10 MO HUTCHISON

 
MO HUTCHISON C905/10/01-06/VHS 01-02

 
MENTAL HEALTH TESTIMONY ARCHIVE

MO HUTCHISON
 
C905/10/01-06/VHS 01-02
Original on DVC-Pro
Copy on VHS

Interviewed by Judy Mead
Camera by Faye

Transcribed by Julie Sharman
August 1999

[Start of DVC Pro Tape one – Start of VHS tape one]
[Camera: `Interview with Mo Hutchison, C905/10 tape one’]

`I thought… could you tell me a bit about where you were… born? And your very earliest memories, and who you lived with and… so on?’

`Yeah I was… I was born in Bristol… and… although… I… we… we sort of travelled around a bit, my memories really are living with my grandparents in Bristol… and my mother and my sister. My father had left home, really… I… I mean I don’t remember much about my father, and… and we lived with my grandparents and I went to school next door to where we lived… which was… really handy, but upset me no end, because I desperately wanted to stay at school and… and have dinner with everybody. I know that sounds really odd [laughs] now but I did… and… I remember once I was in the… the school play, and everybody stayed… after school, to get ready for the school play and to have some tea there… and, I was supposed to go home because I only lived next door, and my grandmother relented and… and let me take banana sandwiches, to have in the break, and that was brilliant.’

`And what year were you born?’

`’49… 1949…’

`And… you said your father left… how old would you have been then?’

`I was… ten, I think… when my father left. He… he had been sort of coming and going really, in my life. I’ve… I’ve only got a few memories of my father. Very nice memories… but only a few of them… and, this one day we were… in the hall… in my grandparents’ house, and he said to me, that he was going, and I said, `you… you are coming back aren’t you, dad?’, and he said, `yeah, of course I am…’ and that was the last time I saw him. I’ve never seen him since.’

`Have you had any contact with him at all?’

`No… none at all. [Pause] It was… it was… you know, it was a while ago and… there… there wasn’t so much emphasis put on… on children spending time with both of their parents when… when there was a divorce… umm… and my mother was… was very antagonistic towards my father and… and didn’t want us to have any… any contact with him, and so… if he sent… I think a couple of years he sent Christmas presents and things like that… umm… but… she would… I… actually only remember it happening one year, and she would collect them and she would give them to us, you know, and we weren’t allowed to have any contact so… I’ve absolutely no idea where he is, or indeed if he’s still alive. None at all.’

`Does that feel strange?’

`Yeah, it does… it feels… umm… it feels really uneasy, yes… because I… I would like… I would like him to know what happened to me, and… you know, that I’ve got three children and… I’d like to know what happened to him and… umm… all sorts of things… it just… it does feel really odd, yeah…’

`And… is your mother still around?’

`Yes, my… my mother… remarried… a couple of years after… my father left, and… she’s been married since then. She’s… she’s with my stepfather, and they live in Surrey… and… and have done… goodness me, for nearly forty years now…’

`So if we go… back a bit to your… memories of living with your grandmother? Is that right?’

`And my grandfather…’

`And your grandfather… and that was in… Bristol? Is that right?’

`Mmm… mmm…’

`What do you remember about your first school? Have you any particular memories of primary school…?’

`Umm…’

`Or junior school?’

`Well I… I… yes, I mean I… I loved the school… I really… I really loved the school and… but I think… I didn’t have many friends there. My grandparents didn’t encourage… friends to come back to the house, at all… and, my mother was working full time. She was… she worked for a butcher’s shop, she delivered meat, and… I… I never had friends come back to the house, I… I just don’t remember having friends back to the house at all… and so… it was… it was quite lonely… so I liked school,
‘cause I liked to… to be with… with the other children. I… I think that… one of my abiding memories really of… of living with my grandparents was that… where they lived, there were quite a few elderly folk… and, my grandmother used to lay people out, for some reason… no idea why, I mean she didn’t have any training in it, but she did… and I just have this… this sort of memory really, of always feeling like there was death around, you know… there were always people… in the houses, that… all these people… dying and my grandmother going in and… and there seemed to be a sort of constant talk about death and… and it felt… like I was living in a… in a very old person’s environment, and like, with no young people around. My mother was… was working, so… I didn’t see much of her… didn’t get on very well with my sister… and… and it… it was just really… it just really had a… a strange feel about it.’

`Where did she do the laying out, was that with… local… for local people?’

`Yes. In their homes… in their homes. She would go in. Like nurses do now, I mean it’s… it’s what nurses do, isn’t it? But she would do it. They would come and get her and… so, you know…’

`And…’
`I didn’t know what `laying out’ was, but it didn’t sound very nice [laughs]…’

`Did you ever see the practice done?’

`No’

`No?’

`No…’

`No… You mentioned your sister… is she older or younger than you?’

`She’s older than me. She’s about eighteen months older than me… and… was always extremely jealous of me. Extremely… because… she always felt that… I could do things that she would like to be able to do, and couldn’t do. I mean I don’t know how real that was, but for instance… we had piano lessons, both of us… with… with another ancient woman, actually and… I… really took to… playing the piano, although I didn’t like it… I didn’t want to do it, and it was a chore for me. It was equal to Sunday School which I also had to go to. My sister desperately wanted to be able to play the piano, and… and… and actually didn’t get on well with it… and they used to say and think, `oh’, you know, `she’s got such a lovely touch, your sister…’, about me, you know, and… she… she was just very jealous… she was very jealous of me.’

`And what’s your sister’s name?’

`Sue…’

`Did you have any other brothers or sisters?’

`My…when my mother remarried, they had a… another daughter, so I have a half sister, yeah…’

`Thinking back, again to school, you’ve mentioned the Sunday School as well… what age would you have been then?’

`Oh, well… I mean, quite… quite young really, from… goodness me… I don’t know, seven, eight, nine, ten, you know, all those years I think we probably went there. I think it was actually… a way of getting us out the house on a Sunday, so that… everyone could go to sleep, you know… it was just at the end of the road, and I hated it. Desperately hated it. But we always had to go and… I didn’t… I mean I didn’t learn anything ‘cause I… I just didn’t want to be there and I… I’ve never had any religion… it didn’t mean anything to me… so it was just… one of those Sunday chores and it… and it sort of… it… it established in me, a… a real hate of Sundays, you know, I really hated Sundays… and I… I… I’ve really tried to… with…with my children, to make Sundays a bit interesting, but sadly they hate Sundays as well [laughs]… so…’

`What sort of church was that? Attached to…?’

`It was… a Methodist church.’

`In Bristol?’

`Yeah… yeah…’

`And which part of Bristol were you brought up in?’

`Horfield.’

`And what kind of area is Horfield? In the sense of the population and type of people that lived there?’

`It’s… very residential… there’s not much in the way of… of any sort of industry or commerce or anything, in Horfield, it’s… it’s just...houses, you know… and… I… I mean my… all my family were… would identify themselves as working class. There… there was… near to where we lived at Filton, there was… a… factory, that… was run by the aircraft industry, that was… before there was… whoever they are now, British Airways… so before that… and a lot of my family worked in there, and I suppose that… that probably other people did in that area, but it… it was a mix really… of… of different sorts of folk. I didn’t really know much about the area apart from my own little bit, ‘cause I never went anywhere, I never visited anybody. I did have a friend round the corner… and I did… but… but that… that was sort of in… in the latter years of my time there really… and I did occasionally go to her house, but other than that I really didn’t know much about the area at all. I used to… there was… just sort of round the corner, there was a big main road called the Gloucester Road, and it was… full of shops, and I used to… quite often used to walk up and down the Gloucester Road, but often on my own.’

`So you didn’t really have any childhood friends, in… at that age?’

`No, not really, I… well I… I did have this one… this one friend, Joy, and I… I’ve lost contact with her now… but… I didn’t… you know, we weren’t sort of bosom pals or anything, I mean she was just… like… she… actually, never… I… I just didn’t have anybody round to the house and… I… I would go round to her house sometimes and we’d go to the park and things… but my grandfather used to take me to the park. I just remembered that, my grandfather used to take me… and… he used to… take us to the swings, my sister and I… and he would leave us at the swings, then he would walk the other side of the park and there was a sweet shop and he would come back with sweets and ice creams for us, and then we’d walk home. But that was very near. I mean everything… I did was very near where I lived. I didn’t… never went on the bus or anything like that.’

`And at school, do you remember… any of the children ever… saying anything about people who were in psychiatric hospital? Name calling or…any rumours about hospitals that may have been around Bristol… psychiatric hospitals, I mean?’

`No, I don’t remember anything about that at all. [Pause] I was… quite… I think… terrified of illness. I think it was because I was surrounded by all these elderly people, you know… and I was quite morbid about illness, but it was always in terms of physical illness. I don’t think… at… anybody in the family spoke of any, mental health sort of difficulties of… in any sort of sense, I don’t remember that…

...no…

…It wasn’t part of my life, at all…’

`So as a young child you have no awareness of psychiatric hospitals at all..?’

`None…’

`Or mental health…?’

`No…’ [Pause]

`Can you break a sec, Carrie?’ [pause]

`We were talking about your earlier school days and so on, and… can you tell me what happened when you got… when your… after your father left, what happened then?’

`Well my mother decided that we would move to London. She… had never liked Bristol at all… and I think that the problem was… that we had never had a family home… in Bristol, like my father, my mother and my sister, and I… we’d… we’d always, either lived with my grandparents or… we lived in… army accommodation… or whatever my father was in, I don’t know. He was in one of the forces, but I can’t remember what… and so my mother desperately wanted to leave Bristol and she had a sister, who lived in South London, and it was arranged that… we would go and live with my aunt and… my aunt at the time, I think had… three children at home… and her… husband’s brother… her husband had died but her husband’s brother also lived there, and so we… we went to live with them, and… we… we just lived there a year, because while… when… while we were there, my mother met… the chap who’s now my… my stepfather, through my aunt and my cousins and… who belonged to a cricket club, and… well it was a sports club actually, and my stepfather used to play bowls for them… and he… he’d sort of been known to the family and so… he got to know my mother and they decided to get married… quite quickly, really.’

`Do you remember meeting him… the… for the first time, or had you always known him?’

`No… I do remember meeting him, and… I… I was… I was quite resentful towards him because… not… not because he was going to be my stepfather, but because… in my aunt’s house, my aunt’s… although it wasn’t, it always seemed a big house to me, but I don’t think it was, it wasn’t that big… it’s gone now, it’s been demolished, but… they always used the back door, never used the front door, and there was always a constant stream of people because my cousins were… the… four of them were… were boys, and one girl… and… certainly two of them were still at home and… and I can’t remember whether there was another one but certainly two of them were still at home and on a Saturday, all their friends used to come round, and it was, you know, people in and out the back door, all the time… and… which was another tale actually, because we used to have… have to have our… there was no bathroom in the house, and we had to have our baths in the kitchen, which… the back door opened into, and I was always… really worried that I was going to be in the bath one day and somebody was going to come in, but that actually never happened. So, on Saturday… there, there would be my cousins, Alan and Terry, their friends would come round for them, to go and play football or to go to a football match, or just to be there… and, I really liked that, I thought it was real good fun, and it had been decided that Saturday would be the day that my stepfather to be would get to know my sister and I, and so he would take us off on Saturday, to various places around London… and we would always go into what was then, Lyons Corner Houses, and we would have, tomato soup and… chips and baked beans, and… I really resented him for that because I wanted to be at home, you know, with all these people coming and going, that just seemed exciting, I didn’t want to go off and look at Buckingham Palace and… but… that… that’s what was decided and that’s what we did.’

`It sounds like a real change from… the life in Bristol when you didn’t have so many young people around you?’

`Yes it was… it was… and… I think that’s why I… I wanted so much to be part of it, and not to go off with somebody, it was just my sister and… and… my stepfather and myself, you know, it just seemed… and quite honestly I really wasn’t interested in the Tower of London and, you know… I couldn’t be bothered really. My mother, has always thought that to live in London was… was like, what everyone should be aiming for, you know… and… I… I’ve never shared that view. I mean I like London but I… I don't think that you’re special just ‘cause you live in London, which my mother does, so I mean it wasn’t really of too much interest to me, to go to these places, and… I… I… I… my stepfather is a very quiet, shy man… and so, the… the days were sort of characterised by nobody speaking to anybody, you know, so we would just go and… wherever we were going. I mean it was good… I did like going on the tube. We were right… where my aunt lived, we were right next to Collier’s Wood tube station and it had a wonderful smell, that tube station’s don’t have any more, but I don’t know why… I suppose, if I think about it, it might be something to do with the fact you can’t smoke there any more, I don’t know, but… but it used to have this wonderful smell. You used to walk in and there was something really exciting about it… and escalators and things, I loved all that… so I did like going on the tube… but, I… as I say, I mean we… we would just sort of spend the day, really, not knowing what to do and… not wanting particularly to be with one another, and my sister and I didn’t get on very well so… my sister… has always really wanted to be back in Bristol… and so, she was incredibly resentful about being in London anyway. She didn’t want to be in London. I didn’t mind too much but… but she didn’t want to be there, so… you know there… there was all that going on. It’s funny… [inaudible]…’

`Did you go to school together there?’

`Yes we did. We… we went to… a school that was… was a little walk away from where we lived and it was a real… inner city school and it was brilliant, and I loved it… and we used to walk past a shop, that sold those penny sweets and we always used to buy those… and, I just really enjoyed the school, and I made this friend there… and… we used to go back to her house and have jam sandwiches. I just thought it was wonderful.’

`And what was the name of that school?’

`Fortesque' [ph]. Fortesque Primary School [ph].’

`That’s… and you were around eleven when you first went there?’

`Yeah, yeah…’

`And your sister would have been in the same… in the next year?’

`She… she was in the next year, yes… yeah.’

`What other memories do you have of the school in terms of… what range of people went there?’

`Well… it was… that area, Collier’s Wood area was… was quite… I… I guess what people would call a rough area. I mean I guess that’s what people would say… and… there was a real, mix of… of folk in the school, but… the… the… primarily, they were people… you know, I don’t like using terms like working class and middle class, but I mean if I’m going to use those terms, they were… they were from working class families. I mean my… certainly my… aunt’s family were… were working class… and… I just… I just really enjoyed being there. I enjoyed being there. I… I did well there… .and I… liked games, which… people always find it quite amusing to think of me in any terms being athletic, but I actually was athletic, and… that was where it started, you know, I started to realise that… that I could run quite well and… and… and do those sorts of things, and I really liked that. But I just like the… I liked the fact that we had to walk to school, rather than it being right next door… and it just felt quite exciting and it… and I felt quite independent, you know, walking there, and going into the shop and getting my sweeties and… and walking on there. I… I really enjoyed it.’

`Did you have to wear a uniform there?’

`No.’

`No… and was there a mix of… mixed race of children that went to that school?’

`Yeah… yeah…’

`And was that different to Bristol, or…the same?’

`Yes, it was different to where I lived in Bristol. And also, I mean it was… because I… I had never encountered any black people at all in… in… in the area I lived in Bristol, and my uncle, when we moved to London, my uncle used to do… night work, in a factory and… he was always talking about `darkies’… he… about working with `the darkies’, but he… his view was that… you know, he.. he sort of, I mean he wouldn’t have described himself in this way, but he had what, for my family was… was quite an unusual view in… in that, you know he… he thought like… you know, that… they’re just the same as everybody else, you know and… he didn’t see why any fuss was being made about them and… you know. I mean he was… he… you know, he was quite condescending in… in… in the way that he said `well, they’re perfectly good workers’, you know, that sort of thing, but… that was my… first knowledge really, of either… people from different backgrounds, ethnic backgrounds, or… that… that… that people felt any antagonism towards them. I had no idea that that would be the case… so… that was… that was all new to me.’

`So you hadn’t heard any comments like that from home… before you’d met other people… black people… you’d not heard racist comments from… family or friends or…?’

`No, I mean, because I suppose in Bristol, I mean it just wasn’t part of our life, so… I mean nobody spoke about it… nobody. I don’t remember anybody speaking about it. But in London it was… it was very different and… my… my uncle, as I say, had this sort of what… what I would… guess would be called tolerant attitude, which was totally at odds with other members of my family who… on reflection were very racist, and… and… as I say, I mean I… I… I was… I was totally mystified really I just couldn’t… understand this… and… and actually I mean when I went to school and… I mean not that my cousins had any black friends, I don’t… they didn’t… but when I went to school, I… don’t remember… thinking any differently at all, of… of… of any of the… the black children. I don’t remember that being an issue for anybody actually.’

`That’s interesting…[pause]… At what stage did you then have to take the… was it the eleven plus in those days?’

`Yes. Well… in fact… I… left London. My mother married, my stepfather… and we moved to Surrey and I went to school in Surrey and I took the Eleven Plus there.’

`Is that before you went to… the place that you were just talking about?’

`No I went… I went… I must have left Bristol… either… just… when I was just ten or shortly before then, because I know we were with my aunt for a year.. and then, that’s when I went to Fortesque [ph]. We left there and… because my mother married, remarried, and went to Surrey and I went to the school that… was just round the corner there, and I took the Eleven Plus there, and my sister… she must have taken the Eleven Plus at the school in Collier’s Wood in London, and she failed it, and she went to, what was then called a Secondary Modern, which was actually right next to the school I… I went to the Junior School, that I went to. But I passed my Eleven Plus… and so, I went to… a grammar school, which was, at the time, very… considered to be very exclusive. It was all girls, it was… it was in a park… and a very, very rigid uniform… just, you know, they sort of… they told you exactly what to wear, throughout your body, really…’

`What sort of things were they?’

`Well… like you could only have particular sorts of shoes, and particular coloured socks, and skirts had to be a particular… everything had to come from a particular shop, `Dugannes’ [ph], the name of the shop was, and everything had to come from there. There was only one shop, so they could charge what they like and they did… and we had special overalls, wrap around overalls that sort of covered you from head to foot for science, navy blue for science and white for domestic science, and we had to have… hockey sticks and particular… uniforms for… hockey and games and… navy blue knickers. We had to have navy blue knickers… and… for…’

`Is that in general, the knickers? Or is that just for sport or…was there a general regulation?’

`No… it was all the time… mmm… yeah, we had to wear them all the time. I don’t know whether anybody checked… [laughs]… but… yes so… it was… it was incredibly expensive, and they just had to… they just… they set down the rules for every… and at the time, when you went there, one of the… like… they didn’t… after a while, when I was there they stopped doing it, but people who went in the first year actually had writing lessons, they had lessons in how to write properly, and so we all had to have… a particular… a fountain pen with an italic nib, so that we could take part in these writing lessons, and… you know, it was just… it was, I mean I… I considered that it was a school for privileged children… and then so it was very difficult for… my family… because my… my stepfather had… was an only son. He had… until he got married he’d lived at home all the time, and… was a civil engineer. They had bought this house in Surrey, and… which you know, at the time was quite expensive, and they’d had to furnish it from… top to bottom, and so money was very tight. I mean that was my entire memory of my childhood and actually it hasn’t changed much since then, of money being very tight, so it was… it was very difficult, for them to… to… equip me with everything I needed for the grammar school. It was very hard for them.’

`What… and your sister’s… she went to the Secondary Modern and they… did they not have to provide this sort of uniform for… that school?’

`They had a uniform, but it was… it was like, wear navy blue skirts and white blouses sort of thing, you know… and there wasn’t a PE… and… I don’t think you had to wear navy blue knickers actually… it was all very relaxed and… I’m… I’m not sure… I think they probably, I mean we certainly… we had ties… and we had hats. Hats… one sort of hat for summer and one sort of hat… a boater, for summer, with ribbons down the back, which I… I actually rather liked, I thought it was rather me… and this horrible velour thing, in the winter… and we had… we had blazers with… with a motto on the pocket that said, `serve God and be cheerful’ which… I just… I… I wouldn’t like to say [laughs]… I used to think… ooh… who says, you know… [laughs]… but no, Sue went to the Secondary Modern and it was the… she did… she didn’t like school at all. I think… there was a lot of view around, that I remember now, that she suffered from the fact of… of… moving around when… when the… she was taking her Eleven Plus, and that we’d just moved to London and, you know, there were all those sort of… and… and there was the sort of view that… that she could probably have done much better, if… if she’d been more settled, you know, if we’d been more settled. But she hated school, and she would… the school was… just… in… in the area of… of… just a parade of shops, but they had a fish and chip shop there, and every lunch time she would go out and get chips and… which they weren’t allowed to do. They weren’t allowed off the site so… she just sort of… went out as much as she could, she hated it.’

`And do you… did you like school… that school?’

`No, I hated it.’

`Would you rather have gone to the… secondary modern?’

`Umm… I think… yes, I… I mean I… I certainly would rather have gone to a mixed school. I hated being at an all girls’ school. I didn’t like that at all… and I… I think, yeah, I mean I’m not sure whether I’d have wanted to go to the secondary modern… because I… there was a strong sense around that… people who went there, just didn’t succeed. Now I mean I… I think that’s probably the school rather than anything else. But I think it would have been probably an uphill struggle for people to… to do what they wanted to do at school if… if they’d gone there. Whereas at… at Nonesuch [ph] I mean it was just… from the word `go’… from setting foot in the classroom, the talk was of whether you were going to Oxford or Cambridge… and you know, that… that… that dad would pay and… you know, would make sure you did and… and… it… it was just a whole new world to me… and there was actually another woman, another girl, in… in my class, whose name was… Pat or Pam, who was the daughter of a policeman and she had real problems, as well, in the school, with… with the whole sort of privilege and… the expectation that you would do well, and if there were any chance that you were going to do well then… then dad would pay for you to do well, and… and she had problems with that as well, so… but I mean I liked… I loved Latin. I really loved Latin [banging noise in background]…’

`Can we stop the tape?’

`We were just talking about the school that you went to… what… what was the… was it called Nonesuch [ph] did you say?’

`Nonesuch [ph] Grammar School for Girls’

`And that was in…?’

`In Cheam, in Surrey…’

`And your sister was at the Secondary Modern at the same time?’

`Which was called Chatsworth [ph] Road, Secondary Modern School.’

`Right…and you said you were unhappy at that school… what particular reason was that… that you felt unhappy there?’

`I felt unhappy because I didn’t… I didn’t like the… the whole… atmosphere of privilege and… buying your way into things. I didn’t like that, and I didn’t fit in with that because, although… I had three friends who… we… we… we sort of hung around as… as a foursome… we… we… it was the time when The Beatles were around, and we were all avid Beatles fans, and we used to go to the airport and see them and we used to go to their shows, and we were… we were The Beatles, and I… I was Paul McCartney… usually… and we used to… we used to meet and… and sing and things… but… I… I didn’t really fit in very well with them, and the reason was that we… you know, as I say, my… my parents were struggling, financially, and these folk didn’t have any problems, they… they lived in very big houses… their… their fathers were all doctors, managers, you know, that sort of thing, and… I was really embarrassed about that. I mean I wasn’t embarrassed for my family, I was just… I just felt awkward that if we… if we went out to buy the latest fashion in something, that… that it… I couldn’t do it, you know… so I didn’t like that about the school. I didn’t like the emphasis on rules and regulations, you know, you… had to walk in single file down the corridors and, you know, you had to walk on… on the left hand side and… all the sort of rigmarole about what you did if you went to see the Headmistress and… the whole… I don’t know, it was just so rigid and it was so stifling… I felt… it was… I remember for instance, music… I mean, now… now I’ve had my three children and they’ve been through education, I just realised that subjects could be so interesting… and geography, history, you know, could be really… I mean they… they did some really interesting things and… it wasn’t interesting, it was boring and I remember… we used to have… music lessons, and… Mrs King was the music teacher and she would come in, and she would put a record on, of… a concert, of… a symphony, or whatever, and we would have the sheet music, and we would have to follow the notes in the sheet music, of… of the record. Well… I mean for… you know, most of us had absolutely no idea of how to do it. I mean I was better off than some ‘cause I’d had these awful piano lessons, but… when you do that, you… you totally miss the music, you know… because you… you’re so busy following the notes, that you lose any sense of… of the music, and I’m sure we listened to some wonderful music. It was all classical, but… I… I couldn’t say that I ever enjoyed any of it, it was just… and… and… the… the interesting thing was, that there were some teachers who, sort of, were so… different… and I remember the Eng… we had one English teacher, and we would have the… the sort of set texts for… for English, that were really at the time, very unimaginative, and she said to us… she… or… she might have just said to me, she might have just said to me ‘cause she knows… but she said to me to read `Cry The Beloved Country’ by Alan Patton [ph], and I read that, it was just such a wonderful book, and also the Gerald Durrell [ph] books, which were… which were so funny, and I remember thinking, yeah, there is another side to this, you know… there are some really good books out there. There are some really interesting things going on, but we didn’t see it at that school.’

`So what sort of things would you have been reading in the school?’

