12.
11:18It was in the winter, very cold.
11:21And the sister come.
11:24She had to cry.
11:25Didn't cry long, so she said,
11:27Cry your eyes.
11:29So she said, come on, come follow me.
11:31She said, follow me, you see.
11:32She said,
11:35Oh, I can't read my dormitory.
11:37She said, that'll be your bed.
11:40And it was big old in the bloody blankets.
11:43Oh, I said, I want to put a blanket.
11:46I was only 12.
11:47I said, OK, I'll make the best of it.
11:50In 12 years at Stoke Park,
11:52John had no visitors.
11:54He was being brought up
11:55in what was then viewed as a lunatic asylum.
11:58There was 129 in one ward.
12:02And some of them were deaf and dumb.
12:05Some were blind.
12:06Some were blind.
12:08Some couldn't beat themselves.
12:10Some couldn't beat themselves.
12:12You had to wipe them down.
12:13Or get somebody to do it.
12:14Staff wouldn't do it.
12:15They were two damn lazy staff.
12:18That's Betty, isn't it?
12:19Yeah, that's Betty.
12:20That's Nees Boydall.
12:21Yeah.
12:22That's same Hillary.
12:24She's from New Church, where I was.
12:26Between them, Francis Schofield and Ethel Williams
12:29totaled 90 years in institutions.
12:32Neither of them is mentally ill.
12:35Like many victims of the system,
12:37they stumbled into asylums via children's homes.
12:41Taken into care when I was two years old.
12:44I don't think my mother was ill.
12:46I didn't find out about that.
12:49And I went to the old cottage homes.
12:51And when I got to know, they were really strict.
12:54You couldn't even take a dog to bed to cuddle,
12:57a teddy bear, nothing.
12:59We went to bed, and if we talk, and if they hear us talking,
13:04go downstairs and get a slipper.
13:06And I think that was disgrace.
13:09And it closed in 1957, and we had to all move.
13:14And I went to New Church Hospital.
13:17And I got there about 5 o'clock.
13:19I can remember going on ward 4.
13:22And I met some more children.
13:24And I met the nurses.
13:25And I didn't know I was going in a hospital.
13:28I thought it was going to be a home.
13:30You know, like with staff.
13:33Not in uniforms.
13:37My dad, like, you know,
13:40he was a bit of a scallywag.
13:45And he's getting himself into trouble and that, you know.
13:50And, er...
13:51My mother had a breakdown, you know.
13:54It's a...
13:58Today, Ethel and Francis share a spotless flat in Liverpool.
14:02In hospital, they became lost in the system,
14:06written off as feeble-minded and used as skivvies.
14:09They had no redress.
14:11See, we couldn't run away,
14:13cos we would have got the worst end of it.
14:16Being in there and locked up and everything, you know.
14:20Mummy shouldn't have been.
14:23Oh, what happened at Newark?
14:24We couldn't even tell the social workers what was going on.
14:27Cos, you know, I'd be in a subnormal.
14:29Staff would have said,
14:31oh, they're telling a pack of lies.
14:33For Francis, Brockhall Hospital in the 40s was the worst time.
14:37Can you manage, Francis?
14:39Well, I slept in the sleeping all day long.
14:42I used to get up at 6 o'clock in the morning.
14:45There used to be night nurses.
14:46They used to come and take you to the wards you worked on.
14:50You used to start work half 6 to half 7 at night.
14:54You used to be cleaning,
14:57helping with the disabled.
15:00You used to treat the disabled people terrible, you know.
15:03You know, I used to hit them in there,
15:06you know, shout at them in there.
15:09They used to upset me and then I used to get myself into trouble.
15:17Jimmy Lang was another childhood victim
15:19who spent 50 years in the system
15:21before a psychiatrist got him out.
15:24Well, today I'd be called a hyperactive child.
15:27That would be it, in a nutshell.
15:30And in those days, there was no places, what have you.
15:33So the clinic doctor, the school doctor and a psychiatrist,
15:37they sent me to the Baldoven Institution
15:40for Mental Deficient Boys and Girls.
