by Ian Wheeler
The replacement – and final – stores of 1960 stood at the edge of the farm site, parts of which had by now been taken over for other uses. It incorporated the linen store and connected with the laundry and sewing room, which were put up alongside and operational in May of the same year.
Communications
We are nowadays helpless without telephone or email, undreamt of in 1870. Instead, an electric bell system was installed at least as early as 1872, with which the asylum could summon staff living in nearby Star Terrace. In 1887 this included the Head Male Attendant, Mr Alfred Lockie. A note in the margin of Superintendent Douty’s first report in that year reads ‘Add means for return ring’, suggesting that it would have been useful to know whether anyone in Star Terrace was paying attention.
The telephone arrived in 1900, doubtless a great boon to the senior officers and soon taken for granted, for little further is recorded about telecommunications, apart from re-equipment in 1923. It is an interesting aside that, until about 1970, all Cholsey numbers consisted of just three digits!
Patients’ Workshops
A range of gainful activities not only gave patients a purpose but reduced the net cost of running the asylum. Some worked out of doors, some in the laundry or kitchen and some tended the wards, but the April 1904 ground plan here also shows us that workshops were in place for tailoring, boot-making and cobbling, dressmaking and mattress stuffing. Although the assistance patients could render was often small, this was nevertheless a part of their therapy.
Unfortunately, we know relatively little about the long histories of these shops. Recruiting a resident bootmaker was an early challenge for Superintendent Gilland, but his journal records success in December 1871, when Simion Lyford was hired, to be assisted by five working patients. Robert Townley arrived as Assistant Shoemaker in 1885, while Harry Lammas was Shoemaker from 1911 to 1943. Henry Aldborough was hired as Tailor in March 1872 and there can be little doubt that he was also assisted by patients who would, among other tasks, recover buttons from worn-out clothing.
Hair picking, which was the sorting and untangling of horsehair for stuffing mattresses, is one of the few activities mentioned in the official reports. This dusty task was probably also rather itchy and it is scarcely surprising that, in 1929, it was suggested that a lean-to or shed would be more suitable than an indoor workshop. Mattress stuffing was clearly a major enterprise, producing goods for Fair Mile and other institutions at least until 1949.
The sewing room and tailor’s shop between them produced or repaired much of the hospital linen (all with sewn-in ward numbers), uniforms and patients’ everyday clothing, and female patients turned out quantities of aprons, night attire, flannel drawers, dresses, shirts, socks and stockings. Until about 1935, clothing tended to be serviceable at the expense of high style, but some items were bought in. The division of the sewing room in the late 1930s, to afford facilities for Occupational Therapy, presumably reduced the overall output of clothing. On the other hand, the women gained the opportunity to select and make their own clothing, which must have been beneficial overall.
This atmospheric study is thought to be of Mr William Watts, a Wokingham patient who suffered from depression, in about 1910. Another patient, a Mr Warburton, an artist who had been exhibited at the Royal Academy, produced a superb pencil rendering that survives in the author’s family. (Spackman collection)
For many years there was an upholstery workshop alongside the boiler house, which saved huge expenditure on furniture. The Commissioners’ report of 1935, when the shop was run by a Mr Ivermee, relates that wicker chairs were being upholstered for the greater comfort of patients. The last known location of the workshop was in a shed close to the farm.
Complete figures are not available but it is recorded that 66 per cent of patients were employed in gainful work in 1899; in 1936 there were forty women in the laundry, another sixty to seventy in the sewing room, and a large number of men working in the farm or the grounds. This is not a sound comparison but appears to be a much smaller proportion of the total of 859 souls then resident.