`Well, I mean… you know, [laughs]… I’ll say books and people will think `oh my goodness…’ you know, these are classic books, and I’m sure… but things like Silas [ph] Marner [ph]… we struggled our way through… and… what else did we read? I can’t actually re… oh… I can’t remember now… The Alchemist, I couldn’t make head nor tail of, but they were… the… there… I mean they… they were classic books, I don’t deny that, and they… they… they certainly have… have a place, but that’s all… that’s all we had. Except for this one teacher who… who like wasn’t there all that long, you know, but… but would say… and actually I think, lent me… her Cry The Beloved Country, and it was just so… refreshing, to… to… to, you know, to read that and to have a site of… another world, you know, another country, another way of looking at things, and for a grammar school, you know, considering that… people had apparently reached a particular educational level to be there… they were very unimaginative, you know, they didn’t… help people to… to think about things in any way. I mean all I remember of Geography is… trade winds bring warm wet summers and something, something winters… I mean I don’t remember it very well, but that’s all… and, you know, that they grow cocoa in this place and… and that’s all we ever did, with those sort of maps of… of… where they grew cocoa and… what the climate was like and… I was just really bored, except I did love Latin. I did love Latin. I mean I really had… a… a real interest in Ancient Rome, and… I liked… I liked the… the way Latin was written. I liked the words and… I used to like poetry, and even Caesar’s Gaelic Wars that we ploughed through… went on and on… volumes of them. I quite liked those as well. In fact I… I actually… what I wanted to do was to take Latin, Greek and Ancient History at A level. I wanted, at the time, I thought I.. I would like to be an archaeologist, and so I thought I would like to take those subjects at A level, but the school… couldn’t… wouldn’t do that. They didn’t.. they were doing Modern History and not Ancient History… they weren’t doing classical Greek. I could have done A level Latin, but I couldn’t do the other two. So… I left, in the fifth form, which nobody did… and it was a real… I mean I hadn’t… I… I had been… something of a rebel in the school before then, because my friend and I had… made our own skirts and… they were two inches shorter than they should have been, and it… and it caused… and also I had shoes that weren’t regulation which… meant that I was regularly summoned to… the headmistress to… to be told that I had to change my shoes so they… they were quite glad to get rid of me.’

`Did you rebel in any other ways in terms of your general… behaviour, or did you have any… can’t think of the word… detentions, that kind of thing?’

`I… I did have detentions, but they were… they were more in terms of… of… the… the uniform not being right and… than anything else, because actually… I got on very well, academically at school. I was always… you know we… we… it was strongly competitive, and we always had… at… at the end of every year we… we had exams, within the classes, and I was always first or second. Although the… the… within each year, the classes were streamed, and so I wasn’t in the top stream, which is how I came to be doing Latin, because people who were in top stream did German. People who were in the bottom stream did Spanish. I mean I don’t know what we… what we can talk and that, but anyway… that’s the way it was organised and I… and I did Latin. So… I… I got on… because I got on well, you know, but, I think… I mean, I don’t remember… rebelling in other ways. However… when I… decided to leave school in the fifth form, I was going to go to college to… technical college as it was then, and I applied to two, one in Wimbledon and one in Epsom, to do the same course… and I went for an interview in Wimbledon and… really, they… it was just a case of like if you… if you turned up for an interview you could come to the college. When I went to Epsom, it was… you know, we had to sit various tests, maths tests and English tests, we had to go for an interview, we had to… the whole thing lasted all day, and they had also asked for references or… or some sort of, not references, but some idea of… how well you were likely to do at O level, from your previous school, and… the headmistress put down that I was unlikely to get any. So, I mean I must have been… I don’t know what I was doing, I must have been doing something, because as I say, my… my memory is… is that I… I always did well, but I think she didn’t like my attitude… and so she thought, you know… that… she said… and, and they didn’t… and the college wouldn’t accept me because of that… because she had said that… and I remember thinking… the school had… quite a big hall and… the sixth form all sat on a platform at the front, and the rest of the school all had to sit cross legged on the floor, and all around the walls of… of the halls, was oak panelling, and… all… on the oak panelling were the names of all the old girls and the universities they’d gone to, and the years, and I remember thinking, `well I’m not going to be up there’ [laughs]… I got sort of delight about that really…’

`Did… sorry…?’

`No… go on…’

`Did you have… you mentioned that you were interested in archaeology, but when you were younger or when you very first came to that school, what was your sort of childhood… what did you think, oh when I grow up, I want to be…? Did you have any sort of dreams as a child or…?’

`No, I don’t remember having any… I can’t… I… I know that… quite early on… I… flirted with the idea of medicine… and I think probably, what I might have thought about in my… younger days was… was nursing. I think I always had that… that sort of feel… but when I… when I went to Nonesuch [ph]… and… got into Latin… I… just really loved that whole world… and so I… I… I… I really wanted to… not that I… I had ever… done… I’d never been on a dig or anything like that… but I did… go to… I remember going to the Pompeii Exhibition, which I just thought was wonderful. So… I think probably that early on I… I’m… I thought about nursing and then when I went to Nonesuch [ph] I thought about Archaeology, but I also… quite had this desire to go into medicine and I… I had that… for a long time. I mean that was quite a regret of mine, that I never did it.’

`To be a doctor or nurse?’

`To be a doctor, yeah… yeah… in fact, when I was… thirtyish, I… wrote round to some medical schools, to say… did they accept people who didn’t have a science background, you know, mature students… because I… I thought maybe I would do it then… but… I mean, at the time I had a daughter and… it… it was going to be difficult, you know, from the point of view of funding, although I think I could have done it, but certainly I mean, that was something I thought about.’

`Did… [pause]… you were mentioning The Beatles and some of those things that happened in the sixties, when you were still at school… do you have very… did they have a very strong effect on your later politics…and your feelings that you… seem to have quite a strong sense of social differences or social justice, if you like… do you think that was… is that all part of it… the change in the sixties?’

`Do you know, I don’t know where I got that from, I really don’t, because… my… my family… were never political. I… would guess that when I was in Bristol, my… my grand… oh, I don’t… I… I don’t imagine actually that my grandmother voted, but I think that if anybody voted, they probably voted labour, but with any real… without any real sense of… of why. When my mother remarried and they moved to Cheam, they were… conservative, very definitely conservative, and… I think my mother considered it to be a sort of sign of… of youthful rebellion, that I… both, had this socialist leaning, and that also I… I wasn’t a rampant racist, and… and she thought I’d grow out of it, and… she thought I’d grow out of it. But the… I mean music has always been very important to me, and… I mean Bob Dylan is… is totally the love of my life, and I had all… all… a lot of… most of his albums and… certainly when the early albums came out I always got them and played them, endlessly, and… so I… I think… but the… the strange thing was that that wasn’t shared by any of my friends. I had no friends that shared my views at all, except, and this is really curious… there was a woman, well a girl, in the school called Janet… no, it wasn’t Janet, it was Gillian, and… she was a socialist and… she… but she wasn’t a friend of mine but I just knew about her and… she would sort of… she… she… I… at the time, when I was at school I wasn’t actually that political. I just had this sort of… this sort of sense of outrage about me, but… but I didn’t translate it into anything, but Gillian was… and… years later, goodness knows, I don’t know how many years later… twenty, thirty years later… I met her, and she was a volunteer at national MIND, and I was working for national MIND. We suddenly realised that we actually knew one another from school…’

`Incredible coincidence?’
`Yes… just amazing… amazing. And we… we talked about our school days and… things that we’d done… so I mean I… I suppose that… certainly… I mean I went to… the technical college in Wimbledon, in ’66, and… we had… the first year of the course, I did a Diploma in Business Studies and the first year of the course we were at… a college building in Wimbledon, but after a year, it was… some of it was closed down and we were moved to a school, which was sort of, still within Wimbledon but quite a walk away, and there were outside toilets, there was no heating… and… so I… I mobilised the students, and I feel very proud of that, and said, you know, `we’re actually not staying here… you do something about this chum, or we’re going home’, and… the Department of Education, I sent a telegram to the Department of Education, telling them we were going to walk out if they didn’t do something, so I think that’s… that’s really my memory of the… [laughs]… the first sort of… rebellious thing I did in… in those sorts of ways, but I mean, you know, the sixties were good for that… as I say… it was easier to do things then. And I… when I was at the… at the college, we had to write a sort of… dissertation really, and… I did mine on the Vietnam War, and… the… so… I was… which I was very opposed to… and read up a lot on that in order to write it… so I mean I was obviously drifting in… into that sort of political way, then…’

`We’re going to have to take a break… and when… after the break we can carry on…’

[End of DVC Pro tape one]

[Start of DVC Pro tape two – VHS Tape one continues]

[Camera: `Interview with Mo Hutchinson, C905/10 tape two’]

`…at it… and…we were talking just before we broke about your… becoming politically active with the Vietnam War… and that was when you were at the sixth form… at the college…’

`At the college, yes… yeah…’

`And what did you study there?’

`I did a Diploma in Business Studies and… it was… it was quite amusing really because… there were… on… on the Diploma course there were… both, men and women, but… they had divided us up into the Ordinary National Diploma, the OND Secretarial, who were all the women, and the OND Professional, who were all the men, except there was one woman in the professional group, which we never quite… and we weren’t ever given a choice, we didn’t know this existed but what it meant was that if you were in the secretarial bit, that you did shorthand and typing and secretarial duties, whatever they might have been, and if you were in the professional group, you did typing, you didn’t do shorthand, and you did Office Organisation. But we used to.. the… I mean the reason that I knew they existed was because obviously we used to have quite a few of the lectures together, so, we… we realised that there were these two groups, although… as I say, nobody mentioned that at interview. Nobody said, `do you want to do the shorthand?’, which I would very clearly have said, `no thank you very much’. But then… I had only been there… for a short… I mean, I don’t actually know why I did that, I think it was the… the sense that… certainly my mother felt that I… I should get a job, I should get… and… and she felt that secretarial work would suit me. I don’t… I don’t know that I ever did, but I… I sort of… I… I suppose I just went along with it, and… but I’d only been there, not all that long… matter of months, and one of the… the English lecturer actually, the chap who I wrote the Vietnam War thing for, said, `look, you know… I don’t think you’re cut out for this. I think what you should do, is to… carry on with the Diploma, but also to take some A levels, and apply for university’, so that’s what I did. I took the Diploma and then… at the same time, in the second year, I took English, Economics and Law A level, and… at the time, I did think I might go into law. From a… a sort of human rights angle, I… I really liked Law, I still like Law… and… but then I decided… and it was… it was quite… difficult, knowing what to do at university because the college I went to was, at the time, really on it’s last legs. I mean it’s now been rebuilt and it’s… it’s very… a lot of people go there and it’s quite high profile, but at the time it was on it’s last legs, they had very few students and… they had no experience of people going to university... none… so… nobody really was in a position to advise me, so I… I just went to the library and read through the… the books about what the universities did… and decided to do psychology, which… I don’t know, quite why, I can’t think really. I mean it… it interested me, I liked the… the scientific bit of it, I liked that… and… I… I just… I actually applied to do Psychology and Sociology, and I was accepted for that… and this was at Southampton University, but… I’d… when I got there and I started on the course and I had a few lectures, in Sociology, I thought oh… I’m not going to like this… so I switched to single on a Psychology… and in fact I… my husband, who I met at University, he did the double Honours, he did Psychology and Sociology and… now, well, for… ever since he left university, has been lecturing mainly in Sociology and we used to have… not exactly arguments, but I… I used to say to him that I thought Sociology was just common sense, whereas Psychology had… you know, some meat to it… so, he didn’t like that very much. But yes, I mean I… I decided I just sort of read through things and thought well… I won’t… I don’t know why I decided not to go for Law, but I… I thought that I… I… I would be interested in Psychology, although I have to say, I really didn’t know much about it. It wasn’t really something I knew anything about, but no… I liked the sound of it. That was the end of it.’

`And that’s how you met your husband?’

`Yes, I met Paul… again, within quite… within weeks of being at the University, and… it was very… it was very funny because… because we were doing psychology, in the first year we had to do physiology, which involved, although I didn’t know it, dissecting… frogs… and… I… had no part of that… I… I… wouldn’t do it… but… when we went there, we were told that we had to buy dissecting scissors, so… we… we both went off. I hadn’t met, really… I mean I’d met Paul, but not… in any sort of major way, and then… there… there was… a hut, that we would do our physiology in, and we met outside the hut, and… said `have you got your physiol… your dissecting scissors?’, and I said `just look at my dissecting scissors’, and… it went from there… ‘

`[inaudible]… [pause]… Other than meeting Paul, what… what were your most poignant memories of your student days in Southampton?’

`Well… I… really regret the fact that… when I was at University, was really… when my mental health started to deteriorate, in… in a very major way, and I regret that for lots of reasons, because I… enjoyed being a student. I… I mean I would have enjoyed it a lot more. I liked the life… it was… I was there from ’68 to ’71… it was the sixties, there was a lot of buzz around, there were lots of… we used to go on lots of demos. We went on a demo for the… dustmen at one time and I… I don’t remember why, but we did… well there was a lot of… that sort of solidarity… and… I enjoyed that… I… I mean I really enjoyed… the sense of solidarity with… with people I felt solidarity with and… that the whole… ethos of university life, I enjoyed. I loved the… I loved psychology… I really thought I can do well at this, and I wanted to go into research… and… I’d not been there very long, when… I just… I don’t know, what happened really. I mean I remember what happened very clearly, in that I… I was in… digs with… with a landlady and her family, who I’m still in touch with, and we had a… I shared with another student and it… it was quite funny actually because the other student in my first year was… was the secretary of the Monday Club, which were an incredibly right wing organisation, so… that was quite lively, and… I went to… to bed one night and… we had to both have alarm clocks because she always got up late and I always had to get up early, and I set the alarm and I thought, `I’m not going to wake up in the morning’… I just didn’t believe that I… I thought I was going to die in the night, and… it wasn’t that… I sort of… I was… anxious about that, you know… I didn’t… rush to a doctor or try and keep myself awake or… or anything, I just thought, `I’m not going to wake up in the morning’, and really, from then on… at… at university, and throughout my life really… I don’t think I ever got back any… any sense of … quietness, you know, and relaxation with myself… and… and I was really sad about that, because there was a… when I was at university, there was a constant sort of… on the one hand, enjoying the life and enjoying the work and… the other students, and the politics and all that sort of thing, and on the other hand, feeling that… mentally I was just falling apart. And it was really difficult, you know, there was… you know, really difficult to… to come to terms with the very… yet, I think, in a sense, if I’d have been desperately unhappy there, then it… it would have made… made it easier in some ways, ‘cause I wanted to stay, I didn’t want to leave, but I just found it… I found it just really difficult to… to just… to just live. [Pause]’

`With the alarm clock incident, what did happen the next morning, can you remember?’

`I… when I woke up the next morning, I just woke up in a sense of real agitation and… and depression and… that… a… a sense… a real sense that I couldn’t go on any more. I just suddenly felt I can’t go on any more… and so I think, quite quickly I saw the GP at the… they had a student health centre on the campus… and… he prescribed medication, but… I… I… I… I mean I just got worse and worse really… I… I found it really difficult to… I mean Paul and I would go… to the pictures… [laughs]… I remember going… I remember going to see `Funny Girl’, and I’d only been in there… I don’t know… minutes really… and I said to Paul `I can’t stay here… I can’t stay here, I’m going to have to go’, and so we went to go, and at the time, they had… St John’s Ambulance people in… in cinemas, or in come cinemas, and they had one in this one, and there was… little old chap, and he sort of rushed over to us… and… what he could offer… he had this little flask, and he offered me this glass… you know, this… this sort of cup of water out of his little flask and… the cup was really… plastic and really grimy looking, and I thought, `oh God’, you know… `what are you giving me water for?’, you know… but it… it… it was that… he didn’t… he didn’t… I mean I didn’t know what anyone can do, and he certainly didn't know, didn’t come in to his bandage her up or put a plaster on it, so it was a… a cup of water, you know…’

`What had made him come over to you in the first place?’

`Well I think the fact that we had just got there and left… I think that was it, you know, that… I don’t think I was particularly upset, I don’t think I was… I… I just… I mean I might have been but I just think the fact that we sort of sat down, and then within a few minutes we’d up and went, made him think that there must be something wrong, so he’d come over to us… but as I say, his… you know, his… his experience didn’t extend to… to people in my situation. So… so I mean I found it very difficult to… just to do everything actually, just to do everything. Just to… to get up in the morning and to get through the day and to go to bed at night and it was… I was… on very strong sleeping tablets that were later put… on… the… under the DDA… the Dangerous Drugs Act, you know there were scheduled drugs, because… the… you know, people were using them in… in other ways, and sleeping tablets. Of course I didn’t know that at the time, otherwise I might have done but… what they used to do, they were really powerful and you would… I would take them and within minutes… minutes, I would have to get into bed, you know. They were really, very, very strong… they don’t use them any more…’

`Can you remember what they were called?’

`Mandrax' [ph]. They were called Mandrax. Yeah…’

`And are they… tranquillisers or anti depressants?’

`They were sleeping tablets, yeah…’

`And that…’

`They were called `Mandy’s’ I think when they became… sort of you know, drugs that people used. So I mean I used to take those, because I didn’t sleep very well and… and I took tranquillisers and I took anti depressants, and I… I guess I was in quite… a sort of haze a lot of the time really. I didn’t have any sense of what was happening to me, at all. I just had this real feeling… that I was falling apart in some way. I just felt I couldn’t… somehow keep myself together, you know, I just felt everything was all over the place… and I found… I found it very difficult. I… I… they had a psychiatrist who would come, on a weekly basis, to the student health centre, and… she was… based at one of the… Knole [ph] Hospital, I think, psychiatric… psychiatric hospital that was… was nearby, and she said she… she really wanted to try and keep me out of hospital, which indeed… well, she did… I mean, that I didn’t go into hospital in Southampton, but I spent a lot of time at the student health centre. [Pause]. I think that… I mean the… the psychiatrist was… well the… I mean she very much wanted me to take medication, but she also had a… sort of Freudian bent… and I couldn’t make head nor tail of what she was saying a lot of the time, and… didn’t make any sense to me. She was a nice lady.’

`Did you have any reservations about seeing a…a psychiatrist or… or seeing anybody about mental health problems?’

`None at all. None at all. I mean I… I actually wouldn’t have had any reservations about her saying `come into hospital’, because I just felt so… desperate… about what was happening to me, because I couldn’t make any sense of it, you know… I… it wasn’t… that I was really… incredibly depressed, although I was depressed. It was just this sense that I was… completely out of control. I just felt… that I… that I’m not functioning at all, I don’t know what I’m doing, and… I was very… I just wanted to do anything. I think I would have done anything that… that got me back together again, so I… no it didn’t worry me at all seeing her. I actually appreciated the fact that she was a woman. I appreciated that. I mean I don’t… I don’t think since then, I’ve ever seen a woman psychiatrist, but I did appreciate her… the fact that she was a woman… and… and as I say, I spent a long… a lot of time in the student health centre, which was difficult for them because… I mean they had… three nurses there, two in the day and one at night… but mainly, the majority of people who were there were people who had… glandular fever and… broken legs and sort of things that made it difficult for them to be either in halls or in their digs, and so, a bit like the St John’s Ambulance man, they didn’t quite know what to do with me... you know. I mean I didn’t need to be in bed, but where… there was nowhere else to be, and there was nothing else, it was just… bedrooms… sort of, I don’t know. So… I mean that was a bit difficult, but… but what I would do, would be… to spend particularly the evenings and the nights in… in the student health centre and then go, try and go to the lectures in the day, so that I didn’t get too far behind.’

`Did you, during that period, how did the people around you react to you… having those difficulties?’

`I think that… [pause]… there… there was… as far as I remember it, there was a… a complete acceptance, you know, there… there was… [pause]… I mean… the… the… people are… students, who I met there, well one student particularly, who… we stayed in… we got married and… Paul and I got married and then Ed got married and we stayed in touch with… with him and his wife ever since…’
`Sorry, who’s that?’

`Ed, the student I met at… at University, when I… I first started to sort of, go into the health centre and have the problems, and he was a friend of Paul’s… and he always says that when they used to come and see me, when I did go into hospital, that they could never work out why I was there. You know, they… they always said, well, you know, we could work out why everyone else was there, but we could never work out why you were there… but I think at the time… that I… I… there was… it… it didn’t seem to anybody strange… didn’t get that feeling at all. I didn’t… I mean I certainly didn’t feel that I had to pretend or… try and, you know, disguise what was going on. I mean everyone knew what was going on, and… and there seemed to be an acceptance of that.’

`With the… sorry, I’ll start again… [pause]… When you were at school and leading up to that… and so on, until you got to university, had you ever had any… had you ever felt any need for emotional support during that time?’

`Yes, I think so… I think… I… [pause]. Well… I think probably because I found school so difficult and then, went on to a college where, you know, I didn’t like the course and… I… I… did… become very… confused and… you know wondering. Also, I mean I had no real sense of what I wanted to do and… I had absolutely no notion of what my capabilities were at all… and… I came from a family where… having an education, being able to go to university and things, weren’t… weren’t valued, you know… that in… people didn’t know about, you know… people hadn’t done it in the family and so… I felt very much an outsider and I think I would have appreciated being able to… to talk through that with somebody. But at the time… that didn’t happen, you know… nobody did that. There wasn’t… you didn’t… you didn’t talk to people, you know, and I certainly didn’t talk to my mother… wouldn’t have done at all. But there was no sense that you would… sorry…’

`It’s ok… carry… go on…’

`No, I mean I think that… I mean certain… certainly at college for instance, that there was no idea that people might need counsellors or… I mean apart from the English lecturer, who said `do something else’ you know… I… nobody would ever sort of discuss anything about your life or you, or what you wanted to do or anything… so yeah, I mean I think… I think I was sort of heading for going off the rails quite… quite a… a time before I went to university.’

`And were there any other reasons that you thought yourself at the time might have caused some of your distress?’

`At University?’

`Yeah, you… you mentioned already that school was really difficult and there were aspects of… the difference in the expectations of your family. Were there any other things that you thought… these are my real problems?’

`I think that I… I was quite… concerned about not seeing my father. I mean I was very close to my father although I didn’t see much of him… and I was named after him. His name was Maurice and mine’s Maureen… and… and I know it’s probably that we do sort of idea… idealise people but I… I always… thought that we… we got on… and… and so I… I think that… that that was quite a gap in my life really, and… the… and the, you know, I… I… I… I think that, the sort of… the tensions at home, when we moved to Cheam… were… I found quite difficult… with my mother newly marrying and then, quite soon afterwards having a daughter and… my sister, very resentful about leaving Bristol… not wanting my mother to re-marry and… and… of course, when my half sister, Katy, was born, I suppose I was about twelve, and… so all the attention was on Katy… and, I mean that continued really, so I… I think, you know, there were… there were lots of things going on, yeah…’

`So when you were then prescribed the very strong medication and Mandrax, [coughs] excuse me… did that seem to you the right approach at the time or…or were you just not bothered as long as it would help?’

`Well, I didn’t actually have any notion of what these things might do. I had no… I… because I didn’t see myself as depressed you see, so I couldn’t… why were they giving me anti-depressants?, you know. I… I remember saying to… a psychiatrist once that… a lot… you know, a lot of… of my difficulties, were that I found it very difficult to accept all the sort of injustice and… the cruelty in the world, and he said, `I think that’s a bit of a red herring’… and I was really… when he said that I thought well no, you’re absolutely wrong there, and I think… I think he was wrong, you know, I think that… I… I sort of did… I had always carried around with me this… this sort of… this real sense of… of… finding it very difficult to live in a world where, you know, there was so much poverty, where there were wars, where, people were oppressed and… so I didn’t sort of see that as depression, you know what I mean, I sort of saw that as reality, you know… and so… when she, said, you know, to take the anti-depressants, I had absolutely no idea of what they were going to do, I mean… what were they going to do? Were they going to make the world a wonderful place? I mean, I didn’t understand that. But of course what they did do, was to… sedate me, so much that I just found it very hard… I… I just found it really hard to put one foot in front of the other, I mean I just felt like I was… walking through treacle all the time, it was just… and if I sat still for any length of time I fell asleep. It was… it was awful. They didn’t do anything, I mean I don’t have any… idea that they did anything at all.’

`It must have been very hard to keep up the studying?’

`Yeah, it was. It was really difficult, because… you know, there was the… there were the, you know, the difficulties in thinking in the first place… and all the confusion and everything and then… then there were the… the drugs and of course, nobody had said to me that I would have any… any of these side effects. I had no idea I was going to feel like this, so… of course, when it first happened I wondered what on earth was going on, I thought I had some brain tumour or something… because I just didn’t know that that’s how I was going to feel.’

`So you didn’t know the difference between what was wrong with you as it were and what…’

`Yeah…’

`…was the effects of the medication?’ [both talking together]
`That’s right, yeah… yeah. I mean I had no idea that they would have any effect, you know, bad effect… didn’t occur to me, I thought you just… you know, like Aspirins, you just took it and something went away. But I didn’t know what `something’ was [laughs] that was going to go away.’

`And there was no other alternatives near… voluntary organisations that…?’

`No, there was nothing at all… no, absolutely nothing. I mean they used to… as I say I used to go… I didn’t go every week, to talk to Dr Hall [ph]… but I did… I did go and talk to her and… but that was always a bit of mystery to me. I mean I actually liked talking to her, it was nice to sit and talk to her, but I would… you know, I would come out and I think well… I don’t know what that was all about… you know, and none of it made any sense to me. I didn’t believe it, I mean I didn’t think she was right… because it… I mean the way she was Freudian, the way that she did it was really to… give a Freudian interpretation of things that I said, or… things that I’d dreamt about or whatever, and I actually didn’t believe her, you know, I didn’t think it was right and so… ‘

`[Coughs]’

`…and, that was difficult.’

`You did also mention to me, in the research, about the suicide of a fellow student…?’

`Yes… yes…’

`But are you happy to talk about that?’

`Yes, that was… that was very difficult, because… there were some halls of residence that were a bit away from… from the campus, and there was one tower, block, and one of the… young men, I didn’t know him… I think he was… in… in… in the science department, but he was in my year, he was in the first year, and he… threw himself out of one of the windows… and I… I found that… very, very disturbing. I found it disturbing because I… thought it was such… a violent thing, to do… and I thought… how dreadful you must feel to do that. But also I think I thought that… maybe that would happen to me… and that… really scared me because I… I didn’t know if… once you… you decided that that’s what you would do, whether anything could stop you, you know so, I didn’t know that… if I suddenly thought right, ok, I’ve absolutely had enough of this, I’m going to kill myself… that that’s what would happen. So, that… that really did distress me, a lot, yeah…’

`So as if it would…it may… you were fearful that it might be out of your control.’