15:46Well, actually, I was quite happy.
15:48We were going on a train.
15:49I mean, 1939, getting on a train and travelling,
15:53going to Dundee,
15:54actually, it was like going on a holiday.
15:57Arriving at Baldoven,
15:59we were met by the superintendent
16:01and introduced.
16:03And the words, I always remember his words,
16:05because they were to haunt me for many years to come,
16:09was, come in, you're going to be very happy here.
16:15Jimmy Lang was 9 years old.
16:1960 patients in a dormitory,
16:2230 in some.
16:24And I think the most horrific thing,
16:27even at that early time in, dare I call it, my career,
16:31was one toothbrush for 30 boys.
16:37Well, I started absconding because, firstly,
16:41I knew I shouldn't be where I was.
16:44I knew that I had the qualities, if you care to call it that,
16:49of being a member of society.
16:59And I continued to do it.
17:01I was never successful, as has been proved.
17:04But, however, the world loves a tryer,
17:07and try as I did,
17:09I didn't get to my destination,
17:11as we know, 50 years later.
17:14Jimmy Lang was trouble.
17:16He fought the system that had labelled him a mental defective.
17:21He absconded and offended.
17:23He was sent to ever more secure establishments.
17:26At 16, he put his fist through a window
17:29and was declared insane.
17:32He kept fighting,
17:34finally meeting his match,
17:3628 years at Carstairs State Hospital
17:38for the criminally insane.
17:40Oh, you had no redress.
17:42In fact, patient wasn't a word they used then,
17:46it was inmate.
17:48Until you admitted you were ill,
17:51they didn't want to know you.
17:57Jaws were locked all the time, you know.
17:59Nurses used to rack them in the keys all the time.
18:03You couldn't go anywhere without any body.
18:06They used to open the door,
18:08shove you in, and lock it again.
18:11We was never allowed out on your own.
18:15So if we wanted to go on the field,
18:17or in the bathroom,
18:18all the staff was always first to go through the door.
18:23And the sports day,
18:24we used to walk around the field
18:27with a big fence around us,
18:28don't fence me in.
18:30It wasn't in us.
18:32Great big fence around you,
18:34and all the staff walking behind you,
18:35rattling keys.
18:43Britain's mental hospitals used to be like prisons.
18:49Storth's Hall near Huddersfield
18:51once held 3,000 patients,
18:53dressed like staff in uniform,
18:56the sexes strictly segregated.
18:58There was no way out.
19:00The wards were locked.
19:03It was into this former system
19:05that Francis Schofield,
19:07Jimmy Lang,
19:08and countless others like them were thrown,
19:10to endure the cruel regimes of the past,
19:13and treatments now consigned to the museum.
19:25This is a type of straitjacket,
19:27which would have been used most likely by patients
19:30who were working out in the gardens,
19:32where they could,
19:33with the movement they have with the arms,
19:36probably wheel a wheelbarrow.
19:38The chief purpose, of course,
19:40was to stop patients from escaping,
19:42from running away.
19:44Well, in those days,
19:45they didn't have the tranquilising drugs
19:47that are available today,
19:49and therefore they had to use
19:51some physical method of restraint.
19:55Institutions strip away people's individuality
19:57and their personal value.
19:59And once you strip away people's value,
20:01then you feel free to do all kinds of things
20:04to those people
20:04that you wouldn't otherwise do.
20:06Oh, yes,
20:08some of the children,
20:09like, you know,
20:12they used to rock themselves,
20:13you know,
20:14and they used to move to chairs,
20:17and they used to tie them
20:18to the radiators and everything,
20:21hot radiators and everything.
20:23Many a time,
20:23I used to be in trouble
20:24because I used to let them loop,
20:27you know, undo them.
20:29You couldn't say no,
20:30and you used to duck your leg under the water.
20:34And if you said stop him,
20:36you duck him again,
20:36so you had to kick him out,
20:37so you had to get him out of a full of soap.