Pathology and X-ray
At the start of 1926, there was a strong recommendation that a pathology laboratory be set up (or else arrangements made with another hospital) to investigate the causes of death, disease and epidemic. As in so many other areas, progress was so slow that one has to entertain the possibility of reluctance on the part of the hospital’s officers. In 1929, Commissioner Herbert C. Bailey wrote:
I hope the time is not very far distant when this hospital will be equipped with an admission hospital and a treatment centre with those modern appliances, such as X-rays, violet rays, continuous baths20 and other things which are now so generally used as aids to the successful treatment of mental troubles.
No laboratory was in prospect by 1932 but the end of 1938 saw official satisfaction at the conversion of a disused ward kitchen – yet this may never have been completed as the shortcoming is repeatedly mentioned up to 1942, when a small laboratory existed in Male 2. Notwithstanding, pathology was being done at the Royal Berkshire Hospital – not at Fair Mile – in 1951.
X-ray facilities fared no better; those for TB at least were still being done at Reading in 1948, and the results reviewed by the County Tuberculosis Officer. Not until 1949 did work start on a radiological unit, which required its own diesel generator. When it opened in 1950, it was operated by technicians based in Reading.
In fairness to all – given the strictures of wartime and the consequent huge increase in the hospital’s patient population – the following statement, dated 22 May 1946, by Commissioners W.S. Mackay and H.C. Devas, does much to deflect any blame from Superintendent William Ogden and the Visitors:
There is much to do to raise this hospital to the standard of up to date efficiency which it will undoubtedly achieve. There is no need to mention in detail all the needs. The facts are well known to the Committee and Superintendent and we were much impressed by what is being done and the amount of thought that has been given to detailed planning for the future. It is regrettable that in present circumstances progress is bound to be slow. Many of the plans are interdependent and must follow a sequence, for example the provision of a nurses’ home, which is the most urgent necessity at the moment, will release accommodation for badly needed clinical rooms and other purposes; the building of an admission hospital will enable the wards at present used for this purpose to be used for the more satisfactory care of patients with tuberculosis for whom the present arrangements, particularly on the female side, are poor: a new staff dining room will allow provision of a proper lecture room for nurses and a sitting room for male staff; it will also allow the operating theatre to be used solely for its original purpose. It is unfortunate that there are no satisfactory quarters for married medical officers.
On the positive side good progress is being made with redecoration of wards and reconstruction of sanitary annexes. The farm has been brought up to date and is a pleasure to see. A new herd of tuberculosis-tested cattle has been started. More important is the development of the clinical side, particularly the out-patient and child guidance work.
After two years in a country that was at peace with most of the rest of the world, Commissioners J. Coffin Duncan and R.G. Anderson recorded in late 1947 that slow inroads had been made into improvements and there was praise for what had been achieved. It was understood that ‘present difficulties’ (almost certainly the nation’s impoverished post-war state) prevented rapid progress. A significant deficiency was in staff housing.
Dr Ogden had done what he could to improve staff amenities, for example a new mixed staff dining room by the kitchens and a new male nurses’ sitting room; female nurses now had two sitting rooms in the 1870 superintendent’s residence, although they needed refurnishing, rugs and lighting. There was also a lecture room for the new Preliminary Training School. Nevertheless, wards were still being described as drab, needing redecoration and comfortable furniture; easy
chairs were most urgently needed. Some staircases were dangerously worn and liable to cause accidents.
As the National Health Service era approached, a report penned in July 1948 by Commissioners Coffin Duncan and Anderson lamented the slow pace of urgent improvements, but was again charitable enough to record that Ogden was fighting an uphill battle and that his difficulties were understood by the Board of Control. There was still no admissions hospital; no convalescent villas; overcrowding and the time-worn problem of staff shortages. Adding difficulty was the presence of about 150 people with learning difficulties who, it was appreciated, should be cared for at a specialist unit. These poor souls, added to a wartime influx from Hill End and Brookwood Hospitals, represented an overload on the nursing staff the hospital had managed to recruit or retain.
