Offered - LONDON COUNTY ASYLUMS (Cane Hill, West Park, Hanwell, etc.)

[ASOM]

Hi all!
My first solo book will be out on 30th July (just a few weeks!), and hopefully its of enough interest and relevance to many of you to exucse the shameless plug.
It details the history of the eleven London County Lunatic Asylums opened between 1831 and 1924, including some of our top favourites over the years!:
Hanwell (St Bernard's), Colney Hatch (Friern), Banstead, Cane Hill, Claybury, Bexley, Manor, Horton, St Ebba's, Long Grove, and West Park.

I'm discussing the reasons for the asylums' creation and how they were built, what went on inside them, what life was like for patients and staff, what the thinking and idealogy to mental health care was at different times, and how cures or treatments were administered (or attempted). It will also look at life during wartime, changing attitudes during the 20th Century, and the eventual emptying-out and closure of the buildings from the late 1960s to very recently. There will also (of course!) be some discussion of abandonment and what happened to them after closure.

While there will be an (un)healthy dose of geeky discussion about architecture, asylum layouts, building types and so on, this is certainly not to be a "dry", plodding history, and includes a wealth of interesting nuggets regarding the patients who lived (and often died) in these astounding buildings that were so beloved by so many while also so absolutely reviled by others. Despite writing many of the profiles on countyasylums.co.uk, many new things were dug up while writing the book and there are some interesting things that were new to me as well.

There are several of my own images included, as well as many old / archival images too.

Although you can obviously import it, it will be available easily enough outside the UK too, although may not appear on storefronts in North America until late the following month (although that may be subject to change).

I wanted to set up an option to buy it directly from me, but it may prove tough to beat the pre-order prices after publication - so if you'd like to pre-order, can I suggest this site:
https://www.hive.co.uk/.../A-History-of-London.../27042113
At £12.15, it's at least £3 off the RRP, and every sale goes towards funding local bookshops, which is cool. You can read more about that here if interested:
https://www.hive.co.uk/WhatsHiveallabout

Give me a shout or comment if you have any questions, etc.

 

[ASOM]

Or you can get it from Amazon, etc. and the usual places if preferred.

 

[ASOM]

and here's the blurb...


From the Middle-Ages onwards, London's notorious Bedlam lunatic hospital saw the city's mad' locked away in dank cells, neglected and abused and without any real cure and little comfort.

The unprecedented growth of the metropolis after the Industrial Revolution saw a perceived epidemic' of madness take hold, with county asylums' seen by those in power as the most humane or cost-effective way to offer the mass confinement and treatment believed necessary. The county of Middlesex - to which London once belonged - would build and open three huge county asylums from 1831, and when London became its own county in 1889 it would adopt all three and go on to build or run another eight such immense institutions.

Each operated much like a self-contained town; home to thousands and often incorporating its own railway, laundries, farms, gardens, kitchens, ballroom, sports pitches, surgeries, wards, cells, chapel, mortuary, and more, in order to ensure the patients never needed to leave the asylum's grounds. Between them, at their peak London's eleven county asylums were home to around 25,000 patients and thousands more staff, and dominated the physical landscape as well as the public imagination from the 1830s right up to the 1990s.

Several gained a legacy which lasted even beyond their closure, as their hulking, abandoned forms sat in overgrown sites around London, refusing to be forgotten and continuing to attract the attention of those with both curious and nefarious motives. Hanwell (St Bernard's), Colney Hatch (Friern), Banstead, Cane Hill, Claybury, Bexley, Manor, Horton, St Ebba's, Long Grove, and West Park went from being known as county lunatic asylums' to mental hospitals' and beyond.

Reflecting on both the positive and negative aspects of their long and storied histories from their planning and construction to the treatments and regimes adopted at each, the lives of patients and staff through to their use during wartime, and the modernisation and changes of the 20th century, this book documents their stories from their opening up to their eventual closure, abandonment, redevelopment, or destruction.

 

[Fuzzball]

Thanks for the heads up!
I was told there was a book coming out regarding the LCC asylums a while back so excited to see it arrive. Very interested to have a read. It's great that it covers the life cycle of the county asylum as well, as the whole story is fascinating with each asylum and the concept as a whole. Was any hospital particularly difficult to find info about?

I've been researching Cane Hill for a video recently and that's been really engrossing, though what I've found frustrating is that there's two BBC panorama programmes from the sixties which feature Cane Hill but it costs a few thousand to obtain the footage. Bit cheeky as it should be public record and viewable without a designer price tag. Anyway gripe over haha, looking forward to buying your book!

 

[ASOM]

Thanks for the heads up!

Hi...
Yeah, it was talked up for quite a while, but then lockdown made it actually happen!
Not long now until the other nerds (mostly friends) start pointing out any mistakes

Well yeah, most of the histories stop at closure, obviously some of these hung around for years before they were finally gone, and most people on here should find the closure and afterlife of the buildings of interest. It also makes you a little sore for all these especially large asylums that weren't really documented properly ni photos before they went completely or were refurbished beyond recognition.

Yeah, there were some photos I really wanted but didn't have a spare £300 to stump up for each one!
On the other hand, some places I thought would be really cagey like museums were like "yeah, here you go!".
Where's the footage of Cane Hill stored?

Banstead was the hardest one to find much about and put together a reasonably detailed history, although it's still the shortest chapter.
Obviously what I'd love to be doing is going down to the archives of each one and really digging in, but again, that's all about costs when one train journey would probably eat up the sale of fifty books. Fortunately have quite a few old archives here, some there were some tips from those.

 

[Fuzzball]

Well continuing buzz is always good, so that's a plus, keeps the steam pressure up for when the project is finished and about to be released. Yeah, lockdown was weirdly conducive to starting and completing some things.

