Mental health and survivors' movements and context

The Survivors History Group was founded in April 2005 to value and celebrate the contribution that mental health service users/survivors have made and are making to history. It is working towards a comprehensive history on this site and in a book. It will also preserve historical material in digital form on this site, and in printed and other forms.

Jessie looks into the future with Hannah.

The website includes, or will include: The story/stories of the movement in the form of a timeline. Individuals' stories inter-related to the story of the movement. See, for example, Charlotte and Freda Mew - Eric Irwin - Joan Hughes - Valerie Argent - Frank Bangay - State of Mind. Information boxes about particular features such as Survivor's Poetry Indexes such as that of survivor history features in Asylum magazine. Reviews and summaries of books, articles and other printed material that record and discuss the story. See, for example, Contesting Psychiatry (2005) Copies of articles about the movement and its history. Some of which are listed in the leaflets and downloads section. Others - for example, Mark Cresswell on the self-harm movement - are listed separately. Copies of documents from the movement's history. Including - Perceval's narrative (extracts) - Ken - The General Grievances of Patients in Hartwood - the Fish Pamphlet - MPU Declaration of Intent - Edale Charter - Lists of paper records about groups in the movement that individuals and others have preserved - See histories - libraries - archives Book and pamphlet lists. See libraries - especially the Anne Plumb Collection Records of where papers, books and pamphlets are preserved. See  listed archives Building this record has to be a collective effort, and we hope you will help us.

See publications list Leaflets and other material to download About the Survivors History Group Leaflets - newsletter/leaflet - leaflet - exhibition Articles - Survivor History General histories From the Survivors History Group: Survivor Voices 1908-2008 - A timeline from the Survivors History Group Posters From Beyond the Water Towers Sainsbury Trust 2005 From Little Acorns - The mental health service user movement by Peter Campbell From the Mind website: user/survivor empowerment leaflets Report on Conference with Historians - May 2008 Celebrating our history - Valuing ourselves. A pdf of the whole report Part one as a web page Histories with a special theme From the Greater Manchester Survivors History Group: Greater Manchester leaflet and timeline History of Survivors Speak Out From Time Together (Together: Working for Wellbeing) - Andrew Roberts' articles relating individual survivor lives to the movement - "The Story of Valerie Argent" Winter 2008 - "The Story of Joan Hughes" Summer 2009 - "The Story of Freda and Charlotte Mew" Winter 2009 - "A Celebration of Survivor History" Summer 2010 - "The Story of Frank Bangay" Summer 2011 - Emotional journeys December 2011 Judy Chamberlin (1944-2010) Psychiatric Survivor Activist, from Asylum September 2010 pp 20-21 "Scotland the Brave - User movement roots" by Andrew Roberts Tools for teaching survivor history Compiled by Clare Ockwell for CAPITAL: A reading list A Quiz 1973 Demands - What have we achieved? Where have We come From? - Appreciating our roots By Peter Campbell Teaching and learning survivor movement history Questions for discussion Five questions Lots of questions

Survivor Timeline

Several items in this timeline (chronology) link to fuller items further down the page or on other pages. Use it as one index to the page. There is another index in the margin.

about 1373 Margery Kempe born Margery Brunham. She was the daughter of John Brunham, sometimes mayor of Lynn, in Norfolk. She married John Kempe, who became a town official in 1394. They had fourteen or more children at least one of whom (a son) survived into adulthood. The 1995 USA paperback (left) of her medieval story has been sub-titled "autobiography of the madwoman of God" A chapter by chapter analysis of the book is available on the mapping Margery Kempe website about 1393 Margery Kempe had a child and went "out of her mind" for about eight months.

" And in this time she saw, as she thought, devils opening their mouths all inflamed with burning waves of fire, as if they would have swallowed her in, sometimes ramping at her, sometimes threatening her, pulling her and hauling her, night and day during the aforesaid time. Also the devils cried upon her with great threatenings, and bade her that she should forsake Christendom, her faith, and deny her God, His Mother and all the Saints in Heaven, her good works and all good virtues, her father, her mother and all her friends. And so she did. She slandered her husband, her friends and her own self. She said many a wicked word, and many a cruel word; she knew no virtue nor goodness; she desired all wickedness; like as the spirits tempted her to say and do, so she said and did. She would have destroyed herself many a time at their stirrings and have been damned with them in Hell, and in witness thereof, she bit her own hand so violently, that the mark was seen all her life after.

And also she rived the skin on her body against her heart with her nails spitefully, for she had no other instruments, and worse she would have done, but that she was bound and kept with strength day and night so that she might not have her will. And when she had long been laboured in these and many other temptations, so that men weened she should never have escaped or lived... "

1413 (soon after her father's death) Margery Kempe left her husband to take a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. She returned via Rome and left Rome in Easter 1415

"She had so much affection for the manhood of Christ, that when she saw women in Rome bearing children in their arms, if she could ascertain that any were man children, she would then cry, roar, and weep as if she had seen Christ in His childhood.

... If she saw a seemly man, she had great pain in looking at him, lest she might have seen Him Who was both God and man.

... the Father of Heaven ... told her that she should be wedded to His Godhead.

... 'I take thee, Margery, for My wedded wife, for fairer, for fouler, for richer, for poorer, so that thou be kindly and gentle to do as I bid thee'"

1417 left on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, via Bristol. On her journey back through England she was twice interrogated and imprisoned. She returned to Lynn sometime in 1418

"Kempe recounts several public interrogations during her travels. One followed her arrest by the Mayor of Leicester who accused her, in Latin, of being a "cheap whore, a lying Lollard," and threatened her with prison. After Kempe was able to insist on the right of accusations to be made in English and to defend herself she was briefly cleared, but then brought to trial again by the Abbot, Dean and Mayor, and imprisoned for three weeks. She returned to Lynn some time in 1418." (Wikipedia)

"During the 1420s Kempe lived apart from her husband. When he fell ill, however, she returned to Lynn to be his nursemaid. Their son, who lived in Germany, also returned to Lynn with his wife." (Wikipedia)

1431 Death of John Kempe and the Kempe's son.

1436 Margery Kempe finished dictating a book about her spiritual experiences.

Thomas Moore and the beating of the frenzied heretic In his apology (1533), Moore explains which heretics he had ordered to be beaten whilst Lord Chancellor (October 1529 - May 1532): "Another was one which, after that he had fallen into that frantic heresy, fell soon after into plain open frenzy beside. And albeit that he had therefore been put up in Bedlam, and afterward by beating and correction gathered his remembrance to him, and began to come again to himself, being thereupon set at liberty, and walking about abroad, his old fancies began to fall again in his head. And I was from divers good holy places advertised, that he used in his wandering about to come into the church, and there make many mad toys and trifles, to the trouble of good people in the divine service, and specially would he be most busy in the time of most silence, while the priest was at the secrets of the mass about the elevation. Whereupon I, being advertised of these pageants, and being sent unto and required by very devout religious folk, to take some other order with him, caused him as he came wandering by my door, to be taken by the constables, and bounden to a tree in the street before the whole town, and there they striped him with rods therefor till he waxed weary, and somewhat longer. And it appeared well that his remembrance was good enough, save that it went about in grazing till it was beaten home. For he could then very well rehearse his faults himself, and promise to do afterward as well. And verily, God be thanked, I hear none harm of him now."

1539 Juan Ciudad Duarte

Known examples of collective action are exceedingly rare before the 19th century. A 1620 "Petition of the Poor Distracted Folk of Bedlam" is often mentioned. The primary sources for this (see below) are ambiguous. Whilst it is possible to read them as evidence of collective action by patients, they can also be read as evidence of complaints by others being investigated. By contrast, the Alleged Lunatics Friend Society, founded in 1845, is well documented. 1914 The Story of Bethlehem Hospital by Edward O'Donoghue, page 160. The "court books" refers to the Bethlem Court of Governors Minutes The relative of a Bethlem patient, Elizabeth Slater, complained about her treatment in 1620: "In April 1620, a committee was appointed to hear the complaints made by a Mr Slater about his daughter's mistreatment and abuses in general; in July, three Governors were ordered to discuss and investigate further alleged abuses." ( Andrews etc 1997 (Kindle Locations 2007-2008). "The Governors undoubtedly expected inmates to be looked after in a way that did not damage them. When the father of Elizabeth Slater, a woman transferred from Bridewell to Bethlem in August 1620, complained that 'her foote was rotten . for want of good looking to' a mere three weeks later, they immediately ordered a committee to investigate this and any other possible abuses." ( Andrews etc 1997 (Kindle Locations 3594-3596). From A transcript of the registers of the company of stationers of London; 1554-1640, A. D. Edited by Edward Arber. Volume three. available in the Haithi Trust Digital Library In 1635 William Jones was one of the twenty two master printers of London (same source). He may have had a printer son who died in 1627. The family were puritans and one or other was prosecuted in 1609 in a case that the king (James 1st) took an interest in. William Jones (the father?) died in 1643. His printing business was a continuation of that of Ralph Blower and was continued by Thomas Paine (See Library of Congress name authority file) Peterson 1982 refers to this. In his bibliography he lists "Anonymous The Petition of the poor Distracted People in the House of Bedlam London 1620 No known copies remain" (p.355) and on page 47 he says "I know of only one piece of protest writing from the seventeenth century, a pamphlet entitled The Petition of the poor Distracted People in the House of Bedlam, which was registered in 1620 but then lost" Other people tell different stories: "as far as we know the existence of a 1620 Petition of the Poor Distracted Folk of Bedlam is no more than a rumour" - "the existence of a document called a 'Petition of the Poor Distracted Folk of Bedlam', supposedly composed by patients and submitted to the House of Lords. Although widely reported (including a reference in the book Personal Development and Clinical Psychology) ... does not appear in Bethlem's archives, and as far as the archivist, Colin Gale, knows, it is a 'phantom reference'. ... if the first genuine patient perspective of Bedlam dates from as late as 1818" (Madness and the Theatre blog)

1621 Robert Burton

1651

Winter 1651 George Fox's vision of blood in the streets of Lichfield

1651 or 1652 Birth of Christoph Haizmann (died 14.3.1700) who became a painter and, in 1669, engaged in what he saw as a "pact with the devil". The pact is said to include the words "I, Christoph Haizmann, subscribe myself to this Lord as his bounden son till the ninth year. Year 1669"

1654 John Pateson

1677

29.8.1677 In church, in the Seignory of Pootenbrunn, near Vienna, painter Christoph Haizmann was seized by convulsions. Shortly afterwards he confessed to a pact with the devil made nine years before. The picture of the first meeting with the devil, a genial genleman walking his dog, is taken from a three part (Triptych) thanksgiving painting by Haizmann which shows the exorcism of the devil in the centre.

1738 Alexander Cruden

1772 Pageant: James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw's life narrative

1803

14.2.1803 John Thomas Perceval, founder of the Alleged Lunatics Friend Society born (Gault, H. 2010, p.49). He died 1876.

1805

26.3.1805 Birth of Luke James Hansard, original founder of the Alleged Lunatics Friend Society. His father (James Hansard 23.3.1781-1849) was the second son of Luke Hansard (5.7.1752-29.10.1828), founder of the firm that printed reports of parliament. See 1820 - 1828 - 1845 - 1846 - 1847 - 1848 - 1851 -

Monday 12.5.1812: John Thomas Perceval's father assassinated

1820  

Luke James Hansard working in his grandfather's printing firm?

1824  

June 1824 Edward L. Peithman, aged about 20, came to England from Germany. In 1827 he published Peithman's Latin composition, in 1830 Peithman's Latin grammar and in 1832 Peithman's French grammar. See 1840 - 1854 - 1855

1825  

1826  

December 1826 First of the Albury conferences in which an elite group gathered in a Sussex banker's house to discuss the "unfulfilled prophesies". Spencer Perceval junior took part.

1827  

11.5.1827 The new Caledonian Church in Regent Street, minister Edward Irving, built for 1,700, was full filled to overflowing at its opening.

1828  

29.10.1828 Luke Hansard died at the home of James Hansard in Southampton Street. He had returned to London from Worthing 10.10.1828 and had been "carried up-stairs" by James, Luke Graves Hansard (a brother of James) and Luke James Hansard (aged 23). The firm became "James and Luke G. Hansard" (Trewin and King 1952 p.162.

1830

March 1830 At Row (now Rhu) on the Gareloch and the Clyde coast:

"On Sunday, 28th March, 1830, Miss Mary Campbell spoke in tongues and some days later was miraculously healed of consumption at her home at Fernicarry on the Gareloch in the parish of Roseneath, Dunbartonshire." Strachan, The Pentecostal Theology Of Edward Irving, p.13.

June 1830 John Thomas Perceval went to Scotland to enquire about the Row Miracles

7.10.1830 Begining of Spencer Perceval's busy month of London madhouse visiting

Christmas 1830 In Dublin, John Thomas Perceval was "unfortunately deprived of the use of reason". He was admitted to a private asylum (in England) in January 1831

1831  

January 1831 John Thomas Perceval confined in Brislington House.

