17 MARY ROBBINS

MARY ROBBINS
 

C905/17/01-04/vhs 01-01

Original on DVCPro
Copy on VHS

Interviewed by Judy Mead
Camera by Faye

Date of interview 05/10/99
Transcribed by Julie Sharman
January 2000

[Start of DVCPro tape 1 of 4 – Start of VHS Tape 1 of 1]

[Camera: `C905/17, Tape number one’].
 
`You used to always be looked after in the homes, but not very nice sometimes.’

`Mmm… ok…’

`… Before that you always had to fight for yourself and get… get the children dressed and off to school and things like that you know… ever so sad. That’s why she’s… nerves… well she suffers with her nerves more than anything, and she suffers from asthma…’

`Yeah. Ok, we can…’

`We can start’

`We can start. Mary, would you like to start off by giving me a brief sort of outline of how your life’s been, starting off perhaps with the date that you were born?’

`I was born January 31st, 1938, and… I was put into a convent, for about a year, and when I was one, I went to the… place at Burnham On Sea, the children’s home, and it was during the war time, when the war started, and we went to… I had to go downstairs… and, taking our pillows and mattresses down, and go down into the… a children’s… playroom, and sleep downstairs while the bombs were dropping. But I didn’t know much about… the life there much, ‘cause I couldn’t understand it, because it was so… you know, it was… it was… well, I didn’t… know what to do about my life, you know. I didn’t… couldn’t understand what I was… about.’

`And you were very young.’

`I was very young, to understand. So anyway, and then, when I… was five, I went to the home at Shepton Mallet, and the matron was called Matron Champion, and she was very, very cruel, and… it… this was during the war time and… one day I picked up a book, and she came into me, and she said, “You put that book down…”, and gave me one smack across the face, and… so I cried, and I was upset, you know, and… very, very upset and so I… she told me to go to bed, so I went to bed, at two o’clock, and I stayed there ‘till the next morn… morning. That was our punishment, and… and then… this went on for a bit and… and then I went out to… and I used to go to school, and the school teacher was very, very… cross with me, because I’d made blots in my workbooks, in… in my exercise books, so… he came up to me and he said, “If you do that again, you’ll get one knock on the head with this cane.” And… I was… I was very… you know, I was very… I couldn’t, sort of concentrate on my work, ‘cause I was very backward, and… and I was very slow in thinking, how I could do these things, so he came back again and said, “You’ve made another blot in the book”, and he come up with the stick, and banged me on the head with this stick, and I cried and… when I went back to the home at Shepton, I told the matron, so… they went over and they said if he did it again he’d get reported, and that…’

`How old would you have been then?’

`I would have been about ten. Ten years old, and then… when I was thirteen I went to Sand Hill Park, School, ‘cause it was a learning difficulty school, you know, people what… for learning difficulties, and… I wasn’t too happy there and I didn’t learn very much, you know, ‘cause I was only there two years.’

`What was it called, the school?’

`Sand… Sand Hill Park School, and it… and then… when I was fifteen, the… master… headmaster came in and he said, “Mary…”, he said, “You’re going home to your parents”. I said, “Going home to my parents…?”, I… I said. That had surprised me, that, because I said I don’t usually go home, and he said, “Well, we’re taking you there.” So he got me in his car and just up the road there’s this great big massive place, you know, like… a state home or something, and they turned it into a mental hospital for… people with learning difficulties… so I went there and… when I got out the car, and got up over the steps, he rang the doorbell and this great big red faced looking sister came out, and he said, “This is Mary…”, he said, “I’ve brought her to… to this place”, and… she got me in… took me in, and then… she… said to me, “Come on in…”, she said, “…we’ll put you in some dresses…”, and they was great big thick… thick material dress, you know, ever so thick, and hot stuff, you know, like… when we… I don’t know if it was cotton or what it was, but it was… some material. Anyway, she got me into this dress and she said, “We’re going to make you do some work now.” I never had no idea about the work at all. So she took me down the stairs and she gave me a bucket and scrubbing brush and steel wool, and I had to go and scrub the front hall, then… and it was like grey stones… little black pebble stones sticking out, and all the rest was white bits and we had to get all the marks off. I did all that, and then she took me down… into the dining room. I had to polish the dining room with this [inaudible] polish…’

`With what polish, sorry?’

`Romick [ph].’

`Oh…’

`It was called Romick. It was like the [inaudible] polish, ever so greasy, and slippery, so I had to do that, and then she gave me a big bumper, showed me where… where the bumper was and she gave it to me, “…and you’ve got to bumper up all this…” she said, “…and make it shiny.”’

`What’s a bumper?’

`It was like a… a big thing… a square thing, you know, like, with a long handle and they put cloths on under it, and you had to sway it backwards and forwards to get the floor shiny. So I did that, and… and then she got me out on the washing up, and we had… and then we had a… meal, at half past five. You know, ‘cause we had tea and… supper, well, together you know, and then we used to watch television, ‘till about seven, and then we had to go to bed at seven, and all the senior girls used to stay down ‘till ten.’

`So what year would have been, when television first came in?’

`I went there in 1953 and there was the Queen’s Coronation, and they let us see that, and then… about seven o’clock we all had to go to beds. The younger ones… I was the youngest one there. I was about fifteen, and then we went to bed, and… the next morning we had breakfast at eight, and then we would have to go to work and then like we’d do what we did other days, and we’d do that for three months, and then they would change our jobs around. Then I would go to the laundry, and do work in the laundry, and they put me on the calender, that you used to put sheets through and pull them out and things like that, and… there were pants and all that, and… I used to like it over there, but if… if the… well if we weren’t doing it right, we’d get told off or sent back to the… place again, and they’d put us on something else and punish us, and then… one Sunday I went to church, and I come back, and I said, “I’d love to find my parents, you know, I wonder how I could go about it?”’

`’Cause you didn’t know your parents?’

`I didn’t know my parents, didn’t know them from the start, so one of the girls suggested, “Why don’t you write to the News Of The World?”. So I wrote to the News Of The World, and I asked them. Within a couple of weeks I had a answer back, the letter had to go through the office. All the letters we had, had to go through the office to be read, and then they would go up to the top office upstairs, and then they would come down and give them to us, opened. So they read… and… but they wouldn’t open… they wouldn’t let me open my… this one because it was from the News Of The World, and the matron wanted me in the office. She said, “What’s this … what’s this idea with you?”, she said. “Finding out about… about your parents…”, she said “…your parents don’t want you. They didn’t want you when you was a baby, so why bother about them now?”. And she said, “You’re mental anyway…”, she said, “…so you… so…”, she said, “They don’t want you, so…”, she said, “You might as well forget them…”, she said.’

`How did you feel?’ [both talking together].

`And that broke my heart and I started playing up… I was naughty, and then he wanted to wash my hair that day, and I weren’t feeling up to it, and one of the nurses grabbed hold of my hair, so I smacked her across the face. So she went and told matron, so matron had me in the office, and she punished me for a month. My money stopped, two and six a week, and it got stopped for a month. Then when I behaved myself, they let me have my money back, but I had to work a lot harder, in those days, and then when I was… about eighteen, I went to Selwood Hospital.’

`Where’s that?’

`Selwood Hospital in… in Frome…’

`In Somerset?’

`In Somerset, and I went to Selwood Hospital, and they were very, very kind there, and… but the babies… I used to have to go on the ward over to the babies unit, and there was these poor babies with great big heads, small tummies. A lot of them had died and I used to cry my heart out. [Tape distorting]… [both talking together]… [inaudible]…’

`They were in the same hospital?’

`… there.’

`They were… the… so the hospital had babies as well as adults?’

`Yeah, and adults, yeah…’

`And was it a hospital for people with learning difficulties or was it just… anybody?’

`Yeah, very difficult… you know, not… not a… sort of psychiatric problems, it was… more for a… you know, from a… already born with… learning difficulties and… you know, grown up to, you know, you sort… you’ve seen children grow up with learning difficulties. They were… the sort of thing like that they were…’

`So they might have had… and they had physical disabilities as well?’

`Yeah, physical problems as well as the mental problems. And they used to have… great big… water on the brain they used to call it, and… and they… they used to have small, tiny legs, and… you know, and big heads. I used to feel so sorry and I used to go over the… back to the ward and break my heart, and then little Rosie was at Selwood with me, and I used to sleep… sleep next… bed to her. She… [both talking together…’

`And this was…? Sorry…’

`Everywhere I’ve been with Rosie she’s… shared a room with me. You know, and… and it’s lovely, to think that she… I’d got back to know her again. Anyway, going back to Selwood, you know, we had our privileges and we used to wait in twos, you know, like go out into the town, go to theatre, go to dances at Nora Fry… ‘cause that was in group, Nora Fry, yeah and… and Selwood [ph] and Sand Hill [ph]… well they were all in one group, and… but in Sand Hill Park, we used to have sports there, you know, and they used to come to near the hospitals, and we used to have outings, used to go on outings, like to Dawlish, and then… when I went… to… Sel… Selwood, I was there about two years, and then… they suggested that I should go to Cheddar, to the hostel at Cheddar.’

`A hostel?’

`Mmm… Cliff View Hostel at Cheddar, so I went, and there was a… ever such a big matron there. Oh, she was massive… always got a cigarette in her mouth. Anyway, she called me, the first day I went up, because I… she told me to go up and put my clothes away, so I went and put my clothes away, and upstairs, I was upstairs putting my clothes… “Mary… can you come down here?”. I said, “Yes…”, and she said, “Say yes, Mrs Gay….”, so I said, “Yes Mrs Gay, I’ll come down, I’m putting my clothes away.” “Come down…”, I said, “…to put my clothes… after I’d put my clothes away.” So I put my clothes away and I went down to her and she said, “I want you…”, she said, “…to go out in the kitchen and do the washing up.” She said, “We’re going to have a rota…”, and we’d do all the washing up, and she said, “You’re going in for an interview tomorrow to go and… to work… to Sidcot [???] School.” So I went in and saw… the next day, I went into the… the school, and Mrs Steinhart [ph], the German housekeeper interviewed me, and she just… “Start on Monday…”, she said, and… we’ll tell you what you’ve got to do.”’

`How old would you have been then?’

`I was about… nineteen…’

`When you went to Sifew House [???]…’

`Sidcot School… [???]… but [inaudible] yeah… so I went to work the next Monday, and I had to go at eight o’clock in the morning, get the eight o’clock bus, to… Sidcot [ph] School, and I got up there and then she told me what I had to do. I had to go in the kitchen and do all the veg for six hundred people… for Sidcot [ph] School…’

`That’s a… lot of people isn’t it?’

`So anyway, it was ever such a lot and… and we had to be quick with it, you know… so I did it and then I had to god down the bottom end and go and wash up all their dishes, that… at… dinner time… with… for six hundred. They had two sittings. They had a junior and a senior, and I did all that and then…’

`What sort of school was that?’

`That… a sort of Quakers’ school, they did… you know it’s like… the… it… like Friend you know, over there. They were just Quakers and they… do it different to what the church people do, you know, they have quiet sessions. They don’t… say anything, they… very quietly, you know. Anyway, they… they had that and they get six to eight weeks’s holiday in the summer, they get a month at… Christmas and a month at Easter.’

`So you were employed at the school?’

`I was employed at the school, and I did that for about a year and a half, and then I was… I’d… given up, well they gave me the sack because they said I wasn’t doing my work properly. So Mrs Gay [ph] said, “Well you’ll have to go up in the café to work”, she said, “…in the summer…”, so they got me this job at Derek’s tea rooms, and I… I worked from half past nine in the morning, till ten o’clock at night, all day… and it was very poor pay, and… I went down to her and I said, “I’m sorry I can’t keep up with it, it’s too much…”. “Well you’ll have to go…”, she said, “You can’t stay here, you’d get chucked out the hostel”. I said, “Well I can’t…”, I said, “I just can’t keep… doing it…”, and it caused me a breakdown, and I cried. I was upset and I kept thinking about I wish I could go back to my bed. I wish I could do something… something different. Anyway, it landed me up very, very depressed and I started scratching myself, all over myself, and… and biting myself, you know, so… anyway, she… “Well, you’re going to…”, and she went on holiday once, and I had to go to the doctor and I told him how distressed I was. He said, “Well I’m going to send you to see a specialist.” I went to see a specialist and it was a skin specialist, ‘cause I was sore. He said, “You’re not the lady… the sort of lady I want to see, you’re the lady for the… the psychiatrist.” So anyway, I had to sit there at the Old General, down the bottom in Alfred Street [ph]…’

`In Weston… Super Mare?’

`In Weston…’

`Uh huh…’

`…and see the doctor there, so… when I saw him he said, “Could you… sign the forms?”, so I said, “Yeah…”, and he never told me what it was about. I just had to fill my name in and he put in all the details, and… the next morning, Miss… or Mrs Gay[ph] had come back from her holiday a couple of days after that, so when she come back she said, “Mary…”, she said, “No breakfast for you.” She said, “You’re going and having some treatment.” Of course I didn’t… understand what sort of treatment it was. I got there, and they got me up to Mendip View…’

`So you had no idea that… [both talking together] whether you were going to the psychiatric hospital or…a general hospital or…?’
 
`No idea what treatment… no… no… no idea what it was like. Anyway, they said “Get… we’re going to get you on the bed. We’re just going to give you a little injection, you won’t know nothing about”, and they had such a job to get my vein, they just could not get it so… I had to have it whether I liked it or not, and I had it straight. And all your legs sort of shake, your whole body and… and when I… you know, got round to it properly, I cried all the rest of the day and I had to have six treatments like that…’

`What was that treatment?’

`It was ECT.’

`They gave you ECT almost immediately?’

`Yeah… and they didn’t tell me that I was going to have to go through with it. That was Dr Dredger [ph]. Anyway, and then… Joan Mitchell [ph] came up, on the first day I was there. She was lovely.’

`And what did… what was she?’

`When I was admitted. She’s a little diamond.’

`She’s… what… what position was she?’

`She was a staff nurse. She was… she’d done a… just finished her training and she was a staff nurse and she said, “Mary…”, she said, “We want to try and help you get better.” So she come to the ward and I had to have an enema. It was an old fashioned sort of one, you know. I said, “I don’t want it.” She said, “You’ve got to have it”, she said… to make me feel better. So I said “All right…”, I said, “I’ll… I’ll have it…”, and anyway, and then she brought this great big white tablet in, and I said, “What’s that for?”, and she said “That’s to make you better as well.” So I took it, ‘cause she was so kind, and then she said, “Now…”, she said, “I think I’ll take… I’m going to take to you…”, she said, “You’re a lovely little thing.” [Laughs] And I said, “That’s nice of you…”, so… I sort of… and she said, “Have you got any parents?”. I said, “No.” She said, “Well, we’ll look after you here…” she said, and then I was there about three months and then I went back to Cliff View, and they gave me another job which had lasted a bit longer, and then I went back in again, about a year later… and they… then they started opening the doors.’

`Back into Mendip again?’

`Mendip, yeah. They started opening the doors, so… when they opened the doors… I wasn’t sectioned at all, you know, the… they have people in for sections don’t they? They section them, under the Mental Health Act. Well they didn’t do that to me, so I could go out any time I wanted or… and… and… when I went back to Mendip, they said that… “You can… you can go out when you want to but you’ve got to be good before a… you know, if you’ve been naughty we have to stop you going out and stop your money.” But they never… it didn’t happen, it didn’t matter what I did, they wouldn’t punish me for it.’

`And how… and what age were you then?’ [both talking together].

`Well that’s what they told me.’

`What age were you then?’

`I was about twenty three then, about twenty three… and then when I was… and then… they used to get these outings up, you know, we used to go to Weymouth, used to have about three outings a year, and… and then we went to… Bournemouth once, and we went in this lovely café and they did all sorts of roast dinners and things, and the… and lovely sweets. You could have whatever you wanted in there, and it was all free of charge. It wasn’t paid for by us, it was paid for by the Mendip Friends.’

`The Friends of the Hospital?’

`Yeah.’

`Yeah…’

`And… the… and they used to treat us out, and we used to have lovely outings. On the way back they used to take us into pubs and have drinks and that, and I’d never experienced anything like it until I went on these outings. As I said, we used to have three or four of them there. We used to all on… from different wards, and if they had any seats over, they’d come back to the ward and ask if anybody else wanted to go. I went on most of them.’

`You enjoyed that?’

`Yeah, and then we went to Lyme Regis and I went down to the shop, right down the bottom end by the harbour, and I bought Joan Mitchell [ph] a pen holder. She was so delighted with it, and she thanked me and… and… and when I was with her when she took me to Bath, and Elizabeth, ‘cause I used to have a friend called Elizabeth, and she took us to Bath and we went to Evans’ fish and chip shop, and there was this… you know, this big restaurant, fish and chip restaurant, and they did all sorts of things, besides fish and… we started off with soup and then we had fish and chips, and Elizabeth stuffed a great big roll in her mouth [laughs]. It was so funny… oh, she did make me laugh, ‘cause she didn’t half get up to some tricks, and one day she got hold of me… got hold of the chair, without me knowing, and I went to go and sit on it and she pulled it away… down, bang on the floor I went.’

`For fun or…did she do that for fun?’

`Fun… for fun. Just to make… to see if I would laugh at it. I said, “Don’t do that to me Elizabeth…”, I said, “That ain’t fair.” “Oh…”, she said, “I’m only having a bit of fun.” I said, “Now… that could be dangerous.” Anyway, and then the next… about dinner time, she’d put… ‘cause we had cups of tea after we had our lunch, and she put salt and pepper in my tea and I… and I tasted it and I was sick for the rest of the day. I couldn’t take it, and Joan Mitchell come down and she said, “Mary, are you all right?” she said, and ‘young haven’t got that bad leg coming back, have you? and I said, “No I haven’t.” So she said, “Well, you’d better go to bed if you don’t feel well”, so I went to the office and I told her what had happened, so Elizabeth got told off and she had to see the doctor and she said “Don’t do this ever again”, she said, “…’cause it’s dangerous.”’

`So she didn’t really realise that…?’

`No, she didn’t, she was just full of it, and then she used to put orange peel on her mouth and sort of make teeth out of it [laughs], you know, and try and frighten everybody, and she used to think she was a Jew but she wasn’t, she was Church of England, and she used to wear a scarf and she used to have long, thin pigtails, you know, and she used to go round trying to find everybody, and she had a long skirt on, and she walked round the wards with a walking stick and every time she saw the cat, she shooed the cat away. “Shoo, shoo…” she was going. It used to make me laugh. We used to have some fun in there, and they used to make apple pie beds and all in there.’

`So you had quite a bit of fun amongst yourselves?’

`Yeah, and… and one day I went to bed and I couldn’t get in it ‘cause the apple… the bed was made into an apple pie, but it was so funny. And… and then… we used to… you know, like we used to go to OT and… some… and they changed our jobs round like they used to at Sand Hill, you know, sort of give us different jobs, and I went to the laundry up at… Mendip. Massive place, and one day one of the men chased me round the washroom, and he said, “Come here and let me have your knickers.” I said, “You’re not having my knickers, get off…”, I said. So he took my slippers off my feet, and he threw them in… in the washing machines and I didn’t have nothing on my feet [laughs] and I started crying, so… Peggy come out and she said, “What’s the matter Mary?”. I said, “He’s turned my… he’s taken my slippers off and threw them in the machine..”, I said, “I’ve got nothing on my feet.” She said, “You’d better go back to the ward.” So I went back to the ward and I told them what happened, and they said, “Well if they do play tricks like that you won’t be able to go up there…”, and I had to have another job. But I loved it at the laundry, that was my favourite job, and then… they changed me around and we went into the kitchen, and I used to help do the veg and…’

`For the whole hospital, was that?’

`For the whole hospital, and we used… they used to let us sit down and do it, and… I did that, but we weren’t allowed to touch no cooking at all. No cooking at all, we weren’t allowed to do that. So they had me down there preparing the veg, and then we used to wash out all the big boilers and… and… you know, wash up the saucepans and things, what they had. Then we used to have to scrub the floors, get down and scrub the floors.’

`Are you happy to… let… let me know what happened after you came out of Mendip? And then we can go back and… you can tell me all the details about… [both talking together] [inaudible]…’

`Yeah, that sounds… [inaudible] I’m happy. When I came… we used to… I was… I started off… Mr Manning came up to me and he said, “Mary…”, he said, “We’re going to try and get you some… somewhere.” He said, “Get out of Mendip”, so I said, “But, where?”. He said, “Well, we’ll see…”, he said. Somebody’s coming to see you…” and he said… he said, “We’re going to have to teach you to do some cooking.” “Oh…”, I said, “I ain’t never had… no idea…”, I said, “I’ve got no idea.” He said, “I’ll send one of the nurses down.” So they looked through the cookery book and they says, you know, there’s… a recipe for shortbread, and I was getting a bit panicky about it and I said, “I don’t think I can manage it.” He said, “I’ll help you.” I said, “All right then.” And anyway, we were waiting for them, and it was Mr and Mrs Bladon [ph], so anyway… they came about eleven o’clock and Mrs Bladon said, “Hello Mary darling…”, she said, “I’ve heard so much about you…” she said. “Would you like to come and stay with us for a fortnight?”, so I said, “Oh yes, please…”. So anyway, they were going away for three weeks so she said… “I’ll come… when I come back…” she said, “I’ll have you done.” So I said “That’d be lovely.” Of course I went down to the office and told David Wiley [???] and he said, “You’re not going now, it’s going to be stopped.”’

`And was he a manager…?’

`He was a Social Worker.’

`A Social Worker, uh huh…’

`He said, “You’re not going there Mary…”, he said “You’re not. You’re not the Somerset area…”, he said, “You’re from Bristol.” I said, “No”, I said… and I said, “They’d… they’d been to see me.” He said, “You’re not going.” Anyway, Mrs Bladon said “We’ll fight… we’ll fight for Mary.” So anyway, she went off on holiday and she come back and there was still a bit of a scene, and then… and… on one Sunday, Mr Malling [ph] said, ‘cause he was on duty, he said, “You’re not very well are you?”. I said, “No…”, I said, “My leg’s coming up”, I said, I feel all hot ad flushed ‘cause I used to get cellulitis in my leg. I used to get it when I was at Sand Hill, and he said, “You can’t go like that”. He said, “I’m going to have to ring Mrs Glenn [ph], but…” he said, “We’ll see what the doctor says before you go.” So I said, “All right”. So anyway, it was planned and… but first, they let me go and see the place before I… you know, can… came and… did it.’

