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Survival & Determination.
Derek Hutchinson
Derek Hutchinson's mother was an alcoholic and used to lock him in the coalhouse
overnight. His father was a bare-knuckle boxer.
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| Derek |
They had Derek in 1946, and he grew up in Leeds, developing a reputation for being
a tearaway, the boy who'd always do the naughty thing. 'If you think what kids get up to, I used to get up to it, because
I didn't know any better, basically.'
His parents had no control over him - 'All they did for us really was bring us
into the world' - and, from the age of 10, he was in and out of approved schools. He had a high IQ and he was talented at
football, rugby and boxing, 'but those places, they knocked violence, embedded it into you'.
In his late teens, when he was working as a welder, Derek had a motorbike accident
that left him with one leg shorter than the other and killed off his chances of becoming a professional sportsman. It was
a terrible disappointment. It did mean, though, that he met his wife, Ruth, a nurse. 'I'd never met anybody, never been involved
with anybody, who'd cared about me, who'd had my welfare - or thought about me, and she did, for some reason.'
They married in 1967, and had three children. 'We were happy. She went to church
and I went to the pub.' But, in 1973, Derek was followed by the police when he was driving a mini-van without a licence. He
can't precisely remember what happened after that, but recollections of Borstal flooded back and he suffered some sort of
black-out. 'Ruth says I came in like a zombie. I couldn't speak, couldn't rationalise.'
He thinks now that he was suffering from mild depression, triggered by memories
of his adolescence. But he visited his GP, who sent him to High Royds, the local psychiatric hospital. 'All I remember is
waking up in that place. Once those people have got you, there's not much you can do: you're powerless.'
Derek was given 10 sessions of ECT and prescribed Largactil and other psychotropic
drugs. His psychiatrist, Dr Todd, suggested that it was time something was done to control his aggression. Derek objected
that his aggression had never been irrational, 'but this Todd said, "How would you like to be responsible for the death of
one of your children?"
I told him there was no possibility of that, but he said that violence was self-progressing,
and I could hit one of my kids and they could die afterwards. I couldn't allow that to happen, no matter what. So then he
said that there was this operation.'
This operation - 'the stimulation and destruction of the posteromedial hypothalamic
nuclei in restless and aggressive behaviour' - had been pioneered in Japan by a neurosurgeon called Kajo Sanno. Only much
later did Derek discover that Sanno had been struck off when all the patients on whom he tried it had died. He was told at
the time that 12 people had had the operation in the UK; he has tried subsequently to track them down. 'I've only found one.
He's in a private nursing home and can't speak.'
The neurosurgeon who was to carry out the operation, a Mr Wall, had worked - presumably
with Sanno - in Japan. He explained that the procedure involved inserting, under anaesthetic, two nylon balls into the scalp
and guiding rods through them into the brain to burn out the areas that were 'responsible for aggression'.
After the insertion of the balls - 'which involved pinning back a flap of my forehead'
- Ruth was so horrified by Derek's appearance that she refused consent for the second part of the operation. Dr Todd himself
went to visit Derek's mother. 'He went at 8pm. He knew she was an alcoholic, and by then she'd be out of it. Even though she
didn't care about me a lot, she wouldn't have put me in that sort of danger if she'd known what she was doing.'
But she signed the forms, and, for eight-and-a-half hours, Derek was operated on
while awake. (Knowing how far to go with the procedure apparently required the surgeons to watch the dilatation of his pupils).
'
The only thing I can liken it to is having a tooth out without anaesthetic, putting
a needle in to the nerve, wiggling it around and then burning it. I felt I'd been hit on the head with a sledgehammer, and
then as if I was cooking
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| The Converted Surgical Ward |
The operation did not make Derek less violent. One of his first actions after returning
home was to storm into High Royds and physically attack Dr Todd. The hospital did not press charges. 'Previously, I might
have got into a fight, but now I would plan violence. There was stuff going through my brain that's not the stuff people normally
think about.
I can't say what, without making myself seem a monster.' He came close to shooting
somebody, and almost firebombed a house. 'I was meticulous about planning it. I came close to killing that man.'
Derek
and Ruth had two more children, twins. But in 1978, while the rest of the family was out at church, 'I just walked out. I
couldn't bear the thought that I might hurt one of my kiddies. But it didn't make sense. We'd been married 13 years and had
five kids.' He is still close to tears when he talks about it.
For a couple of years, Derek lived with his mother. Then he met Carol, a single
parent, and married her. 'She has looked after me for about 20 years. No one could have done it better.' She is evidently
devoted to him: she explains that he is extremely sensitive to temperature and passes out if he gets too hot.
