The end of the road at Cane Hill - Pics and Memories

[Winchester]

Pics from September 2007 -July 2009

Words from Ray

Admin, July '09

"It was a strange place it was, at the best of times. It had a sort of aura about it. Scientifically, we can say the full moon doesn't make any difference, but walking up that drive, getting closer to home, on a full moon you can almost sense something prickly in the air, you know.

I never actually felt it when I was inside the place. I mean you came of duty late at night and walk down the corridors. You think how long those corridors are, you know? Low lighting at night and you'd walk from one end to another, from the admission block, you'd come from Wren, at the far end and you'd have to walk down, it was a long walk you know. That never used to feel strange."

Male Corridor

A lot of the staff there in '64 fought in the war; the guards depot was right across the valley in Caterham. It was rumoured that they'd be discharged at Caterham, take a sharp right, march across the valley and appear at Cane Hill and sign up. If you're institutionalised to start with, then it's another institution.

Institutions are pretty interchangeable, if you fitted within them. For them, they'd gone from a sort of disciplined, uniformed existence to another disciplined and uniformed one, certainly at that time. And the people of the 60s, say late 50s, 60s, top of the pile, had other reasons. A lot of them had started before the war, towards the end of the depression. I've heard some of the charge nurses say it was a good job; it was dry, indoors, with a pension, relative job security. It was a community in it's own right.

Staff Cafeteria

"My experience goes from there through to working at the high end of Care in the Community. I've been involved with that sort of thing since 1968-69, before Care in the Community came in. I've been involved in Supported Living, so I've always worked from that viewpoint, that direction, ever since I left Cane Hill.

The reason being is that for a hell of a lot of people, it was entirely the wrong place! No need for them to be there, especially with modern medicines that could enable the more florid symptoms to be controlled, without controlling the person. I've seen people living good, productive enjoyable lives in the community. I've also seen some people who just couldn't hack it. The community wasn't for them because they had more florid symptoms, or because the symptoms of their particular illness conflicted with society. So society always rejected them, including living in a house with 3 other people, or on their own, it's not going to make any difference to that!

You know, society still isn't going to want them sitting on the bus next to them, or working in the same place. It wasn't for the benefit of patients in the hospitals; it was largely economic".

Signpost on front drive.

Thatcher saw that you could sell off the land, get rid of these bloody patients because they're a bit of a nuisance. Knock down all these old bins; it's all on prime development land, because when the original asylums were built, they were built way out of the cities. There'd be countryside in between, so you'd got that problem away from the city.

From a purely economic point of view, if you can start building mass density housing on that 80, 100, 200 acres, whatever they were taking up, these old places, you're quid’s in, you know! One of them problems is that all the planning authorities went along with this theory, and some of them turned round and said "Ok, you can develop, but only on the original footprint, on the existing buildings.

There may be dozens left, but quite an awful lot that still haven't maximised the density of building required to make a feasible contribution to the coffers, to pay for Care in the Community. So Care in the Community always had that albatross round its neck, that it didn't generate income. They were bloody poor at generating income, these places, and when you release them into the community, you've lost them, and they're a drain on society. So basically, the whole thing went tits up! "

Wren Ward, July 2009

The time the patients spent outside varied. Bearing in mind there were still locked wards when I started. In 64, the majority I think were locked. By the end of 67, they'd started unlocking a few, that didn't need to be locked. Mainly because they were the old refractory wards, Wesley and Vanbrugh, all round the back. And they were for the burnt out patients.

So many things have changed over the years, in the timescale since I started. So many things haven't changed! Society's attitudes haven't got that much better. Political will isn't much stronger than it ever was; it's always going to be a poor relation. I can remember looking at patient's notes when I was there. They'd been there, back in the twenties, since the turn of the century, you know. Christ, it was barbaric! Luckily a penny dropped. I thought, "in 50 years time somebody is going to be looking back here and thinking 'what you're doing is barbaric'", so first, do no harm. We set ourselves on the right road.

"ECT had come along and it was the consultants that would see a patient... "Yes...Definitely a bad case of depression, yes... ECT, we've got this now! This wonder-drug! I prescribe 25 sessions!" and literally, there would be prescriptions for it in their twenties, or more! After one or two the person would perhaps have made quite a startling improvement. It did actually used to have a very positive effect. Hold that thought. You've got a positive effect, the person is now talking and eating, and doing more things than perhaps a couple of weeks previously. Mute, lying in bed, withdrawn from the world. Except that the prescription said 25 sessions! So six more, and the person is now going burr-urrgh-urgh! Another few sessions and they may be hitting an up point, so for years it was a period of people being written off as successfully treated, or unsuccessfully treated by ECT, depending on where they were at the end of the cycle, of X number of shots!"

