11 ANNE SOPPITT

ANNE SOPPITT  C905/11/01-04/VHS 01-01

 MENTAL HEALTH TESTIMONY ARCHIVE

ANNE SOPPITT

C905/11/01-04/VHS 01-01
Original on DVC-Pro
Copy on VHS
 
Interviewed by Judy Mead
Camera by Faye
 
Transcribed by Julie Sharman
August 1999
 

[Start of DVCPro Tape 1 of 4 – Start of VHS Tape 1 of 1]
][Camera: `Interview with Anne Soppitt, C905/11 tape number one’]
 
`You’ve got quite a few…’
 
`Mmm’
 
`So if we… start off… with some…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`…of your earliest memories, going right back to childhood, perhaps you could start off by telling me when and where you were born?’
 
`Clapham Common, 31 Crescent Grove [ph]… but I lived at 14 Crescent Grove [ph].  That was my mother’s house… but I don’t remember… anything about… well I say I don’t remember… I remember going to Boarding School at three… or was I evac… I think I was evacuated to a convent, a girl’s convent.  That’s right… and then… I went to… [pause]… but… Bless The Sacra [ph] convent, to… and then… and I also went to another convent.  I don’t know why I had to change over.  I went to… Presentation Convent in Reading, and Bless The Sacrament Convent at Brighton… and I never came home in the holidays.  I went to holiday school… and then, when I was eight, my mother married, and… my stepfather… I met when I was expelled from school… and I was expelled from school because I came on my period, and I showed it to all the girls, ‘cause you know, in those days you were so innocent, and… they expelled me for it, and… I came and lived with the most lovely lady, my step grandmother.  But sometimes I went home, and I can always see this tin bath.  My mother lived in… 14 Crescent Grove was a downstairs flat… and I used to sleep, when I went… when I was at home, which was very rare, on a camp bed in the corridor, and… I used to bath in the kitchen, you know, but… I can always remember that lovely lady, in the Alms House in Brixton… and I can remember it was a top flat, and I used to love going there, and… I used to tidy, you know, do all different things for her and she taught me how, on a… board, you know, washing board… how to… wash my navy blue knickers and white socks, and… you know… and she taught me… basically… all hygiene and every… you know what… you know, what mum should have really taught me.  But… umm… and then… I suppose… I’d always been… I… I never would, for some reason, read or write, even when I was at school, I just would not learn, and… I suppose… what they called in those days… a… a maladjusted child, you know… and I was taken to Belgrave Children’s Hospital.  I don’t even know where it is, I just know the name of the hospital.’
 
`Belgrave, did you say?’
 
`Belgrave… Children’s Hospital.  I went to a Child Psychiatrist… and took an [inaudible] there… and then from there, I went… to the Adolescent Unit at Cane Hill… not Cane Hill… Bethlem Royal.  This was years and years ago.’
 
`Where’s Bethlem Royal?’
 
`It’s in West Wickham.  It’s where you go from here now.  Do you understand what I mean?  The Bethlem and Royal Trust has taken over Croydon Mental Health, and Warlingham Park’s closed down, last September, and now, there’s just… from a 1,500 bedded hospital, and a General Hospital May Day… they’ve gone down to a sixty six bedded ward for the whole of Croydon… Borough… which went from Crystal Palace… the boundary line is Crystal Palace to… to… Misterham [???] in Coulsdon, but it’s the biggest borough in the country, and there’s just a sixty six…’
 
`Sorry to interrupt…’
 
`…sixty six bedded ward… you know, so…’
 
`Sorry, can just stop you there, we need to…[break in recording].’
 
`Just before our interruption you were telling me that you went to Bethlem…?’
 
`Yes…’
 
`What sort of age were you then?’
 
`About… thirteen. [Pause].  Shall I carry on?’
 
`Please do…’
 
`Yes, when I was about thirteen… and… my mother… how can I put it?  I don’t think it was because she didn’t love me… she had quite… she worked very hard, my mother, and I believe from what their jobs were, I came from good stock.  My real father, who I never even knew, and had never even seen, he was a Stock Broker… up in London, and my mum was… in those days, a Sec… the Head Secretary of Angie’s [ph] Duplicators at High Holborn.  So… I think it was just the shame… you know,  and my father… you know wanted to play his part and give me a good education, but it didn’t…’
 
`Was it the shame of…?’
 
`You know… being illegitimate…’
 
`Right’
 
`You know… and… my mother rarely came to see me.  It’s not… I think… I don’t feel she did disown me… but I don’t know… I don’t know… anyway, when I was at Bethlem Royal, I had nobody coming to see me and this family… Knibbs and Advil [ph]… I can’t… they’re married now, so I don’t know… their parents befriended me, and took me to Bromley Baptist… you know… and after that I became… although I was still at Bethlem Royal, I became involved in… the Church there, got baptised, made a commitment, and… I used to travel… no, let’s not jump the gun… I used to travel about, you know… going to church and… at… Bromley Baptist, from Bethlem Royal, and I got involved in Girls’ Brigade, and… but all the time I couldn’t… read or write.  I never learnt to read and write ‘til 1970, ‘till I was in Rampton, and I went to their… they’ve got a kind of… University there… well not University… what would you call it… school? College?… in… you know, in the grounds in Rampton Hospital.  Anyway, then… Bethlem Royal.  I tell you, in those days, I loved it there.  Loved it.  It was like… oh, it was wonderful.  Everybody had their own rooms and… there was plenty of staff and there was… OT, but it was a training school for… in Bethlem Royal… in those days, because Bethlem Royal is the… annexe, in those days to the Maudesley [ph]… do you understand what I mean?’
 
`Mmm’
 
`It was the annexe, and… the nurses used to do one and a half years’ training at… each and I just loved it there.  I was a rebel, but I loved it… and I tell…’
 
`Sorry, were you… that was during your teenage years was it?’
 
`Yes… yeah… I was an absolute rebel.  I tell you… you wouldn’t believe it.  I can always… I must just tell you of an incident… and… which I think… hel… [ph], when I went to Cane Hill I would have been half murdered if I’d done something like that.  I let all… ‘cause you know there was keys in those days, even at the far… [???]… I let them all out.  I picked the lock and let all the boys and girls out, and we raided Kelsey [ph] Park, and in those days it was… profess… there was a Professor of Bethlem Royal, and we went and raided his orchard, and all sorts… I think… and I can remember… taking them all back in the morning, and we trooped in at seven o’clock in the morning, and I can see Mr Goodwin [ph] standing there, and saying to me… `I suppose you’re the [laughs] leader, but strange enough, I was so… I had… I suppose it’s because… I don’t… oh, I… because in those days it didn’t belong… have anything to do with Croydon Council or… you know, it was just the… hospital… you know, and…’
 
`Was that hospital just for people with psychiatric problems or was it a General Hospital or…?’ [Both talking together].
 
`Yes… it was… the annexe…’
 
`…just for children?’
 
`The children were at the Maudesley [ph], you understand what I’m saying?… and the annexe, you know, when you came to a certain age, you went to Bethlem Royal, but it also catered… it’s a big hospital.  There was bits… it… all psychiatric though, and… umm… you know, you just had a wonderful life… you know, and I was there for two and a half years, and… they discharged me and I was a Cadet Nurse… You’ll never believe this… at Sydenham and Childrens Hospital… I don’t think they have Cadet Nurses now… and I used to…’
 
`Sydenham…?’
 
`Childrens Hospital… I was going to do my training, but… I thought oh, I still couldn’t read and write… I never let on. They knew at Bethlem Royal but I never let on at… Sydenham Childrens Hospital.’
 
`How did you get round it?’
 
`Pardon?’
 
`How did you get round it?’
 
`What…?’
 
`Not being able to read and write… did you have to pretend that you could, or…?’
 
`No, because as a Cadet Nurse you didn’t have to take exams, and in those days there wasn’t all the signing of forms and… there was nothing like that, and I was there for… nine months and then I took an overdose.  I loved it… and then I took an overdose, and I landed at Farnborough [ph] Hospital.  Well, Cane Hill is the long stay place for the Bromley Group Hospital, in those days.  It’s owned by the Bromley Group Hospital Management Committee… because you know in the old days… of… hospitals were away from… you know… where the… big hospitals were away, you know, such as… likes of… institutions and asylums, and I went to Cane Hill, because I took an overdose at Farnborough [ph], and they said they couldn’t do any more for me there, so they sent me over to their… their annexe…’
 
`Mmm’
 
`And then… ooh… it started.  I was put on a ward with 110 lost patients.  Do you know what I mean by lost patients?’
 
`[Shakes head?]’
 
`You’ve no idea?  Well they were all drugged… drugged up. They looked… they looked in those days, that there was something terribly… they were drugged up, and they just stared at you… and… I was just… well, a maladjusted teenager, you know, full of fun and pranks and everything, and… there I had to scrub wax…’
 
`What does that mean?’
 
`Scrub wax?  I used to have to scrub the floors with wax, the wooden floors with wax, and then get big bumpers… you know bumpers?  And swing it, and polish them… like that…’
 
`What’s a… bumper?’
 
`It’s a… you know like a broom handle… but it’s got a great big heavy… sort of brush on it, and you swing it up and down.  You do that for about an hour, you know… all over the floor, and then you put cloth on it, and it shines it up… now I was only what… fifteen at the time… and you imagine… oh, and I used to wash up for a 110, all sorts of things… but they did reward me, because once a week I was allowed to go to the bakeries… ‘cause it was like… Cane Hill [ph], years ago, was like a big, big farm… a big, big village.  It had everything, and I used to be able to go to the big… ‘cause first of all, Cane Hill caters for 2000 patients… and… there was a bakery department that cooked for staff, and the whole of the hospital… everything… you know, and I used to be able to queue up for my reward and have home made… a piece of what they called home made bread with jam on it, so that was one of the good things…’
 
`Was there any other type of reward that… you had for that work?’
 
`Umm… oh, money didn’t come in ‘till a lot… a lot, lot later… but… umm… but in that time, I was… when I first went there, I was locked in a side room… at night, from about seven ‘till seven the next morning, with just a bed and a potty, and a strong dress… you know…’
 
`Can you describe that for me?’
 
`What, a strong dress?  [Draws in breath]… It’s like… how would you describe it?  It’s like… twenty times thicker than a blanket… very thick, and all sown up, so you couldn’t tear it or anything, you know… and it was done up at the back.  You felt as though… you know… you were tied in.  Not only were you locked in, but you were sort of tied in.  You could… you could just about move and go to the toilet during the night, and… most… most of the earlier time I just slept on a rubber mattress… but I had been… well, yes it was in Cane Hill [ph], I had… no, Farnborough… I first experienced a padded cell… you know…’
 
`Can… can I…?  Sorry to interrupt you…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`Can I take you back again to the strong clothes…?’
 
`Well that’s all to do with it…’
 
`Were…what sort of material were they made from?’
 
`Umm… do you know jeans… this?  About twenty times that thickness, and it was all stitched in squares all over so that you couldn’t tear it.  Well, you couldn’t, but it was all stitched, and it went over your head… just sort of… sort of like this shape, but not sort of fitted or anything…and it went down straight.  It was all stiff and… you know what jeans can be like?  It was really… well it was so thick… you know…’
 
`And what was the purpose of those?’
 
`So you couldn’t harm… you know… it was… wait a minute, let me think… no, that was a straight jacket… no… you went into a strong dress after you’d been in a straight jacket… that was… you know… one step up the ladder, sort of thing… and I think they used to… the strong dresses used to come down to here… but the straight jacket… oh, it was terrible.  You were… buckled in, you know… have you ever been in a straight jacket?’
 
`[Shakes head?]’
 
`Ooh… it’s all… at the back.  You’ve seen somebody get out of a straight jacket haven’t you… even on television?  Magicians?  You know… well that’s the sort of thing you were in… you know… belt… but… much… thick cloth then.  You couldn’t move.  You were just like that…’
 
`And you had that…?’
 
`Yes… oh… and you were put in a padded cell.  You know, you were just thrown in, with a needle in your bum and… so…’
 
`What would you have worn ordinarily then in… and what sort of age were you… then?’
 
`What?’
 
`At that time you’re talking about now… when you were… had the strong dress?’
 
`It… well it was roughly between… when I was transferred from Farnborough [ph].  No… in Farnborough [ph] Hospital… [pause]… between fifteen  I should think… round about that time… fifteen and seventeen, between that time.  But I’ve been knocked about so much, that I just believe it was the system, you know… they just… oohh… terrible things have happened to me, and now… and I tell you, I was… you know… no angel. I… I… I’ve never really hurt anybody because I’m violent.  I’ve smashed windows… a cry for help… from frustration, to hurt myself because I couldn't cope, you know… with being… and I wanted to get out into the world, you know… you know, but… I have been to different hospitals in my time… right from The Henderson [ph]… have you ever heard of The Henderson [ph]?  When talking treatment came out… you know… because it’s like…’
 
`Perhaps we can come to that later…?’
 
`Yeah… where else have I…’
 
`You were… you were in the middle of telling me about the padded cells?’
 
`Yeah, yeah… they…’
 
`I’d be interested to know…’
 
`You don’t… they’re… padded like… the jeans stuff you wear… but… really, really thick.  You know like vinyl?… Like that, but… you know padded… they look padded, like vinyl, and there’s no window in there or anything, it’s just a room with a… a minute little light, and there’s this thick… thick, thick wall.  I should think the door was that thick… and you’re locked in, and that’s it…’
 
`How long for?’
 
`Oh, I’ve been locked… and… I… in Rampton I was in a padded cell, and I was locked in for eight days and eight nights, just being fed… through the pigeon hole, with bread and water… do you remember… well you, of course you wouldn’t remember… 1976, Rampton was on the television, and it was called `The Secret Hospital’… it was on ITV, and that’s when Rampton’s whole system changed, but I was there then, when it was being shown on television, and… ‘cause a girl came out and she let… you know, she told… and it horrified people.  I… I was locked in because I asked for a cup of milk, when I was admitted, and because I didn’t get that cup of milk, I put my matress up against the door, and eight warders came and got me… men… and put me in a padded cell and there I stayed, and that’s when… my faith came in… I… had a vision… and I was out two hours later, and from then…’
 
`What was the vision?  Can you tell me about that?’
 
`What, me?’
 
`The vision… you had…?’
 
`I just cried out to The Lord… I said, `Lord… keep me sane…’, you know, and… I just saw the praying hands, you know… you see that up there…’
 
`Uh huh…’
 
`The praying hands… and I said, `God, just help me’… you know, I’m not sick, you know… although… you know there’s a personality disorder… because they don’t know what to diagnose you as… well that’s what I was called, and… I came out… I was let out, two hours later, and I’ve never really… I never… what I would say, looked back since, although… at my tribunal when I wanted to leave… and come back to Cane Hill [ph] they said no.  I went to Rampton in the first place, because there was a Union dispute, because… one of the male nurses on Crude [ph] Ward… that’s a… dangerous ward, as you call it…’
 
`At Cane Hill [ph] was this?’
 
`Yes…’
 
`Uh huh…’
 
`…dangerous ward… threw me through… a door, and I rebelled and… you know… and said it was terrible, and… his wife was a sister of the ward, it was years ago, but… you see…’
 
`You got thrown through a door?’
 
`Yeah, I got thrown through a door, and… because I was one of those people who were outspoken, and wanted to do something about it, there was a Union dispute, and NUPE said… I don’t know whether I’ll get this right… COHSE said I was sick… and it was… wasn’t right… and NUPE said, they’d go on strike, and because I had nobody to sign me out… you know, because my mother had me certified… I wasn’t… but you could do it in those days… had me certified.  I had to stay there, and… nobody would have me because I was certified, and the only way they could uncertify me, in those days, was for a relative to come and… you know, said they would take me.  So, the only place that Roger Camens [???] could get me in, was Rampton, and I… because after a year… I was there for a year… I went… not on the usual… sort of section… in those days, I went on section… a year’s section, you know, and there was no… where for me to go again, so I had to stay there for four and a half years.’
 
`Is it right that you told me in the research that… you were told that you were going on holiday?’
 
`Yes, when I went to Rampton I was told I was going on holiday… and I went in a blue van.  I can see it now, and that lady there…’
 
`Uh huh…’
 
`Sylvie Halliday [ph]…’
 
`In the photograph up here?’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`Uh huh…’
 
`Up there… she became my League of Friend, when I came back from Rampton, but… she remembers saying to Mr Kylie [ph]… that was the Administrator, and Mr Kylie… `this girl should never be going there…’, you know… there’s nowhere else for her to go.  But they couldn’t have the whole hospital going on strike.  You see what it was, it was staff again… they were frightened, weren’t they?  You know they… both this male nurse and his wife were staff members there… anyway…’
`Did you believe that you were going on holiday?’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`So how did they…?’
 
`Well… how can I explain this?  I was… they drugged me up so much, that they… I can just remember the thirty cases (?)… and I didn’t know whether I was coming or going.  I didn’t struggle, I was too drugged up.  I think they gave me 400 milligrams of liquid Largactyl… and if you know what that is… four times a day… and Haloperidol [ph] with it… and… it made me have hallucinations… oh, it was terrible.’
 
`What sort of physical effects did that medication have on you?’
 
`Well I was just huge… you know… I was just… well, I’m big now, but… I was twenty stone, you know… and I had this injection as well… you know, this… I think it… let me think… it was before Modicate.  I don’t know what they did before Modicate. But… I should never have had it, you know, and… I was on other tablets as well.  I was just drugged up it was horrible.  It was horrible.  And I just went there with a… you know, sort of like… a nurse, and this van and arrived there.’
 
`Where did you think you were going to go?’
 
`When you go into the entrance of Rampton, you think you’re going into a hotel… and there was suddenly… they opened the door… you know… [pause]… you go through… you’re horrified.  I saw some dreadful things happen there.  You know… if you… well, you know… now what was… they’re called Down’s Syndrome now… learning difficulties or Mongolians… they had… both were violent there… and… on a ward, and I used to see the nurses throw key… these great big keys… at their heads… ooh, it was horrible…’
 
`What did they do with the keys?’
 
`Throw them at their heads.  This is all what went on in Rampton then… oh, it was horrible, but… because I became in Rampton… ‘cause basically inside me I wasn’t a naughty girl, I was rebelling, you know… I became… what would you say?  Very quiet and docile when I had this vision… and I became… I was a… became a trusted… umm… patient, you know… and out of all the patients… well, yeah, patients at… I think they’re still called patients… because, half the hospital… the men’s side is… wardens, and the other side, when I was there, was… female… psychiatric nurses.  You get what I mean?  There was prison wardens for the male side, and for the female side, there was mental nurses… you know what I mean… psychiatric nurses, and… it was… I became sort of… I did… I was very privileged.  Four people in the whole of the place, are trusted to go out of the hospital, with… a nurse… to work in what they call outside the hospital, in the garden on the farm… and I did that for two and half years, that’s why people say I’ve got green fingers… and…’
 
`Were you paid for that work?’
 
`Pardon?’
 
`Were you paid for that work at all?’
 
`Yes… that’s one thing about Rampton… I never got the money… never got… I did get it eventually when I left, but it was saved up for you.  I got about… five hundred pound when I left… and because… this is a good thing… because I’d been a long stay patient, in Rampton, I also got three hundred pound.  They don’t do it now, from Social Services… to set up my flat in Partridge Knoll [ph]…’
 
`So you left with about £800?’
 
`No…’
 
`All together?’
 
`I got four hundred… from Rampton… but when I left Cane Hill, you know… a year later, after leaving Rampton, I got three… hundred pound from… not Social Services… Income Support… you know, that area… plus my income support.  But silly fool me never realised that since the Health Service was… started, I was on… what was it called in those days?  Sickness Benefit… in… invalidity… I was on it for years, and when I came out of hospital, I had nobody to help me except Sylvia, and she wasn’t aware that I’d been on Invalidity, and I… went on Income Support.’
 
`So when you were actually in hospital, in… in Rampton…’
 
`Mmm’
 
`…did you ever have any cash to spend while you were in there or didn’t you need money or…?  How did you… did you ever have to buy anything… odds and ends?’
 