14.2.1831 Spencer Perceval's first motion (withdrawn) calling for a day of national fasting.

1.3.1831 First Reform Bill introduced into the House of Commons

March 1831 Spencer Perceval making some London madhouse visits

July 1831 Second Reform Bill in the House of Commons

October 1831 cholera in Britain

December 1831 Third Reform Bill in the House of Commons

1832  

21.3.1832 Spencer Perceval to the House of Commons:

"I tell you that this land will soon be desolate; a little time and ye shall howl one and all in the streets. I tell ye that the pestilence, which God is now holding in, will be let loose among ye, and that the sword will follow it ... I tell the house more than this: the Church of the land shall be laid low, for she hath corrupted her way before God ... trouble yourselves not with this Bill; for this which I have told you is your doom ... God looketh into your hearts, and seeth that you care not for him. He seeth that ye think that ye have got your Sovereign into a net, but..."

"Ye may think me mad, and ridicule me as a man beside himself ..."

21.3.1832 National day of fasting and prayer

May 1832 John Thomas Perceval moved to Ticehurst Asylum

7.6.1832 Royal Assent to the Parliamentary Reform Act

1833  

1834

31.3.1834 John Thomas Perceval , married Anna Lesley Gardner, a cheesemonger's daughter, who was described by his family as "quite out of his station in life". They went to Paris, where their first two daughters were born: Jane Beatrice, April 1835-1893 and Alice Frederica, June 1836- 1941 (1921?). Their third daughter, Selina Maria, 1838-1925, married her cousin Sir Horatio George Walpole, assistant under-secretary of state for India. Fanny Louisa Charlotta, 1845- 1862, died when she was 17.

1835

John Thomas Perceval's elder sister, Isabella, married Spencer Walpole who, as Tory Home Secretary, in 1859 set up an inquiry into lunacy laws that John Thomas gave evidence to.

1838 Birth of Herculine Barbin (1838-1868), who became Abel Barbin after 1860, otherwise known as Alexina B. He killed himself in February 1868. (Wikipedia - Foucault)

1838 A narrative of the treatment experienced by a gentleman, during a state of mental derangement: designed to explain the causes and the nature of insanity, and to expose the injudicious conduct pursued towards many unfortunate sufferers under that calamity by John Thomas Perceval published anonymously.

24.8.1838 Richard Paternoster's confinement reported in The Times

5.10.1838 Advertisement?

MR PATERNOSTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES Sir - It is due to Mr Richard Paternoster, whose seizure and confinment an insane person have excited so much interest, that the public should be informed that after a full investigation of the circumstances by the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy (set on foot immediately upon their being acquainted with the fact) and after a detention of six weeks in Mr Finch's Lunatic Asylum at Kensington, he has been released. We are, Sir, your most obedient servants, LAKE AND CURTIS. Solicitors to Mr Richard Paternoster. 11 Basinghall-street, October 5, 1838

Nicholas Hervey (1986) appears to suggest that this was an advertisement "for others to join him" and that it brought John Thomas Perceval and Paternoster together, to be joined in 1839 by William Bailey and Richard Saumarez.

1839

Marquis of Normanby Home Secretary 30.8.1839 to 3.9.1841 - Preface p.x to 1840 Narrative, Perceval says that "since the present work was placed in the hands of the printer", the Marquis (in contrast to others previously) had attended to his suggestions "with as much courtesy as good will". Perceval speaks of the confidence inspired in him by his previous publication had enabled him to approach the Marquis.

22.9.1839 Letter from John Thomas Perceval in The Satirist. The letter was written in Paris in August 1839

1840   16.2.1840 Letter from John Thomas Perceval in The Satirist. The letter was written from Kensington.

10.6.1840 Edward Oxford fired shots at the carriage of the newly married Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He was found insane and sent to Bethlem.

1840 A narrative of the treatment experienced by a gentleman, during a state of mental derangement: designed to explain the causes and the nature of insanity, and to expose the injudicious conduct pursued towards many unfortunate sufferers under that calamity by John Thomas Perceval published with his name on. [Different content]

9.8.1840 Perceval's Narrative reviewed in The Examiner

29.6.1840 Edward Peithman sought an audience with Prince Albert and found himself detained in Bethlem.

October 1840 The assault on his wife (below) led to Arthur Legent Pearce being confined in the criminal lunatic wing of Bethlem, where John Thomas Perceval used to visit him. It appears to have been in visiting Pearce that Perceval met Edward Peithman (above). The conditions in Bethlem led Perceval to protest and in the early 1850s this led to inquiry into Bethlem and Peithman's release. For Arthur Legent Pearce see 1843 and poems in 1851.

"ATTEMPTED MURDER.-On Friday week the neighbourhood of Kensington Gravel-pits was thrown into a state of considerable excitement, in consequence of a report that a lady had been shot by her husband under circumstances of a peculiarly painful nature. The lady in question is Mrs. Elizabeth Pearce, the wife of Mr. Arthur Legent Pearce a respectable surgeon, residing at No. 23, Bedfordplace, Kensington. Mrs. Pearce, who is about 36 years of age, has been married to her husband some years, and has three or four children, one of whom is still an infant in arms ; and she has possession of considerable property in her own right. For the last week or two an alteration bad manifested itself in the conduct of Mr. Pearce. He had been heard accusing his wife of unfaithfulness to him, and also with having made repeated attempts to poison him, by introducing arsenic into his food, &c. On the afternoon of Friday they were visited by a friend, who remained, with the intention of taking an early dinner with them. Between two and three o'clock, just as they had sat down to the dinner-table, Mr. Pearce suddenly rose, and, complaining that the room was insufferably hot, pushed up a window behind where his wife was sitting, and at the same instant discharged a pistol at her. Mrs. Pearce immediately fell off her chair, and while the friend who was sitting with them ran towards Mr. Pearce, she contrived to creep out of the room, and escape into the street, where her cries and her appearance, her hair hanging dishevelled about her ears, without shoes, and her dress (a light muslin one) on fire, soon brought several of the neighbouring residents to her assistance, when, her burning clothes having been extinguished, she was assisted to the residence of Mr. Taylor, her medical attendant, in High-row, Kensington Gravel-pits. On Saturday, at the sitting of the magistrates, at their office in Kensington-square, Mr. Collison, the solicitor of Mr. Pearce, applied for an adjournment of the case, it being essential that his client should have counsel. Before doing so, however, he would have an interview with Mr. Pearce. Mr. Collison, after an absence of nearly an hour, returned, and said it was still his wish that the case should be postponed for a day or two, that he might consult with the friends of Mrs. Pearce, who he must say had met him with the greatest consideration in the matter. Mr. Jennings, on behalf of Mr. Pinto, the guardian of Mrs. Pearce, had no objection to the postponement of the case on the grounds stated. The magistrates determined to hear some evidence before they adjourned the case, and Mr. Pearce was placed at the bar. He appeared greatly agitated and much dejected, holding a handkerchief before his face during the investigatimi. Mr. Rodes, apparently a military man, stated that he was on a visit at the prisoner's house, and, as they were about to sit down to dinner, Mr. Peace complained of the sultriness of the day, and threw up the window with some violence '  at that instant he heard the report of a pistol, and Mrs. Pearce fell to the ground. She then crawled from the room, and running through the garden, reached the street, her clothes being then in flames from the lighted wadding catching them. In his examination by the bench, the witness said he did not see the pistol in the prisoner's hands at the time, nor did he see him fire it off. Mr. Taylor' the surgeon, deposed that Mrs. Pearce was wounded in the breast, but he could not say that it was by a ball ; it might have been by the wadding ; no ball was found on probing the wound ; she was much burned about the arm. He further stated that Mrs. Pearce was suffering very severely from the wound and the burns. Mr. Pilkington adjourned the further examination until Wednesday, and the prisoner was taken in a fly to the New Prison, Clerkenwell." (The Tablet 24.10.1840)

25.10.1840 Letter from John Thomas Perceval in The Satirist. Refers to the suicide of Edward Perceval

1840 Sir John William Lubbock (Age 36) and his family moved into High Elms, Downe, Kent. From 1842 they were neighbours and friends of Charles Darwin and his family. In 1846, John William Lubbock was one of the three trustees of the Alleged Lunatics Friend Society.

1841  

June 1841 Proposal for an association of asylum doctors

December 1841 Richard Paternoster's The Madhouse System

1842  

1843  

21.11.1843 Arthur Legent Pearce, now an inmate of Bethlehem Hospital [Bedlam] in the parish of St George, Surrey: commission and inquisition of lunacy, into his state of mind and his property. The National Archives, Kew C 211/20/P205

"LUNACY.-On Tuesday an inquisition, in the nature of a writ de lunaticø inquirendo, issued against Mr. Arthur Legent Pearce, at present an inmate of Bethlehem Hospital, St. George's-fields, was opened bcfore Mr. Commissioner Winslow, at the Horns Tavern, Kennington. The jury, without requiring the learned Corninissioner to sum up, returned a verdict to the effect "That Mr. Pearce was of unsound mind, that he was ncapable of managinghimself or his affairs,: and that he had been so from the 16th of October, 1840."

12.6.1844 Pageant: John Clare's The Nightingale

1844

Perceval's letter to the Home Secretary about William Bailey

1845

Perceval's letters upon the reform of the law affecting the treatment of persons alleged alleged to be of unsound mind

3.1.1845 Start of a conflict between Luke Graves Hansard, who was controlling the printers, and Henry Hansard, who considered he should be a partner.

6.6.1845 Lunacy and Lunatic Asylums Bills to be introduced to the House of Commons by Ashley, James Graham (the Home Secretary) and Vernon Smith

25.6.1845 House of Commons at the Committee stage of the Lunacy and Lunatic Asylums Bills

1.7.1845 Perceval's petition presented to the House of Commons by Thomas Slingsby Duncombe MP, calling for an inquiry "into the treatment of Lunatic and other patients and ... the laws affecting their seizure, detention and release" before the Lunacy Bill became law. If that was not possible Perceval wanted specified amendments be made to the bill to provide greater security of civil liberties.

2.7.1845 Duncombe stated that if the Bill was not postponed to the next session, to allow for an inquiry, he would "divide the House on every stage". He was supported by Sharman Crawford and Viscount Duncan and secured 15 votes (to 117) for postponement.

3.7.1845 Petitions of Lewis Phillips, Joseph Digby and William Bailey

7.7.1845 Alleged Lunatics Friend Society formed. (Gault, H. 2010, p.190) - See above and below - See publications of the society - publications of John Thomas Perceval (and index of sources about)

Thursday 14.8.1845 First meeting of the new Lunacy Commission

1846

1846 A Report of the Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society published covering the period 7.7.1845 to 7.1.1846

Perceval became (honorary) secretary to Alleged Lunatics Friend Society in succession to Luke James Hansard".

"Luke James was withdrawing into an eccentric world of his own. He was only mad nort-north-west: when the wind was southerly he could still govern Turnstile and Parker Street with his own shrewdness. But there were now periods of blurring when he thought merely in cloudy symbols". (p.229)

March 1846: From an advertisement: ALLEGED LUNATICS' FRIEND SOCIETY, founded July, 1845 - At a meeting of several Gentlemen feeling deeply interested in behalf of their fellow creatures, subjected to confinement as lunatic patients. It was unanimously resolved :- That a Society be now formed, to be entitled "The Lunatics' Friend Society," and it has subsequently been agreed to name the same "The Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society," That this Society is formed for the protection of the British subject from unjust confinement, on the grounds of mental derangement, and for the redress of persons so confined, also for the protection of all persons confined as lunatic patients from cruel and improper treatment. That the Society will receive applications from persons complaining of being unjustly treated, or from their friends, aid them in obtaining legal advice, and otherwise assist and afford them all proper protection. That the Society will endeavour to procure a reform in the laws and treatment affecting the arrest, detention, and release of persons treated as of unsound mind. VICE-PRESIDENTS Lord Viscount Lake - James Ackers, Esq., MP - W. Bagge, Esq., MP - Sir H. Winston Barron, Bart., MP - Peter Borthwick, Esq., MP - Col. Henry Bruen, MP - R.A. Christopher, Esq., MP - W. Sharman Crawford, Esq., MP - Hon. W.N. Ridley Colborne, MP - T. Slingsby Duncombe, Esq., MP - Major-Gen. W.A. Johnson, MP - Sir John W. Lubbock, Bart, - S.C. H. Ogle, Esq., MP - John Patrick Somers, Esq., MP - Edmund Turner, Esq., MP - The Hon. C. Pelham Villiers, MP. Trustees - Sir John Wm. Lubbock, Bart, Luke James Hansard Esq John T. Perceval Esq [MORE]

26.3.1846 The Alleged Lunatics Friend Society was noted at the weekly meeting of the Lunacy Commission, attended by Ashley and professional commissioners. At the same meeting, Haydock Lodge became an issue.

