Fair Mile Hospital Read online

  (Author)

  Following the phases of building, the wards were numbered from 1 to 9 on each side. The change to ward names in 1959 used an alphabetical sequence that echoed the original numbering but no explanation can be found as to why Female 8 became Ipsden, while Female 9 was Henley.

  Phase

  Key

  Ground floor

  First floor

  Second floor

  A

  Male 1 (Aldworth)

  1870

  B

  Male 2 (Blewbury)

  Male 3 (Compton)

  Original

  C

  Female 1 (Aldermaston)

  D

  Female 2 (Basildon)

  Female 3 (Caversham)

  1881

  Howell’s extensions

  E

  Male 4 (Drayton; later Ridgeway)

  Male 5 (Easthampstead; later Ridgeway)

  F

  Male 6 (Frilsham)

  Male 7 (Grazeley)

  Male Top 7 (Grazeley)

  G

  Female 4 (Didcot)

  Female 5 (Englefield)

  H

  Female 6 (Faringdon)

  Female 7 (Goring)

  Female Top 7 (Goring)

  1902

  Hine’s extensions

  J

  Male 8 (Hermitage)

  Male 9 (Ilsley)

  K

  Female 8 (Ipsden)

  Female 9 (Henley)

  c.1958

  L

  Blewbury dormitory extension (male)

  Compton dormitory extension (male)

  M

  Basildon dormitory extension (female)

  Caversham dormitory extension (female)

  Post-1959

  N

  Yattendon (mixed)

  1

  Verandah from c.1929 (position of)

  2

  Sanitary annexe

  3

  External corridor (ground floor only; four examples)

  4

  Water tower c.1935 (site of)

  5

  Boiler house chimney

  6

  Fire pump house (later superseded)

  7

  Battery and engine room, workshop and stoker’s bedroom

  8

  Boiler house 1900 (old boiler house adjacent)

  9

  Mortuary

  10

  Shed

  11

  Bakery extension 1900

  12

  Yard

  13

  Coal store

  14

  Establishment workshops

  15

  Male officers’ mess and recreation room

  16

  Workshops for bootmakers, mattresses and hair picking

  17

  Water tower

  18

  Projection room c.1939

  19

  Recreation Hall 1881

  20

  Dining hall (extended 1881)

  21

  Kitchen

  22

  Scullery and vegetable store

  23

  Meat store and pantry

  24

  General Stores

  25

  Mess room, Surgery and Committee room (first floor added 1902)

  26

  Committee Room

  27

  Main entrance

  28

  Office

  29

  Female officers’ mess and recreation room

  30

  Laundry 1870–1960

  31

  Laundry extension c.1900

  32

  New kitchen 1960–2003 (dotted outline)

  33

  Curved corridor

  34

  Medical Superintendent’s residence 1870–1931

  35

  Verandah from 1927 (position of)

  36

  Transepts added 1881

  37

  Chapel extension c.1900

  THE OVAL

  The Oval was sacrosanct and had its own traditions. Its grassed centre was not to be walked upon, on pain of disciplinary action, and was jealously tended and mown using a horse-drawn mower operated by a ‘working’ patient: the luckless pony was outfitted with overshoes that spread its weight, avoiding damage to the turf.

  A celebrated tradition was that male staff approaching or leaving the main entrance door were required to walk on the path to the north of the Oval, while female staff passed by the south side.

  The Moulsford Asylum opened its doors on 30 September 1870 and an extract from the first report of the Committee of Visitors (covering the period 30 September 1870 to 31 December 1871) recalls that, discounting some small change, expenditure had amounted to £8,317 for the site, £46,299 for construction and around £3,500 for ‘the gas works and fittings, the pumps and steam engine and pipes, and the auxiliary heating apparatus’. A further £9,116 had to be invested in ‘fittings, furniture, clothing, stocking of farm, road-making, ground levelling’.

  This investment was placed under the guiding hand of Dr Robert Bryce Gilland, Medical Superintendent, who supervised the first arrivals from Littlemore Asylum and set about creating the necessary caring environment. Gilland was a 32-year-old bachelor who had previously been Assistant Medical Superintendent at both the Glasgow Royal Asylum at Gartnavel and the Essex County Lunatic Asylum near Brentwood. His experience would be the bedrock that supported him through seventeen trying years at Moulsford.

  The first available superintendent’s monthly report is dated 20 January 1871 and records the death of a female patient from pneumonia, the arrival of a new hall porter, the expeditious vaccination of ‘patients and servants’ (although it is not stated for which disease), the arrival of a number of patients from Camberwell6 and a request from Littlemore that Gilland take ‘a few of (their) worst female patients’. In addition to this, patient numbers – including details of arrivals, discharges and deaths – were recorded in a table pre-printed into the ledger. It seems that the ink was hardly dry on this page before the incoming hall porter had second thoughts and another had to be found. Each report of this kind was examined by the Committee of Visitors and countersigned.

