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England (Counties as in 1851-1901) => England => Lancashire => Topic started by: sikeywabbit on Saturday 16 November 19 03:56 GMT (UK)
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Its. Been a while, I am looking for the burial site for a Hannah Greenhalgh who spent 30+ years as an inmate at whittingham hospital. Born in Lancashire in 1873. Died at Whittingham in 1950. Any info will be greatly received.
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Lancashire Archives holds records for the hospital. On another site I found reference to these including a burial register for the hospital’s own cemetery. I would try contacting the archives to see if they do have a burial register and is it available to view.
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I tried to get access to records relating to a lady who died in Whittingham Hospital in 1975. I was told that all records were closed for 100 years. I was attempting to solve the mystery of what had happened to her for an elderly cousin, who was coming up to ninety. The surname was so rare I could go straight to the death entry on Freebmd. When I explained I already had the death certificate, with 'Status Epilepticus' on it and that my cousin wanted to know where she was buried, I was finally informed that she had been cremated and given the date. They could give no date she was admitted to the hospital, but I knew she was there in 1939 from the 1939 Register. The lady was born in 1893 in Liverpool, but where her date of birth should have been recorded and visible on the area's index of deaths, only the year had been entered. Apparently, the hospital had no record of her date of birth. Her file had been marked 'NKR', which I was told indicated 'No known relatives.' Her family told all the next generation that she had died in the 1920s. Such was the shame that any problem connected with the brain caused. There were family members living within ten miles when she died, but they believed she had died fifty years earlier.
The hospital site is now a recently- constructed housing estate, I believe. There was a website where local people were trying to raise funds to conserve/preserve the main admin. building. This was probably 5 years ago. From what the website said, it appeared the hospital cemetery no longer existed. I am sorry if this is disappointing. I was shocked at the whole story.
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Just checked. The website with the hospital's history and photographs still exists.
It's http://www.whittinghamhospital.co.uk.
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I have a record of someone who died there in 1943. Again the 1939 only gives the year of birth. It appears that was Whittingham's policy - none of the inmates have anything
He was buried in Chorley Cemetery, but his family obviously acknowledged his existence.
The cemetery at Whittingham is still visible on Google Earth (June 2018 imagery). It is not clear enough to see what sort of grave markers there are.
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I believe that that sort of thing often happened at other, similar institutions. How sad.
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Yes, it seems the family's reaction was not unusual at the time. Anyone who experienced any mental problem was carefully edited out of the family story. Another relation of mine by marriage discovered in the 1970s that his grandmother had died in Winwick Hospital only ten years earlier, when he had been told she died in the 1940s. He only started asking questions when he started trying to construct a family tree and contacted elderly relations who told him the truth. At least in this second case, one female family member, her daughter, visited regularly for years, so she was not completely abandoned by everyone.
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"Out of sight, out of mind" seemed to be the philosophy employed by many families. I also heard of more than one female committed to such institutions because of pregnancy out of wedlock, and another in order to remove her so that her husband could enjoy the money and property she had brought to the marriage.