20:40You had to,
20:41you didn't do what they wanted you to do,
20:44they used to put you in the padded room,
20:46and you used to stay there
20:48with, like,
20:49a straight jacket on you.
20:55This is one of the more horrific exhibits
20:57that we have in the museum.
20:59It's a padded cell.
21:02It was used for patients
21:05who were extremely difficult
21:07or probably very noisy,
21:09patients who sometimes asked to go in the cell
21:12because they felt themselves
21:13from the tensions that were growing up in them
21:15that they were liable to do the cell's harm
21:18or do somebody else some harm,
21:20so that these were replaced, of course,
21:23eventually by the use of tranquilising drugs.
21:36This is an early form of ECT apparatus,
21:40electroconvulsive therapy,
21:41or electroplexia, as it's now called.
21:44The various parts here,
21:47this is a mouth gag
21:49which prevented the patient
21:50from biting his or her tongue.
21:52This was a device for opening the jaws
21:55and preventing the jaws from closing.
21:59And this is the headphone, as it were,
22:02or headgear,
22:03which was placed around the patient's head,
22:06the patient's temple,
22:06and the electric current applied,
22:10which gave the electroconvulsive therapy.
22:16There would be two nurses at each side of you
22:19with a sheet under you
22:21and a sheet over you.
22:23And this was rolled in to allow you to rise
22:27when you were given this blast, we'll call it,
22:29and it allowed you to rise
22:31at least six, maybe to eight inches,
22:34off the trolley.
22:35And it's very frightening
22:37because you were awake and, don't forget,
22:38when you go in.
22:39You said there was no pre-meds or anything.
22:42Well, they were providing
22:44an electric stimulus to the brain
22:46which caused them to have a fitting effect.
22:52And it was during the time that this was so
22:56that the patient's condition
22:58was improved by the treatment.
23:02The methylated spurs, or what have you,
23:04was put on each side of your temple,
23:06and I always called them the earphones,
23:08and they were clamped on the side of your head,
23:12and you're looking.
23:13And I always looked over
23:14because I may have got different voltage,
23:19but the effect to me was always the same.
23:21But you saw him setting the dial,
23:23and as he set the dial,
23:25he gave the nod for the switch where I am,
23:28and woof, you were awake.
23:30Good night.
23:31Good night.
23:31Good night, and that was it.
23:41When they gave you a shock
23:43and your toes turned up towards you,
23:46apparently it was called that.
23:47It was a beauty.
23:48That was a good one today.
23:49All right, look.
23:52It was the introduction of drugs
23:54that transformed the atmosphere
23:56of psychiatric hospitals.
23:58How you all right this morning?
23:59Fine, thank you.
24:01Today's medication regimes
24:02are far more sophisticated
24:04than in the early 50s
24:06when much drug use
24:07was experimental and devastating.
24:10Jimmy Lang was forced
24:11to take one of the early heavy tranquilizers.
24:15It's sulfonil, it was called,
24:17and it was widely used
24:19in Gartlock in 1950 and 51,
24:22and of course Jimmy had to get it too.
24:25And so I lost the power of my speech.
24:30I couldn't walk.
24:31It was such a powerful drug.
24:33It was called a tranquilizer,
24:37one of the early tranquilizers.
24:40But although I'd lost my speech,
24:43again, if I can use a word,
24:46I was fortunate.
24:47My brain functioned.
24:49I knew what was going on.
24:51I was aware of my surroundings.
24:53I just couldn't speak.
24:55I couldn't get out of bed on my own.
24:59You see?
25:00And then, again,
25:03they reduced it
25:04and I got a speech therapist
25:06that was back to dog and cat and mat
25:10and what used to infuriate me
25:13when in a stage whisper, if you will,
25:17isn't Jimmy getting on?
25:19It's got through four words today
25:21and I used to remember raging inside,
25:25furious.
25:26How dare they do this?
25:28You know, but I got out of it.
25:29I came round, you know,
25:31and others didn't come round so well
25:34because they sat like this for the...