`Not until… yes, I had… I think I had an allowance of about two pound in Rampton… and…’
 
`A week or…?’
 
`Yeah, a week, and it wasn’t until… I went… when I was about to be discharged… that’s right, they had the tribunal, and… the secure unit at Cane Hill, had suddenly, you know… it was a temporary one had… was about to be opened.  I was the first person on it with seven men.  Can you imagine it?  So I learnt a great deal of how to budget… I used to have to cook for them.  It was a completely diff… it’s a completely different system, a secure unit.  You… the Cane Hill one is anyway.  You have to cook, you have to… you run the place yourself… and you’re… I was allocated when I came out of hospital, ‘cause I had the training in Rampton… three months before I left Rampton, I… went… and lived in a flat.  I never got real money, I got playful money…’
 
`Sorry, can you go over that again…three months after…?’
 
`Three months before I left Rampton, I went in the flat, and I shared it with somebody else, and I learnt to cook and budget, but I never had real money.  I had… as much as I would get with Social Security in those days, and that had to cover everything, except drugs.  That had to cover everything… and… that’s how I learnt to budget, and then… when I had my tribunal and Dr Evans said, he’d have me at Cane Hill, you know… that was quite a good… and it was lovely ‘cause in the end of Rampton, I know this sounds horrendous… I shouldn’t have been there in the first place, but… how can I tell you after all the knocking about and everything…?  It was just lovely to be able to… be independent and have your own money.  You weren’t allowed… oh, you did go to shop… in the town, occasionally…’
 
`From Rampton?’
 
`Yeah… the nurse took you. This was when you were in the flat, you know… and I did play hockey, I learnt to play hockey… mixed hockey… with other hospitals, and… different things like that, you know… and I went to school there… learnt to read and write… and…’
 
`Can you tell me a bit more about that, the school aspect of Rampton?’
 
`What, of Rampton?’
 
`Mmm’
 
`That was quite good because… it was just… what I see like.. an ordinary college.. You know…’
 
`So where was it?’
 
`In the grounds.’
 
`Was it separate to the wards and so on?’
 
`And they had an Olympic swimming pool.  I did my swimming… my life saving… it was… I’ve only got two exams in my… and my life… just my life saving, and my City and Guilds in knitting.  I do a lot of knitting, and that’s all I’ve got, but… I had to see an American Psychologist there… and… she did it.  She taught me social skills, through videos, you know what I mean…?  And she said `Anne, you’ve got a high IQ, but it has been very, very lazy, and that’s why… so many people comment, even in my church now… you know… the… you know, `..you can’t fool Anne over it.’  I can see right through people but it’s a real struggle when you see people… because they… because they’ve heard… I stood up in the church and I was so naïve when I came out… gave my testimony and told them where I’d been… and… [pause]… sometimes I think it’s the worst thing I ever did… because…’
 
`Telling them?’
 
`Yeah… I really do, because… [sighs] how can I put it…?  It’s… I think it put the fear of … you know, a young… people who are leading our church… now we have got a very big church in Purley [ph] Baptist, and we’re very privileged to have as… one of our members, Steve Chalk [ph]… who is known… well, he’s always on television… on news programmes and… all… he’s the… he’s a real one for… ‘nobody is different to anybody else’, you know.  He’s done so much for the homeless.  Have you heard of GMT?  Good Morning Television?  He does a lot on that.  I don’t know if you’ve heard of… just recently they’ve had a week of… five charities… and MIND was one of them wasn’t it?  Well Steve Chalk [ph] was on… in the… where is it?  You know where all the telephones are answered?  Well… on the television they were show… telling the people… and all different stories about people suffering with mental health… it was wonderful really, because to have MIND, you know… for a whole week, every morning… `Get up and Give’, it was called.  Five days… there was MIND… oh, I can’t remember the titles… just a… few weeks ago and Steve, bless his heart, he… he was the presenter, you know… and he raised all this money for the G… he’s Anglo-Indian, and he raised all this money for the GMTV Indian Hospital, and right from the word go, in all my struggles, he came to the church about… I should say about eight years ago, nine years ago… and… he said… `Anne, you and I are on the same bus…’. What he meant… you and I… you know, care for… everybody that was in the community, because he said to me one night… Christmas it was… `Coming up the Old Kent Road Anne?’.  I said, `I’d love to…’, he said `I’m going to preach in one of the pubs’, you know… and… he’s so down to earth.  He’s got four children, he’s got all… he’s an extrovert and… his wife is as quiet as a mouse.  They live in a house in Croydon.  They hadn’t got… anyway… we bought him a car and now he speaks with the Prime Minister, he organised part of Princess Diana’s funeral from the Free Church side… he’s just a great man.  If you saw…’
 
`[Inaudible]… uh huh…’
 
`If you saw him, you’d know who I was talking about… because I think it’s his request, that… although he’s a presenter, his name is not put in any of the TV magazines…’
 
`But he’s part of your current circle of friends and contacts and so on?’
 
`Well… I… look, there he is… you might recog… oh, I mustn’t get up… [laughs]…just that there… that photograph…’
 
`[Inaudible]… films?’ [Both talking together].
 
`No… just up there… there’s Steve…’
 
`Uh huh… ok…’
 
`And… he… you know, he… he’s just… he cares for everybody.  You know, he does a lot with the homeless, you know, and… because of the… most home… a lot of homeless people have psychiatric problems and he’s done… done so much, even in our town in Croydon… do you know what he’s doing?  He’s challenged the whole of the Croy… young people of Croydon… it’s a thing called `ROAR’.  Croydon Council have given… Croy… this project for the young homeless people… a house… but the young people have got to renovate it themselves, and it’s going to cost over a million pound, and they’re having a year.  They’ve got until December 31st, to raise this money, and it’s Steve at the back of it all, you know… for the young people of Croydon to renovate, and the young people… homeless people themselves… you know, will be trained to run it, with professionals.’
 
`Mmm’
 
`You know, it’s just sort of… a… a place where most of the homeless people, young people, can live, and come back into society…’
 
`Right, I understand…’
 
`Yeah, and…’
 
`Do you mind… if we take a little break there?’
 
`Yes… yeah…’
 
`Just… just now you were telling me about your… activities with the church and so on, but perhaps we could talk in more depth about those later?’
 
`Yes…’
 
`And I wonder if I can take you… right back again to the earlier moments?’
 
`Yes…’
 
`And… if you could tell me a bit more about the… reasons why you were admitted?  You said that your mother put you in?’
 
`[Sighs]… [Pause]… I wasn’t… [pause]… I was never in trouble with the Law, or anything like that… it was just… I… my behaviour, you know… how can I explain it, it’s so different?  Children are terrible today, and… you know nothing happens, but… I think really what it was… I was crying out for somebody to love me, you know… and… they just didn’t, because most of my relations, so I’d been told… and I had got, I don’t know if you’re interested… an… an envelope with letters from my Auntie Nina and Uncle Roy in America, but… when we tried to find them, I got… just got a… one photograph of my Auntie Nina and Cousin Sonia that’s… up… up there… I had nothing else, and some letters.  You know, but…’
 
`What… what do you remember about your mother?’
 
`[Pause] I just… [pause]… I don’t know… I just feel that… when she… my faith comes into this… I can… I don’t feel bitter towards her or anything.  I know it sounds strange… my one thing is that I be aiming for is I want to find her, but… I can’t… I did it once with the Salvation Army, and when I came out of hospital, they said that… well I know what the answer was, because I said in the letter, in all… I did… I’ve got enough details to find her, but… you know… I had suffered in my nerves and all that.  I don’t think they wanted… for some reason… to let me know anything.  But… I am now, frightened of the rejection, ‘cause I just want to love her, and say `Mum I’m sorry I didn’t turn out as you wanted to be… but I still love you to bits, but…’, I don’t think I could handle the rejection… if she… she might not even be alive.’
 
`When did you last see her?’
 
`When I was seventeen… I was in a padded cell.  I’d taken a… overdose… and… I can remember… her coming in and… I’ve never seen her since.  But I know she had a big… from what I understand, she had a big… row with the family, and… you can see it by reading the letters… ‘
 
`A row about what… was that?’
 
`I’m sure it was to do with me, because…the way I read the letters, my… family, although I didn’t realise in the early part… she had the same faith as me… and… I suppose, they were outrageous for her… doing what she did, but… I don’t know… the actual circumstances, why I never saw her again.  I don’t know.  I don’t know… but I can remember her.  She had long black hair, and… her maiden name, before she married, was… Alithia Christinia Servedra [ph]… and she’s a… Spanish American.  But my father was Soppitt, you know… and…’
 
`Was your father English or…?’
 
`I presume so, because Soppitt is a Yorkshire name… it’s a very unusual name… surname, but it’s Yorkshire, and… you know, I’ve looked in telephone books, and I’ve only ever met one other Soppitt in my life…’
 
`Only one?’
 
`Only one… and that’s… when I was in Partridge Knoll… I know her now, but… not as friends or anything like that, but she’s a friend of a friend of mine, so… but… I just… and then she married a Smith… her name was Miss P H Smith, and they did… the Salvation Army just wrote back and said, there wasn’t enough evidence and… you know… enough information, and that there was too many Smiths, but I knew that wasn’t right, and the people that… well, Pat and Graham who counsel me now, from another church, said to me, `Why don’t you try and look for her now, Anne? Write to the Salvation Army, again…’, but… I know I should trust, but I just haven’t got the confidence yet.  It’s just the rejection what… because I had… you know, I’ve been rejected so many times through the… not being unkind to Purley Baptist at all, because it’s the only church I’ve really belonged to since I’ve actually, in this… well it’s the… only church I belonged to in the last eighteen years and… it’s… how can I tell you?  I haven’t meant to do it, but I’ve… felt so hurt and I’ve had to take it inwardly.  I’ve had… nobody to talk to really, about it… you know.  I’ve had to keep it all in here, you know… and I have, about three times, hit somebody… not hurt them in any way… in frustration, you know, because… if you… can’t get through, you know, it’s very hard, but… you know, basically I have to say now, I have so many friends in the Purley [ph] Baptist church.  I’ve had so many rejections… too… in Purley [ph] Baptist Church, but it’s not… the church, it’s the people… and the people are all human beings, you know… that need… you know, their eyes opening, because… and I’ll say it again, as I said last night… and… at the church to a friend, I said… `Half the church in this congregation are stressed out… and…’, my… one of my great friends who I’ve worked for as a cleaner, for fourteen years… he had a breakdown himself, and… another friend of mine who I’ve… you know, he’s had a breakdown.  A doctor friend.  So… I think… I think slowly, very, very slowly, I’m… I feel now that I belong to my church, I’m accepted by my church, but… whereas… the Secular Society look at… on the church and say they should have all the answers to… you know, this problem… they’re human beings.  They… the stigma of mental health has gone on for years and years, and I don’t suppose it will be conquered in my time, but… you know, every little helps, you know.  There’s a lot of people working to fight this fear, but you know… it… all the way through, and I’ll say it today, unless you’ve been there, even with trained doctors, it doesn’t matter who they are… unless you’ve been there, you know… can you understand… what… the people are feeling like… how they’re reacting, because, how can people… other than… who I believe in God, see into your mind, and you’ll find that… ‘cause I’ve done a bit of research work in this myself… there’s only about three Christians… who believe the same as me… doctors… that have ever written books on… you’ll find it very rare, for a psych… psychiatrist, to be a born again Christian.  You understand what I’m saying?  Because, you know… I believe that… you know, he’s the doctor of healing, in our garden…’
 
`So you mean that the… psychiatry is a very separated off thing, and it doesn’t involve any spiritual aspect, is that what you mean?’
 
`Say that again…’
 
`Do you mean that… psychiatry, and psychiatrists, they don’t have any sort of religious or spiritual side of their work…?  Is that what you mean or not…?’
 
`Umm… ‘
 
`Do you mean something different?’
 
`I don’t mean exactly that… because I do believe that the Lord uses psychiatrists to provide drugs.  But I don’t believe a psychia… umm… how can I tell you?  I don’t believe that a psychiatrist, can say… just like that, like they do… that you’re that, that and that… until they’ve done a lot of research on it, because I’ve been diagnosed as so many things…’
 
`What sort of things… can you… say some of them?’
`Schizophrenia… you know, and I’ve never heard a voice in my life… you understand what I mean?  Schizophrenia, oh… personality disorder… [inaudible]… Manic Depressive… all sorts of things, and now… I said to Dr Baverstock [ph], ‘cause I’ve only been in… with this new doctor, since I’ve been out of hospital, for six months… and he’s actually sat down, and read all my notes… and he turned round and said to me, `Anne, no way are you a schizophrenic’.  He said, `What you are suffering from…’, because the private hospital said this, you know… I’m suffering from anxiety depression… now… so… trying to cope with the outside world, you know.  You’d be shut away like I was and knocked about… and have… you know, nobody to turn to… but, I’ve got to say in Cane Hill… there were the exceptions… and I can see looking back now, that I craved for somebody to love me.  You know, because there was… two sisters in that hospital, Mother Riley [ph] and… that I didn’t call Sister Riley… I called… Mother Riley… they both used to holler and shout at me… but for some reason, they were just kind… you know what I mean… [laughs].  I… I know it seems odd… [pause].  They had discipline and kindness at the same time, you know what I mean… and… [pause]… I don’t know… I… I just had the… I think they’ve both died now, but I have got pictures of Mother Riley… but I… you know…’
 
`Did you regard her as…
 
`Yeah… yeah…’
 
`…a sort of mother to you?’
 
`And this person here, who’s seventy three… can’t… can’t think of her name because I call her mum…’
 
`Helen?’
 
`No… Pat… Pat… Frank and Pat, but… I always call my mum, and she always sounds… she’s only seventy three, and I’m fifty… fifty nine.  Helen’s forty… forty something I think, and… when I came into the church, the kindness those two showed, it… it’s amazing… it’s only this latterly sort of, say past five, six years, that I’ve become really involved… you know, with the family… you know, but I have great respect for them because, if they had parties and things, for… like their daughter, I don’t… go near nor by, you know… I don’t expect to be invited, but I just know, in all the troubles I’ve had… and last January when I actually, for the first time, had such… I was burnt out… such a breakdown, because of all that had happened to me… in Patrtridge Knoll it was Helen… who stayed with me, here…’
 
`In what place sorry?’
 
`It… I had…’
 
`Patrtridge Knoll [ph] did you…?’
 
`No… but I had to leave Patrtridge Knoll [ph] after seventeen years… on medical grounds.  Not because I’d done anything wrong, because I became iller and iller, and myself, I had to move within a week.  If you imagine your home, seventeen years… a proper one bedroom flat, bathroom, toilet and everything… it was lovely… and I had to move it all, and… did it myself, with… well I packed the whole flat up myself… gave so much away, you know… and… and what with the Sunday School previous, because I… because there’s a new ‘safe from harm’ law, with children… a parent… I started doing Sunday School helping, when I left the private hospital, and a parent went up to… my Sunday School leader, you know… who I helped, and said, `What is Anne… doing in… to helping in Sunday School?’, and they’re allowed to do that… and Helen who… I thank God… was the… Child Protection Officer, and also responsible, because we have about three hundred and forty five… from naught to eighteen, in our church, you see, and… she had to come and say to me on the Saturday night, after tennis club ‘cause I belong to a tennis club… as well… `Anne, you can’t help in Sunday School or anything’… so, I said… I looked at her, and what I usually do is burst out into tears, and I looked… I said, `All right Helen, if that’s what you want, I’ll do it’, but it was horrible, ‘cause I heard… [jump in tape]… I couldn’t think what to say, because the Police had passed me… you know, to the…’
 
`The Police had passed you as suitable for working with children?’
`Yeah… for cubs.  You know how the… the… the uniformed organisations are all ahead… of everybody else… you know, Scouts have been fussy haven’t they, for years…’
 
`In terms of child protection issues?’
 
`Yeah… yeah…’
 
`Uh huh’
 
`And… I’d all been passed… and… well… the hurt tore me inside out.  I didn’t sort of react, I cried inwardly and… oh, it was horrible, but all the time I tried to show the love of God to this family that… I don’t know whose family I… and I don’t want to, but I was able to… write to them and say… and to the Deacon… eighteen Deacons… Steve Chalk, fought like hook and nail… eighteen Deacons signed a piece of paper to say… that it was ok for me to… they’d had a letter from my psychiatrist… my private psychiatrist, and he had put…`I would trust Anne…’, he can’t put a hundred per cent, because it’s not possible is it?  He said, `I’d trust Anne with a new born baby’, you know, at ninety nine per cent, and… still… I had to wait, and… when the time came… Hel… I said to Helen, `Can I go back now?’, and she said, `It’s all been passed… there’s a lot of prayer went up about it…’
 
`Sorry, I didn’t catch that last little bit… can you…?’
 
`There was a lot of prayer about it.  Lots of people in the church prayed and prayed, you know… but when I went… I’m still in… the in… and I still do a lot with kids, but… how can I tell you?  When… there’s a cry out at the moment for Sunday School helpers and I… I said to Helen… whereas I was spontaneous and would do it, I… I… I’m so frightened, for all I went through… you know, because of this word… Rampton… and the word `mental’… you know, and… it’s…’
 
`The stigma’s still really… affecting all this?’
 
`Yeah… and the stig… and even now… you know, last… Wednesday, at a church meeting and something happened, they said… it’s not their fault, you can’t blame them, because… how can I put it?  They’re human beings… there’s such a terrible stigma, and he called Purley Resource Centre, ‘a mental hospital’, and the youth at… we… if we do… you know… have this building… which is… let me get this right… it’s leased out to… the Bethlem on… well Bethlem and Royal’s the Trust now, but it belongs to Seabourne [ph] you know what I mean?  And of course… it’s got nine hundred and something years, this lease has so… we might be having… but that’s beside the point…’
 
`Can I just interrupt you there for a minute, we’re going to have to take a short break…’
 
`Yes…’
 
[End of DVC Pro tape 1]
 
[Start of DVC Pro tape 2 – VHS tape 1 continues]
 
[Camera: Anne Soppitt, C905/11 tape number two].
 
`[Inaudible]…You were just telling me about your work, currently, and in the year since you left… hospital, working with children and some of the difficulties you’ve come across…’
 
`I mean, can I tell you… it’s not paid work.  It’s not paid work.  I’ve only had… I’ve done a lot of cleaning, you know, because… because of my background, people aren’t prepared… I even lost a job, at the PDSA, when they knew I was from Rampton.  Not because I did anything, you know… I hadn’t lied.  I don’t lie… I don’t lie, but… and I worked at Nestles… you know the Nestles company… up at… well you wouldn’t know, Park Lane in Croydon.  I was there in the kitchens… I worked there… and I was on… wait a sec, let me get this… I was still… today it’s called section, but then it… it’s called certified.  I was… no… I was sectioned then, and… very stupidly of them they rang me up at work and… said, `Would you tell Anne the sections are all over now… she…’, you know… and… I… got thrown out…’
 
`Did… that they didn’t know at the time, the employer… didn’t realise…?’
 
`Pardon?’
 
`You were… Nestles didn’t realise that you were [both talking together] under the section?’
 
`No, because… can I tell you, when I came out of hospital you didn’t have to declare all that… you know you would just… I just… I don’t even know how I got the job, I think I got it myself… you know, and… it is so hard, you know… I… I don’t work… well, I tell a lie… on a Tuesday I look after a little man.  He’s housebound, he’s ninety.  Oh, it’s lovely… and because of all that happened here at the beginning of the week, I didn’t go and he rang me up, so I’m going tomorrow.  Just for two hours and that… but I do plenty of other things as well, you understand what I mean? I… I don’t… I don’t just sit back and expect people to come here and everything, I get out and about and… try to go here, try to go there, but I tell you, it does get you into a lot of trouble… caring, because… people… particularly here, can’t understand it.  They can’t understand why I… I’m not the type to have a boyfriend and never have done, but I’m just caring for John, because he’s alone.  There’s nobody to help him.  He’s waited a year to have an appointment with a psychiatrist…’
 
`[Sneezes] Excuse me…stop a sec…[pause]… two secs…’
 
`I’ve just taken him under my wing, you know, because he was… how can I tell you?  I was in another flat.  I was put from my flat, one bedroom flat, with two cats… in a room smaller than this with just a little kitchen and that’s all, and I had… and…’
 
`That’s what you were given when you left hospital is it?’
 
