— https://ezitis.myzen.co.uk/springfield.htm
— Link
— Link
— Link
- why the Surrey Pauper Lunatic Asylum...
- the selection and development of the site..
- some [things that happened here]...
- incl what remais of the past, and recent and imminent changes..
Intro
How I came to this subject . . .
Covid walks . . .
2000-rainbow-front-of-springfield-during-covid.pdfWith my wife . . . Maggie and I / We walked everywhere just about throughout Wandsworth - the Common, parks, cemeteries, streets . . .
But we often came here . . . and still do, at least a couple of times a week . . .
We've been fascinated by the progress being made on the preservation, restoration and transformation of the site . . . the park and old buildings, with new ones appearing rapidly behind them . . .
And I've also been fascinated by the way the developments have been "sold" to the public . . .
In words, of course, but also in "artists' impressions" . . .
Interest in the development of a new park . . . .and new buildings
[Images of the forthcoming park]
Our attention was drawn to the date on the front the building . . . 1840
The "1840" plays a BIG part in the promotion particularly of the restored C19 buildings, for sale as "luxury" homes . . . .
But also . . . a little disturbed by the "heritage-washing" of the site . . .
As here 1840-springfield-asylum-glam-shot.pdf Whe you look at the text, it's all rather weird . . .- it nowhere describes the origins of the building (beyond saying it was a "hospital" . . . set in glorious grounds reflecting the Victorian taste for open space . . . air etc
- it certainly doesn't say it was specifically for lunatics, especially "pauper" lunatics
- on the one hand there couldn't be a greater opposition between the world of the mid-C19 lunatic asylum and today's "boutique living"
- and yet, and yet . . . curiously there were associations and overlaps between the texts of the c.19C and these modern texts . . . a kind of spirit utopianism . . .
- words such as "oasis" or "welcome retreat from the city" - in the C19 this is what the word "asylum" might have meant. Or opportunities to take healthful exercise - to enjoy the sun, air, light, and views - the "access to landscaped gardens" - or the sense often invoked of an almost self-sufficient village life, with intimate relations with your fellow villagers
[" Each home seamlessly combining original character features with modern specifications, offering a welcome retreat from city life. Residents enjoy private outdoor spaces, secure underground parking, boutique communal areas, concierge service, and access to landscaped gardens and a new park." https://www.cityandcountry.co.uk/find-a-home/the-1840-st-georges-gardens-london]
Here are just a couple of examples of promotional material for "The 1840":
— The 1840 Brochure text . . .
— See also the video, target="_blank">"George Clarke revisits The 1840 St George's Gardens" [I've downloaded a low-res version
Notice above all that it says nothing about the origins of the site as a "Pauper Lunatic Asylum"
This is a long way from what I knew to be the reputation of Springfield Hospital as the "loony bin" when I was growing up . . .
The vision of the future didn't always look like happening . . . the building works were (and still are) pretty messy . . .
And of course in the accounts of earlier local residents such as PY Betts (People Who Say Goodbye, writing about the the time of WWI when she lived on Magdalen Road . . .
[ASYLUM]
Madness was accommodated in the large lunatic asylum with its own farm, not far from the Common.
In the days of my youth there were no euphemisms for mental disturbance. If you were mentally ill you [46] were mad and if you were mad you went to a lunatic asylum and no messing. If you were very, very mad they put you in a padded cell.
My mother of course had something to say about lunatic asylums because as a girl she had visited one. Her father had taken her when he went there on business. He was a Commissioner in Lunacy, whatever that may have been - something to do with committing patients, I suppose, as he was a Justice of the Peace.
>hile he went off to attend to what may have been gruesome business she remained behind, engaged in conversation with a pleasant gentleman to whom she had been introduced. They were on an upper floor with a view of the hall below, and when in due course her father came in sight, talking to an official, my mother's companion walked with her to the head of the stairs, where he bowed and took his leave, explaining regretfully that he was unable to accompany her down the stairs as his legs were made of glass and might break. (His glass legs were vivid in my mind. They were like the very solid chunky kind of cut glass tumblers that stood ranged on shelves in my grandparents' butler's pantry.)
But my mother had a more disturbing story than this. It was about a woman in a padded cell. I doubt whether she had been invited to see for herself, more likely her father had [47] told her about it, but its impact on my mind was powerful and lasting. The madwoman was raving, flinging herself at the walls of her padded cell and screaming that she was burning to death, burning to death . . .