25:38You know, vegetated.
25:39And it's very easy to vegetate,
25:41let me hasten to add.
25:43Treatments took their toll,
25:45but it was the institutionalization of the past
25:48that did the greatest damage.
25:50The thing that suffered most
25:52was this denial of individuality
25:55and the taking away of decision-making
25:58from individuals.
26:00And having taken away that capacity to function,
26:03we therefore said,
26:04you're mentally ill,
26:06you cannot function,
26:07you must remain within an institution.
26:09Forget.
26:10Follow me, snow queen.
26:16For John,
26:17for Ethel and Francis,
26:19for Geoffrey and for Jimmy,
26:21times slipped down the decades
26:23and took their lives away.
26:25The system had not yet started thinking
26:28about getting them out.
26:29...
26:39...
26:41...
26:43...
26:44...
26:45...
28:32Thank you very much for everything you've done for us.
28:41I don't know what Sarah done without you all these years. Thanks very much, everybody.
28:49Local authorities will be obliged to make an individual care plan for all their patients.
28:57What are you going to do tonight?
29:03The trickle of people who've been leaving hospital during the last decade is now a flood.
29:11It's a revolution against institutional care.
29:17For people to be returning to the community after a period of time in hospital, no matter
29:22how long, is traumatic. Institutions create security for the people who work there and
29:29the people who live there. And therefore, any move on from that is to see them encountering
29:35something strange, something new, and something at least challenging or frightening.
29:43The new rules mean that everyone has the right to a say in their own future. Freedom is government
29:51policy.
29:57are you sitting on it? No, you're because it's on me. I bet they're all packed nice and neat
30:02next door and here's all.
30:15Hello.
30:16Hello.
30:21Hi.
30:24Hello, yes.
30:28Hello.
30:29How are you?
30:29This is Friday.
30:30Goodbye.
30:30Hi.
30:41But will community care work for everyone?
31:06Two weeks ago, this woman had to return to Offerton.
31:13Community care is working for John Sylvester, but he had to wait 66 years to leave the system.
31:22John's lost all the things that we hold dear.
31:25He has never had, until quite recently, a home of his own, in which he could feel secure
31:31and confident and have control over his own destiny.
31:35He's never had a job, and if you don't have a job, you don't have status and standing
31:40in our society.
31:42He's never had the simple choices as to when he gets up, when he goes to bed, when he eats,
31:48what he eats, where he goes for his holidays, and he's only had those very latterly since
31:52he moved into his own house.
31:55So all the things that we hold dear, he's been deprived of.
32:01Right.
32:05I don't want no burglary thing.
32:07If we want to cry or read a letter or just find five minutes on our own, it's perfectly
32:14easy for us to do that.
32:16If you live in an institution, it isn't.
32:17And one of John's greatest delights now is just to sit in the enjoyment of his own home.
32:25John's independence didn't come easily.
32:27Review panels stood between him and freedom.
32:31John has told me many times when he and another man vowed that the next time they went before
32:36the panel, they would ask for their freedom.
32:39But of course, he said when he went in there and he saw that all the panel were writing,
32:45he lost his nerve.
32:46And it seems strange to us that being in the presence of three people who could write would
32:53make you lose your nerve.
32:54But that's exactly what it did to John, and therefore he dare not ask for his freedom.
33:24John Sylvester, of course, was one of thousands of people who, by the time, he said, what colour
33:28is, by various accidents of history, managed to find themselves living in long-stay hospitals.
33:35And even today, when many, many people have moved, there are still lots and lots of people
33:40who are living in hospitals for no medical reason.
33:45New Hall Hostels in Liverpool.
33:47Once the old cottage homes where Ethel and Francis both started and ended their institutional
33:53careers.
33:55Tests had been a feature of their lives from childhood.
33:58They gave me a book and they said, read that.
34:01I said, all right, I'll read it for you.
34:03I'll show you if I can read.
34:05And I can write.
34:07They got me a book out and they said, spell your name.