`No… here… when I came here.  Because I had to move on medical grounds, you know, that’s why I came into sheltered accommodation… and these are called flats, you know… and there’s only actually eight flats in the whole of the building, you know… one… with a bathroom and toilet.  But my flat is the biggest flat… without a bathroom and toilet.  How can I put it?  The flats that have got bathroom and toilets are… are the same size as this… so, I’m hanging on here [laughs]… you know, I don’t mind sharing a bathroom [???]… [inaudible: microphone noise/rustling]… but… I  was in… and… you know, all… you know, I did it all myself, I wouldn’t let people help me here, you know… I just tried to be so independent, and slowly I just… cracked up.  I wasn’t violent or anything I just withdrew, you know… and… I felt as though I was suffering from amnesia, ‘cause my concentration went.  Helen used to stay to... with me for about... twelve hours a day, you know… she had her own family, her own life… Sandra didn’t understand… not her fault… she’s not trained. Anyway, in the end… Helen went ‘cause I had a GP in Purley for seventeen years. Helen went to them… then she went to May Day, and…’ [both talking together].
 
`May Day is a hospital?’
 
`[Inaudible]… yeah… none… it was a General Hospital, and… the doctor there… I think I went… from what I understand, my concentration went so bad…’
 
`When was this?’
 
`January…’
 
`This year?’
 
`It’s the… be a… first time I’ve ever had a real breakdown, you know… and because of all I’ve been through… a little girl was raped upstairs above me, and it was just all too much and I was having my window sill burnt, and… just… never understood why… I never had my wireless on, I never had my… for six months, and in the end… Helen came… the Police… I called the Police.  I wouldn’t call anybody because my… what was going on upstairs, I thought, `There’s children there’… what… however bad the mother is, to me…’
 
`Who’s that, sorry?’
`Upstairs to me… however bad the mother is to me, their children should still be with them.  So I kept a lot of it to myself, and in the end, because I was so frightened, I called the Police, and Helen was called… and… I went and lived with a family in the church for nine weeks, still coming back to my home… June… oh… she’s my best friend.  What I call my best `secular’ friend, I should say… she moved three weeks after me… amazingly…’
 
`She moved three weeks after you did she?’
 
`Yeah… after I moved here to… twenty nine. She moved… she got… I… in council property… she moved to a little place just down the road here.  It was amazing… and…’
 
`Did you meet her here?’
 
`No… no… she was my friend in Patrtridge [ph] Knoll for… eleven years.’
 
`And that was the place you lived before you came here, is that right?’
 
`Pardon?’
 
`Patrtridge Knoll [ph] is the place you lived in…?’
 
`Patrtridge Knoll [ph], Purley [ph], yes…’
 
`And that’s where you lived… [both talking together]…’
 
`Yeah… it was a…’
 
`…when you first came out of hospital?’
 
`…council estate.  I came straight out of hospital, into that flat and was told to get on with it.’
 
`Without any support?’
 
`Except for Sylvia.  She… and she’s still my friend today.  I see her mostly between four and five weeks.  She either comes for lunch here or I go to lunch there…’
 
`And what sort of help did the… Mental Health Services give you in that transition from having been in hospital for the best part of thirty years on and off… is that right?’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`What kind of help did they give you for that transition from living in the institution to living in the flat?’ [both talking together].
 
`Shall I tell you what happened?  But you won’t believe it.  I’ve got my own GP, you know… [knocking noise in background]… so I… I… knew nobody in Purley [ph] when I… except Sylvia lives in Coulsden and I knew her husband, and I walked into that flat, when Dr Hayden Taylor [ph]… she’s been on television.  She came to do a… secondment at Cane Hill, because… Dr Evans wasn’t very well… she did it… she’s now Professor at Bethnal, training the doctors… well she was… she says `What do you want to do with the rest of your life, Anne?’, this is what she said to me… I said, `I want a council flat in Purley [ph]…’, so she wrote to Croydon Council… she went to the courts… you know, in Croydon, and… in those days Croydon… she said `I’ll put this girl in the street’, and within a week I had this flat, and… Patrtridge Knoll [ph] flat, and Sylvia who was my League of Friend… she’d only been here for eighteen months…’
 
`You’re legal friend, did you say?’
 
`League… of friends… ‘
 
`League of Friends?’
 
`You’ve heard of League Of Friends, haven’t you?  Well, I was nominated to her from Rampton, you know, coming out of Rampton. She was an angel… and a… she came to my house… I’ve still got the basin, ‘cause I can’t part with it… that we scrubbed the flat with… you know, and then the council came and decorated it.  Social Services were better than any… you know… they… what do you call… disablement… people were better… at the end of the day, put me in a ‘phone and… which I paid in those days… actually, I think I didn’t… I didn’t pay for the ‘phone to be put in, because Social Services did… I just paid five pound to have it connected or something like that, I can’t remember…’
 
`Uh huh… and what year was it that you came out?’
 
`’82… March ’80… March the 8th, ’82… and Sylvia said they stood there, as I left, and said, `She’ll only last the week…’, and I’m sitting here today.’
 
`How many years later is that…?’
 
`Oh well, you work it out… March ’82…’
 
`Sixteen or seventeen years, I think…’
 
`Yeah, something like that… ’82… and it’s now… seventeen isn’t it?’
 
`Seventeen years…’
 
`Mmm…yeah…’
 
`Did you think  that you would be ok outside of the hospital?’
 
`Yeah… it’s in that cutting… `Anne knows she’s going to be all right…’
 
`And you… you had in fact been trying to… well hoped to get out for a long time by the sounds of it…?’
 
`Well, I…’
 
`You always wanted to leave, is that right?’
 
`I’d… I’d always wanted leave… that… in frustration, I used to act out just smashing all the windows because… you imagine it… in a… and in this time, all… all through this year, what they’ve done to me… because… I just felt because I had nobody that cared, no relative or anybody, ‘cause my mother just left me and that was it, when I was seventeen… I had ECT… I… I can… just remember… the… I just for some reason, used to have the Atropine [ph] and then I was laid on the floor, on the… do you remember years ago… on… I keep on thinking you’re the same age as me… those mattresses that are black and white striped… that felt as though there was straw in them… well we all used to be laid together… they just used to go along… ooh…’
 
`Shocking people…[inaudible]?’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`Was that with…?’
 
`That was ECT in the early stages… years ago… and then… I had deep insulin, where… I had this injection.  They used to put me in a coma and bring me out.  I used to be in a coma for about three hours, and then they used to… bring me out by feeding me with sugar…oohh… don’t… just I’ve…’
 
`Feeding you with sugar?’
 
`Sugar… you know, Insulin and all that sort of…’
 
`Was that… how did… how did you eat?’
 
`Pardon?’
 
`Was that done intravenously or did you eat sugar lumps, or…?’
`No… no… no… oh, it was all fed intravenously… or put down your nose.  You didn’t know what was happening to you…’
 
 `So for… how long did you say, for three days at a…?’
 
`No, three hours…’
 
`Three hours at a time?’
 
`Mmm.  In fact… it… it doesn’t happen now, it’s not allowed to happen, and padded cells… all that is gone, but… you know, it… it was horrendous… and if you, say… if I smashed  a window, about… well I’m not telling you… the sirens used to go…’
 
`This…’
 
`And I used to be picked up… taken to… well, what was it called… oh, wait a minute… the acute ward.  This is what, Cruden [???] I can always remember… thrown in a side room, injection in my bum, and then I used to have a tin plate, to have some food on… and there was a tin mug.  I tell you, you were treated… to me, looking back on it now, you were treated like animals, but it was the system.  You know what I’m trying to say… and somebody on their own, you cannot fight the system.  But… but you see… the trouble is now, the… the Consultant… well Helen, won’t be… let… let me have… he is the Consultant for my area, but she won’t let me speak to him.  He is so rude… and he’s always… he’s not prepared to accept he’s very old fashioned, you know… he’s an old… [puts on voice]… comes up… very old… and… I believe he just thinks of me as… you know… I came out of hospital, I’ve got my own… went to Purley Social Services… they got me into Purley Day… which is now Purley Resource… well it used to be at the back of the Fire Station in Purley… at the Social Services place, but now, it’s at the back of Purley Hospital, in the nurses’ home… and… he’s just thought of me as a `no gooder’. The happiest time I’ve had in Croydon Mental Health, because I was under Bromley in Cane Hill… is when I was under Jenny Pickton Jones [ph].  Oh, she was lovely…’
 
`And when… what… when might that have been?’
 
`Umm… about… six years ago, seven years ago. She was brilliant, she… and Social Services… I’m not… because they’re completely different… to… the Mental Health System… I can only speak for Croydon… Croydon Mental Health… does not work together… the Mental Hospitals don’t work together with the Croydon Social Service… you know… there’s all this budgeting and fighting over this and, you know… one hand they’re…’ [both talking together].
 
`So two separate services?’
 
`Two separate services, both… meant to be helping the mental health… people, that… take John for instance.  I’ve been fighting for a bus fare… bus pass for him for nine weeks.  I rang up yesterday, you know… what am I doing it for?  You know… he’s signed the photographs that he needed, and he’s… you know… he’s going… well apparently he’s… you know, he’s not… shodding [???] it or anything, you know… trying to get one for nothing [ph], but nine weeks… you know, and he’s been…’
 
`Long wait isn’t it?’
 
`Yeah, he’s been a year waiting to see a Psychiatrist, and there’s me wanting to leave… I said to Helen, `Oohh, I wish I didn’t have to go and see Dr West… Dr Western’s [ph] lovely… I like… [inaudible]…’
 
`What… who’s he?’
 
`He’s really nice, this… he’s a Registrar to Dr Gainford [ph]… he’s lovely, and he said to me, `Anne, you’ll…’, this was six weeks ago… `…you will hear about your CPN’, and I haven’t heard a dicky bird…’
 
`How long have you been waiting for a Community Psychiatric Nurse?’
 
`Seventeen years. [Pause] Because… can I tell you the reason why?  They say I keep my home tidy, I’m methodical, but they forget about my emotional state.  You know, they can’t… and they leave it to the church.  Well they are wrong.  I don’t care what anybody says, Helen says they’re wrong… even my Housing Officer said yesterday they are wrong.  Well…’
 
`So you would actually like to have a…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`…Community Psychiatric Nurse?’
 
`I’ve fought and fought.  MIND’s fought, but who’s at the bottom it… Dr Gainford [ph]… and… Helen won’t even speak to Dr Gainford.  She’ll speak to anybody else, but she won’t have… and… and she is a lovely Christian lady.  He is so rude.  But what can you do?  What can you do?  But… you know, it’s… it’s very… I just say like Sandra, the Warden here and… umm… she’s no different to people in the church… she’s a very kind lady, but she does… she just has no idea in… how to handle somebody with a mental health problem.’
 
`And that’s the warden of the place you live in at the moment?’
 
`Here… I said to Helen, I rang her up because we’d just  come from a church meeting.  I rang her up at twenty past eleven and I said, `Helen, please pray…for… forget about me’, I said, `Please pray for John’, and I said, `Please pray for Sandra too, because it…’ you know, it’s not good her going in there bawling and shouting, and you know… `All right… I’ve told you I’m not… and it’s very wrong what he’s done’, you know… there’s other peoples’ lives, but you see… Sandra hasn’t got a clue.  Mind you, Sandra… I’m doing… what Sandra should be doing, taking it… you know, talking…’
 
`Mmm…can I…’
 
`But…’
`Sorry…’
 
`It’s all right… go on…’
 
`Ok… I wondered if I could take you back a bit?’
 
`Yes… yes… [noise in background]… sorry I keep wondering off’
 
`It’s fine… I’m just trying to get a sense of…’
 
`Yeah, sorry…’
 
`…what happened when… that’ s fine.  When you… were in hospital, and before that… did you have any ideas of how you’d anticipated your life might… work out?  Did you have any particular hopes or ambitions?  In terms of maybe what job you ever imagined doing and might…’
 
`Can I tell you… my dream was… right from a very early… I don’t know… I wished to be a children’s nurse, and… I… oh, I’ve done nursery nursing as well… got through that through lying.  I wasn’t… a Christian then… I worked at Dockingham Hill [ph] Day Nursery.  I’ve got pictures of that… of me… yes, in fact I don’t know what… holding one of the children, and a group of the children that I looked after, and in those days… it was nought to five, now it’s naught to seven, and in those days, it was 1970… you used to have to… go to college twice a week. Well the days I should go to college I never went, and… I used to ring in ill or something like that, but I always did my three days practical.’
 
`And when was that?’
 
`1970.  Yeah…’
 
`And you were still in hospital at that time?’
 
`Yeah, I couldn’t read or write ‘till I went to Rampton, so how could I go to college?  I wasn’t in hospital I was in a Mental Aftercare Hostel, Honour Oak [ph] Park… you know, but… it never worked out… you know.  The children side of it did, you know, I was there for about eighteen months… only had to do two years, you know…’
 
`And when you were at school, did you have the same sort of ambition that… did… even when you…’ [both talking together].
 
`Yeah…’
 
`…were at school, did you think you wanted to work with children?’
 
`I’ve always had it… always had it.  And… with me, they did a survey at the church a few years ago, to see what… it’s very cleverly how… it’s done… you have to answer a hundred and something questions.  Now you don’t know how it’s going to work out, but mine came out as… and… my special gifts were caring, and mercy.  I always go for the underdog… [laughs]  and life isn’t… you know… and when… how… I’ve even… I even wrote a letter to John about three weeks ago, because he… he’s trying so hard to get out in… to the community to care for one another, but also, we’re not just a… clique… a club in the church, we’re here to care for everybody… each other and the home, everything, you know what I mean… and people say… are saying now we’re not Social Services and all that, but… you know, and he said to me, `Well, I just… for the first time I actually am feeling now in the church.’  How can I tell you?  Can I tell you… lots of them… lots of them care and love me, and I wouldn’t dream of saying they don’t… but… the fear’s there… you can see it, the way they react.  You can see… especially, more men, than women… because…’
 
`The fear of people with mental health problems?’
 
`Yes, because… well, I can only speak for myself, because to be honest with you, I’m the only… I know there’s lots wrong and I know they are, but I have only been the one that’s been too open about it.  I haven’t hidden.  I’m not ashamed… why should I be?  Why should I be?  You know… I’ve been put here for a purpose… and now my purpose is… to just show the people I really care and love for… that… it’s because I love the world… that’s just me… that I’m not somebody to be frightened of, you know, it could happen to any of them… and that really is behind me now, isn’t it?  All that is behind me.  They’ve got to look to the future… you know…’
 
`Do you remember those… the stigma… going right back?  Can you remember even when you were a very young child, people saying things about people with mental health problems?’
 
`Oh yes.  I’ve heard…’ [both talking together].
 
`Can you remember what sort of things they might have said?’
 
`Can I tell you… going into a child… child’s guidance clinic… you know, that was… how can I tell you?  Very nicely disguised in those days, ‘cause… umm… I say nicely disguised… umm… [pause]… oh how can I put it? You go to a child’s guidance clinic when you’re nine… you know… and you hear all these remarks, and you’re not quite understanding what it’s all about, but slowly as you’re going into your teens you suddenly realise, you know… this is a real crime to be a mentally ill… you know… nobody understands and… even in the church people have… you know… when Helen… even today… when Helen says to them… `Well… Anne’s going to do it’, you can see… it’s not their fault, you can see some of their faces… and Helen said… I said to Helen, `I am not going to prove myself any more now.’  She’s given… the… I’m helping in Boomerang which I’ve done for thirteen years and she said that everybody… I didn’t know she was going to say it… she said to them all… `Do you…’…know… some of them are leaders, some are helping, you know… with the activities, some are helping with the kids and all sorts, and she said to them, `Do you know who’s got the most important job here?’… and we all said, `No…’.  She said, `Anne… because she is the one who’s got… who is taking over two hundred children’… this is just in my group… `…to the toilet. Boys and girls…’ and she said, `You know… I myself… will trust her with any of them’, because you can see their mum’s reaction.  A lot of kids that come, they don’t know… what a lot of people… not in my church… everybody knows me in my church, but… oh, sorry… that’ll fall… [???]’
 
`It’s all right, don’t worry…’
 
`A lot of people in my church… outside my church, ‘cause this is a church, you know… many churches helping don’t know about me, but those who do… you know, if they pass it on, and when I go near the child, you can see their faces.  You know what I mean…?  You can…’
 
`So that stigma’s been around a long, long time in your memory?’
 
`Oohh, can I tell you?  Can… it’s been round, I should think… ‘cause I’ve read up a lot about it as well, it’s been around since the Victorian times.  You imagine Cane Hill… why was it built a hund… when it was… a hundred years ago, right away from the area… it was looking after?  You know, The Bromley, Southwark… you get what I mean?  It was because, you know… anybody being in an asylum… and it’s grown up with it, because it’s fear of the unknown.  You can see a broken arm… can’t you?  And it mends, but you can’t see how somebody’s going to react, and when a… somebody like me stands up in my church  and says… quite naively in those days, I’ve been in Rampton, but nobody questioned why.  But they all know now.  They all know now.’
 
`But they all had their assumptions about that?’
 
`Pardon?’
 
`They had assumptions about why you’d been in Rampton?’
 
`Oh yeah… I’ve been… I’ve… imagine…so many people have said, `Leave… Leave Purley [ph] Baptist’, I said, `No… they’re my family… they’re my family… I’m not going to leave them.’  I said, `I’ll show them…’’
 
`And educate them?’
 
`Educate them… but you see it’s been a long, long process.  A long, long process…’
 
`You were saying… sorry…’
 
`Go on…’
 
`You were saying about that the child’s… guidance clinic that you went to when you were nine…’
 
`Yes…’
 
`…was thinly disguised…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`What did you mean by that?  I don’t fully understand…’
 
`Well, the words… child’s guidance clinic… you imagine.’
 
`What did it really mean then?’
 
`What, child’s guidance…?’
 
`Mmm’
 
`People who were so… you know… had… mental… mental problems.  That… that was specifically what child’s guidance was.  You get what I mean?’
 
`I understand.’
 
`You understand what I’m saying?’
 
`And what sort of remarks did they make that you heard… then?’
 
`Not… actually, in the place it wasn’t so bad… you know… in the child’s guidance clinic it wasn’t so bad.  It was when people were seeing you come out.  `Oh you’re mad’… but you see, when I came to Patrtridge Knoll [ph] I was so naïve, and I… looking back now… over the whole picture, I can see why because it’s been going on for years.  I went to Patrtridge Knoll [ph], I never hid from the kids.  I used to be involved with all the kids in my council place, had them all in, and yeah… it was open house.  I used to tell them where I’d been, and… some of them… because… the poor… it’s a, you know… all with problems, on a council estate, normally… and… they were so naïve, you know, these kids… they weren’t worried.  They just knew that here was somebody that loved kids, but… when it got to the time when… at… you know what kids are today, how cruel they can be… even… I feel, even more so today… I can remember a little boy came down the stairs and his shoe lace was undone, and I said to him, `Do you want me to do up your shoe lace Marlon?’, and he said, `Yes I’d love you to, Anne’… and I said… I always give kids chocolate biscuits, and two… black twins, bless their hearts [laughs]… I can see them now, they went running home and said, I’d locked them in my flat.  Well the lucky part about it was, Mr White opposite, knew I hadn’t.  He was standing there… and my door was still open, and this mum came racing round, and accused me… and anyway, I’m very fortunate to have a church so at least I don’t have to pay for it or anything, you know, which is lovely… and… because, this Marie… I don’t hold it against her, it was just lack of understanding… and she wrote… her solicitor wrote me a letter saying that I was going to be turned out of my flat, and you can imagine what it did to me, and… so I… I went on my own, to my solicitor, and he wrote… you know, for me… and it… it all came out all right in the end, but I’ve had horrific problems because… you know… I’m not cut… I… I will never, never hide the fact that I’ve been in Rampton, because at the end of all this Sunday School business that happened, which was only… last… June… umm… I just… do you know, it’s gone what I was going to tell you… what was I saying?’
 