This horrified me. It seemed to me that being deluded that you were burning to death was far worse than really being burnt to death, because being burnt to death would end, in death, but being burnt to death in the head would go on and on. It was merciless. It was an eternity of torment. It was hell itself. Glass legs, comparatively, were a bagatelle. You could lead quite a happy life on one floor, preferably the ground floor.
But that was in the past. In my own day no especial horror stories came out of the asylum. There were high walls round the grounds.
[BELLEVUE]
Sometimes a happy band of more or less presentable inmates would issue forth in the care of their keepers, busily chattering. I liked to look at them though I was not supposed to. Their enjoyment was intense. They were mostly, if not all, female, with bright excited eyes and frizzy grey hair, darting jubilantly in and out of the parade of shops facing the Common, clutching small purchases.
'They always buy sardines,' my mother said, and it was true: fourpenny tins of sardines gleamed in their hands as they emerged, discarding paper bags, afternoon [48] light blazing back from their shining eyes. My mother would point out that mad people usually had either lank hair hanging in dank hanks or fuzzy stuff frizzing up all over their heads, and the frizzy sort was more often seen. The hair style of the happy lunatics came naturally. Their hair stood on end of its own accord.
In my own generation, for people near the age of the century in its last decades, the chosen hair style of nearly all old women is a similar frizzy mop, more or less veiling the pink skin beneath. The only difference is that now their faces are not bright with joy as were those of the happy loonies of my early childhood, nor are they joyfully clutching tins of sardines.
Enough said, at least for the moment . . .
Let's go back in time to before there was a Springfield Hospital, or even a Surrey Pauper Lunatic Asylum . . . <.p>
This may be your idea of how people described as "mad" or "lunatic" were treated in the C18 and C19.
[Start with Hogarth]
Hogarth-William-Rakes-Progress-Bedlam-1734-detail.pdf Hogarth-William-Rakes-Progress-Bedlam-1734.pdf william-norris-chained-12-years-in-Bedlam-wellcome.pdf William Norris confined in Bethlem Hospital for 12 years. From etching by G. Cruikshank, circa 1820 after drawing from the life by G. Arnald 1814. C.A. FerrierUntil the C19 there were very few institutions taking in people who we might now call mentally ill or mentally distressed. Most people were looked after by their families, but many lived on the streets or in workhouses, or were sent to private "madhouses" ‐ where they were nominally supervised by "mad-doctors", but usually had no effective treatment and were often brutalised.
Many spent much or all of their lives bound, chained and otherwise confined.
London's Royal Bethlehem Hospital was something of an exception — but this was also a kind of general hospital for those with physical illnesses. In any case, conditions are unlikely to have been very much better than in "mad-houses".
You may know this as "Bethlem", from which the word "Bedlam" derives.
Here is Hogarth's depiction of a ward in Bedlam, from 17??.
Little was possible by way of "treatment", I assume.
Can't go into that here.
Possibly show Morison's machines:
Alexander-Morison-Cases-of-Mental-Disease-1828-Wellcome.pdf
Here are two machines with instructions so any "intelligent carpenter" can make them.
Spinning . . .
Water treatment [this will come up again in the case of Daniel Dolley] . . .
1-Alexander-Morison-Douche-and-Rotary-machines-Cases-of-Mental-Disease-1828-Wellcome.pdf
2-Alexander-Morison-Douche-and-Rotary-machines-Cases-of-Mental-Disease-1828-Wellcome.pdf
3-Alexander-Morison-Douche-and-Rotary-machines-Cases-of-Mental-Disease-1828-Wellcome.pdf
4-Alexander-Morison-Douche-and-Rotary-machines-Cases-of-Mental-Disease-1828-Wellcome.pdf
[PIC]
The Asylum Act, 1808, encouraged the building of public asylums, but the Counties were slow to respond. By 1827 only nine had been built.
I say "the Counties" because this was the relevant level of government. Unlike most of continental Europe, Britain was deeply hostile to national provision of just about anything. So dealing with of insanity and crime were the responsibility of the great and good of each county — mainly major landowners, gentry and aristocracy under the supervision of the county's Lord Lieutenant.
— The Committee (from Patch) . . .
[Just one:
Patch: AS A COUNTY INSTITUTION and facility, the Asylum started from the first as a service to the people of Surrey. At the time, that County reached as far north as the Thames, and Wandsworth represented a particularly densely populated area.
Before the County Council's Act of 1888, Counties were administered by the Magistrates who were appointed by the Home Secretary after nomination by the Lord Lieutenant of the County.