34:11And I did.
34:13Once they gave me a puzzle to do and they took half of it out.
34:19So I said to them, well, I'll do it if you give me the other half.
34:23LAUGHTER
34:29Our friends we go and visit, they said that you should never, ever be put away.
34:36Well, when we got to know when we were leaving the hospital, the staff thought we wouldn't
34:40be able to make it.
34:42Yeah, we wouldn't be able to come.
34:42We've been there, like, for all those years.
35:12Yeah.
35:14It is.
35:14Your life completely changed.
35:17It's a great, it's normal to be.
35:19Normal.
35:19Instead of being as it was in those days, get treated like a baby.
35:24Baby and everything.
35:25It was a disgrace.
35:28It's nice to have different clothes for each day.
35:31And we haven't been used to having them when we was away.
35:34Oh, we used to wear the hospital clothes.
35:36Yes.
35:37And, er, dresses were long.
35:39We didn't like that.
35:40We liked them short when we were young, to show our legs, but that wasn't, er, right.
35:45We couldn't do things like that.
35:47It would be nice that we wanted to get a band now, because we couldn't do things now,
35:51could we?
35:51Every Monday we'd go down for dancing, and there was boys.
35:56When, er, the band used to start playing, you used to get up and start dancing.
36:02But, yeah, more than three dancers were the same fella.
36:05You've had us.
36:08We like music.
36:09She's sitting up in bed at night time with her earphones on.
36:12All hours in the morning.
36:14And I'm giving her a thing, so.
36:17I'm set.
36:18Yes.
36:19Number nine.
36:20Deep down, I always had the gut feeling somebody would come along.
36:25It took 50 years, but I knew somebody would come along, and I would be out.
36:30And when one thinks of it, all the psychiatrists I went through, and there was a young 34-year-old
36:38girl psychiatrist come in and got married in six months.
36:44Jimmy Lang has been rebuilding his life since he reclaimed his freedom.
36:51Today in Glasgow, he offers support to other former psychiatric patients.
36:55The fever.
36:56I was in Gatlock here about four years ago.
36:58I was only in for six weeks.
36:59I had a nervous breakdown.
37:00Aye.
37:01And, er, it hasn't changed a great deal, Gatlock.
37:04There's still, er, I was left, I left in the, in, sitting down in the ward.
37:09All day.
37:10Most of the time all day.
37:11Sitting, not any day.
37:13All I was waiting for was my meal and going to bed at night.
37:16That's what I was looking for in my bed.
37:17And that's still today.
37:19That was four or five years ago.
37:20Well, that's the same as it was 20, 30, 40 years ago, Joe.
37:24Still the same if you're sitting, waiting.
37:27Well, we used to be waiting a bell in those days.
37:29Yes.
37:29Our lives were running with a bell at eight in the morning, midday, and five o'clock at night.
37:34Well, I lost my freedom, which is very, very precious, and I know that today.
37:41And I appreciate every day I live now.
37:44I live each day to the full.
37:45And just living, living, being outside itself is wonderful.
37:53For me, it's wonderful.
37:55I have met a lot of lovely people who have accepted me for me, not my past.
38:09John Sylvester takes his pleasure in everyday chores.
38:14But after 66 years in institutions, he needs the support of two part-time care workers.
38:26They provide a substitute for the family he never had.
38:29Yeah.
38:30Now, where are we going now?
38:32Hello, do you need?
38:34Thank you, John.
38:35One half of that.
38:36Don't eat at all.
38:37In the kitchen.
38:41I'll be back in a minute.
38:44John's become a carer too, helping to look after two other former patients who share his stockport maisonette.
38:53You going in half and four?
38:55Yeah.
38:55You're there.
38:58Can you manage it, then?
39:01OK.
39:09Geoffrey Abbott revisits Meenwood Park with Martin Smith, the man who won his freedom.
39:1522 years of his life disappeared here before his deafness was acknowledged as his only problem.
39:20Those 22 years were lost, in fact.