`How did you know Mr and Mrs Bladon [ph], or didn’t you know them?’

`Well… it was through an old lady, because… I used to see Mrs Bladon come out and interview people for Stanton Nursing Home and then… she… Miss… oh, and I’ll… I’ll tell you about Mrs Burr [ph] in a minute, after I’ve told you this. Anyway, she said, “Mary, we’ll have you when we come back”, so I said, “All right.” So anyway, I went… I… I got to, you know, I got very excited about this and I thought… it was funny, ‘cause I’ve always wanted to live in Weston [ph], ever since I was a child, ‘cause we used to go there for a holiday… come down for holidays. So anyway, I… I… came down… to Weston about three weeks later when she came back, and I said, “Have you got little Rosie here?” and she said “Yes…”, ‘cause I said… oh… but I knew her name was Margaret, but they told me it was… her name, they called her Rosie, but her name was Margaret Rose Clarke, and I said, “Well I know that name, but I’m not sure about her middle name.” So anyway, she said, “Come up… come up with me”, she said, “…and I’ll… I’ll be able to see you.” So I went up the stairs, and there was Rosie coming and smiling all over her face. “Oh no…” she said, “I know you… I remember you, Mary Robbins…” she went. So anyway, she went back and told Mrs Bladon and Mrs Bladon said, “Are you sure, Rosie?”, she said, “You know her?”. “Yeah, and…”, she said, “Well Mary’s coming to stay for a fortnight”, and I had this bad leg, and of course there were another come in. She was a little lady, Mrs Bladon’s mother, and she said to Maureen, “Fancy you letting Mary come down with a leg like that?”, and Mrs Bladon said, “We can cope mum, don’t worry about that… we can cope with Mary’s leg.” So she did, and…’

`So you were really, really glad to…’ [both talking together].

`I’m glad… [inaudible…][both talking together],
 
`…[inaudible]’

`…I was glad to come to Weston, I mean I’ve had my bad days and… upsets, with [inaudible] and… they really had to tell me off for it and… because I’ve learnt from that, you know, I feel much happier that I’m with Rosie… Rosie. But I knew her when she was at Selwood [ph], you see like… I told you earlier on. Anyway, and…we used to have meals together and we used to get lovely meals, like… breakfast we used to have porridge or cereal, and you could have anything you liked, and then we had toast and marmalade. For dinner she used to bring out lovely dinners… used to do beautiful dinners and sweets and… and then we used to have, for tea it used to be like macaroni cheese, scrambled egg or anything like that, and I was at Stanton [ph] for nine months, and then she said, “Mary, there’s somebody’s coming to see you”, she said, “…about going into a house…”.’

`What… sorry, can I… what year did you go to Stanton?’

`I went in 1982, ‘cause I was at Stanton nine months, and then… they decided that we were going to… they were going to get us a place… either in Nevis Walk [ph], and they were going to get thirteen of us there, and there was these two staff, like Wendy and Trina, they were going to look after us and they said… the kitchen was upstairs, but I couldn’t see very well then, my eyes were so poor, and… so they said… “Well Mary…”, they said, “You’ll have to go”, and I said, “Well I… don’t really want to leave the company…”, ‘cause it was… and I’d been amongst crowds. So anyway, Mrs Miller [ph] said, “Well, we’ll see what the doctor says.” So Dr Rowe [ph] come down from Wales, you know, he was a Psychiatrist at Mendip and he had me in the dining room and he said, “Mary…”, he said, “I’m afraid you’re going to have to go in a house, do you think you can cope?”, ‘cause he said, “You’re far too young to be in with these older people…”’.

`And how old were you then roughly?’

`I was… I was… oh I was about… forty… forty two, something like that. Forty three. Just coming up to forty… no, I was forty three in January, but that same year. So anyway, they… they showed us the place down in Nevis Walk [ph] and they took us all upstairs and the kitchen was upstairs, and Rosie and I were going to have a lounge downstairs, and they said, “No”, they said, “You can have the room that side…”, ‘cause a Mrs Glen [ph] told us we were going to have the lounge downstairs ‘cause of the stairs and the kitchen and that. So anyway, we went… went to view it, and then about a few weeks later we were told we couldn’t have it because there was a fire hazard, the kitchen being upstairs, people going upstairs to cook, so they… they… they said, no it was too dangerous. The Fire Officers went up there and said… and that it would cost a lot of money to put all the fire… systems in, you know, so it would be… a lot of money so they didn’t do it. And then they come in the dining room, Mr and Mrs Glen [ph], they said, “Mary, Rosie… It’s fallen through…”, but she said, “We have got an idea in Albert Street [ph].” So anyway about… three weeks later, this… Mr Glen come in and he said, “Mary, you and Rosie are going to have an interview…”, he said, “We’ll take you down but don’t get too excited…”, ‘cause he said, “You might not be able to have it.” So we got down to Albert Street and then Mrs… what was her name… I’ve forgotten the lady’s name… Mrs Blackmore, that’s it, Mr and Mrs Blackmore. Mr Blackmore couldn’t climb the stairs, so they suggested, you know, they would have to retire…’

`What were they running, Mr and Mrs Blackmore?’

`Well they were just on… she used to run a shop up in…’

`They were landlady… you… they were landlords though were they, or…?’

`No, not… Mr… not Mr and Mrs Blackmore, they were just the owner of Albert Street, and they put it up for sale so… Mr and Mrs Glen wanted it for us two.’

`I see, yeah…’

`So anyway, we went down and they interviewed us and Mrs Blackmore said “I think they’re capable of coming down here, they know how… would know how to look after the house…”, so I said, “Oh I don’t really want to go.” And Mr Glen said “Mary, you’re going to have to go.” I said…’

`Why didn’t you want to go?’

`I didn’t really want to go, I wanted to stay at Stanton with… amongst the crowd. “No”, she said, “You’re going to have to go….”, she said, “You can’t stay up here with these crowd, with this lot”, she said.’

`’Cause they were all older than you?’

`All older than me and I was a lot younger and Rosie was ever so much younger. She was in her thirties, Rosie. Anyway, Rosie got excited and I didn’t. Anyway, I said, “Oh all right”, I said, “I’ll think about it.” “Well give it a think…”, she said, “…and let me know. I’ll give you a couple of days.” I said, “All right” and I thought and though hard, so then I’m going to chance it, I’ll go. Of course I was down there six months and there was trouble, wasn’t there? I didn’t want to… I didn’t like it all. I said, “I’m not used to this”, I said, “I’ve been used to institutions, being amongst the crowd” and I was getting a bit low, so I rang Mrs Glen and I said, “I don’t want to stay down here” I said, “I want to go back in the hospital.” “Oh no you’re not”, she said, “I’ll make sure that you don’t go back.” And she made sure that I didn’t go back. I’ll tell you about Fairbanks after and…’

`Ok…’

`You know what happened down there? And then I settled down after six months later, but I kept hearing voices, I kept saying… they kept saying “Mary, go back, go back… Tod wants to live down there…” but I wouldn’t let it beat me after that. I said, “No, I’m going to stay here.” I don’t hear nothing like that now.’

`So it was a massive change for you to…’

`It was a big change, ‘cause I’d never been in a house… [both talking together] [tape distorting]…’

`…be living in a house… [inaudible]…’

`I’d never been… been out to… oh, er, people’s homes ‘till I went to stay with Mrs Burke for the weekend.’

`Mmm…’

`So you’d never, ever lived in a house before, just one or two people or…?’

`I never… ‘cause it’s all been… big crowds, you know. At Sand Hill Park they had about eighty people or ninety people there… you know, it’s quite a big place really…’

`And that’s where you’re still living now is it?’

`We were in Alfred Street, but we’re up in a flat now.’

`So you moved from… and when did you move out of Alfred Street?’

`I moved out of Alfred Street in nine… nineteen ninety… I think it was six, ‘cause I fell… I went to work and I fell down the stairs and… broke my ankle and I broke it in two places, and… they had to put pins and plates and screws in and Mr [inaudible] came up to my bed and he said, “Have you seen your x-rays Mary?”. I said, “No.” “I’ll run down the road and get them for you…”, she said… he said. So he went down the road and got them and there was all these pins and plates and I saw them on the x-ray.’

`Bit of a shock was it?’

`It was, yeah… [laughs] ‘cause it was the longest… it was ever such a long plate in my leg, but I fell down as I was going to work, you know, I was going up there to do tea for the residents, you know, and… of course, I went to go and approach the stairs and down I went, and I put one over like that and then it went over that way, and the leg shot out like that with the foot out that way…’

`Oh, sounds so painful…’ [both talking together]

`…and they said it was a nasty break, and they said they knew it would happen, because I was heavy, they used to call me fatty. I used to laugh at them. I… I used to have them in fits in hospital and tell them everything I possibly could…’

`To keep their spirits up?’

`Yeah, I tell you what happened to me when I was down Alfred Street. John gave me a sweet you see, and… and when I… you know, and just go up to the bathroom, and I was chewing the sweet and all of a sudden I got sick and I couldn’t understand why, so anyway, I turned round and went and was sick in the toilet and my teeth went down. Before I realised it the… I’d pulled the chain on it and I don’t know where they disappeared…’

`[Laughs].’

`I rang up Mrs Glenn and said “Mrs Glenn I’ve lost my teeth”, I said, “I’ve just been sick down the toilet.” “Oh you silly fool…”, she said, “…get down the dentist tomorrow”, she said. So I went down and there was this man, this dentist, a Mr Parrow [ph], he was lovely. I told him what happened, he said, “Oh I… I hope you don’t do it too often.”’

`[Laughs]’

`I said, “No, it won’t happen too often…”, so he said, “Oh all right then”, so… you know, when I went back down again he’d gone.’

`Oh…’

`There was somebody else to finish them off, you know. But these are my teeth that he started off, years ago, about… I went in… Weston about seventeen years, coming up now…’

`A long time.’

`Of course I didn’t do no work to start off with, but I wanted something to do. I used to keep Alfred Street clean and then I said to Mrs Glenn, “Can I come up and help you out?”, so we started washing up and… you know, doing the beds for her and she said, “Mary, I think I’ll need you up here to help Rosie out.” So I said, “Oh, I’ll start it…”. We don’t have to do it…’

`Yeah…you enjoyed it? [both talking together].’

`We can do it if we want to but I find I’ve got so used to doing it, you know, I like to do it, and especially if we’re not doing nothing, and I thought, you know, it makes sense… helps them out. As the situation as it is now, they’ve got very difficult residents up there now and I… I mean it’s… it breaks your heart to see some of them, you know, the way they are. And we had a blind lady come in yesterday, and it’s so sad to see her. Completely blind, and we had another little one, Monica. Oh, she used to scream, and they used to have to, you know, quieten her down and she used to pinch everybody’s… [inaudible], yet she couldn’t see and yet she grabbed hold of her, and she used to go behind the people and they used to… they used… she used to catch hold of them ‘cause she couldn’t see… she used to catch hold of their backs, and they used to take her into the dining room, then when they… they would take her up back to her room ‘cause she wouldn’t settle down downstairs.’

`So you’re still busy there helping?’

`Yeah…’

`Are you happy that we take a short break?’

`Yes…’

`Yeah?’

`Yeah, and then we can start again…

`Yeah, yeah, we can start again…’

`We’ve got plenty of time.’

`We’ve got lots of time.’

`So all that, quarter to then is it?’

`Yes, ok, Mary… if we go right the way back again to the beginning of your…life… [both talking together].’

`And shall I start back then…?’

`Where you began.’

`Where I began.’

`Perhaps you could tell me what some of your earlier memories of your childhood… and where you lived as a… as a child and so on?’

`Well I was… I was at the home, you know, it… they used to get us day’s outings out, you know, when we used to go down to Bristol Zoo and we used to go up there and see all the monkeys up to their tricks. They used to have elephant rides up there. There used to be an elephant called Rosie, we used to have a ride on that, and I was so frightened I nearly fell off [laughs].’

`And what home was that that you were at?’

`That was at Shepton Mallet Children’s Home. We never had any outings at Burnham [ph] at all.’

`And what age would you have been when you went to the home, do you know?’

`I was… twelve when I went to Shepton Mallet…’

`And where were you before that?’

`Burnham On Sea, I was… I was one years old when I went to Burnham.’

`So you don’t remember where you were before…?’

`I don’t remember where I was before. ‘Cause I… you know, I didn’t know… even know my mother. Although I did get told when I was older that she had another child, but they wouldn’t tell me whether it was a boy or girl, I was left out on that one.’

`So you know that you’ve got a brother or a sister?’

`I know I’ve got a brother or sister somewhere, but I knew nothing whatsoever. I don’t think my mother would have allowed me to know, ‘cause that’s what I was told from one of the nurses at Sand Hill Park, that my mother wouldn’t have wanted me to know, where she was.’

`Before you were one, and I know you obviously wouldn’t remember it, but were you living with your mother as far as you know, or your father or…?

`No, I was in a convent. They put me in a convent…’

`Right from a baby?’

`…in Bristol, yes, somewhere in Bristol. From the beginning until I was one… and… and…’

`So right from… that was from birth was it?’

`From birth, yeah, right ‘till I was one, and I went to see them once… Miss Hawkins, the Social Worker took me up to see them and they said they could remember me ever so plain, and they never thought I… you know, they said I’d got so much fatter. I said, “Well I…”, of course they wouldn’t, as a baby, ‘cause they put me there in… you know and I… I didn’t realise how thin I was at the time, but she said she wouldn’t have remembered me if Miss… you know, if she hadn’t saw my photo. She kept the photo of us when we were children, and… then I went to Burnham, but I don’t remember a lot… or anything, as a matter of fact about the convent, just that they used to keep photos of us there, you know.’

`But you don’t really remember actually being there ‘cause you were so young?’

`I don’t remember being there, but Sylvia went back in my records… either of them wrote off to … and they said that’s where I was. And I went back to see it when I was older.’

`So what do you remember about the place in Burnham On Sea?’

`I can remember going down, sleeping down in… the playroom, when the bombs used to drop, and… and I could see Mrs Bundon [ph] with a grey uniform on, and her frilly hat, you know…’

`And she…[both talking together].’

`And her belt, she used to have a belt… had a Matron’s belt on, and she was a lovely, kind lady, and they used to take us… I tell you what, we used to… I can remember, going down on the beach, having donkey rides, and when I was about five [ph], I used to help one of the ladies with the donkeys, take them up and down the beach, and I had long, long fair hair then, very blond I was, and… and then… when I went to Burn… to… a day’s outing, we went on a day’s outing, and we went on a train, and I can always remember the Matron cutting my hair ‘cause it was so long, on the train and throwing it out the window.’

`Did you want her to do that or…?’

`I didn’t want her to do it, but she did it you know, ‘cause it was so long and untidy. And when I was at… Shepton Mallet, I can remember this teacher, and I used to go away… at five, in the infant school. She was the headmistress and I can always remember her saying to me, “You look a bit untidy, you’ll have to tidy yourself a bit more… go and comb your hair and put your… gym… gym slip straight, and your tie straight.” I said, “All right, I’ll go off and do it.” But they used to push me down on the floor and knock me about a bit, you know, the kids did at school.’

`Why did they do that?’

`They were just being bullies. They used to poke fun at me, used to call me `four eyes’ and all [laughs].’

`Children!’

`Yeah, but…’

`Did you live with other children in the home?’

`I did, I lived… there was a little boy there called Terry. I felt so sorry for him. He used to suffer with very, very bad asthma. He was at Hail Worth House, and… he had very bad asthma, and I can always remember Mrs Ford getting married, ‘cause she was there after… long after I went to Shepton Manor, she went there when I was about ten. I think it was 1949 she went there.’

`And who was she again, remind me?’

`She was Assistant Matron…’

`At the place of Burnham?’

`It just shut down, but…’

`At Shepton?’

`Burnham, they used to have a… a Matron, Assistant Matron called Miss Toogood [???]. I don’t remember the Assistant Matron before… Miss Denton [ph] at Shepton though, but miss Toogood was at Burnham with… Mrs Bunkham [ph] and Mrs Bunkham was still around ‘till I was about eleven at Burnham, so I used to write to her, you know and keep in touch with her. But I never knew much about the home except that we used to play… play in the day time and I’d go for walks, and I can remember all these old drains at Burnham, and when the tide… when the tide used to come in it used to come right up through these little holes and go right across the road and flood out the house… council… you know, it was a council home. But they were very, very good as far as I can remember.’

`So it was a fairly happy time was it for you?’

`It was a happy time for me to be there. Shepton Manor wasn’t so nice.’

`And did you used to think about your parents?’

`I used to think about my parents. I often used to want… and I used to go… I used to cry and say “Where’s my mummy? I want my mummy and I want my daddy. Well they did tell me that… that my dad was killed in the war, when he had to go out into the Army and he was killed, but… I didn’t know much about my mother except that I was a… she didn’t want to know, and I didn’t… I didn’t remember seeing her face or nothing at all.’

`So you never saw a photo of her…?’

`Never seen her. Not even a photo or nothing.’

`Did you have any idea why she kept hadn’t kept you?’

`Well apparently they said that she’d had another child and she was more with it than I were, ‘cause that… the way I was born, they didn’t think… they didn’t think I was right for her, you know, she… she didn’t want me.’

`What did they think was not right with you?’

`Well they’d think that I was… I looked a bit… odd, you know. Didn’t think I looked right, so she didn’t want me and… this is what I was told.’

`That that…’

`From… from that person.’

`Do you think that was true?’

`I don’t know whether it was true or not, but that’s what I was told. Whether they just said it to stop me going on about it or whether it was… routine, you know, just the thing that happened, I don’t know. But all I know is that she didn’t want me at all.’

`Mmm…’

`That was… you know, apart from what they took… like I say, I don’t know why, whether it’s because of that, I’m just…’

`But that’s what you’ve been told?’

`I’ve been told that, yeah.’

`So do…’

`So…’

`Did you go to school in Burnham?’

`Umm… yes, I did when I was five in… it was in the summer time I went to Shepton. I was only there a few months at Burnham.’

`I see…’

`But I didn’t learn much, couldn’t under… I couldn’t get down to me… you know, writing or anything and didn’t know how to spell or… or read, or anything. ‘Cause I’ve had poor sight since I was a child and I… think that had a lot to do with… having poor sight, you know. And that… they used to call me four eyes, they used… [laughs]…’

`Did you mind that?’

`No, I didn’t care, I didn’t take no notice of that. I mean I get bullied a bit now about
that.’

`Did you have…?’

`You know, but I don’t worry about it, just let it go… yeah, and just let it go and think nothing of it now. I used to take things, and they used to worry me. Really… really got at me, and I used to go in… inside and cry, but now, if anybody said like that to… “Oh you’re a fatty you are… you want to lose weight…”, or “You ought to go on a diet…”, I don’t take no notice of that. I think when I’m happy enough now, what makes… what make… difference do it make, you know? I mean I’ve had to help myself as much as others help me, but like Joan Mitchell, she’s… she’s excellent with me she was, and… she… she rings me up every week at home. Never fails… without ringing and she tells me her news and I tell her mine and… tell her about John and Rosie, how they are, you know.’

`And Joan Mitchell was the… nurse… the Sister at…’

`She was the Assistant at Mendip…’

`Uh huh…’

`Yeah. She was lovely. Anyway, go on… do you want to hear about Shepton Manor… more about Shepton Manor?’

`Yeah, certainly, yeah…’

`Yeah, and we used to go on… outings out in the summer like to Bristol Zoo, and they used to have the top notch, you know, like the special people… all the heads, you know, they used to take us out, and we used to go in these old shire vans, you know.’

`What were they like?’

`Well they were uncomfortable, and… got up to Bristol and then they used to have these animals up there like lions. There was one there called Mary once up there, and I said, “Well I hope I ain’t like her!”, [laughs] you know…’

`Yes…’

`And… and then we used to go up other places, like we used to go out and have picnics in the… nice weather and… we used to go to Westbury St Mendip [ph] and have picnics up in the fields there… and then we used to go to Wells a lot. I knew Wells when I was a little girl. We used to go in the Cathedral and look round and go shopping and I used to have to go in there to the opticians a lot of the time, for my glasses.’

`So that was a… you always had trouble with your eyesight? Uh huh…’

`Oh yeah, yeah. I used to like going into ours, ‘cause… and when I used to be in Mendip Hospital I used to go down there quite often, and it often used to bring back childhood memories… and we used to sit by the moat and… and have ice cream. I can remember sitting on the… on the moat grass, you know, down there one day and I was a bit naughty, and Matron said, “You’ve got to behave yourself. There’s no ice cream for you or stop it.” We used to go, yeah… and we used to sit on the moat… [both talking together]… [inaudible].’

`What sort of things did you get up to?’

`Yeah…’

`Sorry, what sort of things did you get up to?’

`Oh, I used to be naughty. I used to go in the… go in people’s beds and hide under the beds and… they used to come out and try and get into bed, [laughs] and I was in the bed.’

`Were you doing that for fun, were you?’

`Yeah, and they… and they used to… go downstairs and start going in the larder, taking things. At Christmas time they used to make little cakes, Christmas cakes. The maid, you know she was on the staff, the maid there used to… and they used to help her, and one day, one Christmas, I went into the larder and Mrs Ford was there. I was going to tell you about Terry Archer [ph] too… and that… anyway, I went into the larder and I had these little silver, tiny balls, and they used to put them on the cakes for Christmas cakes and that, and they used to put them on the Christmas cake, and I went and took a packet. Mrs Ford come out. “Mary, you know what happens to thieves…”, she said, “The Police will be after you and you’ll go to prison.” I said, “No, I’m not going to…”, “Yes you are…”, she said, “I’ll get the Police…”, she said, “…and you’ll go to prison”, and they used to frighten us in those sort of ways.’

`It’s… very, very strict then?’

`Yeah, they were very strict, and… you’d have to go to bed without your tea if you were naughty.'

`Without anything to eat?’

`No… without anything to eat, you had to go to bed if you were naughty. Nothing inside you until the next day, and they used… used to threaten us… and they’d say, “If you don’t behave yourself we’ll put you down the cellar with the rats and mice”, and I can remember one day at Shepton and… we were standing outside looking over, you know, ‘cause we had a lovely view across, and there was this great big bridge, what they called a duck bridge, you know, and it… it was… used to be a railway bridge, and it snapped right in half, and the car had just managed to go… as the train that got over it and we were stood back there and all of a sudden it went and collapsed, right in half.’

