Horton Hospital

Last week we were tempted out in the evening, for the first time for a while, to hear a talk at the recently renovated Horton Chapel about rescuing the records from the Epsom Cluster when it closed down, that is to say the group of five large mental hospitals originally built to serve the pressing need from London. One of which was Horton Hospital, together with its chapel, which last was previously noticed at reference 1.

We decided that parking at Horton Retail was the way forward, which worked well. Except that we noticed that external maintenance of the flats associated with the shops was not all it might have been.

The refurbishment of the chapel itself has been done very handsomely, to the point where I was surprised to read at reference 3 that it came in at £100,000. I would have guessed a lot more. Maybe I am looking at the wrong number. But the extensive grounds outside, with a good number of mature trees (no Wellingtonia, despite there being quite a few of them dotted around the cluster), have yet to be done. Fund raising in progress.

The organisation of the event itself was a bit haphazard. But with volunteers new to the job, one has to be make allowances. No doubt they will learn and will manage better next time. Hopefully that will include the acoustical arrangements which were not good on this occasion and it was hard, at times, to hear what our two speakers were saying. One, I think a senior person in county archives, the other the curator of the local museum which is upstairs at Bourne Hall.

We were reminded that while the mental health world has moved on, at the time these hospitals were built the authorities were doing the best they could with the money available. With best including a pretty high standard of building. And there were plenty of people from the slummy London of the beginning of the 20th century who needed the sort of help that these hospitals could offer. Although there was a hint of change in the wind, with best practise in the US moving towards smaller units - there called villas - rather than the large ward blocks they had had before - and which the Epsom hospitals went on to have. London had neither the time nor the money to go small.

Winding up in one of these hospitals was, originally, all linked up with the workhouse system of the day and a good proportion of the customers were paupers from one of the many slums of what is now central London. Although the arrival of recreational drugs in the 1950's meant that there were a lot more middle class customers. Indeed, I remember the days when chaps from the substance abuse department were allowed out to TB for an afternoon beverage. Some of them were quite interesting, having once been serious people. 

Aside: one should not forget the custom of sending unmarried mothers to these places, quite often for life. Something we now handle a bit better.

We learned that saving the records was a rather chaotic business, with it being hard to strike a proper balance between preserving the records and preserving the privacy of the people concerned, a good number of whom were still alive. I was reminded that records, like mental health, is not at the top of the list when it comes to getting money. Also of an adage from the Department of Employment of the early 1980's: if you had a duffer, ship him or her out to records, statistics or premises.

Also that a big driver for preserving the records was the ancestry business. Lots of people are keen to find out about relatives who lived in or passed through these hospitals. Just as it is at the National Archives at Kew: they might hold invaluable records about all kinds of stuff, but it is the ancestry business which pays the bills.

A big part of the record was the case files about people - all complete with a mug shot. Apparently reflecting the phrenological beliefs of the mental health trade at that time. The shape of your head was a good place to start if you wanted to know what was going on inside - with live insides being decades away from being accessible in the way that they are now.

I was a little surprised at the trouble and expense of some of the record restoration work. Given the volume of the material, was it appropriate to be spending a lot on the recovery of any one item?

Door to door, an event lasting around two hours, which was about right. We were glad to have made it. And maybe the chapel will become a community facility, a place where you can drop in for a chat, a snack or a light meal. Maybe even a beverage. Not so unlike the Longmead Community Centre - or indeed the church with its café in the middle of Kingston.

PS: an event which was more or less mask free. This despite the talk being given in a reasonably confined space and over half of the audience being of pensioner age.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/09/autumn-heritage-day-1-session-1.html.

Reference 2: https://thehortonepsom.org/. The people who run the chapel.

Reference 3: https://edenlondon.co.uk/project/horton-chapel-epsom/. The source of the snap above.