`Yeah… yeah…’

`Your thinking processes…?’

`Yes… yes… yes… yes… yeah, I thought maybe, you reached a point where something took over and because you just found it really painful, to get through each day, something else took over and… and you killed yourself, and maybe you had no control over that, you know. ‘Cause I… I suppose I thought, that must have happened with him to have done something so violent, you know, as jumping off a, twelve floor block or whatever…’

`Did that happen you while you were… being treated with the…?’

`Yeah…’

`…medication? Mmm… Did you talk to anybody about it at the time?’

`Yes, I talked to… I did talk to Dr Hall about it… but I… I don’t… I rem… I remember having a dream that when I dreamt it was me… who’d fallen and… she… in… I don’t remember how she interpreted it, I mean she went a lot… in a lot for dream interpretation, but the way she interpreted it, I mean usually I mean, as with all Freudian things I think it was highly sexual, but, it didn’t have any relevance to me… so I didn’t feel comforted. I wanted to feel comforted. I wanted somebody to say to me… `that won’t happen unless you really think you want it to happen’, you know, that… and… and nobody did. So I… I always… you know, I always walked around thinking `oh my God… you know… maybe… maybe I’ll do that… maybe that’s… that’s what will happen.’’

`And at some point did that… view change?’

`Umm… ‘

`[Coughs] Excuse me…’

`I think… I mean I… I suppose I still to this day, think that suicide’s an option for me… but I think I now believe that I would have more control over it… yeah, I mean I think I… I would think… it would be, more… in… in a sense, thought… not exactly thought through, but… but… it would be… a response really, that I decided at… you know, that I had decided to… to do.’

`It would be more of a choice than a compulsion?’

`Yeah… yeah… yeah… ‘ [Pause]

`So… this treatment that you were being given, what… what happened after that? What followed on?’

`Well… I went home, for a while, only a week or so, I think… and… then I went back to University and… really… I think sort of muddled my way through the rest of the degree. I didn’t see Dr Hall for the whole three years, so… I must have been discharged at some point. I don’t think… but I may have done… I don’t think I took medication for the whole of the three years, but I may have done. But I think that… I… I guess I… I don’t know really I mean I… I was very interested in psychology and I was very keen on the course, and… I liked the other students. I was with Paul… but I mean still, although, you know, that was really good, and we did have some good times and you know, we did have lots of laughs and things, there… there were… no, I think I still look back and think I really wish that I had been more together and could have made more of it than I did. In… in fact when my daughter went to University, which was four years ago now… if she… reminds me.. she reminded me throughout her degree, when I…I thought maybe she wasn’t working as much as she should, she reminded me that… she said, `mum, what… when I came here you said to me, remember to have fun…’ and I… I think you know, that… I… I regret that, that I didn’t have a lot of fun, and… and the other… complication, in fact at University, was that Paul and I had got engaged and… I think it was probably in our first year… yes I think it was… and we… we got engaged and his family were very happy about it, and then… after… Paul was very, very close to his family, he was an only son, was an only child, and… they were a very close family, did everything together and everything, and… I… when I used to go there with Paul, it was… it was very difficult… I was very much... I felt very much an outsider, and then eventually… they decided that they didn’t want their son to have anything to do with me, they certainly didn’t want him marrying me… and… that made life very difficult, and at one point Paul broke off the engagement, because he was like being pulled in two different directions, he had… a mother and father who he was very close to, who were very critical of me, not in any… like… any major sense, but things like, you know, I didn’t say please and thank you, they said, you know… and that I was critical of… of where they lived, which was… Hayes End [ph] in Middlesex, you know… which I… I mean, you know, I know nothing about but they… anyway, it was those sorts of things, it was nothing major… so Paul broke off the engagement and I went through a very bad time, then… I was very… sick… I was… I couldn’t eat, hardly at all… and it was… it was a very difficult time, and then… and I… I don’t remember, how many months were involved, but eventually… we got back together again. Paul decided… well we both decided… that we were willing to sort of… risk the… his parents’ wrath and continue with it… but… it was… it was a very… it was very difficult because, while I was with Paul and with his parents, I was… I felt very… I never know quite what the word is for lacking in confidence, but anyway, lacking in confidence, `disconfident’… anyway… and I was very nervous around them. I felt very judged by them. I was… you know, always… because they would judge me. They… they would judge me… if I didn’t take a cup out, that would be wrong, or… that… just seemed to be everything, you know, that… that was wrong, and, and so I… I’ve… whenever I was with them I felt really nervous about it, and then… we get… we… as I say, Paul and I got back together again… but… of course, I never went to see his parents again, they wouldn’t have me in the house, at all, they wouldn’t meet me they wouldn’t speak to me… so… that was quite a strain on both of us really… and… in fact, when… we left University, in 1971, we left in… the June… and… got married in the August, and none of Paul’s family came, to the wedding… you know… only his… his friend, was the only person who came, from… his side as it were, none of his relatives came.’

`And your family?’

`Yeah, I mean they were… they were fine…’

`And they liked Paul?’

`Yeah… yeah…’

`Is that… was that a class difference thing or… just a personal…?’

`I think… no… I think, I mean I… when I’ve met… when I… met Paul’s friends, they would say to me that his mother was… was… extremely protective and… was very judgmental about his friends and, things like that. Although I mean on the other hand, I mean she wasn’t judge… protective in… in… a… you know, Paul, before he went to University, he and his friend used to go out on their scooters and go up west to nightclubs in the West End and get back at all… I mean there was nothing wrong with that, I mean she didn’t mind that… but… to have somebody else who… was in his life like I was, she… she wasn’t very happy about. But his friends did say that, you know, they didn’t think it was me… they… but, of course that’s very hard isn’t it? I mean you… when you’re in that situation, all you can think is that it’s you… that’s all you can think and… so I mean I was… already… I felt that my confidence had been knocked anyway by… my experiences at… when I first went to University and having to go on medication and everything, and then to have this family… judge me and treat me as… I just found it very difficult and just really… I did… not sort of, trust myself to do anything really, or… or… feel happy about any decisions I’d made, so it was a very difficult time.’
`Did Paul’s parents know… about the difficulties you were having personally anyway?’

`Yes… ’ [both talking together]

` Did it have a bearing on their attitude?’

`Well yes. I remember… umm… having… Paul… I rang Paul when he was at home and he said to me, that his father had said, `I don’t understand mental illness, and your mother’s frightened of it’… and… in fact I mean I was a bit taken aback by that because I didn’t… it didn’t occur to me that… that they were… considering that when they thought about me, you know… I didn’t realise that…’

`That they… that they called it mental illness?’

`Yeah… yeah… I was… I was absolutely taken aback, you know… and… and… and particularly by him saying `my mother’s frightened of it’, you know, ‘cause I remember saying `well… what does she think I’m going to do, kill her with a bloody axe?’, I remember saying… [laughs]… so yes, I mean clearly… that must have had some bearing on… on how they viewed me, yeah…’

`And how did you view… did you view yourself as somebody who had mental illness or did you think mentally ill people were some… somebody else? If you understand my question…?’

`I don’t think… no, I mean I don’t know what I thought really, I don’t think I… I thought there was something deeply wrong with me. [Pause] And, I suppose… I didn’t see any difference in, what was deeply wrong with me, and what was deeply wrong with people who were called mentally ill, so… yeah, I mean, I guess I must have thought… that’s me. I don’t think it worried me. I don’t think it’s ever worried me. The only thing that… what worries me, what concerns me, is the… lack of care and support, that’s what concerns me. You know, I mean I think I’ve always felt that… if I had had, I mean, you know… the… the popular one, diabetes, but, you know, if I’d had something like that, it would just have been so different. And also my own family, particularly my mother… were really, very… ashamed of me… and that… I think that’s fair to say. I mean my mother would say, and I guess probably would still say actually, `we’ve never had anything mental in our family’, and she would say that she thought it might… must come from my father’s side of the family, ‘cause you know, he’s long gone, so we don’t know… but… the… she would… she’s always… whoever she’s spoken to… and… and she did at one time, speak to one of the psychiatrists I saw, and she… she said to him you know, `we’ve never had anything like this in the family’, and I think that’s been her attitude really, that it’s something to be ashamed of.’

`And did your sister… did… what was her…? Was her attitude similar?’

`My… my sister… had had post natal depression… and… she had… a son, who was killed when he was ten, on the road. He ran, across the road and died… and I think Sue’s view really, is that… in a sense I’ve had it easy, you know. She’s had an unhappy marriage, she had a son who died… and… she’s always, you know… whereas I’d had this education and… a nice husband, and things like that… and… that she’d always had to struggle, and she’s always worked… well, most of the time… most of her life she worked in shops, in record shops. She works in offices now, and I think… she felt that… I should sort of pull myself together and… you know, and count my blessings and… I… I mean I think, you know… Sue, although we didn’t get on at all well when we were young, I mean we do now, and I think that… you know, a big part of Sue would… would want to… to sort of empathise with me, but… what gets in the way of that is really her… the tragedies in her own life and her feeling that she’s sort of… not exactly overcome them, ‘cause she hasn’t, but that she hasn’t been in hospital, and of course… when I went in and out of hospital when I had… when my children were there and I had my three children… I think there was a… a real sense in the family, of outrage, that I should leave the children and go into hospital. There was a… a real sense that I… had let the family down… and Paul was a real hero who looked after everybody and… I was… really… considered to be an appalling mother and you know, that… if I was sort of anything like I would sort of battle on and be with my children, so… yeah, there was that.’

`There was a lack of understanding, really?’

`Yes… yes… yes… I mean I think that… I think it probably… in some senses, it’s fair enough, I mean I think it probably is quite difficult to explain to somebody how you can feel so confused and distressed and… totally… I can’t think of the word without swearing, but… I mean, totally screwed up, that you… you actually don’t know if you want to live another hour, you know… that’s… that’s probably quite difficult to explain to somebody, I think… you know when… and… and if you… if I… if I talked to people… about my real sense of persecution that I have quite often… I think you can… you can sort of see in peoples’ eyes that… they… `well, you’re just… you’re just getting this out of all proportion, you know…’ I don’t think that… that people can appreciate what it’s like. I don’t think they can. I don’t think that, if people… when… you know, when I have been… had particular difficulties and been particularly distressed, and you know, waking up in the morning and thinking… `shit, if I had a gun I would kill myself’, no two ways about it… `how do I get through this day?’. I think that’s actually quite difficult to explain to people, so I mean I… I do have… I do… you know it is a lack of understanding, but you know, I can see why that would happen and I can also see the… in a sense, the validity in their argument that… they haven’t had this in the family, ‘cause they don’t have experience, you know… I mean that’s true… they didn’t have experience of it, so… I.. I don’t particularly want to be the one that they gain the experience from, but there we are… I mean it’s just the way it’s worked out.’

`Shall we break there?’

`Yeah… ‘

`Ok… thank you…’

[End of DVC Pro tape two]

[Start of DVC Pro tape three – VHS tape 1 continues]
[Camera: `…is Mo Hutchison, C905/10, tape number three’]
`So… was your first experience of going into hospital, after you’d seen the psychiatrist when you were at college… at University?’

`Yes. The first time I went into hospital was after I got married. I got married, as I said, in the August of ’71, after leaving university in the June, and Paul, my husband had a place in Liverpool to do a postgraduate teaching certificate, and so… we moved up there… we didn’t know anybody up there at all and… we… we got… furnished rooms, in somebody’s house, and the idea was that I would find a job to support us, ‘cause we were only going to be there for the year… and… well actually… the… my problems really started just before I got married, and… I was… very… [pause] my parents had gone away for a week’s holiday, and… I, got very… I don’t know… I don’t know what the word is really… anxious, I suppose… but it was… it was somehow a lot more than anxiety, you know… and… I think… I went to the GP because I couldn’t keep still, at all… and… he gave me some drugs that I… at the… I had worked for a chemist and for Boots for a while, and I had a copy of the drug thing, MIMS, that tells you what drugs are, and I looked these drugs up and they said that they were for schizophrenia, and I don’t think I really quite knew what schizophrenia was although, we… we’d sort of done something about it at University… but… I… I didn’t like the sound of it, you know, I… I thought oh my goodness, what is this… and… I took these drugs and… I became more and more agitated and we were going to have the wedding in… in… a registry office and then we were going to have the reception at home, although my… my parents have a very small terraced house, but we were going to… it was August, we were going to use the garden, you know, and… I think it was the day before, I was washing lettuce, for the reception, and I couldn’t stand still to do it. I couldn’t stand at the sink to wash the lettuce, I couldn’t do it. I just had to keep walking backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards… and… when I got married, I mean it was a lovely day, it was… it was… it was absolutely wonderful and it’s the best wedding I’ve ever been to, it was great… and I… I was ok, but I was… I’d lost an awful lot of weight and I was about seven and a half stone which was… quite, you know… quite light for me, but… but we were ok… I was ok, you know and Paul and I had a good day and we went up to… Dundee for our honeymoon. A cousin of mine, who I really didn’t know, but… had… had said that he was going away for two weeks and if anyone wanted to borrow his bungalow, that they could do, and it happened to be the two weeks after we got married, so we went… but I was just so agitated. I mean I ended up… I went into a casualty department at one time, because I couldn’t keep still. I just couldn’t… and… I… it was… it was very difficult because we wanted to travel around but I just found it really difficult to do that. So… and then we went, straight from there we went to Liverpool, and Paul went… was… at the college, and I got a job… using my… I mean, skills isn’t the right word ‘cause then I wasn’t very skillful at it, but… doing typing… and… that… that sort of office work… in part of Liverpool that was a very industrialised area and… I hadn’t been there very long, and I started passing out… just `ppahh’ would go… which of course, I mean caused some… some concern, and… I… I was just very, very… very agitated, very distressed and I got a… an emergency appointment, with a psychiatrist at a… general hospital, that had psychiatric wards, and… he said to me that… because I hadn’t been married very long he really didn’t want me to come into hospital, but that’s where he thought I should be, and… anyway… the… I mean the thing was, it just all got so that I… I really couldn’t cope with anything, at all…’

`[Coughs]’

`I couldn’t cope with working… I don’t think I eat or anything like that, I didn’t… I just couldn’t… I couldn’t do anything really, and so he admitted me to the hospital and… they… I don’t know what drugs they gave me, but they gave me a lot of drugs, and… for some reason that I… I don’t know, now, I was in bed, and I remember getting out of bed and getting… and walking down the ward, and it was a very… at that time, the ward was… was a very… looked… looked like a medical ward, any ward, you know that… that… the nurses wore uniform, even hats and… the… beds… we had to make the beds in a particular way with hospital corners and… pillows turned away from the door or whatever it was, and so I got out of bed in this ward, and went to go to the loo and just… I was… I… I was so knocked out by the drugs, that I… I was just sick, really sick, everywhere, because I… I just felt so weak and… and it was the drugs, I mean that’s what were doing it…’

`Can you remember what drugs they were?’

`I don’t know, I have no idea. I can’t remember what it was… so… I stayed there really, just on medication. It was… it was… it was a very difficult time, because… there were so many people on the ward who… were in… in such… such dire… dire straits and… it just… it just seemed… there was… a woman who had real problems with… with alcohol who… actually while I was there, died. She was… she played golf and she collapsed on… on the golf course and died. There was another girl who was anorexic, who… just… was… and… and that was my first experience really, of… of… being on a psychiatric ward, and I was just so overwhelmed by the… tales of tragedy that, that people had there. It just… it just seemed awful, and… there was nothing to do… there… they had three psychiatric wards. One was male, one was female and one was mixed… and on both the… male and female wards there was a locked section, with about ten beds in, which was… more or less like a cupboard really… and at one time… I… had fallen down the stairs, I had passed out on the stairs and fallen and… and done something to my ankle, and the psychiatrist said that I would have to stay there, and I said well I… I want to go home, I don’t want to be here, and so… we… [laughs]… we argued, we disagreed and I ended up being sectioned and being put on the locked ward… which was actually… I mean I remember it very clearly and it… the door had… we had plastic knives and forks to eat with, and the door had a little sort of hatch in it, and they would push the food through and then the nurse would take it from the other side, and the bathrooms didn’t have any locks on them or… anything like that. There… there was nothing to do there it was just… beds… all the beds were together, and then, there was a little corridor and the… the bathrooms were off of that… and… there… it was sort of… characterised by people screaming, practically all day [laughs]… just… screaming and yelling and fighting and… and all sorts of things, but… I… I don’t know, I mean it was… amazing really that… I think it was because we were all women, but… very quickly there was a… a real sense of… of… solidarity and understanding and… and people would say to you, `look…’, you know, `don’t make a fuss… if you make a fuss you’ll get an injection’… yeah… and the nurses would say that as well, they would say that to me… just… you know, keep your head down, otherwise you’ll… you’ll get an injection, and in fact when… I was only there a few days and… ‘cause they didn’t renew the section, and… when I left and… I mean the agreement was that they would let me leave if I went back to the other ward, so I couldn’t go home but I could go back to the other ward… and when I left the… the… a lot of the women on… on the locked ward said, you know, `come back and see us… you know, when… when you can’. But it was… it was a… it was a very dark time. It was… it… and I knew nobody, in Liverpool, apart from the… my employer at this factory thing that I worked at who used to come and… and see me occasionally. I didn’t know anybody else. We were… ‘cause I wasn’t earning any money, and Paul had a very small grant and in fact, the woman who… who’s house we were in, dropped the rent to… I mean just something silly, so that Paul could stay there, because basically she wanted someone in the house, and she knew that we couldn’t afford to pay it, and we were… a bus ride away from… where we lived, from the hospital, and because it was… you know, we couldn’t… Paul couldn’t really afford the fares, he… he bought a second hand bicycle and had it stolen and it… and it just… it seemed like everything… I just couldn’t… and the… there were some things that… I… I remember… because I was in the hospital as… an inpatient for about five months, and then I went as a day patient, and… I remember getting on… on the bus one day, from where we lived to go to the… hospital, and the bus conductor saying to me… I think he probably had seen me on the bus before, but I… I mean I didn’t know… that he knew where I was going, because the hospital was a… quite a long way from where you got off the bus, but he said to me one day, `I’ll… I’ll light a candle for you’, and… you know, a lot of Liverpool was very Catholic, and I was really touched by that. I sort of wondered what it was about me, you know [laughs], that made him feel that he had to say that, or… didn’t make him feel, but you know what I mean… that he thought I needed that.. but… I thought, you know, I… I really felt that… that somebody had reached out to me there… and also the psychiatrist I saw, who… who was also Catholic, said to me, that… he… he would say a prayer for me… and on the one hand, I thought, `oh my God, are we down to a hope and prayer?’, you know, isn’t there more to it than that, and then on the other hand I thought that’s really human, that was really… I mean I didn’t… you know, saying prayers didn’t… wasn’t important to me, but it was to him, and for him to… to… to say that that’s what he was going to do… I was… again, I was really touched by that… and there were some really nice people in Liverpool but… I mean they were mainly people I got to know on the ward.’
`And how old were you then… roughly?’

`Twenty two…’

`And how old… did that compare with the average age of the other women that were there?’

`I guess I was probably one of the younger ones… if not… I think there were a couple of us who were about the same age, you know… and… I mean I made friends with… with people in there, who I kept in touch with for a while and then lost contact with. There was another woman, I remember very clearly… Gladys, her name was, and she had… she was training as a nurse, a general nurse, and… she had kidney problems and the hospital had some sort of specialist kidney unit, so… she had been admitted to that, and had become very depressed and so they had suggested to her that she should spend her time on… on the psychiatric ward, which she did… and the psychiatrist, who… she saw the same one as I… I saw, said to her, `you must give up any idea of nursing’, and… and she was like within weeks of taking her finals… and she gave it up… completely. I went back to Liverpool… oh, I don’t know, some… oh no, it was quite a few years after I left because I had my daughter, so it must have been six years, after I left, and I went back to see Gladys and… she was totally zonked on medication, she’d put on an awful lot of weight, she didn’t do anything with her life at all… I mean her whole life was about going to day centres or, whatever, and this had been a really capable woman who was going to be a nurse and I… I just felt really appalled… like, you know, I thought this is terrible.’

`When you went there, did you have any idea how long you might be there…?’

`In the hospital?’

`…for? Uh huh…’

`No, I didn’t. I didn’t have any idea, I don’t think he said. I think, if he… if he did say, he talked in terms of weeks… but… I think he probably, you know, I think he probably… I think he probably said a fortnight, I think he was… that’s what he said, and… as I say I was there for, I don’t know, five or six months. I have absolutely no idea what I did there, because… there was a hut just outside the ward… ‘cause the ward wasn’t attached to the rest of the hospital… the… the psychiatric wards were sort of out…’

`It was a General Hospital?’

`It was a General Hospital… ‘

`Uh huh’

`Yeah… you could walk through it to get to them, but then you had to go out in the open air [laughs]… and there was, next to the ward there was a hut that had… a table tennis table in, so we’d just play that… all day… and then there was another hut that had OT in it, but… it was… very much a case of… of… stuffing toys and… sticking tiles and making trays, and… that… I… I… I did make a green sausage dog, which my sister still has. But… other than that I didn’t really go in there and they did quizzes and that sort of thing, but… I didn’t really go in there so I have no idea what I did with my time… none at all.’

`Do you know how many people were there all together, roughly, as patients?’

`There was about… I suppose… must have been about, maybe twelve women and twelve men. The men were upstairs and the women were downstairs, and we used to all eat… downstairs, in the dining room, so I guess there were about twenty four of us on the ward. I… the television was upstairs in… in the men’s bit and although we were actually, we could go and watch it, it was sort of frowned upon, to do that, for the women to go up there and do it, so we didn’t watch television. Also, upstairs, they used to do ECT so… a couple of times week they would bring in whatever they needed and… chuck the men off the ward and use it for ECT. I had no idea what ECT might be… I mean I knew from the psychology, you know, but actually… how it was used or… I mean I really had no idea and then, there was… on the ward there was an elderly lady, I’m not quite sure whether… I don’t think it… it was sort of mixed in terms of ages, but… but she was… quite elderly and she… one night, I woke up and she was trying to get into bed with me and she kept saying over and over again that she was going to have BBC… I was thinking `BBC, what on earth’s she talking about…’, anyway, the nurse said that she was having ECT and she was very confused, and… I was in the room… just coincidentally, when the psychiatrist, who… who wasn’t my psychiatrist, was speaking to her husband, and… said to him, `look, I’m very sorry, we’ve given her ECT, but actually it’s brought on a state of dementia’, and… that’s what happened to her. She had come… gone in as… you know, in a depressed state, and had gone out as a very confused lady, so… I mean, whatever it was, I thought `I don’t ever want that, thank you very much’ [laughs].’

`And that was your first hand experience of that?’

`Mmm… mmm…’

`So were you very frightened that you might get that?’

`Never occurred to me that I would, actually…’

`Right…and did… were you given it, at that hospital?’

`Not at that hospital… no… I wasn’t, no… I don’t think anybody spoke about it, to me…’

`[Coughs] Excuse me… were you aware of your… rights… did you… you said you were sectioned there, did you know what that meant and…?’

`No… no, it…’

`Did you know that you were sectioned at the time?’

`No… Paul came in to see me, and I said `don’t sit down, go straight to the sister and tell her you’re taking me home’, so, he said, `ok..’, and off he went and he came back and said `I can’t take you home’, and I said, `well I mean I… what…?’, you know, and I couldn’t believe it, ‘cause nobody had said that to me. He said `no, I’m not allowed to take you home, you’re detained here…’, so…’

`How… can you remember how that felt?…during that…’

`I felt absolutely desperate. I thought… ‘cause that was just… I mean I… I had only just arrived on the ward and… I… I… I mean after a while… I mean, you know, [laughs], going on to a ward, where… I mean everyone had to wear their night clothes. There were no locks on… on… on the bathroom door… the food was… you know, it was… it was like the… I imagine, I’ve never been in a prison, but I would like… I imagine it was like being in a prison. Everything was very basic because of the concern of people getting violent or whatever… and there was a lot of… of screaming and shouting and… and… whereas the ward before had been very quiet, you know, I mean anything… well I don’t remember it, but I mean I imagine anything that went on was more in terms of… of people crying and things, but this was very different and I… I was frightened to death. I’d… but I… I couldn’t… I just couldn’t believe… I… I mean I just thought well… you know, Paul will come in, he’ll say, `look, she’s coming home’, and they’ll say ok… and I couldn’t believe it, when he said, `I can’t take you home’, I just couldn’t believe it.’

`And how did he feel about that?’

`Well he was totally bemused. I mean he had no idea either… and nobody had… contacted him, nobody had ever given us the impression that… that that was ever going to be, on the cards… so… I mean he… he just couldn’t believe it.’

`Did you learn anything about your rights to challenge that decision… to detain you?’

`No… I didn’t… I didn’t… I didn’t know I had any rights at all… I didn’t know. Nobody said anything about any rights, but it was the… section that was just three days… it was the old Mental Health Act, and it was three days… twenty eight I think or twenty nine, something like that… and… in fact I didn’t know that when I went to see… the psychiatrist, that it was to be assessed for being put on a longer section, I didn’t know that… I didn’t know that that was possible. I just, really… wanted… I mean I wanted to… to say to him… you know, if the option is that either I… I stay here or I stay in the other ward, then I’ll stay in the other ward, because… and the people were fine but of course you couldn’t go anywhere. You couldn’t go out the ward, you absolutely couldn’t go out the door. I mean it wasn’t a case of going out with the nurse, you couldn’t go out, the door was locked and you didn’t go anywhere.’