`Gosh.’

`And… we went back in doors and told the Sister, the Matron I mean, and then one day there was a lady fell down and broke her arm, only we didn’t know that at the time, and her name was Cynthia Jones, so… she went out to… went out and played about you know, and she fell and they went in and told the Matron, but the Matron was on holiday and it was another Matron took over, Matron… Backhouse [ph]. She was a… a little short lady and she had a dog. I used to be scared stiff of dogs, and anyway, she had this dog and it was black. I can always remember it, like a Labrador dog, and… she called… somebody went and told her that… somebody had fallen down, so she came out and she called her in. She said, “We’ll have to get you up to the hospital, it looks as though you’ve broke your arm…” to Cynthia, so she… come out looking for her. So she said, “Where’s Cynthia Jones?”, I said up Jack’s… you know, in America, and I won’t say the rude word ‘cause… [both talking together]’.

`I don’t understand’

`Anyway it turned out… Jack’s Ass in America…’

`Oh right…’

`Anyway, it went back to the Matron, what I’d said. She come out to me and she said, “Get inside…” she said, “…and get up those stairs…”, and she scrubbed my mouth out with carbolic soap, and the dog run up after me and she said, “Go after her Peter, go after her Peter…” and I’ve been frightened of dogs ever since.’

`It sounds terrifying.’

`Yeah…’

`And how old were you then?’

`I was about eleven. Then… then you see, ‘cause I didn’t go to Sand Hill until I were thirteen, so… but and… and then… I went out one day, and fell in the river, down at… one of the fords down there, ‘cause they had a long river… river there you know, and I… and of course I was playing about, and I fell in it and they had to come and get me out and I was screaming and shouting, “Get me out, get me out”. I was soaking wet, my hair and all…’

`Could you swim?’

`No, no…’

`So you were very frightened…’

`Oh frightened, yeah… several times I’d fallen in rivers and…’

`We’ll take a break there ‘cause the tape’s finished…’

[End of DVCPro Tape 1]

[Start of DVCPro Tape 2 - VHS Tape 1 continues]
Camera: `Mary Robbins, C905/17 tape number two’].

`Ok… so you were telling me that you were in the…’

`Home…’

`Home in Shepton Mallet, and you were telling me that you’d fallen [both talking together] several times into the water?’

`I fell into the water, yeah… and I got soaking wet [laughs]… and I…’

`And did you go to school at the same time, were you going to a school or was it a school as well?’

`Pardon?’

`Were you going to a school as well at the time?’

`Yeah, I was going to the school at the same time. Yeah, and we were going out on these… you know, when how they take you on nature walks and… ‘cause… the river was nearby. The… the… you know, it was an open gap, and somebody, you know, pushed me in as well, and I… and I… got… I said, “Oh I’m getting wet” and they said, “We’ll get you out…” and they got me out and took me into a… into a place where I could get dry, but I had an awful cold after it. Terrible, bad cold. Anyway, I… can I tell you about Terry? He had very bad asthma, and… and… Mrs Ford was getting married. Her name was Miss Dent [ph] at the time and, she married this farmer, he was a lovely chap. Used to drive all of our coaches, on out… for when we used to go on outings, and so he couldn’t come one day, so Mrs Ford had to stay with him and the other, like the maid had to come with us and I… I kept thinking about Terry and I was crying on the coach, and… and… and they said, “Don’t worry Mary, he’ll be all right”, I was very fond of him. So anyway, and then… one Saturday, he had a bad asthma attack and Mrs Ford was getting married on that day, and I can always remember we had these… hats like, you know, straw hats and they had all flowers round it and we had pretty dresses. Mine was blue, and white, and we were going to the wedding and it was out at Oak Hill, a little church out at Oak Hill, and we went to this wedding and it was beautiful and it’s the first wedding I’d ever been to and I started crying, and they said, “What are you crying for?” and I said, “I don’t like the service”, and they said, “Well she’s getting married, you should be happy”. I said, “Oh…”, I said, “I’m… "I’m sad ‘cause I… I’d never been to a wedding before.” Anyway, we had these dresses on and it was Easter, Easter Saturday. Beautiful day, and we took these flowers, when they come out, when the service had finished, we came out and went into the hall for a buffet you know, and… and I went up and gave her these flowers and she said, “Oh thank you, Mary…”, she said, “That’s sweet of you”, you know, and the others started playing about and they pushed me over [laughs].’

`For fun?’

`For fun, you know. We were playing about and I was trying to fight with them and I couldn’t get back fighting with them. So anyway they got us back home and then they… and then they sent back the rest of the wedding cake, ‘cause they were going to ask Terry to cut it but he couldn’t do it because he was too ill.’

`Was Terry a friend of yours? He…’

`He’s a friend… he was a friend of mine.’

`He lived there as well as a child?’

`He was a… he was there as a child, and his parents didn’t want him, but when… when he grew up they sent him back to his parents but he didn’t get on with them, and he ran off to Canada when he was eighteen, and got married in Canada. I have been writing to him but he hasn’t wrote to me for ages. And he got a lovely daughter, and they write sometimes, you know and… keep in touch and I tell them all the news, and we talk about the old times and… at Shepton Mallet when we used to go to school. I can remember when a… a young person died, Dawn Fiers [ph], she was a little darling, and I made friends with her and you… and she had appendicitis you know, and it was… it killed her and she was only about thirteen and I broke my heart and they asked me if I wanted to go to her funeral. I said “No, I couldn’t.” I’d never been to a funeral and I wouldn’t want to go to one, but you know, that really upset me for days, ‘cause we were so close.’

`She was one of your best friends?’

`Yeah, she was one of my best friends at school, and in the class she used to help me with my writing and spelling and she got caught one day and she got a smack.’

`Really?’

`Yeah.’

`So were you very mixed ability in this school?’

`Yeah, it was very mixed.’

`So you had some people that could read and write without any problem and…?’

`Yeah, and I… I was…’

`…other people that found it…?’

`I was bottom of the class all the time. You know, I couldn’t read, and I used to have to go in a… in a room on my own with a teacher, who’d teach me. Oh, I can read all right now. I can read the hard words and everything.’

`But it…’

`I used to read the Bible in church sometimes, to happen… I had to do it one Christmas down here, I had to read the Bible, in front of everybody, and Wadham Street was closing.’

`So when did you learn to… [both talking together]…read and write?’

`Well I learnt to read when I went… when I was looking in this massive place in… this mansion you know, it was… it was the eighteenth century this place was built and, Loverage had it, you know, it was his house.’

`I don’t know who he is.’

`No, it was… it was an old… it was an old… thing, you know, before ever I was thought of. Then I suppose when he died it was meant to the… it was given to people for… to stay in like, you know, like the men… it was a mental hospital, but not as… it wasn’t for really psychiatric… really bad cases, mainly for disabilities or learning difficult people. You know, they go out and make you work and that.’

`Yeah…’

`I can remem… I tell you what happened to me at Sand Hill Park once. I was… I was naughty, really naughty and I played and played up, and anyway, they had given me this drug, this Par… Paraldehyde. It’s like.. oh it was horrible. You know like chrysanthemums, they smell don't they? Really got a strong smell. It smelt like that and it was so strong, and they said, “Come on you’re going to have this” and it made me… and I said, “What is it?” and they said “It’s some medicine to make you better.” So I… had it. They gave me a little glass of it with about that much in it, and I slept and slept and slept. And when I woke up I… I was… mind, I slept for three or four days without nothing inside me and when I woke up, I was gradually woken up and I picked up my hairbrush and flung it like that through the window. It went right through the window onto the floor outside, and they gave me a bit more, so I slept another few days…’

`Gosh…’

`So anyway, they wanted to give me a bath ‘cause we used to have nurses there, watching us bath and… so they got me down to the bathroom, and I was so drowsy I was swearing. I won’t tell you the naughty words I used to say, but I swore, I said, “I wasn’t going to have this and I wasn’t going to have that… I’m not getting in the bath, I’m not doing this you so and so…” you know, so anyway, they said “If there’s any more of it you’ll have some more” and that’s how they kept going.’

`So they threatened you with Paraldehyde..?’

`They threatened it, all the time I was naughty, and…’

`What sort of things did you… you know, you say you were naughty, what… what kind of things…?’

`Well I used to like hit people, go for people if… see, somebody… there was a lady there called Audrey, Mitchell… and it was Joan Mitchell’s sister in law. Well I didn’t know at the time, but she’d never get on me, not Audrey wouldn’t. Anyway, I used to talk to her. She wouldn’t answer and that… used to really get me, used to really make me angry. And I said “Audrey, why aren’t you going to talk to me?”, and she went for me, one day. “I’m not talking to you and that’s it”, she said, and I pulled her hair as much as she pulled mine [laughs]. We had a good old fight then. So anyway she said, “I’m going to tell Matron on you”. She’d go and tell Matron and they used to drag me out the dining room, and I had another fight with a… nother person, but Audrey, she really got at me, she really did, so… I’d go over to her and I pulled her hair, I’d… hit her in the back, and they pulled me out the dining room and they said, “You’re going to bed now” and they’d come up with this medicine, that’s what it was, that Paraldehyde… then somebody else had a fight with me, Marina. I didn’t get on with her at all. Only a couple of them I didn’t get on with, and Marina hit me one day ‘cause we were talking at night and they were blaming me for it. Anyway, she came out and hit me across the mouth, so I said, “You ain’t going to do that to me”, so I went out… and we were told about it the next morning, they reported us ‘cause they used to do the reporting at night, and… when I got up and we went down and had our breakfast I said, “Mary, you and Marina are punished.” I said, “What for?” and she said “Because you were talking late last night.” Anyway, I got hold of… Marina got hold of me and she really hit me and she made my nose bleed, she knocked some of my teeth out so I went for her back, and they dragged me out again and did the same thing to me again.’

`More Paraldehyde?’

`Yeah.’

`Did they give her that as well or not, just you?’

`They wouldn’t give it her, they’d just give it to me, and then…’

`How was…? Sorry, how was it given to you, Paraldehyde?’

`It was given me in an ordinary medicine pot and…’

`So you… you drank it?’ [both talking together].

`I naturally took it, not thinking, and I used to sleep for days.’

`And they didn’t tell you what it was?’

`They didn’t tell me at the time. Then… then I heard a doctor just… give it to somebody else, ‘cause the doctor had to sign it before they can give it to you. Sign a paper before they can give it to you.’

`And were you there under any kind of section then or…?’

`I was under section, yeah.’

`And did you realise what that meant, or did you know…?’

`I… I… I didn’t really understand why they put me under section, ‘cause I can remember when I first went there, a doctor was there called Dr Danby [ph] and… he… used to have us in so many times a year, about twice a year, and give… put you through these tests, you know, like mental tests like… asked you what two and two was or if you can read or… what can you do? Things like that, and then you’d have to face a board of control, you know, like they call them the Board of Control. They’re like a committee, about twelve of them sitting at a big table and the doctors would tell them about you and then they’d call you in, and they would decide whether you were… whether you’d come off section or whether you would still have to be there… stay there.’

`So those tests, they would include whether you could read…?’

`Yeah…’

`…and write? What other sort of tests…?’

`…and whether you could work, like do cleaning and things like that, and then one day they called me in and I wanted my parole, and they said “You’re not well enough to have parole yet.” Ooh, didn’t I play up too, ‘cause I couldn’t have it, and then eventually they did give it to me, about six months, but I had to improve. My behaviour had to improve and… to… to prove that I could go out and be trusted without having a nurse, and they had this long drive, it was about ten miles long and we used to go out with these nurses up and down the Clyde and out round the village, and at Christmas they used to have these hounds, you know, like hunting. We used to go down the village and watch them, you know, do… do… chase after the hounds and that.’

`So what was parole, how did…?’

`It was like… you had to go out in groups you know, three or four in a group and it… if… if you went… you know, you didn’t behave yourself, they would stop your parole, they would stop your money, for a month. But if you behaved yourself in that month they’d give it back to you, but when I used to face these committees, it used to be nerve racking. There were about twelve of them sitting at the table asking you these questions.’

`And who were they…? What, what would the board consist of? What sort of people were on the board?’

`Well like… men and women and… top notch, you know…’

`Were they doctors or…?’

`Doctors… doctors… half people, you know…’

`And did you have anybody on your side as it were?’

`No, they wouldn’t stand up for me, they said I was too mental to go out into… they call them services and… or a license in those days.’

`They called them what, sorry?’

`License. You know, like… if you went out on license, like to work, you had to be good enough to go out and go out on license and they would give you the license for six months, and if you were back in those six months, then they would keep you again, they wouldn’t let you out for ages.’

`And did you have any idea of how long you were likely to be there?’

`No I didn’t, and then one day they suggested I go down to Corner House School and try and do some work down there. I did it for a month and I… couldn’t cope with it, so they sent me to Selwood. Then when I was at Selwood I stayed there for a bit and then they sent me to Bridgwater. Mary Samuel [ph] Nursing Home. I was a bit naughty there because the girls started interfering with me, you know, telling me I wasn’t doing my work properly, and when they… when the Matron come in she told her I wasn’t doing my work properly, so she told me to go up to my room. I went up to my room, and she said, “You’re going back to… you’re going back to one of the hospitals”, so I didn’t want that see, I wanted to stay there. I said, “I’m not going back” and I broke a window. So anyway, it was facing the mortuary with these dead babies in it and I used to hate it, and she’d come up and she’d take my mattress off my bed and took the bed out and the mattress and I had to sleep on the floor until the Social Worker come the next day to take me back, and I went back to Selwood.’

`Was that in a room or…in a ward or…?’

`It was in a little room, bedroom.’

`Just with that in… just with the one mattress in it?’

`Yeah, and they took that out. Made me sleep on the bare floor. And I went back to Selwood and I got my [inaudible] because I had to go back, because somebody had said I wasn’t doing my work properly, and that used to get at me as well and I used to try and do what I could, you know…’

`So you were trying to work hard but they kept telling you you weren’t good enough?’ [Both talking together].

`Yeah, [both talking together] [inaudible]… wasn’t done to their standard.’

`What sort of work were you doing?’

`I was scrubbing floors and… doing things like you know, and polishing and… go up and clean the bedrooms and then come down into the kitchen, and wash up, ‘cause it was a… it was a babies unit, you know, in Bridgwater. I hated Bridgwater. We used to go to the fair down there as well. I used to hate it there. You know, going… I didn’t like Bridgwater to live, but… you know, I wouldn’t have lived there if I wasn’t chucked out of Mary Stanley, but I did like Mary Stanley Nursing Home, but…’

`What age were you in that nursing home?’

`I was… seventeen.’

`And how old was everybody else?’

`Well they were a lot older than me. They were more like maids, you know, going up to the wards, just… cleaning the wards up. I didn’t do none of that, I just stayed down and did the kitchen work, and did some of… you know, did my own room out and things like that. And when I was at Corner House School I used to have to go right up into the loft, and sleep all on my own. I used to hate that, I used… I used to like company.’

`And the school where you went to school, what age were you when you left the school?’

`What, Sand Hill Park?’

`When you were a pupil, yeah.’

`I left there when I was fifteen, ‘cause I went up to this… place, you know, but they… when I was at… when I had to go to Sand Hill Park School, I left… Sand Hill… Shepton Mallet when I was thirteen, and they gave me a pen and a few things to go away with and I can remember going to this hostel and… and then, the… like the classrooms were just a bit further down and on the other side they used to have a men’s hostel, and they weren’t allowed to see any women at all. They… they weren’t allowed to mix with them, you know. It was just women on their own and men on their own. The only occasions when they could see them was when they used to have dances, at Christmas time. We used to have fancy dress balls and I went into a fancy dress made… I went and… I’ve forgotten what I was now, but I won a prize, I won a… first prize for it, and they used to have just dances and outings. We used to go to Burnham and Dawlish and Weston Super Mare.’

`So, the hostel… you were there as a resident were you?’

`Yeah…’

`Or when were you working there? [both talking together].’

`[inaudible] hostel…’

`In… in Cliff View Hostel? You were there as a resident were you?’

`I was a resident at Cliff View Hostel, yeah.’

`And who was it for?’

`It was for disabled people, you know, to go out ‘cause they’d been in institutions and they used to have to, you know, put them there to go out and… train and go and do some work, they had to put you out to work. A full day’s work… and you got Social Security dole money and they used to pay that at County Hall at Taunton, and you were only allowed to earn so much a week. But I earnt £5 but I was up Derek’s Tea Room for… from half past nine ‘till late night, washing up, scrubbing floors, bleaching all the cups ‘cause she used to be ever so fussy, Mrs Derek and I used to help with the potatoes. I still see the chap now, her son, ‘cause he comes to Weston and I still see him. I haven’t been over to Cheddar for ages. I don’t think I’d want to go back there now if I… you know, but they’ve got really difficult ones there now. It’s not for people like, you know, who’s a bit more with it now, it’s mainly for really, really bad cases. But they… they used to have ladies there liked knitting their woollens, going and it’s more… more with it, in my time. And one day, Doreen and Linda and Wendy, we were going down… going down to the village, and they… they were doing the roads, and I can always remember, and Wendy said, “I’m going to push Mary under that steamroller”, I said, “You’re not going to do nothing of the kind”, and she’d try and get me over, and push me under. She was a little monkey and she’d get up to tricks when I used to go to work with her at Sidcot School. She used to go into the toilet and put my… try and take my vest off and my clothes and put it in the water. Well she says, “You’re not doing that to me” and I screamed at her, and Mrs Turnock come out, the housekeeper. “What are you up to?” and I… I walked out, and they had to get John Jan [ph], the Social Worker, to get me back again. I said, “I don’t like these tricks played on me” I said, “I’m not… I’m not going back to Sidcote School”. “Yes you are” they said, “…you’re going back there now.” I said, “No I’m not.” But they got me back. They got Wendy out of it but she used to be a terror. She was in Mendip Hospital.’

`Did you like her, or…?’

`Well not the naughty things she used to… and one day we were at the hostel and there was Doreen and her, and Pam, and Josephine, and they come in the bathroom one day, I was having a bath, and Eileen Johns was on duty, the Assistant Matron, and these four of them come up and they… one of them tried to get my head down, the other was trying to push me… push me over, you know, and I… get hold of me and pushed me down and there was the other two throwing my clothes in the bath water, and I gave such a scream out, Eileen Johns come up. She said, “What’s going on up here?”. I said, “They’re trying to put my vest in the water and they’re trying to drown me.” “Come on you girls, get out of it”, she said, “Leave her alone” she said “Leave Mary alone”, and they still did it all the more when she went downstairs, so I got out and I nipped one of them and they soon went [laughs].’

`That showed them did it?’

`Yeah, never did it again. And that was the sort of things that used to happen, and they used to come down the rest room and they used to… ‘cause we had our more freedom there, and we’d… but she wouldn’t let us out if it was raining, or anything, so… when they… they come down to Weston and they started British Home Stores down here, and it… and Woolworth’s, you know, before it was like it is now, and they used to have these little shelves, you know, where you could pick up things yourself and pay over the counter. Well I went in there one day and they picked up several pairs of knickers and tights, and went off with them without nobody seeing them. Before the security cameras came in… and we used to… they used to do teas and lunches in there and we used to sit down and have tea and… or lunch, whatever we wanted…’

`Were you ever aware… did you feel different to other young people in a… of your own age?’

`Yeah, I felt a bit… you know, I felt a bit left out. I felt that people didn’t… you know, want much to do with me. I didn’t make many friends.’

`And was there… did you ever get into things like the pop music of the time or…?’

`No, I didn’t…’

`Anything like that?’

`That didn’t appeal to me at all. I just didn’t like modern music and I… on a Sunday at Sand Hill I used to have the radio on in the ballroom and we used to listen to that, sit and listen to that, and I used to love the hymns they used to sing. Used to be lovely. Went on for years, Sunday Half Hour. I still listen to it now, but it’s… you know, a lot more traditional hymns in those days, old, very old hymns.’

`So you enjoyed all that?’

`I enjoyed them. I used to like… music while you work and things like that, you know, the old… and we used to watch Muffin The Mule on the television, and then we only watched it until seven o’clock, but you know, we used to hear the news and that, and we watched the Coronation but…’

`And Muffin The Mule was one of the first children’s programmes…’
 
`Yeah, children’s programme…’

`…wasn’t it?’

`And Bill and Ben, Rosie likes Bill and Ben. Never stops talking about that. And Nora, you know Nora, that you know… you know, that had… but Nora knits her little Teletubbies and things like that. She’s ever such a good knitter.’

`So you’ve always enjoyed that…?’

`Yeah, we… we enjoy things like that, and Rosie always puts the telly… children’s telly on now. She likes Blue Peter and Bygrove… whatever you… you know…’

`Byker Grove ?’

`…telly programme, yeah… anything like that. I got stuck into the news, I’m interested in the news…’

`Uh huh…’

`And Eastenders and… Brookside and things like that.’

`Did you ever have boyfriends or girlfriends when you were younger?’

`No, no… I tell you what did happen to me once. I was going, you know, I was going on holiday to Hillworth House, from Sand Hill Park. It’s good ‘cause they used to have breaks, they [inaudible] other children used to go back to their parents or, you know, their foster parents, and I didn’t have nowhere to go but this home at… where I used to be at Shepton Mallet, and one day I was going there and this chap took me, and, we were going through the villages and one day, we stopped, and I said “What are you stopping for?” and he said “Do you know anything about babies?”, so I said “No, I know nothing about babies.” He said “Well I’m going to tell you how you have them”, and he tried to get me in the back of the car and you know, in… be a bit rude and I said “No, I’m not going to go through with that.” So anyway, when I got to the home, I told the Matron, so she rang County Hall in Taunton, and told them and they had to sack him and they said they couldn’t… you weren’t allowed to do things. We weren’t even allowed to go out the gate…’

`Who was he working for?’

`Pardon?’

`Who was he working for then?’

`He was a Social Worker for County Hall.’

`And was he your Social Worker?’

`Yeah, he was my Children’s Officer, yeah, and he used to… you know, take us backwards and forwards. Then I had a lady… [inaudible]…’

`Were you…? Sorry to interrupt you. Were you a child then? When that happened…’

`I was a child. About ten years old. No, I wasn’t… I was thirteen then, just gone thirteen and it was the first holiday I’d had, from Sand Hill…’

`So… so you knew that what he was doing was…?’

`[Inaudible] [Both talking together].’

`…was wrong and…?’