`You were telling me about the problem you’d had with the parents of these children in your council flat, and the fact that you’d used the church solicitor…’
 
`Yeah… that’s right… [inaudible: coughing]… he’s my own…’
 
`Is that the Sunday School teacher?’
 
`Yeah… he’s… he’s my own personal solicitor, you know what I mean, and… John didn’t really understand the… stigma, but he said, `Anne, in this day and age, you mustn’t have your front door open’.  I was so naïve.  `You mustn’t… ‘, ‘cause there’s… it wasn’t all that long ago actually, it was when the new Children’s Act came out…’
 
`In ninety five or something like that?’
 
`I had… no, no… this was in the eighties… ‘cause I… he’s… he’s been my solicitor…’
 
`Eighty five or something like that?’
 
`Yeah… like that.  Or… has another come… well another one must have come out ‘cause it’s… I’m sure it was in the late eighties.  Anyway, he said to me, `Anne… if a child asks you to do something… and you know… if they’re in the road, or something like that… unless you know them, and the parents know you, you mustn’t touch them’, and I… I couldn’t understand it, because if a child falls off a bike, you naturally go and help them whatever… but I don’t even do that now.  Only… all these kids you see around… here… who I’ve knitted for and I’ve done all sorts for… the parents know me and trust me.  You know what I mean?  And June’s little boy… now that’s my best friend down the road… her grandson… she’s in her sixties, June… it was… I could do more with him, than what… than the doctors could do or anything, because I understood the way that little boy was… you know, going… ooh, he… he’s changed so much now, he’s going to a special… you know… proper special school. There’s nothing… apart from being over active there’s nothing really wrong for him, just like me.  He wanted somebody to love him, and the person who really, really did love him, was June, but she’s getting on in years and he… he was treated so badly at… I didn’t have that as a child, praise the Lord… he… you know, he had curry powder put in his mouth… you know, all this sort of thing which is really nothing to do with me, but he just wanted somebody to love him, and now… by this man, who did so much to him as a child… they’re… the best of pals… and this boy, who’s… how… he’s up there… umm… he has got a problem, you know, I’m not saying he hasn’t, but the way he was treated by Croydon Mental Health… but now… fighting, me, June, the family… for his family… fighting, he’s down at the special school.  Croydon are paying for him to go to this special school in Murkestone [ph]… where he gets a one to one… you know… five in a class and… you know, all that sort of thing, but… I don’t know.  But in here… it’s horrendous what’s happening to me, but I’m getting so strong now, so I’m… with my faith and… I’m managing, just about, to cope with it.  You see when they see somebody, who… they know has a mental health problem, and they see them being kind and caring, and not wanting anything back for it… you understand what I mean?  And… a lot of them are set in their ways, you know… and I’m here, there and everywhere, and… people are repeatedly saying to me they’re jealous.  No, but I don’t say that, I say… you know, they don’t understand… that I’ve got a faith, you know… I love people.  You understand what… I love… grown ups… did you see by that… thing, about, it said… I knew I couldn’t work with children when I came out of hospital, because of my background.  You know, they have to be… so careful don’t they?  You know what I mean… paid work with children?  They have to be… but I knew…’
 
`You mean you have to be… you knew that you had to be vetted if you wanted to work with children when you left hospital?’ [Both talking together].
 
`Yeah… yeah… I wouldn’t have got anything anyway, but I did know… well… can I tell you?  Now… they can’t… I have it in writing… well Helen’s got it in… at home, you know… in my [inaudible].  They cannot turn me down… if I went… I’m not allowed to work now, but if I was… if I could… since the letter was signed, if I wanted to…I…’
 
`What… what does the letter say?’
 
`It says that… it’s ok for me to work with kids…’
 
`And who wrote that letter?’
 
`The Psychiatrist… you know, this private Psychiatrist…’
 
`So you’ve been passed by a Psychiatrist… Deacons, and the Police…?’
`Yeah…’
 
`…have all said that you’re fine to work with children…’
 
`With children, yeah…’
 
`But you still come across this attitude sometimes?’
 
`Well I… what…?  Oh yes… yes.  You see, what people don’t do… people… hear about the stigma which has been going on… they hear in the papers, all the bad about Rampton, all the bad about asylums… there were some very good things… in Cane Hill.  They cared so much in those days… for the social side.  Can I tell you?  I’d rather be in Cane Hill… now, let me put this right… what they did for the patients socially, years ago… then I would be in Bethlem Royal any day.  I’m terrified to go to that place… terrified… and you see all that’s happened over these last two days about two people writing letters about me, which are… at… Mr English [ph] knows they’re unfounded… but you see, when peop… I… when people say I’ve done something, and I know it… I’m not perfect by any means, and I’ll tell you that, but when I knew I’m telling the truth, I feel threatened… and then I get agitated, do you understand what I mean?  My emotions come out.  I don’t hit or anything, I just cry and cry… and I… I feel threatened… I think they’re going to take me away again.  I can’t go to bed… you see what I’m saying?’
 
`You’re still very, very fearful of… going… being sectioned or taken back to hospital?’
 
`Oh yes… yes… because…’
 
`That fear’s not left you… at all really?’
 
`And I tell you… this will shock you.  I’d rather go back to Cane Hill… as it was… in the good times… than ever going near Bethlem Royal again.  I want to get out of Croydon Mental Health…’
 
`What was it about Bethlem Royal that… what is it about that place that’s so frightens you?’
 
`I loved it when I was a… teenager… ohh… [pause]… [draws breath]… Well… today, you’re a number, you know what I mean?  If you’ve got… well actually, they couldn’t do as they liked… they tried to, but they couldn’t do as they liked for me, because…’
 
`They couldn’t do a…?’
 
`They couldn’t do as they liked… I wasn’t sectioned…’
 
`Couldn’t do a cell up, did you say?’
 
`They couldn’t do as they liked with me…’
 
`Sorry…’
 
`Because I’d got nobody… a relative, to… nobody… and… as far as I know… but I’m so blessed to have Helen’s husband, and her, and that mum and dad, because… Helen came with me… she talked to… I had so… I… well… I had so many visitors… in hospital and everything, but all I wanted to do when they come and see me was… `take me home, take me home, take me home’… but I just promised Helen faithfully, that I would stay there… and what… I saw… the Psychiatrist that should have seen me… I didn’t see at all there.  Dr Gainford [ph] had a conference… and he was so rude to Helen that… well I… I can’t…’
 
`Is that what mostly frightens you… the people there?’
 
`That… the staff and the people, and… [sighs]… my heart goes out to the patients…’cause they… you know, it’s not like years ago… how can I tell you?  Please God I’m not a racist… because sometimes I feel I’m not sure, but… [pause]… their culture… you know, the nurses… the black nurses, when I was in Cane Hill they were… some of the coloured nurses were… you know… you know… well you don’t… years ago, they came over here, specifically to work didn’t they?  You know they came over in their great batch, you know… to be bus drivers and those sorts of…’
 
`Are you talking about Jamaican people?’
 
`Yeah… and some of them were lovely, but… [pause] [sighs]… it… it just… it’s just that I’m just frightened.  I’m so frightened of being sectioned and they… the fact that they can do as they like with me.  Helen says they can’t… `They can’t, Anne… we’re here’, but… I know I should… I trust God, but… you know you’re not perfect are you? I’ve got that dreadful fear… you know.  They just didn’t care.  They even, with this CPN business, put on my form that I was under a CPN… put his name… when… Dr… Baverstock [ph], who I’d been under for four months right… oh Dr… CPN Paul Chambers moved over to Bethlem Royal, months ago… so Dr Baverstock said well why… is she… `oh… the nurse… who was on duty didn’t know what to put down’.  Now, is that an answer?  So I… I just hadn’t got anybody.  The only thing, and I’ll be honest, Helen’s mother, she’s had triple heart by… surgery, and she came to the private hospital, and she tipped the tablets on the bed… she had twenty eight she had to take a day… for her heart… not for nerves or nothing like that… and she said to me, `Anne… it’s just the same as…’.  I don’t want… basically, if I had my way, I wouldn’t touch a tablet at all, but I’m realising now, because… you know, because of what they’ve done to me… you understand what I mean?  I need something… and I’m prepared to trust… you know… I just have Prozac and Sulpiride.  Now, I wouldn’t… didn’t feel all that happy taking on Sulpiride, because if you read the paper up about it, it says `for schizophrenia’.  Now, my Psychiatrist, my old Psychiatrist, Dr Stein [ph], he said to me, `Anne, I promise you it’s not just given for schizophrenia… I promise you that’, and Dr Baverstock [ph] who doesn’t know Dr Stein [ph]… he read all through my notes.  It took him a few weeks, and when I went back to him about five weeks ago, I said `Am I a schizophrenic?’, and he said, `No… no way, Anne.’  He said, `You’re not even a personality disorder.’  He said, `What you’re suffering from now is… trying to carry on in the outside world, you know… it’s a tough world to be in.’  He said `You’re suffering from anxiety depression.’  And he said, `I’m amazed… my practice is amazed… that… you’re still in this world today… all as you’ve been through.’  But… can I just say… I do know that Purley [ph] Baptist Church… on the whole… they love and care for me, the best way they can, but somehow or another, I do think somewhere along the line, I should… I come home here… you know… if I’m not feeling well or something, if I didn’t understand [???]… who do I talk to?’
 
`Mmm… so it’s as if… it… you know… there’s sort of the one option?’
 
`The person who I’d talk to…’
 
`Uh huh…’
 
`I pick up this ‘phone… 300… it’s Helen’s mother, or Helen.  I’m very careful about Helen as well, ‘cause she’s such a busy lady… and… I’ve had more help from that lady, who’s wise, who… her own husband went… you know, had a breakdown, but she was treated at Harley Street.  He’s never had to be in hospital… he’s… everything’s ok now, but you see… I just feel that… you know… it shouldn’t be left to them, you know… they…she doesn’t… they don’t believe… these two… mum and dad don’t believe... but…’
 
`So you feel you should have more… more choice of support now, rather than that all your support really is from the… from the friends in the church?’
 
`Exactly…’
 
`Because you think there should be support from the statutory service, for… for yourself, if you needed it?’
 
`Can I tell you… I fought for this for a long time, but… the mental health… user’s group… MIND, who is for the user’s… they’ve fought… but this Dr Gainford [ph] said, just because I keep my sort of… house clean and tidy, and I’m methodical, you know…’
 
`They think you don’t need anything?’
 
`They think I don’t need anybody.  What if I…?’
 
`Can I… sorry…’
 
`What have I got to do?’
 
`So you feel that you’d have to get to a crisis point or something and then it… you’d get something…?’
 
`Can I tell you… I mean… you know… it… I do know that I did get to a crisis point at Christmas, but... oh, the mucking about… the mucking… [draws breath].  Poor Helen, it’s a wonder she didn’t have a breakdown as well.  Do you know what happened in the end?  They took me to May Day… I was so confused… I walked out of… I didn’t realise I was doing it, I was told this after… and the Police found me at three o’clock in the morning, wandering about in my night-dress.  I was… my… but…’
 
`That was at Christmas just gone?’
 
`Yeah… but… I was there for fifteen days… that’s right… I was there for fifteen days… and it’s only… this, well… so I thought… this… la… bless the church… they came and moved me, the… eight people from the church, came and moved me from that flat to this.  They, you know… it was all done, and… I walked into this flat, and I said `I can’t believe it’.  I did… it wasn’t like this… because I have done it all myself since… you know, but I couldn’t believe that… you know… and Helen had bought me this lovely co… [???], you know… it… they have just been so kind and… Helen understands and… mum understands and… you know, there are lots of people understand but there’s lots of wives that understand, but, you see… you have somebody who rings them and says `Can you help me?’. The husbands see it as a threat… do you understand what I’m saying?  Because they feel, all their wife’s attention is going to be… you understand?  You understand what I’m saying?  But… Helen, Derek and those two… Martin doesn’t go to our church.  He didn’t know me ‘till I came in contact with Helen.  He’s got a cystic fibrosis daughter.  This is the dreadful part… when Helen goes on holiday, you know… and Helen… they go… mum… they’re quite a well off family, very, very kind to… other people, and Helen… and her… they take their parents on a cruise every year for… umm… a week and ten days… and the brother, who’s nothing to do with my church, is on the other end of the ‘phone.  I don’t use it, but he is.  And… there’s nobody I feel, at the moment, that I have such trust in, as I have in her, and her mother, so… umm… umm…  I just feel that… you know, I just have to pray very hard to God that he will look after me, because you do need somebody to talk to don’t you?’
 
`Certainly…’
 
`And if…’
 
`When… when… when you were saying about you’d rather… if… if it came to it, you’d rather go to Cane Hill as it was, than Bethlem as it is now?’
 
`Mmm’
 
`Because of the social things that there were at Cane…?’
 
`No, Cane…’
 
`What…sorry… is that not right?’
 
`At Cane I don’t… there used to be dancers…’
 
`Uh huh’
 
`Everything… you used to go… outings… you know. There used to be so much.  You used to have holidays… you know what I mean?  When..’
 
`Where… where would you go on holiday, or who with?’
 
`To the seaside… you know, you used to go with your nurses and staff… yeah…’
 
`What… a group of patients would go…?’
 
`Pardon?  Yeah… a group of patients would go…’
 
`Can you remember any specific ones that you went on?’
 
`This will shock you.  Do you know where I’ve been?  To Lourdes… I’m not a Catholic.  I was brought up as a Catholic ‘till I was nine, but I’ve been to Lourdes… ‘
 
`With the hospital?’
 
`Yeah… and with MIND, bless their hearts…’
 
`Mmm’
 
`MIND.. you know… Rich Posetti [ph] and all of that… the user’s group.’
 
`Uh huh’
 
`When I was in MIND… long before… I sort of settled down, in society… I’d been to Spain… I’ve been to Bruges… this’ll even shock you… 1995 when I told you, my… my minister, he was lovely… always used to call me Annie.  He wouldn’t take me to the Holy Land.  They had a letter from my Psychiatrist, they had a letter from my GP, Dr Pinker [ph]… everything was ok… but he had the final say, and he wouldn’t take me… and he told me in the end it was just fear, because he didn’t know… I knew I wouldn’t be ill, but I knew I wouldn’t… I might be physically ill…’
 
`Mmm… but he was really worried that you were going to…?’
 
`Yeah… he… he…’
 
`…be very mentally ill or something?’
 
`Yeah… because I don’t think John ever understood that I’ve got… more here than meets the eye, you know… and he was just fearful, you know… he wouldn’t be able to cope if I was ill, and all that… but… I never condemned him for it.  I was very hurt and I took it inwardly, but suddenly I noticed, from our old senior minister, he was taking… he’s done it for years… he’s seventy now.  He was taking over…’
 
`He’s done what for years?’
 
`Taking… ‘ [both talking together].
 
`Going to the Holy Land?’
 
`With trips, he’d get… and so, with him… I… how I did it I’ll never know. With the help of like, Olga… she gave me a hundred pound for the deposit.  It cost me a thousand five hundred… and I only have invalidity… oh… how I… I’ll never know… I had a… a minor upset just before I went but I still went… and I had the best holiday I’ve ever had.  It was wonderful, and in a way I was so privileged… there was all married couples… and Frank went on his wife… own… ‘cause his wife’s got Parkinson’s… and he.. I sat with him, everywhere we went.  We went everywhere.  He’s known for his Holy Land trips.  I’ve got two beautiful albums that somebody, who’s got Parkinson’s, who I looked after in the church, somebody who understood… he did… you know… we… together, put these two albums together of the trip.  But he’s moved away now, Norman and Ruth, but… and people don’t understand to this day in the church, it was me that looked after Norman, went… to relieve…’
 
`Who was Norman, sorry?’
 
`He’s a… chappy in the church who had Parkinson’s and his wife was our tennis club captain in those days, and she couldn’t leave him, you know, so… when she had to leave him, I used to go and look after him, and I’ve even given him his injection… and if they give an interjection [ph] in the muscle when he shakes… that was in those days, and people… think, you know… people think, you know… this word `mental’ means that you’re stupid… this is how I see it.  That you’ve got learning difficulties, and that… but they are so wrong… you know, when you think, even those with schizophrenia… I’ve got a friend who moved from our church, David… he’s married now.  He’s brilliant… he’s brilliant, but he’s got schizophrenia… you know, he’s so clever.  But you see, they just think you’re a little bit doolally and you can’t… you…you… you’re so stupid you can’t… but so many people, after what I stood up and said last Wednesday, people said to me… umm… `Anne, there should never have been… ‘, they said, `We’re behind you all the way’, but… after Mike who happened to say this, he was prepared to talk to me… after…’
 
`Who was Mike?’
 
`He’s… one of the Deacons.  He just said something that upset me so much, which was out of order about mental health, and… but he was prepared to talk to me… and he understood that he’d been very insensitive, so we were able to say sorry, which was nice, and then I wrote him a letter and I said, `I’m quite at peace about it now.  I realise, you hadn’t done your homework properly, you know… but let’s forget it…’, and now, there’s another one… person… who understands.  You see… if only people would look behind the situation… not take people… what they hear and what they see, you know… and I tell you something else that happened.  Two people from a group home, in my church are coming regularly, you know.  One is very severe… you know, bless her heart… she smokes all the time…’
 
`Severe… where are they from, sorry?’
 
`From Cane Hill… you know… from… you know, she goes round the… you know, this is what’s happening today, care in the community.  She goes round smoking… round the streets picking up dog ends, it’s very, very sad, but she loves to come to the church, and… the gentleman who comes with her, he’s a black guy… he’s from Cane Hill… and… he’s lovely… lovely… lovely gentleman.  Very shy and reserved, and… what is so lovely now, I just feel I’m beginning to make a pathway.  I’ve noticed… you see I keep these open and I keep these [Anne points to eyes and ears]… they’re being… people are befriending them… you know what I mean?  And I think, `Oh, it’s coming… thanks Lord’, but I know it’s going to be a long time… and when I went to… see John Earwicker [ph], because he’s a very, very kind man… oh… sorry… he’s a very, very kind man… and he’s for people, you know… none of this… he won’t have it, you know… and he’s turned the church upside down… you know… and…’
 
`So he’s really supported you hasn’t he… and helped you do your own…?’
 
`Well in there… he’s only been there six months’ [both talking together].
 
`…within the church and so on…?’
 
`And he happened to ring me up… when was it?  Tuesday night.  Now he’s had some very important things to decide about the church, but he would bother to ring me up at nine o’clock and say, `You’re ok Anne… you’re ok… you’re ok…’ and I just thought that was lovely, because… you know… one in about 400 members, you know… and he hasn’t even…  he’s only got a youth leader with him… you know, a main youth leader…’
 
`Uh huh’
 
`What I call a youth director… Helen’s the chap… our child protection officer, but… I just feel that… it’s… you know.. there’s… light coming out the end of the tunnel as regards… but…’
 
`We’re going to have to come to a stop for a break…’
 
`Could I just say one thing before the end… I just want to say about Purley [ph] Baptist church.  As for caring for me, and loving me… the… they have been wonderful, but for understanding, they need to be trained… some… they need to have people to come and talk to them.’
 
`It sounds as if you’ve started the process off well.’
 
`Laughs’.
 
`We’ll have a break for lunch…’
`Oh is it… oohh… I didn’t realise… now, shall I slip my shoes on… I’ll go like this…?’
 
[End of DVC Pro tape 2]
 
[Start of DVC Pro tape 3 – VHS tape 1 continues]
 
[Camera:` Anne Soppitt, C905/11 tape number three’].
 
