Yes, Lisa
don't get me wrong - in it's day it was an amazingly forward-thinking place and was built with all the kindness and forethought you could imagine - was one of the very first 'asylums' in the world.
My own G-grandfather was the mecdical superintendant of another asylum and my grandmother grew up in one. I know from her stories how 'family' everyone was and how the sulf-sufficiency of asylums at that time gave everyone a respected role, nurse, attendant or patient.
As well as some of the rather awful things we who worked there in latter years have described, there was even at that late date great love, kindness and community amongst both people who had to live there and those who worked there, with many of both caring greatly about the other. In many ways, at its best, it was a huge family.
What the other person who worked there and I also experienced were the negative results of pioneering brain surgery and medication - and that experimentation was truly well meant at a time when science within mental health was unheard of and the idea that one could improve 'lunatic's' lives a revolutionary idea. There were, I believe, many people living in Warwicks generally who had benefitted greatly from such treatments. Because of lack of knowledge and facilities, these operations and medication schemes sometimes produced the most awful results and that is what we are describing, hopefully not too clearly.
I believe that when many people were admitted, it usually was as an alternative to the workhouse or the jail - and I've heard many long-stay patients describe the wonderful feeling of being released from those places to Hatton, which was humane and gentle by comparison.
Your GF would have been sent to Hatton as an alternative to the workhouse, no doubt, and many elders were cared for mostly by younger, fitter patients who lived beside them in all ways. The care I saw many of them receive, even at my late date, was generally good and loving, so be reassured. Probably, I could say this to anyone who reads what we've written and thinks that their relative was subjected to intentional cruelty. In my experience, that was rarely the case. What we saw, they were rarely aware of themselves - and most of us started in that work at very tender ages - I was considered quite elderly, being 19 when I started - so maybe we were short on life experience! I still work in mental health - it's been a lifetime commitment for me - it's just that looking back it seems so sad that more wasn't known and more could not have been done. Also, in our time, the government, in its wisdom, had legislated against patients working, which meant that many of them were disposessed of lifetime roles and no doubt changed the staff-patient relationships somewhat.
A word about patients working, to anyone interested - it was seen later as a form of slave labour by those who didn't understand the asylum system in general - I experienced the very late days of patients working what were apparantly long hours for pittances of money. The point is that the community began and continued for almost a century as a self-sufficient community. If you liked the job you had done outside, you could continue to do it - and if you had no trade, you could be taught one. The only things bought in were raw materials that couldn't be found on (or in) the land.
Even people who remained lifelong were highly respected and valued for their contribution to the community. It was until latter days a cashless society - people were piad in beer and other forms of rewards - better diet for manual labourers, for instance. When some well-meaning government in the 1970's legislated and insisted patients should be paid in cash, this didn't translate well - and people were left in the same position as today - there was a benefit trap, even then, so wages were very poor - but work pace was never forced - many people only attended sometimes, did nothing whilst there and were still paid. Some patients refused to stop doing what they'd always done and were continuing when I arrived in 1980 - we had a bootmaker, a watchmaker, glazier, plumber, barber, several gardeners and a newspaper delivery service all done by patients. Ask anyone who worked there at that time, I bet we all still remember their names and what sort of people they were - they were known and repsected amongst us all. I still have a pair of walking boots the bootmaker made me and I wouldn't swap them for the world..... on the other hand, the watchmaker pinched the inside of my watch and put it in to the watch of another nurse he preferred - I didn't find out until I took it into town, asked if they could fix it, since Harry couldn't. When they opened the back, there was nothing at all inside!!!
A quick PS about the graveyards - it wasn't the builders who destoryed grave markers - there were none at all there by 1980, though we knew where the burial grounds (2, I think) were. Glad they're marked today.