`Was wrong… so when I got to Shepton Mallet I told her what had happened, so they got hold of the Social Worker at County Hall at Taunton, and told them, you know, that I was distressed with it all, so they said he had to go.’

`And did you have any other experiences like that?’

`No, never. No. I… I’d never been out with me… and I don’t think I’d want to, you know. Not now. But I know all about things like that, ‘cause… I didn’t get told a lot of it until I was twenty or more, but I knew something. You know, one thing that they used to do but… I never used to know when to do it or anything like that it was just… well he tried to get me and I said “You’re not getting me”, and of course I was… well it was the wrong time of the month for me then, and I said “Well I’m not… I won’t let you get at me like that” and I tried to get out the car. He said “Don’t be silly”, he said, “You’ll… you’ll kill yourself”, he said, “I’ll take you… I’ll take you straight to the home”, so I got there and I told the Matron, as I said, you know and… she got hold of him at Taunton.’

`Did that frighten you, that incident?’

`It did frighten me. It frightened the wits out of me. That’s why I wouldn’t even dream of going out with a man or anything, it frightened me so much. I mean, I’m not saying I don’t like men, I mean as long as they’re decent, you know, but… I wouldn’t want them if they were going to be like that. So… can I tell you a bit about Mrs Burke now?’

`Certainly, yeah…’

`Well, when I was at Mendip Hospital she used to come and visit, you know, like on Harrowgate [ph] ward, and she used to bring sweets and things for patients. So anyway, she come up to me one day and she said “Hello Mary”, she said, “How are you?” and I said “I’m very low today”, so she said “Well I’m going to see if I can take you for the weekend… stay with me for the weekend. I’ll got and ask Sister Mitchell if you can do that.” So anyway, I went with her and she said “Yes, you can take Mary”, she said, “I’ll get Mary’s tablets up to go”. So anyway, she had me for the first time, I’ll never forget it, and we went down… I went… I only had to go down the road up to Kippat’s [ph] Avenue, and she took me upstairs and… ‘cause I… well I had all my tea on the ward. She come and picked me up about six o’clock and we walked down to her house, ‘cause it was only down the road, from Mendip, and I got there and she took me upstairs and showed me my bedroom and I was just… so used [ph] going to bed early, seven o’clock. So anyway, she said “What are you going to do Mary?” she said. I said “I’m going to bed now”, so she says “All right”, so she called me up the next morning. “What would you like to do?” she said. “I tell you what…” she said, ‘cause she was up at half past six and she used to wake me up. I wouldn’t get up ‘till seven. Anyway, she called me up and she said “We’re going out today”. She said, “Would you like to come on an outing?” she said, and I said “Where is it?”, and she said “I’ll take you to Bournemouth”, so I went to Bournemouth and I enjoyed every minute of it. We had lunch there. She’s a lovely old lady. Of course we don’t see her now ‘cause she’s… she’s ninety three… don’t want to know any more. She’s too…’

`How did she know you?’

`Well, she used to visit Mendip Hospital and… you know, she used to be a Friend Of Mendip there, and on… and then… she’s had me on several occasions, like three or four times a year.’

`So the Friends Of The Hospital would just go and visit people…? [both talking together].’

`No… no they were Friends Of Mendip. She used to have me every… you know, every time… she was… she used to have me for weekends. I used to enjoy it, and one day she got a bit cross with me. She wasn’t very good tempered. She got up like it and I was walking down the road and she said “Close your mouth” she said, “…and put your feet together properly and walk properly.” Oh I felt such ashamed and down then and I said I wouldn’t come again but I did. I’ve forgiven her… but she used to visit our ward every fortnight and we used to have some lovely times.’

`And would you have had any other visitors?’

`I don’t… no, I wouldn’t have had any others. Nobody came to see me at all, and then another lady came up, Barbara Allen. Oh she was lovely, she had a lovely sense of humour, and I was very, very depressed one day and I, you know I… I had the wrong time of the month, and I come on that… Joan Mitchell said “Mary…” to me, “Would you like to go down the canteen with Barbara?”. I said “Yes, I would love to go down” I said to her. “Well it’ll get you out… off the ward” she said, I should go down and have a cup of tea. I went down with her and she was lovely, and then one day when I was… when I was… going out, Joan Mitchell said “Mary…” she said, “I want you in the office.” She said “Barbara wants to take you to the… to her house for tea”, she said, “Would you like to go?” she said, “You and Elizabeth?’. So I said “Oh I’d love to do that” so she invited me and Elizabeth out, and then before I come to Weston to this year I haven’t been out, for tea, and Elizabeth kept saying “I can’t eat this and I can’t eat that” and Barbara said “Have what you want” she said “…and don’t have what you don’t want”, you know, ‘cause she put all sorts out for tea and Elizabeth said “I can’t have this and I can’t have that”. Anyway she said “Well you don’t have to have it, Elizabeth”, and she used to take them to the Cathedral when they used to have these advent services on, and one day I sat there and I was shivering so much. “Mary”, she said, “You’re not very well, are you all right?”. I said “Yeah, I’m all right”, I wasn’t really, and my cold was coming out like I was going to get a high temperature, so when I got back to her house, she said “Let me have a look at your leg it’s going all red”, and it’s… my toes were infection. I had an infection in my toe, and I had cellulitis.’

`Cellulitis?’

`Cellulitis, yeah. I… I’d been… used to have that at Sand Hill Park.’

`Did the hospital ever treat… your physical needs as well as your…?’

`Yes they did, they used to get the doctor out and give you tablets or… if you needed like something from the hospital, they used to get you an appointment, like when I had to have a big operation, when I was in there, ‘cause I… you know, was quite heavy with… you know, and… and… and I stopped for about a month, and so Joan Mitchell said “You’d better see the doctor” so they… they got me to see the doctor and they made an appointment for me to go up to the Bath Royal United. First of all they did a D and C and it didn’t work, and apparently it was the lining of the womb making me bleed heavy. Then I had these ovaries, so they thought they’d take it all out together.’

`Oh…’

`About six months later. I saw a Mr Dunstan. He was ever such a nice gentleman. You know if you… they really thought that you… when you were genuine then they would do something, but if they thought it was all in the mind they wouldn’t sort of help you very much. You really had to make them know that it was… you know, really genuine, make out, you… I was, you know…’

`So did you feel that they tended to not take your physical complaints seriously…[both talking together]…’

`Sometimes they took you seriously and…’

`…unless you [inaudible]…’

`…sometimes they used to say “Well it’s your mind… don’t… don’t think about it.” And one day I sat there crying in Mendip and… Joan Mitchell called me in the office and she said “Look Mary, I want… I want you to do something for me” she said. “If you will do it for me” she said, “I’ll try and help you.” So I said “All right”, so I sat down talking to her and she said “Why are you crying like this?” she said. “You don’t need to cry like this” she said. “You just try and help yourself” she said. “I can only do so much and you’re going to do much… you… I can…” you know, she couldn’t do so much, and I went off to do… help myself a bit more. And she said “If you promise me…” she said “…that you will help yourself to get out of this depression, I… I can help part of you.” I said “All right, I’ll do my best” and I sat in a corner one day, the next day, in the lounge, and I thought why am I crying like this? Why can’t I stop doing it? And… and then I suddenly thought well, I’ve seen people that have got no legs, no arms, have fits, and I said “Come on Mary, pull yourself together”, and it took me several days to get me… get myself into it you know, to think that there were people worse off than myself. So anyway, I said to her, went back to her one day and I said “Joan, can I have a word with you?”, ‘cause we were allowed to go in the kitchen then. “Yes Mary, come in the office”, I said “I’ve really thought about this.” I said “There’s much, much worse off than me, I’m doing my best to pull myself together”, ‘cause I used to throw myself on the floor and drown out myself. I used to try and go into… into… town and kill myself, try and put myself in front of a car and… do stupid little things like that.’

`And did you feel like that because… of…?’

`Because I was depressed, you know…’

`Because you were…did you feel stuck in the hospital?’

`I… I… I thought that I was stuck in there, and if you had a lot of trouble, it’s not… many of the nurses wouldn’t sort of listen to you, they… they’d walk away and they didn’t want to know. But some of them were quite good and, like Joan Mitchell and… a couple of others there. Sister… whatever was her name… oh, I’ve forgotten her name, the… one of them that used to be on Hillside… what… I can’t think of her name at the moment, but…’

`It doesn’t matter…’

`She… she was… a Sister… for Hillside and they had a fire up there once, ‘cause I was up… I was on Hartlake [ph] then, but…’

`You were on…?’

`I have been up to Hillside…’

`Where were you did you say, on…?’

`I was in Hartlake ward…’

`Hartlake ward… uh huh…’

`But Sister… Sister… this sister, particular sister was up at… Hillside and she was Acting Sister, and she was lovely, and they had a fire up there once and one of the patients saw it so they rang the emergency bell and they had the fire brigade up there and when I was on Hartlake, all these patients come down from Hillside, Joan Tugwell and all the others, you know, Joan that lives with me, and she come down on Hartlake ward, and they had to sleep over night and then put them on separate wards. The next morning she had to go over to Chilcott [ph] the next day. Anyway, Sister Hillier, that’s right, and… the one up… there was about six of us had to go into Sister Mitchell’s office and Sister Hillier came down, and… and Dr Bailey was the doctor on the ward then, and before we went in there, I went in and looked in the book, ‘cause I heard my name go so I went in and looked in the book, you know in the…’

`What was the book?’

`Diary. Diary, ‘cause they had our names down to go in these halfway homes at Fairbank and that and book her out… so I went and sneaked in the office and had a look and I said “My name’s down. I’m not going anywhere, I’m staying on the ward.” Of course Joan Mitchell come and call me and she said “Mary what are you doing in here?”. I said “Well just I thought I heard my name go so I looked in your book.” So she put it in the… and when I used to go in there and talk to her she used to pull it away so, I really used to go and read the reports.’

`You used to read the reports?’

`Yeah… if I did anything I shouldn’t… I used to go in there and read it. See if she put me down, and she did sometimes…’

`Did you…?’

`Not very often.’

`So would you have been able to… could you see other people’s reports or were they not locked or anything?’

`No, they just put… you know when they… you know, just… day reports they used to write in, for the doctors and that… and… and one day they had reports out and I read them…’

`What… can you remember what they said?’

`I can’t remember what it was but… and some of them used to do it… used to sneak in the office, and sometimes we used to get out of bed and go and make a cup of tea, and sometimes we used to go in there and put the television on and some of them used to go out in the garden, like… some of them, you know, like some of the patients on Hillside, and they used to go out and get the vegetables and the strawberries…’

`Oh…’

`And the next day the kitchen people used to go out there to pick onions and things and they used to see the strawberries missing…’

`So was there a big… a farm on the site?’

`There was like a garden, a big garden they had. They used to grow all their own vegetables and then as the years went on they stopped doing it…’

`And… and were they the same vegetables that you used to prepare in the kitchen for them all…?’

`Yeah, yeah, like… parsnips and beans. Used to go out there and pick them… pick the… gooseberries and you know, the… strawberries. Things like that, and we used to have to pick the apples out… put them all in a big bag… basket and take them down to the kitchen. I used to do all sorts of jobs in at Mendip.’

`And what was the food like once it had been cooked?’

`Oh horrible. Mind you they put… I had to go on a strict diet, you know, really strict diet, and I had to go on a 800 one… calorie controlled one. Oh it used to be dreadful, I used to starve, and I used to go down the canteen after dinner and used to try and sneak up a bar of chocolate and… I’d have it after my meal, and there used to be a little… bit of tomato, one small tomato about that big. No, tinned tomatoes and a piece of fish, you know that white fish. It tasted like cotton well. It was really horrible, and one black potato that used to go on our plate, and then we used to either have plums… plums without the custard, or apple. Oh, I couldn’t stand it.’

`There was no choice, of what to eat?’

`No, they gave it to me to have. I had to really go on a strict diet. One piece of bread, no butter. I could have toast, dry toast and a few cornflakes and it all had to be weighed out at eight hundred.’

`Did you agree to that diet or was that forced upon you?’

`No they made me do it because I had to have a big operation, and he… he…’

`Did you agree to do it, is what I mean?’

`I agreed, in the end, yeah.’

`You agreed?’

`But you see when I was… when I went to have my D and C, you know, for… scraping of the womb and that, and… this big massive doctor came up, a big woman, and she made me cry and she shouted at me and she said “You’re not going to have an operation if you’re as big as this” she said “’Cause we may have to do a bigger operation” she said. “And you’re going to have to lose some weight” she said, “You’re too heavy”. So I said “Oh…” I said, and she said “I’ll write you out… a diet sheet and you’re to stick to it and you’ll come back in two weeks, and I’m going to weigh you every time you come.” So I had to go up there about four times, and be weighed and see the doctor and in the end he had to do it, and I lost so much I went right down to ten stone. I don’t think they could do it now though [laughs].’

`That’s very light, yes…’

`Anyway… that’s what happened to me.’

`If you hadn’t been on a diet, what would the food… what sort of food did most people get?’

`I don’t think it was too bad. ‘Cause when I… when I first went there we used to have choices… menu choices, and they used to do all sorts. Lovely food, and at supper time there was… you know, you used to get bread and cheese on a Thurs… Tuesday and a Thursday, for your supper and a cup of tea or coffee or… Ovaltine, and then sometimes on a Saturday and a Sunday they used to do these iced buns you know, and they used to do those cream… with real cream in them, and we used to have them, but… then they suddenly stopped that.’

`When… when would they have stopped that? Can you remember roughly, what year?’

`Well, I think it’s got to be about… nine… nineteen seventy something… ‘cause everything was completely different. Once seventeen… once the Seventies came, and mind the doors were open more often and… Burcott was locked up though rather a lot.’

`So when you first went there, there was locked wards was there?’

`They were just starting to… yeah, there was locked wards, when I was up there for about a week when I was up there, and then they started opening them. Matron come round and said the doors had to be open, but there was one… one or two wards they kept locked, but they were kept for mainly the bad days and they used to have a patient there and she used to bang on the wall. They used to have to put her on the floor and… on the floor, take her mattress out and put her on the floor and she used to try and get up to the window and smash the window, try and rip the bars off, do all sorts. She used to scream and shout. She had to have a lot of ECT. But she’s died now, she died about a couple of years ago, Elsie Llloyd. But she was a so and so, Elsie. She wouldn’t… she wouldn’t cooperate at all, and they used to go down the pubs, the patients. I can remember when I first went to Hartlake [ph] and Sister Babberna… Babberda… no not Babbergy… another Sister, and she was lovely. You know Duffy on the television, that plays in Casualty, she… she reminds me of this Sister Backalar [ph] her name was, and I went to the ward for the first time on Hartlake, ‘cause I’d already been in there but I was on Mendip View, two months before. You know, I went out, but… and then I had to come back again so they put me on Hartlake ward and Sister Backalar was there and… she was leaving to get married. Anyway she… she had me on the ward and she put me up at… on the… upstairs, you know, like you had to go out into the hall and you had to go upstairs, and…’

`And what was upstairs?’

`Dormitories, you know, like… and there was Joan and… Tugwell, and Audrey Turner, and we were up there and Audrey used to get up to mischief, and she used to run away. She used to go out down the pubs and she’d come back, get drunk, and she was naughty, she played up one day so they put her on Burcottward, and Joan woke up and she said “Where’s Audrey?” ‘cause she used to sleep next to Audrey and the night nurse said “She’s down in Burcott‘cause she was naughty. She’s got to and they’re keeping her down there.” Joan used to call… broke her heart, she was ever so fond of Audrey… Audrey Turner, but Audrey used to get up to mischief and one day she dragged Joan Tugwell down to the pub and this cat down there. It was killed by the… by a car or something and she took it to the pub and she said “Please can you help me?” she said, and she made Joan, put it in a sack, and take it up to Mendip Hospital.’

`Why did she do that?’

`…in the sack.’

`Why did she do that?’

`I don’t know why she did it but she… you know, she used to play Joan up terrible. But on the other hand she was very good to Joan and she used to give her things and they used to go out together and Joan and Audrey worked at Cathedral School and Audrey used to go out at dinner time and get drunk, and the Bishop had to send her back, to Mendip, ‘cause she was so naughty. And then Joan used to stay there and work, but she worked harder, and then she had a… Joan had a job down at the White Hart, she worked down there for a long time, and she slipped down the stairs and broke her ankle and then they had her back again, and she started throwing eggs at Mrs Beckley [ph]. So that… they had to take her out and take her home then. She’s always on about Dr Bridger, always, non stop. “She’s taken my life”, she used to say, “She’s taken my life.” Yeah…’

`[Inaudible]’

`But I knew Joan.’

`You were describing the dormitories. How many of you would have been in a dormitory?’

`There used to be… there used to be about ten of us in the dormitories.’

`And what kind of beds were they?’

`Oh they were… iron beds. You know, like old fashioned. Nothing like they’ve got now, and then they bought these beds with… tops and bottoms, wooden, where they couldn’t take them off so easy and when I was at Sand Hill Park I used to jump up and down on my bed, and… and I put my… foot right through it once.’

`Did you?’

`Put it… put it right through the mattress and the bed, and all the steel stuff, from the bottom, underneath the bed, was hanging on the floor, broken in bits, on the floor…’

`Did you get into trouble for that?’

`Pardon?’

`Did you get into trouble for that?’

`Yeah, I got into serious trouble for that, and one day I had my glasses on and they were quite thick. This was when I was at Shepton Mallet, and I accidentally stepped on them. No, not Shepton Mallet, Sand Hill Park. I accidentally stepped on them and they were broken all in bits so I had to take them to the office, and she made me pay for my glasses, to have them… and I had to have a different pair ‘cause I couldn’t mend them, and all these bits of glass on the floor…’

`And how did you get your money to pay for them?’

`I didn’t, ‘cause I didn’t have to pay for them in the… well, I mean they used to take it out of my pocket money and they used to pay it in. If I was naughty they used to make you pay for it. If you did it purposely they’d make you pay for them, you know, and you had to say… I mean you had about a pound at the time, two pound, two… ten shillings or you know, whatever it was in those days.’

`And how were you given that money when you got the money, how did you…?’

`I didn’t have it, I didn’t… they used to hand it in when they used to take me there. The Matron used to store it up and then give it to the nurse and they used to pay it in when I used to go. But we used to have two and six a week at Sand Hill…’

`That was the… what you call pocket money?’

`Yeah, you have pocket money… and then we used to go to Minehead, on a train Easter and Bank Holidays… we used to go to Minehead on the train and we used to enjoy that… used… and we were on parole then. You could only go if you were on parole. Oh, and they used to get up to some things. Some of them used to try and miss the train purposely and… and they used to ring up and say they were late coming… they’d missed the train. They used to get punished when they come back mind.’

`Did you ever think of escaping yourself?’

`I did sometimes, but I didn’t know how to do it… and they used to put… they used to tie knots in blank… in the blankets and sheets and used to throw them out the window and the girls used to try and get out that way. Even at Mendip they used to do that as well.’

`Did they… did they succeed at all?’

`Some of them did, yeah… and they… some of them are… you know, gone out and got married and not come back again.’

`Do you know any other ways that people tried to escape?’

`Oh they got down through the fire escapes… used to leave the doors open sometimes, especially when I used to practise with the fire… you know, for when they had fires and that… all these sirens going off…’

`So that gave an opportunity for some people to…’

`Yeah, to go…’

`…get out… uh huh…’

`Yeah…’

`And would you have had your own clothes, by… I know you said at the beginning you had these very, very thick dresses…’

`No, they would take your clothes away from you…’

`So on a normal day to day in the hospital, you didn’t have your own clothes?’

`No, we didn’t… not if you were naughty.’

`Right…’

`They’d take them away from you…’

`And what would you be left to wear then?’

`Straight jackets or a night dress. I know… I wasn’t ever in a straight jacket, I was just in my night dress… and [inaudible]…’

`[Both talking together] And how many days might that go on for that you would be in a night dress?’

`I would be in a night dress for about a week. They used to keep you in bed a week. Sometimes two weeks, depending how bad you’d be… or if you’re going to do it again, they’d keep… if they know that you’re going to do it again then they’d keep you a bit longer, until you realised that you’re not getting away with it, you know [laughs]…’

`So when… were, say the majority of patients, did… would, would they have been in their own clothes or would the majority of people have been in their night clothes all day?’

`A lot of them were in their day clothes, you know, but… some of them… some of the really bad cases, were in night dresses and dressing gowns…’

`All the time?’

`All the time. And some of them, you know, and there used to be ones that had… terrible bad fits and you… to see some of them there it used to break my heart, I… I really did used to break my heart. I used to go to bed, and I said I make it out worse that I’m… you know, one of the people that’s got my hands, my feet… I can walk about, get about. Some of those poor dears couldn’t, ‘cause they… you know, were so ill, really, really physically ill and they used to… a lot of them used to die there and one day, I went through the dormitory not realising and… one of the ladies, old ladies are in bed and… she just took one last breath, and I said to Joan Mitchell I said, “Can you come in…?”, I said, “…and see this person and see if she’s all right.” And she come out and “Mary….”, she said, “She’s died”, she said, “You’d better come out the dormitory”, and I broke my heart ‘cause she was such a lovely lady.’

`Was she a friend of yours?’

`Yeah, she was… made friends with me, and then… we used to go out and that before… before she took very ill…’

`What was she…?’

`Some of them used to act, you know and I… I mean I was one of them. I… I used to be a bit naughty, used to think I was ill and I wasn’t, just to get out of work I suppose [laughs].’

`Yes… [laughs] probably…Can… well shall we take a break for lunch there?’

`Yes…’

[End of DVC Pro Tape 2 ]

[Start of DVC Pro Tape 3 - VHS Tape 1 continues]

[Camera: `Mary Robbins, C905/17 tape number three’].

`Ok…before the break, and a while back, we were… you were telling me about ECT…’

`Yeah…’

`At Mendip Hospital? How was that given to people, what do you remember of it?’

`Well I can remember them… laying me on the bed and giving me an injection, but all… sometimes couldn’t get me… veins, so I had it straight, but they do give you anaesthetic.’

`You have had it straight?’

`A small… a small anaesthetic, yeah… and if you go right out you don’t know nothing, at all, and then you come round… when I came round… well I mean it got my veins once or twice, on occasions they couldn’t get it. I think ‘cause I was so worked up at… you know, thinking I had to have it and then when I used to get there I didn’t get… I… they couldn’t get me out but then once or twice, ‘cause I was calm, and I had to have it, they gave me an injection in my arm, and I just went out and knew nothing, but when I come round I felt all dizzy and… you know, and… thirsty and… but when I come round properly I was all right and I was able to get out of bed and… go back to the ward…’

`And did you ever have to sign consent forms…?’