`Ok…[pause]… ok… Anne would you be able to briefly… going through your life, tell me what age, what happened to you… so for instance if you could start off with the age you were when you first went to school…right up to what age you were when you left hospital?’
 
`I went to school in… I was three… boarding school… and then I came out of… when I was eight.  I went to Child’s Guidance when I was nine… Belgrave Children’s Hospital… and then I went to Bethlem Royal… the… adolescent section when I was about eleven, twelve… and then… [pause] I came out of Bethlem Royal and I was a cadet nurse at the age of fifteen… and I had another breakdown, and I went to Cane Hill… and…’
 
`What age would you have been then, at Cane Hill?  That first time?’
 
`The very first time, would be about… seventeen… I… well I’m not quite sure.  I think it was about seventeen… yes, I think it was about seventeen… and then from there… I was in the hospital doing different things and… sort of just aimlessly going on… and then in 19… umm… 70… I left the hospital again and went to Honour Oak, purpose built mental hospital, psychiatric hostel, and… I did eighteen months as a Nursery Nurse at Docking & Hill Day Nursery [ph].  I had a… another break down… and… I went back into Cane Hill, and from there then… went to… really bad, and… I got so frustrated at being there.  I was… I was… thrown through a glass window… door and… there was a union… big union dispute over it… and I… because I had nowhere to go and no one to sign me out, I went to Rampton, top security hospital… [both talking together] in Nottingham…’
`What age were you then?’
 
`1976 was the year I went there and I kept… I came out in December 1982… 1981, and then I was a year on Cane Hill secure unit, and then… I came out into my flat in March… the eighth… ’82… and I stayed there ‘till December, no… yeah… I… yes, umm… no, sorry… September… ’98… and I’m now in sheltered accommodation in Borough Grange in Sanderstead, where I’ve got a nice little flat and… still have lots of problems but, I’m learning to cope very well.’
 
`And what age are you now?’
 
`Fifty nine.  I’ll be sixty in January, the millennium year… yes…’
 
`There’s a good… good combination of dates and times isn’t it…?’
 
`Yes…’
 
`Ok… we’ll just take a short break there… [pause]… ok.  If I take you right back to… those very early days that you were telling me about… I mean at the age of three, you went to a school…’
 
`Mmm’
 
`…which I think you said was a Catholic School?’
 
`Boarding school…’
 
`Boarding school…Boarding school at the age of three?’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`Did you have any memories prior to that of… your parents?  What sort of people they were and what they looked like?’
 
`No… no… I never knew my father… I never saw him… not when I was away a lot…’
 
`And when did you learn about your father?’
 
`Umm…’
 
`Your real father?’
 
`Umm… ‘
 
`Oh sorry… how did you learn about him?’ [both talking together]
 
`It wasn’t… it wasn’t very… ‘till very late in life, that I learnt that he’d… paid for my education, but I do know… I was born at his house.  You know what I mean?  My… I was born at 31 Crescent Road, which was a private road… and my mum… lived at 14 Crescent Grove… in this flat… you know…’
 
`So… did you ever see your parents when… between the age of three and eleven, when you were at the boarding school, or did you just never see them again, or…?’
 
`I’ve never seen my… dad at all… in all my life.  I don’t know what he looks like or anything.  But I have seen my… I have… I know my mother quite well… you know… and… [sighs]… what I do know of her, but I know more of my step grandma than anybody, of any family, you know, that I’ve got… because I lived with her a much longer time.  I went to school… secondary school, when I came away from… boarding school.  I went to Parkside Secondary Modern in Brixton, which is a town… a little town just next door… little… well, you’ve heard of Brixton?  A little place, not a little place, next door to Clapham Common, so… I went to Parkside Secondary Modern School, but… never got anywhere.  But I had a… adorable grandmother, she was lovely.  Yeah.’
 
`Do you want to describe her to me? What she looked like and…?’
 
`Umm… she was small… small.   I can only remember her, with grey hair, you know.  Very methodical lady.  In those days I thought she had a lovely place, she had a lovely old fashioned little place. She actually, in those days, had a bathroom and toilet, you know, inside… you know… when many people didn’t, you know.  It was the alms houses.  Why she was in the alms houses I don’t know, but she was in the alms houses, and it’s… I can… I can see the alms houses here today, but I don’t… I don’t know if they’re actually still there but I can see them in my mind.’
 
`What were they like?’
 
`They were… two storeys… with a balcony… sort of, there was the flat and the balcony in front of it, all the way round… and it was on the second floor… it was just two flights… she was on the top flight… and in front there was… lovely green grass, and lawns and things.  I should think there must have been about thirty people, who lived... there was... I can always remember, two sets of buildings, you know, and they were sort of joined together in the middle… bit like a semi-circle, and there was high railings, black railings… round the whole sort of site place…’
 
`And what were alms houses actually for?’
 
`Well I only know what alms houses… they’ve got them in Croydon haven’t they, for… I don’t know.  There must have been a reason why, but I don’t know what… who the alms houses belonged to.  Do you understand what I mean?  Like… Croydon have got… some alms houses for… people who have worked for… now, what… for the school… where the Archbishop of Canterbury… umm… a palace or something, do you know what I mean?’
 
`Lambeth… Palace?’
 
`No, not Lambeth Palace.  Croydon used… oh, I’m trying to think of the name… it’s a school now, ‘cause I went round it…about…’
 
`Is it the Choir School or something?’
`Pardon?’
 
`The Choir School, or…?’
 
`No… no, it’s a school now… you know, a… private school… you know… and… but it’s all… as it originally was, you know, and… when the people retired, you know, they used to go and live in the alms houses…’
 
`Oh right…mmm.’
 
`But it’s that sort of thing, but I don’t know specifically what my grandma’s alms houses were for... you know why she was there and… what she worked at or anything like that, ‘cause when I went to her she must have been about seventy… you know… she was a…’
 
`Would she… your mum’s mother or your father’s mother?’
 
`My stepfather’s mother..’
 
`Oh you’re stepfather’s mother?  Right…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`And your stepfather, what… what sort of…?’
 
`Well…’
 
`…memories do you have of him?’
 
`He wasn’t a very kind man.  But his mum was lovely… but he wasn’t a very kind man at all.  I don’t even know if he had… because, from what I can remember, my mum married very late in life, you know… and she had me… you know… quite late in her life, you know… but… the vital memory I can have of… of my mother… she had long black hair, you know, but…’
`Was she tall or… short?’
 
`She was tall.  Yes… tall and… umm… about your build, but tall… you know, and… the thing that I remember… about her most was her long, long hair, you know.’
 
`Can you remember anything about the way she spoke?  Was she from a well educated sort of background or…?’
 
`Yes, very well educated [noise in background].  Yes… yeah… and… according to my birth certificate…my… father… ‘cause his name’s on it… [pause]… he was a stock broker… up in… you know at a… big place in London.  But… and… what I was told was that he paid for my education, and for me to go to holiday school.’
 
`Do… do you have any brothers or sisters from either of those… relationships?’
 
`I don’t… as far as I know, I had no brothers and sisters from… the Soppitt side, but I don’t know, to this day, whether I had any sisters or brothers from… the… [pause] now let me think… the…’
 
`[Inaudible: rustling on microphone] …your parents?’
 
`No… my… stepfather’s… side… I don’t know.  But I do know, somewhere… somewhere I’ve got some relatives, because… my mum had sisters, and… in the letters that I’ve got in there… in my drawer, you can see she talks about all the family.  They’re all over in America…’
 
`And the letters are from an aunt, are they?’
 
`Yeah… two aunts… Aunt Lucy and Aunt Ninia [ph], and I’ve got a cousin, Sonia… but… when… a social worker, years and years ago, wrote to them, they… he never got a reply… he wrote on my behalf, but he never got a reply, but I last heard from my auntie in America, when I was Rampton, so… I don’t know…’
 
`You don’t know why she hasn’t kept in touch?’
`No… I should think they must have died, at… well, I don’t think cousin Sonia’s died but I think she must have done… you know. But I’ve never seen any of them, you know… and reading the letters that they’ve written, I think there was a family dispute or something… on my mother’s… you know, on my mother’s side of the family… I don’t know.  Because my aunt put… she just left London, that’s all, so…’
 
`At the convent school, that…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`Was it a convent school?’
 
`Yeah, they both were…’
 
`Both the schools…?’
 
`No…’ [both talking together]
 
`Do you remem…?’
 
`…both the boarding schools were convents ‘cause I went to two…’
 
`Right… the first boarding school you went to…?’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`What memories have you got of… have you got any memories of that place?’
 
`Yes…’
 
`Or the people in it?’
 
`…I can remember learning the rosary, and for punishment I had to… had my hands on my head… ‘cause I had fleas… this is how… integrated it was… and I had to learn the Maths and Latin, which I can still remember some of it now… [speaks Latin]… that’s all I know, but I had to learn it as a punishment, with my hands on my head, and kneeling. [Laughs].’
 
`Do you remember the teaching?  What sort of lessons might you have had at that school?’
 
`Umm… well I think… from what I can remember, I just didn’t want to learn, you know what I mean?  And I think I used to spend half my time… staring into space, you know… and ‘cause I just didn’t want to… I liked the sports side of it and I loved music, and I enjoyed all that, but… and I used to love netball.  I loved netball, but… and I’ve played at Rodene… in the junior team, so…’
 
`Rodene’s a private… girls’ school is it?’
 
`Yes… right near where I was at school.  It’s near St Dunstan’s [ph], the blind place… and… I can remember… I can always remember my father… ‘cause I wrote to my father, although I didn’t know him, and never met him, I can remember writing to him, and asking him for a tennis racket.  And he sent it, you know, but… and I can always remember my cases used to be packed at the end of term… well my trunk… and then it used to be shipped off to the holiday school and… you know…’
 
`Did you… did you remember any friends, from that age?’
 
`No… no… no…’
 
`Did you have friends there?’
 
`Umm…’
 
`At of the school?’
 
`Not that I can remember… not that I… I can’t remember a friend at all… no… no…’
 
`Ok… we’ll take a short break again.’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`Oh, it’s my stuff…[pause].  You’ve just been telling me in our break, about…’
 
`Oh, I’m sorry, I thought… [laughs]… no, go on…’
 
`Ok… You’ve just been telling me in the break, about pegging stations…which hospital was that at?’
 
`Cane Hill.’
 
`And what… what is the pegging station?’
 
`It’s… on nights, when they… night dut… [ph].  Years ago there used to be Assistant Matrons… there used to be the Matron, and the Assistant Matron, and Assistant… Sisters, sort of you know… and the nurses themselves, to make quite sure that the patients had all been checked… they used… ‘cause they hadn’t got the staff in those days, about… let me say… out of a hundred and ten, about… eighty would be sleeping in this massive great dormitory, with commodes, you know, at the end… first to go to… we all shared the same commode… you know… at… there’s about two, right at the end of the dormitory, and at the other end of the dormitory, there was this machine, and… the nurse, every two hours, put this key in… and it registered in the Assistant Matron’s office, at… because this… the Assistant Matron was in charge of the whole of the hospital, that… all the wards and everything, and it used to register in her office, during the night, and she used to do three ward… three hospital rounds a night, and she used to have to bring… the nurse… my repeat Chlor [ph]… I can always remember that…’
 
`Your repeat…?’
 
`Chlor [ph]… you know… ‘
 
`Which was what?’
 
`You didn’t… a drug, you know…’
 
`Right…’
 
`You know, to shut me up…if I got… ‘
 
`Is that short for something, Chlor?’
 
`No, it’s called Chlorhydrate…’
 
`Right…’
 
`It’s a… like… it’s a… like Largactyl… it was a liquid medicine.  It was a liquid sleeping drug… and they used to have that… eight…about ten… and… have a repeat before two, but we used to be allowed out of side rooms and quarter to seven, in the morning, and… those that were able… some were really lost to the world and had to be dressed and undressed, and we all used to stand in the base room, I mean it was called… in this ward…’
 
`In the base room did you say?’
 
`Basin room…’
 
`Basin room, right…’
 
`…where all these basins, there was no sort of cubicles or anything… a long row of basins and you used to have to strip wash… you know… with the carbolic soap, and… strip wash, do your hair, get dressed…’
 
`So you had no privacy…?  Was there anything you want to say about privacy?’ [Both talking together].
 
`Oh, no… no privacy, ever… ‘
 
`What about for the toilet even… was there any privacy for that, or…the commode?[both talking together]?’
 
`Not at night time.  Not at night time, there was no privacy at all… no privacy… you just… went to the toilet and the nurses in the morning used to empty the commodes and…’
 
`So this commode was just sort of standing on it’s own with no curtain round it or…?’
 
`Nothing… nothing.’
 
`It was just like a toilet on wheels sort of thing?’
 
`Yeah… yeah… that’s right… two of them…’
 
`And… you’d have to just go in front of everybody else?’
 
`Everybody else… yeah… but you see they were so drugged up… you know, that they weren’t aware that… some of them used to wet the bed and… you know, because I found that a lot of them were many, many years older than me… you know, so… there was an admission ward, and at the end of my time at Cane Hill, before I went to Rampton, they started having mother and baby units on what was called, `Queen’s Ward’, where the mother… the baby… the new born baby went in with the mother, but that was always called the `ladies’ ward’, you know… if you got on Queens you were… other patients used to be on it, but there used to be about two or three mums and babies in the hospital, that… that… that was in the latter time.  But… all sorts of things happened there, and then we all used to go in this garden, and they just… lots of them just used to walk round and round, you know… the garden.  It… it was a very regimental life, you know… very, very dreadful, and…’
 
`So what… if you didn’t want to get up, what would happen?  Say you didn’t feel like getting up in the morning, at seven o’clock or whatever…?’
`Oh… there was… nothing… nothing to do, you were just dragged out… you got up, whether you liked it or not, you were just thrown out… and if you didn’t get up, and you did misbehave, you were thrown in a side room.  You know… there was quite a very strict regime, and I always think now, that’s why I find it so hard at Bethlem… now… because it’s so free and easy.  Well, I don’t mean free and easy… [sighs]… it… to me it seems that there’s too many chiefs and not enough Indians… [laughs]… you know that saying don’t you?’
 
`I do… yeah…’
 
`You know… there’s no sort of… umm… ‘
 
`Structure to the day, do you mean?’
 
`No… no structure… you know…’
 
`So in the hospital where you had to get up very early…’
 
`We had to…’
 
`…were meal times regimented?’
 
`Yes… yes…’
 
`And what sort of meals did you get and… how were they served?’
 
`We always had a tin plate, you always had a tin mug.  All the cutlery had to be counted every meal time… knives, forks… and they had these old fashioned knives, forks and spoons. They all had to be counted before you got up from the table.  If there was one missing everybody was searched… oh, yes… wouldn’…’
 
`What… when you say old fashioned cutlery, what… what do you mean by that?’
 
`Well you imagine in 1953, it was… horrible cutlery there, it was just old fashioned.  What I have now… you know… ‘
 
`In what way was it different? Did it… what did the handles look like or…?’
 
`Well, it was like… thin… you know, skimpy, thin metal… it was horrible… you know, I can tell… and the food just used to come up in great big tin trays… you know, thick tin trays, and they used to have to scour these out and… oh… what… oh, I can’t… oh yeah, I think… I think vaguely I used to have to run round with all the meals and… oohh… but… some… sometimes because I worked so hard… because really, oh… I shouldn’t really say this… sometimes, being so young could compared with everybody else… the ward I was on… I felt that… I was the only sensible one… you know what I mean?  Do you understand what I mean?  Because if you talk to people about… years ago, about lost patients… oh, they were so drugged up they were lost to the world, you know…’
 
`So… but whereas you still had your sort of mental faculties and…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`…energy?’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`Did you have to… for the meals… were they… given out to you or did you have to queue up for them… or…?’
 
`No they were… you sat at your table and they were given to you… yeah…’
 
`What sort of choice did you have of menu?’
 
`You didn’t have a choice.  You didn’t have a choice at all.  Yeah, I think you had… porridge… [pause]… I don’t even think… I think… it wasn’t the milk like you have today.  We had porridge and milk… I think… mug of… out of this great big tea pot of tea, you know… and that was it… and then…’
 
`That was breakfast?’
 
`Yeah… and if you were really good, you were allowed a cup of tea at… in the middle of the morning, and then there used to be… dinner… cup of tea in the afternoon, if you’d behaved, and… in the evening, used to have another cooked meal, but… and it… the food was so different… you used to go to all…’
 
`Was it nice food or…or not?’
 
`Umm… not really, no.  You know that old fashioned egg… ?’
 
`I don’t know it, actually…’
 
`You know, from the war, that sort of meals… we used to have powdered egg… powdered egg… but you see myself, in those days, I accepted all that… you know, you had to… [sound distant].’
 
`Sorry, we’ll have to take a break…’
 
`Is that…[Camera: OK’].’
 
`Where we have raw egg today, then we used to have powdered egg, but you… you know, if you’re in a place like that, you don’t know any different… you understand what I mean?  So you just accepted it, but I wasn’t fat through over eating, I was fat through drugs.  You know what I mean?  Because as soon as I came off my injection, three years ago, I lost it all.  You’ve been on an injection for thirty years, and suddenly you come off it…’
 
`So what sort of size did you go from… to…?’
 
`I went from twenty stone… and I’m now thirteen…’
`And what sort of weight do you think you might have been when you first went in…as a young woman?’
 
`What, when I… when I went in as a youngster?’
 
`Yes…’
 
`Oh, about eight… nine… you know… that was when I was about seventeen, you know… but… slowly and slowly I got fatter and fatter… but I will say, I do like my food now, but it’s funny.  I’ve come off the injection, horrendous it was, you know… because the side effects… but now, as regards eating I don’t get fat because… I’m so active… you know what I mean… not… you… I’d never sit like this normally, ever… you know… I like doing…’ [both talking together]
 
`You’re always out and about doing things?’
 
`Pardon?’
 
`You…’
 
`I’m always doing something.’
 
`You were saying that if you behaved well…’
 
`Mmm’
 
`…then you might get a cup of tea?  What did that mean… what… what did you have to do…?’
 
`Well…’
 
`…that would be counted as behaving well?’
 
`If  I’d worked hard… if I was quiet… you know… it was entirely up to the staff, you know…’
 
`Was there any sort of rhyme or reason to that or was it…?’
 
`Didn’t seem to be any rhyme or… it did…’
 
`So you couldn’t really work out…?’
 
`No, I never worked out, you know… but I did realise why I used to get my bread and jam… at the end of the week.  I didn’t get it every day, just on a Friday, I’d go to the bakeries and get… your slice of bread and jam, and we… we used to get an… a… a really nice cake.  The bread side was lovely, you know… because it was home made, you know… home made bakery, straight from the bakery into the wards.’
 
`So what did you have to do to get that?’
 
`Pardon?’
 
`What did you have to do to get that?’
 
`Bumper… bumper… the floors… and they weren’t a little place like this, they were massive… scrub wax, wash up after dinner… you know, wash and dry up, you know… that’s why… I tell you a very… thing… you might not believe this, but in a crowd… if we have a party or anything at the church, you can guess where I land up can’t you?’
 
`[Laughs] In the kitchen?’
 
`Yeah… I cannot socialise like that.  But when Helen’s parents had their golden wedding, nobody knew me except Helen.  I had a wonderful time, I was completely different.  Isn’t it funny?’
 
`That’s interesting…’
`Yeah…’
 
`Mmm… so what would people have… have you got any sense of what sort of behaviour was deemed to be not acceptable?’
 
`Well… not acceptable, if… because… being at Cane Hill, you become like them, don’t you?  You’re on the same… for so many years, and I…’
 
`You become like the other patients?’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`You know… and… I used to swear… you know, and… and… I think in my frustration, I became verbally quite… you know, I started to get verbally quite aggressive, you know… verbally, but… when I came out of Rampton, after I had that vision, I completely changed.  It… it… well I just… I’d for… I… I tried to think it was God.  I think personally myself, Rampton was… I know it’s horrendous what I saw and what happened to me, but I… I feel some way, that Rampton did me good.  I know it seems strange…’
 
`Because of the vision, you mean?’
 