The system ensured that Magistrates were chosen exclusively from among the landed gentry, aristocracy or a few individuals who had risen by sheer industry or merit. Trades-people, the middle classes, or in fact anyone contaminated by business or trade found no place on the Bench or on the Subcommittees recruited from it, such as that which managed the County Lunatic Asylum.
Throughout most of Queen Victoria's reign, the Lord Lieutenant of Surrey was William King, Earl of Lovelace (1805-1893). As a young man he had a promising career as a Diplomat, spoke four or five languages and while in the Middle East often talked with Mehmet Ali, the legendary Pasha of Egypt. In 1833 his father died unexpectedly; he returned hastily to look after the family estates and in 1835 married [Ada] the only daughter of Lord Byron, the poet.
She brought with her not only a large inheritance, but also influence with the Whig Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne; these were the means by which King acquired his title and social eminence in the County. Although deaf and somewhat eccentric, he was a benevolent and competent landlord of his large estates — on which he designed many cottages and schools, as well as his own mansion (Horsley Towers) in what was described a "vaguely Rhenish Gothic" style.
In such a milieu, it was natural to appoint minor, or under-employed, members of the aristocracy [to be County Justices and sit on the Committees of County institutions such as the Asylum and the nearby County Prison [the "Surrey House of Correction"]] . . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_King-Noel,_1st_Earl_of_Lovelace
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace
https://www.cityandcountry.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Siteplan-HR-Update-01.04.22.jpg
In 1838 the Surrey magistrates finally decided to establish a county asylum for the mentally ill poor. To this end, they purchased Springfield Park for £8,985 from Mr Henry Perkins (1779-1855), a wealthy brewer and partner in the firm of Barclay Perkins, who had decided to move to Dover.
The estate, with 97 acres of land, was considered an ideal location for the Asylum because of its nearness to population centres, its southerly aspect — with big views to distract people from repetitive negative thinking — sunlight — and clean air — a suitable water supply.
[Actually, water proved rather harder and more expensive to secure than was expected. But we'll come onto that later.]
[It would be good to unpack the notion of an "ideal location". Why was it thought desirable to spend such a colossal amount of money — ratepayers' money, remember — buying a gentleman's huge estate, on a hillside in south London?
[And then building what amounts to a stately home on the site? And this for just a few hundred very poor people. What was the thinking? Was it simply benevolence? Care? Concern?]
[What was the scientific or moral or religious justification that would lead the Surrey Magistrates — the Great and Good who made the decisions to buy here and build — to be believe this would work, and be worth it?]
[Utopianism? Whatever happened between then and the end of the C20 it seems they were inspired by a kind of Utopian vision. [See Browne] And there's something of the same mindset in the way the new developments are portrayed and described. ]
[And this at a time when other massive institutions were being built nearby, also at great public cost . . . The Wandsworth and Clapham Union Workhouse on East Hill (c.1839), and soon after that the Surrey House of Correction (1849-1851), which we know as Wandsworth Prison.]
[The workhouse and prison were not kindly places. The workhouse was designed on the principle that the life of an inmate would be so unpleasant that nobody would enter if they had any alternative. Ditto the prison.]
[Are all these developments — workhouse, asylum, prison — connected? I'm sure they are, but that's a discussion we can have another time.]
Springfield Park contained an 18th century mansion house, stables and a coach house, as well as farm buildings. The entrance drive was from the road around Garratt Green (now called Aboyne Road).
[The now main entrance from Glenburnie Road, and the lodge, were not built until 1893, thus making the back of the Asylum the front.
A well was bored in 1839.
By 1840 construction had been completed.
[The first inmates? patients? — what were they called? — arrived in June 1841.]
It was the 15th asylum to be built. The buildings had cost £67,467 and their furnishings and initial expenses some £7,515.
Patch: The building of the Asylum started about 1838 to the design of Mr. W. Moseley, the County Surveyor for Middlesex, "lately occupied in the extensions at Hanwell Asylum", advised by Alexander Morison and Sir William Ellis. Its Tudor style, with gables and twisted chimneys (now removed as dangerous and not replaced) was praised in the architectural journals, who commented on the subtle angles and variegated brickwork that save the long facade from monotony.
Lost Hospitals: The Asylum had 350 beds and was built to the 'corridor' plan, a state-of-the-art design (ward wings radiated off a long spinal corridor at right-angles).
Patients would be diagnosed, classified and sent to designated wards.
The Asylum was built in the Tudor style, with twisted chimneys similiar to those at Hampton Court Palace (these were later removed, being considered dangerous, and not replaced). The facade was patterned with variegated brickwork and subtle angles, but the interiors were plain and dull, apart from the main hall and staircase.