`Yeah, I had to consent, yeah… had to sign the form, yeah…’

`And do you remember doing that?’

`No I don’t… no, I can’t remember doing it but… I can remember when Dr Burger asked me… said to me he would send me into hospital and I’d sign the form now, but that was before I even had it or… long before I had it.’

`And when you first heard that you were going to have that treatment, what did you think?’

`Well I… I mean when Mrs Gaye told me that I couldn’t have no breakfast, and I thought oh well I wonder sort of treatment it is, ‘cause nobody told me it was ECT until I got up to the ward…’

`And what…?’

`…and they told me to get on the bed, but I didn’t know… before that what it was all about. I’d heard of some treatment but I didn’t know it was that. You know, and I… I always thought it was tablets and a rest, that’s why they made it easier to have a nap but… it wasn’t that when I got up there [laughs].’

`So when did you find out what it really was?’

`Well when… when they got me up to the ward and they told me that I was having
ECT and they got me on the bed, and I could see all this machinery there, but I… was a bit upset ‘cause you know, they didn’t tell me at the time, before… you know, when I was… down there at the hospital, that I was having that sort of thing.’

`And how was it explained to you?’

`The Sister came in and told me they would put me out, and I wouldn’t know nothing, so…’

`Did they tell you that they were going to… use electric shocks?’

`No, they didn’t tell me that, they just said they would put me out and I wouldn’t know nothing.’

`So you didn’t even know, once you’d had it, what had happened to you?’

`No… not until I’d had it a week…’

`And how was that?’ [Both talking together].

`… [inaudible] I had and then I knew what it was all about then, ‘cause they put two things up there on me… running it into your brain and it makes you shake all over.’

`You had it without anaesthetic as well did you?’

`I’ve had it without anaesthetic once or twice, ‘cause they couldn’t get my vein… the anaesthetic, but that’s… as… as I say, it’s ‘cause I was all tensed up I suppose. That’s one of the reasons why…’

`And what are your feelings about that?’

`I don’t think I’d want it again. Now once they said I had to have it and I said “No, I don’t want to go all through that again”, you know, so they said all right, we’ll put you on different tablets, and injections.’

`Mmm… and what was the usual sort of treatments that were given?’

`Well it was usually tablets and injections…’

`And what…?’

`You only had ECT if it’s really, really necessary for you to have it, but they give you antidepressants and… like if I was worried about something, I went to them and… if I was crying a lot they would be… put me on ECT… tablets, antidepressant tablets.’

`Can you remember the names of any of them or…?’

`I was on Librium, for a while… Nulactol [???] and Stelazine. They were blue tablets I… remember I was on. Three little tiny ones… and then they put me on Depixol injections. I was on them for about three years, and then they changed over to… Modecate… no, I had Modecate first and then Depixol, that’s right. Modicon… Modecate and then, like I said, three years after that I was on… Depixol.’

`And did they tell you much about the drugs, what they were for?’

`No, they didn’t tell you nothing. They just said that it would make me better and that was it… didn’t know much about it.’

`And did you think that would make you feel better or not?’

`Well, I… I did think, yes, I did think it would make me improve. ‘Cause they used to use it for people that got in a temper, but… they used to have higher doses. I was just on forty mils all the time. I used to have it once a fortnight, and then once I’d got… was getting better they cut it down to three weeks and then it went to a month and I was like that until I came out into the community.’

`So all in all, how long were you on the medication for?’

`I was on medication from…ten or eleven year, in July, 1964 until I came out of hospital in ’82. When was it I came out of hospital? Umm… December. The end of ’82 I came out, and I was on a… I was still on the tablets then and then, I improved a bit and they sort of said I didn’t need no more tablets, and then… I used to have to go and see the nurse at the clinic, at Work, once a month and then they would give me an injection and then as I got, as the years progressed, and I got better, I didn’t need them so they took me off them.’

`And what other kind of help did they offer you in hospital?’

`Oh they offered you to come to FRIEND and… oh, you mean…’

`When you were at Mendip particularly?’

`When I was at Mendip… oh I used to go to Occupational Therapy and they used to let you get… to go out in the town and go off to Weston. They like you to do all that, get yourself out into… out of the hospital you know, and… do your own thing.’

`Can you remember what you did in OT?’

`I used to do… knitting, and they used to teach some of them to cook, but I wasn’t up to the standard of cooking. As I say, I didn’t do any… nothing about cooking until… I was on the ward when I was coming out, and that was only shortbread I made. And then they used to have whist drives up there and… and they used to go out for walks, do exercises, watch videos… played bingo or, you know, and…’

`What about…?’

`Played outside games.’

`What kind of games would you play?’

`I… I… I played Bingo and cards. They used to have cards on a Friday, and we used to have music therapy, you know, like they use to… put the music on and you used to have to guess what the movement of the music was, you know, like the…’

`Uh huh… and what… what other things were on offer in Occupational Therapy for other patients?’

`Other patients used to do everything, they used to do cooking and… and knitting and sewing and crafts, and… woodwork, they used to make baskets and stools. I’ve got a stool at home, that somebody had made, in that hard… stuff, you know…’

`Like cane?’

`Like cane stuff is… you couldn’t break it if you tried [laughs]. They used that sort of stuff and they’d… do pot… pottery, all sorts of pottery, make vases and plates… paint the plates, do all things like that… sewing. I couldn’t sew, I’d not… no good at sewing at all.’

`Could the women have done woodwork if they’d wanted to, or…?’

`Pardon?’

`Could women have done woodwork for instance?’

`Yes, they could… they were allowed to do it yeah…’

`And was there any work done in Occupational Therapy, any… was there any jobs… some hospitals, in Occupational Therapy, the patient have jobs, like packing things or… [both talking together] [inaudible]…’

`Oh there is… [inaudible] [both talking together] a place for that. They used to have a… two factories, one they used to pack screws, and little things like that and the others used to pack chalks and make, you know, put plasticine in packets and things like that, and roll the plasticine out, you know, and put it in packets to send off to the shops. I used to be on the… on the… chalk… chalk… I packed chalks and that.’

`You used to do that?’

`I used to do that… all colours, different colours and white chalks, and they used to pack blackboards, and easels in packs… you know, to send out.’

`So with the chalks you’ve…’

`I had to put them in the boxes. Make sure they’re in and shut the box up properly.’

`So you put so many in [both talking together] [inaudible]…’

`So we’d put about twenty in a box.. some ten and some twenty.’

`And what did… how did you find that work?’

`I did… I did Monday. I used to enjoy it.’

`You didn’t mind doing that?’

`No, I mean I was a bit slow but… some of them were quicker than me [laughs].’

`And did you get paid for doing that?’

`Yeah, I used to get… ten… ten pound a week for that…’

`In… in roughly what kind of year might that have been?’

`Oh, 1970, after the currency, you know, and that all came out…’

`Oh when they… new money…’

`When the new money came out, yeah…’

`So how many hours might you have had to do to get ten pounds?’

`I used to do from nine o’clock until twelve, and then we’d go back down at one until five. Then we’d come back to the wards and… have our meals.’

`So you did that every day, maybe?’

`Every day, Monday to Friday, and I don’t think they ever opened on a Saturday. But I used to enjoy things like that and… sometimes they would change your work around like you’d have to work on the ward like… they changed my job around and I went to… on Hartlake, you know, I stayed on Hartlake and helped undress the ladies and put them to bed and make sure they were, you know, I had to feed someone ‘cause they couldn’t feed themselves, and… but they used to get undressed before tea and then go… go to bed after tea about seven. They used to put them to bed and I used to help them, and I used to serve out the drinks in the day time, and lay up the tables, wash up, do things like that on the ward, and then Saturdays I was free… I could to Wells and go off to Weston, go off to Cheddar, do whatever I wanted.’

`And what kind of room did you have by that time at the hospital?’

`I had a dormitory, and then I went… I was in a dormitory, and then Mrs… Joan Mitchell said to me when I was on Hartlake, “Would you like a room for yourself?”. I said I’d never been in a room on my own before, but I’ll try it, so she gave me one of the other patients’ rooms, somebody that died, so…’

`And what was that room like?’

`It was nice and… I had a proper window. I mean the bars were up but I could open my window. I had to climb on the bed to do it though, ‘cause they were quite high up.’

`And…’

`The dining room was quite long, you know, and they used to have one section for the lounge and then they used to have two long like screens, pulled them across, but they put doors there when they… when they modernised it a bit, you know, ‘cause they modernised it for a bit, after… the old times.’

`So, what did they put the screen across… to divide the room into two?’

`To divide the room in two so that one half… like there was… there were the ones that were difficult, you know you had to feed the difficult ones and then the other side they used for ordinary people that eat, you know, and… the ones you had to feed, they partitioned them off. You had like a screen across… a proper screen, you know, like… you pulled them across.’

`So you… you were helping the nurses do stuff?’

`I was helping the nurses to feed someone and then I’d go and have my tea after that.’

`And was…?’

`And my lunch…’

`Can I ask you a bit about the… you were saying you were in dormitories, and several of you in one… one big dormitory…?’

`Big dormitory yeah…’

`And what about, you know, the washing facilities and the toilet facilities?’

`Oh they had… they had… they had about six toilets and… and about four or five basins and… when it used to get crowded I used to go back in the dormitory and wait ‘till they’d finished.’

`Were they…all in a row or did… were they…?’

`Yeah, they were in a row, and the toilets… about five toilets…’

`Did you get privacy?’

`Yeah, we…’

`They had to…’

`They… if they didn’t want any… to see anybody, they used to bring the screens out, you know like they do in hospital and… the old fashioned screens?’

`So did the toilets have doors and things? Yeah…?’

`Yeah, they had proper doors and it was like little toilets to start off with, like children’s toilets, then when they modernise… moderned the place a bit they put ordinary toilets in…’

`And…’

`And they just used it for us on the wards, you know. The staff had their own toilet, down the other end of the toilet, ‘cause it had staff on it. But all the others, we… we used…’

`So you weren’t allowed to use the staff toilet?’

`No, ‘cause the staff toilet used to get locked and the nurses used to go in and… when they came out, finished, they used to get locked up.’

`Were there other things that were just for the staff…?’

`They had a… they had a kitchen… to themselves, and they could make their coffee and tea, but I don’t think they were allowed to eat hospital food, they had to go out to the canteen, and they had a big nurses home there, and quite a few of them lived in.’

`Oh, they lived on the site?’

`Yeah… further down the drive. And then they had a… Dr Bridger’s house and Dr Harmon’s house, then when they… they was to retire, they made it into a… a half way home, you know you… we… they put out who had to go down, and there was six of us that went to Fairbank, then a few of them that went to Bridger house and that was next door, that was… they called that Bridger House after Dr Bridger’s name.’

`That had been his house?’

`It had been his house before and Dr Harmon had the other one, Fairbank. The one we were in was Fairbank, and there was six of us down there.’

`And that was still all within the hospital grounds?’

`That was in the hospital grounds.’

`And so how was it different being there to being on the ward?’

`Well it was a lot different because, you didn’t have to do what you did in… in the hospital, I mean you’d go to work and if you had a bad day you could stay home and… stay in the place, but I mean you had to do your own cooking, and… of course I didn’t touch none of it, Elizabeth wouldn’t let me touch none of it. She used to do it all herself, and then they used to allow so much money to go down to Wells to get some things in… in Gateway’s and you made friends with the people down there, they were so… helpful in the shops in there, and we used to buy fish. She wouldn’t have no meat in the house at all. ‘Cause we wanted meat, she wouldn’t have it and she wanted fish all the time or cheese and sauces and stuff like that, and everybody there would get jelly and… jelly and then on another day you’d get blancmange, well… nobody was… wanted that, they were sick of it all the time, and then… she went back to the ward because she had a… bit of breakdown so they sent her back to the ward, and then they wanted one of us to go up with her to keep her company for a bit ‘cause she had to stay in the ward, in her room in… I used to go and visit her and I stayed there with her. Used to let me sleep with her, put a bed in there, and then she got up to her pranks. You could tell she was getting better ‘cause she used to get up to her pranks. And then she came back down to Fairbank again, and I… she wanted a room on her own, ‘cause she had one at… in… ‘cause there was two beds, and there was enough for two beds in there, and then… when… when I went up there, I was only in there a couple of nights, and then when… when they said we had to go back down to Fairbank she said she wanted a room on her own. So they gave her a room on her own and it… she had the best of the rooms and I had the… one that was all damp and horrible, and I said “Well I can’t sleep in that, I’m going to go in another room”, so they put me in another bedroom, much nicer then. Anyway…’

`There was no staff in that kind of…?’

`No staff, no staff, just night staff coming in and out… to see if you were all right, at Fairbank, and then… one night, it was, you know, it was a nice summer’s evening and she went out in that field, ‘cause they had stinging nettles and all sorts in those… you know, thistle things, stuck up in the grass. She used to go out there and pick those out, and she put them in my bed one day, and I’d gone to bed and I had all stinging nettles, marks all up my legs and all thistle prints up my legs. I gave one screech out and the nurse come over. “What’s going on?”. I said, “Elizabeth put stinging nettles in my bed”, I said “…and thistles”, and they said “Well, she’ll have to be punished” and they sent her back to the ward again, and I had to… I had to go up to… Hillside then into a… Dove’s cottage.’

`That was the other…halfway house?’

`That was another half way home but there was only two of us in there, and… we didn’t get on so I had to go back to the ward then, I had to go back to Burcott. I went back… I rang up the nurse and told her that I couldn’t stand it no more, so they had me on Birkott and I was there three weeks, and… and then I went… and then when those three weeks were up, they said I should go out… I had to go out, you know, back down to the houses. I said “I don’t want to do that again, I’m not going all through that again”, so they kept me on the ward until I came out, to Mendip, and then I came into Weston.’

`Did you… it’s interesting, you were saying that when you went into the village and so on, to get food from the supermarket…?’

`Yeah…’

`…that people were very friendly… did you ever encounter any sort of trouble from the public or, because you’d been in there?’

`No, not really, no. Not at all, I mean they were quite helpful. And then I went to church… United Church. When I was on Hartley [ph] Joan Mitchell would like to get, you know, like us to go out, and like you know, go down the town, so that we would be prepared for community, going outside. This is the first time I was ever going out… had that confidence to go out, and this… Minister came up to the ward and I said to her… to this… with Joan, I said, “I’d love to go to church” and she said “Where do you want to go?” and I said “Well I’d like to go to a Baptist Church… somewhere in Wells, I know there’s one somewhere.” So this Minister came round and she had a word with them, but I had to see the doctor before I could do this, and… and the doctor said “What do you want… what do you think about church?” and I said “Well it’s all about Christianity and about helping others” you know, that’s what they want to read in the Bible and studying it, so she… she said “All right” she said, “We’ll let you go”, so… Joan Mitchell told the Minister, and he contacted the one from the Baptist Church and they came up to see me, so I started going off Sunday mornings, just for one service, and I got to like it so I went in the evening. They used to pick me up… the people used to pick me up and I got quite friendly with them, and… I used to go out and enjoy that and then I was baptized, about January… February, I was baptized in 1975, and I was about thirty something then. I can’t remember off hand but I think I was in my thirties, and I was baptized, and then I become in membership with them, and they used to have Parish open days in the summer and I used to go out and help them…’

`They had what open days sorry?’

`Parish open… Bishop.. open days, you know, like they used to have open days in the Mendip Hospital…’

`Oh…’

`…in the churches all around the district. I used to go and help wash up and prepare the food, put sandwiches out and do salads for them and things like that…’

`And… and what, who would come to an open day for instance?’

`Well anybody was invited, it was… you know, for everybody the public, some of the Mendip patients went down and… and the church, and they had a… from other churches as well, and Mendip Hospital used to have faith days, I used to go down and help with that, and I’d like get… wash up in the kitchen and… do things like that. I mean when Rosie come with me from… from Weston, I took her for the first time, they all loved Rosie… of course Joan wasn’t with us then, it was just me and Rosie and I took her to Wells and… she said “Can I come and help you in the kitchen?” and they all loved her in the… they took to her straight away. They said she was a lovely person and she snatched the bread off the table one day [laughs]…’

`So she’s one of your oldest friends, is it, Rosie?’

`She’s one of my oldest friends and she’s… a little love… do you know if you give her some work to do, she’d do it and she’d do it extremely well, she really would.’

`That’s interesting.’

`What else did I do down there? Down… Alfred Street. Oh we used to go off to Clevedon and see our friends…’

`Where was that, when you were living in…?’

`When I was living in Weston…’

`Uh huh…’

`We used to go and see her friends in Clevedon and they used to have us out for the day, and then the first time we went down Alfred Street she had to come back up Stanton and scrub floors and do work, and then it got dark in the winter, so Mrs Glenn stopped her. And then we… when we were… we.. .when… when we were in Weston, when we were in Weston, I used to work with Rosie and go and help her, when I wasn’t even supposed to go, I used to go and help her, but the very first time I come to Weston I wanted something to do, and it was the very first day, and I went in the kitchen and there was Rosie doing all the ironing. I said “Rosie, let me iron” and Mrs Glenn come out. “No Mary, you’re not allowed to do the work here”, but I got so sick of sitting there doing nothing, that…’

`Why did she say that?’

`Pardon?’

`Why did she say that you shouldn’t be allowed to do it?’

`’Cause I wasn’t allowed… I wasn’t really supposed to do it, see, ‘cause I was one of the residents who… they had Rosie, to… had her there because she had to work there, you know, they had her for work mate… morning. Anything else… because she had a job at Clifton, and that…’

`What, she did live there as well?’

`She lived at Weston, but before that she had a job in Clifton, and… the lady that had her, she died, and… she had a Social Worker called Mrs Aspel, and they brought her to Weston for interview and… and Mrs Bladon had her and said she would love to have her, so she’s had her ever since.’

`So what did you find to do in Weston?’

`Well, I used to go out and then I got tired when I got back home, and I wanted something to do, besides going out, sitting in the house… and I used to do the housework, but once that was done… I used to finish it by half past eleven and I wanted… and we used to have to go up there for our dinners at the time…’

`Up where?’

`Up to Stanton… for our dinners at the time. But I got so fed up with it so I said to her “I’d like something to do” so I… I got on the ‘phone and I said “Mrs Bladon have you got any jobs I can do?”. “Oh all right Mary…” she said, “If you want to come round and wash up and… help you can”, so that’s how it all started off…’

`So you did…’
 
`And then she taught me to do some cooking. I went to the… place out at the old… what… what do they call it now, Royal Hospital. I went out there and the… I had training in six weeks of cooking, so… you know, I enjoyed that, and that’s how I started picking up my cooking. Of course I couldn’t make cakes and I did ordinary lunches and things like that, and then when I was at Stanton they started teaching me to make cakes, and sponges…’

`And you still enjoy that now?’

`I’m still enjoying them and they said they come out better every time. I said “I don’t know about that” [laughs].’

`But you enjoy cooking?’

`I do enjoy cooking now ‘cause I’ve got more confidence in myself to… do it, you know. I do really enjoy it.’

`That’s good.’

`What else have I done in my life? And we used to go off to Wells, you know, like go and see Mrs Burke and… you know, go out for the day with her and… she’d have us up her house, and give us… take us out for dinner and then we’d have a cup of tea and watch Countdown and Fifteen To One…’

`I know, the quiz ones…’

`And then we’d get the six o’clock bus back from Weston… from Wells, back into Weston. We used to arrive home at seven o’clock, but we used to have some good times. You know, at Mendip as well, we used to have some good times, and they… and they used to go out late at night, and they used to be out, you know, some of them. They used to get drunk…’

`How… what other things did the hospital do in order to help you live… prepare to live in a community?’

`Umm…’

`You said that you needed to learn to cook, but what about handling money or going shopping…?’

`Oh yeah, she taught me that. They’d give us so much money a week, and they told… you know, they’d give you enough for what you wanted for the shopping, like ten pound and some… well I mean things were a bit cheaper weren’t they then? And we used to go out and buy… like when I was at Fairbank I used to sneak out and get myself some sausages and… cook… cook them you know, and do things like that.’

`And did that seem strange having been quite a long time…?’

`Yeah, it did seem strange but of course Elizabeth was away on Christmas ‘cause she was ill, and… Joan Mitchell came down to a part… a dinner party. We did chicken and all down there, but we had a nurse to help us with all that. They used to come down and help us with the cooking, but when Elizabeth was down there we didn’t have nobody. Because Elizabeth was out, you know, out of… place for a bit, we used to have the nurses helping us do it. Once she got down there she took over.’

`That was when you were in that halfway house?’ [Both talking together]

`When I was at the halfway home, Fairbank…’

`But when you were preparing to live where you live now, was there any other… skills that you sort of had to learn that you might not have had?’

`Oh we had to do our own washing and clean our own rooms, and make sure everything was tidy and… and then we had freedom, like we could do what we like after, but they used to allow us so much money, ten pound a week, and had enough for what we needed, you know, and they used to give it to us, ten… for… for the week, you know, and that… you had to get the whole bulk in for the week, and then…’

`And what… what year would that have been?’ [Both talking together].

`Then when that runs out you had to go up and sign for some more money, and they used to keep our social security books, and if we wanted any money we’d have… we had to sign a form and go out and get it, and we used to have shopping day… goes out shopping on a Thursday, and we used to get fish in and stuff like that, but…’

`Was it difficult to have access to your money?’

`Sometimes it was, yeah…’

`Say you went and you wanted to take more out than they thought…

`Yeah, because they only allowed you so much, and you could only draw it out one or two days and then once you did that you couldn’t draw no more out. You had to wait for the following week to get it out. Some… some had theirs when they wanted it but it wasn’t… it wasn’t allowed, where I… the ward I was on or… not even when I went to Fairbank.’

`So how… how did people get enough money for their…say things they wanted to buy like cigarettes say, or…or sweets or what have you…?’

`Well they… they would have pocket money. Some got more than others, but they had to make that last. Of course, cigarettes were cheaper. I mean I didn’t smoke, only when I first went in there and then I gave it up, I didn’t… couldn’t be bothered with it again.’

`And was there a hospital shop?’