`Yeah… not only because of the vision, but… it taught me so much about how to live on my own, how to budget, there was some very good things… you know, people only read all bad about… Rampton, but when I think what it did for me as a person, I learnt about gardening, doing plants… I was in the print for a year doing collating… I know it wasn’t very… very much but I learnt how to collate… I learnt how to read and write… I worked in the laundry… and Sandra will tell you… you look around this place, everything’s spotless… you know… normally it is, but… now… but… ‘
 
`So did it… did the other hospital not have any of those opportunities to do…the variety of activities that you had at Rampton?’
`Oh no… there was… there was an Olympic swimming pool at Rampton.’
 
`But what I’m saying is that… Rampton sort of provided you with those opportunities, but the other place hadn’t done, is that right, or not…?’
 
`No… no… but on the other hand, with all these… Rampton’s a top security hospital, but say like Cane Hill… sort of dances and going out to places and things like that… Cane Hill did a marvellous job, but actually teaching you… how to cope and everything… didn’t… you know… because it was always said from the word go, that I’d… never suit a group home.  You know… it was said, but Pam Taylor…’
 
`[Sneezes] Excuse me…’
 
`…that’s the doctor who did the secondment, said `I will fight for you to have my own flat’, and when you think, you know, I came out in society… just with Sylvia, myself… I mustn’t tell a lie… Norman the kit… he was one of the nurses, just used to come every week and give me my injection ‘cause I hadn’t got a doctor or anything like that… but that only lasted about three months… and then I found Dr Pinker [ph] and the only way I could trust him, was through his dog.  He introduced me to his dog, and then I started going to him, but he was wonderful… wonderful.  Lovely doctor… you know… he used to come to all my parties…’
 
`Mmm…’
 
`…I’ve had… I’ve never not had a birthday party since I’ve been out of hospital.  I said to Helen this will be the first year, she said, `You don’t think we’re not going to celebrate your sixtieth?’
 
`What happened when you had birthdays in the hospital?’
 
`I… they just came and went, you know.  I’ve never had… I’ve never had a birthday party ‘till I came out of hospital.’
 
`Did anyone acknowledge it was your birthday?’
`No.  No…’
 
`Did you remember that it was your birthday though?’
 
`Oh yes… yes… I always knew it was my birthday.’
 
`And how did that feel?’
 
`[Sighs]… I can remember, after coming out of… well… in Rampton, saying… you know, when I had this vision and… my faith came… really strong… I remember saying to God… I… I used to say… `I know you love me, but send me somebody, who really… wants to care for me’, and that’s where Sylvia came in.  She’s been brilliant… brilliant… but…’
 
`Did you used to wish that people… that there might be somebody that would remember your birthday, or…?’
 
`Oh yes… yes… yes… but now… now… [laughs]… Christmas time, and this is not an exaggeration, I can show you photographs, I have about two hundred Christmas cards…’
 
`[Laughs]… Making up for it?’
 
`Yeah… [laughs].  They say… the Bible says you’ll prosper, but financially I find it very hard, but I’m so organised… you know, down to the last penny.  But through my caring, I’ve given a lot away which was a bit silly and all that, but I can’t bear to see people in need… Oh sorry… I can’t bear to see people in need, you know… I’m hoping… I don’t know if it’ll come off, but I’m hoping to go to India in March… with John Earwicker [ph]… we’re going to do a week… with… Oasis… helping Oasis, because it’s a very needy country, third world, you know, sometimes they… and then we’re going to have a week’s holiday after… I don’t know if it’ll come off, but I’m hoping that they’ll take me… I’ve just got to trust they will.  Where the money will come from I don’t know, but… if I’m meant to go, I’ll go.  I’m hoping… and the lovely part about it is I’ve got my passport… so…’
`You’re all set then really?’
 
`Mmm… yeah…’
 
`You were talking about the social aspects and the dances… at Cane Hill…?’
 
`Mmm… Cane Hill… yeah…’
 
`How was the mixing of male and female patients… would there have been men and women at the dances?’
 
`Yes…’
 
`Were you very separated?’
 
`The male nurse… the… the females sat on one side, and the males sat on the other, with the male staff… but you were allowed to dance together, but you had to go back to your separate places… that was at the beginning, when I first went there… but… the latter years you all mixed together, but… over the latter years, it all… slowly sort of faded out, you know… when I…’
 
`What, the dances and things you mean?’
 
`Yeah.  I think it was money… you know, money, but… we used to have a Recreation Officer and… umm…’
 
`What sort of things would you do in recreation?’
 
`Well that was recreation… dances and… bingo… beetle drive… and the hospital had a shop… you know, like they do today.  They had a shop, which wasn’t run by… somebody owned this shop, and in Cane Hill there was a church, and the church in the front of the building is listed, so… in some ways that’s why they’re having a problem to sell it… some ways… and the other reason is because it’s a secure… the secure units… in the same grounds, in the corner at the top… it never used to… it’s a purpose built place and it’s been… it had a ten year lease when I left, but…’
 
`Did you ever go to chapel… to the church?’
 
`Oh yes… yes… I used to help the vicar and get his robes out, and… you know, all sorts.  That was at the… when I came out of Rampton.  Yeah… it was…’
 
`Did you go to the church that was on the hospital grounds?’
 
`Yeah, it was in… how can I tell you?  It was built in the hospital… you know this… you know like a C of E church?  That was all in the hospital… built in the build… you know, you opened the church door on the corridor, and you were in the church, and when you got in the church it was just like a C of E church.  You… you understand what I’m saying? ‘
 
`Yeah…’
 
`Yeah, so… yeah, and the corridors were long, you know… you had to walk miles to each ward.’
 
`Did you get the… we’ll stop for a break in a second but did you get the hang of the corridors?  Did it take you long to sort of know where you were within the hospital?’
 
`Not really… not really… well… I say that… because I started at the wrong end.  I should have gone to Blake [ph]… to the admission ward when I went there, but I went to a `lost’ ward straight away… because, I think the main reason… being so young, I shouldn’t have been there at all, you know, so they took me right up the other end of the hospital, in King’s ward.  King’s ward… King’s one… upstairs… and so I was out the way, where nobody could see me… and I couldn’t go in and out as I pleased… it was all locked.  When I went to the hospital, every ward was locked… locked.  Every side room was locked… you sort of… the patients used to walk up and down the sort of… corridor… in the ward where all the side rooms were, and the office.  It was horrendous, and they used to walk round the day room and…’
 
`How many patients do you think there were?’
 
`A hundred and ten… on the ward I was on…’
 
`On one ward?’
 
`On one ward…’
 
`And how many beds in a ward…?’
 
`Umm…’
 
`Roughly…?’
 
`Well, there was a hundred and ten beds…’
 
`Oh, in one ward?’
 
`Yeah… what I’m trying to say… there was some side rooms… and then there was this massive great dormitory… you know, and… umm… they were all little sort of… light… metal beds, you know… metal and… umm… wood… you… you saw the springs and everything, you know, the springs on them and a… this horrible straw matress, but it was wonderfully comfortable, compared with a side room and… a strong dress and everything, and you wore the hospital night dress, but the good thing… in latter years, everybody… but out of their money… they had… do you remember eiderdowns?’
 
`Eiderdowns? Yes…’
 
`Yes… they… everybody… they were all different colours.  We all had a brushed nylon… I can remember it… I’ve still got mine, it’s in there… a brushed nylon… it’s sort of a souvenir… [laughs]… a brushed nylon eiderdown.  That one in there…’
 
`Are they all identical or…?’
 
`No, they were all… well, they were all the same, but all different colours, you know what I mean?  I’ve still got mine in there and I still use it… thirty years later… I still use it now.’
 
`Let’s just stop there for a sec…’
 
`Can you tell me about the smoking situation in hospitals?’
 
`Ever since I’ve entered… hospital… it seemed that everybody smoked, right from the staff, all the way through… you know… every… at… I suppose there were people that didn’t, but I just thought smoking was the norm.  You know… and… you know, I’ve been out walking in the hospital grounds, and seen people picking up dog ends and putting one old fag into another, rolling toilet paper, you know… ‘cause it’s thin and… oh…’
 
`Instead of a cigarette paper you mean?’
 
`Yeah… instead of a cigarette paper.  In the summer, using dry grass when it’s been burnt, you know… all sorts of things, you know…’
 
`What other things did people smoke?’
 
`Oh… that… well… it was a cigarette, you know… but they used all sorts of things to try and get a smoke.  It was as if like… drinking water… was this… when everybody smoked… and I should think the sale of… in the shop… of cigarettes… hundreds and hundreds were sold, you know, but… in latter years it sort of subsided because of the changes in the health and everything like that… but if you go into a psychiatric hospital, nine times out of ten, a lot of people they either start because they’re… particularly today now, because they’re bored.  There’s nothing to do… you know.  They say there’s all… you… you’re not forced… made to do anything.  Everything is your choice… you know what I mean?  And I think sometimes, the old ways… you know, where you were sort of… pushed into doing things… I don’t mean to say you should be pushed in a regime, like they were years ago, but to be encouraged more, you know… in that… on the stricter line to do these things, it does help you.’
 
`To be a bit more motivated?’
 
`Yeah… and today… what I found out, is… I can only speak for my own situation… if I’d sat in my flat when I came out of Patrtridge Knoll [ph], and expected everybody to come to me… I’d still be sitting there… you know what I mean?  Because… I’ve tried so hard to put myself out… you understand what I’m saying?  I’ve tried so hard to put myself out, and meet people half way, go to the church… even today I know I could pick up the ‘phone and I’d get a lift somewhere, but… if I am upset and need help, I’m quite prepared to put myself out, and make my own way there, you know what I mean?  Because they might be doing something.  It was like Tuesday, I was very upset about what had happened here, and poor Helen couldn’t come here… she wanted to…’
 
`What had happened then?’
 
`I had been… I had been accused of purposely, between six and seven, and all night long, of making a noise, and as Helen says, `Anne’s got a thing about noise… she lives most of her life without her shoes on, and when I come in this building at six o’clock and it’s like a morgue, she says to me… `Helen will you…’ I said to him, `Helen don’t wear those high heels coming in’, she said, `You know… it’s normal to wear… at six o’clock’, and it’s not that, it’s people like Fio [???] which I can understand, she’s eighty… you know and she’s senses the noise, she wants to go to bed, but… you see people don’t… she’s got a nerve problem and they don’t understand they want quiet, but you see, because I care and everything like that, I’m being picked on, you get what I mean?  They can’t understand why somebody should go down and make somebody else a cup of tea, when it’s not my job.  You understand what I’m trying to say?’
 
`Like you?’
 
`But… that’s just me, but I think… only… personally, myself… the situation I’m in… you’ve got to help yourself a bit, you can’t rely on the drugs all the time, you can’t rely on the doctors and nurses… you… you’ve got to… do you understand what I’m trying to say?’
 
`So that… is that why you found…aspects of Rampton better, because it did… to some extent, sort of make you do things, that have now helped you… to adjust to life outside?’
 
`Yes.  Yes… because… when I came out of hospital all together… all together… black was black and white was white, but now over the years I’ve learnt there’s grey in between.  Now… it’s been a very hard lesson for me to learn, because I’ve either expected things, on time… you know what I mean… you know, in hospital, seven o’clock, breakfast… you know… you’ve got… everything was just organised, and everybody… all the staff… wore a uniform.  You never called anybody by their… Christian name, and… but… it’s all changed… and I’ve always…’
 
`What would you have called the nurses? What… how would you have addressed them?’
 
`What, the nurses?’
 
`Nurse… or Mrs so and so, or Mr…?’
 
`No, you said… `Nurse… Nurse Mead’… just say you was a… you’d say `Nurse Mead’.   You didn’t know anybody’s first name, and the Assistant Matron, she used to say, well `Mrs Harris [ph]… is doing a ward round’, do you know what I mean?’
 
`And how were you addressed as a patient?’
 
`Soppitt… Anne…’ [both talking together]
 
`Plain Soppitt?’
 
`It was just Miss Soppitt… or… I can always remember I got on top of a cupboard once, and they said, `Soppitt… we’ll kill you , we’ll kill you…’, and I did fall in the end and break my ankle, but you see what I mean?  You… I was… not until very… well, I think it was when I came out of Rampton, and went to the Secure Unit in 1981, that… I heard anybody called by their christian name.  You know… and I found it very difficult.  Even today, there’s a lady in my church who’s so kind to me, and she’s eighty… and I call… she says, `Call me Brenda’, and I keep on calling her Mrs Peck [ph], you know what I mean?  Oh, now everybody else I call by their first name, but… it’s…’
 
`That was a very traditional thing though wasn’t it..?’
 
`Yeah… yeah…’
 
`…that you called your elders by their… title and not their name…?’
 
`Yeah… yeah… and you’d never call a doctor… umm… you know… nat [ph]… in the end, I found myself calling Dr Pinker [ph], Trevor… you know, and… before he went to America.  I used to say, `Trevor… ‘ you know.  He was exceptional though. So that he could give me time, I used to go and see him at seven o’clock in the morning…’
 
`Where did you meet him?’
 
`He was my GP for… the last… sixteen and a half… no… he went to America didn’t he?  I had Dr… another doctor then in the practice…’
 
`Right’
 
`But he was my GP for about ten years… and… and you know, he used to give me time and everything, and when they went over to computers, you know… to surgeries and things, I can always remember, he had to be the first one to switch it on, and he was a bit puzzled, and I can remember him saying this to the… rest of the team, I was there at seven o’clock, and I… I’d seen a computer, but… and I… I’d learnt to read and write and everything like that, and he said, `Anne, I can’t puzzle this out’… so I said, `Look…’, it was when first computers came out… I said, `Look, if you read what is in that little square...’, I said `…there’s your answer’.  And he looked at me as if to say, `How should you know?’, but it was just…’
 
`[Laughs].’
 
`You know… you see… as I’ve said before… if you… well, I… I’m not… I don’t worry about it now at all, to that extent, and… if you say you’ve been in an asylum, or… Rampton or something like that, they think you’re stupid.  They think you’ve got learning difficulties, you can’t take anything in, and there’s Helen… and Sylvia and all of them who know me say, `Anne… you’re more acute than all of us put together’, so…’
 
`Do you read a lot now?’
 
`I read… well… I won’t say… I do read, I read before I got to bed but… I wouldn’t say I’m a great reader.  If I want to know something about something, I’ll go to the library and research it, but I’m not what you’d say a bookworm or anything like that.’
 
`Did you fully catch up on reading and writing, or is there any elements that are still… difficult for you?’
 
`Can I tell you?  I’ve… I haven’t been to school, since I was eleven, and… I’ve never sat an exam as such, except my City and Guild… in… and what I had to do, I did… now let me remember now… I did… I had to… you know a knitting pattern… I had to work out what’s on a knitting pattern and do my own pattern, and then… knit it, and I did Jacob’s Coat of Many Colours… yeah… I haven’t got it now because I gave it to somebody in the church, but… and at… it’s funny… I… I can knit anywhere.  I know it sounds stupid and everything, but people have… for years… people have seen me.  I don’t do it now though, but people have seen me walking along in Purley [ph] knitting.’
 
`Oh you can walk and knit at the same time?’
 
`Yeah… I do… like somebody who will read a newspaper, I can walk anywhere and knit… not look at a pattern or anything…’
 
`Incredible!’
 
`…and I can also remember this is the funny side of it… I left my ball of wall… I was knitting when I got off the bus, and if you know Purley [ph] roundabout… the waterworks was there before Tescos and… I got off the bus, and as you went to go round the corner, he threw the ball of wool out to me, and I was still walking along, like… he recognised…[???][laughs]…’
 
`Yeah…?’
 
`But I don’t do it so much now because Dr Stein said it was a form of anxiety… you know, always… you know… so I do… I am able… these last sort of… since I’ve been private for instance, I’ve been off my injection… to relax more.  But… if John knew I’d been sitting there for ten minutes, he’ll be more shocked than anybody, ‘cause he said, `Anne, you’re always doing something’, you know… I sit, but normally when I sit, I’m… knitting or… something or other…’
 
`You like to be active?’
 
`Mmm’
 
`Did you find… I know you’ve said that you were… very drugged up, so that’s a… that must have affected your ability to do things…’ [both talking together].
 
`Can I tell you… I have a fear of drugs, because if you’re given a drug, and the side effects… you do things and you don’t realise it, it’s horrible… it’s horrible to feel you’re not in control… do you understand what I’m saying?’
 
`What sort of side effects would… would you have had?’
 
`Have you ever heard of Haloperidol?’
`I have…’
 
`It gives you hallucinations, and it… I sometimes felt I was doing weird things… standing naked and… not potential… I couldn’t help myself… you know… I just didn’t… I just wasn’t with it… you know, they were giving me… perhaps a small… they were giving me such a large dose, you know… and I’ve a terrible fear of… it’s taken… Helen’s mother… [pause]… only since Christmas, that I will take my tablets on a regular basis, and that’s why… I’m so much better after coming off the injection.  I’d been off the injection… I took myself off it in the end, and… it was horrendous, ‘cause I had terrible side effects… you imagine…’
 
`What kind of side effects…did you suffer from?’
 
`Well for coming off the drip… drugs…’
 
`But can you explain that to me… the side effects?’
 
`Well, you imagine things and… you know… you’re putting… a saucepan on the stove and you miss it… you know… you know what I mean?’
 
`Try to… lack of co-ordination sort of thing?’
 
`Yeah… you’re co-ordination goes and… this is the side… I’ve had terrible side effects of drugs…’
 
`Anything else that was very physical… in the side effects?’
 
`Well… I’ve got a whole… well… where… is it this… yes, it’s… can you see that scar there?’
 
`Yes…’
 
`I fell in my flat… trying to carry on as normal, I fell in my flat and I had a great big hole in my leg about… six years ago… from… because I’ve only been off my injection two or three years, and I stopped it myself… I wouldn’t go back… I didn’t for nine months, and that’s when Helen… because Croydon Mental Health wouldn’t help me… Helen took me privately.  She paid… her husband and her paid, and I was in… they expected to me… to be in High Grove… Priory… for… about six months, and I was there for just over three weeks.  And…’
 
`Can we just take a break there…?’
 
`Mmm…’
 
`And when we come back after the break, we’ll…’
 
[End of DVC Pro tape 3]
 
[Start of DVC Pro tape 4 – VHS tape 1 continues]
 
[Camera:`Anne Soppitt C905/11 tape number four’]
 
`Shall we carry on talking about Highgrove Priory?’
 
`Yes… umm… I can… can I tell you how I hap [ph]… the day I happened to be there?  I was in my flat… I wouldn’t let a doctor in, or anything… and they couldn’t do anything with me because I wasn’t harming myself, and I wasn’t causing any trouble in the public, you know what I mean… and a very good friend of mine… Maurice… he was a doctor in the church, and my GP… I’m trying to think… not Dr Pinker [ph], it was later… I can’t remember his name… he said… rang me and said would I let Maurice in from my church, and I really trusted him… really, really trusted him… and Helen… had rang the night before, and had rang during the day, and… that’s really, the first close contact I’ve had at… at… well, what I mean… sort of real contact I’ve ever had… I don’t mean real contact… where we really became close, ‘cause… the night before I had rang her late, and… she knew… she… she knew I wasn’t well… I… she wasn’t my carer in… and… she knew I wasn’t well, and she knew the trouble I was having, at Purley [ph] Resource Centre, I couldn’t get any help or anything, so she just said to me… it was about half past ten at night… `Who is your GP?’… so I said, `Helen…’, and I told her who my GP was… and… but I said… `If you want to get… speak to him or anything, you’ve got to have my permission, you know…’, so… Dr… I can’t… isn’t it terrible, he’s only just finished being my GP… and…’
 
`It’ll come back to you…’
 
`And he rang me and he said, `Is it ok… to talk to Helen?’… and I said, `Tell her… you can talk to her and discuss with her…’, I didn’t know what was going to happen.  Anyway, the next day, Maurice said to me… ‘cause I really trusted Maurice as a doctor… he had… he had taken me everywhere for help, you know… state wise, you know what I’m trying to say… and… I let him in… and he said, `Anne, would you  prepare to go to a hospital?’  He didn’t say private, he didn’t say paid… he just said, `Would you prepare to go to this hospital that you’ve never been before… just to see the doctor? You haven’t got to stay… just to see the doctor’, and the appointment was five o’clock.  His wife came with him… and… I saw this doctor Stein… and… I didn’t know… I didn’t know ‘till I got there what was happening… ‘till after I was admitted.  Doc [ph]… I wasn’t… the idea wasn’t to keep me there, but Dr Stein…’
 
`Did you agree to go there?’
 