This Annexe leading from the ground floor of Blake was marked ECT/ECG on various maps of the Hospital

One lady died, just after I started, who'd actually been there since the place opened in 1883, she'd been admitted as a twelve year old who was morally defective, possibly become sexually promiscuous or whatever, and if she was poor, then a young girl got pregnant, they'd take the child off straight away and sling her off to the bin! The actual thinking behind the asylum movement initially was good, positive, and it was to say we should give these people the best conditions we can, in healthy surroundings, out in the countryside where it was fresh, and would build in farms, so they could be, to a certain extent, self-sufficient, and get good, fresh produce."

Green space at the rear of the Female side, adjacent to the Nurses Block.

"I can remember one old charge nurse saying, that when he started, presumably back in the twenties or thirties, that there were only two medications back then! Laxatives and sedatives! We cleared them out and knocked them out! That was the thinking behind a lot of those. Containment. That all had to be broken down, got rid of. I'll never say Cane Hill was a good place, in that sense. In 67, I couldn't wait to get the hell out of there. But now, having seen it come full circle to where there aren't any hospitals like that left, there are slightly sterile psychiatric wards tucked at the back of general hospitals. No room to go and howl at the moon! So for some of the people I've worked with, in the community, I know damn well they'd be much happier, living a freer life, ironically, because they weren't free, living in the society they were living in, because their behaviour is such that society wouldn't tolerate it."

The top floor of Wren ward.

[Winchester]

"Before [in the Asylums], they'd have what we perceive as oppressive and regimed, but they'd have a good social life, a dance once a week, they were fed, they were clothed, they had friends by the score, affairs, their love life was quite active! You had to watch where you trod in the bushes sometimes! But for people who'd had nothing, come from an upbringing in the society they'd been in, 50 or 60 years ago, That was actually a step up! And a lot of freedom with it!"

Remains of the Main Hall, with 7 years worth of foliage.

In my day, pool hadn't really come in, I don't think. Pool was just an American game we saw in films. But snooker tables! We had full sized snooker tables in the sixties. And some bloody amazing players! It was all they'd ever done. They were locked in a ward with a large snooker table. The old snooker tables were probably on their way out, to be replaced by pool. Every one of the major wards had one, for the patients. You usually found that the charge nurse happened to be a very good player, as well as some of his cronies! And some of the patients were absolutely shit-hot! If they could have had a chance to get into the playoffs, the primaries for the world snooker championship, they would probably have been going all the way though. It was just sheer repetitive routine, to the point where you can almost picture some of them playing without any passion: It was all routine, automatic.

The Pool Table on Lidgett Ward

Everything was routine, starting off with dress; Haircut for the staff. Short haircut, so I was always getting asked, "are you wearing a collar, boy? Yes! Well I can't see it, get your bloody hair cut!" It was typical military. Then you got your suits. You got one every year. It was a jacket, waistcoat and two pairs of trousers, because the trousers wear out quicker. They were made and measured by the hospital tailor, and they were made in the hospital tailoring department, and they'd measure everything, right down to your toenails, and cock-girth, or whatever, and then they'd produce a suit that had no relationship to you whatsoever!

Sign in Johnson Ward

Everybody wore the same charcoal grey suits, the female staff wore, more or less, a general nursing uniform. We had to wear the grey suit. You would take the jacket off when you were on the ward, with a white coat. If you were a junior student, you'd get a coat covered in blood and shit! you'd desperately try to keep it relatively clean for visiting days on a Sunday. If you had any conscious at all, you wouldn't want to appear in front of the families and relatives looking like an abattoir worker!

Bearing in mind we're talking about institutions, on visiting day everybody had to look good. so somebody that hadn't had a shave all week would be shaved on Sunday, change their clothes, make sure they've got buttons on everything, try and pick the shit out from under their nails, whatever. I remember doing this on Zachary ward, which was a medical geriatric ward, so yeah, it was The Last Post, the ward down from it, Unwin. A tiny little ward, had 26 beds, we'd refer to it as the last post.

Zachary and Unwin, at the back of the Male Side

Hope you've enjoyed reading.

TBC...