`Yeah, there used to be a canteen and they used to go down and have cups of tea, and they used to sell cigarettes down there and chocolate and stuff. If we couldn’t go down the town, or if we didn’t feel like going down the town… you’d go down the canteen and make use of that, and then some of them used to go down to the club, what they call the club, and play games and things like that down there. In the summer they used to play… play tennis… have tennis courts there as well, they played tennis, and they used to have sports, fete days… used to get the Friends of Mendip in the team and organise all these things… for the fetes…’

`Did they have… I think you… you at some point had mentioned…smoking concerts or…[both talking together][inaudible]…’

`Oh we had… we actually had smoking concerts.’

`What did that mean, what was that?’

`Well like, they sit… put cigarettes on a saucer. The ones that smoked could have a cigarette, but if you didn’t smoke you could have the sweets and the biscuits and things like that.’

`And what was the concert, what would that have been?’

`It was people going up on the stage singing and… if they could sing or… recite a poetry or do some conjuring or whatever, and the staff used to join in with them and they had pantomimes then, and I can remember little Hilda Powell when she was there, when I first went there. She was in a pantomime and she was very good, and we used to have a lady there called Moira, and she was always out, shouting out… “You stink, you stink of manure…” and things like that, you know, she was ever so funny, and she used to shove cigarettes down her… dress, and she always used to shove bread and cheese down there. She was a character, she really was. But she used to go out in the street shouting, and then we had Margaret Allen and she used to say… “Can… Can Parkhouse give me a baby? Can… Parkhouse give me a baby?”’.

`What was Parkhouse?’

`Pardon?’

`What was Parkhouse?’

`No… Mark… Mark...’

`Oh Mark…’

`Mark Parkhouse his name was… funny chap…’

`Right… who was he then?’

`Pardon?’

`And who was he?’

`He was one of the patients, and Margaret Allen… he used to go… she used to go out with him and she always used to think she was having babies, and she used to shout “Can Parkhouse give me a baby, can Parkhouse…” and everybody used to stand there and say “Shut up shouting Margaret, go back to the ward.” I can remember when Mrs… Sankey [ph] was there, and Miss Whitehead, and they were both in the… ‘cause we used to have pictures as well there… used… to have pictures every Monday, and I went in the hall there once…’

`Do you mean films?’

`Pardon?’

`You mean like films?’

`Yeah like they used to show films. I didn’t go often but they used to have them every week, and one day I was going down to the hallway at… hall in… in… Mendip, and Miss Whitehead stopped me and she said “Mary…” she said, “…you want to clean your shoes. Go back to the ward and clean your shoes and put your hair tidy.” [Laughs]. We used to see cowboy films and… you know, a lot of films and all that, you know.’

`And who would choose what films were going to be shown?’

`They never let us choose, it was… it was what they… used to have sent to them. They used to send them.’

`So was there a special sort of cinema or was it shown…[both talking together] [inaudible]…?’

`No, it was just there… we had a big screen in the hall and… and they used to… show films once a week. They used to have fancy dress balls there. Lovely fancy dress balls and lovely prizes. They even used to have raffles and at Christmas time there was… on the ward they used to put all the tables together, and you’d have this Christmas dinner and they’d do a party, and you had karaoke, you know, like dancing and music and they used to keep it all going and… used to have to be in bed by ten.’

`That would have been in the sort of seventies or sixties?’

`Yeah, sixties, seventies… then it started all going, you know and the… there was nobody to do anything like that.’

`When did it start to change, that…?’

`It started changing about 1970, towards the end of the seventies, and… and it was… you know, and there was nobody to get outings up. There was nobody to do concerts any more, no pantomimes, it all went.’

`What about the gardening and the food and all…?’

`The gardening was all right, that was still going, and then when they told us that… I think we saw it in the… Wells General that the… place was going to close in 1990s, and Joan, well… she made me laugh, ‘cause when… ‘cause when we came to Weston, she came. Before they were closing the hospital she said “I want to go to Wells, I want to go to the party, the closing party. I want to see Dr Bridger.” I said “All right Joan, we’ll make a day…”, so Gvin give us the details, you know, with the… one of the Community Nurses, and he gave us the details, what to do and what time to be there. Of course, we got there, and we had to go and see Betty Neale up in the hall ‘cause she was one of the lady’s that had organised this party, for the close… closure, and we… and we went to Betty and we said “We under…”, oh it was a tea dance, that’s right, and it was a tea dance they had and they invited all patients that had been out and wanted to come to it. It was all in the programme and everything. So we got to Wells, and got there about ten… twelve o’clock, and we got up to the Mendip Hospital and the… I went to the reception and they said “What do you want?” and I said, “Oh, we understand there’s a tea dance up here”, “Oh no”, he said, “Not for you, it’s only for the staff.” I said “Oh no”, I said that we were told, I said “It was for patients.” Well, “Oh no” he said. “Wait a minute” he said, “I’ll get hold of Betty”. So Betty Neale come down and… we told her what had happened.’

`She was a Sister was she or…?’

`Yeah, she was a… she was one of the organisers, and she was a nurse there as well. So anyway, she come down to us and she said “What… what do you want ladies?”, she said “Hello Joan, hello Mary”, and I said “Hello” and Joan said “Hello” and she said “What can I do for you then?”. I said “We’ve come over to the tea dance”, and she said “Oh no, it’s not really for you, it’s only for the staff”. So Joan looked round and said “I’m not going back all the way to Weston without nothing inside of me”, so anyway, so Bet… “I want to see Dr Bridger” she said. So, Joan went and Betty said “Come on then, come down with us.” She said “We’ll all make sure you get down there.” So we went down, and they were having eats you know, and… like that and talking to each other, and then… about three o’clock, one of the staff that was there, a Mr Derek, he collapsed and then… he had a stroke. So Dr Bridger went out and got the ambulance. He was rushed off and he died on the same day, and then Joan was going, “Oh poor Mr Derek, he’s died.” I said “He hasn’t even died yet Joan, he’s just had a stroke”. Anyway, so we were stuck with transport to get us down to the bus stop, ‘cause… we got a… we got a taxi and it was pouring down with rain and Joan said “You can’t afford a taxi, I ain’t got no money, you can’t afford a taxi”. I said “Don’t worry”, I said, “Somebody will take us down.” So one of the staff came down and took us down, to the bus stop, and we caught the bus home about seven o’clock.’

`So was there no leaving party at…?’

`Not for the patients there wasn’t.’

`So that shut down in around 1990…?’

`Yeah, it shut down…’

`But there was never anything for the patients?’

`They didn’t have nothing for the patients and… they actually got them out into homes like in Bath and Taunton and Weston. There was a lot of homes… down here now with a lot of them in.’

`How many might there have been, any idea?’

`I don’t know, ‘cause… I don’t know how many there had been but…’

`Would it have been like hundreds or thousands of people that were at the hospital or…don’t’ you know?’

`Well most of them, yeah… and some of them went back to their families, you know, but a lot of them, they ended up in homes, the older ones. And the ones that didn’t have anybody went into… flats and things like that, you know.’

`Yeah…’

`Some went back to their wives and some went back to their husbands and… some, like us, you know… went out into homes… other homes.’

`Mmm…’

`And there’s some in Wells, they got houses in Wells for people like us. They’re doing things for themselves.’

`How many patients do… had… I’ll start again. Say, in the 1970s, and 1960s, can you remember how many patients there might have been on a ward?’

`I think there was thirty on Hartlake ward, and thirty on…’

`And…uh huh…’

`And I don’t know about the… some of them were about twenty and some were about twelve. Burcott was only twelve.’

`And do you remember how… how many wards roughly in the whole… place?’

`I think there was about twelve of them…’

`Twelve wards?’

`About twelve wards. I don’t think I could remember the names.’

`No, no… and each had about twenty or thirty…?’

`Yeah, about twenty or thirty, but the smallest ward was Burcott, only had twelve on it, and I can remember going into that ward, when I was naughty, and…’

`What do you remember about it?’

`Well I can remember them being… you know, we couldn’t get out, we had… we were locked in and you had to have permission, to go out, you had to get a doctor’s consent before you could go out, and once you were all right they let you go out, just ask for the cleaner to let you out.’

`Did you… at the time did you know about the Mental Health Act? There was one 1959 and one in…1980…?’

`I didn’t know much about it at the time…’

`Mmm..’

`Not until… then I… oh wait a minute, when I was a little girl, I heard about Wells’ Asylum, you know they used to tease me at school and they’d say, “You’re so daft you’ll be in Wells’ Asylum” you know, and I used to say “Whatever’s that?”, and they said it was a mad place where you had to work all day. I believed it too. [Laughs].’

`So did you used to fear that a bit?’

`No, I didn’t, it didn’t bother me. I… I just used to take it with a pinch of salt.’

`And did you ever think that would happen or…?’

`I didn’t think it would happen to me you know, but… I said… you know, after the years went on and… like I say, when I first went there they started opening up and the people had more freedom… than they used to. I’ve got some photographs of… of… some of the… you know, of the… Wells Journal bits of when they had the big snow there and big… Joan Mitchell’s taken photographs of the painting. You know, all iced up, and the nurses in their old uniforms. Long dresses and long, you know… aprons, frilly caps, frilly cuffs, frilly collars, all dressed up they were, nurses, with these old fashioned trolleys, with all the medication on them. And they used to… do Christmas puddings and all in there…’

`So…’

`…in the kitchens and Joan used to go down and… and I’ve got a photo of her stirring one up, at Christmas…’

`Stirring a pudding?’

`Yeah… [laughs].’

`You were mentioning the uniforms… when did that change? When did you notice a change?’

`[Both talking together] That… that changed about 1970, early seventies. They started wearing private clothes. They didn’t wear their hats like they used to, and you’d call them by their Christian name, which you couldn’t do in the 1960s, you weren’t allowed to.’

`So what would you have called them in the sixties?’

`You would call the Sister, `Sister’. You could call her Sister Mitchell, or whatever their names were, Sister Hillier, and you would call Staff Nurse, `Staff Nurse’ and then you would call the NHS nurses, and… the Matron, she used to come round the ward, every day and say “Good morning”. She used to come down and check the trolley and make sure the dinner isn’t… and breakfasts’ were all right and then she’d go off again.’

`And things like getting up in the morning in those days, when the staff had… [both talking together]…’

`They used to get you up at six o’clock.’

`And what if you didn’t want to get up… you just…?’

`Well, they’d get you out of bed. They’d pull your bedclothes back off you and make you come out [laughs]. I’ve had it done often. I’d say “I don’t want to get up”, and they’d say “You’re getting out of that bed”, and they’d stand there over you until you got out of bed.’

`That was tough…’

`And if you didn’t want to go to bed they’d make you go… you know in… after… they’d turn the television off. You should be in bed by now, come on, get up to bed [laughs]… [inaudible]’

`What kind of time would that be?’

`We used to talk late at night, talk about all naughty things… what we used to get up to.’

`What sort of time did they want you in bed then?’

`[Tape distorting] [inaudible] They used to turn the lights out ten o’clock, but we used to still talk, and the night nurse used to come round. “Stop your talking, get to sleep.” But I… you wouldn’t get a cup of tea in the morning, and they’d get you up like… you had to be up by seven o’clock, and sit in the lounge until breakfast time. When they were on… um, Avalon with Mr Manning, he used to make us take it in turns to do the breakfast, like do the toast, and the scrambled egg, and then when they started all this cooking, he wouldn’t let me do any ‘till I was coming out you know, he wouldn’t let me do it, then… until, you know, the day I was coming out.’

`Right. So, if we go back to that time when they’d get you up at six and pull the covers back and say “Get up” and you’d have your breakfast, and then what… what might happen after that?’

`Then you had to go to work. Sometimes, if you didn’t feel up to it and they knew it was… you know, if you was poorly, and they knew it was… for real, they wouldn’t let you do it, they’d let you see the doctor. Once or twice when… they thought I was acting, and I had to go to work and they had to send me back again ‘cause I was so sick, you know, with my legs and that, I used to… suffer with that cellulitis, and it used to go oh, all in my leg and… used to be like a tree trunk… come out as a… like a tree trunk. It was all swollen, and… they used to put me back to bed, and bring me… I had plenty of orange drinks and things like that, and they used to bring me my tea. Sometimes I didn’t feel like it, but… I mean those days were quite good, apart from the other places that… I mean Selwood was not too bad, they gave me my freedom and… you know, you had to go out in groups, and Sand Hill Park, I think it was the worst place I’d ever come across.’

`Why was that?’

`Well, because we weren’t treated, you know, properly and… you only would have to do something and somebody… we all went to bed one night, and it was about seven o’clock, and they had this big committee meeting, you know, for the hospital, and… and… there was two or three of them poking their heads out the window, and they could see all these, you know, top knots coming, and they shouted out, “You can only come for a cup of tea and a biscuit.” Of course, there was a nurse… a sister standing in the doorway, and she said “Who said that?” and nobody would own up. “You’re all going in the book tomorrow” she said, “Be booked.” And we were all booked, and the Matron come in and she said, at breakfast time… I went down and had breakfast and she said “Good morning everybody.” We said good morning, and she said “I’m going to punish you all” she said. “There was rather a lot of noise, upstairs last night…” she said, and she said “And there was shouting out the window. I want to know who it was. If you don’t own up you get punished.” And nobody owned up so we all got punished. We had our money stopped for a month, we had to go to bed, early for a week, and we couldn’t have nothing and we had to work all day, until it was time for us to go to bed. And sometimes they would get you up at night if you were really naughty, and they would get you up at night, and they’d get you downstairs and scrub all the corridors, with steel wool…’

`In the night?’

`Pardon?’

`They’d get you to do that in the night?’

`In the night. Yeah…’

`As a punishment?’

`And you had to have… you had to have the nurse stood over you and watch you… doing it all night, until they think you’d finished and then you went back to bed.’

`What would have happened if you’d refused?’

`Oh you’d get… you’d get punished. They’d make you do it until… you know, if you did refuse, they’d make you do it. They’d come… come out and get you out of bed or something, make you do it.’

`They’d physically come and get you or…?’

`Yeah, we wouldn’t… they wouldn’t… let you get away with it. Not at Sand Hill Park they wouldn’t. I had a happier life in Mendip than I did at Sand Hill Park.’

`What other ways were the nurses unpleasant to you?’

`Well I mean, we used to try and share jokes with them and they used to report that and they used to think you were being dirty. Especially if you talked about the men, ‘cause a lot of them knew about the men and they used to… escape and go out with men and… stay out all night half of them used to.’

`Did…?’

`Yeah, and they used to come back and say, oh… tell them dirty jokes and…’

`How did they manage to get out in the night then? To do that…?’

`Well they used to… they used to try and get the key out the office, they… they got one of the keys out once and… sneaked out and locked the door behind them and… they didn’t get caught ‘till the next morning. They had to get the Police, and when I was at Cliff View, there was three of them, absconded after ten o’clock and… Mrs Day said they had… ‘cause we had to be in by ten o’clock at Cliff View, and there was three of them got… got out and never come back… until it was two or three days and the Police had to go out looking for them, and they had to go somewhere else when they came back, they wouldn’t have them in the place. Mrs Dipa [ph] had to take her mum and go somewhere else.’

`So where were the men in the hospital? Were they in a separate…?’

`They were on separate wards. At one time they weren’t allowed to see the ladies but then they got them together and started… you know, getting them to talk to each other but some of them would be a bit naughty… go out and get the other ladies into trouble and some were decent.’

`Did they manage to have sort of any sexual relationships??’

`Well some of them did, yeah. But we didn’t have no men in the hostel. We had them in Mendip, a lot of them. I think there was more men than there were women, and they used to go out, take the ladies out down the pub and… to all sorts, you know, drinking and… and… and Audrey used to go out. She used to be a little terror, Audrey Turner, she was down that pub every night. And one night I went to Weight Watchers, ‘cause I had to go to Weight Watchers when I was on Avalon [ph] and I used to go down to the town hall and they weighed me and I was about twenty stone. I had to lose all this weight, right down to ten stone. And I didn’t succeed, I only went two or three sessions, so… I didn’t… I didn’t… and then one night somebody followed me down the drive, followed me all the way down the drive, right down to the bottom of… to the town.’

`Of what place? Oh…’

`Frightened most of the life out of me and there was… they had these dogs with… you know, these mouth things…’

`Like muzzles?’

`…on the dogs… muzzles… and… they had dogs with them on and… they followed me all down the drive, and I was so frightened I nearly went back again. I managed to get down to town in the end, but they chased me all the way down…’

`Did they?’

`And when I got to the Town Hall, I said I wouldn’t do it again, and I didn’t come down any more after that. Too frightened.’

`Can we take a break?’

`Yes, if you like…’

[End of DVC Pro Tape 3]
[DVC Pro Tape 4 – VHS Tape 1 continues]

[Camera: `C905/17 tape number four’].

`Mary, when you look back over the experiences that you’ve had sort of in and out of the different institutions, do you think that you should ever have ended up in a psychiatric hospital?’

`Umm… maybe I [ph] thought it didn’t do me no good, you know, I wouldn’t have gone in there but I heard so much about it, that if I did need it, it was there for me to go into to be looked after.’

`But when you very first ended up in a psychiatric hospital, you were only fifteen, is that right?’

`That was at Sand Hill but…’

`Uh huh…’

`…that wasn’t quite a psychiatric…’

`Right…’

`’Cause it was just mainly for people with learning difficulties that, you know, didn’t know how to work and things like that.’

`And did you consider yourself as somebody who has, or had learning difficulties or… or not?’

`No I didn’t think nothing of it, I just thought I was an ordinary person you know, going to school like anybody would or… I… I think what it was, was because I didn’t have anywhere else, and that’s the reason why… they put me out there, ‘cause I wasn’t fit for work. But I never ever thought of… not being fit for work. Never entered the… my head at all.’

`And did you do any… did you have to do exams at school or anything like that?’

`No. When I was eleven, they wouldn’t let me do that sort of thing ‘cause they… they said… how many… they said I wouldn’t be able to do it, you know, I wasn’t quick enough for that sort of thing, and it was a scholarship, and I didn’t go through with that…’

`You…’

`And they did tell me that I was going to somewhere else, but they didn’t tell me where, I was going, they just said I was going somewhere else…’

`So did…?’

`…in the future, when there was a place for me.’

`Mmm. So did you have any… what sort of ambitions might you have had when you were much younger? What did you think you might do in life?’

`I think… well I thought I might be able to help like… go out into the community and clean up places like we do now and… and… do anything like if they… if I could train to be a cook or something, but I never, ever thought that I would be in that situation where I couldn’t… wouldn’t be allowed to do it or couldn’t do it. I never even thought of things like that.’

`So it sounds as if you ended up, and you still do, you did quite a lot of caring and nursing type work…’

`Yeah…’

`Did… did you ever think that you’d [both talking together] maybe like to go and nurse or anything?’

`I didn’t really want to do that sort of thing, no. I never ever thought I’d… have the brains to do it, you know.’

`But you were telling me that you… you read perfectly well now and [both talking together] you stood up in church and…?’

`I read perfectly well, yes I do. That’s only because I’ve been able to… I mean my sight was poor as well, and I used to… I mean when I was at… I couldn’t read properly until I went up to this… hospital, and they used to teach me when I had spare time, and the girls used to help me read.’

`The other patients you mean?’

`The other patients, yeah. When… when we had… you know, when we had our freedom and that, when we didn’t have to work or anything, I mean… from… from eight o’clock until five, you had to work but after that, I mean we could do anything. Go in and watch the telly apart from… when it was time for us to go bed and if we didn't want to watch telly, then somebody would come and help you… you know, spell and put down on paper and then I used to have to try and memorised the spelling and all things like that.’

`So did you really enjoy learning that?’

`I did… I did. Then I picked up the reading quite well really I suppose.’

`And you write perfectly fine now?’

`I… I mean I’m not good writing, but I do get some of my words… wrong, that I’m not sure of. I mean if I get stuck with a word, Joan’s excellent at… spelling. And he’ll help me and Rosie… if we get stuck with a word and we’re not sure of the word she helps us out with it. It’s like at Sand Hill, if I got stuck with a word they used to help me. The older ones used to, the ones that had the ability to do it. They had a lady up there, ninety… that was the oldest lady they had at… Sand Hill Park.’

`Did they have any kind of library at the hospital?’

`No, none I… oh… oh, do you mean at Sand Hill?’

`Any of the places?’

`Not at Sand Hill they didn’t, no. They used to go down the village and get books and things, or buy them.’

`I was just wondering what you began when you started to… enjoy reading, what sort of things did you read?’

`I used to read children’s books and… then it went to grown up. I didn’t read much about sex or anything, that didn’t interest me.’

`What kind of things do you like reading?’

`I… I like reading… I still like reading children’s books and… magazines, and… I like looking at other things, pictures in the books and things like that.’

`And how did… how would you have kept in touch say, in the 1960s or ‘70s in the hospital, how would you have kept in touch with the outside world? Did… were there newspapers around and that kind of thing?’

`Yeah, they used to… you can go out… you used to go down the village or down the town or wherever you were at, for… and go down and get a paper, and read it, or a book, and… I used to do knitting, a lot of knitting. When… when I was at OT at Sand Hill I used to knit babies’ clothes, and make from the patterns, and make babies’ coats, hats, everything. I couldn’t do it now, I couldn’t concentrate on it. Wouldn’t be able to put my mind to it. So I didn’t… you know, my mind wouldn’t work that way now, for things like that, you know pattern work or anything like that. And… and of course it’s different to what it used to be. It’s not put in the same way as it did in the older times.’

`Oh, the way the patterns are written…?’

`No, I wouldn’t understand it.’

`I don’t understand them either.’

`And it’s like… when I’m wearing anything, if they cut… say it’s metro or whatever, you can’t call them stones or inches no more, it’s got to be that other name for it, and I don’t understand that. The metric, I’ve got a pair of scales at home, that have got ordinary pounds and ounces on, so I’m able to use that. And I’ve never made pastry before, until the other day, and I thought I’m going to try and make some pastry, so I looked it up in the book, I read all what I needed and I did it with no trouble. I’d never ever made it before.’

`That’s encouraging!’

`[Laughs] And what else have I done? I… I’d never made flapjacks until about a month ago, and then I read that in the book and I was able to do it, but I mean I couldn’t do things like that when I had my cataracts. Couldn’t even touch the oven or nothing. It’s like it was a cloud all the time to me. Couldn’t even watch television properly, and then they had me in the eye hospital and did it, and they were very good up there, and that’s…’

`Was that Bristol?’