The Mortuary
This was situated on the west wall of the boiler house from at least 1904. The building was part of the original boiler house complex and it is not clear whether the mortuary was always there. A young Vera Talbot and her little brother, John, who lived in the Lodge, one day couldn’t resist climbing up to look in through the window – and rather wished they hadn’t. There are few mentions of the mortuary in the archives and, hardly surprisingly, no detail of the solemn proceedings it hosted.
The mortuary was a small building adjacent to the boiler house. It housed a chapel of rest, a refrigerator for three corpses, a post-mortem table and these shelves. (Bill Nicholls)
The tiny chapel of rest adjacent to the mortuary. These forlorn views are from 2011. (Bill Nicholls)
Notes
14 Gas lighting had a protracted development history; some Chinese were burning natural gas for lighting in the fourth century.
15 It is unlikely that the 1910 purchase of engine and dynamo had been finalised.
16 Other contenders included the equally famous Edison Swan, British Thomson Houston Co. and Siemens Bros., whose even more economical ‘Wotan’ lamps were later purchased.
17 Compare this with a modern 60W lamp, which emits about 65 candlepower.
18 Yeast was a major product of the Distillers Company Ltd.
19 James Morrison (1789–1857) was a fabulously rich, self-made businessman and Member of Parliament. His descendants were notable landowners for many years.
20 A calming therapy in which patients would spend hours or sometimes days suspended in warm water that was continuously replenished.
4
EXPANSION
More or less chronologically, here is an account of the significant enlargements to the asylum over many years.
Four staff cottages standing along the Reading Road perimeter were all in place for the 1870 opening of the Moulsford Asylum. Tenure of each was associated with a particular responsibility; for example, in the early 1930s, the semi-detached cottage at the gate to the asylum’s farm was occupied by Mr William (Bill) Southby, Clerk of Works, and his wife. The adjoining property was that of Mr Chris Carter, Farm Bailiff from 1897 to 1946. A hundred yards to the south, by the main gate, stood the lodge cottage, which was assigned to the Hall Porter, Mr Leslie Talbot and his family, whose neighbours were Mr Last, Head Gardener, and his wife.
Unsurprisingly, the arrangements for staff accommodation were supplemented and altered over the asylum’s long history, according to the needs and fashions of the day.
Star Terrace
Although some believe that Star Terrace, in nearby Papist Way, was built for the asylum’s use, it was in fact purchased from the estate of a Mr Bowler in 1872. The cottages, on three floors, were described as ‘newly built’ and the auctioneers were quick to point out that they were ‘the nearest buildings to the new County Asylum at Moulsford’. Money changed hands on 25 September 1872, a deposit of £90 representing 10 per cent of the purchase price. Although Star Terrace usually housed artisan staff such as the farm hands or upholsterer, Alfred Lockie, Head Male Attendant from at least 1875, had one cottage, while Mr Porter and Mr Matheson, both attendants, and Perce Talbot, stoker, were there many years later. The terrace is now in private hands.
(Reproduced by permission of the Berkshire Record Office)
Part of Star Terrace and the neighbouring Morning Star pub. (Author’s collection)
Howell’s Extensions, c.1881
Almost as soon as it had opened, Dr Gilland found himself faced with heavy demands on the asylum’s capacity. The majority of its 285 beds had been filled within twelve months of opening and were all occupied by May 1875. Meanwhile, Berkshire continued to use its allocation at Littlemore but in 1876 Oxfordshire, with troubles of its own, took steps to buy out Berkshire’s places. This precipitated urgent expansion at Moulsford, again supervised by C.H. Howell and, between 1878 and 1881, 400 additional beds were made available by adding Male and Female wards 4 to 7. The hospital plan here is based on a 1904 drawing by Thomas Dinwiddy & Sons, which claims an original 200 beds, plus the 400 new. Whatever the exact figures, demand exceeded supply and Change at Cholsey – Again! tells of ‘patients sleeping on the floor until new beds were bought to go in the corridors’. The new building work included additions to staff accommodation outside the site, extension of the chapel, a recreation hall and improvements to infrastructure, notably the laundry and bakery.