27.11.1846 entry in the Visitors Book on the Criminal wing of Bethlem Hospital I visited the Hospital this day for the purpose of seeing my Friend Mr. Pearce, and being ushered into the waiting room, & finding this upon the table, I beg leave to call the attention of the Governors to the following observation. Having myself been confined some years back from a temporary derangement of the understanding, I knew the irksomness of long confinement without hope (except that which inwardly maintained me from a confidence in the reasonableness of the views I entertained, when I was of opinion that my liberty ought to have been restored to me, and my trust in the Power and Wisdom of a Divine Providence) and the depressing influence of such a confinement & of every circumstance that rudely called it to my recollection. Amongst the most painful of these circumstances was the constant sight of heavy bars to my window, which in my extremely nervous state even produced a sensation of physical pain to the visual organs. I observed the bars to the windows in this Asylum are peculiarly massive-and they remind me so much of the horrors of my former situation, that it is with a considerable effort, that I am not persuaded by my feelings from fulfilling my intentions, when I come to the gate of the Asylum. I think the Committee might safely remove these bars, and substitute windows with small sashes in iron frames-or adopt in some cases, the plan pursued in many private asylums, of having Venetian blinds to the windows. This would give a more cheerful appearance to the Hospital outside, and relieve in a greater degree than can be conceived by those who have never secluded under such circumstances, its heartsick inhabitants.

1847

15.5.1847 Luke James Hansard's advertisement in The Times attacking Joseph Hume MP which led to his losing the contract for printing parliamentary reports.

19.5.1847 Notice in The Times from Henry Hansard saying that the partnership between himself and [his older cousin] Luke James Hansard "is this day Dissolved, and that the business will henceforth be carried out by me alone". Luke James denied in the press that Henry had ever been a partner, he said he was just "an Allowance Clerk". Luke James' father (James Hansard) took legal action against him - [which may have been to apply to Chancery for a Writ de lunatico inquirendo] - Henry and Luke James fought the issue of the partnership out. It was resolved in Henry's favour in October 1847 and the firm recovered the printing contract. (See Trewin and King 1952 p.231).

1848

25.12.1848. Entry in the journal of Henry Hansard:

"The Times of this day contains an advertisement from Luke James being entitled 'An Appeal to the People of England of All Classes of the United Queendom!' The only opinion that can be passed upon it is that it a confirmation - were confirmation necessary - of his condition... This wretched man has been enabled to prolong the Chancery suit for nearly two years, to bring his father from worry and vexation to the brink of the grave, to involve the concern and myself in enormous expense and perhaps destroy my fondest hopes in life and to be in all probability - amounting almost to certainty - the ruin and means of degradation to his own family consisting of six or seven children" (Quoted Trewin and King 1952 p.232).

1850

1851

1851 A Report of the Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society published

28.1.1851. Entry in the journal of Henry Hansard:

"Saw an advertisement in the Times by Mr L. J. Hansard to the Governors of Christ's Hospital asking for a presentation for her child, reciting the numerous charites of her husband and his having been 27 years Printer to the House which appointment he had lost owing to his having neglected his own interests in the cause of philanthropy and stating that he is now absent from the country from inability to meet his pecumiary engagements" (Quoted Trewin and King 1952 p.235).

1851 Poems by a Prisoner in Bethlehem (Arthur Legent Pearce) published by Perceval

1852

1853

1854

Autumn 1854 Edward Peithman, having been released from Bethlem, saw fit to approach Prince Albert again, and was detained in Hanwell. He was allowed to leave the country in the company of John Thomas Perceval.

1855

1855 Case of Dr. Peithman published by Perceval

5.5.1855 Ann Tottenham taken to an asylum. 28.6.1855 Inquiry into Ann Tottenham's case.

21.8.1855 [Walter] Abraham Haigh born Mayfield, Derbyshire, to James Haigh, cotton merchant, and Sarah Crompton Haigh. Living with his parents as lodgers in Over, Cheshire, in 1861. Matriculated at St. John's College, Cambridge, 8.10.1876 (of Stafford). Received his BA from Cambridge University (not Oxford) in 1881. A school tutor at May Place, Main Road, Hanley Castle, Worcestershire in 1881. At this time, his father James was a patient in St Thomas's Hospital, Lambeth, London. Walter A. Haigh was admitted to Bethlem Royal Hospital on 18.10.1882 and discharged 20.7.1888. See 1884. Ordained deacon (London) 1889; priest, 1890; Curate of Bromley, Kent, 1889-1891. Curate of Christ Church, Chelsea, Middlesex, 1891-1892. No address given subsequently, and disappears from Crockford, 1902. [Mostly from Cambridge University Alumni] (Museum of the Mind and Sarah Chaney 2015)

1856

4.1.1856 Ann Tottenham escaped

1857

1857

1858 Herculine Barbin an assistant teacher in a girl's school. She became the lover of Sara, another teacher. Excruciating pains led to a medical examination in 1860 and a decision that Herculine was a man. She changed her name to Abel Barbin.

17.7.1858 Release of Rosina Bulwer-Lytton from Inverness Lodge

Friday 23.7.1858 Mrs Mary Jane Turner at Acomb House near York. Not only was she insanely jealous, or just jealous, but also, should the asylum keeper degrade a lady?

Late 1858: Mr Laurence Ruck at Moor Croft House, Middlesex. Was he drunk or insane when he abused his wife and other people? Should doctors profit from recommendations?

Late 1858? Case of Reverend William Leach confined in Sussex House. Was he mad to want to marry a servant girl? Was she a gold-digger? How close to God was he?

1859

1859 A Report of the Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society (for 1858) published

January 1859 Public Meeting at Exeter Hall (The Strand, London) called by the Alleged Lunatics Friend Society in the wake of the cases of Rosina Lytton, Mary Jane Turner, Laurence Ruck and William Leach. A resolution was passed to petition for a government inquiry into the operation of the lunacy laws. (Wise, S. 2012 p.286)

April and August 1859 and July 1860: Three reports from a Select Committee of the House of Commons "on the operation of the Acts and Regulations for the care and treatment of lunatics and their property"

1860

18.7.1860 news item in L'Écho Rochelais about a modest and pious woman of twenty-one who believed herself to be feamale and was so believed by everyone else who had been found to be male on medical examination. "une erreur de sexe a été reconnue... La jeune fille était tout simplement un jeune homme". (source)

1861

John Thomas Perceval living at 3 High Street, Herne Bay, Kent. Their youngest daughter died in 1862, aged 17 ( Gault, H. 2010

1862

John Bull 25.1.1862: Letter from John Thomas Perceval quoted ( Gault, H. 2010, p.252:

"In your paper of the 4th of January... you allude to the horrible treatment of a paralysed patient in the county asylum at Hanwell. I am sorry to have to remind you that this is not a solitary instance... for a few months ago inquests were held on another patient in that asylum who had died after receiving very dreadful injuries, as well as on one who was accidentally scalded to death. And only lately... two keepers were tried for the murder of a patient at Colney Hatch, who had died with eleven of his ribs fractured, their ligatures separated, his breast bone broken in, and his liver ruptured"

1860

1864

1865

1866

1867

1868

1868 August Natterer born in Schornreute near Ravensburg, Germany. He studied engineering and became an electrician. A 1907 vision led to a suicide attempt and confinement. He spent much subsequent creative energy drawing his vision. Died 1933 - Wikipedia

February 1868 Abel Barbin committed suicide by inhaling gas from his coal gas stove. His memoirs were found beside his bed.

1869

1870

23.6.1870 Selina Maria Perceval, daughter of John Thomas Perceval married Sir Horatio George Walpole, son of Rt. Hon. Spencer Horatio Walpole and Isabella Perceval. She died 5.11.1925

1871

1872

1873

21.5.1873 murder

Lunacy Law Reform Association

1874

1875

1876

28.2.1876 Death of John Thomas Perceval (Gault, H. 2010, p.194).

1877

1878

"Rachel" met her husband to be "Martin Grant-Smith". She became Rachel Grant-Smith (pseudonym) in 1881. - See Cheadle 1900 - 1914 - The Experiences of an Asylum Patient 1922

1879

1880s Charcot's work on hysteria. Foucault (23.1.1974) says "we salute the hysterics as the true militants of antipsychiatry".

1880

[Archibald] Archie Meek, who first suggested a union of mental patients to Thomas Ritchie, was born about 1880. He died in Shotts, Lanarkshire in 1973, aged 93. [569/331]

1881

1882

One of Vincent van Gogh's early drawings of an old man with his head in his hands. This one has the title "worn out". [Pencil on watercolour paper The Hague: November, 1882. Now in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam]. The drawing is one of a series of studies of Adrianus Jacobus Zuyderland (pensioner 399) on which Van Gogh commented: "The poorest woodcutter, heath farmer or miner can have moments of emotion and mood that give him a sense of an eternal home that he is close to."

Van Gogh used this picture as the inspiration for the oil painting called At Eternity's Gate , painted shortly before his own death in 1890

1883

1884

Hippolyte Bernheim published De la suggestion dans l'état hypnotique et dans l'état de veille. Foucault (1974) argues that "the age of anti-psychiatry begins with the suspicion that... Charcot actually produced the hysterical fit he described"

1884 Birth of Sabina Spielrein, an asylum patient who became a psychoanalyst.

1885

1886

1887

1888

1889

1890

1891

1892

Johanna Stuten-te Gempt published a pamphlet "Mijne ervaringen in het Haagsche Krankzinnigengesticht" (in Dutch) [My experiences in the mental asylum]

1893

1894

Charlotte Mew The sisters' kiss - both sublime and ghastly - A page of the gospel which the priest never read.

1895

1896

1897

1898

1899

1900

1901

July - September 1901 Birth of a James Ollier registered in Chorlton, Lancashire. Born Widnes. Father John James Ollier (born about 1877). Mother Elizabeth (Previously Collins. Born about 1882). In 1911 they lived in five rooms at 3 Roscoe Street, Hulme, Manchester. John James was a General Carrier and an employer. In 1924 a James Ollier (literate, with a neat hand) organised collective action by inmates in the Royal Albert at Lancaster. The James Ollier born 1901 died (aged 66) in Haslingden, Lancashire in July-September 1967. He may have run a taxi service in Delamere Street, Winsford, Cheshire, from 1939 to 1962.

1902

1903

1904

1905

1906

1907

1.1.1907 August Natterer (Neter) (1868-1933) saw a vision lasting about half an hour and including about 1,000 images. This pencil picture depicting one of the images was drawn about 1911. It is catalogued as "witch with eagle, crocodile and cornucopia". Inventory number 151 in the Prinzhorn Collection This is one of the images by Natter that featured in 1922 in Hans Prinzhorn's Bildnerei der Geisteskranken (Artistry of the Mentally Ill)

1908

March 1908 A Mind that Found Itself. This was published by Longmans Green in New York - But London, Calcutta and Bombay are also listed. The date is shown as 1908, but the copyright as Clifford Whiitingham Beers 1907. The book was published in New York and London and reviewed in British papers.

1909

21.10.1909 Rose Nuttall born. About 1953 she had a "complete cure" following a pre frontal leucotomy", which she spoke about on Radio 4 in 1972. She died Winchester, aged 72, in December 1981.

1910

1911

1912

"Arnold Schoenberg composed Pierrot Lunaire, a suite of semi-spoken songs for a moon-touched loon" (Ben Wilson 14.11.2002) - Listen over the internet

10.11.1912 William Smart Harnett admitted to a private asylum - In 1922 he was awarded damages.

1913 Charlotte Mew had written Ken, but it could not be published because magazine editors "believed in the segregation of the feeble-minded"

1914

1915

12.6.1915 Christopher Paget Mayhew born London. As chair of the National Association for Mental Health from 1969 to 1978, in which time it became Mind, he is said to have drawn "on his own experiences of psychiatry in the 1940s and of his television work", including one into the mental effects of hallucinogenic drugs in 1955." (Robert Ingham DNB). Sometime in 1956 he spent a few days in a ward at Warlingham Park Hospital in preparation for the television series The Hurt Mind, which he presented in January 1957. He spoke in the debate on the Percy Report in July 1957.

1916 Charlotte Mew On the Asylum Road published

1917

10.6.1917 Birth of Stephanie [or Stephani] Mary Allfree, daughter of Alice Mary [born Godwin] and Geoffrey Stephen Allfree, Cherry Allfree's uncle. With her husband, Stephanie created a fantasy world called Thessyros (desired?) which included "Cupid and Cherry". The story is told in The Starlight Years: Love and War at Kelmscott Manor 1940 - 1948 (Dovecott Press March 2015) edited by her son, Joscelyn Godwin See 1940 - 1944 - 1948

1918

16.4.1918 Terence Alan [Spike] Milligan born in Ahmednagar, India.

1919

"In 1919, Nijinsky became mad. He expressed himself solely through his "diary", a story and a mystical quest, and through numerous drawings declining endlessly a single geometric figure, the circle." (source) "During the early part of his breakdown Nijinsky would shut himself away all night, feverishly drawing and writing. Many of his drawings include stylised human figures and portraits, all based on the circle." [The Mask] "seems to belong to a group of less figurative drawings which he produced as his mental state approached a crisis, described by Romola in her biography of him: His study and rooms were literally covered with designs; no longer portraits or scenic or decorative subjects, but strange faces, eyes peering from every corner, red and black, like a bloodstained mortuary cover. They made me shudder. "What are those masks?" "Soldiers' faces. It is the war." (source)

1919 Citizen soldiers: "in the aftermath of the war... ex-servicemen were drawn into recording their embittered experience at the hands of official agencies such as the war pensions authorities"

1920

30.6.1920 Edith Morgan born, County Durham. Her husband, William Morgan (Farmer, poet, economist) was born Breconshire in 1916. - Good Practices in Mental Health - "Edith worked for Mind head office and was director for Local Mind Associations. Through this role she was aware of very many good local mental health initiatives and she felt that these were never given the credit they were due. The newspapers, if they covered mental health at all, just had stories about large psychiatric hospitals and how bad they were (from various inquiries in the 1970s). So Edith had the idea for Good Practices in Mental Health, which she raised money for and ran herself when it started. Inevitably GPMH involved service users in its local projects but not in a planned way - more just because they were sometimes involved in the local projects. So, for example, Eastbourne GPMH was coordinated by a man who was an unemployed service user who was keen to do the work" (Thurstine) - 21.7.1982 - Edith died 21.8.2003 aged 83. William died Highgate 1990. Edith died Hampstead.