`I agreed to go… oh yes, they took me… at five o’clock.  I trusted Maurice so much… went there, and I couldn’t believe what I saw.  I couldn’t believe it.  I walked into this… entrance there was flowers…  nothing like a hospital.  It was like walking into a… how would you describe it?  [Pause] Like a hotel… you know, the front entrance.  There was no great, huge entrance desk or… notices or anything like that, and… this girl was sitting sweetly at this little place and she said, `Anne… are you Anne?’, and I looked at her first of all, so shocked… I said, `Yes’.  She said `Dr Stein and…’, Helen… I wouldn’t go in on my own… Helen… who was… yeah, Helen… Maurice came in with me, you know… and we had a chat, and Dr Stein said, `Anne, would you come in?’.  I said… because then Maurice had quietly said to me `It’s a private hospital…’.  I said, `I can’t, I’ve got no money…’, and Maurice said to me, `Forget about the money… would you just come in here for a few weeks?’, and then I made all the excuses about the cats, and… `You haven’t got to worry about these things…’
 
`Were you expecting to be taken to a hospital similar to the ones that you’d already experienced?  Is that why you were shocked at what you saw?’
 
`Umm… Oh yes, I expected to… but I thought… my… I thought, a new broom sweeps clean.  You know, this is what was in my mind, but I never knew it was private… and when… Maurice said `Just a minute, I’ve got to go away’, and he went to tell Helen and Derek how much it would cost.  Now this is going to shock you… afterwards they were telling me.  You know all the hierarchies we had… I think they cut them down a bit now, but managers in the National Health and everything like that… and fewer Indians, you know what I mean… well, in High Grove it’s not like that at all.  Many, many staff… and there’s… it… how can I say… very few… you know what I mean?’
 
`Very few patients to staff?’
 
`No… no…’
 
`No?’
 
`Yes… there’s that… but you know the hierarchy, like the… do you know I haven’t been in hospital for so long that I’m forgetting… you know, into a… state hospital… as such.  You know there’s… umm… Ward Managers, this Manager, that Manager… well they don’t have that… in the Priorys… they have… like one Head… of the whole place… and then they have Sisters, and they… every patient has their own nurse, you know, but, it costs much less to run… this might… to keep me at Warlingham Park… it cost… now what was I told?  An astronomical amount because of paying all the…’
 
`All the overheads and…’
 
`All the overheads… but it cost… I think about a hundred more, to keep me… in this private hospital.  It was quite amazing.  Anyway, Derek and Helen forked out… well… so I’ve [inaudible]… forked out the money, and they came to see me every day, and suddenly… the whole church started coming to see me… and… another Minister, the Deputy Minister at the time, said… came to a meeting.  I was there, Helen and Derek was there, my keyworker was there, and they sit… the… umm… Rich Littledale [ph] said, `How can we, as a church, help Anne?  Because we feel we’ve failed her…’, and the… do you know what it… Dr Stein turned round and said?  `Treat her as a normal human being… don’t isolate her.’ [Noise in background] `…as if she’s somebody to be feared’… and I’ve never had so many cards sent to me in hospital, flowers… I felt I was a… you know… and I thought, you… and that’s why I say, now… there’s… it’s much, much better.  There’s a long way to go ‘cause there’s still the human beings, but… you know, the older people still think of… and Rampton and Cane Hill as dreadful places, and all this sort of thing, but… you know… this’ll make you think it’s strange… I know I could have stayed there much longer, if it needed be, but after three weeks, I wanted to get home to my flat, and my two… oh.. sorry… my flat and my two cats, and… as nice as it was and… you know, like living like a princess and being helped so much and having… proper therapy, psychology and all that…’
 
`What sort of therapies did they… did you have there?’
 
`Everything.  You know, psychology… they… I had everything…’
 
`Were they like done in groups or…?’ [both talking together].
 
`I didn’t know…’
 
`…on a one to one, or…?’
 
`Yeah… groups… no, I had one to one… there was groups… there was all… but… how can I tell you?  They came to me… this is what shocked me… Dr Stein… I went in on the Friday… and Dr Stein… she… he had another consultant under him, a lady, who worked… who… who was working at the weekend, but Dr Stein himself, rang up each day to see how I was.  I couldn’t believe it… and this… Consultant, she asked me… what drugs I would be prepared to take.  She asked me!  Dr Stein said `You’re coming off the… Depixol’… officially, although I hadn’t been on it for nearly nine months, he said, `That is finished with’… and he put me on Sulpiride… and Prozac in the morning, and… because I’m so active, I still have a sleeping tablet, because I… you know… I… it’s not that I’m addicted to it… I… you know… even the Sulpheride [ph]… didn’t say which is… I don’t know what it’s for even now… I don’t read the leaflets any more, because it makes you more fearful than ever, so I just have Sulpiride and HRT.  I’ve had HRT for nearly nineteen years, and…’
 
`HRT?’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`What… what is that?’
 
`You’ll learn about it… you know, when you’re…’
 
`Is it hormone… replacement therapy?’
 
`Yeah… replacement… yeah… it’s a general… but I had that before I even… you know… and I think… partly… what my problem’s been… you know… since I’ve been out of hospital… I’ve come into the change, you know… and Dr Pinker [ph] put me on the… hormone replacement… and… it was knocking against the Depixol… you know… but, when I was taken off, I wouldn’t be without… without my hormone replacement now, but I still… would like to be off the Prozac and the Sulpiride, but it’s keeping me… so… just for the… because of the kind… I don’t… I never mess about with my tablets now… I take… and I take… to take the tension away and everything, because I…’
 
`To take… sorry?’
 
`Tension away… because, my back used to ache so much… I’d take a herbal tablet, and it’s like a miracle drug… I… oh, I don’t get any pain anywhere.  It’s something to do with the joints and all the tension here, you know, I used to get.  I don’t get any… it’s a herbal tablet.  I had to pay for it, but… I’ve been taking it for… five months, and I… I don’t get aches and pains… it’s just lovely.’
 
`That’s good to hear…’
 
`Mmm…’
 
`We’ll stop again… for a little while…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`An area that I haven’t yet asked you about… before we go on to talk about your strong faith, is… whether you made any relationships… personal relationships, with men or women… during your life? It’s not something you’ve touched on.’
 
`Yes I have.  Umm… I’ve had… umm… [pause]… umm… the first relationship I can… [pause]… now, how do I put this?  I’ve never been good… at forming relationships, until latter years… because, I’ve made many mistakes about… [pause]… how…I… but I’ve always been quite… you know… not now, because I… I think I’ve matured, but… demanding of people and things like that, and it’s put them off.  I think it is because of the lack of love as a child, you know… from my… you know, my parents… you know… but I might be completely wrong, but… I’ve never had a special friend… I didn’t know what it was to have a special friend, until… what I call a… what I’ve always yearned for… a real special friend, until… I really met Sylvia… Sylvia… and when she was prepared… and Pam Taylor said to her, `Will you stick by Anne… through thick and thin… when she comes out of hospital?’, and her first react… her reaction was, `If she can live in Purley [ph]’… and Sylvia knew… because Sylvia only lived just… in Coulsden [ph] which is…’
 
`And Sylvia was a friend of Helen’s, is that right?’
 
`No…’
 
`No… sorry…’
 
`Sylvia was… a… the League of Friend lady that was… that was appointed to me, my last year in Cane Hill, on the Secure Unit…’
 
`Right…’
 
`And… I came out of hospital not knowing anybody, no… nobody at all… nobody in the area, except for Sylvia… and… she stuck by me.  After about a year I had a Social Worker, which was very helpful in those days… Anne Williams, and… I’ve even… you know, craving for love… I’ve even… ‘cause I’ve got so fat and… within myself… I’m being honest now… locked Anne, in my flat… not harmed her or anything… locked Anne in my flat… detached all the telephones…’
 
`Who’s Anne?’
 
`She was my Social Worker… ‘
 
`Right…’
 
`But she was lovely… lovely person, I really trusted her… and… umm…’
 
`You locked her… because you wanted her to stay?’
 
`It was because I wanted her to stay, ‘cause I was frightened… you know…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`You suddenly be cast into a flat on your own… after thirty years of being with people… and Sylvia will tell you… and I never had any help to pay… I paid it myself… my first ‘phone bill in that flat was £248 pound… any rate… [pause]. She was a real friend, you know… and she still is, you know.  I don’t see her a lot… a lot of… well… I say I don’t see her… I don’t see her on a sort of an every day basis, and I don’t pick up the ‘phone, but we see each other at least about once a month… you know… and she’s been so good to me in all sorts of ways… and she’s really… we’re… we’re not patient and League of Friend… we’re good friends now.  Do you understand what I’m saying?’
 
`Yeah, you’re completely equal… footing…’
 
`Yeah, we’re… we’re completely equal.  I’m an adult of fifty nine, and Sylvia now is seventy.  She had her seventieth anniversary this year.  She just looks just the same as that…’
 
`Uh huh…’
 
`And that… and… then, when I went… when I came into Partridge Knoll [ph]… a lady across… well, the lady upstairs… for people on their own, ‘cause I really tried to help myself, said to me about… I came out in ’82, and in… December ’83… they had a `Teach and Reach’.. thing at my church, and this was…’
 
`A what thing, sorry?’
 
`Teach and Reach… you know… Evangelism…’
 
`Teach and Reach… right…’
 
`You know… and… this lady… oh, what was her name?  Betty, upstairs… arranged a sort of lonely persons evening, and… Rene… who was a Missionary, and got a council flat, just opposite me… she was in her seventies… or… seven… late sixties or seventies… she left a note on the chair… `Would you like a visit to Purley [ph] Baptist… from… Purley [ph] Baptist church?’, and about six… sixteen… [pause]… sixteen… about six weeks later, I had a ‘phone call… `Could… Keith and… Keith… Olgar [ph], who’s up there… and Yvonne… come and see you?’.  Keith… let me get this right… Keith and Olgar… no Keith and Yvonne, were trainees, and Olga was the teacher of evangelism… and they came and introduced me… and… they… they’d never heard a story like it.  You know… and so… I started… I went to… Purley [ph] Baptist… ninety… Christmas 1983, and I became a member… April 1983, and I started in the Cubs… about… August ’83, and I did my training.  I was only… an instructor, then but I was a helper… in…’
 
`What were you instructing in?’
 
`Well, I was called to do the instructor… ‘cause instructors don’t have a warrant today, but I had a warrant, which meant that… which meant I… you know I helped and I did what Archaela told me to do, and Archaela and myself, Carol… who’s now… one of our Assistant Church Administrators, trained together. We went away for the weekend and trained together… you know, with the Scout movement… and… I’ve been in it ever since.  Not as an instructor, as different things I’ve done in it… and… umm… then… I became involved in the church.  I’ve worked for… quite a few people in the church, but the longest job I had was for four… fifteen years… and it was Olga and John Lewis.  They were a fabulous couple… fabulous, they were… they were so good to me… and I used to get there on a Tuesday, at half past six and leave at half past nine…’
 
`In the evening or the morning?’
 
`Morning… no… now wait a minute… half past six… yeah… now… half past six to seven, ‘cause I used to do two hours…’
 
`And what were you actually doing?’
 
`Cleaning…’
 
`Uh huh…’
 
`Cleaning… I did that for fourteen years.  I cleaned the church for… umm… I should say for about thirteen years.  I only gave that up two years ago, and… I did so much in the church… and then I had Cubs… I belonged to the… now, I belong to the tennis club, and they made a plea yesterday in the church meeting, could they have volunteers… and Helen went… `No cleaning… you’re not doing too much…’ [laughs]… you know… but she’s lovely…’
 
`So you’re always the first to offer to help there?’
 
`Yeah… because… you know… sort of… I used to think, you know… I’m… you know… I don’t mind what I do to the Glory of God, but… I used to think, why am I always cleaning, doing all the… but… as I… I realise it… whatever you do for God, is just as important as for me… and… and then… as I told you… I’ve had… sorry… oh…’
 
`Don’t worry… it’s ok…’
 
`I’ve had… I had two people who tried their best to care for me, but… [pause]… they always treated me as a child… and… then… when Hel [ph]… they’re still at the church now, but when Helen came on the… the scene… I was an equal.  I feel an equal… mum treats me as an equal… such a wonder… when I think… you know, for somebody to pay out all that money… ‘cause it… it wasn’t cheap, let me tell you… it wasn’t cheap at all to go…’
 
`I’m sure it wasn’t…’
 
`You know… and… the… what… what I… what I wanted to do when I came out of hospital… I said to mum I said, `How can I help Helen and Derek?’, so I ironed their shirts… you know, I ironed their shirts… you know… the family… there’s about twenty one shirts a week… and Helen being… Helen comes to see me, as much as she can… at least once a week, and she holds my keys.  She comes to this place at least once a week… in any case, unless she’s on holiday… because she has to pick up the shirts, but she’s… she’s the holder of my spare keys… you know what I mean?  And.. they’re just such a lovely family.  Mum came up the other day to spend the day with me, and dad… and… I must tell you this is so amusing… Fred, a chappie from here… came into this flat, done… quite a bit of work for me… and… I think he was fed up of seeing cats, so he… he brought… in… this monkey… this door stopper… dressed in a red dress, an apron and a cap… I said, `You’re going to have that monkey…’, so… I said, `All right Fred.’  Anyway, mum’s had it for a few weeks, ‘cause she’s a very busy lady, she makes cakes, she does dress making… and what she’s done is… she’s dressing it in the same colours as… ‘cause she made my curtains… you know… my curtains, my checked curtains… she made them… and in about a fortnight’s time, Fred is going to paint the kitchen… pale lemon, and do the hall, you know… and I just say… everybody’s you know… where I go, say, `Anne, you’ve got so many friends`, and it seems that my life has completely changed, but there’s one now… very special friend, and I will never, never forget… well.. I never could… she’s sixty five… June… June her name is, she’s up there.  I did so much for her and this problem child, and… when… she had a breakdown… it was me that looked after her twenty four hours a day… I’m just trying to explain to you because I understood… she could hardly walk, they… I called the doctor in, they gave her these drugs.  They nearly sent her off her head… so she stopped them, and slowly but surely, she came right.  Now, when I had the breakdown… well, I didn’t know I was going to have the break… I didn’t realise what was happening to me, and I had to move… it was June… that came to my rescue.  She fed me, and I kept… was kept alive on Valium… I wasn’t addicted to it, but… just so that I… oh… just so that I could pack up my flat… you know… in a week, and her eleven year old other grandson… Darren… helped me pack up my flat.  Now… and… when I went… nobody hardly knew in Partridge Knoll, but about… the few families that did… they all came and waved me goodbye and said `Best of luck’, but in the actual moving… and the finances and things like that… I don’t mean the packing… but the financial side… my home group were marvellous… marvellous… I’ve been so privileged there… so privileged, but… I think… you know, I think… June… I should say is my closest friend.  I was always in her house… her flat… but now we only see each other about three weeks, and when she needs me to do something, she’ll give me a bell around there… and when I need her… ‘cause it’s only… I [inaudible]… I haven’t called her at all over what’s happened, because you know… she’s got her own life to live hasn’t she?  And… but as… men relationships, since I’ve been out of hospital, I’ve…’
 
`Sorry to interrupt you there…’
 
`Yeah…’
`Take a short break, and then…’
 
`So…’
 
`Ok…’
 
`I’ve really only had one boyfriend… and he was a chappie… he was a Catholic… this is in… I can’t… I can’t even remember… it’s in sort of the last ten years, and he was the father of one of the families upstairs, and… he used to take me everywhere.  I used to do his washing… and all sorts of things, you know… I slept… I never had sex though… I think… I don’t know, because I suppose the life I’ve lived… you know… I just haven’t really had proper sex, you know… and… umm… because of my faith, and… you know… I was… planning to marry him and everything, and he wanted me… to… I don’t… I hope you understand this… he didn’t believe like I believed, he was a Roman Catholic, but he didn’t believe like I did, and… umm… he would not get married in my church and… because the Bible said you should be equally yoked… and suddenly he was made redundant and went back to Ireland… that was the end of it… and… [pause]… but I… in some ways, I was going to get married and everything, but in some ways… looking back now… because I’d been on my own for so long now… you know… I can cope with it.  It’s… everybody gets lonely, it doesn’t matter if you’re family or anything… everybody gets lonely, but now… I can cope with it.  You know what I mean… because… if you’re helping other people… you’re forgetting about yourself aren’t you?  And this is what it’s about all the time.  You know… over this instance… I had… the… the two people who wrote the…’
 
`The incident last night, or…?’
 
`No… not John…’
 
`No…?’
 
`Oh, I wouldn’t shout at him or anything… I rang up Helen at twenty past eleven… I said, `Please pray that Sandra won’t shout at John or anything’, and apparently, Sandra… I’ve seen Sandra today, she hasn’t said anything to me, but… you know, she’s said hello now… she said, `John said she’s been an angel’… oh, I said, `Thanks…’, but you see… it’s just because I understand.  I was firm with him and said, `You must…’, and Sandra, she said, `You must be careful’… you understand what I’m saying?  You must be careful, ‘cause you’re putting out… you mustn’t mix drinks with drugs.  You know, if putting other people’s lives at risk… you know… but… and I find, because I’ve taken John under my wing, there’s no sort of… he’s never slept in here, he just comes in here for a couple of hours…’ [both talking together].
 
`It’s a platonic sort of friendship?’
 
`Yeah… platonic…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`And I go and have a cup of tea with him… he comes and… you know, when we’re here… you know… so…’
 
`So it’s not something you particularly miss or hanker after or…?’
 
`No… no… nothing at all…’
 
`Did you ever wish that you could have had children, because you love children so much?’
 
`Oh yes… yeah…’
 
`Would you have liked to have had children?’
 
`Yes… I’d love to have had… but… I just…’
 
`Though you seem to have a lot of children here anyway…’
 
`Can I tell you… that… that’s only half the photograph.  In that drawer there, it is just full… all organised, of… of my life.  Well… it’s just amazing.  Helen said to me, `You could do the history of Purley [ph] Baptist for the last seventeen years… you know, with the photographs you’ve got since you’ve been here.  I’ve got everybody and everything… you know…’.  I don’t do it so much now I suppose ‘cause I’m getting older, but…’
 
`Does working with the children in all the ways that you have… has that in some way compensated…?’
 
`Oh yes… yes… and the biggest thing that’s compensated is that… Helen’s colleague who’s taken over part of her job… at Atwood [ph], has come into our church… you know… through strange reasons, and… her mother, Jill’s mother… committed suicide.  It’s just a strange thing, and this little girl, Emma came to the church… and because I’m a friend of Helen’s… I’ve got to know the family quite well… you know… the husband doesn’t come to church but… Emma and mum come and… and mum helps in Sunday School.  This is only in the last two years, which was… the mum was received into membership last night, which is lovely… and Emma, about nine months ago said to her mum… she… Emma’s just six, was six… last… Sun… a week last Wednesday, and had a birthday party on Sunday, said, `Mummy…’, a five year old saying to her, `Can Anne be my earth nanny?’.  I didn’t know anything about this, and I rang Jill for something, and this little girl said, `Nanny Anne’s on the ‘phone’… and now, I’m classed as her nanny, so, for the first time in my life, I help, because I’ve always been associated with… little boys, sort of thing, you know… but they’ve… I… I’ve got a little girl…’
 
`You’ve got a granddaughter who you…?’
 