`Bristol, they’re very good. Frenchay’s [ph] good… I… I mean it’s very old, Frenchay [ph] isn’t it?’

`Mmm…’

`Very old place.’

`And are you still involved in the church?’

`I’m still involved in church. We’ve had to transfer our membership to Bristol Road ‘cause I had such a job to get to Clarence Park from the flat and of course, Beryl Hughes was one of the loveliest people we could meet and she used to… come up an get me and take us down to church. Then, we found that a bit difficult ‘cause she kept getting poorly, you know, she suffered with her heart, and she’s out half the time, she’s, you know, like in church sometimes used to nod off and then, you couldn’t get her round you had to take her out several times, and then we used to get stuck with people taking me back... back to the flat.'’

`Oh, you couldn’t get a lift back to…?’

`I couldn’t get a lift back and there was no way I was going to walk… from Clarence Park up to the flat, so I said “Well I… well I’m…”, I said to Darren “I’m going to have to consider going to a nearer church.” He… he wasn’t very happy about it but I said, “Well it’s for the… it’s not only for my good, it’s for others as well, ‘cause…” I says, “…it’s not fair depending on people that… they can’t always take me to church.” So I said “The best thing to do is find a church nearer.” So, we went to lower Bristol Road and David’s… they were very good.’

`And… is that a Baptist Church as well?’

`Yeah, it’s a Baptist Church. It’s only about five doors away from our flat. I mean it’s up and down the hill, but it’s better than walking all the way [laughs] down to Clarence Park, right down the bottom.’

`And did you always have a… Christian faith?’

`No, it’s only since 1970 and I went to one of the big meetings, at Bristol, and I’ll never forget when I was in Alfred Street, and I think it was when I went to Warren Street when it was open, and they were getting the coach up there… and we showed them Clarence Park and Melton Baptist, and we were going to Bristol to hear Billy Graham, I think it was Billy Graham that’s right, and we went to Bristol and it was a time when these mission phrase books started coming out, and we went up to Bristol and I sat with my friends, and it was only me that went, from the house, so I had to stay with people that I knew. I got on the coach all right and got up there, and it was great to hear him you know, and I heard him in London, as well years ago. So anyway, when I come back to Weston it was getting quite late, about eleven o’clock and it was pouring down with rain and I’d got off the coach and I fell over in the… on the pavement, and I got myself soaking wet, I’d gone in a puddle, got all my clothes wet, everything underneath me was soaking wet. Luckily I didn’t hurt myself ‘cause it was wet, and I went back to the house and they said “What have you done, you’re all wet?” and I said “I just fell over in a puddle”. To half the coach it was so funny and… the way it happened…’

`And that was after you’d been to see Billy Graham?’

`After… after I’d been to hear Billy Graham, and I thought well it isn’t for me to do this. I’m sure God didn’t intend me to do that, come on, fall in a puddle… [laughs].’

`But that made you want to go to church and find out more about…?’

`Yeah, it did… yeah.’

`…Christianity…?’

`I mean I hadn’t got a Bible, ‘cause I hadn’t got the printed… [inaudible] I can see some print, but some of it’s not very clear. So I had to go like that you know, and it’s… a job to be able to read it but… when Carrie wrote to me she wrote the letter and it was quite big print, but with the booklet and that I have to really hold it near me, you know, to be able to read. I mean I’ve got some thick reading glasses, I read with them, but the… and I’ve had some funny experiences, really funny. It’s like when I went down to town one day and I went into Tescos, gone to the toilet and something happened and I had to come out and ask for a safety pin…’

`[Laughs]’

`I felt so embarrassed [laughs]… and shall I tell you about London, when I went to London? Well there was an old lady up Stanton called Stella Hopton [ph] and she was always shouting, “I want to go out, I want to go out… I want to go out with Maureen…” ‘cause Maureen used to make a fuss of her. So anyway, Maureen’s only ever taken us out what, about three times…’

`Who was Maureen in…?’

`Maureen, Mrs Bladon…’

`Oh Mrs Bladon?’

`The owner of the…’

`Uh huh…’

`…flat in that home. Anyway, she decided she’d take us to London, and she booked the coach and paid our tickets, got on the coach, and Stella was sat behind me with Joan, and Joan… Mrs Glenn said to Joan, “Give Stella a cigarette”. Of course Stella couldn’t see very well either, she had very poor eyesight. She was in her sixties then. Anyway, she gave her a cigarette and Stella sort of shook and it went down on her dress and Joan said to her “Watch it…” she said, “You’ll catch yourself on fire in a minute”. So Maureen said “Let her come by me…” and then Joan was going “I’m hungry, I’m hungry”, so Mrs Bladon said to her, “Oh, wait till we get to London, it won’t be long darling…”, she said “…and then we can have something.” Joan kept on and on and on. So anyway, when we got to London, we had something like a sandwich, and then Mrs Bladon said “Cor, I don’t half want to go to the toilet” and she said “Mary, go and find a toilet.” I said “I can’t find one, I don’t know London”, and it was in Park Street where… where we got off the coach, and… we went down to the station and I said “Maureen, I can’t find no toilet”. “Oh blow it” she said, so she said “I’m going on the flower bed, I don’t care what anybody says”, so she went on the flower bed and did it on the flower bed. And then when we got down to Trafalgar Square, Moira was sick, all down my sleeve. She was as drunk as drunk as could be, and we were laughing there and I said “Moira” I said to her, “What have you done?”. “I don’t care”, she was going and getting so drunk. So anyway, we had… we had some fun there you know, and then she said “Come on girls, it’s time for us to get back to the coach, we don’t want to walk home tonight”. So she pushed little Rosie off in a taxi, and Rosie was crying and she said “I don’t want to be on my own.” Mother said “Shut up Rose, get in the taxi, go on…” she said, “You’ll be all right.” When she got on the coach she said…’

`Did you say her mother said that?’

`Mrs Bladon…’

`Oh, you called her mother?’

`We call her mother, yeah…’

`Yeah…’

`We call her that. I’ll tell you the reason why we called her that in a minute. So anyway we got out… we got back to the coach. Rosie was still crying and… Maureen said to her “Be quiet Rosie, don’t be so silly.” So anyway, she stopped then. I said “Come on Rose, cheer up…” I said, “It was only a joke.” So she started giggling, so… Miss Fenn [ph] said “That’s better Rose”, and then… Stella went and sat over by the lady in… ‘cause Joan was a bit fidgety, and she started going on to Stella, so Maureen said to Joan, sit over the other side Joan, and let Stella sort of, over the other side. So Stella sat by this lady and she was sick all down her hair, all down her clothes, everywhere… and when we got home, we didn’t get home ‘till eleven o’clock and they were drunk all day these two were, and Joan kept saying, “Mary your foot’s swollen, look at your foot” she’s going, and Maureen said “Shut up about Mary’s foot, she’s all right.” [Laughs] Yeah… and we didn’t have no tea or nothing, only a bit of…’

`No…?’

`…a couple of sandwiches at dinner time, and then we went to Long Leat with her, but we went with the group, she was different then, completely. Behaved herself then.’

`That time you went to London, was that the first time you’d ever been there?’

`That’d be the first time I’d ever been to London… London…’

`And what did you think of it?’

`Oh, I think it was a dirty old place [laughs], you know, by… Trafalgar Square. Of course, Rosie wanted to wander off on her own and get a book all about London, but luckily she found us, ‘cause we were… she only had to cross over the road.’

`When was that, that you went there?’

`That was in nineteen… eighty… six… and then we went to Long Leat, and then they had an outing to Exmouth and we had a… a nurse, you know, a Community Nurse, Adrian Stone, before he left Weston, to go on a higher course, and… we were all on this coach and he… he had a pair of knickers in his hand and he was waving them all up there… all up the coach saying “Whose knickers are these? Whose knickers are these?” and he was just playing about, and he had Maureen in fits. Maureen was laughing at him, but she… she’s got a really good sense of humour, she really has got a lovely sense of humour.’

`So you really enjoyed travelling around?’

`Enjoyed it, yeah…’

`Uh huh…’

`But she’s a scream when she’s out, but we haven’t been out with her for ages now… nor Moira, but I’ll never forget that time when we were in London and we were trying to get Moira across the road and there was this blessed motorbike coming a… down. He come down so fast he nearly hit us over, and he said “You silly B’s…” he said, “Trying to get across the road…”, ‘cause I was trying to get Moira over. She was so drunk… and one of the staff were asking me about that yesterday, so I told them what happened then… I had them in fits, it was so funny…’

`You don’t drink yourself though?’

`No. No. I… I… I do… I do get a bit naughty sometimes…’

`[Laughs]’

`Sneak out and have a… drink at… yeah, not beer or anything, but… you know, like squash and that and lemonade in the pub, and one day I was… I was going to Wells, I’ll tell… I’ll tell you about Barbara Ann. One Sunday, one week Barbara had me for two nights, because we were going to Worcester, and Joan always come… always wants to come to Wales with me, and then she comes back on her own on the bus. I said “Well you can’t do that Joanie… not really…” so she said “Why not? I want to come with you.” I said “All right then”, so she came with me and… got to Barbara’s and she said “I want a drink.” I said “Well there ain’t no pubs open yet.” “Come on, let’s go in the bars”, I said “You can’t, ‘cause Barbara will be here in a minute”. I said “Go after and wait until I’ve gone on the bus… can’t… got off the bus.” So she said “All right…” she went off and had a drink, and she told me the next day… and she was pulling my leg coming back… Joan was. Anyway, we went… and before I come back to… at… Weston… Barbara took me to Worcester and it was lovely, and we… it was raining and I said, “When…?”, ‘cause she said we were going on the boat you see. “Oh…” I said, “I hope I don’t break the boat down…” I said, “The boat’ll collapse and go in the river” I said, “Don’t be silly Mary” she said, “…it won’t do that.” I was only joking with her, and she saw that and she didn’t half laugh. Anyway, she made sure… she caught all the back of me and she made sure I got down to that boat all right. Got on the boat, and it started raining, and then she said “Oh it’s raining, come on let’s go in the cabin”, you know, where the driver and that was. So we went in… and had a drink and that and she said “Are you all right Mary?” and as I was opening my drink, it all went over all this dress… all down my dress, and she said “What are you doing?”. I said “I’ve just spilled my drink.” She said “Be careful” [laughs]. And then… and then we had fish and chips after, went and had fish and chips, and then we went to this place, you know, to get some pressies, but they ain’t half expensive. They had lovely teapots there about ninety pound for a big teapot… [both talking together].’

`And what…?’

`Worcester, you know, we went to Worcester… Worcester.’

`Oh, to the special china place?’

`Yeah, the china shop and… and it was too expensive and then I picked up this tray, and, you know, it was one of these sandwich trays and I said “I’m going to buy that”, ‘cause I naturally thought it was the number of the tray, so I said to Barbara “I’m going to… going over to pay for this a minute…” I said “…can you wait for me?”. “What Mary?” she said, “Give me that a minute” she said “…and let me see how much it is.” I said, “That’s the number”, she said “No it isn’t”, she said, “It’s the money”… £18 she said, “I’m not accepting that. Put that back”, she said. I said “Well I really want to give you something…” I said “…because you’ve had me out for two nights.” “I’ll tell you what…” she said, “…if you want to get me something, we’ll find what… see what we can find.” So I let her choose what she wanted, so she chose it and I said “Well I’ll get it.” I got it. She was ever so pleased, and she wrote back to me and said how pleased she was with it. But…’

`Thinking of presents and things, did you have…?’

`Well I always… I… people always buy me nice things, and if they have me out, I thought that it was nice to give them something.’

`Did… were your birthdays and things like that ever remembered by the hospitals and homes that you lived in?’.

`Yes… Joan Mitchell always remembered my birthday. Always gave me something and took me out, and Mrs Burke used to have me out for weekends. One year I went… I went to Mrs Burke’s for the weekend. I stayed Sunday ‘till Tuesday, and little Rosie came over.’

`So birthdays were still treated as special, even in their hospital?’

`Yeah, and… and Mrs Richards that used to go to Wells United Church, made me a beautiful cake and when I was down the spur, she had all my friends round and we had tea together, and I went back home on the Tuesday, and I think that’s what upset me when I first started going in people’s homes, ‘cause I thought there was… you know, I was being looked after, and going back… I always used to cry when I had to go back in… back to the hospital at weekends, and even when I first come down to Weston, I didn’t want to come but I always wanted to stay. But I’ve learnt now, you know, to stay, to come back and think well, some of the girls don’t go, you know, and… and I go, so I… I… I mean I try and be fair with…’

`Mmm…’

`…with them, you know.’

`You used to sort of slightly dread having to go back did you?’

`Yeah, I used to have to dread to come back, although I liked Rosie, I didn’t want to come back, ‘cause I enjoyed myself so much. And of course Rosie feels that way if she goes out, you know… or I’ve got to go back, I don’t want to go back and that… you know it upsets her and it used to upset me like that. But then I got used to the idea, of coming back. Of course, we haven’t been able to go out, a lot lately because we’ve had… you know, they’ve called me in for work and that when they’ve really been short and I don’t mind doing it anyway…’

`Yeah…’

`And Rosie’s been up there twenty years at Stanton. Twenty one years.’

`That’s a long time isn’t it?’

`It is a long time, and she’s lovely really, and Joan.’

`Can I ask you a bit about… when you first came to know of Friend… of this…?’

`Friend… yeah…’

`At the place where we are now.’

`When we were at Wadham Street, you see I wanted to go to… I wanted to do something, and I wanted to go out and find somewhere like a fellowship.’

`And what year would this have been about?’

`It was 1982, it was a… only for… of course I had my bad leg and I wasn’t… I was told not to go out but I was a bit naughty, I… I said “I’m going.” Anyway, on the second day I was there, it was on a Thursday, and Wadham Street Baptist Church was open, so I tapped on the door and this lady come out. She said “Can I help you?” and I said “I would like to go to fellow… a fellowship”. “Oh” she said, “You’d have to go upstairs.” It was ever so funny really, ‘cause I didn’t really want to go to… Friend at the start. Anyway, she went “There’s one upstairs” so I knocked on the door, and I naturally thought it was… a meeting like… a house group or some… a Bible study or whatever it was. Anyway, I went up and I tapped on the door and she said “Can I help you?” and I said “I’ve come to a fellowship”, and I said “Can I come in here?” and she said “Oh no…” she said, “…this isn’t a fellowship.” She said “You’d have to get a nurse to sign for you to come in…” she said…’

`And this was Friend where it was originally you’re talking about now?’

`Yeah, and Wadham Street, and it was Joan Jackson, running it then, and they used to do crafts as well up there. So anyway I went in and like I said, I… said I wanted to come to some fellowship, “Oh..” she said, “…you’ll have to go back downstairs, there’s a fellowship down there, but…” she said “…you can’t come in here.” She said “’Cause you’ve got… you haven’t got no consent…” she said, “You haven’t got no doctor’s consent and no… no nurses consent. You only come in here if you fill in a form, or at least fill in a form for you to come in”. So anyway, I said “Oh dear”, so I went and they said “Go back downstairs again”, so I went back down, and then finally Mrs Rogers, an old lady that used to go to the fellowship, helped me, and she said “Come on in…” she said, “…if you want to join us”, and I said “Well I’ve just been upstairs, they sent me down again.” And so she said, “Well come on in and join us”, so I did, and we got quite friendly with them, so I thought I’d join, the church down Wadham Street, and then when Gavin come to see me, ‘cause he used to come and see me once a month…’

`Was he a nurse?’

`He was… he was a Charge Nurse, at… you know, a Psy… you know, Community Nurse, so when he come I said “Gavin…” I said, “…is there any chance of me going to a club somewhere?”. He said “Yes, Mary…”, he said, “…I’ll introduce you to Friend, he said at Wadham Street.” So he got a form filled in and he sent… sent it down and they said would I like to go, so I went, and they started doing crafts and cookery and things like that.’

`What sort of place did… were… was Friend in those days? What did you think Friend was for or…?’

`I was… just thought it was for ordinary people, and then I got told it was for people that had been in hospital, in Mendip Hospital, and in… round the area, it’s… Berrow and places like that, and I thought well… I said to them, “I’ve been in there…” and they said, “Have you got permission from Gavin?”, I said, “Yeah… he said he’s written a letter to you to ask… so that I could come.” Anyway, they had the letter in the end and I went, and Pat was up there and we used to do craft. I made birds out of pegs. I sent one to Mrs Burke but… she’s got rid of it now.’

`And have… was it anything like being in hospital, going to Friend in those days, or was it very, very different?’

`Different. It was like you… you were out in the community but you were mixing with ex-patients you know, and… like they do now and it’s lovely.’

`So…?’

`All used to enjoy it, it used to go on from half past ten ‘till four, and then they moved to a place in the Boulevard, by the registry office, and then… I’ve forgotten who the people were then. I think it was Joan Jackson and Ruth Cummings used to come, one of the Psychiatric Nurses, used to talk to us and things like that and then, they got this building here, you know, down here and… I came here for a while with… used to go and get Hilda. We used to come down together. I was the only one that used to come from Tamsen Hill, it used to be over the other side, over the other road, you know, in 4 Grove Park Road, and we used to walk down together and go… come to Friend.’

`And how was Friend different to the hospital? Did Friend still… did they have nurses and did they give out drugs and medication?’

`No, nothing like that. They didn’t… not Friend… not here they didn’t, nor at the other one… ‘cause they used to take their own medication, the patients had to have it. They took their own but… didn’t have no nurses to give you medication. The only thing they did give you is… they used to have a clinic down at… the Royal Hospital and if you had to have injections you’d go down there and have it, but then, when they closed that place down, Edward Long Fox in the Royal, they used to have… I used to have to go out to Work… Work Centre, Doctor’s Centre and have it…’

`Oh so you were still having a regular injection?’

`I was still having a regular… regular, until nineteen eighty… eighty six… then I was cut down for six weeks, they put me right down to thirty. I had to do six weeks in between, you know, and I had the injection in between the six weeks, and if I thought I could cope with that, they would knock it down to ten. Then he knocked it down to ten and within the next six weeks I did all right, then they said “I don’t think you need it. We’ll take you right off it”, and… so they took me off it, but I had… at first I had… withdrawal symptom, and he gave me once chance. He said “Look Mary…” he said, “If you feel you need your injection just say so, and I’ll give it… give it to you…” but, I.. I didn’t think no more of it and I…’

`What sort of withdrawal symptoms did you have?’

`Well you know, like you thought you wanted it and then, you thought you didn’t, then you couldn’t make up your mind, you know and you can’t take the feeling, or am I going to go back on it? And used to worry about going back on it or, if you wanted it, you know, what should I do about it?’

`Did you feel that you had been addicted to it then?’

`Yeah, I’ve been addicted to it for so long and I… then minute I wanted it and then I didn’t, and then I couldn’t make up my mind. Eventually… and I thought well I must try, and I got used to it coming out, of my system, and I was all right then.’

`And what difference did you notice once you’d really… come off all the medication?’

`Well I felt a lot better and I felt, you know, people were thinking about me, and… I spoke to somebody and I did say once or twice that I think I needed it. Well they said “Try not to worry, ‘cause we understand, you know, if you need it that you can go back on it.” Then I kept thinking shall I go back on it? And then shall I not? Shall I…? You know, I shan’t… and I’m going to try, how am I going to do it? You know… and… and then eventually I thought, no I’ll give it a try, and ever since then I’ve been off it and… mind you it took me a few weeks to get used to the idea that I didn’t have to… go back and have anything, but I used to go back and see them, and they’d say “How do you feel now you’re off your injection?” and I used to tell them that some days I would… was… wanting it back and then I’d think, well should I have it or not? And then they said, “Do you really want it? We’ll give it to you next time.” When I went back time… next time, I didn’t worry about it, and they said “Are you all right, are you coping with your… not having your injection? But…’

`And you felt… you were feeling better not having it?’

`Oh, I felt better each time. As I got used to the idea of not having it, I got so used to it but there was a time when I went to the hospital about my sight because… they weren’t happy with it, you know, the doctor, or the optician wasn’t happy with my sight, so they sent me back to Weston General, and Mr Manningham couldn’t make it out and then he made me see Dr Kelly there, she was expert at finding cataracts, and they come to it, it was a cataract and it was coming, but Mr Manningham couldn’t see it coming, and yet she could. And I went back and reported that to them and said they’d found something, and they said it was a load of nonsense, and explained that it was a load of nonsense, and when… as my sight got really, really bad, and I… she had me over Grove Park working as one… and… at weekends, doing lunch… and lunches and teas. I said “Look”, I said, “I can’t see no… no more…” I said, “I can’t put the oven on and that…”. “Don’t be so silly she said.” So anyway, I said “I’m not being silly, I’m telling you the truth.” I got in so cross that I banged my fist and I said “Look, I am telling you the truth, I cannot do any more I said, “My sight is fading. There’s something that’s causing it.” Anyway she wouldn’t believe me, so any… the nurse from Stanton that was working up there, I said “Look…” I said, “…I’ve got an appointment to see Mr Manningham” I said, “Could you come with me?”. “Yes Mary” she said, “I’ll come with you”. And I had to witness to Belinda, the nurse, that I’d had a cataract and Mr Manningham had said it was a big one, and they would put me on this waiting list to have it done. That was the next time I went, six months later, but I had to get Belinda to prove to Mrs Bladon that I’d had this cataract, otherwise she wouldn’t have taken my word. ‘Cause she kept saying it was in the mind.’

`Did you find that annoying?’

`I did find it annoying at times. Especially when… when she tried to… say you know, it was in the mind. I said “It’s not in the mind”, and Mr Bladon said “Shut up” he said, “You’re not… there’s nothing wrong with your eyes.” I mean they genuinely thought that it was in my mind. They thought well, she’s just saying it, we’re not taking no notice. Eventually it was, and when she went… when Belinda reported back, and I… I don’t really want this to go… get back to her in any way…’

`Do you want to stop the tape a minute?’

`Just tell you this bit, yeah…’

`Just stop that a sec…’

`But she’s a…’

[Camera: `Ok…’].

`Ok…’

`She’s like that you know, and… anyway, they got it sorted out and she went on one… one… one day she went on holiday for a week and Belinda said “Mary you can’t go on like this, I’ll get in touch with Gavin to see if he can do something.” And she said, “You’ll have to get a letter from your Optician”, so I got a letter from my Optician, and they sent it to the hospital and they got me in as quick as they could get me in, and the day Mrs Bladon come back, it was on a Sunday, early, and she said… rang me up and said “Mary, Good Luck” she said, “I hope you get on all right with your operation”. That was when I was having it, but I mean before that she wouldn’t…’

`Have you found that quite common that people, in general would think that if you complained about something physically wrong, that people think it’s all in your mind?’