1921

21.4.1921 Sidney Isadore Briskin born in Bethnal Green, London. In 1965 he established Kingsley Hall Asylum. He died 10.2.2010 at Golders Green, London. Obituary by Leon Redler (offline)).

September quarter 1921 Alfred Charles Barnes married Kate Marshall in Portsmouth. [Her mother called her 'Kit' - p.15]. Their first child, Mary Barnes, was born in 1923. "Mother would tell me how she met father at a church Bible study group. Then he went away to war, came back, asked her to marry him. At first she said no". (p.24)

21.12.1921 William Sinclair Warwick (Bill Warwick) born, probably in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland. His family moved to England before he was six. His maternal grandmother, Susan Williams (born 1880) died in Fife District Asylum on 13.3.1941. Bill served in the RAF pay corps during the war, but was committed to a mental hospital in England whilst on leave from North Africa. He was in a manic state of happiness in relation to a romance. Bill was treated with Electro Convulsive Treatment, without anaesthetic in 1945/1946 - diagnosed Schizophrenic 1959 - wrote "This Mad World" February 1963 - April 1973 MPU - 1975-1976 plans awry - Visited Janet Cresswell 15.8.1976 - Parliamentary Commissioner - Pension tribunal - PROPAR and PROMPT - 1981 list - Matthew O'Hara Committee News 16.6.1981 - moved to Wirral Autumn 1982 - died June 1999

1922

about 1922 Edith Haithwaite born. See - See Rampton 1939 - Rampton 1957 - Rampton 1959

1923

2.2.1923 Mary Barnes born - (parents) - Peter Barnes 1925 - 5 in 1928 Uxbridge - Ruth Barnes 1930 - Dorothy Barnes 1935 - war and pre-nursing 1939 - 22 in 1945 - Mary and Peter 1945 - 8.12.1949 - 8.12.1951 - 1953 - 1962 - 5.6.1965 Kingsley Hall Asylum - crayons - Christmas 1965 - June 1966 - Autumn 1966 - Christmas 1966 - Spring 1967 - Mary and Peter 1967 - 1968 - 1969 First exhibition - 1971 First book - Psychiatric Oppression 1984/1985 - death of Peter 1984 - 1989 Second book - Died 29.6.2001 - Bow exhibition 2015

1924

5.3.1924 Jean Oury born

The Royal Albert Institution for the Feeble-minded of the Northern Counties - Collective action 18.7.1924 This statement is written by a patient and signed by patients. On July 18th 1924 Patient James Ollier reported to the Chief Attendant the bruise of patient William Dugdale on hip (penus) which Dugdale had said Mr Hully had done it with kicking him. The undersigned patients were present when the Chief Attendant replyed saying he did not believe it. Mr Hully would not do such a thing. Also informed him to mind his own business. J. Ollier J. Holmes A. Batty G. Hilton J. Morris R. Longmore

1925 Evidence to the Royal Commission on Lunacy and Mental Disorder

"The National Society for Lunacy Reform brought forward a number of ex-patients who wished to give evidence. After the first day's hearing in public, the Commission decided that the atmosphere was one of 'recrimination and controversy', and directed that future hearings of this kind should be held in camera. 'We do not find,' they record, 'that the evidence received from this source made any constructive contribution to the main purpose of our Inquiry" - "This evidence was published among the minutes of the Royal Commission" - Again, the Commission received over 360 letters from patients. 'Some of these,' they note, 'were unintelligible.' (Jones, K. 1960 pp 107-108

13.9.1925 Peter George Barnes born Portsmouth - Mary and Peter 1945 - Mary and Peter 1967 - Kingsley Hall June 1969 - died 1984

1926

1926 Anthony O'Donnell (Tony O'Donnell) born. Whilst serving as an engineer in the merchant navy (mid-1940s), had voices in his head of the Chief Engineer telling him he was useless. Furious, he burst into the Chief Engineer's cabin, was put of the ship at Vancouver, sent back to England (Scotland?) and committed to a mental institution where he received ECT without anaesthetic. Mental Patients Union 1974 - Robin Farquharson House - married Nina Ramage late spring 1976 - Hackney Union of Mental Patients 1987 - died 2.12.2007

1926 Pageant: Eric Irwin's life narrative

1.8.1926 Eric Samuel Irwin born in Belfast - Left school aged 14 (1940?) - Left for Australia 1950 - Back from Australia 1954 - no Leucotomy 1956 - 1959 Mental Health Act - anyone a psychopath 1960 - London hostels: Willesdon from 1962 - Islington 1964 - Bromley 1965 - Cane Hill? - Paddington Day Hospital - 1973: Fish Pamphlet - taped first MPU meeting - May 1975 Mind Conference - Eric's Info 23.1.1976 - Frank Bangay 1980s - Psychiatric Oppression - PROMPT Fund Raising - CAPO March 1985 - What They Teach in Song 1986 - Autumn 1987 - Before Christmas 1987 - Mike Lawson's poem -

1927

15.3.1927 Frederick Alexander Jenner (Alec Jenner or Frederick A. Jenner) born, Brentford, Middlesex. Mother's maiden name Young . Nick Crossley's Interviewee 1? - Lived (2004) Manor Farm, Brightholmlee, Wharncliffe Side, Sheffield, S35 0DB. Died 1.7.2014

1928

11.3.1928 Thomas Ritchie (known as Tommy), founder of SUMP, born in Lanark, Scotland. [In 1971 he said he was 43. Exact date from death registration]. His brother John Ritchie was born about 1923. By the time Thomas arrived, his father was drinking heavily. This led to the family separating: John with his father and Thomas with his mother and a Roman Catholic aunt. The aunt pressured him to take technical rather than artistic subjects, but he did not last long studying engineering at the Royal Technical College (18 in 1946). Thomas came to London in the early 1950s and "drifted into photography". Arrested for drink driving in Aylesbury, he served three months in prison. In 1953-1954 he went to Ireland, living in Belfast (where he had a photography shop) and Dublin. About this time he became dependent on mood changing drugs. He moved back to England, establishing a photography business in Brighton. In January 1960 he began a three months sentence in Brixton for drink driving, during which his photography equipment and business books were stolen from his flat and dormobile in Brighton. He returned to Lanark and became a voluntary patient in Hartwoodhill Hospital. Court sent him to Crichton, Barlinnie Prison, and then Hartwood in 1963. [See SUMP box] In Hartwood he wrote a life-story Summer 1966, and life in Hartwood and personal grievances in September 1967 (box) - In 1968/1969 he completed a three-months course at a Rehabilitation Unit and passed two A level exams. (box) - From 1969 he shaved other patients, one of whom suggested the idea of a union (box) - His problems seeking work for rehabilitation in 1970/1971 became an important grievance (box) - After an unlicensed trip to Edinburgh, he was confined to "Ward 7" on 14.7.1971. - Tommy compiled collective grievances, dated 26.7.1971, which he posted to GAP on 30.7.1971. As a result, the Scottish Mental Welfare Commissioners visited Hartwood and "several personal grievances have been redressed". The signatories of the grievances were later taken as founding members of SUMP (Scottish Union of Mental Patients - Discharged (summer 1971) he continued to organise. The first public annoucement that he had started a Scottish Union of Mental Patients came in the undergroung newspaper Ink on 16.11.1971. The article reproduced te full text of Tommy's paper "Advantages of patients in mental hospitals having their own fully democratic and autonomous national association or union". Tommy used the Ink article to publicise the union in Hartwood and secured support from the Scottish Council for Civil Liberties and another article in The Glasgow Herald on 23.3.1972. On 7.4.1972 Tommy began a "Journal of SUMP Days" - phoning his MP on 28.4.1972 - visiting Gartnavel 7.5.1972 and Gartnavel and Gartloch 4.6.1972 - In June, Tommy decided he would have to go to London to find paid employment. He talked to th SSCL about continuing the work in Scotland, made a final visit to his colleague Bill Ferguson in Gartnavel and on the way to London decided to see if he could sell his story to the Daily Mirror. (See 20.6.1972). Tommy became a member of the London based Mental Patients Union in 1973, who published an article about SUMP in February 1974. From 1974 to 1976, he was a founder tenant of MPU house in Woodford. - After this he found work cleaning toilets in Hackney and died in Islington on 18.11.1983

25.2.1928 Joan Martin [Joan Hughes from October 1975] born. See - her autobiography - preservation of archives - Movements in the 1970s - 5.1.1993 - died 13.12.2008 - Joan was a pioneer of women in science - of the mental patients union - and of survivor history. She was joint author of A Directory of the Side Effects of Psychiatric Drugs (October 1975)

About 1989, Joan wrote her own "Obit". So here it is:
" Born in 1928 in a warm working class street where all the children played together. Did well at school. Remained child-like all her life, because that was fun, but had an adult side. She did some original work in chemistry. Had great fun in doing laboratory work. Studied and achieved a chemistry degree. Later on in life, after a break down, became concerned about other people with breakdowns in a house for homeless people from mental hospitals. Worked tirelessly to give people a better life. The policies worked out in these houses later became Government policy, and people who had breakdowns, when better, were able to have community care and live as equal members of the community. She was a catholic who was pro- life and against nuclear weapons. Worked in the peace movement and lived to see the withdrawal of nuclear weaponry by the super powers. Joan had a lot of friends, who were of all different types. Almost everyone came to the funeral, but I wouldn't expect those with more important duties to the living to come. The friends made friends with each other. The cat was also brought to the funeral, and scratched for joy on the grave."

2.2.1928 Mary Barnes five years old. "When I was five years old we moved to a bigger semi-detached house with a long garden. It was in the country about twenty miles from London, in those days in a rural area" (p.15) [Alfred Charles Barnes and Kate Barnes were at 2 Winter Villas, Money Lane, West Drayton, between 1928 and 1935]

27.6.1928 Peter Michael Whitehead born in Queen Charlotte's Hospital, Hammersmith - See 1935 - St Joseph's and Besford Court - 7.12.1944 - 14.1.1946 Canning Town - Rampton 1946 - NCCL 1947 - NCCL 1.11.1954 - 1955 - Rampton 1956 - 1958 David Roxan's Sentenced without Cause

1929

4.8.1929 Birth, Salford, of Hugh Lionel Freeman. Assistant Editor British Journal of Psychiatry 1978-1983, when he bacame editor. Vice-Chair Mind 1984 to November 1988.

1930

15.4.1930 Ivy Buckland born. Died 11.12.2011, aged 81. "A great person, full of gentleness, compassion, dignity and humour". A long-serving officer of Contact at Tontine Road Community Centre, Chesterfield. Very involved with the development of Survivors Speak Out. See January 1986 - Spring 1986 - August 1986 - Summer 1986 - Manchester Mind Newsheet - August 1987 - Edale - Edale attendance - Barker and Peck 1987

3.10.1930 Robin Farquharson born (died 1973). See - 1958 - 1959 - 1961 - 1964 - Kingsley Hall - 6.11.1967 - 1968 - 1968 - PNP - 1972 - 21.3.1973 - Bitman - 6.4.1973 - 4.7.1973 - See Wikipedia

Late summer 1930 Michael Barnett born. Father (probably) Bearon Barnett a Jewish "bookmaker" (a binder of books in leather) and mother Joyce E Simmonds. They lived on the western borders of what is now Hackney and Michael went to Dame Alice Owen's school in Islington. After the army (National Service) he studied Maths and Law a Pembroke College Cambridge. He went into business and then travelled with his wife, Pamela. In Australia, in 1965 (35 years old), he was prescribed medication for his mental problems. They returned to London in June 1967 and the birth of their son, Shem, was registred in Hampstead in the spring of 1968. Through Aaron Esterson Michael was led to work at "Q Hospital" [Henderson]. In May 1969 he joined forces with Peter Stumbke in the Campaign Against Psychiatric Atrocities, before Sidney Briskin told him it was "connected with Scientology". Withdrawing from this, he wrote a manifesto for "People for a New Psychiatry" that was published in International Times in July 1969.

This triggered People Not Psychiatry and he published a book with that name in 1973 which began "all writing is about oneself". He set up a "Growth Centre" that he called "Community". In 1974 he became a disciple of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho), and ran seminars in Poona (India). In 1982 he set up his own "Energy Field" known as "The Wild Goose Company". He and his commuity wandered from Switzeralnd to Italy, to France, and to Germany. He now operate under the trade name "OneLife".