The buildings were heated by a central heating system, with steam circulating through the [2] galleries and hot air injected through the floors.
The iron pipes of the central heating system soon proved to be too thin, with the resulting explosions throughout the wards injuring patients. The system was removed and [3] fireplaces installed instead.
[Was adding new fireplaces very expensive ? Were there ever enough to keep provide sufficient warmth?]
Grand sweeping lawns, with a stone-carved fountain, flanked the reception area.
[I wonder what's happened to that fountain? When was it installed? I think its not marked on maps until [date?]]
[The fine staircase! I believe it concealed extraction ducts?]
On entering the main building, the Committee Room was on the right and the residence of the Medical Superintendent on the left. The Steward was housed on the 2nd floor of the central part (but when he retired in 1872 his rooms were used as accommodation for nurses and domestics).
Behind the main hall were two offices, used as doctors' surgeries, where the medical staff wrote up their clinical notes in massive bound volumes.
The kitchens, gas works, boiler house and well (and, after 1881, a builder's yard) were at the rear of the main building.
Staff were hired and the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum opened on 14th June 1841, with 299 patients being admitted that day from other asylums in London and Surrey, mainly from Peckham House (172 patients), Hoxton (54 patients) and Bethnal Green (51 patients).
[So none from Bethlem?]
The Asylum had four principal officers — a visiting physician, a Resident Medical Superintendent on a salary of £250 a year, a Matron (£80 a year) and a Steward (£150 a year). An attendant (as nurses were called then) earned £26 a year.
The cost of keeping an in-patient per week was 9s (45p).
[According to Patch, there generally wasn't a designated "matron", or the role had an [difficult? ambiguous? history?]
By the end of the first year the Asylum had 385 inmates — 170 males and 215 females — although several elements for the proper functioning of the Asylum were still missing, including some furniture and bedding.
The front drive had not yet been made, nor the porter's lodge built.
[From Burntwood Lane or Garratt Green/Aboyne Road via the Farm? Or the late-C19 Gelnburnie Road entrance?]
[It was always assumed that there would be more women than men, an interesting mid-C19 assumption.]
[Admissions vastly outnumbered [cures or deaths]
Patch: Besides the pressure of numbers, the Committee were preoccupied with the maintenance of the huge building:
"A building covering nearly seven acres of ground, and containing, as does the Surrey Asylum, 1,022 windows, 619 doors, 663 fireplaces, 38 cisterns, 25 baths, 270 water-taps and stopcocks, 307 gas-burners, with an extensive apparatus for cooking, and washing and drying linen, and in which nearly 40,000 gallons of hot and cold water are distributed daily by steam power through more than 4,000 yards of lead piping, can be kept in repair only at a great expense, especially when it is considered that it is occupied by nearly 800 persons, most of whom being patients, act generally without judgment, and sometimes with violence".
The original central heating system, for example, caused alarming problems. Iron pipes had been laid to carry steam throughout the wards but they proved too thin, and explosions throughout the wards were frequent, as the pipes burst and patients were injured. Within a few years, almost the whole system had to be removed and new fireplaces installed.
In 1842 some £1,981 was spent on levelling the ground, with the excavated earth being removed. New roads were laid and gravelled. The airing courts (ward gardens where patients exercised) were turfed, and a bowling green laid down for the patients' recreation.
[Where was the bowling green?]
An oak fence was erected to mark the estate boundary. A wall was built around the kitchen garden, at the cost of £1,574, to enclose 8 acres at the northeast of the site.
[How high, how substantial was the oak fence? Enough to prevent escapees?]
[I have read that walls were built in deep ditches, like ha-has, so patients could have an uninterrupted view of the open country (and across to Earl Spencer's great park at Wimbledon). Fine views were believed to be important in distacting people from repetitive negative thoughts.]
The farm buildings of Springfield Farm, which lay to the west of the Asylum buildings, were re-used to serve the farmland, worked by male patients for occupational therapy.
After five or six years the Asylum had become overcrowded and, in 1849, had to be extended, as a cost of £35,000. Two new wings were added to the building, providing accommodation for 400 more patients.
The water supply ran out in 1850 and, while a new well was drilled, the Lambeth Waterworks Co. supplied the Asylum with "not fewer than 30,000 gallons daily", at a rate of 3d (just over 1p) per 1,000 gallons. (The new well became operational in 1860.)
[Patch writes: ]
The water supply was another source of anxiety to the Committee.