39:25It was certainly a sentence which society imposed upon him in a very arbitrary kind of way.
39:34That's the right one.
39:35That's the right one.
39:35That's right.
39:36It's better.
39:36Yes, it's super.
39:39It's really very good.
39:40Yes, it's super.
39:41You like that?
39:42Yeah.
39:43It's best.
39:44It's super.
39:44He had no opportunity to find out a range of options and choices which would have made him,
39:54would have given him all kinds of different angles on life.
39:58He's so intelligent that he's learnt to manage, but the full opportunities in life were missing to him.
40:05What happened around here, Geoffrey?
40:07What happened around here?
40:09Oh!
40:12There were railings.
40:13There were railings.
40:16Who lived in here, though?
40:19All kinds of very strange people lived in here.
40:22They were very disturbed people.
40:25And they belonged in that house over there.
40:28That's Villa 13 over there.
40:30Yeah.
40:31But were they connected to there?
40:32Oh, no.
40:33I was in there.
40:34We were better in there.
40:38Part of Meanwood Park is now closing.
40:41Prime real estate up for sale.
40:44The proceeds are destined for the community care budget.
40:49A successful sale can mean big money towards caring for people leaving institutions.
40:56New Church Hospital in Cheshire was home to Ethel Williams for nearly ten years.
41:02Today it's being turned into luxury homes, designed for suburban professionals at up to £175,000.
41:13Their new owners are living side by side with the hospital's remaining residents, who won't be leaving until it finally
41:19closes later this year.
41:23Brock Hall Hospital above Blackburn, where Frances Schofield spent her worst years in the 40s.
41:29Last year the hospital closed.
41:31Its fate is undecided.
41:36Nantwich Workhouse, where John Sylvester began his long life in institutions, is now a building site.
41:42A private hospital will soon be followed by a supermarket.
41:45Sainsbury's paid nearly £4 million for their plot.
41:49But in a recession, who's going to buy Huddersfield Stores Hall, on 600 acres of isolated moorland, closed in 1991?
41:59If unwanted hospitals don't sell, the community care budget will suffer.
42:05And Stanley Royd in Wakefield, one of the nation's first asylums, built in 1820.
42:13At its height, it housed 2,800 patients.
42:18Today there are 300.
42:20Soon, there will be none.
42:26Tremendous wrongs were done.
42:28And I think we now acknowledge that because of the impetus that there now is to change the way that
42:35we provide care.
42:36The other part of that story, of course, is to prevent it happening again.
42:40And the model of psychiatry nowadays is to look after people in a community setting and avoid large institutional care.
42:49And therefore the government emphasis now is about closing down large institutions and creating new care within a community setting.
43:02I mean, people think about rehabilitation and think it's an easy option.
43:06In fact, it's not. It's quite difficult.
43:09When I was a nurse training in the 60s, the long stay wards were huge.
43:16It's very easy to actually go on to a ward like you did in the past and get the men
43:22shaved and wash them, bath them, dress them, make the bed.
43:26The hard bit is standing back while you're actually teaching them to learn how to do it themselves.
43:34I think we'll become extinct.
43:38Certainly this ward is, as in the previous two wards I've worked on, is due for closure.
43:45The majority of these residents will go outside.
43:49I think this is the right thing to do, really.
43:52They shouldn't be in here. This is not their home.
43:55They should be out there living in a small community where they can become involved and get new friends.
44:06Quite clearly, the sins of her forefathers have now got to be sorted out, and they're being sorted out over
44:12a very short period of time.
44:14We're thinking now about 200 years of institutional care being remedied within a period of two decades, three decades.
44:22That is an incredible challenge for the health service, an incredible challenge for the people that work within the health
44:28service.
44:30Wakefield has operated a model resettlement policy, so successful that two weeks ago the final closure date of Stanley Royd
44:39was announced.
44:40Hostel accommodation will be the future for its last and most vulnerable residents.
44:51No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!
45:07At Offerton House, the next wave of patients receives survival lessons for life in the community.