`So you didn’t get any fresh air?’

`No, you know… you couldn’t go out at all. Nobody went out from that place, nobody. Nobody went anywhere. They just stayed all day, in that environment, and there was one woman who spent her entire day, taking the sheets and blankets off her bed. Now, if that… if I was a member of staff I would say `fine, you do that, then at the end of the day when you’re ready for bed, we’ll put them back’, but they didn’t want that. They wanted the bed made, so every time she took them off, somebody had to put them back on again, so, that would be the… the way, the day was spent… for this woman… and… and ‘cause it was me… usually me who made the bed. So no… nobody went anywhere. There was nothing to do. I mean they didn’t have… there was no OT… the only… I mean the only thing that people did there was smoke, and at the time I didn’t smoke… and actually the staff said to me, `well you’re…actually you’re lucky that you don’t, because if you smoked, people would keep on at you all the day, for cigarettes, but… no, there was absolutely nothing to do. But… the thing was, everyone was very, very drugged, so I don’t think people noticed what… what was going on really.’

`So any… any form of entertainment? Radio or record player on the ward?’ [both talking together]

`No… I don’t… even think there was a television… actually, I don’t think there was a television on the ward. There wasn’t a radio. I don’t think there was anything.’

`Books?’
`Oh no… no… there was ab… it was… it was… it was like… I mean the lockers and everything, it was a… just like a general ward…’

`What sort of beds were they? Can you describe the bed?’

`The beds were… sort of standard issue, NHS beds with… they weren’t… you know now, quite often in… in psychiatric wards you get those sort of divans with… with the… the… better headboards and things, that look… you know, like ordinary beds. These were hospital beds…’

`So, metal… things?’

`Yeah… yeah… yeah…’

`Did… did you have any privacy there?’

`None, at all. You were all together, all the time. There was no room anywhere, apart from the bathrooms… that were unlocked, but… there was no room anywhere. There was just like one room and… as I say the corridor and the bathrooms and… I… I suppose… I don’t remember there being a nurses office but I suppose there must have been… I suppose there must have been [pause]. It was very cramped… very small… it was just like a big cupboard, you know… just felt like we were all on top of one another, and there was… a table in the middle, where we had our meals, you know, passed through the hatch and we’d have our meals there…’

`What sort of meals were they, can you remember?’

`The… it was just standard hospital fare, really… you know, pretty…nothing very exciting…’

`And if you… say you were hungry in the middle of the day, or when the… a time…

`You didn’t get anything. You didn’t get anything and you didn’t… I mean you… there was coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon… and you didn’t get anything apart from that. You couldn’t ask for drink at all. You wouldn’t get anything.’

`So you couldn’t just go and help yourself to a cup of tea when you were thirsty?’

`You couldn’t go anywhere. You couldn’t go out of that room, except to go to the bathroom. You couldn’t go out anywhere… and, I mean you certainly couldn’t go out of the door, it just wasn’t on. ‘Cause I know that… you know, sometimes… I mean I haven’t been on a locked ward since, but I… I’ve… worked on them and I know that sometimes, you know, people are allowed out with nurses and things like that, but… in… there was nothing like that… it was… it was as though we were a collection of totally mad women, who needed to be kept away from everybody else. That was the view, and I think I probably had that view, before… you know, I mean I knew about the locked ward, and I think I probably had that view, and when I went on there, I was so staggered that everyone was so ordinary. You know, it was really funny, I mean they were just ordinary women, with… frequently, horrendous tales to tell and… I thought well this is just… it was just… staggering really that… that you could actually put people in that situation and… and just… lock the door, and walk away from them. Terrible. [Pause] And when… in fact… I… I think they didn’t quite trust that I was going to stay, so when they… I was only in that… the locked part for a few days, and when they let me out, I went into the main part of that ward, rather than back on the mixed ward, and it was staggering, because I had no idea how many beds there were on that ward. There must have been twenty. They were so close together that you honestly had to be careful how you got out of your bed so you didn’t get in somebody else’s, and there was tiny little lockers, and if people had… clothes and things, which… which obviously we did, because then we could wear clothes, in that bit… there… at one end of… of the ward, there were wardrobes, that you could put your stuff in, but you just mixed them up with everybody else’s, you know… just, you didn’t have anything of your own…’

`[Coughs] Excuse me… can you stop a sec?’

[Pause]
`So, you got your own clothes once you’d gone into the mixed ward, but you weren’t… you hadn’t been allowed to have your own clothes in the locked ward, is that right?’

`Yeah…’

`Ok, and have…’

`I got my own clothes. As I say, I went from the locked ward to be in the women only ward, that wasn’t locked and the… the locked ward was just off of the… women only ward, so, before I was sort of allowed back, to the mixed ward… I… I was on that ward, and I could wear my own clothes then, but there was nowhere to put them. And also I think, that most of them were still on the… the mixed ward anyway. I think they were still there. So… I didn’t have… have much with me.’

`And was Paul allowed to visit?…Or did you have any other visitors?’

`I didn’t have any other visitors, at all. Well I didn’t have any visitors when I was in Liverpool apart from my, mum and dad came up once… and… [pause] I don’t think, I mean Paul came that once to… to see me when I was in the locked ward. I don’t remember him coming again, then… but he… he may have done, but he… I mean he didn’t visit every night, it was just… it was just too far and too difficult for him so… I think he probably… I don’t remember him coming when I was in that part, at all… I think he probably waited until I was back.’

`And did you have any access to any form of communication, such as telephones or writing letters?’

`Umm… not to ‘phones in that… there weren’t any ‘phones at all in that part of the hospital. If you wanted a public ‘phone you had to go into the general part of the hospital, and… there… there were no, I don’t remember any sort of hospital shops or anything where… where you could… where you could get anything, but the hospital itself was… was in… in an area that there… there were shops around there, but of course I didn’t know Liverpool at all, and I… I didn’t know this area, it wasn’t where we were living, and it was another area… didn’t have a clue where I was. I mean I didn’t… just didn’t know… and I don’t… I mean you weren’t particularly encouraged to… to leave the hospital grounds anyway, and I… I was quite worried that I was going to get lost, you know, I quite thought if I take a wrong turn I… I might never find where I am again, you know… so I didn’t really go very far, although sometimes I did go out for a walk, I did occasionally go out for a walk.’

`Was that an escorted walk with a nurse or…?’

`No, I went out… actually… I went out a couple of times with… with some of the other patients and… just went around to… we… we found a park and we walked around there… but… I mean normally I didn’t go anywhere.’

`How did you find the staff? Their… attitude towards the patients?’

`The staff were very… they were very medically orientated. They were… they were… you know, ‘we are nurses’ and… they never spoke to you. They would never ever speak about how you were feeling or if anything was worrying you or anything, never… and there were… there were two male nurses, there was a charge nurse and an auxiliary, and they were both young men and they were really… [pause]… I… I mean abusive is too strong, but they… they made considerable… they made a lot of the fact that there were some young women on the ward and that they were young men and… it didn’t… it didn’t really feel very safe to me. I mean the… the sort of… the washing bit was just… it was… it was the… as… it was… like… when you go into motorway service places, and there are all those basins that you can wash your hands, it was like that, only you had to wash, you know, so there was no privacy at all…’

`So it… there was no showers or baths or…?’

`I think there.. there were baths, yeah… yeah… I don’t remember but I think there must have been, but if you just wanted a wash then, there was no privacy at all… and…’
`Not even a curtain between…?’

`No… none, and… I mean… what I was meaning about… about the male nurses was that they would walk in and out, you know, I mean without knocking and… and I said to one of them once, ‘cause he had walked in and I was undressed, and I said, you know, `would you mind knocking next time?’, and he said `if I knocked, I wouldn’t have seen what I saw’… and I was just… appalled, you know… it didn’t… it just didn’t feel to me that… it… they just… their attitude was so… I don’t know, I can’t quite describe it, but it was like… like being lads… being on holiday, you know what I mean? It… it… that how… how it had… had the feel of it… about it, like they were… make the most of… of any situation that… that came up… and they… I mean all of them…’

`You mean they were having a… a sort of laugh and not taking things seriously?’

`Yes… yes… yes they were. Yes, it was… it all felt like… a big joke to them. And in fact, one of them, the chap who had walked in on me, had a hairdresser who was very well… not a hairdresser, a barber, who was very well known because he’d cut The Beatles’ hair at one time, things like that, and so… he took me there to have my hair cut, because I had very long hair then and… we… we sort of thought may… that maybe a change of image was… was good. So, you know, there… there was that side to him… but it… it… it was… I… I… I never got the sense that they were really… tuned in to how terribly upset and confused people were. I didn’t ever get that… feeling… like, I mean the… the woman who, was alcoholic, May… it was all a big joke to them. You know, she would… she would go out for the weekend with her husband and they had pots of money… and he would bring her back, and she would always be drunk, and it was just... and she would just get undressed in the middle of the ward and… you know, they all thought it was a huge laugh and… I don’t know, it just felt really… it didn’t seem to me that anybody was doing anything that would be in any sense, beneficial to anybody, at all… at all… I mean I’ve no idea what May was doing there really. She was just… she was just, you know, killing herself, and nobody was able to do anything about… I mean nobody was trying, you know… nobody was trying. It wasn’t as though they’d failed, it was they weren’t actually weren’t doing anything. They actually weren’t doing anything.’

`Did you have any of your own posessions there?’

`The thing I did have, was… tape recorder. A cassette player… I mean those… in those days, they were… they were sort of… although they were portable they were quite big, and they weren’t sort of walkman things, and I had that, and… my sister had done me a tape, and… and that… in fact that’s the only tape I had, so I used to play it over and over again.’

`What was on that, can you remember?’

`It was Christopherson… Chris Christopherson…

…yeah…

…Really miserable music, you know… [laughs]… sort of typical… real music to play if you were really pissed off, you know, and say `oh my God…’, but yeah… yeah… I had that. I think that’s all I had. Didn’t have any books or anything like that. You never had anything. And I remember, there was a… a registrar, the psychiatric registrar on the ward, and she declared that… what used to happen was that… people would have their lunch and then go and lie down, for a while… basically ‘cause there was actually nothing else to do, but also because people did have a lot of medication and were quite tired… and she suddenly decreed that this wasn’t a medical ward, and that there was nothing physically wrong with anyone on the ward, so nobody was to allow… to be allowed on their beds, and… it… although… I… you know, I could understand what she was saying, I just kept thinking, `well, what else is there to do?. There’s nothing else to do…’, and we can’t… walk around, it’s not… it wasn’t the… a sort of place that you’d want to walk around… you know, just pop out now and again, but you wouldn’t want to walk around there for… every day… and… and… not many people went to OT, and it wasn’t on all the time anyway, and… I mean, you know, there’s a limit to the amount of table tennis you can play [laughs]… but… I thought well, if… if… if the woman had… had offered something as an alternative, that might have been reasonable, but she didn’t, just… you know, `you’re not allowed to lay on your bed and that’s that.’ So it would become a battle… course… after every lunch time, people going lying on the beds, nurses come along saying `get off the bed’, you know, and the beds didn’t have… screens round, like on… runners, they were… you know, they… it was… they would bring the screen. They were mobile screens, so… I mean you didn’t … when you got ready for bed you didn’t have any screens there, ‘cause there was only like one pair of screens per ward, you know, so you just… got undressed sort of publicly, really…’

`And did you ever wake in the night and…? Thinking of the lack of privacy? I was just wondering how it felt to wake up in the night in that situation?’

`Well I think that because of… of the whole way it was, you just… you would… if you woke up in the night you would just think, `this is… this is what being in hospital is’, you know, being in a ward where, you’re sort of cheek to jowel with somebody else, so there was… there were real contradictions, because… I… I think you would… you would expect in a hospital, and to do something… you know, something to be done, or something to happen, and if it didn’t… I mean I… I was lucky in that… the consultant would speak to me, quite frequently. He was… there were three consultants on the ward and the consultant I had didn’t have any private patients. He… he was a socialist and he didn’t believe in private medicine. The other two did, and people never saw them. They very rarely saw their consultants, because they were in their private practice, it was known… people would say, `they’re in private practice’, so I saw more of… of my chap, than anybody else, but he was… he was very reluctant to talk to me and he would never talk about how I was feeling. I don’t know what he talked about really. We talked about football and the Labour party, and… [laughs] you know… but I… I remember… I mean he was actually… he was a very caring man. He was a very caring man, but… just after I had… had been admitted to the ward, he wanted to see Paul and he met us… he… it was upstairs, it was… they had, upstairs, where the men were, they had two or three, I think it was only two little rooms, that they could use as… as consulting rooms, and he met us in there and he sat, one side of the desk, and Paul and I sat the other, and he leant back on his chair and he… he folded his arms, and he said to Paul, `If I were you, Paul, I would divorce her… because she is going to spend the rest of her life in a long stay hospital’… and… I was… well, you know… I mean, I don’t think… I didn’t believe it… I didn’t not believe it, I thought… `well he might be right’, you know, I did think that… but… I was… I… I think I was annoyed that he said it to Paul before he’d said anything to me, you know, I thought I quite wanted to know what he was going to say, and… it just seemed very bald, you know… I… it was… you know, there’s no two ways round it, it’s this is going to happen, just get out while you can, mate, you know… and… but Paul said that what irritated him more than anything was the way he folded his arms [laughs]… just thought… it was really arrogant, you know… so… but I mean I… in his defence, and I don’t see why I should defend him really, I think he genuinely thought that. I think he really thought that he was giving Paul an opportunity to get out of the marriage and leave me, you know, I think he was… he was just thinking, `well I’m telling it like it is’, you know…’

`So you were about twenty two then?’

`I was twenty two’

`And being told, that you’re doing… not been married long, and there was this psychiatrist saying to you, to Paul and yourself, Paul should divorce you? How did that actually feel, for you?’

`Well… I was… I don’ think I was surprised. I don’t remember being surprised. I think that… I knew Paul wouldn’t, I suppose… you see, I think… I knew he wouldn’t do it, I knew he wouldn’t believe him because… Paul has… very little time for doctors, and… I knew that… that… that that would just really antagonise him, there wasn’t any way he was going to say `oh well, thank you very much Dr White for your advice, cheerio’, you know… I knew he wouldn’t do that, so, although I wasn’t… I wasn’t actually surprised by what he said, I knew that it wasn’t going to have that… the effect… that that… he was anticipating. But even… even… I mean I can remember it even now, and that’s, what… you know, nearly twenty eight years ago. I remember the room really clearly and I was… I was on this side and Paul was on that side and Dr White was over there… and… just feeling... I… I remember feeling extremely powerless, with two men… and thinking `between them, they’re sorting out what’s going to happen, and I’m not in this’, you know, and even the fact that… Dr White called him Paul annoyed me… I thought, you know, `you don’t know him, why should you call him Paul?’, and it was those sorts of things, you know, that… that I remember.’

`What did they call you incidentally? Did they call you Mo, or Mrs… Hutchison?’

`Umm no, they… they call… I think they probably called me Maureen, yeah… at the time. He might have called me Mo actually… yeah, I think he did call me Mo, ‘cause Paul’s always called me Mo. I think he did, but… he did it in a way that implied… I was the exception… you know, it was sort of special treatment in some way. It was sort of done in a jokey way, I don’t quite… I can’t quite explain it, but… but he… he had… he’d not met Paul and… I don’t know, I didn’t like it. I didn’t like that… that… that… at all…’

`Very familiar sort of approach?’

`Mmm… it was… it was like, you know, `oh well us men…’ you know… `oh we can… we can sort of… decide the fate of this poor woman…’.’

`Can you recall how the medications were given out?’

`They were given out… at the office. We had to queue for them... I think… they… it was either that, or they had a trolley. But I think we had to queue for them. Mmm… I didn’t have any idea of what I took.’

`Did they sort of call out the name and… I was just wondering how their queuing system…?’

`No I think you just queued and then, when it was your turn they found… what you had to have… but there was no discussion about it. It was just sort of `three of this and two of that, and one of something else’, you know… pfff [ph]… no idea…’

`Give you a handful of things?’

`And a bit of… yeah… anything and… they were changed and… increased and… things added and things taken away, we’d… no consultation, so you’d go one day and you might have something completely different, and you’d say, `Well what’s this?’, `Ah, well he’s decided you’ll have those…’, `Well what are they?’, you know…’

`Would they tell you if you asked them?’

`No, no, no, no… they would… they would hedge… `Oh, well they’re the same sort of thing as you’ve had before’, it was all that… that sort of thing, so… I had no idea really.’

`Did you ever try to refuse them?’

`No I didn’t, no…’

`And why is that?’

`Because I was… I was quite… frightened… by the whole hospital sort of setting. [Pause] And also, there was a very strong sense, everywhere, on those wards, that if you didn’t do as you were told, you would get an injection. I mean that was just… it was just common knowledge… and they used to give you Paraldehyde [ph] that I don’t think they use any more, which is evil… I mean it just completely knocks you out…’

`By injection?’

`Yeah… yeah… completely knocks… it’s a bit like Largactil, I think, I don’t know. I don ‘t think they use it any more, but it just completely knocks you out. You just can’t move…’

`Did you see that being done to other people?’
`Oh yeah… oh yeah… they were… for sure it would shut them up, I mean for God’s Sake, they couldn’t move…’

`Was it quite an instantaneous thing [both talking together], or did it take a while to take effect or…?’

`[Both talking together] Yes, yeah… no… it was very instantaneous. It was instantaneous and it would just knock people out, you know… they couldn’t move, they couldn’t get up…’

`For how long?’

`Oh, for quite a few hours. Oh you know, it was quite long lasting.’

`And did you ever have that done to you?’

`No I didn’t… no.’

`At that place?’

`No, I didn’t, no… no… and I think that’s why I didn’t sort of… challenge anything really, ‘cause… I mean I had seen it happen to people, and… I knew it was… it was really their first line of response and… I was terrified. I didn’t want that to happen.’

`So it was… was it a bit like a lesser of two evils, that you…[both talking together]?’

`Yeah, yes… yes…’

`…took the tablets rather than be forced an injection?’

`Yes… because the thing was, that you had no clear idea, of what you had… what you did… what, it was necessary to do wrong, to get this injection, you know what I mean, you didn’t know… you know, you… you almost… there was almost the sense that… like if you didn’t eat your dinner or, you know, it was that… like that trivial, you… ‘cause it… it didn’t seem to be for major things, and… I mean sometimes if people were really upset, they would get an injection, you know… just like ordinary crying, they would get an injection so… you know, it was… it… it was difficult to know, so you just thought, `well… do everything they tell you really…’’

`That’s interesting, so… how did that affect people’s display of their emotions? If you say that there was a fear that if you cried… you may get an injection? Did that affect you personally, knowing that…yeah?’

`Yeah, I mean… I don’t remember… on that ward, any… real… signs of people being distressed. People were… I think they were terrified actually. Very contained… there was… very little… sort of… outward anguish of any sort… and it, you know, it was in such contrast to the locked ward, and… and indeed the other part of that ward where… where people… were, I mean very close together… but, you know, there was a lot of… of sort of… anger and shouting and things but… but not on the mixed ward, it was… it was… it was really subdued, it was really… very… lacking in any sort of stimulation at all… it was… it… it was dire. I mean it was awful. We… we used to talk to one another, but it was more about what had been… what was going on, you know… where people lived, what they were doing, what their family… there… there were very few visitors, actually, I do remember that… very few visitors, very few people came… and…’

`Did you…? Sorry…’

`There were, ‘cause downstairs there were… two women’s wards downstairs, and I think one must have had something like ten beds, and the other probably had six… and there were two private rooms there… private in terms of, not that you paid for them, but they were... at... but... having said that, they did actually have somebody in one of those rooms who was a doctor, and she was put there…’

`You… she was working there or she was a doctor and a patient or…?’

`She was a patient there… and she was a doctor, yeah… but she was put in one of those rooms… not quite sure, how people got them, you know, what…’

`Do you think that was a privilege thing?’

`Yeah, I think there was a sense that if… if… if you were somehow special in some way I think you got one of those rooms… I didn’t… I don’t think it was related to what treatment you had, ‘cause I don’t think there… there really was any treatment that I remember… or… or… I think you… you might have one of those rooms if you were physically ill as well. I think maybe… maybe there was that as well.’

`Did you have access to things like… you were saying there weren’t many visitors, did you have access to things like newspapers or… how… how did you keep in touch with the daily… world, with what was going on outside?’

`I didn’t know anything about what was going on outside. If I… I’d… I mean if I did want a paper… I didn’t… I don’ t think I ever… I don’t remember reading a paper, I’m sure I probably did, but… they weren’t… they would obviously have, throughout the ward there would be deliveries of newspapers but they didn’t come to the psychiatric wards, they didn’t come there… and as I say, we had the television, but it was upstairs, so that was a bit frowned upon, so we didn’t do that. I… don’t remember there being a radio. There might have been in the room that… that was used as the dining room, but I don’t remember. I mean I really don’t remember being aware of anything that was going on, apart from what was going on in that little… I don’t remember anything about… what might have been going on in the world, you know…’

`And is that something that… you were aware of at…did it worry you, that, at the time or…? Did it bother you that… that you didn’t know what was going on outside?’

`No, I don’t think it particularly bothered me. It just seemed like a funny way to live, to me. It seemed like, living as if you were expecting not to live much longer. You know… it seemed like there was no future in it.’
`It was the end of the road sort of…?’

`Yeah, that’s what it felt… it felt… and there was a chap on the ward whose name was Fred, and he was quite… overweight… and he would… every day, he would go out and… he would walk round, the graveyards, that were near, looking for a suitable epitaph for his grave.’

`How old was he?’

`Must have been in his thirties, something like that.’

`So he thought he’d never come out?’

`No… no… he thought, yeah. He was quite jovial about it, you know, but… he just thought well, you know, it’s the best use of his time to go and find something that he wanted to be said on his grave stone.’ [Pause].

`Shall we take a break there?’

`Yeah, ok…’

[End of DVC Pro tape three]

[Start of DVC Pro tape four – VHS tape one continues]

[Camera: `Interview with Mo Hutchison, C905/10 tape number four’].

`Are you happy if we move on from your hospital experience in Liverpool, unless there was anything else you wanted to add about that?’

`No… no… no…’

`To the next stage in your life, which I think, correct me if I’m wrong, was… that you moved from Liverpool, you left that hospital and you moved to Kent, is that right?’

`That’s right, yes. Yeah, Paul got a job, in Kent, so we moved back down.’

`And were you working at the time, in Kent?’

`I had a job in Epsom… in one of the hospitals there. That was… the job I’d applied for was a… a research post, but in fact, I ended up doing mainly secretarial work for the Clinical Psychologist there. Mainly because his secretary had left, and I had the skills and… it was a bit of a compromise. He sort of said that I could do some research as well… if I would do the secretarial work, but in fact I ended up just doing all secretarial work.’

`And which hospital was that for?’

`It was St Ebbas [ph], which was a large, what would now be called `learning disabilities’ hospital.’

`What was it called then?’

`Subnormality… it was called a Subnormality Hospital.’

`And, what… what happened after that job? Or during that job?’

`Well, I had… been there… I hadn’t been there very long, a matter, I suppose, of a couple of months, and I… I mean I don’t think I’d ever got on an even keel really, from… coming from Liverpool, and we’d moved to Redhill, and again, we’d got furnished rooms, but it was in quite a large house there, and… I… I got… more and more unable to… to do anything, just to… again, I don’t think I cooked. I was terrified of being in the house on my own, and I was terrified of going out… not in an agoraphobic sort of sense but… just that I didn’t know what I would do. I didn’t know what was going to happen, you know, I was just… I really… I was so… muddled and… uneasy all the time, and… I… saw the GP, and she sent me to see… a psychiatrist at Redhill General, and he was… he was actually a registrar, although I didn’t know that at the time, and, he said that I should go into the hospital and that there was this new drug, and I would be in there for ten days, and dah de dah [ph]… and… eventually, after my… much sort of `iffing’ and `butting’, I decided that I would do that, so the hospital that… he had beds in, that he came from, although he was in Redhill General, was actually Nethern [ph] Hospital, which is, or was, it’s closed now, a large psychiatric hospital in… it’s near… fairly near Croydon, in Surrey, it’s a place called `Hoolie’ [ph], and… right at the top of the hill… and there were no buses, ordinary buses, to the hospital. There was the staff bus that you could get up, so… you just had to walk up the hill… I… I suppose you know, I was a lot younger then and considerably fitter, so I did it, but…’

`How long would that have taken, to walk up that hill?’

`It took about twenty minutes, to walk up the hill, ‘cause it was quite… it was at the top and you had to keep crossing the roads, ‘cause the road sort of zig zagged, like that, up the hill… and it was… when I went in, which was… about September time… so we’d moved back down South in the summer, and I’d got the job, and then this was about September time…’

`What year roughly?’