[PB: In addition to personal needs for water, fire was always a deep concern. ]
They started in 1839 by boring a well in a site that is now surrounded by workshops. The pipes broke at 358 feet, but the boring continued until enough water was found [meaning?]; the resulting supply was enough only for a few years and by 1850 an additional well was needed.
In the meantime a contract was signed with the Lambeth Waterworks Company for "not fewer than 30,000 gallons . . . daily" — at a cost of 3d. per thousand gallons.
The water received in this way was taken directly from the river at Thames Ditton. This source lay above the massive sewage pollution of London's water that continued till the 1880s and was responsible for repeated drastic epidemics. When cholera broke out in 1854, John Snow (1813-1858) demonstrated that areas of London supplied from the higher reaches of the Thames had much lower mortality: Springfield was fortunate in its location.
The second well was not completed until 1860, but maintenance and deepening were often needed, as the population of the Asylum increased, and baths became an everyday occurrence.
[Pic of water tower.]
The building of the water tower in 1885 (for £1,300) was also designed to improve the supply, as well as to produce sufficient pressure in case of fire: it was demolished in 1976.
A water tower was built in 1885, as the cost of £1,300, in an attempt to solve the water supply problems being experienced from the two wells (the tower was demolished in 1976). The pump from the original well — a Maudslay table engine — was used until after WW2 and is now in the Science Museum. (The newer pump for the second well was broken up for scrap).
The wells themselves, although still in existence have not been used since the Second World War. The newer pump — a single column beam engine, with its graceful Doric column — was broken up for scrap, but the original pump — a Maudslay table engine — continued in use until after the Second World War, and then found a permanent home in the Science Museum in South Kensington.
By 1855 the Asylum could accommodate 430 males and 534 females.
The Resident Superintendent of the Female Department from 1849-1858, Dr Hugh Welch Diamond (1807—1886), described as the 'father of psychiatric photography', took photographs of exceptional quality of many of the patients in his care.
[The old boundary on the west had been the limit of Tooting or Streatham parish, which was a public footpath. This brought walkers very close to one of the airing courts.]
Patch: At the time of the purchase, the northern boundary ran from east to west at the level of the Gardiner Hill Unit, and along a line marked by the original lodge (1844) opposite these new buildings. The eastern border followed the line between the parishes of Clapham and Streatham. Along this line (the drive from Glenburnie Gate, between the present Admission Hospital and the main building) a public foot-path allowed passers to peer at the patients in the ward gardens — or "airing courts".
The Committee were therefore particularly pleased when, about 1860, they were able to extend the eastern border to its present line, giving greater privacy to their patients. A year or two later they added two strips, from the estate of Mr. McKellar, carrying the northern boundary to the line of Beechcroft Road, from Burntwood Lane to Glenburnie Road. No further land was added to the estate after this (1864): a lodge was added to the new entrance with a weighbridge (1893) and a further lodge at Glenburnie Road (1897).
In 1860 and 1864 additional land was acquired to the east of the site. The Asylum then had 83 acres of farmland and 14 acres of kitchen gardens in which male patients were employed to provide food for the institution (as with other asylums at this time, it was almost self-sufficient).
In 1872 a separate cottage hospital (today known as White Lodge) was erected to treat Asylum patients with infectious diseases. Designed by the Medical Superintendent, it was built by the patients at a cost of £955. As the patient numbers increased, two further wings were added at the south of the site. A ballroom was built in 1879.
In 1881 a purpose-built chapel was built to replace the one located inside the main building, in accordance with the wishes of the Lunacy Commissioners.
In 1889 London County Council and Middlesex [4] County Council were formed following the Local Government Act, 1888. The Surrey County Lunatic Asylum was allocated to the Middlesex County Council, who renamed it the Wandsworth Asylum.
[Still called "County Lunatic Asylum (Middlesex)" on 1940s OS Map?]
[Changing terms/names/language!]
In 1893 a new entrance was made at Glenburnie Road, thus making the back of the Asylum the front. A lodge was built by the new entrance, as well as spacious accommodation for the Medical Superintendent and his family — the new buildings being lit from the first by electricity. An extra lodge was built in 1897.
The Lunacy Act, 1890, sought to separate mentally handicapped children from mentally ill adults and, in October 1897, an Annexe for Idiot Children with 260 beds opened in a separate building, advocated by the Medical Superintendant, Dr Hugh Gardiner-Hill (1856- 1925). Visiting rooms and toilets were located at the front of the building, while the ward accommodation was at the rear (where visitors were not allowed to enter).
