Sarah Dentith gave the March talk on Powick Hospital Patients in World War I, using her extensive research on this topic. If you wish to follow in her footsteps you will need to apply for permission to look at these records from The Hive https://www.explorethepast.co.uk/contact-us/ and it will take some time for this to be granted. You will also be restricted by the 100-year privacy rules. A starting point might be https://medicalmuseum.org.uk/powick-patients/
The original building was built in 1852 for 200 patients, however, by 1914 there were over 1000 patients. 898 were from Worcestershire, but further civilian patients came from facilities in Montgomery, Hereford, Winson Green and Northampton. Before this time Edward Elgar had been the conductor of Powick Asylum Band for dances. It was a place to do good.
Many of the staff had secondary skills that they were able to use with the patients, such as carpentry and building. There was little physical restraint used. There were no fences and many did “escape.” The cost of medication was considered as minimal at 1s ½d per person per week.
Unfortunately, 42% of the staff volunteered for War Service in World War I and this put considerable strains on the staffing of so many people. Over-crowding and staff shortages were problems then. The records for men and women were kept separately, but unfortunately, the male records from 1916 to 1918 do not appear to have survived. There are full records, of their type, for the females. The patients came as individuals with a variety of complaints, some were delusional and there were cases of “War Worry.” There is no mention of diagnoses that we would recognise today, like post-natal depression, but they were probably present, but labelled differently.
There are no cases of what we would call shell-shock and there is no evidence that people using the building to seek a method to avoid War Service. But several patients’ notes mention the War causing their delusions. It was a civilian facility.
The name from 1847 of the Worcester City and County Pauper Lunatic Asylum is rather brutal to our ears and it changed its name over the years. It closed as Powick Hospital in 1989.
Questions from the audience included:
The name of the building: opened as the City and County of Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum in 1852 the building Changed name to Powick Mental Hospital in 1890.
Causes of death of patients (referred to a colleague in the audience who is currently researching).
Whether female staff volunteered for service during WW1 – more research to do on this but there was a Red Cross hospital on site, outside of this research and staff can be researched here: British Red Cross volunteers during the First World War.
Patients from an older period – digitised copies of records: https://medicalmuseum.org.uk/powick-patients/.
Shellshock: shellshocked patients were not transferred to Powick or other public mental hospitals, but by 1922 48 ‘special hospitals’ had been set up around the country to deal with ‘emotional casualties’ with 9000 ex-servicemen still hospitalised and 65000 shell shocked personnel were thought to have been on disability pensions.
More Links:
The booklet on patients at Powick from the HLF funded research for Worcestershire World War 100 project Mental+Health+Booklet.pdf (squarespace.com) A recorded interview with Sarah about the research on Powick patients: History West Midlands | Powick Mental Hospital – untold stories from the First World War (historywm.com)