`And that must have been… ’72… and it was… a very, very large, psychiatric hospital… huge grounds and gardens and… buildings all over the place, and a huge main building with a very impressive sort of driveway sweeping round, and… lots of wards actually in the main buildings, but then all these… these… wards everywhere else. It was like it’s own… a… a community… in itself, because, all around… there was nothing there, I mean it was in a small village, but up the hill, there were roads around that had lots of houses, that people who were nurses at the hospital had lived in for years, their fathers had been… worked at the hospital and… so, you know, it was a community, in it’s… it’s own right, really… and it was… it was September time… and… I think… I’d gone on the bus from Redhill, because Paul couldn’t take me to the hospital, and I’d gone on the bus from Redhill, and I’d got my case, and everyone on the bus was going shopping… because… it was obvious they were going shopping. It was mainly women on the bus and it was sort of the middle of the day and they… they were going shopping, and I just felt there was such a contrast between… me sitting there with my case… a… a really small case actually, I had hardly taken anything, and these folk chattering around off to Croydon to do their shopping… and I went up… the bus stopped at Hoolie, and I went up the hill, and I went into the main building, and there was a reception area there and a, porter… and I said that I was being admitted to Farm Villa, so he said, `well I’ll give the ring… give the ward a ring, and somebody will come and meet you’, and so I sat in… in the waiting room there, and waited for this nurse, and when she came she took me through the main building and we down these endless, endless corridors and we passed all these folk who were shuffling around in clothes that didn’t quite fit them, and muttering to themselves, and… it was… it was very… it felt very dirty and… it… it… it just felt endless, you know, and we would go out of one door and in another door and I thought `where on earth are we going?’, and actually, some time later I realised that the villa that I was in, was actually quite close to the main building, and you could come out the main entrance and walk down a very pleasant road, to the villa, so there was absolutely no need for her to do that. I’ve no idea why she did it, but it was totally unnecessary… but I felt totally disorientated, of course I didn’t know where I was, you know, when… when you’re following somebody and she says `go left here, go right there’, and you just wander along behind, you know, you have no idea where you are… and… I went into the villa, and I remember thinking `villa, that’s a stupid name for a place’, anyway I went into the villa, and all these… people went through the back door, so went through the kitchen first, and into… past the nursing office and into the main… lounge, which was quite big, and at one end there was a television and chairs round, and then there was a sort of room divider thing that you can see through, and then in the other part there were just chairs, and then there was a dining room off to the left, and then, just off the television bit there was the table tennis room, and I thought `ah, table tennis’, and then upstairs there were the… the dormitories, and one half was… one side was women and one side was men, and there were different stairs to go up to the… the dormitories, but in fact, I was having this treatment that was called Modified Narcosis, which involved putting me to sleep, basically, so, I went into the main bit, into the main lounge, and there were quite a few young people there, who were more or less the same age, and… we… we sort of started chatting. I was… I was just… out of my mind, I didn’t know what was going on at all and… the nurse came in and she said to me, `The doctor wants you in bed’, and I thought, `oh!’ [laughs]… I was quite taken aback really… so I went up to… I had a room… rather than being in the dormitory, I had a room, but it was very… really bare… really, really bare, with very… painted walls, painted in a very… yukky sort of creamy colour, and just a bed, and… a sort of locker, and that was all… and so I had to get into bed, and… then he had prescribed… sort of very… actually Barbiturates, they were, that he’d prescribed, plus Largactil, and I was to have these every… I think probably every four hours, something like that, so very high doses of them, and together… they would put you to sleep.’

`Was that what was called the Modified Narcosis…?’

`Yeah…’

`…was this mixture of different drugs?’

`Yeah… yeah… and you had to… the… the hospital had some arrangement whereby student nurses from St George’s, which is a teaching hospital in Tooting, would come to Nethern [ph], to do their psychiatric placement and… and so they wore uniform, and none of the other nurses did… and they were… because I… I was going to be put into a deep sleep I had to be monitored, like pulse and blood pressure and things like that, regularly, and also, ideally I had to have somebody with me all the time, all… although, that didn’t always happen. So one of these nurses would… would be detailed to me, and they gave me the Barbiturates and the Largactil, and I was just terrified to go to sleep, because I thought if go to sleep I’m never going to wake up. I was quite convinced I was never going to wake up. I… so I was chatting away, trying to keep awake, but it was impossible, you just… you know you’d just be… oooh [ph].’

`Did you know that that’s what the treatment… were you told that this was the course of treatment you were being given?’

`I don’t think… I think he had mentioned that there was this treatment. I don’t think I was aware of exactly what it was, and that I was definitely going to have it, because he had talked about this other drug, which actually turned out to be an anti-depressant, that wasn’t new at all, and… you know…’

`But that was the reason why you’d gone there…’

`Yeah…’

`…because you were being told that you could try a new drug?’

`Yeah… and I was going to be there for ten days. That’s what he said. Ten days… and… so I had this, and… just really, I just went to sleep. They would wake me every couple of hours and walk me up and down. They would give me a bath every morning, that I struggled, to keep awake in and not drown. Sometimes they weren’t always with me, and sometimes, one time I wandered downstairs in my nightdress, took my clothes off in front of everybody, because they… they weren’t there to keep an eye on me, which they… which they should have been. They had told me that they would be there.’

`Do you remember doing that?’

`Yeah… yeah… yeah… and… and I did… oh, it was awful really, ‘cause I did it right in front of the bloody television, so they were all watching the tele… you know, it wasn’t like I did it discreetly in a corner, you know, it was right in front of them… and… so I had that. I think the first time, for four or five days, and Paul wasn’t allowed to visit me then, and… then… there was… it was… the sort of thinking behind it seemed to be a bit of a `snap out of it’, you know, `we’ll have a break from all this, and when you wake up, everything will be fine’, well of course, it wasn’t and… you know, it’s no… it’s no better at all. So I had another… I don’t know, course I suppose… which was something like nine or ten days, and then I had another one. I had three in all, and the third one was seven days, something like that… so… it was… it was just… totally bizarre… totally bizarre. It was, you know, to… to have that… those… that amount of drugs in your body all the time, was… a really very… very difficult. I mean you could only sleep. You could only sleep, but… it took a… oh, and the other thing that happened, that’s right, was… you know, your… my blood pressure would quite often fall quite low… and then, so that added to the general sort of… confusion that I was in, and… and I started hallucinating, while I was on the drugs, and seeing things in… in the room and things like that.’

`What sort of things… were you seeing?’

`Well I could see… I… I could see me… I thought there was a mirror on the wall, that I could see me in, you know… it was really unnerving, it was… it was very odd… and… and I could see other people in the room and there weren’t people in the room.’

`Did you realise it was a hallucination or did you think it was real?’

`I thought it was real… and I kept, touching the wall, you know, `Where… where’s the mirror…? I can’t see it… where’s…where’s the mirror?’, you know, and… it was… it was very… I don’t know whether anybody else in… in the… who was on that villa at the time, had any idea what was going on, you know… ‘cause I… I wasn’t… I wasn’t there… and then suddenly after so many days I would appear, you know… and… but what happened when they… they sort of weaned me off all the… the Barbiturates and the Largactil and woke me up… and then I was put on… just so many different tablets. I mean I really couldn’t tell you how… what they were. I mean I took about forty a day. I took thirty in the day and I took ten at night, and… I had no idea what they were. I think… some of them must have been major tranquillisers because I took… I do remember that I took drugs to stop me shaking… to counteract the side effects of the other drugs, and I also had to take… vitamins… because, I was having so many different drugs that… that they… it was affecting my ability to keep vitamins in, you know, and so… I was having a vitamin deficiency, so I had to have vitamins, but I’d… I… I just had handfuls… absolutely handfuls of drugs.’

`Can you remember what they looked like?’
`The… the… yeah, they were all… I remember there were… oval shaped red ones… and… the… there seemed to be… there were capsules, there were blue and green capsules. There… they were just… they were just… you know, I mean like sweets.’

`Just a rainbow of colour?’

`Yeah… just a handful of drugs… and they were given like that, you know, they were given in a handful.’

`Oh right, all at once?’

`Yeah, so you got the whole handful… you know, you took them…’

`Did you just take the whole lot in one go…?’

`Yeah… yeah…’

`And wash it down with water or something?’

`There used to be a man who used to go [???] to the other patients, `How on earth do you keep going with all those tablets inside you?’, you know…’

`Did you have any effect… did they have any effect on you immediately, so if you took... suddenly took a whole handful of tablets can you remember the effect of the tablets?’ [both talking together].

`Well I think probably, the thing was that because I had… so many so frequently, I was just permanently in… in such a zombie state, that… they didn’t… you know, it didn’t wear off from one lot to the next, so… it… I didn’t notice any effect, at all. But… I mean I… I just… wandered around really, I didn’t know… I didn’t really know what I was doing.’

`Did you ever attempt to do anything like read or watch the television when you were on all these… drugs?’

`No, I couldn’t… I couldn’t read and… I couldn’t watch the television. I couldn’t sit still actually, but I couldn’t… concentrate, and I couldn’t see the words to read, because of the medication, because… everything just swam, you know… to try and… and read was impossible. I used to smoke a lot and I used to knit a lot. Used to knit. At the time there was a fashion for gypsy shawls, very… holey, triangular shawls, and there was a shop in Maidstone… in Redhill… that had… sold a sort of kit, the pattern and… and the wool that you needed and a lot of the nurses, particularly the nurses from St George’s, really liked these shawls, and I think I made about ten of them, in the end, in different colours, black and white and cream and… I didn’t make one for me, actually… and they were great big thick needles, but people used to be amazed and actually I think probably continued to be amazed that… I can be so drugged and yet… you know, following knit… knitting patterns and… [laughs]… and do things like that…’cause I used to make… you know, people on the ward would ask me to make things for their children or their grandchildren or whatever, and baby stuff and, all sorts of things, you know… and that’s what I did…’

`Was that something you already knew how to do?’

`Yeah… yeah, I’ve always knitted. Always knitted. I don’t quite remember how… how I got into all the shawls and everything, I don’t quite remember how that happened. But of course, once you make one and somebody sees it and, as I say, they were very popular at the time, and they were very expensive to buy, but very cheap to knit, so… you know, people would… would get me the wool and that, and… would I make them one? I think actually I can probably still remember how to make them without the pattern.’

`Had plenty of practise?’ [Laughs]

`Yes… yes, indeed… [laughs].’

`When you first explained about coming into this hospital, you were saying that you went through the kitchen. Can you describe the kitchen, the layout of it, and the type of equipment that… you would have seen in there?’

`It was, yes… I mean the kitchen was… was quite a nice area really, because… it was… it was… quite big. I mean I… I guess there was enough room for, I don’t know, six or seven people to stand in it, but I mean, you didn’t eat in the kitchen, and… I mean I… from a health and safety point of view, I mean it was probably a nightmare because there… there was a gas stove and… the… there… there were no… what we used to do, practically all day, was to make toast. Tea and toast. Jam on toast, and a cup of tea, all the time. So… and there was no restriction on that, nobody queried that, you know, we did it all the time, so the kitchen was actually quite nice. I don’t think… I don’t recall there being anywhere there, that you could wash any clothes or anything, but there may have been… because Paul used to take my washing, so… I didn’t have any need to use it, but I don’t remember there being that. I mean there was certainly a fridge and… there were a lot of cupboards… loads of cupboards…’

`What was in them?’

`A lot of crockery. Yeah, a lot of crockery in them.’

`Did the crockery have the names of the hospitals stamped on them, or anything like that?’

`Yes, I think… and I think it was… it was… it wasn’t actually crockery, it was that sort of… thick plastic stuff… you know, so you couldn’t actually break it… and… blue, I think, pale blue, but… but the… I mean it was… it was… it was actually quite nice in the kitchen, ‘cause… it seemed ordinary.’

`Did it have ordinary kettles or was it…?’

`It did… and in fact…’

`[inaudible]’

`…it had ordinary kettles and in fact… one time I was in there, and somebody was… taking a kettle of boiled… boiling water from one side of the kitchen to the other, and… I stepped back, and he… tipped it all down my leg, ‘cause… you know, so I mean it… you know, there… it… it was… I think probably quite a dangerous area, really… you know, because it… it was gas, and… you know people were always in there and there… there were no staff ever in there, so… I think it was a bit of a dodgy place, but it was quite nice, yeah…’

`But you didn’t eat the meals in there, so how were they… how was that done, the meals?’ [both talking together].

`No we had separate… we had a separate, dining room, and the meals were brought over in a trolley from the main building, you know those huge, steel trolley things that they walk around with, and they were already plated, so you didn’t get any choice, you just… had what… what was there, and…’

`Could you have vegetarian if you wanted, or meat [inaudible]?’

`I don’t think… anybody had vegetarian then. I mean I wasn’t vegetarian then and I wasn’t aware of… of that being available. I don’t think there was any choice about anything actually, that was it… just had what… what was there… and it was very school `dinnery’ you know… mash and meat and that sort of thing... and…’

`Was it hot?’

`No, I don’t think it was hot. I don’t… well it wasn’t, no… it absolutely wasn’t hot, because of course it had come quite some way from the main building, and they… you know, they trawled it all round the hospital… before it got to us anyway, and there was always… you know, it would come and there was always a bit of sort of hanging around before anybody bothered to do anything about it, so… no, it was never hot, it was never hot. And the… the dining room was quite nice. It had just lots of tables and each table just had four chairs round, so… you know, you didn’t… you… you… you could sort of choose who you eat with, and that was quite nice.’

`What would happen say, if you weren’t hungry, at that particular time when the meal was? I don’t know what times they were served.’

`Well, I… I don’t think that you got any choice. I mean you had it then or you didn’t have it at all. You just relied on your toast if you didn’t have it then. There wasn’t any… any choice about anything there.’

`Did that bother you?’

`No, not really because I… I wasn’t that bothered about food then. You know, it was just a case of… of… and it also… it wasn’t… a sort of high spot of the day, like it has been in some places I’ve been in, you know… it was just a case of… go in, have it and go out again. So it was… I… you know, it didn’t feature much in the day… just as something to be done, really. And… and outside, it was… at one… at one end of a sort of rectangle, and there was an enormous field. It was actually a football pitch, and they would have matches on there, from the… the staff… and different hospitals would come and play, football… on… on the football pitch, and then the other side of the football pitch would be… the OT department, which was… mainly for another villa, which was actually a villa… I mean at the time, that… that they would have said… called long stay… so very few people actually went to OT. I never went. I never went, because it was actually a long way away. I mean it was across this… you know, and… you know quite often the weather… and it was actually organised so that you couldn’t get there without walking across the football pitch. There wasn’t one where you could go round the hospital, you know…’

`So what did you actually do then?’

`Well…’

`When you weren’t under the Modified medication?’
`I knitted. I think that’s all I ever did, actually. I don’t think I did anything else. [Pause] Can’t remember doing anything else at all… and I used to see… the chap I… the psychiatrist I’d seen at Redhill, he used to come and see me on the ward. I never saw… I didn’t even know I had a consultant, I never saw him, ever… and… he was a chain smoker, and he used to smoke all the way through seeing me, one after another, and he used to smoke little, Players No.6 they were or something like that, and… he was always… he would always… tease me about smoking menthol cigarettes and how bad they were for me and things like that, and… I remember one day, I… I have no idea what the point of talking to him was, none… I mean he never… he didn’t… I don’t know… I don’t know what the point was… but one day, we were in the dining room, which looked out on to this field, and he called me to the window and he said, `look’, he said, `look at all those different shades of green’, he said, `that’s what life’s about’, and I thought, `well bugger you, mate’… I felt… I just felt like strangling him, you know… I really… I was so angry… and… I… I… he was… there was always, when I was in Nethern [ph]… I was.. I was there for about five months, and… whenever I was discharged, it was always with the sense that, `we’re keeping your bed warm… you’ll be back’, of course I always was… and… but there was always that sort of… there was never any feeling that you were any different than when you’d come in, or that you were… not going to come in again, or anything. It was just, `well off you go for a while, and as I say, you’ll be back’, so it was very… it was a very dispiriting place to be and… there was… in the grounds, there… near to the main building, or probably in the main building, at one side of it, there was a canteen, a patients’ canteen, and we used to go over there. We did do that, actually, have endless cups of tea, but it was filthy… ‘cause nobody had bothered to clean it out. It was a patients’ canteen and they didn’t… just didn’t bother, so, the tables were never wiped, the floor was never wiped, it was just filthy, it was horrible, and… you know it was… it was… it was… it was, you know, it was good to go there, but, it was just such a disgusting place to be, and you just felt it didn’t have to be like that, you know, I didn’t… I just didn’t feel it had to be that way.’

`What was the décor like in the rest of the hospital? Do… you did mention the colours, but was it… was the… was it in good condition, the general décor or…?’

`No, it wasn’t, it was… it was very… dilapidated really, I mean the… the wards were and… it was… the… the wards were very large. There was a huge amount of space on them, but nobody doing anything… just watching television, you know… and… it was all very… grim and… dingy… and… just felt really run down… always… it all… I mean I… I was in and out of Nethern [ph]… I mean I’m… I’m not quite sure how many times I went in, three or four times I suppose, for about five months each time, and I never recall there being decorated or… anything new or…’

`In that whole time?’

`Yeah… I don’t think there was.’

`[Inaudible]’ [both talking together]

`And… and there was… I used to… there was a ‘phone box that was between Farm Villa and the main building, which is how I came to know that you could get to it from a different way, and I used to quite often go to the ‘phone box and ‘phone Paul up, in Redhill… he couldn’t come up to see me… and… it was… it was really strange, because, you know, I was going… to a ‘phone box, to ‘phone somebody who I was married to, who lived not that far away, and I would be… I would meet people and… and talk to people who had been in the hospital for… years… for years… and… to whom the hospital was home… and it was really queer. It was a really odd feeling, you know…’

`How many years are you talking about?’

`Well people… you know, people who’d been there for twenty odd years… and lots of people had been there for a very long time. There were lots of wards… that were wards that… say, that people referred to as long stay. At the time, there were only a couple of… I don’t know… couple, three or four acute… villas or wards… which were for different areas. They had quite a big catchment area, and… so the… there were… there were about four acute bits, but the rest of it was all… long stay, and people had been there for years and then… and… and the other thing was that, you know, it had all these grounds and it had all these gardens, and… people would be… employed… that’s not the right word, but they would… would work in the gardens, patients would work in the gardens, so you’d see them sort of… you know, doing this… thing, that I always think every autumn is senseless, of sweeping up the leaves, you know… you’d see people sweeping up the leaves, and… and sort of cutting the grass and…’

`Was there a farm there?’

`No… no there wasn’t…’

`Just the garden? Had there been a farm?’

`I don’t think there had at Nethern, no… I don’t think… I mean there might have been but I don’t think so…’

`I did read that there had been… at it’s height, about 2,000 patients at Nethern, but I don’t know when the height of Nethern was, but… have you got any sense of how many patients there might have been in the whole hospital?’

`I would have thought… probably went into a thousand, I would have thought. Yeah… there were a lot of wards. And they had elderly people there as well, and there were a lot of elderly wards… and there were a lot of people on each ward. They just seemed to be everywhere. I mean they were… not only if you went in the main building, there were wards here and wards there, but you went out of the main building and there was a block here and a block there, and a villa here and something else there. It just went on forever. It was enormous… it was huge.’

`Nobody ever gave you a map or anything that would help you orientate yourself?

`No… no… not at all…’

`Sort of tell you what… how to cope with the day there, or…?’

`No…’

`…what was served when and all that kind of thing that you get these days?’

`No… you had no idea what was… what was going… and… and more than that I think that you had no idea what you were doing there… I mean how… how does somebody know when you were… or how did you know when you were ready to go, you know…? [Laughs] I mean what… what… I… I remember writing somewhere that I… I thought that… I was there until people got bored with seeing me there and then… then I would go… you know.. but… as I say, it was… it was always with the sense that, `well you’ll be back’.’

`So were you…? Am I right to understand… You just kept going there in the sort of hope or belief that one day something different would happen, or was it that you stayed there because you didn’t think you could get out?’

`I… I think that I was… I felt that I couldn’t live outside of the hospital. I… I had that mentality. I mean I could see why that chap had said to me, and… and to Paul, that I would become a long stay patient, because I could… I… I couldn’t see how I could function outside the hospital. I thought that I just had to be there, so… it… it wasn’t a case of… of really, I didn’t expect to be any different, but I just thought `I can’t live away from here’, `I can’t live at home’… `I don’t know what to do…’. I… I had no job and… no real prospect of getting a job. I had no friends, in Redhill and… I didn’t see… I mean my parents never came to see me any of the time I was in hospital… and my sister came once, to take me out for the day. That’s the only time I saw her… so… I… I just thought, `I have to be here’. I had no sense of the future, at all… none, at all…’

`Did that ever make you feel suicidal or…like giving up?’

`Yes, it did. I… I suppose I didn’t think too much about it, because I think it would have driven me completely off the wall if I had… I… I didn’t think too much about it. I didn’t… I mean I had regularly… absolute sense of… of desperation, about the whole thing, what on earth was going to happen… how was I ever going to get home, and live with Paul and… lead a normal life, and how was I ever going to do that? You know, I just couldn’t see that that was going to ever happen, because my… my whole world was in that hospital, and… I rarely… I mean even when I was… you know I was there for a long time and I rarely went home, like for weekends or anything, I rarely did that… so… I had very little contact with life outside of the hospital. I didn’t… I don’t think I ever got the bus into Croydon or anything like that. I used to walk down the hill sometimes and go to the post office… and at the time, the post office was a sort of newsagent as well, and you could buy one fag, you know, you didn’t have to buy… a packet, so… that was quite good, ‘cause of course I didn’t have much money, and… but I didn’t go further afield.’

`How did you get your money?’

`I think… I can’t… honestly I can’t remember. I can’t remember how I did. I mean I must have had some sort of… something, giro or something, I must have had sick pay… ‘cause I had worked for a while… but I don’t remember that. I don’t remember how I got it. What… actually what… what happened was… because I had done a degree in psychology, they… they had a psychology department there, and… they negotiated the… the psychiatrist negotiated with the… head of… I don’t know what he was called, of.. of the psychology department, for me to go there, and work there, while I was in the… in the… hospital… and I got paid for that. £2.50 a week I think I got paid for that… so I would go there every day, and I would just go… from something like ten to twelve, and come back for lunch, and then go from two to four or something… something like that.’

`How long had you known the hospital… up to the point where they said, `there’s a job going at this other hospital and would you like it?’

`I think, probably, I had been in the department for, perhaps six months, something like that. Maybe not as long as that. It… at Nethern, I’d been working in that Psychology department, and… the head of that department had been speaking to the Head of the Psychology department in the hospital down the road, a mile away… which, actually had had a farm, until fairly recently…’

`Oh right, sorry, I’ve misunderstood. So you started off working at Nethern, as a… trainee psychologist…[inaudible]?’

`Well, no as a volunteer.’

`Oh, as a volunteer?’

`I mean as a… complete volunteer. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I shudder to think about it, because I hadn’t been there very long, and the… Dr Beech his name was, the… the head of the department said to me, we have booked in a woman to come and see you this afternoon, for an IQ test. They were… they were very keen on IQ tests at the time in psychology, and it was… an… an IQ test that took two and a half hours to do. There was a verbal bit of it and there was a performance bit of it which involved fiddling around with blocks of wood and… little pictures and things like that, and you had to assess various things and… as you were going along… as… somebody who was giving the test, you… you had to… put people’s answers down and you know, sort of… evaluate what they were doing with their little blocks of wood and all the rest of it. I had never seen it before, in my life… and… I think it was that day, I think he had told me that morning, so I spent the morning, just looking through the handbook, about this blasted IQ test, to give it to this woman when she arrived in the afternoon, and… I mean I… you know… I don’t know… well, I… I do know which one of us was more nervous, it was by far and away, me… and she thought she was coming to see some qualified person who knew exactly what they were doing. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing… I never set eyes on the thing before…’

`Did she know that you were also a patient?’

`No, nobody did. As far as anybody who came to that department knew, I was a trained Psychologist.’

`It seems a highly unusual thing…’

`Mmm’

`Was it unusual… an unusual practice?’

`Yes…’

`Or a unique practice then?’

`Yeah… it was, yeah…’

`Did it seem bizarre to you at the time?’

`It… I mean it sort of worried me… that… I… I was quite worried that… you know, people came with expectations and I thought, you know, it was wrong, that I wasn’t going to live up to that [laughs]… ‘cause I didn’t know what I was doing. I mean I didn’t actually think I could do any harm… but I did think I might… I wasn’t as skilled, obviously, as people were expecting me to be, and that worried me. I did some research while I was there, with… with other people in the department, and I was ok about that, because I thought, you know… that was all right, but again… I mean… one lot of research involved me going on to… some of the elderly wards and observing patients on those wards, and that seemed really odd… [laughs], you know, when I’d walk from one ward… over the way… [laughs]… on to… on to this other ward, and it was really… it was really odd to go from the status of being a patient to… to go to the status of being somebody that people regarded as a professional, ‘cause that’s how I was introduced to people, and on the wards as well…’

`You helped there… [???]’

`You know… the…’

`Sorry… go on…’

`They would introduce me to the… to the sister or the charge nurse, you know, as… `This is one of the psychologists’, you know… [whispers] I used to think,`Oh My God’, I used to keep my fingers crossed.’

`And how did the staff that were nurse… well, so called nursing you, how did they react to this appointment?’

`I don’t… I don’t think they had any problems with it actually. I don’t remember them having any problems with it… and the other patients didn’t as well. I mean I… I don’t think they quite knew what I did… and probably the staff didn’t. I think that’s probably fair to say that the staff didn’t quite know, what was going on either… I suppose, probably, what they thought was that I went to the Psychology department and sort of did filing or something like that. I think they probably thought that. But I did get paid for it, and I used to… they used to pay people for working in the hospital either… you know, people who… who worked, on the gardens or wherever, you… all used to get paid, on a Thursday I think, and we had to go to the… the main block, and… and down one of these corridors, and… there was… a… cashier… in… on… in… on the left hand side, and there was like a grill… a little hole in the wall and a grill, where the cashier was, and we had to all… queue up for our money, and… I mean it… you know, to be fair to them, it actually came in envelopes, like a pay packet, you know… but you had to sign for it, and the chap who… the cashier, would always be really embarrassed at… at making me sign for my £2.50… I mean he didn’t seem to have any problems with people who were sweeping up the leaves, but… he found it difficult… [both talking together].’