December 1930 Ruth Barnes born Uxbridge (see p.27) "My sister, Ruth, is still alive with her family in South Africa. My parents died there, my brother died in London and my younger sister Dorothy died in Australia" (Mary's Finale November 2000)

1931

About 1931 Kathleen Rutty born. She was detained illegally as a mental defective from from 21.6.1948, to 21.2.1956 - See Rampton 1956. At the time of her discharge on 21.2.1956, she was on licence in the care of her half-brother and in remunerative employment. See Hansard 8.12.1958 re review of people detained under that section.

29.3.1931 Janet Myra Coleman (later Janet Cresswell) born at Bushey, Hertfordshire. Only child of Myra Coleman, a school teacher. Her father was a research chemist. After Watford Grammar School she became a secretary. She married John W. Cresswell, an architect, in the spring of 1956, in Watford. Their daughter was born in the summer of 1961, by which time they were living in London. Admitted to Horton February 1965 - assault November 1970 - first letter to MPU 17.4.1974 - petition October 1975 - Friern November 1975 - assault March 1976 - Holloway - trial 24.6.1976 - Bill Warwick visited 15.8.1976 - Sylvia Jeffares: Day School and Janet's 1981 petition - Matthew O'Hara Committee News 2 Summer 1981 - Lawletter 1983 - Phoenix 1984 - The One Sided Wall 1989 - Asylum Spring 1993 - Asylum 1994 3 - Asylum Spring 1995 - Asylum 1997 3 - Asylum 1998 2 - death of Bill Warwick June 1999 - Asylum 2001 4 - Transfer from Broadmoor 2003 - November 2006 release - death of Tony O'Donnell 2007 - Janet died 24.11.2015.   Janet's own ideas are outlined in a box.

1932

1932 Myra Garrett born. See Friends of St Clements - F.E.E.L. Birth of F.E.E.L. article 2014 Community Champion

1933

Peter Thompson born. - Pakenham-Thompson Report 1961 Broadmoor 1965 - Books 1972 and 1974 - Matthew Trust 1976 - UK Federation of Smaller Mental Health Agencies 1996 - died 2003

About 1933 Noele Arden born. See Rampton 1948 - about 1953 - Moss Side 1954 - Rampton 1955 - Rampton 1957 - Child of a System 1977

1933 Mary Betteridge born

1934

Peter Sedgwick born - on Schizophrenia From Within 1975 - PsychoPolitics 1982 - died 1983 - See also Mental Health and Civil Liberties and external link to memorial website

1935

March quarter 1935 Dorothy J Barnes born Uxbridge. Her mother nearly died and had a life after death experience. It was about this time that Mary Barnes "really started to talk to myself, to God, to be always praying" (p.37). Dorothy went to the Far East and Australia, but also lived with her daughter in Welwyn Garden City. Her daugther was a friend of her (aunt) Mary. Dorothy died in Australia: (Mary's Finale November 2000)

early 1935 Wolfgang Huber born. See Heidelberg 1964 - Patientenkollektivs 1968 SPK February 1970 - 7.11.1972 - Fresnes June 1973

20.7.1935 Ursel Schaefer, born in Cologne. She became a doctor and married Wolfgang Huber

In the long letter of 22.10.1993, Wolgang Huber refers to Ursel and himself as "two Frontpatients"

Under the 1921 Education Act, Special School education had to be provided from the age of seven for children who were defective or epileptic, considered cabable of education, but not considered suitable for normal school education. [See the 1927 description by Monsignor Thomas Newsome of high-grade defectives] Local authorities could provide this education by boarding a child in an area that had a special school. In Peter Whitehead's case he was moved from Southampton to Worcestershire:

" Peter Whitehead... has been certified as unsuitable for education in an ordinary elementary school, but not incapable by reason of mental defect of receiving benefit from instruction in a special school for mentally defective children." (minutes of Southampton Borough Council 27.6.1935 [Peter's seventh birthday], quoted by David Roxan 1958, p. 23 [See 1921 Education Act].

Finding a place took 15 months. See St Joseph's 1937

1937

1936

2.2.1936 Marion Beeforth born - See Mindlink 1990 - Sainsbury 1990 - Mental Health Task Force 1993 - 1.3.1994 - died 29.7.2000 - obituary by Jan Walcraft

1936 Jean-Claude Polack born

1938

About 1938 Birth of Peter Richard Jameson, President of the Oxford Union Debating Society. "He suffered from schizophrenia and so was in and out of hospital, but he maintained lifelong friendships". First chair (1986) of the National Voices Forum. "He enjoyed the Edinburgh Festival and performed in theFringe". Died 11.2.2008, aged 70.

1938 Jill Molyneux born. Testimonies Project Died 2002.

1938 Judith Holt born Neasden, London. Testimonies Project

25.1.1938 Victor Finkelstein born. Died 30.11.2011. (Wikipedia)

June 1938 Sheila Anne Beskine born in Croydon. She became a student at the Bath Academy of Art in Corsham, Wiltshire (closed 1986) and an occupational therapist at St Clements Hospital, Bow. She wrote poems working with other Art therapists, including Edward Adamson. Sheila thinks across categories, using pictures, objects, poems and associations. She has inspired may discussions of Art at Survivor History Group meetings.

4.12.1938 Ken Smith born in Rudston, Yorkshire. He co-edited Beyond Bedlam with Matthew Sweeney - In the poetry archive he reads some of his poems.

1939 First edition of Alcoholics Anonymous - Also known as the Big Book. 300,000 copies were printed. They took sixteen years to sell out. (external link) - archive

about 1939 Mike Llywelyn Cox (Mike Cox) born. See The Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health (CPPIH) - PPeyes - Desmond Curley - blogspot - first posting for Survivors History Group - 23.7.2012

26.4.1939 Matthew Paschal O'Hara born (in Dublin?). See 1956 - MPU November 1974 - March 1976 - June 1980 death

Sunday 3.9.1939 Britain declared war on Germany.

Mary Barnes says (p.38) "The day the war started, father was sent away, out on the North Sea on minesweepers, and I was sent away, to school as an evacuee". (16 on 6.2.1939. She was on a pre- nursing course). "This was the beginning of the physical split-up of our family. Mother was left with my brothers and sisters. Sometimes father came home during the school holidays. He was in the Home Guard and used to get us on the kitchen floor, practising unarmed combat. Battered about as I felt, mad an angry and often homesick, it was not me but my brother who then broke down"

1940

1940- 1948 Edward and Stephanie [born Allfree] rented Kelmscott Manor, Oxfordshire, to escape the war in a drug induced state using Benzedrine, which they called Starlight. "There they created an aesthetic and erotic paradise based on a fantasy land called 'Thessyros' "Edward Fell Scott-Snell and Stephani Mary Allfree met in 1935 and set about cultivating Thessyros, a fantasy land Edward had already sown with overripe imagery and peopled with priapic cupids, ageing debauchees and, Godwin explains, 'assorted gardeners, priests, and organists who gleefully seduce their willing, under-aged charges'" (Chris Fletcher, The Spectator 2.5.2015)

1941

About 1941 Lewis Mantus born - 1973 - 1988

About 1941 Jenny James born. From a very political (communist) family, she was active politically from 1958 (aged 17), "firstly in the Communist Youth movement and then in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament". She also had several personal relationships. Her first child, Rebecca James [Becky], was born in the late summer of 1961 in Exeter, Devon. Being in "very radical left wing movements, with very radical left wing boyfriends" was not enough and she sometimes felt suicidal. She was therapy with David Boadella, a follower of Wilhelm Reich in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Convinced that "radical social change couldn't take place without a deep emotional healing" she "became involved with the People Not Psychiatry (PNP) Movement and for several years ran a free, drop in therapy house in London" (online biography). Speaks of her "community" being "founded in London in 1970" (Green Letters).   People not Psychiatry 1974 - Jenny was based at 12 Villa Road from 1974 to 1978 - At the same time, she established the Atlantis commune in Burtonport, Ireland. Nick named "The Screamers" by the local people. - 1977 - In 1980 the community moved to the island of Inishfree. In 1988 they moved to Colombia in South America. 1997. In 2000 one of Jenny's grandsons and his friend were murdered.

Spring 1941 Peter Scott Blackman born, Hammersmith, London. His mother (maiden name Scott) was of Jamaican and English descent. His father was Barbadian. His mother had become the first black nurse in England (?). He was evacuated to Yorkshire and later sent to Glasgow. He returned to London aged seven (?), but his parents had temporarily separated and he and his brother were sent to a children's home in Essex.

After two years the boys rejoined their younger sister and parents, who had rented a flat on Heath Hurst Road in Hampstead. Peter's father was a priest turned communist activist and among his many visitors was Paul Robeson, whom he once accompanied to Russia in the early 1950s. At 30 he suffered a breakdown and was sent to Henderson Hospital in Surrey. Formed Steel an Skin in 1975 Chief executive of the Afiya Trust in 1999. Died 1.3.2012 Camden Journal obituary - latest.com - video

1941 David Brandon born. See North West Mind - Voices of Experience - Consumers as Colleagues - Died November 2001 - biography online

1941 Ken Lumb born - He "grew up in the Freehold area" of Rochdale, Lancashire, "living his early years in Talbot Street. He developed muscular dystrophy in his late teens and because his brother was also disabled, the family moved into one of Rochdale's first specially adapted homes in Rooley Moor Road". - "confined to a wheelchair from the age of 20" (1961) - November 1964 - Rochdale Sculptures - "He met Anne at the Ronald Gorton Day Centre - Scope - Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation - Rochdale Voluntary Action - 1977 married Anne Plumb "moving to Shelley Avenue, Boarshaw," [Middleton] "where they have remained ever since" - 1981: International Year of Disabled People - 1983 Greater Manchester Disability Action Group - helped found Middleton DIAL (Disablement, Information and Advice Line) Constitution 9.6.1983 - "Their daughter Hazel was born in 1984" - 1985 - 1985 A founder member Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People - 1986 - "a governor at Boarshaw Primary School for several years". - "for 12 years edited local magazine Coalition, which covered the issues affecting people with disabilities." - "admitted to North Manchester General Hospital suffering from bronchial pneumonia". Died 19.2.2009, aged 67. external link to obituary from which quotations are taken. A Tribute was held for Ken at the Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People on Tuesday 10.3.2009, followed by a private cremation

1942

Spring 1942 Julian H Barnett born Bathavon, Somerset. His mother and father came from Stepney in the East End of London, which his where his siblings were born. Presumably his mother was living in the country to escape the bombing. See PROMPT

1943

1944

about 1944 Patsy Staddon born. See 2003 (Women's Alcohol Dependency) - 2009 (authenticity in a hostile environment) - 2013 (editor research book) - and 2015 (alcohol)

1944 Gabrielle Cox born. See 1971

27.1.1944 Kevin Coyne born. Died 2.12.2004. Wikipedia

29.1.1944 Andrew Roberts (me) born in London during the final air raids of the second world war. How did this little baby gain his identity as a mental patient? He was very young when he started looking at the world upside down. From about eleven years old he sometimes had intense suicidal desires, but at other times was equally intensely over-enthusiastic about life. Runwell Hospital, Wickford measured the waves of his brain about 1955. Before he left the school for failures, he wore academic dress on the back of a lorry. By 1963 he was standing at the door of a psychiatric centre (Ingrebourne), looking on a sunlit lawn, with his mind set on dying, but his heart responding to the grass. When you leave a mental hospital you have to choose to cover up or be open about it. Andrew does not remember ever covering up. In 1964, Valerie Argent was sent to Belmont (mental) hospital to get her away from Andrew. It did not work: On his 21st birthday, they were married. In 1969 he started studying social science at Enfield College of Technology. Another breakdown. He and Valerie helped found the Mental Patient's Union in 1973. Another breakdown and another suicide attempt. Just survived. Still alive. Ambition to die a natural death. See stereotype. More potty biographies

September 1944 First issue of The Broadmoor Chronicle - Broadmoor patients' magazine

October 1944 An exhibition at Ryman's in Oxford of the paintings of Edward and Stephani [born Allfree] Scott-Snell [soon Godwin] at which privately printed copies of Stephani's poems Thessyros were on sale. In the fantasy world of Thessyros, Cupid and Cherry are adolescent lovers. "During the autumn... friends and relations loyally flock to the exhibition (page 136). Amongst them may have been uncle and aunt Bernard and Dorothy Allfree of Hercies Road, Uxbridge, who named their youngest, and last, daughter "Cherry" in 1948. See the illustration "Cupid and Cherry in the Ivory Tower", which illustrated Thessyros.

