Secrets from the Asylum ITV Wed 20th Aug 9 pm

[Olde Crone]

Of course, one of the really big "SECRETS" that they did not address on the programme was that of so-called moral imbeciles - those incarcerated for immoral behaviour, including that of having an illegitimate child. Hundreds, maybe thousands of women were sent to asylums and stayed there fore the rest of their lives, just because they had had an illegitimate baby.

OC

[JBee]

Yes I thought that too OC.

One of my clients was sectioned for being over anxious about her disabled son!!! It was an old Victorian hospital thankfully now closed and she was absolutely frightened to death - most of the other inmates seemed drugged up except one.

She was only there a few weeks/months but it had shaken her to the core and she'd lost her happy demeanor and confidence. Whenever I visited she clung tightly to me even as we strolled through the old dormitory ward. When realeased she was transferred to another old peoples home. Why she couldn't go back to the one she'd been at and had been very happy I don't know. I couldn't see a reason for not going back but apparently the social worker did?!!!! They then moved her again without telling us and she contracted MRSA (didn't tell me when I visited) was put into isolation with only staff popping in a few times a day. She was neglected and starved to death. I complained but nothing was done. I still blame that social worker for destroying that poor woman's life.

[Ann from Sussex]

I've just caught up with my recordings of this programme and thought it was well done....in fact, much better than what WDYTYA has become.

I was surprised that Christopher Biggins' gt. grandfather was said to have died of GPI because, in the photo taken when he was admitted I thought he looked like a classic case of severe depression. I wonder if it really was GPI or that was just what his cause of death was assumed to be.

I laughed at the talk between Ray Winstone and his researcher about the speed with which Hannah remarried as I don't think it was that uncommon when there were children to be provided for.

Did anyone else feel that there was quite a facial resemblance between Al Murray and his 3xgt grandfather W.M. Thackeray?

My father-in-law was a charge nurse (male equivalent of a sister) on the men's infirmary ward at the large mental hospital in Nottingham where patients with physical ailments would be treated; he worked there for over 30 years. The family lived in a house very close by so my OH grew up in the shadow of the hospital walls. The photos of hospital cricket matches reminded me of stories he used to tell of playing for the hospital team as a teenager to make up the numbers. That building too has been converted into flats, the way all those mentioned in the programme seem to have been.