RootsChat.Com

Perhaps I am being pedantic but it is Radcliffe not Ratcliffe but there are a couple of Ratcliffes so any research you do might be lead astray. I can tell you that all the records were archived when the hospital closed around 1988.  Even the photographs of the staff pantomimes, I believe were saved.  The discussed that with the administrator and even offered to give them a home if nowhere could be found for them.  In the subways of the hospital were stored ward report books going back to before the hospital was built.  The hospital was know under various names. At the time you are refering to it was known either as Notts County Lunatic Asylum or Notts County Mental Hospital Some time later and until it closed it was Saxondale Hospital.

General Paralysis of the Insane was the last stage of Syphillus.  There was no cure for this until the arrival of Penicillin but a percentage of people recovered.  When I began working at Saxondale in 1957 I recall five such male patients. All had been soldiers in the First World War and penicillin could only arrest the disease but was too late to prevent the damaging effects.  During the 19 century I believe the disease was pretty widespread.

At certain stages the disease can be inherited but its effect is obvious and can include early childhood deaths and blindness. 

I don't know where the archives are stored you might find their whereabouts  on Google or some other site.
Bob

He would not have been buried on site. Thee nearest thing to a burial at Saxondale was when the Head Gardener's ashes were scattered on the bowling green.  Some patients who were not returned to their relatives were buried in Radcliffe.

I have a few older photographs of parts of Saxonale .

Incidently in one of those photgrphs that some one has already supplied that pagoda looking thing in the middle of the lawn was a ventilation shaft. There was a door and steps which took you down into a tunnel more that six foot high. This ran to other passages under the hospital, a whole network of them