`The… yeah… I’ve got an adopted granddaughter.  Oh, her photographs are there as well, and she’s lovely.  It… when she sees me, she runs up to me and says `Nanny Anne’, and Jill, bless her… said… and Emma said, `Nanny, you must come to my birthday party’, so… if you knew the hectic day I had last Sunday, I was… church… first service selling programmes, barbecue ticket… second service on church pray, ‘cause I wear a uniform.  From there I went and organised… help organise… the birthday party, and Jill says to her husband… `I shouldn’t have had…’, she’s been worried about this party… sixteen child… she said, `I should have left Anne to it…’
 
`Mmm’
 
`And… you know… I just look… I… I’ve just got a way with kids…particularly the underdog kids, though Emma’s not… an under dog kid, but… these boys you see… no… no… yeah… some of these children, they’re all from… under privileged families or something like that… and I just understand.  Now, a family that has been so… bitter towards me… I still have got to thank… well not got to, I just feel… just to show them that… I don’t bear any malice, to send them birthday cards, you know… I’ve just… John’s just posted me two today… that is just me, you know…because I care, because… you know… if you’re thinking about other people…you’re thinking… I find you’re thinking less of yourself… and I tell you, I will share with you, today… John and Helen… have both been praying for me that… whatever is said, you know… it will be done to further Mental Health and also the Glory of God because without God, I’d never… and I’d tell you that… would be here today… and I… I just… you… you might not understand that… when I think… you know, I was nearly… well not nearly ‘a gonner’… ‘cause I won’t go to tablets now, I won’t touch tablets, anything for an overdose, I just keep in my mind what he did for me on the cross… and… when I was really, really low, Frank rang me.  He would… he would… he doesn’t go to church now, but years and years ago he was going to be a Baptist Minister, when he came out the Army… you know… he was brought up… he… he told me this on the ‘phone that helped me so much… he was adopted when he was eight, and he brought up in a Christian family, and… he went into the Army and he was going to train when he came out to be a Baptist Minister, but he had a breakdown.  He’s fine now… he went into insurance at… and… he said to me on the ‘phone… I said `God, please let somebody ‘phone me’.  I never expected Frank to ‘phone me, and he rang me and he said, `Anne… two things…’.  I said `Who’s that?’, and he said, `It’s Frank, you know… Dad… so he said `Two things… count your blessings and… Jesus loves you, and it was this… from that… you know…I’ve… everybody’s saying I’ve changed so much, but the trouble is, when you show love in society, and I’ll say this again… particularly here, not in the church, particularly since I’ve moved here… and at Partridge Knoll [ph], people can’t understand it today… because… how can I say?  You’re not wanting something back…’
 
`Right…sort of suspicious of your motives or…?’
 
`Yeah… the whole time…’
 
`…cynical about it’
 
`…and they get jealous, because… they try to bring you down… and although I was always upset, because when Mr English said to me… you know… Anne, we’re not blaming you, we’re investigating…’
 
`What did he say?’
 
`We’re investigating… now that’s ‘cause they had to, that was… the law of the Council on our… and…’
 
`About the work with the children?’
 
`No, about…’
 
`No… sorry…’
 
`What happened now, the day, about me being accused of making a noise…’
 
`Oh right, sorry…’
 
`I was told I deliberately make a noise between six and seven…’
 
`Uh huh…’
 
`I bang doors… but I can’t bang… because normally I tell you something… I suffer… if I haven’t got people with me, I suffer from claustrophobia, and that… the… that is the first time in… how long have I been here?  15th of February, when I moved in… that I’ve had that door shut.  Did you know that?  I never have any of the doors shut…’
 
`No…’
 
`…and certainly can’t slam the doors shut… Fred, upstairs, took the fire things out.  We’re allowed to, and… they just don’t shut… the bedroom… and the bedroom door shut today.  But that’s the only door that might be shut if there’s people who are allergic to cats, but when I’m on my own or… sleeping , that bedroom door’s open the whole time.’
 
`Sure…’
 
`So…’
 
`[Inaudible]’
 
`I just say… to me, if it hadn’t have been for God, using different people… not only in the church, I have many, many friends.  When I joined Purley [ph] Baptist Church, I knew very few people… eight years later, I told you this… I organised a party for fifty people… for… a 127 people, I’ve made so many friends, and the outside world and in… and how I coped with it… paid for it and everything… instead of people bringing a bottle, I asked them all to bring a plate of food… and I had people from Partridge Knoll [ph] meeting… different… June… and different people like that… to do the catering… you know… with the catering of the church, and… everybody joined in.  I’ve got a video of the party… if you’re interested, I’ve got two videos, you can take it away and see… and… [pause]…’
 
`Sorry…’
 
`And… I just feel… I just feel… of course I had my ups and down but I just for… you know… just a few yards away, there’s elderly people living on their… you know… in a cramped house with parents… you know, with their in-laws, not getting on… there’s some living on their own… local… just a few yards alone… you know… I just feel so privileged to have a nice home like this, and people think, you know, that I’ve got masses of money… I tell… I haven’t at all… I haven’t at all.  I live… on £73.50 a week, plus £12.50… disability allowance for getting about with, so… you know…’
 
`Do you look forward to the future then… did you…?’
 
`Oh yeah…’
 
`Are you quite optimistic about the future?’
 
`Can I tell you, I… I look forward to the future.  If this is… heaven at the moment, and if it’s like this here, what’s it going to like… I… ‘cause I tell you something… I’m a hundred per cent sure I’m going up there… so… Praise The Lord… you know, and… I’ve never been so happy… basically as I am now.  What I would like to do, and I still think I’ll do it in the end… is do something with Mental Health… to further Mental Health, but I have to be careful… I’m not a youngster, and I have to be careful that I don’t over do it, you know… but… and… Dr Stein said, I had to give up… a lot of my jobs, you know.  I was working like… you know… and what with all the church workers, well it was all too much, and then… all the kept… people I was trying to help in Partridge Knoll [ph], some of them threw it back in my face, but… you know, I’ve had… many, many problems where I’ve cried and cried, because my outlet isn’t getting violent now… it… I cry… you know… it all comes out in tears…’
 
`Is that something that was very difficult to do… in institutions… to cry or show emotion?’
 
`Well, immediately you cried, years ago… I used to act out a lot years ago, but I think since I’ve… well I know since I’ve been in Rampton I don’t do… I… I don’t act out… what’s the word… violently, physically, violently now… or harm myself.  What I do is… I either cry, and cry and cry… or I… take it within myself, because I won’t complain about anybody, because… actually, I’ve been made to… to say… to say where the noise has come from.  I know where it’s coming from, I’m not stupid, and… I say… I said to Mr English, I rang him… sorry… Mr English, I rang him today, just to say… you know… `I’m sorry… I reacted the way I did but… I immediately thought I was going to lose my home’, and Mr English said to me, `It’s all right Anne, we know it’s not you, we were just investigating… although the letters referred to you, and… he was just so… nice and he said, `Anne, will you tell me what the problem is?’, and I said, `I’ll tell you what… oh, right now, what the problem is… there is a gentlemen, he has been here a long time.  He wears heavy boots, and he… you know, he come in about eleven, and… he walks about upstairs, and… I said, `You have to learn to live with the… in council property or flats, certainly, you have to learn to live with… you know, these things around you, you know.  This is quiet compared to where I’ve come from, but… you imagine… an eighty year old lady… sensitive to noise… she said to me today, and I couldn’t believe it… she said, `You know… the noise, at six o’clock at night.’  It’s like a morgue here… the fire doors are shut… you know what I mean…?’
 
`And most people wouldn’t mind noise at six anyway, would they?’
 
`No… most people… [noise in background]… [inaudible]… and… I just said to her, `It’s not his fault…’, I said, `I don’t suppose he’s even aware of it…’, but he’s got to hear of… that he… it might be him… you know, and he can’t understand, and he’s panicked, gone down and accused me [???]… I’ve been accused from six to seven, and from eleven for the rest of the night, and when people are frightened… you know.. the truth always doesn’t come out does it…?’
 
`Mmm’
 
`You know… so… but Helen’s assured… Mr English that… in all our… at times I’ve told Anne off… not recently, but… in years, but… `…she is very conscious about noise… you know… very conscious about noise, you know…’, but I just have to thank The Lord for my home and everything, and… I do thank God for the opportunity here, because it’s something I’ve paid for, that I’ve been yearning for… even if I don’t do it any more… help Mental Health and by giving this testimony… it’s just been a real pleasure and…’
 
`You’re certainly doing that…’
 
`I’d like to work with you two…’
 
`Thank you very much…’
 
`I can’t believe how professional you both are… you know…’
 
`Shall we… is there anything that I’ve missed before we go on to talk through the photographs, is there any other thing that you wanted to mention?’
 
`Not really, just… you know… just to say… you know… it’s a miracle that I’ve come through it all… all right, I’m having… a couple of tablets a day, to… keep me fine, which they are… I’ve got some wonderful friends… everywhere… you know, and… you know… nobody’s going to run the… their lives smoothly, but the main thing is, I can trust Him that He’ll bring me through, until He wants me up there with Him [laughs]… so… and… I just want to say, I’m not religious maniac, because this is the first time, secularly, that I’ve talked about my Faith, so…’
 
`It’s obviously…’
 
`Yeah, it does mean a lot to me…’
 
`Very, very important to you?’
 
`Yeah… yeah…’
 
`Ok… we’ll take a break there, before we look at the…’
 
[Camera: `Ok, when you’re ready…’]
 
`This is Derek and Helen, who I feel that God sent to help me so much… her whole family, but Helen is like an Angel in disguise.  She has been so good to me, and not only is she good to me, she is good to so many people, and they both are so humble about it.'
 
`How did you meet them?’
 
`I met them first of all, through the uniformed organisations in our church.  Derek, who was the… group secretary… sorry, I’ve made a mistake…’
 
`That’s all right…’
 
`Treasurer, of the Scout Movement… and Helen, who was the Guide Leader… when we had fund raising things, the… they used to work together, and Hel… Derek was always, always very kind to me… and Helen of course, but… particularly Derek.’  [Pause]. 
 
`This is Helen’s… mum and dad, and I also call them… particularly mum, her mum I call `mum’, because for about four years now, she’s always been on the other end of the ‘phone, and she’s just been a life saver. She is so wise… and… if it hadn’t have been for her, The Lord using her to help me, and her dad… I doubt… I don’t think I’d be here today.  The Lord has a wonderful way of using people… [pause].’ 
 
`This is… Helen’s two children… daughter and son and mum and dad.  They’re grandparents but I call them mum and dad, and this is James and Andrea.  Andrea, lovely girl… and… no… work… had just started work… this… last… year after finishing Uni, and James who’s working as well in his father’s business… lovely, lovely coup [ph]… two children they are.’ 
 
`This is Andrea when she came out of Uni… when she received her degree.  She got a 2:1 degree in… International Business Studies.’
 
`This picture here is when I was so privileged to go the Holy Land with Frank Cook… had the… best fortnight of my life, as a holiday, and this photograph is one… this painting is one that I took… in the Holy Land, in the Sea of Galilee, and Gavin, who is my home group leader, who… does wonderful art work, painted this for me in about three hours and framed it… and… it’s quite a treasure in my heart.’
 
`This is another family who have helped me so much… David and Yvonne Bagger [ph].  They took me to their apartment in Porta Palenta [ph]… Porta Palenza [ph]… and this is a photograph I took… and another family in my church had it enlarged… and framed for me for a birthday gift.’
 
`This is just because I love… love cats.  I find… the three cats I’ve had, so comforting, you know… although they don’t talk to me… when it seems that I’m distressed that always… they seem to be always there to comfort me, but even they… particularly Snow… Snowy has caused me so many problems recently… when she escapes down the badger hole in the space there… for three weeks, and comes back like a vagrant, and she causes me a lot of problems but I love her to bits… and Fluffy, well she’s so faithful, and… Fluffy, loves children… loves them.  She has been brought up with little Damian from right… from when she was a tiny… a kitten of eight weeks old so… she’s very placid and very quiet, but she’s getting like an old age pensioner… just like I will be soon.’
 
`This is Tara… this is Helen’s brother’s daughter, who’s got cystic fibrosis, and she’s been a real challenge to me, because… in humanly speaking, she could… go at any time, but she’s just amazing.  She has got a 2:1 degree.  I believe it’s… in something to do with children… Child Psychology… or something like that, I’m not quite sure… but… she graduated last year, as well… and she’s such a challenge to me because she never moans or groans or… she’s just a lovely, lovely girl, and she has really challenged me, and… you know, if she can do it, so can I… ‘
 
`Now this is Helen’s brother… another… good… very good friend of mine.  This is Tara’s father… umm… he’s… he’s got such a wonderful sense of humour and we get on so well together… and very… I just want to say one thing about the whole of the family.  Most of the time, apart from Tara, who I don’t see very, very often at all… the whole family spend their time, joking with me and being rude to me… but if they weren’t I would think there is something wrong with them.’
 
`This is some of the people that have helped me so much during my time out of hospital.  Could you show the one of my very good friend, Sylvia? [Pause].  Oh… Yes, there is Sylvia and her second husband.  I just believe that The Lord used Syvlia to befriend me… and teach me so much about being in a flat… in actual reality… actually, because she’s just a lovely person and Len is too.  He’s accepted me just like… a true, true friend, and I know any time I can pick up the ‘phone and she’ll be… if she’s in, she’ll be the… you know… around to give me a buzz, but Praise The Lord I don’t have to do that.  Hardly at all now, because I have so… so many… other friends, that… you know, can help me… and… well I just say I thank God for this lady.  She did so much in Cane Hill for other people.  She worked for Cane Hill as a volunteer for twenty years… befriending people like me and doing all sorts of things, helping in the hairdresser… you know… us people… what… well… I just can’t say how many different things she’s done, and I just thank God for her, and Len as well, her husband.’
 
`This is Steve Chalk, bless his heart.  A lot of you might know Steve Chalk but he is a member of Purley [ph] Baptist.  He has four children, all growing up… nearly all teenagers, and he has… so opposite to him is his wife… Queenie, who is as quiet as a mouse, and honestly, Steve is just great.  He’s just great, and… his example has shown me so much how to go on in life…’
 
`Is he the one that was on television?’
 
`Mmm… yeah… he’s also, as you all know… he’s a presenter for tel…. BBC… well, and he’s also the Head of Oasis… Trust… he’s the Director.  He’s done so much work, and… he’s run parenting courses, he… well… there’s nothing he hasn’t done… and believe it or not he’s only just forty, so… Steve, I’ve given away your age…’
 
`Now… these two go back a long, long way.  The husband… used to manage the… umm… little old fashioned tobacconist, and they befriended me, and I must be honest, I can’t remember how, but… bless his heart, Hazel and Eric… I still have Christmas cards from them… and news now and then, but he… they… are just a lovely couple… very caring couple, but sad to say… Eric’s got Parkinsons and they now live in Poole in Dorset, but they’re two friends that helped me so much, in the first part of my life… in the outside world.’
 
`Now… Anna and George.  What could I say about them?  George is a tennis coach, and Anna has just started her first year of teaching… not just started, in September, and what a struggle she’s had with teaching, but… I was their prayer partner… in the church, because bless his heart, George lives on a council est… well used to live on a council estate as well, and he lives now, amazingly enough… just a stone’s throw away from here at Hamsley Green [ph], and they did something which… I don’t know… I think quite surprised the church.  They asked me, with Olga and John, to do the prayers, at their wedding… and… I just don’t… they’re just an amazing couple.  They’re another couple, if I want prayer I’ve just got to ring.  They both live very hectic lives but they’ve always got time to talk to me on the ‘phone.’
 
`[Pause].  This is Trevor Pinker [ph].  He’s in the Queen’s Gynaecologist’s nephew, and he was my GP for many, many years, and spent hours… although he said he was never trained in psychiatry, except for six months during the course of his training… he was a man that really… stood beside me and helped me in so… so many ways, and… he was just… such a personal friend.  He’s now out in America, running a hotel, and he got me to trust him through his lovely dog.’
 
`This is… my boy.  This is Peter… June’s grandson.  He’s just a lovely little boy and has been through so much, but bless his heart, he’s coming out trumps and… he meant so much to me ‘cause I could identify with him and help… try to help him, and June and the mum so much, but he’s now at a lovely little school, and getting on so well, so… and I just have to say, he’s just a lovely little boy, to me.  He’s twelve now, and I’ve known him since he was two.’
 
`This is my adopted granddaughter, little Emma… from Purley [ph] Baptist Church.  I got to know… through Helen’s… Helen… and… about a year ago, I was asked to be her… Emma asked her mum if I could be her earth nanny, and the relationship has really grown… and it… you know, we had such a wonderful time, last Sunday, at her sixth birthday.’
 
`[Pause].  Who’s that?’
 
`That’s a note, Emma wrote for you…’
 
`Oh yes.. sorry… this is when… Emma writes… me little cards and things, and… nobody has asked her to do this, she has just spontaneously called me `Nanny Anne’, and these are the little cards she has sent me.  The top three… Oh… the end one is a `Get Well’ card, when I wasn’t too well… last January.’
 
`Now… this is June, with Beattie, another very good friend in Partridge Knoll [ph]. Both very, very kind and caring people… both had very hard lives but… you know… they can’t understand why I kept on going to Purley [ph] Baptist, but I think they do realise now… and… such an understanding pair, but particularly June, she’s just a gem.’
 
`[Long pause].  These are all my cats, as you can imagine… I’m a lover of cats.  Oh… this is very special to me, they’re praying hands and they came from Jerusalem and this is where… the lord… I had the vision of the praying hands and I’ve always wanted praying hands from Jerusalem and they’re very, very special to me.’
 
`[Pause] And this pussy comes all the way from Spain.  It was packed so well, and I saved and saved… so I could… pay for this cat.  It cost me… it doesn’t seem a lot…’
 
`…these days, but it cost me… when I went to Porta Polenza [ph] about seventeen pound, and it was a lot of money to me, but… it was quite a treasure in my heart.’
 
`Ok, when you’re ready…’
 
`Oh, this is… Amanda and Nick… they’re a missionary couple out in… Kenya.  They’ve given their… Nick has given his life to translating the Bible… into… [pause]… into the… a tribe’s language, and they’ve got a handicapped little boy.  They’ve got two children, Benjamin and Matthew, and Matthew, bless his heart… he… he can’t talk… he… he can walk… isn’t that wonderful?  He’s now six and he can walk but… a lot of research was done, whether he should go over to… Kenya, and… so his parents could do this work, and Great Ormond Street said it would do him the world of good, and… there is a… nother young girl, who is so dedicated… to, not only looking after her boys, but… just being out there, and at the moment, because… they’re… they’re living by faith, I am just helping out a little tiny bit, for Matthew’s education.  He’s a lovely little boy and… I just love him to bits.’
 
`This is little Daniel from Partridge Knoll [ph].  He’s a little boy… very nice little boy… their family are Jewish… lovely family… and… he’s just a lovely little boy and he said… he begged his mum if he could come and see me… you know… over here, from where I used to live… and he came and took photographs of me and I took photographs of him and… I just hope that… you know, when I’m… you know, really, really settled, he can come over again.’
 
`Does his family not want him to come?’
 
`No… he’s… no… his… family… you know, wanted him to come, you know…’
 
`Mmm’
 
`You know… [pause]. She specially brought him over.  Now this is the little angel, out of the two brothers.  They’re both little angels to me, but… little… Darren, is so good… to his big brother.  He seemed to sense that… that Peter is… was a sick little boy at the time and that little boy… he’s just been so good to his brother.  Of course, he’s a normal little boy, gets up to pranks and things, but he’s so… he’s so grown up his age.  He’s done so much… you know… to help his grandmother with Peter and all sorts of things.  I just love both these boys to bits.  And June there… that… that angel again.’
[End of DVC Pro tape 4 of 4 – End of VHS tape 1 of 1] HeH