  The May report detailed Gilland’s delight at the success of the vaccination programme but a marked increase in patient numbers and dismay at destructive female admissions ‘of the worst class’, who exhibited lamentably poor personal hygiene – probably better left to the imagination. Sadly, there was also scandal among the attendants, with mention of ‘probable concealment of birth and infanticide’.

  By 16 June, Gilland was appealing to the Committee of Visitors to avoid placing elderly, incurable cases in his charge, claiming that it was unfair when the asylum ‘is so suited to the recovery of younger patients’. This sounds unsympathetic but numerous subsequent entries show that some new arrivals, often very elderly, arrived from the workhouses in a wretched condition and terminally ill, their troublesome symptoms owing much to the poor standards of care they had received from the parish. Meanwhile, amid ‘much difficulty in finding suitable attendants’, Gilland was striving to create a beneficial and positive environment by purchasing equipment for outdoor games, engravings to enhance the interior decor and, that same month, engaging ‘a trio of Italian strolling musicians who, with harp and violins, played in an exquisite manner’ to the evident enjoyment of those patients well enough to attend.

  Another major item of concern, always reported in tones of regret, was the deaths of patients. The commonest causes during the first eighteen months of operation were exhaustion, sometimes associated with melancholy; phthisis (nowadays known as pulmonary tuberculosis or TB); diarrhoea (with one mention of dysentery); apoplexy (stroke); erysipelas (a streptococcal infection) and ‘general paralysis of the insane’, which is brain damage associated with late-stage syphilis. Had Gilland had access to modern anti-depressive drugs and antibiotics, his unenviabl
e position as custodian of these poor cases would have been much easier. As it was, he was frequently at pains to defend the best available efforts, especially when a death occurred during one of his very rare leaves of absence.

  An item of note in the 1871 journals is the employment of male patients in the filling of gravel pits dug during the asylum’s construction, improving the turnpike road and creating ‘a store of dry earth for the closets’. Although water closets were certainly in place, the modern plumbing might have been less than ubiquitous.

  Based on samples from these enlightening reports, it is clear that Superintendent Gilland’s daily concerns revolved around patient capacity, continuing difficulty in recruiting reliable personnel, efforts to fill new staff positions, such as Housekeeper, Shoemaker and Tailor, the repair of defective workmanship in the buildings and the quality and quantity of the foodstuffs provided to sustain the patients. Indeed his estimable successors seldom fared better for a century thereafter.

  All of these aspects of the asylum’s day-to-day operation, and more, are examined in the following chapters.

  Notes

  1 The county line between Oxfordshire and Berkshire was changed in 1974, leaving Fair Mile a few miles inside Oxfordshire’s southern border.

  2 Accounts of the land area vary according to source but a more recent figure of 97 acres would include the later Schuster Hospital.

  3 Invariably known to Cholsey residents as Ferry Lane, while official records sometimes consider this to be an extension of Papist Way.

  4 The first report of the Committee of Visitors described it as ‘a modification of early English’.

  5 It has been said that, in addition to exotic specimens that still survive, there was at least one example of every native British tree.

  6 Later revealed to be Berkshire residents.

  2

  GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT

  Names Used by Fair Mile Hospital

  1870–97

  The Moulsford Asylum

  1897–c.1915

  The Berkshire Lunatic Asylum, although a set of printed regulations dated 1904 clearly uses ‘The Berkshire Asylum, Wallingford’. The front cover of Volume 9 of the Visitors’ Minute Book (commencing 1908) is boldly gilt-embossed with ‘Berkshire Pauper Lunatic Asylum’ and the style ‘Berks County Asylum’ has been found here and there. There are yet more variations, including Berkshire County Lunatic Asylum, which is highly convincing as it follows the standard pattern across the country.

  c.1915–1948

  The Berkshire Mental Hospital (BMH). The date remains uncertain and could be as late as 1920. Rather annoyingly, the 1927 update of the Staff Regulations still states ‘at Wallingford’. The Commissioners to the Board of Control used ‘Berkshire Mental Hospital’ up to 1939 but inserted ‘County’ thereafter. This detail clearly didn’t reach everyone’s attention.

  1948–2010

  Fair Mile Hospital. Mercifully, no dissention has yet been uncovered, apart from a tendency to write ‘Fairmile’. Fair Mile is taken from a broad, straight and very ancient drove road in the nearby Berkshire Downs, connecting with The Ridgeway.

  From 2010

  With the commencement of redevelopment for housing, the new-build areas of the site took the name Cholsey Meadows, to the puzzlement of local residents. The listed Victorian buildings, however, underwent their renaissance as Fair Mile, with some of the ward names being retained.

  The Commissioners in Lunacy were a body of worthies established under the provisions of the Lunacy Act of 1845. Succeeding the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy, they had influence outside the London area, overseeing the many county asylums for ‘pauper lunatics’ that were set up as a consequence of the Act. From 1914, following the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act, the Commissioners acted under the aegis of the Board of Control for Lunacy and Mental Deficiency, which superseded the Lunacy Commission and had additional responsibility for mental defectives. The Board of Control originally reported to the Home Office but fell under the Ministry of Health from 1919 as a result of fresh legislation. These changes apart, the way the asylum was regulated appears to have remained largely unaltered.