`What because you were working as a psychologist…?’

`He found it difficult, yeah… and of course the other thing was that the majority of… of the other people, were men… and they had been there a long, long time. They were older than me… and… and he just found it… you know, he… he really used to get embarrassed by it.’

`But you weren’t bothered about that at all?’

`No… it didn’t bother me. I mean I was glad to get the money. It was really important to me, that money… was really… yeah, crucial…’

`Was that a comparable amount of money to what people were earning in those days, or was it more of a token…?’

`Oh, no… it was totally token. Totally… totally token…’

`What would an ordinary wage be at that time?’

`Gosh, I don’t know. I wouldn’t like to say… no idea… but… certainly a lot more than £2.50 for a five day week [laughs]… although I mean it was only four hours a day to… to be fair…’

`But you did it every… for five days a week?’

`Yeah… I did it every day, when they were open.’

`And did… and you said the patients didn’t… did you say the patients didn’t object, or they didn’t… make any difference between you and anybody else…?’ [both talking together].

`No… no… no it didn’t seem to… didn’t seem to bother them… at all…’

`Did they think it was a good thing?’

`Yes, I think they did. Yeah, I think they were pleased for me. I think they were, yeah… I mean there’s lots of… there’s lots of… camaraderie I think on those wards, and I think that… that… people do want to see things happen to people… that’s going to be helpful for them… you know, there’s really a genuine sense of wanting people to… to get on, you know… and I think they were… and the other thing that they… that they never, ever did… that I can remember, is actually to… which has happened to me in other places, to sort of sort them out, you know what I mean… to… `oh, you’re a Psychologist’, you know… which of course I wasn’t, but… you know… `What do you think about this, and you know, what do you make of that?’, and… they never did that.’

`They didn’t?’

`No. They didn’t do that… so… no, they were ok, they were fine…’
 
`Was there much…you talk about the camaraderie, was there much humour ever… amongst patients?’

`There was a lot more humour than there had been in Liverpool, yeah… but I think it was a lot easier… at Nethern [ph], it seemed to me the population was much younger, I mean… there were quite a few of us who were early twenties, and… that seemed to make things a lot… I don’t know how people who were older, coped on that ward actually, on that villa. In fact, one woman… who… was probably the age I am now… took an overdose, and went to bed, and died in the night, while she was there, and… it… it did seem that it was a very lonely place, for people who were a bit older. But if you were a bit younger, and… and the nurses, particularly the St George’s nurses were young… and… I had taken in a record player, and they… quite a few of the nurses had brought some records in, and other people had brought records in… oh, and somebody else… had got a guitar, and he used to… play his guitar and… so, yeah, I mean so… there… there was that… I think if… if you were younger then… the… there… there was more activity, and there was a more, sort of lighthearted feel about it, but on the other hand, some of the younger people… did some awful things. There was one woman who was forever setting fire to her hair… she was very… I think she was probably younger than me, at the time, you know, and… I think she would be in her late teens, and that was just awful. It was just awful. Whereas I don’t recall the older people on… on the villa, actually doing anything… anything like that…’

`Right…and what other sort of behaviour can you think of? How… What other ways did you see that the younger people were doing things… that the elderly people were not doing?

`I think people used to harm themselves… I… I have a memory of people harming themselves on the wards, and… yeah, I mean I think the… the… on the one hand there was… there was this sort of, almost lightheartedness about it. On the other hand there was what I feel now, when I… I go towards this… to… to… to any psychiatric wards is… this total desperation that young people so… people who were so young, should be in that situation, you know… and almost, you know, what future was there? And… and I used to think that about… the people that I met on the ward, you know, what… what actually you’re going to do with your lives? you know…’

`Mmm’

`So, you know, at the same time there was that underlying sort of despair about it all. And they had… had this total bizarreness, I mean I… I went off… I was on… one of the drugs I was on… was… the MAOI antidepressants you know, that you can’t do this with and that with, you can’t drink with… and… one evening… the chap who used to play the guitar asked me to go into Redhill, because he… [laughs]… he was collecting subs from communist party members, in… well, I mean Redhill there actually aren’t many communist party members in Redhill… and he was going to go and do that, and would I go with him? So I did… and we didn’t tell the staff, and we took a bus into Redhill, and then about half way through the evening, Neil, that’s his name… said, you know I… I’d better ring the ward, you know, just let them know, and the first thing they said was, `Don’t let her drink anything, she’s on drugs and she can’t drink anything’, [laughs]… and, you know, it was really… amusing that they… they weren’t really concerned about where I was or what I was doing, just as long as I didn’t drink [laughs]… so, I mean, you know, we did… we did do some very strange things… yeah. It wasn’t ordinary life at all… it wasn’t ordinary life, you know… and it was very… it was such a vast site… and… apart from all the… the hospital buildings, beyond the hospital buildings it was just fields. I mean it wasn’t… houses or anything, and it just felt like you were in another world, and you had not part of… of the real world at all. You were just, up on this hill… you didn’t have any real reason to come down. It was difficult to get down anyway, and… it… it just felt… I mean there was no… absolutely no attempt to… help you… to get into living in the community, there was nothing. I mean you just went and that was it, then you went back to your outpatient appointment and…’

`Did you have any awareness of… what your family or Paul thought about the way that you… were being treated… or not treated as the case may be?’

`I think Paul was… was totally desperate, because we had originally been told that I would be there ten days, and of course the first time it went on for months, you know… five months. Well it always did, but I mean we had been told ten days… and that was, I think… I mean I don’t think he believed the doctor when he said ten days, but… you know, part of him thought `Well, maybe it will be’, you know… so he was very bitter… he was very bitter. And it was really difficult for Paul, because he would come to see me, and… I mean it’s difficult for me to describe it now, but I would struggle to stay awake. I was so drugged, I… really struggled to hold a conversation with anybody. I was… permanently shaking, I mean I couldn’t keep still, and it must have been awful, to go and visit your wife in that state, and have no idea of when it was… or if it was going to end… and no hope at… I mean this was the treatment they’d offered, this was the treatment they gave. As far as they was concerned… they were concerned, that was that, you know…’

`Were you surprised that Paul stuck by you?’

`Umm… no I wasn’t. No, I wasn’t… I don’t know why I wasn’t really, looking back on it… but I… I… I just couldn’t see him ever going. I don’t know, I just…couldn’t see it happening. [Pause] No, I… I mean I… I… I don’t know. I mean it’s an interesting question that, because I… I just knew that he wouldn’t go… I… I knew that he would stay… and… and… and just… really just take whatever happened, you know. I don’t think either of us felt that we had any control over what happened… I don’t think either of us felt that anything we did was going to make any difference, to the situation at all.’

`And do you think Paul’s unusual in that respect, that…?’

`I think probably he was, yeah. I mean… Paul is very… has a very jaundiced view of doctors and medicine and… and… of the whole profession anyway, and he had that, anyway… and… so… although he had… I don’t think he had any particular view that they were going to do anything very dramatic, he didn’t think that there was anything he could do either. I mean he had no idea… we… I mean, no… none of us, we… we didn’t really… I mean nobody had given me any diagnosis, they… flitted around, between… anxiety state and depression and schizophrenia, and oh, and maybe it’s manic depression, you know, I mean I… and… you know, of course every time I had a different diagnosis I had a different lot of drugs, you know, to… sort of justify their diagnosis really. So… you… we couldn’t ever… go away and sort of find out what it was all about, because… we didn’t know what was wrong. And of course, some of the time, I had… in fact most of the time, I had a such a cocktail of different drugs, that… that they were for… practically every diagnosis anyway. So… you couldn’t say, well, `oh she’s on this, so it must be that’, because I was on, just practically anything… you know… everything and anything anybody could be given, I mean… and… they had… charts for the drugs, and they would, like sort of… registers really, and they would write the drugs and how often you were to be given them and everything, and… they were about that… that big, and quite often, drugs I was… was on… would… would practically fill the side. Sometimes where they’d crossed them out and put them in again, but… you know, I mean… the… the… so they kept their options open basically, and treated anything and everything.’

`We’ll take a break shortly, but did Paul… ever want you to come home at the times when you were in hospital?’

`Yes, I think he did want me to come home, but I think he also… because he wasn’t given any support or advice or information, he had no idea what he would do with me once he got me home. He just didn’t know what… what would be helpful. He had no idea what would be helpful, and because I was taking all these drugs it didn’t seem like… well… have some more of those and you’ll be better, you know… what’s… what’s going to be useful… so… he didn’t… he didn’t… he had no… I mean neither of us did. You know, was it better to… to try and go out socially or would I be better off?…you know, it was all those sorts of things that… that we just had no idea about, so… although he did… he did want me to come home. He didn’t know whether he could handle it… and to an extent, you know, at least while I was in the hospital, he knew where I was, and… and he was at work and I was there… whereas I think if I’d been at home and he’d been at work, he… he wouldn’t have known what was going on.’

`He’d have worried more about you?’

`Mmm… mmm…’

`Mmm… Ok… we’ll break again now…’

[End of DVC Pro tape four]

[Start of DVC Pro tape five – Start of VHS tape two]

[Camera: `Interview with Mo Hutchison C905/10 tape number five’]

`You were working as a psychologist, during the day, whilst a patient at Nethern [ph], and then as I understand it, you also did some work at Cane Hill [ph] Hospital. Could you tell me a bit about that?’

`Yes, that’s right, I… through the… heads of department… the psychology department of both hospitals… I got a job as a probationer, clinical psychologist, at Cane Hill [ph] Hospital, because they didn’t have one at the time and they… they’d had a vacancy for a long time, and… I was appointed, initially without any interview at all, and… went to Cane Hill [ph] which was… I was… I’d been discharged from Nethern [ph] at the time, I think… and Cane Hill [ph] was about a mile down the road, nearer to Croydon. It was actually at Coulsden [ph]. It was… it was also up a hill, it was also closed. It was a lot smaller than Nethern [ph] and had a very different catchment area. Nethern’s [ph] catchment area was very much, Dorking, Redhill, you know, sort of leafy bits of Surrey… other areas as well… Cane Hill’s [ph] catchment area included… Brixton and Camberwell, and other places in… in South London. They had… two… locked wards… and… most of the… in fact I think probably all of the wards were in… within the main hospital building. There weren’t these sort of outlying areas like there were at Nethern [ph]… and the… at… you see at the time you could do a clinical psychology… you didn’t actually have to have any training, you could do an in service training, which is what I was doing. The Psychology department was… was actually through the potting shed of the… the gardening bit… ‘cause they had extensive gardens there, and they had greenhouses and… they had had a farm, and… it was… you had to go through the… all the… the pots and the flowerpots and the spades and, everybody’s wellies and everything, to… to get to the psychology department, which was just three offices… and… I had an office. There was an office for the Principal Psychologist and, another office that… most of the time I was there wasn’t occupied. The… hospital hadn’t had a psychologist who was willing to do any work for a long time because the principal psychologist only came in really, as far as I could work out, to have lunch and go home again… so… they were very… they sort of eagerly jumped on me… and I… I was really keen to work and I really wanted to work in that area so… you know, I… I eagerly jumped on them really and… quickly… had lots of responsibilities. We were… psychology was very involved with testing… just about everybody, for just about everything, so I did a lot of that. I still didn’t know what I was doing… I mean I still had to… before I did it I had to read all about it… umm…’

`What sort of tests would they have been…?’

`There were… [both talking together]’

`Or were they?’

`…personality tests… there were tests for IQ, there were tests for brain damage… there were… there were… I think that’s probably the main ones. The… the personality tests were… were really odd, ‘cause they were… sort of questions, you know… `if you’re in a crowded room do you…?’, you know… `I am the sort of person who…’ and you know, you had to tick boxes and things, and then… there was some sort of scoring mechanism that you… you had to use and… at the end of it all, you’d come out with something that said `this person is an extrovert or…’, it was all really odd, and, I don’t know… but, I think what happened was, as I say, I mean they were so pleased to have a psychologist that they would order all these tests, just because they could. I don’t think it told them anything…’

`Did they not apply the knowledge… that…?’

`No, I don’t think so. I mean what on earth did they want to know peoples’ IQ for… and yet they did. I mean they were always asking, for IQ tests… well, what on earth for? I mean what difference does it… was it going to make to anybody? It was… it was nonsense…’

`With the treat…sorry to interrupt you… was the treatment… to the patients changing, by that time?’

`Oh no… no… no… people… people got exactly, you know, just medication, that was all… and there was no notion of… psychologists talking to people, which I mean I was quite glad about really, ‘cause I didn’t have any training, although, I did actually… have one young man who… used to come and… and see me… but… I… I mean I don’t know… really I think he came to talk to me ‘cause he… he didn’t want to stay on the ward really. I don’t think there was any other reason. But I would go to the ward rounds, and… they would discuss patients. They weren’t there… they would discuss them… and then they would say, `I think we’ll have an IQ test’… so I never questioned it, I just did it. I mean I had no idea. They… they… I mean they… not for any reason, I mean they didn’t say, ` I think we’ll have an IQ test because… you know, we think this and that might happen’… it was just, `well we’ve got somebody to do it, so she can do it’. So… that’s what I did, and I had… one of my responsibilities was the… to go the locked wards and… that was really… funnily enough, the male one, actually wasn’t so disturbing as the… as the female one… as the… on the female ward the… there were a lot of people who used to, cut themselves and… there were lots of fights and… it… it was really distressing, to see… I think it was distressing for me to see women like that really, in that position, you know. So… I… I used to do that. I also… the… at Nethern [ph], the head of the department there was heavily into behaviour therapy, and so… because I’d been in his department, they thought `well, you know, she can do a spot of behaviour therapy’… so again, I had to read all about that, ‘cause I didn’t know what I was doing. [Pause] And… and… I… I… I… I did enjoy it… I… I enjoyed it a lot, but I found it very difficult to be completely unsupported and virtually unsupervised. I mean it… really the sum total of what the principal psychologist would say, was, `You write excellent reports’, and that was about it, you know… and so I… I just stumbled on really, not quite knowing what I was doing, but… ready to be all things to all men and… but I did enjoy it. But I did find that the… the amount of work was increasing so much. They did appoint another psychologist who had come from, I think Denmark or Sweden, and was really here to learn about what was going on in… in Britain, and he had a very particular… he was very analytical and… and… so there were certain things that he wouldn’t do… and he was very picky about what he would do and what he wouldn’t… and so he wasn’t really much, help either… and eventually I… really became very distressed again, and I was… re-admitted to Nethern [ph]… but I still kept working at Cane Hill [ph], so I would get up in the morning at Nethern [ph]… I would have all my drugs… I would get the staff bus, that went down the hill, up the road, and to the bottom of Cane Hill [ph], and then I would walk up that hill and go to work, and do the… the reverse in the evening… and none of the people at Cane Hill [ph] apart from the principal psychologist knew, that that was happening… and… that was a… it… that was a very… difficult situation to be in. I think probably it was more difficult than… than the situation at Nethern [ph] when I worked there, because… I was being paid, you know, proper money for this, and in fact I did have an interview… having appointed me they did decide to give me an interview, and it was in the large committee room there and it was at the… it was… you know these hospitals always have the most impressive committee rooms with, incredibly long tables and you go in and you can just about see the person at the other end of the table, and I did that. I went into this committee room and there were all the… I don’t know, there were… seemed to be dozens of them around this table… and… and it was just a rubber stamping thing. They just said, `Well, ok… you know, you can continue, so…’, so I did, but… I… I… went back to Nethern [ph] and I was a patient there and I worked at Cane Hill [ph] and then I was discharged from Nethern, but I really did find it too difficult at… at Cane Hill [ph]… just… I just felt so on my own, you know, I didn’t know what I was doing, and I got to the point where… the referrals used to come in, usually by the internal post, and… there would be a stack of… of referrals from the wards, and I would just go into the office, I would sit in the… they had an armchair… I would sit in the armchair and I would go to sleep… and I’d go home. I wouldn’t answer the ‘phone, I wouldn’t see anybody, I wouldn’t go anywhere, and so I just thought, `I can’t do this’, you know, `I’ve got to give this up’.’

`Were you falling asleep because of the medication there or because you couldn’t face it?’

`Because I couldn’t face it. I just couldn’t face being there… you know, I… I knew I had… I sort of, you know, part of me thought `Well I’ve got to go there, I’ve got to do this job’, and I wanted to do it… and I knew that I could be good at it, I knew I could do it… but I… because I… I wasn’t supported in any way or supervised, I had no advice about prioritising work or anything like that so, I just felt swamped all the time, I didn’t know what to do first. I just didn’t know what to do, you know… and I… I sort of felt I’ve got to go to these ward rounds and there… there were so many of them ‘cause there was so many consultants that they just took up all the time… there was no time for anything else… so… in… in fact, when I said to the principal psychologist I was leaving, he said, `Look, you know, why don’t you take a few months off… and just sort of try and get your head together’… , I said, `No, I just can’t face coming back, I know I’d never face coming back if I went.’ So I left and… very much regretted it, but… because I… I do think I could have done the job, but I… I just couldn’t… face it… really couldn’t face going in.’

`And during that time, did you feel that you were being treated… by the staff at Nethern [ph], any differently to how you’d been treated before you were also working?’

`No, I didn’t… no.. actually I didn’t. I think they were… they seemed ok… about it…’

`They were? [???]’

`I didn’t see them, actually you see. I mean they would give me… my… my tablets in the morning and I would see them at night, but I didn’t see them most of the time, so… I don’t think it was really issue for anybody. I mean I didn’t… I don’t remember it being, certainly… I don’t remember there being any sense of resentment or anything. I suppose there might have been something around, people thinking it wasn’t going to last, ‘cause they did have that… very much there was that sort of sense with them, that they didn’t think I was going to succeed at anything, you know… I was ‘a hopeless case’. I think they felt that, so…’

`Did they ever worry, knowing that you were similarly, or even better qualified than some of the nurses?’

`No… no…’

`Didn’t seem to worry them that they might… the same thing might happen to them or…?’

`No… no…’

`Do you think that’s changed in recent years?’

`Yes, I think it has, yes… I think there’s… there’s far more willingness of people to… you know, on… on… the sort of mental health professional side of the fence, that to… to… talk about their own vulnerabilities and… and things… but I think… then, I think there was this… this sense that… you were poles apart. You were absolutely poles apart… and… I think probably that was reinforced at Nethern [ph] where there were people who had been there for so long… and so, there was a real sense that from the… the staff point of view that they were never going to be in that situation, you know… they were never going to be… somebody was going to be in hospital for twenty years. So I… I think that’s what it was based on really.’

`One finds it hard to imagine these days… professionals accepting this situation where you’d have a patient going off on… working in another hospital. It’s not something that I’ve heard of in recent years. Do you think they… nowadays, people would be less likely to be willing to… let you as it were, going and do that?’

`I think it depends what you did. I mean, I… even in recent years, I have… been a patient on a ward and gone off the ward to attend meetings, for things that I’ve been doing… that I had started doing… at the hospital, when I worked for MIND, but had then been a patient and the… the date of the meeting had coincided with when I was a patient, so I went to the meetings. I think… I do hope that nowadays you… you wouldn’t actually go and do a job, like that that you… you had no qualifications for. I mean… you know, I hope to God you wouldn’t. I don’t think that would happen now.’

`So… you’ve actually left that job, and what happened after that?’

`Well… I… became involved with… a voluntary organisation in Redhill, that was… it wasn’t MIND but it was like a MIND group and they had a sort of `drop in’ there… and I knew that… two people ran it were both psychologists and I… one of them had worked in the department at… at Nethern [ph] and he said to me, `Why don’t you try to register to a higher degree, a PhD?’, and told me how to go about it. And so I did… and… I… was accepted by the City University, in the Psychology department there, to do a degree… looking at memory. That was my… I was interested in memory… and… I… worked for them for a while as a research assistant. I worked with the Professor of Psychology there. I also… I did some work for the… chap who was working on memory, as well as trying to start my own work for my PhD, and… I did some tutoring there for… on the degree course. [Pause] But… I mean it… I had to fund myself… and so I… got a job… doing auxiliary nursing… that’s right… just part time… and… that was to… when we were still in Redhill, so I worked at a local hospital there… and then went to London, a couple of days a week. But… I… I really liked the… nursing… but again, I really worried that I wasn’t qualified, you know. I just thought, `What will I do if I’m with somebody and… something awful happens’, and I just kept thinking that people deserved more than that, you know, they deserved better than that when they came into hospital, and to have this… somebody who’d like done a work… a week, say learning how to wash someone and take their temperature… didn’t feel right and… so I… I was always incredibly anxious that I was going to be on the ward, and somebody was going to have a cardiac arrest or something and I wouldn’t know what to do.’

`Was that a General Hospital?’

`Yeah… yeah… and… we moved to… Paddock Wood, to be… in Kent, to be near where my husband worked, and… I carried on with the nursing at the hospital there, and it was… Pembury [ph] Hospital, and I was on… the… wards, the sort of geriatric ward they were called, I don’t know what they’re called now, but they were called that then, and… that’s when I really got in… involved with the University, the City University and tried… do the work… but then… I hurt my back, lifting, and eventually I had to give up the nursing and I had to give up my PhD… because I couldn’t afford to do it, but also… because I… I was really starting to lose it again, and… I found it very diff… again, I would do the same. I would go into the University, I would go into a room, and I would just sleep… because I… I wasn’t convinced that I knew what I was doing… all… it was… all was a bit… all a bit `airy fairy’ really, I didn’t quite know what I was… I was doing.’

`What sort of age were you by this time?’

`Well… it must have been about ’74… so… I was twenty five. But… no, it must have been later than that. I must have… I have must have been twenty… twenty six or twenty seven, because… when I was still with the University, although I’d given up doing my PhD, I was still doing the tutoring for them, and I was doing this research for the Professor, and I was pregnant then… and I had Jane… I think, when I was twenty eight… gosh… I can’t remember now…. [calculates out loud]… yeah, when I was twenty eight, yeah. And so…’

`Was that your first child?’

`Yes… yes she was my first. So, when I had her I gave that up… I gave up the University… and stayed at home, with Jane and… actually I didn’t… I didn’t do very much really. I mean I think I knew that at the time and looking back on it I’m… I’m horrified at the little that I did. I didn’t… get… and… I… we… we got involved in Paddock Wood, we got involved in… in the local Labour party and we did some work for them and… there were odd bits and pieces, but when I think of what I could have done, you know… I… I don’t know, I just… I had just got into this sort of… I… I totally lacked confidence. I didn’t know what I could do… I always felt that I was one step away from a hospital bed. And still do… I mean I have to say, I still do… and… I really… enjoyed having Jane… I mean I loved it. I love… I love babies and… I really enjoyed having Jane. I was… I was very ill when I had Jane, and… physically ill, and I nearly died… just after I had her… so it took me quite a while to… to get strong again. But we… you know we did go out to the park and we used to go around and it was lovely… and then I had… Tom. Between Jane and Tom I had three miscarriages, because we did… we wanted to have two children and we wanted to have them close together… and Jane was about… she wasn’t actually a year old when I was pregnant again, but I miscarried, and then I miscarried again, another… another twice… and… then I had Tom. Jane was three… when I had Tom… and he was… I… had all my ante natal care, and I had him at Guy’s Hospital, because I had gone there after the miscarriages to see what was wrong, and also… because I was convinced… well, I knew, everybody knew that… that because… of the local hospital’s negligence I had nearly died and I… I thought `I don’t want to go there again’, so I went to Guys… and had Tom, who was wonderful, and… enjoyed Tom, and was sort of jogging along with… with the two of them. We had been in a flat in Paddock Wood and we moved… it was a council flat and we got an exchange with somebody who lived in a house and… so Tom was only a couple of weeks old and we moved to the house, still in Paddock Wood, and… when Jane was… oh, I don’t know, about a year old, I had got involved with MIND, and I’d got involved… my nearest MIND group was in Maidstone, so I’d got involved with Maidstone MIND and became part of their management committee, and… they had acquired a house and they were looking for funding to open it, as a day centre, but they wanted to sort of test the waters first, so they asked me to… become… the coordinator, part time, and not on a salary, but on a… honorarian, whatever that is… very little money is what it is… and I agreed to do that. Again, I mean I… I was going in through the …back door and I… I… I wasn’t happy with that, but… I… I didn’t know, really, I suppose, if I’m honest, I didn’t know whether, if they advertised the job I would have got it, and I was willing to do things that other people might not have been willing to do, you know, I was willing to work for very little… to see if it would get going.’

`And what year was that that you began working for MIND?’

`’79… so it was before I had Tom, actually, it was before I had Tom. Jane…’

`And…’

`…was two…’

`So was that quite a new thing in those days, to have a voluntary sector… organisation ‘cause, prior when we were talking, you were saying that there weren’t any alternative things to hospital…?’

`Mmm… mmm…’

`…and psychiatry? Was that a new thing then?’

`Yes, it was quite new, and of course because of the way… the situation… in… in the seventies and… and earlier, the voluntary sector was very much seen as the provider of... of sort of new, innovative, creative services that were far more… flexible, far more accepting, and… sort of open door policies, and that sort of thing… and… this is what the house that we had in… in Maidstone was going to be… and… we… it was just a very small terraced house in a… in a residential street, in Maidstone, and… the… the neighbours were outraged, but they were ok… they came round, they were fine.’

