Secrets from the Asylum ITV Wed 20th Aug 9 pm

[kiterunner]

Following on from "Secrets from the Clink", another two-parter. Celebrities appearing in the first part include Al Murray, Ray Winstone and Claire Sweeney.

[Merry]

I quite enjoyed this, though Claire Sweeny got on my nerves over the use of the word lunatic and her belief that elderly people with severe dementia looked different in Victorian times compared with those suffering similarly these days. Thank goodness for the other two celebs who generally took things in their stride.

My great-grandmother spent 20 years in an asylum and the programme helped me to remember just how big these places were. When I visualise my auntie being taken to see her grandmother when she was 5 or 6 years old I always imagine a cottage hospital type affair, even though I know that's completely wrong! My aunt said they (she and her mother) passed through several locked doors behind a female 'gaoler' in a black Victorian dress (this was about 1926) with a huge bunch of keys hanging from a chain round her waist. Auntie thought they were going to see a murderer, but all they found was a bedridden frail lady. My aunt didn't know she was a relative as her mother kept that a closely guarded secret.

[Jill]

Watched with interest as my OH's great grandfather died in 1916 in Broadmoor of GPI, another two years and the 100 years will be up and we may be able to look at his records, though obviously we won't be talked through them by a friendly expert!
This is him
http://www.genealogistsforum.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=15937&highlight=charles+harwood

I shall be interested to see the next part, especially to follow what happened to Al Murray's relative.

I'm about 10 minutes walk from a Victorian mental hospital, now converted to apartments but remember it as being a major local employer. Various elderly inmates were allowed out in the day and would wander around the town, some of my school friends did voluntary work there.

[Olde Crone]

I was interested too (but kept getting distracted by the phone!) as I used to live almost opposite the main entrance to Colney Hatch (which we called Friern Barnet locally) in the late 1960s. It was the size of a village and was largely self supporting.

Even in those days when I didn't give the matter much thought, I was quite repelled at the, shall we say, low level of staff who worked there. One "nurse" lived in the flat above mine and frankly I wouldn't have let her look after my budgie.

On the other hand, awful as these places were, they were genuinely a refuge for many people and were better than what came next - care in the community.

OC

[kiterunner]

Ray Winstone and the researcher who researched his family seemed to make a lot of assumptions. I don't see that the fact that Hannah remarried 6 months after her first husband's death and managed to recover from syphilis particularly shows that she had an admirable strength of character, as they seemed to think. I thought it showed that she didn't care about the danger she was putting her second, much younger, husband in, oh, and of course the danger to the children she would have with him, though apparently they turned out to be healthy, but she wouldn't have known that when she married him. I liked Ray's hope that the second marriage was "for the right reason - that she was in love with him" but it seems unlikely to me! Perhaps I'm just cynical!

Oh, and Claire Sweeny thinking that the fact that the married couple and their daughter were all buried in the same plot made it a "love story". Again, maybe I'm just cynical, but it was likely cheaper that way.

[Margaret in Burton]

I'm as cynical as you then Kate.

[Joy Dean]

I'm as cynical as you then Kate.

Me, too.:)

[Guinevere]

I haven't been watching this. It was a deliberate decision. Something about the concept makes me feel very uneasy for some reason.

[Olde Crone]

Gwynne

I know exactly what you mean, but in fact it wasn't prurient in any way (that's not the right word, but I'm sure you can supply your own!)

I found it moderately interesting and informative and I felt that Lesley Joseph was certainly sincere in her reactions, as was the other man (don't know his name). Biggins was a bit silly but how could he be anything else.

OC

[Margaret in Burton]

Think you are referring to Al Murray OC.

[Olde Crone]

Of course, one of the really big "SECRETS" that they did not address on the programme was that of so-called moral imbeciles - those incarcerated for immoral behaviour, including that of having an illegitimate child. Hundreds, maybe thousands of women were sent to asylums and stayed there fore the rest of their lives, just because they had had an illegitimate baby.

OC

[JBee]

Yes I thought that too OC.

One of my clients was sectioned for being over anxious about her disabled son!!! It was an old Victorian hospital thankfully now closed and she was absolutely frightened to death - most of the other inmates seemed drugged up except one.

She was only there a few weeks/months but it had shaken her to the core and she'd lost her happy demeanor and confidence. Whenever I visited she clung tightly to me even as we strolled through the old dormitory ward. When realeased she was transferred to another old peoples home. Why she couldn't go back to the one she'd been at and had been very happy I don't know. I couldn't see a reason for not going back but apparently the social worker did?!!!! They then moved her again without telling us and she contracted MRSA (didn't tell me when I visited) was put into isolation with only staff popping in a few times a day. She was neglected and starved to death. I complained but nothing was done. I still blame that social worker for destroying that poor woman's life.

[Ann from Sussex]

I've just caught up with my recordings of this programme and thought it was well done....in fact, much better than what WDYTYA has become.

I was surprised that Christopher Biggins' gt. grandfather was said to have died of GPI because, in the photo taken when he was admitted I thought he looked like a classic case of severe depression. I wonder if it really was GPI or that was just what his cause of death was assumed to be.

I laughed at the talk between Ray Winstone and his researcher about the speed with which Hannah remarried as I don't think it was that uncommon when there were children to be provided for.

Did anyone else feel that there was quite a facial resemblance between Al Murray and his 3xgt grandfather W.M. Thackeray?

My father-in-law was a charge nurse (male equivalent of a sister) on the men's infirmary ward at the large mental hospital in Nottingham where patients with physical ailments would be treated; he worked there for over 30 years. The family lived in a house very close by so my OH grew up in the shadow of the hospital walls. The photos of hospital cricket matches reminded me of stories he used to tell of playing for the hospital team as a teenager to make up the numbers. That building too has been converted into flats, the way all those mentioned in the programme seem to have been.