  Responsibility for establishing and running the asylums fell to the county authorities; in Berkshire’s case, this devolved to the magistrates via the Berkshire Court of Quarter Sessions, which set up a ‘union’ between the County of Berkshire and the boroughs of Reading and Newbury (sometimes referred to as ‘the Bodies in Union’). The court also appointed a Committee of Visitors, some of them clearly Justices of the Peace, charged with ensuring the sound management, governance and financial control of the asylums. Committee members included ‘visitors’ from the boroughs subscribing to the union which, in 1896, welcomed the Borough of New Windsor, followed in 1898 by Henley, which embraced Caversham. The Royal Borough of Windsor joined in 1908. Meanwhile, the Lunacy Act of 1890 transferred responsibility from the courts to the county councils.

  Arrangements were made to transport the numerous Visitors to and from their monthly meetings at Moulsford and they were afforded the services of a clerk: Mr John Thornhill Morland MA was Clerk to the Visitors from 1870 until at least 1909.

  Until 1892, Moulsford’s railway station stood an easy walk from the asylum’s gates, on Brunel’s Great Western line from London to Bristol. This was a convenient means of bringing some of the Visitors to meetings. In January 1909, although the station had necessarily been relocated half a mile further west (and renamed Cholsey and Moulsford), Morland was instructed to write to the Great Western Railway requesting a special train on meeting days for the convenience of the Committee. Although the running of special services was in those days a means by which any self-respecting railway could solicit the approval of the Great and the Good, the GWR’s reply very respectfully turned them down flat.

  The superintendent, his senior officers and the chaplain were bound by the Committee’s decisions and required to keep journals of the execution of their duties. This did not mean that the superintendent was without influence; he was charged with applying his professional judgement to prevailing circumstances but many measures – notably those involving expenditure – had to be ratified by the Visitors with a degree of formality that might nowadays be summed up as ‘starchy’.

  MEDICAL SUPERINTENDENTS 1870–1965

  1870–86 Dr Robert Bryce Gilland, the first medical superintendent, was clearly passionate about his responsibilities. Formerly Assistant Medical Officer at the Essex County Asylum, Warley, Essex, he presided at Moulsford until 1886, rarely taking holiday and quitting his duties only when ill health left him no alternative. He reported in July that year that he was in need of a rest and requested leave of absence – simultaneously expressing regret that no locum tenens7 had yet been found to cover his absence. Dr James Murdoch was by this time his Assistant Medical Officer and Gilland generously suggested that ‘Dr Murdoch, by himself, would be quite able to take charge of the asylum’. This was duly ratified and on 20 August 1886, Gilland dutifully recorded his thanks to the Committee for both his leave and their approval of Dr Murdoch as stand-in.

  Dr Gilland took leave of the Moulsford Asylum that October and never returned. He died on 8 March 1887, having effectively worked himself to death at the age of 49.

  1886–87 Dr John Barron, also Assistant Medical Officer, actually took over on Gilland’s departure instead of Dr Murdoch and served until a new superintendent was appointed.

  1887–92 Dr Joel Harrington Douty, who qualified to practice medicine in 1881 and, at 29 years of age, was the youngest superintendent who served at the asylum, arrived with his wife and young son. He was evidently progressive and innovative, for he promptly prepared a long list of items deserving the attention of the Committee of Visitors, requesting their guidance in respect of irrigation of land, beer money for attendants (50s male and 40s female per annum were granted), mowing equipment, the Queen’s Jubilee, a fire brigade, the purchase of a large ‘Cyclostyle’8 for cheaply printing dietar
y tables ‘in house’ and ‘Repair of the electric tell-tale apparatus’.9

  His reports show concern over morale, reward where merited and the poverty of some patients’ families, who would care for their relatives if they had the means. He recommended ‘a small weekly allowance’ from the asylum until they could find employment.

  Douty unfortunately died after a short illness at the age of 34, only five years after his arrival. His death certificate was signed by his deputy, Dr Hugh Attwood Beaver, who is understood to have run away to Canada with Douty’s young widow shortly afterwards. Superintendent Douty is buried in Cholsey churchyard, close to a number of his patients.

  1892–1917 Dr James William Aitken Murdoch. A determined and industrious Scot, Dr Murdoch’s reputation as a good doctor endured long after his unfortunate death, late in 1917, following an operation for appendicitis. He joined as Assistant Medical Officer in 1881 and in April 1892, after six years’ service as Deputy Superintendent, was considered for Medical Superintendent at the Kent County Asylum, Chartham. He succeeded the unfortunate Dr Douty that same year and was outspoken in his criticism of unsuitable cases being foisted on his undertaking. Dr Murdoch was also conservative and suspicious of change in a field of endeavour where progress was necessary and unavoidable; it was several years before he could be persuaded to attend conferences on the advancement of psychiatric medicine. He is buried in Cholsey churchyard.