Patch:
The most ambitious addition involved the removal of the mentally handicapped, and especially children, from the wards for the mentally ill. The "Annexe for Idiot Children" (now the Admission Hospital) was opened "'in the sixtieth year of Her Majesty's reign" (1897). The idea had been strongly advocated by the Superintendent, Hugh Gardiner-Hill (1856-1925), no doubt supported by an expert member of the Committee, John Langdon-Down (1812-1896).
The building, designed by Rowland Plumbe, was opened on 15th October, 1897 with the admission of 20 "idiot children".
It was equipped with visiting rooms (and toilets) at the front; the wards (into which visitors did not penetrate) lay to the rear. On the right of the entrance was spacious accommodation for a doctor and his family. It was lit from the first by electricity, although the change from gas needed a grant of an extra £5,000.
Its opening made possible at Springfield an active approach to the education and training of the mentally handicapped, previously dispersed — to everyone's disadvantage — through all the wards. Hugh Gardiner-Hill stated the objective as "teaching them to acquire habits of cleanliness, and to develop their dormant senses, so as to adapt their minds and bodies for industrial training, and make their lives the happier by engaging in such occupations as tailoring, mat, basket, brush and shoe making... it would be a noble achievement to bring back this unfortunate class within the pale of ordinary life".
This aspiration continued until the First World War when the building became a military hospital for the wounded. It was never again used for the mentally handicapped but underwent a further adaptation as the result of the Mental Treatment Act of 1930, providing accommodation for the new "Voluntary" patients.
During WW1 the Asylum became the Springfield War Hospital. A Neurological Unit was established in the Annexe for Idiot Children, renamed Springfield House Hospital (separated from the main Asylum by a high fence) for patients with shell shock or loss of mental balance. Together with the 4th London General Hospital, it was the principal reception centre for the mentally disabled from the front in France.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2303170/pdf/brmedj07252-0021.pdf
4th London: https://ezitis.myzen.co.uk/kchdenmarkhill.html
At the beginning of 1916 Springfield House Hospital accepted severe or protracted cases referred from the Neurological Units of the 23 Territorial Force General Hospitals in the United Kingdom. After the war the Annexe was never used again for mentally handicapped patients (following the Mental Treatment Act, 1930, it became a building for 'voluntary' patients. It was renamed the Admissions Hospital).
The Wandsworth Asylum was renamed Springfield Mental Hospital after the war. In 1927 an association was formed with the Westminster Hospital and Medical School.
Clinicians at Springfield taught medical students in their Out-Patient clinics, while the Westminster Hospital consultants provided a service to Springfield patients (this arrangement lasted until after WW2).
In 1930 a Nurses' Home was officially opened by [5] Princess Mary, Countess of Harewood. It provided accommodation for 140 nurses, who had previously lived in side rooms and in the towers of the main building.
In 1931 an infirmary block (now the Dispensary) opened to treat mentally ill patients who were also physically ill. Operating theatres were installed in the block. In 1932 the Asylum had 1,848 patients.
In 1933, an Annexe opened in Kingston Road to accommodate elderly female patients.
In 1939, when it had dropped the word 'Mental' in its title, the Hospital had 1,931 patients.
[Changing terms/names/language!]
During WW2, with no bomb shelters available, the patients were crowded into the basements in an attempt the shelter them from high explosive bombs. Dysentery broke out, with hundreds of patients affected. As well as the common Flexner and Sonne forms of the disease, a new strain was discovered. Springfield Asylum, the Annual Report states, had the distinction of developing a new infective agent, unlike any other bacteria of the intestinal group. the bacillus dysenteriae Springfield. This outbreak produced a legacy of carriers of the disease who required segregation from the Asylum population. Although the buildings received no direct hits during the war, they suffered blast damage from flying bombs nearby. At the end of the war in 1945, the Hospital had 2,040 patients.
The Hospital joined the NHS in 1948 with 1,856 beds. under the control of the Springfield Tooting Hospital Management Committee, part of the South West Metropolitan Regional Health Board.
It was by now providing the usual treatments for mental illness — Cardiazol convulsion therapy, electroplexy (ECT) and deep insulin treatment, as well as neurosurgery. Out-Patient clinics were held at Westminster Hospital, St Charles Hospital and West Middlesex Hospital.
As with other mental hospitals, the ratio of elderly patients had been steadily increasing. In 1949 the Hospital was overcrowded and seriously short of nursing staff. The Hospital had a bed complement of 2,177 beds, but there were only 2,128 patients (740 males and 1,388 females), of whom 33% were over the age of 65 years. These patients were disturbed, senile or moribund, but did not need psychiatric care; there was nowhere [6] else for them to go.