The Recreation Hall
This was part of Howell’s 1881 scheme and adjoined an extension of the dining hall at the rear of the asylum. Although plain and described by some as rather small, it had a large stage with rooms beneath and an excellent dance floor. Naturally it was the social centre and the scene of many dances, concerts, pantomimes and parties. When its huge sliding doors were rolled back the combined dining room and hall made an impressive space.
The 1881 Recreation Hall in about 2000. The castellated roofline beyond marks the contemporary extension of the dining hall. Note the projection room at the extreme right. (Spackman collection)
The Recreation Hall or ‘Great Hall’ before restoration. Note the false ceiling. The panelling around the stage had protected many original features. (Bill Nicholls)
The banner over the stage of the Berkshire Mental Hospital’s Recreation Hall appears to read ‘THE COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON’, suggesting a Christmas show. The date is estimated at 1930. Ray Beasley is 8th from left, then Roddy Hutt and Vi Hearmon. The violinist on the far right may be Alf Alsopp, charge nurse, who also played trombone with Cholsey Silver Band. (Spackman collection)
Dancing girls in the same show around 1930. (Spackman collection)
The Isolation Hospital
To combat the spread of dangerous diseases, an isolation hospital was built in 1894, costing £2,879. The single-storey building stood by the north-eastern perimeter, well removed from the main blocks. The architect was George Thomas Hine, RIBA, like Howell a specialist in asylum architecture. Tuberculosis affected the asylum for many years and was among the principal reasons for this addition, which staff and even official reports called ‘the Bungalow’. Surrounded by attractive gardens and screened by trees, it was a peaceful retreat. Extensions and alterations made in 1929 accommodated fourteen extra patients. With improvements in the treatment of previously intractable diseases, consideration was given in 1935 to assigning it to low-supervision male patients on the same basis as in the Villa (see here), although the Commissioners noted that it was still ‘admirably used for debilitated or tuberculous female patients’. From the 1970s, the unit was officially Rotherfield Ward and at various times it was used as a secure unit and by the hospital’s forensic service. Sadly, the Bungalow did not survive the hospital’s redevelopment.
The Bungalow in the 1960s. The gardens are not at their best. (Spackman collection)
Renato Zito and an unknown patient/gardener at the Bungalow in 1958. (Renato Zito)
Dick Nicholls and colleague in the Bungalow, c.1950. (Bill Nicholls)
Hine’s Extensions, c.1900
Having been obliged to relinquish its own arrangements with Littlemore, the Borough of New Windsor joined the Bodies in U
nion in 1896, adding to pressure on ward accommodation at Moulsford. In 1898, George Hine submitted plans for two new two-storey wings with 100 beds apiece – housing Male and Female wards 8 and 9 – a further extension of the chapel and bakery and the new boiler house that provided centralized heating and generated electricity. Electric lighting replaced gas and a telephone system was installed, while some existing wards received interior panelling.
A contract for groundwork and foundations was awarded to Benfield and Loxley of Oxford, and completed by April 1899, while the upper works went to Parnell & Son of Rugby. Sadly, there were delays associated with one of the service tunnels and a shortage of facing bricks. This had the superintendent expressing his frustration in March 1900, since the weather was ideal for building. A year later, only sixteen new beds were available and overcrowding was unavoidable until the new wards could be opened in 1902.
Ferry Cottages
Two rows of staff houses, usually called Ferry Cottages, stand along the Reading Road to the south-west of Ferry Lane. One of these is believed to have been built at the same time as the asylum and to have housed building workers before allocation to nursing staff. The house nearest to the asylum was usually allocated to the Head Male Attendant; around 1900, this was Mr Jack Woolley and, from 1936 to 1952, Mr Jack Croxford, who was in turn replaced by Mr Harold Lambert.