`Yeah, I do. I still think that now sometimes. I mean I’ve got… oh, low and behold I don’t care what they think. I know if I’ve got something there or if I haven’t. I mean I am… I am honest with people now. If I feel that there’s something wrong, you know, I tell them but now… now, you know, I don’t seem to have worried about psychiatric bits, I just let that go. I… I try not to worry about it. I mean they either believe me here or they don’t now. You know, I don’t worry about it like I used to.’

`Do you have any contact at all now with the Psychiatric system at all? Do you have a nurse or Social Worker or anything like that?’

`No, I don’t have nothing now. I just go down and… when Joan goes down, ‘cause she has medication and that, and she has… goes down the clinic and sees the nurses, but… I just go down and sit and wait for her. Sometimes she’s up there ages. She’s always saying good things about people, you never hear her running anybody down. She’s always got something good to say, and Rosie, you know…’

`Yeah…’

`And Rosie used to be a torment. She used to tickle my feet, and she kept tickling Joan, ‘cause Joan says to her “Tickle my feet”. She gets off the step, and she tickles underneath, and Joan’s got such a catching laugh. If you heard it it’d make you laugh you know, it’s so funny. But she’s lovely… they’re both lovely girls and…’

`So you really enjoy living with them? [both talking together].’

`They’re both adorable [ph]. They’re just like sisters to me. Believe me, I like sisters.’

`And the three of you share the flat?’

`Yeah, we share the flat and… Rosie does washing up and the ironing and the washing and Joan does the hoovering and Rosie gets down to do all the… you know, skirting board bits and I do the cooking. Sometimes I wash up. If she thinks I’ve done enough, “You go and sit down, look at the paper. Let me and Joan do it.” And then Rosie goes “I’ll wash up, I’ll wash up.” I said “No, you don’t Rose, I’ll do it…” [laughs] and we take it in turns. We just have a laugh with one and another. But when Joan was in… Joan’s lovely really but when she gets a bit upset… you never… you never stop hearing her. You know, she’s going on about it and then… I said “Look Joan, go in your room and take your tablet” and she’ll go in, and she’ll sleep it off for about an hour and then she’s fine again. But she loves her cigarettes and… I just can’t stop her. I said “Joan, I shouldn’t have no more”. “Oh I want another one now.” I say “Well you’d better not, ‘cause you know what’s happening” I said. “You’re going in the hospital. You want your heart better… ”, but he wouldn’t do it see ‘cause she was so chesty. But she… she’s suffered with her chest all her life, ever since she was a baby.’

`And did you smoke yourself ever?’

`I… I smoked for about three months, when I was at Cheddar and then a bit in hospital and then I gave it up. I got so bored with it and I gave it up. Don’t want to smoke no more. [Laughs].’

`Did you find that difficult?’

`I found it a bit difficult to start off with, but then I got used to it. But…’

`Do you mind if we take a short break?’

`No, not at all…’

`Ok Mary…’

`Yeah, I’m ready.’

`Good. You were going to tell me a bit about the work that you do now, and how many hours you do every week?’

`Yeah… when I first started going up there I did from nine until… two, and I used to do cleaning, like cleaning the toilets and going into the kitchen and cleaning all the teapots, keep the oven clean and stove, and… and then… we used to wash up the dinner things like we normally do and I used to have to cook, and if there was any cakes that were wanted they used to ask me to do them while she was doing the other things.’

`So the place you work in is the…nurse…’

`… [inaudible] nursing home…’

`…is the nursing home that you once lived in… yeah?’

`I once lived in for nine months.’

`Yeah, and the person who owns that is the same person who owns the flat that you live in now?’

`Yeah, that owns the flat, yeah… and I was… and… and then… I was getting rather bad legs a lot you know, so she felt she had to cut our hours down. Well she said it was fair. She cut mine down. She’d have had to cut Rosie’s and Joan’s down. So that’s what they did, and then… when I… she stopped me cleaning the porch… you know, I should be able to get teas. I used to go in at one o’clock and start one o’clock, doing, you know, making cakes, and preparing the tea and make fruit jelly and things like that, for tea and… and it was mainly weekends. In the week I’d do cleaning. At weekends I used to go in at one o’clock, get the… get started making cakes and ‘cause I didn’t know nothing about… I didn’t know how to put the oven on, so when little Rosie used to be up there weekends, ‘cause we all worked weekends, when we… when I used to go in at one, Rosie put the oven on for me and I used to do it… just plonk the cakes in and then leave them in half an hour and then I’d take them out and make them whatever I wanted, like iced cakes, butterfly cakes, and they had a variety of cakes.’

`And you’d give them to the residents?’

`They had them for tea. And then they used to have spaghetti on toast, they had that or scrambled egg. Oh, I don’t like doing scrambled egg, the pan sticks. It’s too hard to get off [laughs], and I do sort of things like that and then… I wash up on my own, and… clean up the kitchen. Then I have… had to go and do the dining room. You know, wash the dining room floor. Sweep it and wash it and mop it over with a dry mop thing but it used to be ever so hard and you’d get the residents in and out, in and out and I’d say, “Sit down. I want to get the floor done”, you know, and they… they’d have all these nurses running after them. Anyway…’

`Do you get paid for that work?’

`I got paid a little bit. Thirteen pound at the time.’

`And do you get paid for doing that work now?’

`I get it paid now, I get thirty pound a week now.’

`Thirty?’

`Thirty, three `0’.’

`And how many hours do you work a week?’

`I do three ‘till… six… wait a minute, four ‘till seven now, but I had… I do go in a bit early at weekends, ‘cause the cook that does weekends, only does ‘till two o’clock.’

`Do you work every day of the week?’

`No, I…I get days in between, off you know, but it’s only when they’re really short, and they had to call in on my day off, like they did yesterday. But I don’t have to do it if I don’t want to, I just do it if I’m not doing anything else. And she don’t make me do it. Nobody makes me do it.’

`And you enjoy it?’

`Well, she says to me, “Could you come in and help ‘cause we’re desperate?” and I say “Yes.” Like when… when somebody goes sick in the kitchen, like today. “Could you… you… could you come in?”, and I said “I’m sorry I’ve got something on today.” But then they don’t mind that. It’s only if I’m doing nothing I go in. I’m quite prepared to go in and do it.’

`And is it quite important to you that you’ve had the job?’

`Umm…’

`That you’ve got a job?’

`Yeah, I… I mean I enjoy doing it anyway. I mean years ago you had to do it, and there was no getting away with it, but you don’t have to do it now, not if you don’t want to. And like, if I’ve got anything on, if I’m going to Wells, and they say to me “Could you come in?”. I say “I’m sorry we’re going out”, then they don’t mind. As I say, it’s only… the only time I will go in is… is most times now. We don’t go out anywhere so often now, so I say “Yes, I’ll come in”. And I do break… like, when the cook’s there I do breakfasts and lunches. They have toast, porridge or cornflakes or Weetabix and then for dinner they have quiche, stew or salad stuff and… and for sweet they have ice cream, sponge puddings, jam sponge… fruit or fruit and custard and cream, anything like that, and for tea they have like sandwiches. Mainly sandwiches now. It used to be all cooked teas, every day, but they stopped all that. It’s mainly sandwiches now, ‘cause they have such a big dinner at dinner time and half of them don’t eat it, they waste it, you know.’

`And what do you like getting up to on your day off?’

`Oh, I… if I get a proper day off I got to town with Joan. I go out every day with Joan… well two days a week with Joan, Monday and Tuesday…’

`Go round the shops and…?’

`We go round the shops or… if we’re fed up too we’d go to Wells but we haven’t had a chance, ‘cause the old lady that I used to go with at weekends, she’s so frail now that… she’d not even ring us up and say would you like to come over? And we wouldn’t expect her to at that age.’

`Do you ever… have you ever gone into Bristol or anything like that, on your own?’

`The only time I went to Bristol was when I had to take Joan up and we had escort there, well she had a escort, that was me. And then I had to go up some years ago, but I went with Rosie, ‘cause you known this mammogram thing they were doing for breast cancer, it was ever so funny I went to… Weston one once, and it was the first time. It was when I was in my early fifties, and they had a… an x-ray unit down here, and I went up to the General ‘cause I had an appointment, it was an afternoon appointment and I… she booked me in and she took all my particulars, and when I undressed she said “I’m sorry dear” she said, “I won’t be able to get them on there..” she said, “…’cause there’s so much… you’ve got such big things…” she said, “…you’ll have to go up to Bristol…” and I felt so embarrassed…’

`Yeah…’

`And I laughed and Joan was stood there so serious. “Well look…” I said “I’ll have to go to Bristol, I’ll have to let Mrs Bladon know.” Anyway, she made me an appointment for Bristol and they got me in the next week, and I said to Mrs Glenn, could someone come with me, like a nurse to make sure that if needs be, it had to be reported back. “You don’t want a nurse Mary…” she said. “You’re independent, go up with Rosie or something.” So Mr Bladon come down with some money, he said… “You can go off together…” he said, “Enjoy yourselves. Have your dinner in Bristol.” I said “All right then” so off we went, got to the bus station, got on the bus and went on to the taxi onto this centre where I had to go for my mammogram, and it had bigger plates on that… on that one but when I first went to… Weston it was so funny. The first one I ever had to have done. ‘Cause… ‘cause they couldn’t get their plates big enough for me, so I had to travel in all the way up to Bristol.’

`And is that the first time that you’d ever travelled independently?’

`That’s all… that’s it… the first time I’ve ever travelled, on my own… well like with Rosie, but I mean other times I’ve had nurses with me in… you know, I’ve never been out with… hospital appointments before on my own, until I went to the General, you know when I had to have eye appointment.’

`So how did you feel about doing that, were you worried or did you look forward to it, or…?’

`I was a bit worried at first but then I got used to it.’

`Uh huh…’

`But, when I went up with Joan it was quite easy, but she… she had me in fits, she really did. ‘Cause… you see how it all started, we got up… this chap come and he come for us at seven o’clock and he said he was looking for he couldn’t find number thirty six, so I said, “Oh”, I said, “You haven’t been here since seven o’clock?”. He said “Yeah”, he said, “I’ve been hunting around for you.” Anyway, I said, “Oh…” I said, “They haven’t got it on the wall out there they’ve got it on the… outside by the door there.” “Oh they shouldn’t have it there” he said, “They… they should put it on the wall out… out… out by the gate…” he said “…where everybody can see it.” He was a bit grumpy. Anyway, I called Joan to come in… to come out I mean, and she came out, and… I said “Come on Joan” and she was a bit nervous but usually she gets a bit… tight up, but she didn’t, she was quite calm and she was talking to me in the car, talking to me sensibly and…’

`That was a taxi that was coming to pick you up was it?’

`It was a… an ambulance car.’

`Ahh…’

`And it was this big man, and he was a miserable… man, and we got in the car and we started talking, and we would… kept getting stuck in the traffic. So anyway, and when we got as far as Portishead, I thought “Joan, we’ve got your appointment here… nine o’clock…” and it wasn’t… it was gone nine o’clock, twenty to ten when we got up there. Anyway, eventually we got there and we reported, and we had to sit there ages, and ages and ages, and Joan kept saying “I’m going to have a fag… I’m going to have a fag outside.” I said “No you can’t Joan…” I said, “If you have an operation they wouldn’t do it.” “I’m all right…”. Anyway, she was, you know, a bit chesty. I said “You want to cough that up.” I said “Cough it… get it out.” She… she tried, but she couldn’t get it off her chest, and then about ten minutes later, she said “Oh, I want another fag, I want another fag.” I said “Go on then.” “I want something to eat.” I said “You can’t have nothing to eat, love…” I said, “You’re having an anaesthetic.” “I want something to eat” she said. I said “Well you ain’t having anything, and then she kept going up to Carol, the one that took her particulars, “When are we going up?” she said, “When are we going upstairs?”. And Joan said, and she said to Joan, “You’ll be going up in a minute Joan…”, of course it was nearly two o’clock before we went up there, and then they had to change the bays around, like six ladies in one ward, they had to get the men out, the bay they were in and put six ladies in there. So anyway, the chap come up to Joan and he said to the nurse, “I can’t carry her down, she’s too heavy.” So anyway, he said “I’m going to leave it” he said, so he got the nurse to take her down, and then they took her oxygen levels, you know, and she said “I’m a bit chesty” and the nurse said to me, “Is that attention?”. I said, “No, it’s real.” I said, “She is chesty. She’s been chesty all her life.” “Oh well, I don’t know…” she said, “…whether they’ll do the operation or not.” So we got her down to theatre and… and he said to her “I’m sorry, we can’t do it, you’re… you’re too chesty.” So she come up laughing. She had me in fits. Anyway, she kept on, “I want something to eat” and she said “Mary, will you stay with me tonight?”. I said “I can’t Joan.” So anyway, the nurse come out and she said “Joan, I’m afraid you’re going to have to stay ‘till the morning…” and she said “I don’t know what you’re going to do” she said.’

`To you?’

`Yeah. And I said “What do you mean, don’t know?” and I said, transport… transport’s been ordered.” “Oh no” she said, “It hasn’t.” I said, “Well they told me it was… they… they told me the transport had been arranged for me to come back.” “Oh no” she said, so she got hold of the Senior Nurse and she explained and she said, “Well the only thing we can do is keep her up here”, she said, “But we haven’t got no beds.” So she came into me and she said “I’m sorry”, she said, “You’re going to have to stay.” And I said, “What?” I said, “I can’t stay here…” I said, “…and leave Rosie on her own.” “Why didn’t you say you had Rosie at home?” and I said, “Because you were so busy seeing to others…” and I said, “…I didn’t get the chance, to tell you.” “Oh I’d better go down and see about it.” Anyway, I said to her, I… I had quick thinking. I said, “I know what I’ll do, I’ll go back on the bus” and Joan kept saying “No, you stay with me… stay with me.” I said, “No, I’m sorry Joan…” I said, “Little Rosie wants some of me…”. “Oh, you don’t worry about me.” I said “Look, I’ve come all this way up to Bristol, and…”, I said, “…you’ve got six people in this ward that can talk to you, and…” I said, “…Rosie’s left home with nobody.” I said “I would like to get back home.” So off I trot to the nurse again and I said “I’m definitely going home”, I said, “I can’t sit here” I said, “…and go back the next day. I’d rather go back on the bus.” “Oh, you can’t do that.” I said, “Yes I can…”’

`Why did they say you can’t do that?’

`Well because she didn’t think I was able to do it you see. I said “I can do that”, I said, “I’m… done on the bus”, I said, “Even though I have to walk back”, I said, “I’ll get… well home somehow.” Anyway, she let go after me, she said, “All right, if you’re happy in doing it, and you’re sure.” She said, “I’ll tell you what…” she said, “I’ll give you a lift down to the bottom of the road here…” she said, “Where you can get the four bus, down… down to the bus station”, so I thought fair enough, I’ll go down. So she took me down at four o’clock and she was talking to me and she said she was sorry about all the confusion. I said, “But they did tell Joan she was only in now for a day and there’s a chance they wanted all of us to come back.” And she said, “Well I’m ever so sorry” but she said, “Will you be all right?” and I said “yeah.” So anyway, got on the bus and I… they stopped just before the crossing, you know, to go up to the bus station, so I crossed over and I’d just got in time, ten minutes, the bus was there, and I got… I got to the bus station. I rang Rosie and I told her. I said, “Rosie I’m coming back on the bus, there’s no transport to bring me ‘ome, Joan’s staying in, could you tell… let them know at Stanton, ‘cause it’ll have to be booked?” “All right” she said, and poor little Rosie’s breaking my heart.’

`She thought you wouldn’t come back?’

`She thought I wouldn’t come back that night. Anyway, I said, “I’m coming back, don’t worry.” So anyway, before I left the ward I said to… Joan, “Joan’ll be all right?”, I said to the nurse, “Yes” she said, “She’ll be all right.” So I said “Will you make sure that she gets something because she’s hungry and she’s going on a bit.” “Yes” she said, “We’ll get something to eat” she said, and I said “When I get home I’ll ring her and I’ll see that she’s all right.” And she said “Are you sure you’ll be all right?” and I said “Yeah.” So when I got to the bus station, about ten minutes I had to wait for the Weston bus, I got on it and I enjoyed the ride. It went through the villages, and I got a taxi, ‘cause there was no four bus after that going up to South Road, so I caught a taxi and you ought to have seen Rosie’s face, she was delighted, great big smile on her face and everybody was ringing me up, “How’s Joan? Has she had her operation?”. I said, “They wouldn’t do it because of her heart… her chest.”’

`And did it improve your confidence to know that you… you…?’

`It did, it did… it made me think well… I got home, there’s no reason why I can’t do it other times. You know, and… you’ve just got to be careful… you know to avoid…’

`So do you still… sorry…? So do you still go on a bus now? Do you feel more confident now…?’

`I feel more confident did… than I did before I went to Bristol, ‘cause when I come back on the bus, you see the nurses at Stanton didn’t think I’d ever do it, and I said “Well there’s no reason why I couldn’t do it, ‘cause I used to go to Wells on a bus”, but Bristol is a bit… it’s a bigger place and there’s a lot more… things going up there isn’t there, like rapes and things.’

`More worrying?’

`Yeah so…’

`Sorry?’

`So I got on the bus and I was all right, and when I told the nurse that I had to come back on the bus, she was amazed. She said “I’m very proud of you… oh…” she said, “I am proud.” I said, “Why are you so proud of me then?” “Well..” she said, “…having to come back from Bristol” she said. I said “Well I’ve done it before… once before but not on my own, I’ve had Rosie with me before.” But Rosie you know, she wouldn’t hurt a fly [laughs].’

`Sounds like you’ve made a huge, you know, achievements…’

`Yeah, I… I don’t want… think I’m better than anyone else ‘cause I am… I’m not but… you know, I… I think the staff were so pleased to think that I’d come back, all that way on my own without a hiccup.’

`So are you…are you proud of everything you’ve managed to achieve…[both talking together]…since all those difficult days…?’

`Yes, I am… I mean… of course with other peoples’ help, and if it wasn’t for other people’s help I don’t think I could have done it on my own. It’s really like Joan Mitchell and the doctors and nurses that have… have done so much to help me get, you know, the way I am now, ‘cause I don’t think I could have done it all on my own, without nobody’s help. I’m sure of it.’

`And are you looking forward to the future?’

`I am…’

`You said you… when I asked you earlier in the break, I said when are you going to retire?’

`I doubt if I’ll retire until I’m… I… I shall retire when I can’t do it no more… [laughs].’

`You told me a particular age?’

`Ah ninety… [laughs].’

`Ninety one you said [laughs]?’

`I don’t know… no, I… I’ll… give up when I feel it’s time to, but it’s not time for me yet, I… you know, I’d like to go on as long as I’m able to go on, ‘cause do you know, I mean I’m physically all right and there’s no reason why I can have somebody else to help me in the past [ph]. But I mean Mr and Mrs Bladon are excellent and they’ve got lovely humour. You know, I mean they do get… I mean they’ve got a lot of worry with, you know, the whole business of the home and everything and staff going out and leaving, you know, they’ve got a terrible job to get people there but… you know, so that’s why we fill in when they need us, but I do love doing something for somebody else, that have given me a home and, you know, and get on like… and I think…’

`So you’re glad that, in the end that you moved out into the community?’

`I’m glad that I’ve done it. At first I didn’t think much of it, I’m not going to do it, I’m not going to do it, but then one day I made up my mind that I must try and do it, help myself, as well as people helping me. And I think it’s nice that when, you know, people appreciate you like they do and… and they’re ready to help you as well as you helping them. I think it’s nice to think that they do care. Sometimes I used to think oh they… they don’t like me, you know, and they’re nasty, but… I mean, I think it’s unfair to think, when they have done something… I mean everybody gets a day, a bad day… I get a bad day, and there’s times that I don’t want to do it, and I tell them if I don’t want to do it if I don’t feel up to it, but that’s not very often. I do enjoy doing it when…’

`When you can?’

`When I can, you know and… as I said, if I’m not doing anything then I’m… if they want me in then I’d go in and do it. It doesn’t bother me at all.’

`Ok, I think we’ve come more or less to the end have we?’

[Camera: `Yeah…’].

`[Laughs].’

`Thank you very much for talking to us.’

`I’ve enjoyed doing it.’

`Thank you.’

`I just want to ask you, how did you feel about me… how do you think… no, I don’t want to think that I’m…’

`How do I think you were…?’

`…better than anybody else?’

`[Both talking together] [inaudible]…’

`Far from it, but I just…’

`Have you stopped filming?’

`How do you think I was…you know?’

`I think you’ve been absolutely superb.’

`But I’m…’

`I’m not just saying it, I really think that what you said is very valuable, ‘cause you’ve told us so much detail…’

`Yeah…’

`And you’ve given us the over all impression, and you’ve told us things that most people wouldn’t have a clue about, you know they wouldn’t realise that that’s how things were.’

`No… no, but I have enjoyed doing it and…’

`Yeah…’

`And I’d like to thank you and Faye for taking the trouble and… to give me this interview… I’m most grateful to you and I’m glad I was able to come and do it.’

`Well we’re really, really glad that you said you’d do it for us…’

`Yeah, ‘cause I… I wasn’t sure… [both talking together]…’

`You’ve been really helpful…’

`…what to expect and… and then Nora kept saying “I shouldn’t do it Mary, I wouldn’t want to do it…” and she worried about it.’

`How have you found it? How have you found it today?’

`I found it very interesting and… I… I found it… you know, that you’ve been such a wonderful, wonderful… how can I explain… you know, I used to… you understood everything I said and… and you’ve been so helpful to me, and I’d like to say thank you again to you and Faye for all you’ve done…’

`We thank you…’

`I’ve enjoyed doing it…’

`Thank you…’

`I really have. I don’t want to think I’m making you a big head, ‘cause I’m a big head myself…’

`[Laughs].’

`I have enjoyed doing it…’

`We like it a lot… [laughs] we like the encouragment!.’

`Thank you very much both of you…’

`Well thank you for…’

`…for all you’ve done… and I mean that. I honestly mean that, all right?’

`Thank you very much.’

`So…’

[End of DVC Pro Tape 4 of 4 – End of VHS Tape 1 of 1]