Jane had seen this Facebook post, listing the ridiculous reasons why women were put into old fashioned mental hospitals in the late 1800’s.
Days long gone by, thank goodness. She immediately thought of her great grandma and gran, who both ended up with dementia, and suggested I ought to write about it. So here goes.
From the Loveliest Grandma…
What is Jane’s great-grandma was my lovely Grandma Bishop, who succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease when I was very young. She was a lovely, bubbly, warm, caring grandma, the nicest you would wish to meet. She was my mum’s mum, that’s her on the left of the photo above. The others are my dad’s mum and dad, the photo taken on a holiday to Blackpool.
Grandma Bishop’s eyes used to crinkle up with laughter, as she was so full of fun. I remember her with love, and the disease that robbed me of her. Slowly and slowly until all my childhood was taken over. It became my mum looking after her full time and me always being up there at her bungalow.
To a horrible life…
It was the most unnatural family situation you could ever have. There was my mum, already a very nervous, anxious person, who ended up just about going over the edge with the stress of her mum. And me picking up on all this from a very young age.
There was just no time left for us to spend as a family and to say we were just left to it to bring ourselves up was no exaggeration, it was horrible.
She saw Indians under her bed and was terrified of them. In the middle of the night, most night she went out in her nightie. And on and on it all went, while she still lived at home.
An Old Fashioned Mental Hospital
Eventually, and to cut a long story short, one of my mum’s sister had her sent to Storthes Hall at Kirkburton near Huddersfield. It was the known ‘mental’ hospital for the area, that catered for people from all over the place. What used to be called a lunatic asylum.
By the time she was sent there, I was about 10 years old. I watched my lovely gran become someone who was so distressed, and without a clue who we were. My mum never spoke about her actual condition. But I spent the next seven or eight years going there to visit her, which was a nightmare on its own, without what I saw when I got there.
Storthes Hall was enormous to say the least, it was massive, holding about 2 or 3, 000 patients. It was such a long journey, including changing three buses and another bus to get you to the top of the hill where the hospital was. In all about five hours there and five back. I began to dislike the journey with all my heart.
Things a 10 year old shouldn’t see
As a 10 year old child, I saw things I never should have, and am scarred by it to this day. It was all very clean, but to get the ward where she was, was a long walk, believe me. Through long, long corridors of dark green tiles, arched roofs just the shape of Nissen huts.
As we went on this journey we saw patients milling around who were obviously disturbed, making it even more scary to my 10 year old brain.
Locked doors
At the end of every corridor we had to go through a locked door, with a guard standing there to unlock and then lock the minute we went through. No smiles, no greeting. Just this stern man who silently let us in and out of so many doors and staircases.
Eventually we got to the long corridor which led to her ward. To my horror the corridor we went through was full of single rooms. Their walls padded, no light and just a bed. It filled me with terror. Once when we got there they had put my gran in one and she was crying like she was never going to stop. It was heartbreaking. But apparently, she had been ‘difficult’ so had been put in there in the dark to punish her. Maybe that was one of the many incidents that made me so claustrophobic, the thoughts of being shut in those padded cells.
Anyway, she ended up full time in bed. They think hospitals are overcrowded today. Well back then the beds were pushed very closely together, with even more women head to toe in beds down the middle. It was awful. They probably thought they were batty so why bother!
Everyone suffered
My lovely Grandma would cry to go home which was so distressing, especially for my mum. But she wasn’t compos mentis at all. As a result me and my mum ended up crying for what she had ended up like, and her own family also suffered with her beyond measure.
We walked in one day, to find a nurse who wouldn’t have been out of place as a prison warder, screaming at her, with my gran crying. She looked as though she was ready for hitting her, until she saw us and then left abruptly. Today we would have done more about it, but then, things were so much different, hell would have broken out!
She had to undergo electric shock treatment without being put to sleep or sedated as patients are today. She told us how painful and distressing it was and begged us to tell them to stop. Put it this way, it didn’t do her any good, if anything it made her worse.
Some kind of hell
There is such a lot lot more to tell of this story that had such a profound effect on me and my family, but I would be here all day. My gran died before the place was closed down and were we glad to hear when it was empty at last of all these poor people. They wandered about looking like something from a zombie movie, which so scared me. It was like going into some kind of hell believe me!
We visited the site about 18 years ago and, driving round the roads of the by then empty site, I saw the ward she was kept in. I must say it gave me the shivers it looked so haunted. What they did with all those patients when it closed I don’t know. But today, you wouldn’t treat your dog like they were treated.
Ghosts of the past
I believe the site, operated as a mental hospital between 1904 and 1991, was eventually taken over by Huddersfield University and much of it demolished. I’ve often wondered if they see ghosts of all those poor people.
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If you’re interested in Storthes Hall, there’s a video here of photos of it when it was derelict, with an interesting write up too.
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