I have thought that - asylum history does tend to be very compartmentalised which is fair enough as its usually presented by academics specialising in a certain area of research, but its great when the whole story is told. There's a lot of missing info on asylums, stuff seems to be saved ad hoc. Often its urbexers who find or stumble upon missing info. There's loads of stuff found in Cane Hill which still isn't part of the official collection in the Croydon archives. Ha! It does expensive when it comes to photos, especially if you need to have them scanned and the rights haven't elapsed.

The footage I mentioned of Cane Hill is from a 1968 episode of Panorama called "Drugs and the Addict" which also contains footage from 1967. The BBC sold off much their archives (can't be not making a profit for someone can we? It's not like the footage or resulting programme was originally licence-fee paid or anything) so It's held by Getty now. I've got the document with the list of shots should yourself or anyone else is interested. The shots are of: The exterior of the the hospital, Dr Becket of the hospital's drug addiction unit, a recreation room with patients playing ping pong, one of the rooms/cells, plus a group therapy session also within Cane Hill. I haven't seen these as just to get them to dust the film cans off is a few grand apparently.

There was also a news item made in 1996 which features the exterior of the Medium Secure Unit as well. Apparently though there's nothing else in the Getty (therefore BBC) archives of Cane Hill - both radio or telly. I find this strange as there was at least one strike over the later years and the fires in 2002 and 2010 were a big deal for the area and would have also made for some arresting images in a BBC London bulletin. But anyway....

Oh right, I don't know much about Banstead. It was completely flattened too, now a prison right? Amazing to think 99% of that place is lost to time.

Obviously what I'd love to be doing is going down to the archives of each one and really digging in, but again, that's all about costs when one train journey would probably eat up the sale of fifty books.

Absolutely! It's fackin' expensive! I've travelled down to Croydon four times this year to gather everything I need from the archives. Tbh it's been a distraction from what's been a stressful year, so its been mostly enjoyable although pretty damn expensive when all said and done. I won't be monetising my video anyway so I've just taken the hit with it and written the trips off as leisure days out.

 

[zombizza]

Interesting. I might take a look.
Well done.
Hope it's balanced, there is always far to much negativity about asylums and I still believe there would be a place for them today with some of the patients I have.
Who/what/why is the face on the front cover?

 

[ASOM]

I have thought that - asylum history does tend to be very compartmentalised which is fair enough as its usually presented by academics specialising in a certain area of research, but its great when the whole story is told. There's a lot of missing info on asylums, stuff seems to be saved ad hoc. Often its urbexers who find or stumble upon missing info. There's loads of stuff found in Cane Hill which still isn't part of the official collection in the Croydon archives.

Well that's one of the really good things the UE community has undoubtedly done: paid attention to and documented a part of British history (not JUST the asylums, but particularly them), that others haven't really been that interested in, or at least not in the same way.

While my book won't be taken remotely seriously by academics, because I'm not one myself and it's not an academic work, that has freed me up to write about the asylums in a more passionate and opinionated way.
In reply to Zombizza:

Hope it's balanced, there is always far to much negativity about asylums and I still believe there would be a place for them today with some of the patients I have.
Who/what/why is the face on the front cover?

Absolutely! I've made a specific point of addressing this in the introduction - and without going into sales mode, if you're interested in conversations about how the asylums have been represented (and mis-represented) over the years, both in the sense of the popular perception as well as in an "official" sense from the time it was decided they were too expensive, and would be closed down regardless of what alternative ideas for how they could be used were presented, you should find it quite interesting. The history of mental health provision in the era of large-scale institutions is riddled with plenty of real-life horror stories, but I've tried to make the case that it isn't so cut-and-dried, and that there was always a vested interest in presenting a particular perspective and argument regarding their rapid closure, sale, and destruction.

The face on the front cover is of a patient at Colney Hatch. I didn't have full control over how they did things, but I did have to step in and request some changes to the original version they presented, which I felt was a little too lurid. To be fair to them, they're not really (like most people) very conversant with issues around mental health and its representation. Although I'm actually quite happy with something that perhaps lures a few people into buying something they might think is going to be one thing, but is actually a bit different to what they might expect, and represents the buildings, the workers, and the patients in a way that's a bit different to the usual approach.

Would love to see the Cane Hill footage, but it seems it's not likely to happen! There was a little bit of Cane Hill in the BBC documentary that focused on High Royds a few years back (well, probably about 2011 or so actually!).
Yeah, you're right, it does take the mickey to ask us to pay through the nose to view footage we already paid for! But I suppose the BBC would argue that money goes back into producing new quality content, like Cooking in Prison with Dogs, or whatever they're currently doing.

Well if you end up putting anything together, give me or Tumbles a shout, and we'll promote it on the County Asylums site/Facebook page, etc.

 

[zombizza]

Sounds good.
I've just pre-ordered one.
Cheers

 

[ASOM]

Sounds good.
I've just pre-ordered one.
Cheers

Awesome, hope you enjoy it, let me know any thoughts!

 

[MotionlessMike]

Also pre-ordered

Was Springfield not included in the county of London then?

 

[ASOM]

Also pre-ordered

Was Springfield not included in the county of London then?

Thanks, same again, hope you enjoy it!

Springfield was built for Surrey in 1841, and then given to Middlesex in 1889, so was never a London County Asylum - although it obviously served London patients much later in its timeline. I'd like to do a book on all the other London-area asylums (including Springfield) at some point, but we'll see.

 

[Winchester]

Nice one, I have ordered a copy and look forwards to receiving it.

 

[ASOM]

Nice one, I have ordered a copy and look forwards to receiving it.

Great! Should be right up your street!