30.10.1944 Judi Chamberlin born

7.12.1944 Peter Whitehead was "unaware ... that he had been certified... At Besford Court the month's dragged past. The Germans surrendered" [8.5.1945], "and Hiroshima and Nagasaki heralded Japan's downfall. Peter's life was not affected: his world was limited to the bounds of the institution." (Roxan 1958, p.73)

1945

8.5.1945 Allied victory in Europe.

"just after the war", Mary Barnes was wondering about going to Russia to become a doctor and have a baby as a single mother. She considered her ideas "fantastic, must be crazy" and went to Europe as a midwife with the United Nations Relief Organisation, before becoming a District Nurse and then "to be content just to travel, and get married in order to have a baby. I decided to become an Army Nursing Sister". It was at the point when she was "ready to enter the army" that her brother Peter entered her room at night and said he had come to sleep with her. This event led, eventually, to his hospitalisation. (pages 42-43)

"When I was twenty-two the Army stationed me abroad, first to Egypt and then to Palestine. Peter remained locked up in a mental hospital" (Mary Barnes, p.48)

28.11.1945 Alistair Cox born. See PNP Manchester 1971 - Tony Riley - 42nd Street 1979

1945 Peter Beresford born - 1967: BA from Oxford College, Oxford University - 1975 to 1977: lecturer in social administration at Lancaster University - 1976 married Suzy (Suzie) Croft - eight years poverty as a Battersea community activist - [Peter calls North Battersea "my own home town"] - 1978 Peter and Suzie's Battersea Community Action report, no. 1. - 1980 to 1992 mental health service user

5.10.1982 Battersea, Newcastle and Nottingham dissenting voices at Community Challenge Conference - Summer 1987 on Steering Group for MIND Consumer Advisory Network - July 1988 article "In Care in North Battersea" published - 1990: Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at Brunel University - Survivors Speak Out - "Psychiatric System Survivors and the Disabled People's Movement" - Doing Disability Research - take hold of our past - Literature - Professor in 1998 - chair, Shaping Our Lives 1999 - INVOLVE - History meetings - User Controlled Research - 18.7.2005 - October 2005 - May 2006 - Manchester 2008 - individual or collective? - 20.10.2010 it's the poor what gets the blame - keeping Mad Studies safe .

1945/1946 In 1978 Bill Warwick wrote that he was "still suffering from the effect of the dose" [of ECT} "meted out to him in 1945/46". In 1979, however, a Pensions tribunal denied he had received ECT and said he was treated the drug Somnifane: "It was used quite a lot in the Military Lunatic Bins"

1946

1946 The Association of Parents of Backward Children formed

14.1.1946 Peter Whitehead left Besford Court "for a trial period of licence in London. He worked in the kitchens at the Dockland Settlement in Canning Town. "It was all a terrible shock to me. I realized how shut-in my life had been, while people were dying when the bombs came down. I had seen photographs in newspapers, but none of them had prepared me for what things were really like. Walking through streets that were only paths through the rubble, all my old fears about my mother being buried after an air raid came back to me". Peter was taken back to Besford Court following a fight with another boy. He was in Canning Town for 14 days - His first period outside an institution since he was a baby. (Roxan 1958, pp 73-74)

17.9.1946 Anne Plumb born. See Anne Plumb by Anne Plumb - Anne Plumb Collection and books - 1970 moved to Rochdale - 1977 married Ken Lumb - archive start - Letter on racism, Autumn 1986 - Edale September 1987 - DATA Distress Awareness Training Agency. May 1988 - Survivors Speak Out June 1989 - Treasurer Survivors Speak Out 1991-1993 - London 10.4.1992 - Distress or disability? February 1994 - Manchester 2008

December 1946 First Rampton Board of Visitors' review of Peter Whitehead's case. "The future years were to teach him the bitter truth that a man inside Rampton, fighting for his liberty, can achieve nothing by himself. He is lost without outside help and outside pressure" (Roxan 1958 p. 125)

1947

1947 British textbook still says "In my opinion it would be an economical and humane procedure were their existence to be painlessly terminated"

1947 Birth of Terence McLaughlin, editor of Asylum

1947 Rodney Wiley born Leytonstone, London. He went to sea during the sixties as a merchant seaman to see the world. On his return, his life revolved around drugs and creative people. Met his wife, had a son and moved to Southend. One day he came back from work and fell ill with mental health problems and have had them ever since. It is only in the last few years that he has had a breakthrough from his breakdown, which includes OCD. (2012) His book Fighting Madness took twenty years to write.

About 1947 Christine Andrew born - See - picture - experience - meaning - ECT - Voices and Survivors Speak Out

16.1.1947 Elaine Murphy born. Grew up in Nottingham. Qualified at University of Manchester Medical School in 1971. 1972-1996 Psychiatrist. With three year gap with George Brown. Foundation Professor of Old Age Psychiatry at the United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals in 1983-1986 and District General Manager for Lewisham and North Southwark Health Authority, and Personal Advisor to the Chief Medical Officer. As District General Manager she was partly responsible for closure of Bexley and Cane Hill - 1987/1988 BMJ articles on Community Care - - mid 1990 three months writing After the Asylums - 1997-2000 PhD.

David Kessel photographed by Natalie Fonnesu about 2013

2.4.1947 David Kessel born, Hampstead, London. 1970 Emily Bronte - 1976 - 1980 - 1981 - Hungering - Hackney Mental Patients Association - 1983 - Hackney Mental Health Action Group - Phoenix 1 - Phoenix 2 - Minstead Lodge 1986 - Hackney Union of Mental Patients - 1987 Vixen Phoenix 3 - 1999 Life Against Death - 2000 Summer Rain - Hillside, Llangattock - Friends of East End Loonies 2010 Pageant - 2013: Ravaged Wonderful Earth

26.4.1947 Tony Riley born in Manchester. His niece Linda was born 16.9.1951. They grew up together and were very close. From 1958 to 1964 Tony attended St Clares Secondary School, Alworth Road, Higher Blackley, Manchester 9, where he became head boy, but did not tell his family. He left without completing his A level course. In 1966 Tony was diagnosed as being manic-depressive (age about 19). He was admitted to Gaskell House, the (small) psychiatric unit of Manchester Royal Infirmary. Tony was a hospital in-patient on two occasions, the second time in Prestwich. At some time, he developed an intense dislike of (Withington?) hospital because of its treatment of patients. He and Justin Larner of Manchester Mind made a trip to witness demolition at the hospital in celebration. In 1971, when Tony was living in a men's therapeutic community in Plymouth House, he met another ex-patient, Mary Walmesly, at a social in the women's therapeutic community at Forrester House. Tony and Mary Walmesly were members of the PNP network which, in Manchester, stood for "People Need People" as well as "People Not Psychiatry". Tony came into contact with PNP as an indirect result of moving into a group home. Tony finished his A levels part time, financing this by a job as a cook at Daisy Bank Road Day Centre. From 1974 Tony studied sociology at Sussex University, graduating in 1977. In 1979/1980 he studied for a Post Graduate Certificate in Youth and Community Work at Manchester Polytechnic. From 1980 he worked as a volunteer at the new 42nd Street, founded by Alistair Cox, and served on its management committee. Mary and he were married on 3.10.1981. From 1981 Tony was Senior Youth Worker at the Harphurhey Neighbourhood Project in Manchester and from 1983 Senior Youth Worker with Manchester City Council. He moved from youth work to be (part-time) development worker at Rochdale Mind and later fulltime development worker at Manchester Mind, where he remained until 1990. Projects he developed included a drop-in centre and legal support groups that gave access to a solicitor. June 1987 facilitating Harpurhey users group - Whilst working for Manchester Mind, Tony was sent to America for two weeks to study "normalisation" in Atlanta, Georgia. - In May 1988 He founded Distress Awareness Training Agency (DATA) with Andrew Hughes and Anne Plumb - Manchester Users' Support Group - DATA box - Employed by Having a Voice from 1990 - In 1994 Tony helped Nigel Rose to launch the Schizophrenia Media Agency - 24.7.2004 - 31.3.2006 Retired from Having a Voice, aged 60. A commemorative DVD was made - 2012 died of cancer, aged 65, - Funeral 18.6.2012, 12pm, St Edwards Catholic Church, Thurloe Street, Rusholme, M14 5SG. Alistair Cox spoke about Tony. About 60 people attended.

November 1947 Alan Hartman born. See Hackney Hospital MPU July 1974 - Manchester 1985 - Springfield Hospital - Manchester Mind 1986 - Manchester Users Support Group - 24 hours support 1987 - The Patients' Case 1988 - Asylum April 1989 - Hackney 1997- 2000 - Hackney Users Support Group - about 2001 Manchester Users Support Group became Manchester Users Network - 24.7.2004 Patient and Public Involvement Forum - 2008 Manchester Users Network website

1948

1948 Ann Davis born.

1948 Brian Taylor born See Rochdale Mind

1948 Liz Davies born. Married Tim Durkin. See 1972 The Need for a Mental Patients' Union. Now Liz Davies. - website - Liz Davies collection

1948 Brian Douieb born. See 1972

2.3.1948 Cherry Virginia J Allfree born, Uxbridge, Middlesex. Her father was a professional artist specialising in paintings of garden flowers in vases to hang in one's sitting room. He died in Folkestone, aged 75, when Cherry was only ten years old. Her older sister (born 1937) was called Myrtle Ellen, so her parents liked beautiful plant names and, hopefully, cherished their new daugter. She also appears to have been named from "Cupid and Cherry", pictured in her cousin's book of poems and plates, published privately in 1944, and publicly in the year she was born, and this has more sinister tones.

After her father's death, Cherry lived with her mother who was 20 years younger than her father and she had a lot of time off from school because of sickness.

About 1965 (17?) she was removed from her mother's care by a court on an allegation that her mother had permitted sex between Cherry and a lodger. Cherry said it was rape. Cherry was in a remand home for six months and then placed with a foster lady for six months, who registered as mentally handicapped because she was slow at school. She was then admitted to the first of a group of units in Colchester. She went to a small home, Kingsmead for two years. (1966 - 1967 - 1968?) - Aged 19 Lexden House for a year, Essex Hall for three years (1969 - 1970 1971?) , back to Lexden House for three years (1972 - 1973 - 1974?) and finally back to Kingsmead for two years (1975 - 1976?) , making a total of 12 years (about 1965 to 1976) in some kind of institutional care or foster care. Leaving Kingsmead for hotel work when she was 28 years old, she had a hole in the heart operation following a taxi accident, went to Manchester for work, and came back to London. Living in hostels in Kings Cross, friends took her into a squat in Hornsey (Welby House) - "Cherry met Julian Barnett in the mid 1970s. They formed a partnership whereby Julian would produce the PROMPT books and Cherry would sell them. (Frank Bangay, email 5.4.2010). - 1977 - 1978 - 1979 - 1980 - R.D. Laing - A Day in the Life - 1981 - PROMPT Dulwich - 1982 - Mixed Emotions - 1983 - "Cherry was the PROMPT representive who would go over to Holland to meet the Dutch survivors". (Frank Bangay, email 5.4.2010). - 1984 - 1985 - 1986 - in hospital 2002 - Died, aged 57, around March 2005 in Lambeth area of London.

Wednesday 21.4.1948 Valerie Pamela Argent born at home. Her father and mother were living at 54 Avenue Road, Bexleyheath, Kent. Her father was a librarian. - See also preservation of archives. Summary of life compiled summer 1985. An account in Time Together December 2008 specifically relates her personal biography to the development of the mental patients' movement. See 1962-1965 medical file - Essex Hall and Ingrebourne - Escape from Belmont - shared house - CHAMH - Community Health Council - discarded poems - Patients Committee - Family History Group - death

25.5.1948 Mike Lawson born. External link to Testimonies Project archive summary - full text - Born in an internment camp Timatowal [Temirtau?] outside Karaganda, in Kazakhstan. - Berlin - August 1955 Ambler Junior School in Finsbury Park - Haverstock Comprehensive School - 1965 (17) "I'd had four years in and out of Napsbury" - "I'm nineteen. Nineteen for the first ECT". Napsbury - November 1969 (about 20) Napsbury - Paddington Day Hospital - MPU: First meeting, working group and second meeting: lived with Jill at 56 Connaught Road, Craven Park, NW10. Often at Harlesden Community Project. Had a typewriter, tape recorder, and facility to duplicate using stencils. - PROMPT Fund Raising - Mind 1985 - What They Teach in Song - Capital Radio "Breakdown" 1986 - We're not Mad - We're Angry - narrative poem - Vice-Chair Mind 1988 -1994 - Crisis Cards - 23.8.1991 - an archive of his website - See SUN website

15.8.1948 Sylvia Rachael Jeffares born Islington. See Day School 1981 - friendship with Joan Hughes - Janet Cresswell's 1981 Petition and Sylvia's death.

