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A made-up, true story!

G

Grace

Guest
Alice drew the coarse wool blanket closer round her body, although it was August she felt so cold.  She could hear the girls downstairs having their bread and scrape and she hoped that Ethel, the eldest, was looking after them. Albert had shouted at her again that morning that it was about time she looked after her chldren and attended to her homework.  Dr.Ferguson had arrived a while ago and asked her a lot of questions about how she felt and she had told him how frightened and tired she was and so sick of her life and turned her face to the wall. The doctor and Albert had gone downstairs and she could hear them talking quietly.
Alice turned her mind back to when she married Albert in 1898, fourteen long years ago.  He hadn't wanted to marry her when he found she was having his baby, in fact he was furious, but nevertheless they had married when she was over seven months pregnant.  She remembered that her new husband wasn't at all pleased when she produced a daughter and four more, all girls, had followed in quick succession.  Alice started to cry quietly when she recalled that wam day in April 1910 when Albert, the longed for son, was born.  Such a beautiful baby, dark hair and big brown eyes, the girls loved him and Albert wanted him named after him.  He had even started to stay at home a little more and not visited the pubs in Park Lane each night as he had before.  The Spring of that year seemed to rush into summer and little Albert blossomed in the lovely weather.  She remembered the day Ethel developed a bad cough and cold and it spread like wildfire through the girls.  The steam rising from the damp clothes around the mantle seemed to bring relief and Annie was the worst despite poultices applied twice a day.  Baby Albert started to cough at the beginning of August and worsened rapidly until they had no alternative but to find the money to pay the doctor to come and take a look at him.  Alice trembled when she thought of that day in August when her little son died in her arms, he had been so ill for about ten days and just seemed to fade away, he was five months old.  She held him and sobbed until he was pulled from her arms and taken away.  After little Albert died she had tried her best to care for her girls and Ethel was wonderful with her siblings.  Albert came home drunk most nights and at time she locked him out because she was frightened of him.  She knew he blamed her for his son's death and when the last baby girl was born less than twelve months later that was the last straw, she could see the disgust in his eyes.
Downstairs Albert was explaining to the doctor that his wife had been sent to Hatton Asylum in 1908 after the birth of her fifth daughter, suffering from what the paperwork described as "confinement".  She had been released six weeks later and went to stay with friends.  Albert described how Alice refused to look after his children and spent much of her time in bed.  He told how she locked him out at night and how she threatened to cut herself.  She sometimes walked the streets in the evenings and didn't come back until the early hours.  He said she had been in this condition since the birth of her last child, a daughter.
The doctor listened patiently while he completed the appropriate paperwork then informed Albert that his wife would be collected the following day and taken to All Saints Lunatic Asylum.
And so it was that Alice left home on that sunny Monday morning in August 1913 and All Saints awaited the reception of a pauper lunatic.  Alice never returned home and died in Rubery Lunatic Asylum aged 98 in 1975. 
 
Strange how in those days goverments could declare someone a lunatic one minute then let them out the next and if you escaped and was out for 6 weeks you were free.
The care of the sick was shocking in those times
My dads brothers first wife died and he went to the workhouse to get a house keeper and married her but the ones in their had no hope.
Once you was placed in a Lunatic Asylum ( which is a horrible name) all your rights had gone
Grace, you wrote that article with a lot of feeling, I used to got to Rubery and Monyhull Colony as well as Hollymoor in the late 60's with my work and saw the conditions then, how they were made to sit at tables and tie knots in string and when they had finished passed it across the table so the people on the other side could undo it, I could go on, but it would upset people, so I won't
We have come a long way since those days for the better but still a lot needs doing but we dont seem to know what to do, maybe we will know in the future
 
Grace, I can see that's a very heart-felt story. The title confused me for a while but now, having read it and linked to something you mentioned in another post, all becomes clear. It can't have been easy posting it here, but it seems the topic is now getting a healthy airing - brave on ya!

I had cause to visit All Saints on a couple of occasions just before it closed and, to me, things weren't much different to what cromwell describes. I even saw one poor soul restrained with straps in his chair. Sad as these mental hospitals (a slightly nicer expression) were the inmates/patients weren't much worse off than those supposedly being "cared for" in "the community" these days.
 
:angel: It happened so often to people just like us, you just need to read Crommies story of 'Locked Away for Life for Swearing'. Here we have two people who were suffering a form of .‚.‘Post Traumatic Depression' and just needed some T.L.C and understanding from those around them.
My Dad had a friend in Rubery who we believe now was just Epileptic with an eyesight problem. He had a wife a son and twin daughters (all the children had some form of learning difficulties). Dad feared that they too would end up in a place like Rubery, but thank goodness things changed and the last I heard of the twins was that they were working at Wimbush.‚.’s Green Lane Small Heath, one was engaged to be married and their brother was doing well and had a good job. That was in 1966 so I do hope life turned out well for them, they and their Mother had it really hard and struggled, not only financially, but also with the stigma of having their father and husband being classed as a 'Lunatic'.

Hugs Grace a well written and told story :smitten:
 
Grace - I have only jsut caught up with your story and it is wonderfully told. I second Oisin's comments - you are one brave lady with loads of talent as a writer to boot! Hugs from me. :smitten:
 
Grace I echo the sentiments of the previous posters, it brought tears to my eyes, that poor woman was just worn out with bearing too many children in too short a time, hard up and unloved and cared for by her husband.
 
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