In 1950, when the Hospital had 2,153 patients, modernisation and repair of the wards began, with underpinning of some of the buildings.
Refrigerators were installed in the kitchens. The letter and number system of ward names was abandoned, and the wards were renamed — male wards after trees (for example, Willow, Elm, Yew — Fir and Teak Wards were for the most seriously disturbed) and female wards after flowers (Dahlia, Aster, Zinnia, Fuchsia, Bluebell, Crocus, Marigold, Tulip, etc). The cottage hospital was refurbished and modernised — with a TV and a radio — and became White Lodge — a Neurosis Unit for 20 female patients (male neurotic patients had a ward in the Admissions Hospital). The Medical Superintendent's house became a hostel for male nurses.
The farm had 50 cows producing 800 gallons of milk a week; poultry produced eggs, and provided meat, as did pigs. Fruit was provided by the orchard, and vegetables and salads were grown in the kitchen garden. But both farm and orchard were under threat and, in 1951, 2 acres were taken from the orchard end for a school playing ground.
In the early 1950s the average stay of a patient was 1,050 days. In 1953 an Annexe was opened in New Malden for 290 long-stay elderly female patients who required custodial care only. For the Coronation in 1953, TVs were set up in the wards so that the patients could watch the ceremony. A 12" TV set was provided for the Sisters' Sitting Room. The Hospital had 2,128 patients (764 males and 1,364 females), who stayed an average of 779 days. Outbreaks of dysentery occurred at the main hospital and the Annexe (this was almost an annual occurrence).
By 1954 the Hospital was suffering from a perpetual shortage of nursing staff; there were 110 full-time and 40 part-time female nurses and 120 full-time and 7 part-time male nurses looking after 2,089 patients, 250 of whom were voluntary. About 21% of patients were over the age of 65 years. The cost of an in-patient was 17s 6d (88p) a week. An arrangement was made with St James Hospital in Balham for Springfield patients to be sent there for general surgery, if necessary. Neurosurgery was carried out at the Whittington Hospital, as the post for a neurosurgeon at the Hospital was vacant. A [7] centralised radio system was installed in the wards. The sum of £7,000 had been granted by the King Edward's Hospital Fund for a new Occupational Therapy Centre for 200 patients. It was to be built equidistant from the main block, the Cottage Hospital and the Admissions Hospital.
In 1954 the Catholic chapel was altered to double its capacity. While the Hospital had some 250 Catholic patients, the chapel could only hold 32 (but usually some 45 had to be squeezed in).
The extinction of the farm approached and, in 1954, 26 acres of farmland was taken over by the LCC for building purposes (the site now contains a housing estate and a school). The piggeries and poultry remained, however, cared for by male patients, 40 of whom also worked in the gardens and orchards.
In 1955 the new Occupational Therapy Centre was opened by Dr Noel Harris, the past-President of the Royal Medico-Psychological Association.
The Hospital had 2,093 patients, 16.9% of whom were over the age of 65 years. By now the Hospital was entering the age of tranquilisers.
The advent of chlorpromazine (Largactil) led to a reduction in the number of deep insulin treatments. Two Out-Patient clinics were established at the King Edward Memorial Hospital in Ealing.
In 1955 all dairy farming ceased and the use of the farm gate was discontinued as an exit and entry point. (Burntwood School now stands on part of the farmland, where Springfield Farm's Grade II listed ice house remains in its grounds; the other part became Springfield Park Golf Course, now renamed the Central London Golf Centre.)
The resident male nurses vacated the Medical Superintendent's House and moved to the Nurses' Home. The Admission Hospital was redecorated internally. The Hospital had 34 dysentery carriers housed in one ward, and 14 enteric carriers.
By 1956 there were 2,069 patients, 21% of whom were aged 65 or over. The Hospital's death rate was high — 10.94% — but this reflected the fact that many patients were elderly and died of respiratory conditions afflicting old age.
By the end of the 1950s the Hospital had been almost surrounded by urban development. [8] During the 1960s the number of in-patients began to fall, mainly due to the introduction of drug treatments which enabled patients to be treated as out-patients. Burntwood Villa was built in 1960 and Springfield Cottages in 1968, in the northwest corner of the site, presumably as staff residences.
In 1974, following a major reorganisation of the NHS, the Hospital became part of the Wandsworth and East Merton (Teaching) District Health Authority, under the South West Thames Regional Health Authority. In 1978 it had 1,124 beds.