1.9.1948 Peter Barham born - See Literature Review - Winterton group (1969-1972) - schizophrenic thinking (thesis 1977) - thesis (1977) - schizophrenia and human value (1984) - Hamlet Trust (1988) - patient to person (1991) - Poland (1990) - closing asylums (1992) - human value new preface (1993) - Open Society Institute - patient to person relocated (1995) - Pathways to Policy 2002 - forgotten lunatics (2004) - 8.10.2004 - Albania (2005) - 27.4.2007 - March 2008 - 9.11.2012 -

9.10.1948 Hilda Turner born

7.12.1948 Jan Wallcraft (Janet Wallcraft) born. Jan was chair of Islington Women and Mental Health in the early 1980s. She became a student at Middlesex University in 1983. In 1985-1986 she spent six months at Mind (Harley Street) on a student placement. She took part in We're Not Mad We're Angry in 1986. She graduated from Middlesex University (BSc Hons Science Technology and Society) in (the summer of?) 1987. She was Mindlink Co-ordinator from December 1987 to late in 1992 - In October 1992 she was MINDLink representative in talks about the Mental Health Task Force - a freelance mental health consultant from 1992 to 1997 - In September 1993 she joined the Coordinating Group of Survivors Speak Out, editing the newsletter in December 1994 - She worked with the Mental Health Foundation from 1997 to 2001 - Doing Disability Research - Literature - Senior Researcher, User Focused Research, Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health from 2001 to 2005 (See 2003 History) - Her Ph.D Thesis in 2002 was on Recovery - Fellow for Experts by Experience respecting users and carers (National Institute for Mental Health in England) 2002 to 2006 - Operational Manager for SURGE (Service User Research Group in England), from 2005 to 2007 - See her own account on the SUN website and her online CV - offline copy)

1949

About 1949 Peter Lindley born in Yorkshire - archive of profile

15.1.1949About 1949 Kevin Richard Sutton, known as Richard Suton, born, Tonbridge, Kent. He met Peter Campbell in April 1986 and joined Survivors Speak Out "there and then" and took part in planning the Edale Conference in Derbyshire in September 1987. The first membership of Survivors Speak Out enrolled at a meeting in Ivy Buckland's hotel bedroom at a conference in Newcastle in the Spring of 1986. Richard was Survivors Speak Out's first Information Officer (unpaid) and was known to everyone who went to its AGMs because he provided "lovely food for lunches" ... "at a price people could afford" (Peter Beresford Community Care 18.10.2001). On Saturday 27.1.1996, Richard and Peter hosted a Ten Year Celebration Party at the Survivors Speak Out Office. Money had run out for the Information Service and so they gave a farewell present to Gloria Gifford, the paid information worker. A web site created to replace the Information Service remained online for many years without being updated. In retrospect, the ten year celebration may have been the beginning of the end. When Richard died in Bromley in June 2001 he was still representing mental health service users. - Died, aged 52, 2001 Registered Bexley

1949 Peter Campbell born in Logierait, Scotland - "a regular recipient of NHS psychiatric services since 1967" (Brackx and Grimshaw 1989). - See September 1970 - Testimonies - June July 1983 first letter in OpenMind - September 1983: activist - Camden Mental Health Consortium - November 1985: Spoke at MIND conference and his life begins a rapid change from obscurity to privilege - an officer of Survivors Speak Out from 1986 to 1996 - See his summary of Survivors Speak Out - Spring 1986: preparing for We're not Mad - We're Angry" - 17.11.1986 We're not Mad - We're Angry - historian of the movement - 27.6.1987 "dance floors of everyday life" - September 1987: holding the Edale Conference together - Brackx and Grimshaw 1989 describe as "actively involved in self-advocacy ... a member of Camden Mental Health Consortium ... Secretary of Survivors Speak Out and a nursery nurse" - November 1991: Survivors Poetry - 18.2.1992 - 10.4.1992 - Summer 1992: (Survivors Speak Out funding) - Speaker at Derby November 1994 - 1996 employed on Open University K257 - 1997: interviewed by Nick Crossley - 28.2.2001: UK Survivor Workers' conference Manchester - Martha Robinson poetry prize 2002 - 2003: On Our Own Terms - 14.1.2005: Survivors History Group - 17.5.2006: Diamond Champion

7.3.1949 Malcolm Chisholm born. Labour MP for Edinburgh Leith from 1992, (Edinburgh North and Leith from 1997). Member of the Scottish Parliament for Edinburgh North and Leith from 1999. CAPS, Edinburgh Users Forum and Advocard are located in his contituency. From November 2001 to October 2004 he was Minister for Health and Community Care in Scotland.

8.12.1949 Mary Barnes "received into the church, into the mystical body of Christ, was the most important event in my life... Making confession and receiving communion bound me into the body of Christ. That same body that carried the cross to Calvary had I received into myself. My mother was curious. A year later she became a Catholic" (pp 49-50)

1950

Nelsy, author of Standing up to madness - An autobiography, born in Bogota, the capital of Colombia. See 1948 - 1957 - 1966 - 1978 - 1988 - 1998 - 2010 - 2015

1950 Peter Lehmann born - external link

1950 David Pilgrim born. See literature - 1991 - 1993 - 1993 - 14.1.2005 - 2005 - (external link)

1950 Denise Winn, editor of Mind Out, born.

20.5.1950 Patrick Joseph Kelly (Joe Kelly) born "in St Mary's Hospital Praed Street, Paddington London where Penicillin was invented". "Joe has been a service user/survivor for 48 years and an activist for over 30 years". (NSUN 6.9.2017). A co-founder of Footsteps Art in 1998. Nominated a champion in March 2007 - fundraising to go to Africa - One of two Brits who attended th WNUSP Conference in Kampala Uganda on 2009 - Started his blog - 9.11.2012 a new vision of disability.

June 1950 Renata [Erica] Edge born. She became a language tutor and a Church of England Minister. Living in Derbyshire before moving to Scotland about 2007 (?). Canal boat enthusiast, photographer and quilt maker: "I am a very busy person". See June 2012.

29.6.1950 Mr E S Irwin, 24 year old Radio Serviceman from 8 Grove Park, Bangor, Belfast, Northern Ireland, sailed from Tilbury on the Ormonde for Sydney, Australia.

1950 Philippe Bernardet born. (Died 15.4.2007, aged 57) - See Groupe d'information sur le Asiles

1951

1951 Barbara Taylor born in Western Canada. She moved to London in 1971. "Women in the London Feminist History Group heard the story of the Owenites in regular installments over the years". See 1981 - 1983 Eve and the New Jerusalem - 1988 Friern - "Mary Wollstonecraft and the Wild Wish of Early Feminism" 24.10.2010 - 6.2.2014 The Last Asylum - 26.6.2015 archive questions

1951 Matthew Sweeney born in Donegal, Ireland. He co-edited Beyond Bedlam with Ken Smith - In the poetry archive he reads one of his poems.

14.1.1951   Frank Bangay born Wandsworth. Many of his poems relate back to growing up in a working class area of London. Frank left school at fifteen and in his early twenties started suffering from severe depression and anxiety. Expressing himself through poetry helped to disperse the gloom and he performed at Troubadour coffee house in Earls Court. His poem Spring is Rising was first published in a hospital magazine. At the end of the 1970s, he collaborated with musicians in the Fighting Pigeons band. His work often combines either words and music or words and pictures. In 1979: he first read PROMPT booklets. From the early 1980s he distributed hand made poster-poems such as Solidarity (October 1982). Frank's poetry and music events to raise money for PROMPT began in 1984 and continued, on behalf of CAPO in 1985. By January 1985, Frank believed in "causing a fuss". Following an historic gatecrash in May 1985, Frank organised entertainment at the Mind conferences in the autumn of 1985 and 1986. Frank's obituary of Eric Irwin, who died in December 1987, is an early source of survivor history. Survivor poetry and music convinced Frank that "our poetry and other forms of creativity are our only voice, and the only way we really have of communicating our experiences." (Interview with Xochitl Tuck). The "original inspiration for Survivors Poetry" in 1991 derived from Frank "who organised numerous poetry events and published poetry magazines with great love and dedication throughout the 1980s". Frank was one of the four principle organisers. From 1992 to 1997 he organised workshops in hospitals, day centres, sheltered housing and similar grass-roots places. But as the organisation moved away from such activities, Frank relocated himself to work with Core Arts, in Hackney. In March 1995 Frank drafted an "ongoing statement" in connection of with meetings of CAPO that were taking place. In May 1996, Frank wrote "The old poet rediscovers his youth, he learns from his wisdom". Poems like And We Can Learn, relating to his working class childhood, reflect on its influence and limitations. Frank was interviewed by Nick Crossley in 1997:. Naked Songs and Rhythms of Hope, his collected works in 1999, contains in its annotations a history of the movement. It was launched at the first Mad Pride event. In 2000, Frank surprised the Mad Pride collective by pointing out that their movement had a long history. As a result, the "Fish Pamphlet" was republished in Mad Pride: A Celebration of Mad Culture and Frank contributed "An Uphill Struggle, But It's Been Worth It". In 2005 Poetry Express published "The Importance of Being Frank" by Xochitl Tuck. Working with Core Arts, Frank has published several CDs. These include Jewels in the Pound Shop in August 2005. Frank provided harmonica backing for some of Brian (Smiley) Sims songs. Frank's 'Punk Gardener' rambles were first published in August 2007. In Summer 2009 he published Songs, Poems And Prayers, performed with support from gospel singer Sophie Mirrel and other Core Arts artists. Articles in 2011 and 2012 explore the madness history of the musical world of which Frank is part. Frank has contributed many items to the Survivors History archive. See, for example, August 2016.

1.3.1951 Carol Batton born. Carol came to poetry relatively late, prompted by being prescribed lithium in 1983. This was a pivotal moment in her life: "I went on medication; first it sent me to sleep and then I started jotting down poetry. "The medication is by far the worst thing that ever happened to me but it gave me poetry." See Survivors Speak Out newsletter One - Asylum 2000 and Asylum 2002

24.4.1951 Terry [Terence Robert] Simpson, born near Garforth, Leeds, to a working- class family. His father worked on the railway, and both sides of his family were heavily involved in the mining industry. He went to Leeds Grammar School and then to University College, Aberystwyth in 1969, gaining a degree in Philosophy in 1972. "I continued postgraduate studies into "the nature of mind" through psychiatric hospitalisation in Leeds several times from 1975 to 1985, (diagnosis "acute paranoid schizophrenic episodes") at which time I discovered re-evaluation counseling (also known as co-counselling), which I think has helped me stay out of the mental health system since then".

Terry Simpson survived psychiatry before working as an advocate for Leeds City Council Health Unit from 1989 to 1993, during which time he helped set up the Leeds Mental Health Advocacy Group. He was Co-ordinator, then National Director, of the UK Advocacy Network from 1993 to 2002, rejoining the board in 2004. He has written two plays about the mental health system and is an active member of Survivors Poetry. Martha Robinson poetry prize 2001

8.12.1951 Mary Barnes entered a convent of Carmellite nuns in Wales. (p.51)

1952

1952 Terry Conway born Islington. In-patient Friern Hospital 1972-1973. Lived in Hackney from 1984. City and Hackney Mind (?) volunteer from April 1993. Co-founder of Hackney Patients Council 1994. Chair for three years. Contributor to Mad Pride 2000

David (John) Hill (Dave Hill) born. See allies - 1983 - The Politics of Schizophrenia - British Network of Alternatives to Psychiatry - "Psychiatric Oppression" - Mind 1985 - 12.1.1986 - 17.5.1986 - Director Mind in Camden - London Alliance for Mental Health Action (October 1987) - 19.11.1988 - 20.6.1989 - 13.1.1993

1952 Anne Beales born - CAPITAL - Together Service User Involvement Directorate - Survivor History Group - Early 2006 - May 2006

Howard Geld born

3.2.1952 Birth of Tony Glynn. External link to staff profile at Birmingham University - named Suresearch in 2000 - Co-authored Two Decades of Change in 2006 - died 5.3.2008 - Glynn Rooms

25.4.1952 Howard John Mingham born Norfolk. Moved to Hackney aged ten (about 1962). Patient in F Block 1976. Resident Arbours, Norbury 1977/1979. Hackney Writers Workshop 1980/1981. See 1984 - 2012 - 2014

11.7.1952 Ray Rowden born. First chair of Mad Pride

1953

1953 Edna Conlan born. See 1990 - National Advocacy Network 1991 MBE 12.6.1993 - See Mental Health Task Force 1993 - Have We Got Views for You 1994 - Scottish Users Network AGM 1994 - Advocacy - A Code of Practice 1994 - National Advocacy Network 1998 - Royal College of Psychiatrists 1999 - died 19.8.2010

About 1953 Jackie Biggs born: See August 1987 - Edale - Edale Letter - 6.2.1988 working party - Crisis Cards

About 1953 Premila Trivedi born. She has been a medical research biochemist - a primary school teacher - a member of the group who developed the Mental Health National Service Framework, which she describes as a "horrendous experience" - an interviewer on the Testimonies Project (an inspirational experience). She helped set up SIMBA (Share in Maudsley Black Action) - See 18.7.2005 - 15.9.2005 - 2016 Christmas Card - articles

About 1953 Mark Roberts born

about 1953 Noele Arden told her fellow inmates in Rampton that "I'd write a book and let the outside world know what went on behind those high walls and locked doors. Although I meant it, I hardly thought I would ever get the opportunity to do so" Child of a System p.62 Her book was published in 1977

1953 Mary Barnes a patient, for a year, in St Bernard's Hospital. (p.52 following)

16.1.1953: Mary Nettle born in "a small village nestling at the foot of Bredon Hill in the Vale of Evesham... I am very lucky to have secure roots in such a lovely place. I was sent away to a convent boarding school at the age of 10" See SUN website - 1970s market research - 1977 a horrible Victorian asylum - 1987 Edale "I felt myself a survivor of life" - 1992 Mental Health Task Force - December 1992 Mental Health User Consultant - 29.5.1993 DATA - 1994 Building on Experience - 1996 chair of MindLink - 1997: Mental Health Act Commissioner - February 2000 - INVOLVE 2003 - Chair European network 2004 - Mary's story at two decades of change 2006 - Recovery In Sight Centre 2009 - Health Rights 2011

20.5.1953 Andrew Hughes born - see North West Mind - visited Oldham Schizophrenia Fellowship - Oldham Mind - memories of 1985 - Rochdale Mind - Founder of Distress Awareness Training Agency May 1988 - Survivors United Network 1999-2002 - worked on On Our Own Terms in 2003 -

1953-1954 Thomas Ritchie went to Ireland. "I was taking the occasional Drinamyl". This needed a prescription, so early in the summer of 1955 he moved to Preludin. "It soon became a daily requirement and that is how regularly I took it until the year 1960", when it was restricted. A conviction for forging prescriptions led to his confinement in 1963, when he learnt about using Benzedrex inhalers, which he was still using in the mid 1970s. In a 22.8.1971 paper he refers to all of these as "Speed" (deleted) "Amphetamine". He says he is addicted and that it is of equal importance as air and food to his life. "Much more than half my waking hours" in hospital "and more than 80%" of his money were consumed in acquiring it.

