Typhoid Women kept in asylum

[XB9S, BSN, MSN, EdD, RN, APN]

Very interesting article in the BBC today

At least 43 female typhoid carriers were locked up for life in a mental hospital, the BBC has learned.

The women were held at Long Grove asylum in Epsom, Surrey, in the period between 1907 and its closure in 1992.

They had recovered from the disease but still excreted the bacterium and posed a public health risk.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7528045.stm

When I did my nurse training the my psychiatric stint was in one of the older psychiatric hospitals. I remember that there were a few patients there that had been admitted for reasons such as being pregnant and unmarried, post natal depression, epilepsy. They were admitted at a young age (usually in their teens) and then had spent so long being medicated and in the presence of those with real psychiatric illness by the time it was acknowledged that the admission was inappropriate they were unsuitable to go anywhere else as they were institutionalised.

Very sad for those poor women.

[Silverdragon102, BSN]

I remember when I did a stint at a long term mental health hospital on similar cases, not for Typhoid but as you mention Sharrie. I remember a couple of women who was placed there because they was unmarried parents in the 1920's and spent that long there they was totally institutionalised. One loved Vera Lynn and would always burst into song and cheered everyone up which is how I will always remember her.

[RGN1]

I watched the program about that - sad & fascinating at the same time.

I did my psyche at Claybury Hospital (now shut like all the others) there were definitely people (usually women) sent there for very suspect reasons in the past.