In 1980 it had 1,000 beds. After another reorganisation in 1982, it became part of the Wandsworth District Health Authority. By 1984 it had 828 beds. The Joan Bicknell Centre was built, named after the first Professor of the Psychiatry of Mental Handicap and a pioneer of psychodynamic thinking in working with people with learning diabilities.
By the beginning of the 1990s, due to the new attitude to mental health issues, many of the large mental health institutions had closed or were being gradually emptied. Government policy of deinstitutionalising mental patients and returning them to 'care in the community' had begun to have effect following the report "Making a Reality of Community Care", published in 1986.
The National Health Service and Community Care Act, 1990, enabled patients to receive long-term care in their own homes (with adequate support) or in a residential home setting.
The Annexe in New Malden — the Morris Markowe Unit — closed in 1991. Ronald Gibson House, a nursing home for 56 residents, opened on the Hospital campus in the same year (it was extended in 2006).
Throughout the 1990s fewer patients were admitted to the Hospital and wards were closed. However, out-patient clinics and support services increased.
In 1994 the Hospital became part of the Pathfinder Mental Health Services NHS Trust, which changed its name in 1999 to the South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust.
In September 2005 the £7m Phoenix Unit opened, a low secure 2-storey mental health [9] rehabilitation facility with accommodation for 18 patients.
The latest development, the £23m Wandsworth Acute Unit, opened in April 2009. It contains an 18-bed acute ward and a psychiatric intensive care unit with 10 beds.
Present status (July 2010)
[PB{ How things have changed since!] The site, which contains some 67 buildings, is currently the headquarters of the Trust.
Many of the original Hospital buildings are now disused and the Trust hopes to sell most of the site for redevelopment. The old buildings would be converted into 262 apartments, and new family housing built. This residential area would be known as 'Springfield Garden Village'.
The Trust plans to build new mental health facilities in the northern part of the vast sprawling campus.
The main building, built in 1840, is Grade II listed and is currently on English Heritage's 'At Risk' register. The Elizabeth Newton Wing, built in 1897, is also Grade II listed.
The mortuary (now called Island House) had been converted into an exhibition centre, while the chapel had become the Mayfield Gymnastics Club.
Update: January 2011
Planning permission for the redevelopment of the site was refused in December 2010.
Update: July 2013
Planning permission was granted in June 1012. The project is now called Springfield Park. N.B. Photographs were obtained in February 2008
The gate lodge on Glenburnie Road, built in 1893. Harewood House, the former Nurses' Home, is seen to the right. [10] The entrance to Springfield University Hospital campus (right). Hightrees — the former Medical Superintendent's Residence (left).
A ward building at the north end.
The northwest side of the Hospital (left). The male ward block (right).
The western elevation of the main administration block, dated 1840, was once the front of the Hospital. Wings were added later on either side.
The main administration building(left). The stone fountain still remains in front of the building (right).https://ezitis.myzen.co.uk/springfield.html Page 10 of 12 [11] Mental care facilities on the south side of the campus.
The airing court on the south side of the Hospital.
The workshop and utility area of the Hospital in the centre of the site.
The ballroom with the chapel just visible behind it (left). The Mayfield Children's Centre Nursery (right).
Island House, the former mortuary (left). The maintenance yard on the northeast side of the site (right).
The Admissions Building, the central part of the Elizabeth Newton Wing. During WW1 the Wing became the Springfield War Hospital. Built in 1897, it was originally the Annexe for Idiot Children. [12]
Patient 'escapees' The Hospital has recently attracted a great deal of media attention and controversy because of a high number of violent crimes relating to its escapees. In 2004 John Barrett, a paranoid schizophrenic, left the Hospital, having been given permission to walk in the grounds unattended.
He bought a set of kitchen knives and, the next day, fatally stabbed to death a cyclist, Denis Finnegan, in Richmond Park.
Since 2005 some 30 patients have escaped from secure wards. In 2009 one patient escaped and two absconded, one of whom was the rapist Barrington Gordon (he was found 12 hours later). Paul Caesar, a convicted killer, went on the run after being allowed to walk in the Hospital grounds unescorted, then committed suicide at Balham station by jumping in front of a train.
References [some links may not work, or are unspecific]
— (Author unstated) 1915 Medical notes in Parliament. Army casualties (mental strain). British Medical Journal 1 (2842), 1060-1061.
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"Springfield House Hospital" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2303170/pdf/brmedj07252-0021.pdf link=— https://ezitis.myzen.co.uk/springfield.htm
pdf=— Lost-Hospitals-of-London-Springfield.pdf
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