45:13A little place in the middle of a big main road.
45:17You have to press the sign to say wait.
45:21It says wait.
45:22She presses a sign.
45:23And then when she sees the what colour man?
45:26Green man.
45:27She can go the rest of the way.
45:31Now, there's things you have to do to make sure that crossing the road on your own is very safe.
45:37Now, what is this man doing, Jed?
45:39What is he doing?
45:41He's weighing up the traffic.
45:42He's weighing up the traffic.
45:43That's a good way of describing it, that, yeah.
45:48What do you reckon, Roy?
45:49Can you see those cars?
45:51Can you see those cars?
45:53Is it safe to cross the road?
45:55No.
45:56Do you think so?
45:57Oh, I don't think it is.
45:59It's not safe.
46:03Resettlement has worked for Ethel and Frances, but nothing can replace their lost years.
46:08If I would have been adopted, it would have been great.
46:12I should be with a family.
46:14I would have been made up.
46:15If I would have been with a family, I would have been like other children.
46:19Like, working out, meeting all different people, go to different places, go, you know, all around the world.
46:28But that never happened.
46:32Could have been out in the world and everything, could have been out and done things for ourselves and everything,
46:42instead of slugging and slaving for them.
46:57John was always, and still is, very interested in sport, and was a man who had some considerable abilities, particularly
47:05in football, but also in cricket.
47:08To the extent that he always played for the hospital teams, wherever he lived, and had some aspirations for that
47:15to be part of his career.
47:18However, that was never to be.
47:22He's lost 60 years of his life, really, and had that replaced by some shallow existence in very subservient roles,
47:31without any status and standing in long-stay hospitals.
47:36What we can do is to crack on and make sure that he's got the best possible opportunities that we
47:40can provide for him for the years that he's got left.
47:44John Sylvester watches his favourite team, Crew Alexandra, with his friend and helper, Marion Murphy.
47:51John's a very, very special person. He's a grandfather I never had.
47:59I feel very sad, because I'm sure if he'd been given opportunities years ago, he could have made something of
48:05his life.
48:07Are you kidding? Come on, pass it to me.
48:12I don't know, but I'm sure somewhere along the line there's a little path for Johnny.
48:16Yeah, they're over there now.
48:17That house.
48:18They didn't allow to mark one of them.
48:20I mean, I could have earned a lot of money, got married, had a lot of family.
48:25Yeah, yeah.
48:26But they didn't know what court it was.
48:28They didn't know anything about it.
48:32I wasn't allowed to talk to my own sister.
48:34I mean, I never seen outside.
48:37I wasn't allowed out of the ground then, you know, what would have known outside?
48:41I noticed cars and people, pictures and all that, shops, river, not very far away, a big park.
48:48I knew all that, because I could see it from when I was in my bedroom.
48:54History is taking its revenge on the institutions.
48:59The mental hospital is becoming extinct.
49:05That door will open a bit further tonight.
49:20For those who should never have been locked up, there has been no apology, no compensation.
49:28We should, in fact, compensate them, and the way that we can do that is to give them a valued
49:34life in the community,
49:36to give them the opportunities to do and participate in things that see them as valued members of society.
49:46We have this inclination to want to see people as objects of pity and objects of charity,
49:52when what we should be doing is seeing them as valued neighbours, valued work colleagues,
49:57valued friends, valued members of our own community.
50:23I want me money to make up for the years when I had none.
50:28What do you think you lost?
50:29I never, well, to be honest, that brings back to my life, didn't I?
50:38Well, you can't back them years back now, can I?
50:58Are you warm enough now?
51:00Are you feet warm?
51:01I'm not worried about my feet.
51:22The Community Care Act in April should put an end to such cases.
51:26For one, there'll be a system of assessment by law.
51:29For another, there'll be very few institutions.
51:33The real danger of neglect now will be in the community,
51:36and that's a challenge we've all yet to face.
51:39Until the first Tuesday in March, good night.
52:22Transcription by CastingWords
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