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Nurse Gwen recalls bygone times and electric shock treatment
Telegraph & Argus, first published Thursday Jul 2002.
Electric shock treatment and patients scrubbing floors are one woman's memories of a psychiatric
hospital.
The 115-year-old building hides many secrets and intriguing tales - some
of which former High Royds nurse Gwen Hartley has shared.
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| Equipment at the Stephen Beumont Museum |
The wards would take 64 patients then and during the war the number rose to 100, Mrs Hartley
would have to work from 6am to 8pm.
The 100-year-old added: "There are only 24 in a ward now, sometimes we would have 100. Some
people had to be locked away.
In the doors there were two holes, we would look through one at the patient and shine our
lantern through the other."
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| Nurses Uniform At The Stephen Beaumont Museum Wakefield |
"The wards had stone floors. There were no warders so we had to do everything. I used to have
to take six patients to scrub the floors with soap.
"We had to bath the patients once a week and cut their hair and nails. It was jolly hard work."
The wards were heated by coal fires and were lit by gas lamps.
When it was meal times three patients would be taken to the kitchen and would then have to
push a trolley of food back to their ward.
Mrs Hartley said the windows on the wards only opened two inches and some patients would use
the spoons to try and unscrew the windows to escape.
She experienced numerous incidents of patients escaping, despite the complex having tight
security then with every door locked after a nurse entered and left a room.
In one incident a patient had made it as far as Middlesbrough before been caught and another
escaped during an afternoon walk and scaled the guttering and hid on the roof. It was three days before someone noticed.
When Mrs Hartley began working there in 1924, the hospital took a guinea out of her wages
for living accommodation, all nurses were expected to live in-house until they had been there three years.
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| ECT Machine From The Stephen Beaumont Museum Wakefield |
Described as a self-contained village the hospital grounds stretch for more than 200 acres
and it was even serviced by it's own railway line.
Originally called the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum it opened on October 8, 1888, and
was hailed as state-of-the-art, with all of its wards facing southwards.
It was the third one to be built in West Yorkshire and could
accommodate 1,440 patients.
The self-sufficient complex had staff quarters, wards, sick bays, a laundry, coal storage,
a sweet shop and two padded rooms.
More intriguingly it had a ballroom, a large Italian mosaic floor with
a Yorkshire white rose in the centre and a theatre.
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| Hawes Ward, High Royds |
The hospital would hold dances each Friday night for two hours for the patients and it was
covered in the Wharfedale.
During the Second World War famous comedians and actors would travel to the hospital and perform
for the troops and patients in its theatre.
It had a cinematograph for showing silent films, which was replaced in 1932 by one for talking
pictures.
Mrs Hartley remembers how she would have to scrub half the mosaic floor with six patients
from her ward and they would meet up in the middle with the patients from the adjourning ward.
"I remember that after breakfast we had to get some patients, pick up two buckets and go through
the back yard to where the coal was dropped off and we would carry it back to the wards to light the fires," she said.
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| Padded Cell Is Located At The The Stephen Beaumont Museum Wakefield |
Electric shock treatment was introduced at the hospital in 1943 and received some positive
results.
"It was quite frightening," said Mrs Hartley. "I would have to hold the feet of a patient
whilst a mask was put over their head and they would shake as if having an epileptic attack.
"You got used to it after a while and it did seem to work."
It got its own graveyard in 1905, behind the ambulance station on Buckle Lane, only two headstones
mark the site where 2,858 pauper lunatics were buried.
In 1963 the hospital changed its name to High Royds and in 1989 the 19th century lunatic asylum
received grade two listed status
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