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View Full Version : Archived: St Mary’s Hospital, North Saltwick, Northumberland 03/2010



doozer
11-03-2010, 06:27 PM
This is the story of me and St Mary’s and of my goodbye visit. It’s long and maudlin and has no jokes in, so if you don't do that type of thing, skip to the next report, which will probably have many more pictures and a humorous incident with a hedge, or a dog, or quite possibly both.

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I first visited St Mary’s Hospital in the summer of 2006, with a former psychiatric nurse. He knew St Mary’s well and had tales of the residents, and how it had all become too much towards the end. The climate of chronic underfunding in the NHS, coupled with the gradual wind-down of mental health hospitals which had begun with Enoch Powell’s ‘Water Tower’ speech (Powell visited the North East shortly before he made the speech) had reduced the hospital to a holding place, neither here nor there, before its final residents were ‘rehabilitated’. Mixed wards were common, and yes, if you’re thinking that wasn’t a good idea, it wasn’t. What had once been a mighty Institution for society’s unfortunates was now a vacant shell.


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The history of St Mary’s is well documented – I won’t bore you with the details. It’s interesting to note, however, that the hospital had its own railway to bring in materials during its construction. It was used as a hospital for Britain’s war wounded in both wars, treating shell shock victims from the First World War, and injuries to trainee pilots from the nearby Tranwell airfield (RAF Morpeth) during WWII. As I stood in the quiet of the wards during this, my last visit, I imagined the gallows humour of soldiers being treated, the quiet ones, and not so quiet ones, the ones with Blighty wounds, and the ones with no visible wounds at all. I remembered passages from ‘Certified and Detained’ (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Certified-Detained-Hospital-Through-Student/dp/095621150X), describing how, by the 1950s and 1960s, the outside world had forgotten these men, and they were treated as imbeciles, subjected to ‘thump-therapy’, abused and ridiculed by those who were supposed to help them.


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Whilst the plight of the female residents was not so dramatic, or heroic, as that of the war-wounded men, I can’t forget that female residents claimed half this building as their own. In addition to the madnesses which did not discriminate by gender (syphilis, depression, schizophrenia etc), women had the unique privilege of being sent to the asylum as a result of being considered immoral. Enjoy sex? Asylum. Hate sex? Asylum. Got pregnant? Baby taken away and then… Asylum. Hysteria – the word itself comes from the Greek for ‘womb’. Women were institutionalised for crimes against the morals of the society of the day, then became institutionalised and never left. As I waited in the hall for the rest of the party to return, I imagined the female patients waiting for partners at a hospital dance, edentulous from the dental surgeon’s attention and with badly made-up faces like Aunt Sally, or no make-up at all. Some were just there to enjoy the music. Some didn’t realise they were anywhere at all. There were public dances, too, in the hall, and I can imagine the laughing couples skimming across the dancefloor to a big band, their free and easy movement in contract to the dated, broken-clockwork, out-of-time dance moves of the patients. The patients put on plays – the scenery for their final stage production, a replica of the Eiffel Tower, and Arc de Triomphe, still wait in the farm outbuildings.


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In between visits to St Mary’s, I did what young professionals do, moved jobs, moved houses and generally got on with my life. In the last house I rented, I lived next to a lovely lady in her 80s, called Missy (names changed, naturally). She was a bright spark and doing damned well for her age. She had one daughter, who would visit at weekends and she was a sprightly soul; she ‘did’ for herself and was incredibly independent. After about a year, I noticed that she actually lived with someone else, a man, about 60, with unkempt hair. I would see him leave the house, once a week, in a taxi, then return a couple of hours later. I eventually found out (via another neighbour) that this was her son, a long-term resident of St Mary’s. He was looked after by his Mum, and left the house once a week to go to his club. The one time I saw him out of the house at any other time was on a hot day. He waited for a long time at the back door, before running - like the devil himself was after him - to the bottom of the garden, before hanging on tightly to the pole for the washing line, then running back in and slamming the door behind him. All the while he looked absolutely terrified. Reflecting, I think he probably has a severe form of autism – I have autistic friends and family and his behaviour was consistent with autism or Aspergers. I worry for my friends’ severely autistic children – will Care in the Community mean they are looking after their 60 year old autistic children at 85? At 90?


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This is what I fear most. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/8561513.stm

So, this is my farewell visit to St Mary’s Hospital, Stannington War Hospital, Gateshead Borough Asylum. I say goodbye on behalf of the friends, the healed and the failed, but ultimately I know this – the principles of asylum - literally a safe haven - will serve you will in your next incarnation as a home for a family, or an office for a newly-fledged business. You will continue to protect people, house them and look after them. Goodbye and good luck. x


http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2730/4420599594_66e3d311de_o.jpg ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/94983576@N00/4420599594/in/set-72157623462541639/)