`How did they show that outrage… to start with?’

`Oh, well they were always complaining. They were always complain… knocking on the door complaining about people throwing litter in their garden and noise… and just about everything really. But they… they did… they became… they were ok. I mean the neighbours on the other side we didn’t actually see much of. I don’t think they were there a lot of the time… and actually… it… it was really quite… quite a nice community resource, because, we had been there, not that long, and I’d started a women’s group on… one morning, on a Tuesday morning, and… eventually after running it a while, we had somebody who… I think we got them through social services, who would come and look after the children, so… it was very much for young mums with children, and I was there one… Tuesday morning and… a couple of the neighbours in… in the street… quite sort of middle aged, late middle aged ladies, knocked at the door and said… Phyllis who lived… about six… six doors down, `Phyllis is in a dreadful state, would you go and see her?’… and I went to see Phyllis and she was in bed… and she was quite an elderly lady. She was very distressed and very depressed and that started up quite a friendship with… between Maidstone MIND and Phyllis, and in fact… we had a volunteer who… who lodged with her at one point… because she was so grateful for all the support that we’d given her, but what was really nice was that the neighbours knew to come. ‘Cause it wasn’t well advertised, I mean I really don’t know how they knew, but they did, and they came, and they hadn’t been told by anybody to come, they just sort of knew that something like that, mental `healthish’ went on in that house… and they…I think we probably had a sign saying MIND up, so they just came and said, `Can you come and see Phyllis’, so it was nice… it was good. And it… and it was very successful, so they applied for and got funding to have a coordinator. Initially it was just part time. And then I had Tom, and… I… I think you didn’t get maternity leave then, you didn’t get paid for being off…’

`Was Tom your second son?’

`Yeah… no… he was… he was… the first… you know, Jane and then Tom. He was… Jane was three when Tom was born, and… so I took him to work with me. I don’t know how I did it… I mean I took him to work… I took all the paraphernalia that you take with babies, breast fed him at work, with the an… with the ‘phone in one hand you know… until he got to the age really when it was a bit dangerous… you know, he couldn’t… he wanted to move around and I was concerned about cups of tea on the floor and fag ends in his mouth and all that sort of thing, so he went to a child minder, and I carried on with Maidstone MIND, and… we built it up and it was… it was brilliant… it was… it was just really good. We… the place was always buzzing. It was a very small house… and even now, you know, I will meet people who remember those days, and always talk with great fondness about being in Foster Street…’

`Did people stay over night there as well?’

`No… no…’

`It was a day…?’

`It was just a day… it was just, two up, two down… two up, two down house. Very narrow little hallway and… just two rooms upstairs and the bathroom, and two rooms downstairs, but it had a really good atmosphere, it was very supportive… to people. But actually, I didn’t ever feel able to say to people there that I’d had problems, myself… that I’d had mental health problems. At… at… it was very difficult to do that in those days… it was very difficult. I mean people just didn’t treat you… whatever… however you… you… you sort of… however well you did something, people just didn’t think you should be in that sort of job if you had those sort of problems…’

`Even…?’

`Including the committee… you see… they… they were my main concern.’

`Did they… but somebody knew that when you very first got the job, is that right?’

`No, nobody knew’

`Nobody else ever did know?’

`No… until… I… we… we’d had our two children, and that was… that was done. The children were done, and then I found that I was pregnant again… totally… a… total surprise… and so… I had Sam… and… he was born in… ’83… [whispers/calculates]… and… so I did… I did the same with Sam… I took him to work with me and then he had a child minder as well, so… it was all quite a difficult juggling act, because… you know one would be at school and one would be at play school and one would be at a child minder, and quite often they were all at different places and we had to pick them up from different places, but I was still part time, so I wasn’t there every day… and Sam was about eighteen months old… and… I was becoming more and more… I think paranoid is really the only word… that I can… I can used to describe it. I was… I was very agitated… about… various people on the committee at the centre… not people who went there, but the people at the committee. I was getting very… agitated about driving in the car and believing that… that people were going to kill me and going to force me off the road. I… I… I was really losing it in a very big way, and… getting very… psychotic and seeing things and hearing things and… the children, of course were only young. I mean Sam was eighteen months old, and Tom would have been about three… three and a half, and Jane was about six… and… when I had been… when I had left Nethern [ph] there was a Senior Registrar there, who was also leaving and he was going to… St George’s Hospital, in Tooting, and he said to me, `Look, you know, if you… if you ever need any help again, then contact me there, because obviously I was out of Nethern’s [ph] catchment area, and so I did… and I went to see him and… I went to see him because I always felt that he wasn’t going to rely on drugs, he was more of a… a talker… but he’d become a family therapist and… he was… he wasn’t actually very helpful, but he did want me to take drugs, he wanted me to take major tranquillisers which I did take, and I in fact I… I mean one of the reasons I took them was because I thought, `Oh my goodness, you know, if he thinks I need to take them then I really need to take them’ [laughs]… and… I… became… I mean I started to see him actually when Sam was just a baby… in fact I started to see him before… when I was pregnant, because I remember going there and being pregnant… and I… I continued to see him and then, as I say, when Sam was about eighteen months old, I was really… I was thinking people were following me, I was thinking that I could recognise people I’d never seen before in my life, and I thought I knew them, and… it… I was just finding the whole thing really difficult, so… he said to me… he was going away… he was American, he was going to America for the summer and he said that if… I should go… I should go… to… to see another psychiatrist who was part of St George’s but had beds at the Atkinson Morley [ph] Hospital in Wimbledon, and the other chap, who I’d seen, didn’t have any beds because he was now a Family Therapist, so I went to see this other person at… at the Atkinson Morley [ph] and he said, `Well, you know, I really think you need to be admitted’.’

`What sort of hospital was that?’

`Well the Atkinson Morley [ph] is… is a Neurological Hospital… and it’s… it’s a very well respected sort of Centre of Excellence… Neurological Hospital, and… but on the… the top floor they had… two psychiatric wards, one male and one female, and it was sort of billed as a… a therapeutic community, and… which… which was quite difficult for them to achieve really because… there was very little common space… for people… for people to be a community in, you know… there… there was the female ward at one end the male ward at the other. There was a lounge with a fish tank in which nearly drove me… drove me bananas… and… an office, and… then… there was… a funny sort of dining room arrangement. A very, very small room that had… I don’t think it was a long table. I think it was lots of small tables but made into a long one, so… it was a bit like eating in a refectory. It was… it was a funny sort of… and a… and a table tennis room, but there wasn’t actually anywhere for everyone to be together, so what they did was to… the female ward had quite a bit of space, at one end of it, so when we met as a community, they would put all the chairs in the female ward, and if… if you were in bed, they would just… they wouldn’t let you have the curtains pulled round your bed, they would make sure that… that everyone could see you, in bed and getting out of bed… that was your punishment for not being up at that meeting, you know… so I… they… they admitted me there…’

`[Coughs]… Sorry…’

`…and… again, I… I had drugs, mainly Stelazine… major tranquillisers, but also anti-depressants, and… the chap there started to mention ECT, but… I wouldn’t have it… I said, no I wouldn’t have it… and it was actually very strange, because… there was a… a notice as… as you walked up the stairs, to the… this therapeutic community, there was a notice, saying about the `milieu’ of… of the place and… you know, what it was based on and… and sort of sharing and caring for one another and all that sort of thing, and then, you know, not very far away was a notice about how somebody would be given ECT… how you would make the machine work, you know, what you would do and… I always thought, [whispers] `This is very odd’…’

`’Cause you… you still hadn’t ever had any ECT?’

`I’d had no… no I’d never had ECT… no… no… and again, it was… at the time they… they sort of… they could pick and choose who they had on the ward, and it was mainly young people, and they came from all over the place, and they did… because, for one reason, was that… they had… at St George’s they had somebody who was considered to be an expert on… anorexia… Professor Crisp… I always think that’s… the name Crisp should be… anyway… he was an expert on… on anorexia, and so he had people on the ward… they had their own rooms… who… who had come in for his particular treatment… and… I actually found it very… distressing… to have so many people there, with such severe weight problems. I… almost felt intolerant of them… and at the same time I was very… appalled at… the… the sort of… state that… that… you know, the size and the weight of some… some people there… and the other thing that I really worried about was that… below the ward were… the ward below the one that I was on, the female one, was… a surgical ward, so people had had operations on their brains, which obviously were very severe… and I really worried, because the… folk who had anorexia, would never walk anywhere, they would run everywhere, and I always worried, about the people below, you know… I mean… I mean now I come to think about it, I don’t think there was any way that they could have heard, you know, because you don’t… but I just kept thinking `oh, these poor souls in bed’… and having had terrible surgery and… there were these people running up and down the ward because they’re frightened of putting on an ounce, you know, and…’

`Oh right, that’s why they were running?’
`Yeah…’

`…to lose weight?’

`Yes… yes… that’s what they said. That’s what they did, you know, I mean I… I asked them, you know `Why do you run?’, and they said well, that’s what they… they didn’t… they wanted to burn off all… [inaudible].’

`Had you been given any kind of… any different diagnoses by this place?’

`They had… what they said was that… it was a severe depressive disorder with paranoia… para… paranoia, that’s what they said. With paranoid psychosis or something like that. I think that stayed with me, really… but I did actually… they did… ask me to… to see another consultant while I was there to get a second opinion. I don’t know why. But… he came up with the same thing, so… But when I was there, you know, I did see the Consultant a couple of times. There was… a Senior Registrar who’d started on the day I arrived, and he was lovely. He was wonderful. He was… he was very political, like me, and we were both very… very critical of… of Margaret Thatcher and… he was just… a very nice bloke. A very caring man… and… he… he always… felt an affinity with me because we’d arrived on the same day, and it was a Saturday, you know, so it was quite unusual that we’d both gone… got there on the Saturday… and I did see the Consultant in… in the ward round a couple of times and I… the first time I saw him, he said to me, `Well, my dear’, he said, `…all I can offer you is sanctuary’, and I just thought, `That’s fine… that’ s fine…’

`[Inaudible][Both talking together]’

`…that’s what I want… you know… that’s ok…’

`What did you tell your children at that… Jane, that time… had you ever…?’

`I didn’t tell them anything.’

`Where did they think you were?’

`I’ve no idea… I have no idea where they thought I was, I never saw them. Well they didn’t come to see me… it’s not quite true… they didn’t come to see me… but… I was there for three months, and towards the end of the time, I went home for weekends, but obviously from Wimbledon to Paddock Wood was… a bit of a journey, you know, it involved going on the tube to… Victoria I think and then… then to Paddock Wood…’

`So Paul was looking after them whilst you were…?’

`Paul was having a night… nightmare time… because he was working at College through the day, having to pick up children scattered all round Paddock Wood… and then get home and feed them and do everything else, the cooking and the cleaning, and… I mean not that we’ve… ever been particularly hot on house cleaning and things, but you know, there were certain things that had to be done, and… and then of course, having to get up in the morning and get them all dressed, and get them all delivered, ‘cause he couldn’t take any of them to school, so he had to take them to people to… be taken to school before he went to work, and… there was also a real problem because… we were having to pay such a lot of money… in child minding, but there was a real… I think, a real concern, that we had… that they would be taken into care. I think… we were concerned about that, ‘cause we thought we wouldn’t be able to pay, but in fact what Social Services did, which I’m… I don’t know whether they do any more, is to pay the child minding bills. So they paid for the child minders.’

`The children never asked where you were or…? They must have noticed that you were missing?’

`When I left for the hospital I went, as I say, on the Saturday, and by then I knew to take more than one little soppy case, so I got quite a bit of stuff, and a friend of mine took me up there, and the… I remember so clearly… the… Paul stood at the front door, with Jane by the side of him, holding Sam, and… and Tom the other side, and both he and Jane were in tears… and the boys just… didn’t know what was happening. They were just totally, `what’s going on… where’s mum going?’, you know, `what’s happening?’…. and I have no… I have no idea… what… I think, you know, I think they knew I was in hospital, but I don’t know… why they thought they never saw me or that I wasn’t just round the corner or something, I don’t know… no idea. I… at the time, I found… I found it very difficult to juggle their needs and my needs. It was really difficult. But when I… I mean I… when I… the… I arrived… I went to the Atkinson Morley [ph] on a Saturday, and on the Monday we had this community meeting, and I just sat and sobbed all the way through, and one of the doctors was there, because they used to come to the community meetings, and… right at the end, he said, `You know, we’ve got somebody new here… and she’s very distressed… and I think we should ask her why?’, you know, and I said, `Look, I’ve got three young children at home, that’s where I should be and not here’, and that was something that… that haunted me really all the time that I was there… this feeling that I shouldn’t be there, I should be at home with the kids… and knowing that it was so difficult. It really was a nightmare for Paul. ‘Cause he didn’t live… I mean he didn’t work that near where we lived, it was… you know, quite a trip to get there and… and the children were young and… you know it was just really… must have been awful… for him. Just terrible.’

`And have you ever talked to the children since about it?’

`We have never… actually… I don’t think that we’ve ever talked about… although, that’s not quite true. I mean I remember saying to Jane, that, you know, I have this memory of her standing with her dad and the boys, crying… and she said she remembers that. We’ve talked far more about the more recent admissions when… when they were older. Yeah, so I… I…’

`It’s not something you’ve had… felt that you had to hide from them all together or…?’

`No… no… no… no…’

`I think some people think that they have to never mention it, and so on…’
`No, I think, in a funny sort of way, they’re quite proud of me. I think they… they… they sort of think… oh, well I don’t know what they think, but they sort of give the impression that they feel I… I’ve overcome a lot, you know… and it… it’s been significant and I… I’ve always… and… and when I’ve… recently since 1990 went… I’ve been… going in and out of… acute wards, they… they’re… certainly what they say to me, is… `You need to be there… that’s where you go, you can’t help it’, you know… `It’s not your responsibility… and we know you… you want to be at home with us but we know you can’t be, so… that’s… that’s where you should be, so…’ you know, they’re… they’re great, I mean… they… they’re great, and what’s really great about them is… that… I mean I wouldn’t, for anything, have… want them to learn it this way, but they are very accepting, of… any mental health problems. Anybody with mental health problems they… they are not in any sense judgmental of people, and… I think that’s really impressive…’

`So they show quite a good understanding?’

`Yeah… yeah… yeah, I think they’ve… I think they’ve survived it all really well… actually… I think they’ve done very well.’

`Sounds like it. So the more recent admissions you were saying about, in the nineties… where were the… where were you admitted in those days…?’

`I went to… Medway Hospital, which is… about ten miles from Maidstone, because… I… through my MIND… Maidstone MIND days, although by then I was actually working for South East MIND… I knew a lot of the… people like CPN’s and Psychiatrists in the area, and I didn’t… I didn’t want to go and see them… and… and I knew… of… of one of the Psychiatrists who was at Medway, who was very highly respected, and so… my GP agreed to send me to see him, and so that’s what I did but… I’d only… I mean the… the first time I went to see him, his response was… `You must come into hospital… you… you know, you’re… you’re not well, and…’, he has always emphasised… says, you know, any number of times, `You… you are seriously ill… you… you have serious problems and… hospital is the place that you have to be’, so… I… I went in… in 1990, or it might have been ’91, and… stayed there for… about six months. [Pause]. It was… well it is… a new unit, within a District General Hospital… a mixed ward… four bedded bays plus some single rooms. Not separate washing facilities I have to say, which appalls me…’

`Not separate for men and women?’

`Yeah so… there are just… I mean there… there are bathrooms, there are just two bathrooms for… there’s eighteen beds, there’s two bathrooms, and I suppose, four or five toilets, and… it… you know, men or women can use any of them. Which I don’t like… you know… I… I think it would be much better if they… said this is… this is the… the female bathroom and this is the male bathroom….’

`What was… sorry… go on…’

`No, go on… ‘

`What was the sort of décor… was it very, very different to the décor of Cane Hill [ph] or Nethern [ph]?’

`Yeah, yeah it was because… it was a new unit. It had been… I can’t remember when it had been opened, but I think in nineteen eighty something, by Virginia Bottomley… and… it was… there were curtains round all the beds and they were new curtains. They were regularly taken down and laundered… the beds were divan beds with… duvets on them. Never enough pillows, you always had to… go and pinch somebody… somebody’s pillow, and… there… in… within the bays the floors were all carpeted, although out in the corridor, that wasn’t carpeted, but within the bays they were… so it was very different. It was very… light and… and airy, and… I mean you sort of got the feeling it wasn’t going to be that… like that for very long, you know, it was… it… all looked a bit like it had been done on the cheap, you know, and… you could see that the carpets actually were going to get pretty dirty pretty quickly, but it was… the… the… the bays were… they were four bedded as I said, and there was plenty of room in them, and you each had a locker and there was… hanging space in there and also in… in some of… with some of the bays there were like chests of drawers, so you had plenty of room for your stuff. But security is very bad there, I mean people can just wander onto the ward, and… I had… I bought two walkman…’

`Two walkman did you say?’

`Yeah… ‘

`Nicked?’

`Yeah… yeah… I was trying to think of what the plural of walkman was… [laughs]… yes, and… just by somebody who walked onto the ward, and… and in fact, it was… it was really dreadful because I… I… I walked into the bay, that I was in, and there was this guy, standing there… and… I thought, `What are you doing there?’, and… and before I had sort of time to collect my thoughts, he’d gone, and I said to… the nurse who was… on duty, who was sort of standing at the end of the corridor, `Did… did you see that bloke?’, and he… he said `Yes’, and I said, `Well, you know, what was he doing here?’. I said `He was just… in… in the female bay… what was he doing there?’. Anyway, then… one of the women in the bay said that she’d lost her purse… and I… suddenly found that I’d lost my walkman, which the children had actually given me as a birthday present, because it had a radio on it, and they knew I was going into hospital. I always seem to go into hospital around my birthday, which is September, and… so… the chap came back on the ward, and… I said to the… Charge Nurse, you know, `That’s him’. So they went up to him and asked him what he was doing there, and he said he was… he’d come to visit somebody, and it was all… it didn’t make any sense, it was all nonsense. Anyway, they sent for the Police, and the Police came, and I couldn’t believe the attitude of the Ward Manager. The attitude of the Ward Manager, was… like… I… I mean I… it’ll… he… he kept saying things like, `I expect it’ll turn up’, like… my walkman… I said, `Well… ‘

``Where do you think it’s going to turn up?’, and he was very much on the… under the impression that I had leant it to somebody and I had forgotten, you know. Never mind somebody else had lost their purse… and the Police, scarcely spoke to me or to this other woman, they spoke the whole time to him, and… it was very clear that… it… the attitude was… [whispers] `I’ll just leave these people, they don’t really know what they’re talking about… you know… they’re on drugs, they’ve got a lot of problems, they’re…’’

`So you weren’t taken seriously?’

`Not at all… and they interviewed this bloke who was still there, and they let him go. They let him go… and in fact, there were other nurses on the ward who… who weren’t impressed by the way the Ward Manager had dealt with it and said that… that they knew that sometimes, what happened, was that one person would come on the ward… would take whatever he could find… would go off and give it to somebody else, and then come back and do it again, so that he was never actually caught with anything on, and they think that’s, you know, what had happened. But I was just so appalled by… I mean, you know, `It’ll turn up’… I said, `Well, why will it turn up? You know, where do you think it is?’, and he just, you know, was… under the impression that I’d… I’d leant it to somebody or put it somewhere and I’d forgotten about it.’

`That’s a very patronising…[inaudible] [both talking together]’

`Yeah, so I mean… security was very bad… it was very… people could just wander on and…’

`Uh huh…’

`…wander off again… so…’

`We need to break here…’

[End of DVC Pro tape five]

[Start of DVC Pro tape six –VHS tape two continues]

[Camera: Mo Hutchison, C905/10 tape number six’]

`So Mo… we were talking about…you were just telling me about the security problems that there were at Medway? Was it Medway Hospital?’

`Yes, it was… [???]’

`And what other things… particularly stuck out to you that were different… to the other hospitals that you’d experienced?’

`I think with… well… there were some things that weren’t different. There is… certainly a heavy reliance on heavy medication and… in fact I think that the situation that they have at Medway is probably worse than Nethern, because the way that the medication is given out, is that… there is a nurses station, and they put the… the drug trot… trot… cart to one side… and you have to sort of queue up at the nurses station, and… and… obviously there’s only one nurse doing it… and one nurse sort of helping, but… you can’t go away… they don’t like you to go away, and if you go away then they come and round you up again, and so you end up standing there and standing there and standing there, and quite often, people will query something about their medication or well, `Oh you know, I don’t… I don’t think I’ve had these before’, or `I usually have so and so’, and the… the staff frequently don’t like that, so they get a bit… you know, `Just take them’, or `Speak to the doctor’, or something like that… and so sometimes there… you know, there’s a bit of `argy bargy’ [ph] about what’s going to go on… and it’s just like… seems you spend hours, standing there and standing there, and people are arguing… `Oh for God’s Sake…’, and you just want to go away and for it to be dignified. I really think there has to be a more dignified way of doing it, than to have people standing there, waiting to be given stuff that most people there don’t want… and quite a lot of people, they don’t want to take the damn stuff anyway [laughs]… and… it… it… I don’t know, it just feels like… being un… on… on a sort… sort of conveyor belt, you know… and… and Nethern [ph] wasn’t like that in that they… they had this sort of… the drug trolley thing, but they would call individual people and… give them their… which they… is much better actually, I think it’s much better. I think that… I mean I’ve… whenever I’ve been into Medway, I’ve always stayed for a long time… always stayed… well usually. I think there was once that I didn’t stay for that long. Usually it’s five or six months and… but I’m the exception… I mean most people… who go in there don’t stay very long, whereas at Nethern people did stay a long time. I mean that was the rule, people stayed a long time. There is still… there… there is still some sense that there are some people and I guess I’m one of them, who are going to come back time and time again, and what is really sad about that is that some of the… the people who… who come on the ward are so young… and I… several times I’ve been there and there’ve… there’ve been young people coming on the ward, and you know, I just made a point of saying to them, `Look, you know, just try and get out of this ward, try and keep out of this ward, try and keep out of the mental health system’, because I think that you can get sucked into it, almost by default… and once you’re in it it’s really hard to get out again, and you’re whole life becomes defined in terms of… of mental health problems. And that’s bad enough for me… you know, I’m nearly fifty, and that’s bad enough for me, but… I mean these young people, they’re nineteen, twenty, they… they want to get a life, you know… I really… I feel very sad about that. I feel very sad… when I see people there, and I’ve seen them there before, and… the staff all know them, and there’s that expectation that actually nothing much is going to change for them, and I… I think that’s really sad. But there are… other people, I mean certainly it’s true to say there are other people who come in, who stay for a while, and that’s that, you know… they get themselves sorted and off they go. So I mean I think… I think there is more… of a willingness on the part of some of the staff, to talk to the people on the ward, but it’s not all of the staff.’

`So it’s still a relatively rare thing to chat with the nurses?

`Yeah…’

`…to chat with the nurses and…?’

`It’s not all the staff… it’s not all of the time… and it’s not all of the patients. It’s all very selective. I mean there are some people… who nobody will speak to. [Pause]… There was…’

`What sort of people would they be… that are ignored and…?’

`Very disturbed people… usually men. There was a… a young man… that… last time I was on the ward, there was a young man there, and… he had been brought in by the Police, and… he was in… apparently he’d sort of locked himself in his flat, and… was… I think hearing voices and was being very… aggressive, and not letting people in, and shouting, and causing a lot of concern, so the Police brought him in, and… the… on the ward they put him into the seclusion room… and… he came… he… I mean he didn’t stay there very long, but, for quite a while he was… he was very… he was obviously disturbed. He was a disturbed young man, and he would… it would be quite difficult to follow what he was saying… and… and he would obviously talk to voices… you could… you could hear him doing that. The staff didn’t go anywhere near him. They never spoke to him. It was like… you can’t speak to him, you know, he’s mad… can’t speak to him… and there was… on the ward there’s this small cupboard, that smokers can go in… which is most of the ward, so I mean that’s… it’s quite a challenge for us all to get in there… and… and often the staff as well, and… one day, this young man, Lee, was in there, with me… and he said to me, `You know Mo’, he said, `I really like being in this room with you’, he said, `..because you’re so tranquil’, he said…`It’s… it’s just nice to be with you’, and I thought to myself, `Bugger me, you know…’, there’s not a member of those qualified staff who will speak to this bloke, and yet, he… he can say something… you know what I mean?’

`Mmm’

`You know, it… it just struck me as… poles apart… that… that he could make that sort of observation… when nobody, with all their qualifications, was actually willing to talk to him about what he wanted for dinner… leave alone what he thought about. So… so that I think there’s still a lot of that around… yeah…’

`By that time, were you getting more information… were patients in general getting more information about… their rights, or…about… that… was there a hospital map given to people…?’ [Both talking together]

`Well…’

`…for the telephones and that kind of thing?’

`…by that time, as far as I was… you see, I was… by that time I was heavily involved with MIND, so I just made sure that people got that. I worked on… before I went there, I was working, well… I mean sort of between admissions, I was working on an information pack for the ward… that actually has never seen the light of day… but… I mean I… I was… I think there… there was… I… I mean certainly, people were… were told where they could get information more… more readily than they had been.’

`But it wasn’t being provided by the hospital?’

