SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds

There is a programme on BBC4 at 9pm on Monday 17th May, entitled Mental: A History of the Madhouse.Anyway, it is all about the treatment of mental illness and it focuses mainly on High Royds at Menston.More info here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sfpvfI though it might be of interest to some posters, for a variety or reasons.

Timely reminder, mentioned about a week ago on the High Royds Thread I think it was.

Will have to catch it on the i-player thing.Not the wife's idea of entertainment after working all day

Ravey DaveyAre you indicating that some of us should have been at High Royds even though we never managed it lol!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????

There was also an excellent documentary on the Battle of Towton at 7:30 pm on BBC 1. catch it on iplayer.Christa Ackroyd displayed her usual standard of knowledge about history on Look North earlier by not only telling viewers that she didn't know where Towton was,but also that she had never heard of the battle!

Saw about the first 20 mins or so(wife had gone to Asda)Very disturbing.When you think about the British owning half the globe and educating most of it how could this be allowed to happen ?I worried when people talked about 'care in the community',after seeing the in situ version of care it makes you shudder.Like some of those recalled in some schools threads these places(and others)were a breeding ground for bullies and sadists.Count your blessings one and all !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

dogduke wrote: Saw about the first 20 mins or so(wife had gone to Asda)Very disturbing.Count your blessings one and all !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Here here dogduke - I found the proramme, while admittedly interesting, to be quite horrifying, and I do admire the honesty of many of the nurses and doctors who spoke up.    As one who has passed by High Royds practically daily for most of my life I found that the film confirmed the sinister look of the place.While working on early morning and late evening buses in the area we quite often saw some of the most pitiful sights of wretched human beings wandering about after"escaping" - enough to break your heart. Also I've had friends who had suffered "ECT" and who described how awful it was and how it had done them little or no good - but seeing the filming of the barbaric procedure made me shiver. While I've no doubt it was genuinely well intentioned by the medical people, the similarity with some of the "experiments" that went on in WW2 looms large for me.We should indeed count our blessings, one and all !!

I watched this programme this morning after seeing this thread a couple of evenings ago.It certainly was an eye opener and gave me a lot of food for thought as to the way the mentally ill, or just ill in many cases, were treated not so long ago.It too left me feeling cold and somewhat shocked by some of the things it revealed - thanks for the heads up on this programme.

I recently read 'The Hounding of David Oluwale' which has some harrowing detail about High Royds.As an aside I keep meaning to put together a 'photo' story of this case as many of the sites mentioned are on Leodis or still exist.

Further to some of the above threads it should be remembered that the 19th century asylum system had a lot of good points and it is an extremely moot point that the present so called "Care in the Community" system is an improvement. The Parliamentary Acts of the 2nd decade of the 19th century that stipulated that every English county build an asylum were extremely forward thinking and an example to the rest of the world.Yorkshire is arguably the home of asylum type care as the first such institution was the private 18th century Retreat nr York which still exists today.When the final asylums closed in the early 1990s (and in High Royd's case as recently as 2003 maybe the last one in England?) many of the resaidents were traumatised by the end of their home and are still suffering the effects today.They pretended "Care in The Community" was introduced for positive reasons but really it was a convenient hijacking of an idea by 1980s Thatcherites to save money.PS ECT is still used and for some people it is the only thing that gives them relief