He has no appetite and could happily go two weeks without eating. His short-term
memory is terrible, and he often picks up the telephone, dials a number and forgets whom he is trying to call. His sleep patterns
are disrupted: he naps throughout the day and wants to be up talking at 4am. He has had repeated flashbacks - which he now
believes to be post-traumatic stress disorder - ever since the day of the operation. 'Sometimes I go through it 12 times a
day. I know exactly which instrument Wall is going to ask for next.'
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| Confinement Cell |
Dr Todd and Mr Wall are both dead. Their attempts to control aggressive behaviour
by removing parts of the hypothalamus seem to have ground to a halt shortly after Derek's operation. 'You can see why they
wanted to believe in it. An operation to control behaviour would be a breakthrough. There are still neurosurgeons who believe
they will be able to do this. But they don't know where the mind is located in the brain and, unless they know that, how can
they judge what they're doing?'
Derek has seen a letter in which Dr Todd advised Mr Wall that he would suitable
for the operation because he had 'no gross psychological abnormality'. In which case, he asks, why did they butcher his brain?
He has started an organisation called Scalps (Survivors' Campaign Against Lobotomy and Psychosurgery) and spoken at a conference
in Germany. He has been invited to Paris, Japan, Holland and Australia. For the last year, he has received counselling for
his PTSD, which seems to be helping.
He helps out in the primary school along the road, and has 15 grandchildren, to
whom he is devoted. He doesn't believe he was ever seriously mentally ill before the operation. 'But you can't put up a defence,
if you're going to be mentally ill,' he says; 'because it just comes, and it can come to anybody.'
Derek has mounted a campaign to give the former patients buried by the Ambulance
station a Decent memorial
Give Them A Memorial.
Nikki's Story.
I was born in Leeds in 1982 and at the age of 4 my father left me and my mum, he
was replaced quite quickly with my step-father. From the age of about 7 or 8 I used to get this feeling that I didn't belong
anywhere and that I was an outsider
At the age of 13 I started to cut my legs on a regular basis because thats the
only control I had. At 14 I started to develop anorexia and bulimia. At 15 I took an overdose on my way to school and
was immediately rushed to hospital and given some pills to make me vomit up the paracetamol. 2-3 weeks later I rang my assigned
therapist and told her I wanted to kill myself, 2 days later her and a consultant visited my home and told my mother
I needed to be sectioned for my own welfare, they said to my mum that if she didn't agree to it they would just remove me.
So on 31st October 1997, I was admitted to Linton House, the adolescent unit of High Royds Hospital, for children aged between
13 and 16.
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| Litton House Classroom |
Originally sectioned for 1-2 months I could not even leave for fresh air. I have so
many bad memories from that place and they still plague me even today. The staff were not very good and the bank staff did
not know how to look after us. They would tease us and make fun of us, they used to tell us that when the alarm went off in
the main building that a criminally insane patient had escaped and we used to have to lock our windows and draw the curtains,
that was very frightening.
The other patients on the ward were all similar to me with similar problems. It
was a nightmare, we used to hold competitions to see who could draw the most blood from cutting and who could starve themselves
the longest. it was very destructive. After 5 months of being in there I was told I was going to be released. NO WAY was I
cured and I still wanted to die but they thought me sane enough to enter back into the real world so they released me.
Cat.
I was sent to Linton House in 1973 and finally let out in 1977.
Apparently I was a \"child out of control\", these days I would have been diagnosed with ADHD and given ritalin but back then
the condition was relatively unheard of.
I now have two kids of my own, the eldest, now 16, suffers from the condition so
I know what a struggle it must have been for my parents but Im sure they would not have made me stay in that hell hole had
they known what went on.
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| Litton House Dormitory. |
It was very rare that we were allowed outside but a few of us did manage to escape
now and again. We used to go to the farm to see the horses but when we got caught we always swore never to risk going out
again. Our punishment was getting strapped to a bed and injected with whatever drug it was they used to calm us down,
occasionally we were \"forgotten\" about and left like that overnight.
We had ro take turns with the washing up etc. and one day when I felt really
ill I was hit several times because I wasnt doing it good enough then my head was put into the wasing up water and scrubbed
with scouring powder.
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| Kids Art 2001 |
On a night we were all afraid to sleep as it was quite common for a male member
of staff to come into the dormitary- what he used to do I cannot bear to repeat, we were threatened with overdoses and beatings
if we ever told so we never did.
I will never forget what that place was like, Im now settled
in a relationship and have two kids but even now after so many years, in certain circumstances the memories come flooding
back and I struggle to cope.
I dont believe that any child who had to spend time there was helped whatsoever,
in fact it probably made me worse. I will never forget the day my friend was found dead, she had anorexia and should have
been in hospital,instead she was locked up in what was basically a childrens prison.
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