`No, it wasn’t provided… and in fact… they had, what I… I have found out really, is a very… I mean they might have changed it by now, they had a very poor policy with regard to the Mental Health Act because… they would come and tell you you were detained under the Mental Health Act, and they would give you a copy of the leaflet outlining your… your rights… and then they would go… and this happened to somebody who was in the bed opposite to me. I’d got my copy and she’d got her copy, and the nurse was just going out the door and… and she said to the nurse, `I can’t read’… and the nurse sort of huffed… well, you know, ‘what do you want me to tell you… I’ll just tell you briefly, you know…’, but I understand that that’s… that’s quite bad practice, that it doesn’t always happen like that in wards, but… they did… they did sort of seem to feel like once they’d given you the bit of paper that was it… that was done.…’

`So would people know how to appeal against their section?’

`Well… there was… an excellent, when I was there, there was an excellent administrator, who dealt with the Mental Health Act, but you did have to know, to be able to get hold of her… and I did know… but I think it was quite difficult for people to do that… and… and even I found that… I couldn’t… I wanted… I knew this solicitor… through MIND and I knew that he… worked… worked mainly around the Mental Health Act, but I couldn’t think of how to get hold of him, you know. I couldn’t think of what I did, and so by the time… I… I actually, was in… in contact with him, I… I’d been detained then for… a couple of months. By the time the appeal came, the tribunal, the section only had two weeks to go. So… I don’t think they make it easy for people… at all. There’s no advocacy in… on the wards. So I mean I think it’s… I think it’s really hard… I mean with the best will in the world it’s hard to make your way round leaflets and forms and this, but… when you’re in a… a state that people feel you’ve got to be detained… and the whole process of being detained anyway, you know… to try and make sense of it, I just think you know, you should have… the administrator was very good… and she would certainly help with… setting up the hospital managers appeal thing. But no, I think… I think it was… it was very poor.’

`So the changes that there had been to… because the 1983 Mental Health Act had come in by then hadn’t it…?’

`Mmm’

`But as a patient, would you say that you hadn’t particularly noticed any difference… the fact that that Act had come in, or was there anything tangible that people would have noticed?’

`I think, certainly the whole process of being detained… was far more… seemed far more rigorous… under the ’83 Act than it did under the ’59 Act… I mean you knew… you were being detained, whereas I didn’t know I was being detained before… but you knew what was going on… you knew why they were talking to you… and… and I didn’t know that before so I… yeah, I mean I think… I think there are those sorts of changes. I think that there is still a lot of dishonesty about it because… the last time I was detained, my… the social worker said that she would contact my husband… to see if he had any objections, and… he was… I mean he was standing in the staff room at work… you know, a room full of per… people, being told that his wife had been detained under the Mental Health… did he have any objections, you know… and she said to him that it would be very… it would be… what he could do, would be to discharge me… he had the right to… to actually discharge me himself, you know… that he could put in that appeal. What she didn’t tell him was that the hospital could block it… that the Psychiatrist could block it. She didn’t tell him that, which of course he did… and so… of course, Paul was thinking… `Well she needs to be in hospital, but… and she won’t stay, so ok, you know, they can detain her for a while, and then, when she’s calmed down a bit, I’ll…’, I mean… he… he… knew that once I’d calmed down a bit, I would probably have stayed anyway, it was just the initial…I…’

`You’d have stayed voluntarily?’

`…I don’t want to be here… you know… and I’d have stayed voluntarily… so he was thinking, `Well… then I will put in my whatever it’s called appeal… and… and she will be… and she can become voluntary…’, and of course he… we were both absolutely… ‘cause he would never have gone along with it, you see… he said `I would never have gone along with it, if I had any idea they were going to detain you for… what amounted almost to six months’. So I… I don’t think, you know… I think there was… there are changes, but I… I still think there’s… quite a lot of slight of hand about it… and particularly, I mean I… I did have the feeling, because I had… an appeal by the hospital managers, Paul had his appeal… and both times I did have the feeling that they weren’t going to do anything that… that the Psychiatrist didn’t recommend. They just didn’t look like the bunch of people who were going to do that, so…mmm.’

`Were there any changes in the sense of… I remember you telling me earlier that… there were these sort of unwritten rules if you like… that if you disobeyed whatever, those unknown things were… there was this fear of being injected? Was that still the case in the nine… early nineteen nineties?’

`No, I don’t think that was around. I think that… no… that wasn’t around, but there was… they had this seclusion room, on the ward, that I’d actually not encountered before, it’s sounds funny…’ [both talking together].

`What was that like?’

`…you know, doesn’t it?… Well, a padded cell, basically… but they didn’t have one in… on the villa I was in at Nethern [ph], and… so… people were… I don’t think… I think people thought that you would have to be really `off the wall’ to go into the seclusion room, but people didn’t quite know, you know… didn’t quite know, how `off the wall’ you had to be…’

`What the criteria might be?’

`Yeah… yeah… and sometimes… there were nurses on the ward… who used it as a threat… for people who… when they wanted people to… I mean there was one chap, when I went in one time, who was very… he talked, incessantly. He gabbled, absolutely incessantly… and he drove everybody mad because you couldn’t hear what he was saying, and it was all… all slightly under his breath, but slightly you could hear it, but he was so fast you couldn’t make it out anyway… but actually the patients were far more tolerant than staff, and the staff found him very difficult, and… they… they would say, `Look, you know… shut up Ken or I’ll put you in the seclusion room, and nobody ever quite knew, you know, whether that was going to happen or not, but no… I mean… there… there wasn’t… there isn’t that… that sort of… in fact that is much easier. There is more… than what… what they do do, now… is quite often to write people up for something… that… that they call `prn’ as the need arises, so that… if somebody becomes very agitated they can have Melleril or something, you know… and so… that seems like more under peoples’ control, so that’s much better. But I worry about the seclusion bit, and in fact there was… there was a nurse on the ward who used to say to me… that his theory was that you… you have a seclusion room, you will use it, because it’s there… you know… and that if you didn’t have it, you would find other ways of dealing with… with peoples’ behaviour.’
`Was it used quite a lot?’

`It was actually. It was, yeah… it was used quite a lot, yes… and… and it was… it was always very distressing because… you know people in there would often bang on the door… you know… `Let me out, let me out’… [both talking together].’

`So there… people were locked in this padded room…?’

`Yeah…’

`What else was in the room?’

`I think there was just a mattress on the floor. There was just a mattress on the floor, and then the door was locked, and they had… sort of reinforced glass, so that they could see people, and they had to come… they… you know, there were sort of hospital procedures around the use of the room so… they had to go and check on people and you know, so many times an hour or whatever it was. I don’t know. But it was… it was always… very… it… brought home to you more than anything else that… that you were on a psychiatric ward, because if ever anybody went, there was always about… a great song and dance about getting them there, and they would… quite often… there were… there were three wards… that were sort of linked by a corridor that went… although they had doors between them, to… to make them into… separate wards, so that there was a corridor that went right the way along, and… I… sort of had this impression that… the… the nurses quite liked the… the sort of drama, sort of emergency bit, you know… a bit like sort of cardiac arrest and everybody comes running and… if they had somebody who they sensed or gave some indication that they were sort of getting out of control, they would bleep the other wards and you felt like they’d sort of gathered together the biggest nurses in the world, to… come running onto the ward to assist them, and they all seemed incredibly over the top, you know… always seemed absolutely incredibly over the top.’

`How many nurses would they send?’

`Oh, I mean quite often there would… there would be… two or three from each ward… I mean quite often there would be six… six or seven of them…’

`To get one person in…?’

`To get one person in a seclusion room… that… it always… it had the feeling of being just a tad over the top.’

`It certainly sounds that way.’

`Mmm’ [Pause]

`Was there ECT carried out there?’

`ECT was carried out there. They had a… a suite… an ECT suite, downstairs… which was… because it was a new block, so it was a… it was a new… new suite, and it had… an enormous waiting room… really large waiting room, full of chairs, which was amazing, ‘cause I’d… I’d had ECT and… I think there was only once that there… there was one other person in the room with me… and… and… awkward… equally amazing was that you went through, to… to lay on the trolley, and…the room was full of trolleys. There were about a dozen trolleys there… and this was like well away from the main hospital, and I always had this sort of fantasy of people rushing in and saying `Quick, quick, quick… you know, we’ve got this emergency, we’ve got to give dozens of people ECT, you know, line the trolleys up everybody’, and… I’ve no idea why they had so many. So… and you were… you know, you’d have to get on the trolley there and then… then go through to this… this other room, so it was all… and then you came out and there was a sort of recovery… bit and chairs and tea and everything. But I never quite… got the hang of where everything was, because… when I went from the waiting room to… go on the trolley, that was all right, but when I went on the trolley, into the room where it was done, because I… I couldn’t wear my contact lenses I couldn’t see, so I didn’t know what was what… and I never could see how I got from there to being in the room where you got your cup of tea and your biscuit. I could never quite work that out. I quite often actually, wanted to go back and just walk round and see how you got from one place to another.’

`So there… it was still a bit like a rabbit warren then?’

`Yeah… yeah…’

`How was it that you ended up agreeing to ECT… have… having previously not had it?’

`Umm… well the Psychiatrist was very… adamant… that… I mean his view was that… if I didn’t have ECT, I might recover but it would take a lot longer… I might not recover, I might in the mean time commit suicide, and… so he thought that this was like a… a quick fix that was going to work. I was… dead set against it. Completely. I did not want it… and he said to me, on one admission, he said, `Look…’, he said, `I want you to have ECT. You’re not sectioned at the moment, but I will section you, under Section Three of the Mental Health Act. I will get a second opinion doctor to come, and… assess you, for whether you should have ECT’, with… with the clear implication that he would say I did… and I was terrified, because… I… I didn’t want ECT, but I desperately didn’t want ECT that I hadn’t consented to. That just felt like a whole different ball game to me, because I knew… that… you know, the staff would be following me everywhere, and… in fact, one of the nurses said to me… when they were discussing ECT, `Look..’, he said to me, `Look…’, he said, `If you don’t want ECT, make sure that you always go to bed with a glass of water or a sweet or something, you know, and they…and they won’t be able to give it to you’, and…’

`Because that would affect the anaesthetic?’

`The anaesthetic, yeah. So I was really worried now… I think… I mean I should be fair to this Psychiatrist. He is a very caring man. He just has… an unshakeable belief in ECT, and he was very concerned about me. He… he knew… that I was in a dire state, and he felt really powerless. I knew… I know how he felt, I mean, I know he was desperate, and he… because of that he started to get angry, you know, with me… and with himself… and I’m sure that he wouldn’t have done it really. He wasn’t that sort of person. I mean he… he did detain me a couple of times but… I don’t think he would have done it but I was really frightened, so I agreed to have it, because I thought, I would rather have it voluntarily, than… than just feel that I was going to be forced, you know. Maybe…like… forced down there and… you know, and… between two nurses, or you know… I mean I didn’t know what would happen, but I didn’t want it like that. And what… what… what happened was that… I kept… I had it, and I would have four… or I would have three… or whatever… and then I got… I got so scared about it… I kept stopping it… because I… I just didn’t want another one. You know, I didn’t want any more… and so… then he said, `Look, you know, it isn’t going to work unless you have a course, you know…’

`And how long would a course be? How many treatments?’ [both talking together]

`A course for him was eight. It was eight. So eventually I had all eight. In fact I had nine, because… apparently one time that I’d had it, I hadn’t had a proper fit… and I thought that was really odd. Do you know? To… to say, whether a treatment’s been effective or not, whether you’ve had a proper fit, it’s just… it just made me go cold, ‘cause they’d actually written it down there, you know… that I hadn’t had a proper fit, so… they gave me nine instead of eight. Didn’t do the slightest bit of good. Not the slightest. In fact, it just addled my brains… I couldn’t remember a blasted thing. But… [pause]…’

`What year might that have been that you had that?’

`I think it was probably ’93 or ’94… something like that… and in fact, I did have it… again… umm… [pause]… maybe… maybe ’96, and I had one… and… I came back from the ECT suite, and I thought, something awful has happened… and I’m not having that again. I couldn’t remember anybody on the ward, and even when they told me who they were, I couldn’t remember them. I struggled to remember the name of my children.’

`Did you recognise them?’
`No…’

`Visually?’

`I didn’t know where I was… and… instead of… like bringing me round downstairs and giving me a cup of tea downstairs, they’d actually waited until they got to the ward, and so… I don’t know how I got up the stairs, but I got up the stairs, and I was standing by my bed holding a cup of tea, and I thought, `Well how did I get here?’, and I just had this feeling… I had this real feeling… that I must never have that again. I thought, I… I’d been really lucky that time, but I shouldn’t ever have it again, and… and I just absolutely refused… ever to have it again.’

`And you said he couldn’t remember the names of your children?’

`No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t think about… I couldn’t think about anything, you know. I mean I… I couldn’t think of… and anything that anybody told me, seconds later I’d completely forgotten, and I… it was near Christmas, and I was just terrified. I was terrified ‘cause I thought… you know, how am I going to sort everything out, because I can’t remember anything. I don’t know what I’m doing… and… it was… although I’d had those… all those before and I’d… had the four and stopped them and some more and then I’d had the nine, it was actually in a different league, the feeling I had when I came back was in a different league to that. I really felt that if I… if I carried on there would be permanent damage… and when I said to the Psychiatrist about it, he said, `Oh’, he said, `I think it’s because they… they didn’t bring you round downstairs, they brought you upstairs…’, and I thought, `Oh don’t be so silly’, you know. Something major’s happening here and you’re just telling me it’s about walking up a flight of stairs… so I… I would never have it again and I… I am quite determined that, if I was ever sectioned again, I… I would ensure that I… I had… I had somebody, like my solicitor or somebody there, who… who was going to… to make sure that I wasn’t given it without my consent… ‘cause I just feel that… it was going to damage me. [Pause].’

`So when did you leave that hospital… the most recent time that you left?’

`The last time I left was ’97… February ’97.’

`And is that when you began working as a user consultant?’

`Yes… yes. In fact, I had… signed up to be a user consultant, in ’96, while I was still at the hospital, and they didn’t actually know that… so… that was quite funny… because, you know… I would be in… I mean I don’t… I think by then… no, I was detained actually… I was detained, and… I went for an interview while I was detained, and the only way they would let me go, was if my daughter went with me, which she did. But they didn’t… they didn’t… know anything about that, so… I then, when I left the hospital… I’d done odd bits of… of work, while I was there… and then when I left I… I continued to… as you say, to work as a user consultant.’

`And what did that actually involve doing?’

`Well, it’s mainly been about… when… there’s been consultancy work, is to ensure the… that the people on the receiving end of services have a… have a say… in what… you know, and what their view… views are, about the services they receive, because… there had been a tendency to ask the nurses, and social workers, and CPNs and Psychiatrists, and actually the people on the receiving end… had… had not been asked, and of course… as we will all know, their version of events was… often very different from the version of events that the Mental Health professionals would give you, so… I think that… I mean I hope that that’s been valuable. I… I do have… some reservations about it. I… I do feel that I… I have this sort of sense that I’m profiting from other peoples’ misery about… you know… the sort of feeling about it, and I don’t like that… and I don’t like the feeling that I’m… somehow… putting myself up as… as… as an expert on other peoples’ misery… because I think that’s very discounting of people. But all I can do… is to… when I talk to… to people who use services in different areas, is to say to them, `You know, I can’t influence what will happen, all I can do is to assure you that what you say to me will get said, to the people who… who are asking for this work.’ And I… I speak at conferences, on user issues and… write… various articles and things about user issues, so… yeah, I mean I… I think it’s… as I say, I’m not… I’m not sure. I’m not convinced about it really. I… I think it’s… quite a difficult road to go down in that… your status is often questioned… as… as well of course is… is your sanity…’

`Questioned by other professionals?’

`Yeah, by other Consultants, other people you work with, I think. I mean it was very different when I worked for MIND, and I… I would introduce myself as being… MIND Project Manager, and… you know they… people would… would ask your opinion and would make sure that you knew about meetings, that you had the stuff, and that doesn’t always happen, and…’

`There’s a different status attached to… working for MIND as opposed to saying you’re an individual…and a user consultant?’ [both talking together].

`Yeah… as… as opposed to saying you’re a user consultant… yeah, I think so. I think so… so… I… I may well not stay, doing that sort of work, I… I don’t know, I’ll see…’

`So… but you still do that work at the moment?’

`Yeah…’

`Yeah?’

`Yeah…’

`So if I… to summarise a little bit… over the period of your life you… you spent… vast amounts of it really, in and out of psychiatric hospital… but at the same time you’ve managed to raise a family… and then… in a way, a complete turn around, by representing users and yourself. What sort of hopes have you got for the next stage in your life?’

`I mean, the reality with my life is that I can be in a smart suit, driving up the M1, one minute, and detained on an acute in-patient ward the next. I know that… and… my sense is, although I am an eternal pessimist, my sense is that actually that’s not going to change. I don’t think that’s going to change… so… I… I think I… I have to… to make as much use as I can, of… of the times when… when I can do things. I mean I have to do what I can when I can do them, and… then I have to free wheel when I can’t… and… and come back again, you know… hopefully. I… I would like to feel… that I was not going to be… involved with Mental Health… using Mental Health Services, but I… I don’t… I think that’s unrealistic. I don’t think that’s true. I think, you know, a lot of my life really, is… even now, I mean even… two years after the last admission and I’m… I’m not on medication now and I… have a job that… I love to do… and I think I can do. But even now, a lot of my life is a struggle, just to keep my head together… you know… it’s… it’s a real struggle, and sometimes I just think `Oh shit… you know… I can’t do this any more…’, and just to… to keep thinking… just… things that… that are reasonable, rather than getting into all the… the sort of fantasy land… is… is just… I mean it… it just… occupies a lot of my life. I wish it wasn’t that way, but…’

`In the break we were talking about your children. I don’t know what ages they are now, perhaps you’d like to say?’

`Yeah… Sam’s sixteen, and Tom’s eighteen, and Jane’s twenty two…’

`And you were saying to me that they were… quite supportive and quite understanding…I wonder if you’d like to elaborate a little more on that?’

`Well, yes I mean they’ve… they’ve… it’s obviously… it’s been a really difficult time for them because… they… lost their mum for… lots of major chunks of time and we’re not… talking about a couple of weeks, we’re talking about months on end, and… they would come and visit me at Medway [ph], and… and particularly when they were younger it was… it was really difficult… particularly in the winter when we couldn’t go and walk around and… and we would sit downstairs, ‘cause… because it was a General Hospital, there was a… a League of Friends shop, and you could get a cup of tea and we would sit there and… one time Tom tipped his tea all over the carpet… [whispers]… `Oh, God… you know…’, and… and it’s been really difficult for them, and… you know, I wanted to be their mum and I wanted to be a good mum, and… `I’m sorry, I’m going to get upset now’, [crying]… [pause]… I think I… I can be, you know… I… I… [crying]… and I… I just… [pause]… I… [crying]… I really regret that I wasn’t able to… to… to be like them, like that for them… umm… because I think they deserve better than that, and… I’m very proud of them. I think they’ve done brilliantly. I mean my… my… daughter has… just finished her degree in teaching… Tom has moved to Devon, and… is… is looking for work there and… Sam… is… is off to Agricultural College and… I think they… they’ve done brilliantly, and I think they’re very… sensitive and… sympathetic, people… but I just wish they didn’t have to have done it that way. I mean Sam, particularly, and Jane as well, they are both… very socialist. Sam is completely outraged by any thought of racism. He cannot understand it, and I’m very proud that they’ve got those views, but I… I’m very relieved that they got them, because of the way that they thought about them, and what… rather than because of experiences… and I… I’m really sorry that… that… that the views, the… the sort of… the sensitivity they’ve got, was learnt in such a painful way… I… I do regret that, because… I mean it… you know I think it is probably hard for you to believe this, but… one thing I am known for is my sense of humour. I mean… and the children really appreciate that, you know… I mean my… my son introduces me to his friends as though I’m… I’m some sort of stand up comic…’

`[Laughs]’

`And I think their…their lives would have been very different, because I am that…usually that sort of person… and… and I think that it would have… you know, it would have made a lot of difference to them, if I could have been like that, rather than the sort of person I was.’

`You also said to me though that… that you feel that they are actually very proud of you, and the fact that you have survived all…’

`Yeah…’

`…all these things…?’

`I think they are… I mean I think they… I don’t know, it’s difficult to know how they… see you, because I did… try… when I was at home, I did try to… in a sense, protect them from the worst of what I was feeling… and… I don’t know… how they viewed me, you know. I don’t know what they saw, when they saw me. But they… they do feel that… oh, particularly depression… I think they do feel… that depression is… is very serious, and… they did… I mean the Consultant in Medway [ph] was very good and… a couple of times he came to the house and he spoke to the children, and one of his messages was, you know, `Your mum is seriously ill, and… that’s why she needs to be in hospital’, so… I think they… it… you know they… they have always felt that this is… that this is something that I can’t do anything about, I mean they do believe that, but… and also I think they also probably feel… that it’s something that they can’t do anything about either, which I think is good, you know… I mean, like with… with divorce and things, you know, children always think that maybe they contributed don’t they… but I don’t… I don’t think the children do… so I’m… I’m relieved about that, but… but I… I just think, they… you know, they learnt… some really painful lessons, that I just wish they could have learnt other ways. But yeah… they’re proud of me, and… it’s… I…. In a sense that’s… that’s actually also… not exactly a burden, but… when… if ever I do go back into hospital, I… you know, it just makes me feel, `Oh God, I’ve let them down again’ [laughs], you know… that they had such hopes… and that it’s… you know, that it’s all gone a bit haywire again.’

`It also sounded as if… they’re very realistic about that though?Maybe they, you know…I don’t want to sound as though I’m analysing something ‘cause I’m not trying to, but from what you said it sounded to me as though there is a very accepting part, so that… even if you go into hospital again, that’s… maybe they’re not… maybe you feel you feel you’re letting them down, but maybe they don’t…?’

`You know, I think… I mean, I… when I’ve been in the hospital the… the staff and the other patients have always been really impressed with the kids, because they… in order to get from Maidstone to Medway [ph] you have to go on a bus that… you know, goes round the world, every village in between here and Medway [ph], and it takes about fifty minutes on the bus, and… all of them have come, at one time or another, on their own, on the bus, to see me… and they’re very… infrequent buses and they’re very… difficult to get back again. They don’t come to the hospital, they come to a bus station that’s quite a walk away, and… you know, when they used to walk down the ward and they’d… made the journey, you know… I… I always felt so proud of them, for doing that… and I… I thought… that it… it said, you know… for me it spoke volumes about them really, that they were… they were quite willing to come onto… to a psychiatric ward and visit their mum, and you know, people could be doing bizarre things around and [inaudible]. I mean Tom actually, Tom, bless him, was `oh yeah… what are they doing?’ you know…’

`[Laughs]’

`But you know, Jane and Sam were sort of, you know, very unphased by it all, so… yeah, I think they’ve done brilliantly.’

`We’ve nearly come to the… the end of it… is there anything…that you’d like to add or any bits that you feel we’ve left out that we should have covered?’

`Umm…’

`Anything indeed about the…your future… hopes or thoughts?’

`No… I mean I… my… real concern is that I do think there is something desperately wrong with Mental Health Services. I do think, most of them are… lack compassion for people, and lack any sort of understanding of peoples’ lives, and… I… I think that’s just appalling. I… I… I just really, whenever… wherever I go, to places and… and speak to people who use services, people… even people who have used services for years and years will say… you know, `What we really want is someone to talk to’, you know… I don’t mean like `high flow’ fancy therapy… I mean somebody to talk to… and I think that it’s really sad that we don’t listen to that… and I’m really… I am concerned about the young people who get involved in the system and I… I get very depressed about whether there’s any future for them. I think that’s terrible. I mean my… my heart is in Mental Health, and… I probably will stay there, but I mean I think what really… I… I really… think we should be concerned about is… is human rights here and… and what people have a right to expect in life, and… certainly the old institutions were not what people had a right to expect in life, but there was actually… a lot of what’s in the community [laughs] that isn’t what people have a right to expect in life either, and I… I think we… we really have to do something about that… and I’m concerned that there’s not a will to do that, you know…’

`So there’s plenty of work to do then around user involvement?’

`Yeah… yeah… absolutely… yes. I think so and…’

`I certainly found it very interesting, listening to you… and also the fact that the… politics in a way that you were mentioning right back to those school days when you had this sense of injustice… and then going through the…hospital systems and so on, that that still really shows through now that… that’s still stayed with you, your whole… right the way through you have this very strong sense of what’s right and wrong…’

`Yes… yes… I think… I think that’s right. I think… you know… when you’ve been through a mental health system, you… and you see other folk, you have a real… you have a real feeling for what’s happening… I mean I don’t mean what’s happening in their head, but what’s happening to them in their lives, and what they’re losing, and… I mean here I am, you know… I had a… a degree in Psychology, I could have had a PhD, I could have had... a... I mean Clinical Psychology, certainly when I started was very well paid. I have been able to… to hold down jobs, some of the time, but a… a lot… of course a lot of time I’ve been off sick, and my whole life… has been characterised by being very poor [laughs]… and… and I mean I know it’s all relative and… you know, I have got a house and things, but… it… it is a constant juggle to… just to keep our heads above water, and I feel… I think that’s really sad for Paul, you know, he’s worked so hard, and friends of ours… of the same age, who… you know, were similarly educated are… are really, you know… two cars and a villa in the South of France sort of thing, you know… and I… and I… I… I think that’s really sad.’
`Mmm’

`So I… I yes… I mean I do feel that… that a lot of it is about… human rights and about injustice and about where you are, on… on the social scale, and I don’t think that’s right... not at all. [Pause].’

`Shall we end there?’

`Yeah… fine…’

`Thank you very much.’

[End of DVC Pro tape six of six – End of VHS tape two of two]