1954

1954 Liz Sayce born. See 1983 - 1988 - 1990 - 2000 - 2012

28.2.1954 Winston Basil George Rose born in Jamaica. He married Thora H. Paul in St Pancras, London in September 1976. In 1979 he was an electrician living in Leytonstone when he was admitted to Claybury hospital for a short period. In May 1981 he became redundant and depressed and in July 1981 he died being taken to Claybury by the police. - Inquest file

13.3.1954 Valerie Ann Amos born British Guiana (now Guyana) in South America. She was involved in the Black Health Foundation (Afiya Trust) at the time that she became a member of the United Kingddom House of Lords in August 1997

Spring 1954 Fabian Tompsett born? Brentwood School about 1964 to 1970. From 1984 to 1994 he worked at Union Place Community Resource Centre, a radical print shop started in 1974 in Vassall Road, Lambeth. "A co-operative serving the various communities of Lambeth". It had offset litho (A3 and A4 and later A2), screen printing and 35mm darkroom facilities. In 1985 he left th politcal group Class War (French Wikipedia). 22.8.1992 London Psychogeographical Association re-formed (a development of the situationists who influenced the May 1968 Paris events) with an address at Centerprise (Box 15, 138 Kingsland High Street, London E8 2NS). Fabian was a very active member. In May 2006 he is listed as an Advisory member of THACMHO University of East London 2010-2015, gaining first a BA in Social Enterprise and then an MSc in ICT and Development. Since 2008 Fabian has been involved in exhibitions of Class War Games. See 2016 "Wikipedia" and his website -

21.5.1954 Chris Barchard born. See 1992 - 21.7.2005 - 13.7.2007 - 14.7.2007 - Perceptions Spring 2008 - November/December 2013

23.7.1954 Eric Irwin, Radio Mechanic, arrived at Southampton, England, from Sydney, Australia, aboard the ship Fairsea. He was travelling to 13 Sandhill Gardens, Neills Hill, Belfast.

2.9.1954? Celia Hughes born. See 10.1.2005

October 1954 Be Morris born. See 8.1.1988 - 26.9.1988 - June 2012

1.11.1954 Peter Whitehead, having escaped from Farmfield and seeking refuge with his uncle, was taken to the National Council for Civil Liberties offices in Westbourne Grove, Bayswater. Later the same day he was examined by a woman doctor who wrote "I cannot see how he can be deemed certifiably defective" [See Intelligence]

1955

about 1955 Carole (later) Murray born. She became a director of Capital Project Trust on 1.3.2012 at 57 years of age.

April 1955 Roberta Mary Graley (later Wetherell) born. "I have worked as an advocate and helped to establish advocacy servoces in secure hospitals since 1990..." (The Advocate October 2003 page 9) See 1993

1955 Rachel Perkins born

19.12.1955 Rick Hennelly born. See allies - Tontine Road - Survivors Speak Out 1985 - Survivors Speak Out 1986 - Asylum Spring 1986 - Asylum Summer 1986 - Edale 1987 - Interview 11 (before 2005).

The struggle inside January 1955 Peter Whitehead in solitary confinement at Rampton "I decided I was being wrongfully shut away, because I knew I wasn't mentally defective, and in spite of what had happened at Farmfield, I was not violent. I knew that I must go on believing this, and go on hoping that one day I would be set free. No matter how long I was imprisoned in Rampton, I was determined never to give up". Peter Whitehead advised other patients to "Write letters. Get people outside interested in you. Tell them you've been wrongly shut away. If you stay quiet, nobody will lift a finger to help you, however long you stay here" About twenty patients began writing letters and staff complained that Peter's campaign meant they had to spend all their time reading (and censoring) patients letters. Several time, Peter was warned: "Carry on like this, and you're heading straight for trouble" The struggle outside "As soon as he received a written notification that his nephew had been recaptured" Dennis Whitehead called on the National Council for Civil Liberties, determined to get Peter released". He wrote to the Board of Control and was told (3.2.1955) Peter's next review would fall on 25.12.1956. On 2.3.1955 The NCCL wrote to the Board about its independent medical report on Peter, but the Board expressed no interest. Roxan describes these letters as the first two shots to be fired in what was to prove a protracted battle in which Dennis Whitehead would have to sign more than a dozen letters of authority "so that the National Council could wring one more piece of information from sources often most reluctant to part with it" (Roxan 1958 p.227).

1956

"In 1956, Eric Irwin says he narrowly escaped a leucotomy. At the time he was a voluntary patient, and he claims a doctor told him "I wish you were psychotic so I could do it". Irwin is convinced that under the "liberal" 1959 Act, he would have been put on a section and operated on"

1956 Ben Watson born. See Mad Pride 2000 - June 2000 - Asylum 2000 issue 2 - 14.11.2002 -

1956 Lorraine Bell born. See allies - Frank Bangay believes that Lorraine was at the Brighton Congress in July 1985, as was David Hill, but not Peter Campbell. She and Helen Smith may have secured funding for the meetings that established Survivors Speak Out after the July 1985 World Congress, and before the November 1985 Mind Conference. See MIND 1985 Seminar B4. In 2006 it was said of her that "In 1987 she published 'Survivors speak out' as a chapter in Good Practices in Mental Health; from this, she developed the national self-advocacy group for people with mental health problems, adopting her chapter title as their organisational title." See 1987 - 1988 - 2006 -

12.1.1956 Sixteen year old Matthew Paschal O'Hara arrested on suspicion of killing his 26 year old brother Peter in Ballybough House, Fairview, Dublin. It was one of only four violent deaths in Dublin in six years. (Dublin since 1922 (2016) by Tim Carey, page 168). Matthew was convicted by the Central Criminal Court, Dublin on 19.4.1956.

December 1956 Peter Whitehead released from Rampton. "... after ten years at Rampton, had to go to a Ministry of Labour Training Centre to learn a practical trade following his release."

In 1957 he took part in a NCCL "investigation into Rampton Hospital and insanity laws" with another ex-patient, James Stanton. Picture shows James Stanton and Peter Whitehead at the National Council for Civil Liberties Conference. Copyright Pathe News (not used).

"A crowded meeting in the Conway Hall with some 400 People present, many of them parents of Rampton patients; others ex-patients-two of them, embittered, on the platform; both, though previously labelled 'feeble-minded; as able platform contenders as I have seen at many an election meeting". Donald Johnson MP Spectator 27.9.1957

Frank Haskell, Elizabeth Allan and Dr Donald Johnson

1957

1957: United Kingdom Consumers' Association (publisher of "Which?") founded. In 1961 Kathleen Jones expained why it was not possible to do consumer resarch in mental hospitals. In 1971 the Consumers Association published Treatment and Care in Mental Illness

1957: Recovery groups, now known as Grow began in Hurstville, Sydney, Australia. Started by former mental patients who met through Alcoholics Anonymous. Described now (2008) as a "community of persons working towards mental health through mutual help and a 12 step program of recovery. Small groups of people who have experienced depression, anxiety or other mental or emotional distress, come together on a weekly basis to help each other deal with the challenges of life. Some people come to GROW while struggling with the loss of a job, a loved one or a relationship". The organisation started in Ireland in 1969

Veronica Dewan born 1957 - See Capital and 14.1.2005

1957 Altaf Ramtoola born.

About 1957 Alan Leader born. See Hackney WEA - December 1980 - Survivor activist 1986 - Hackney Day Hospital Patients Committee - 9.5.1986 - 21.11.1986 - 5.9.1989 - Survivors Speak Out 1989 AGM - 1992 - 13.4.1994 - Direct Power 1995

January 1957 "Put Away", was the first programme of The Hurt Mind, the first British television series about mental illness. Much of it came from inside Warlingham Park Hospital, where the presenter, Christopher Mayhew, spent a few days "to get the feel of the place". No faces of patients were shown - Some individuals were pictured from the neck down, a group of patients were interviewed around a table without showing faces, one or more individuals were interviewed back to camera. Gerald describes how the war drove him to alcoholism Sidney describes how he became "persecuted by a wizard and became possessed by a familiar" Mary, a teacher, tells of her "irrational fears" and how her parents found it "difficult to understand" Mary also speaks for Marcia, a silent young woman; Mary says that Marcia "can't do anything without being told" A woman explains that peculiar thoughts were put into her head by someone other than herself, how she had hallucinations of red devils and religious figures. A young male patient speaks of his aversion to close proximity to other people, inordinate concerns about cleanliness, and a phobia about dirt and infections A female patient talks about how she suffered deep depression after childbirth, her indecisiveness, her mistreatment of husband and child and unhappy childhood

John Zammit - Outsider poet About the Author He was placed on earth in 1957, on the 16th of August. The town he was selected to breath in was Bethnal Green, this place is a small town, in a massive city called London, or help me, I can't see the fucking sky!

4.11.1957 Alison Faulkner born. See Rogers and Faulkner 1987 - Faulkner, A. and Field, V. 1993 - 1994 - user led research - February 1997 - Strategies for Living - A. Faulkner, 2000 - September 2002 - INVOLVE - 24.7.2004 - 16.11.2004 - 1.6.2009

1958

1958 Mary O'Hagan born Winton, Southland, New Zealand. See 1987 - 1991 World Federation chair - 1993 - 2001 Comissioner - box

1958 Helen Smith born. See allies - July 1985 - Minstead Lodge - Collaboration for Change -

1958 Ron Coleman born - See 1991 - 13.4.1994 - May 1994 - Handsell Publishing - Hearing Voices 1996 Conference - 1999: Recovery: an alien concept - 2001-2002 Victim to Victor workshops - 29.5.2002 Bristol Hearing Voices Network Self-Help group - 2006? Working to Recovery Ltd - Essex April 2008

1958 Clare Ockwell born. See Society for the Advancement of Research into Anorexia - Eating Disorders Association 1992 - CAPITAL

1958 Paul Ripley born. See Having a Voice coordinator and then Media Project worker - Manchester Social Media Director ID : 912430416 in 2008.

28.1.1958 Joseph Lodrick Watts born. "My brother was Joseph Watts and he died in Broadmoor, he was always told that he would never walk free and that he would die in Broadmoor,and this is exactly what happened. R.I.P. Joseph Watts" (Yvonne Fitzgerald 17.1.2013). In June 1989 "Following the death of black Londoner Joseph Watts" on 23.8.1988 Inquest was "one of several groups which have been helping Mr Watt's parents to find how he died".

July 1958 Colin Hambrook born. 16 in 1975. Established Disability Arts Online. - 2012 - 2013

About 1958: Mark Greenwood born. After completing a degree in history at Cambridge University, he then (1982- 1985) trained as a psychiatric nurse at North Manchester General Hospital. Towards end of training, carried out oral history as part of the Getting To Know You project. Staffed on Springfield's long-stay wards before being appointed as one of the first community support workers in the Harpurhey Resettlement Team (1987 -1992). "During his 5 years on the team he was also heavily involved in mental health politics, including visits to Trieste and other European centres of radical psychiatry, involvement in Asylum magazine and helping set up the Hearing Voices Network." See Asylum July 1989 - "I was involved in producing Asylum with Paul Baker and Nigel Rose between 1989 and 1994" In 1992 he moved back into Springfield Hospital as a senior nurse manager, overseeing the closure of the remaining long-stay wards. - Asylum Summer 1993 Defence of Italy (See March 1993) - He left Springfield in 1994 to become development manager at Creative Support (Registered 18.1.1991 as Manchester Housing Consortium. Name changed to Creative Support Ltd on 24.2.1994) Mark has has been involved in the Kwan Wai (Mental Health) Team of Wai Yin Chinese Women Society since its beginning in 1999 and has worked at Wai Yin as Health and Social Care/Well being manager since 2002. Interview 5.

1958 Robin Farquharson's Doctor of Philosophy thesis An approach to a pure theory of voting procedure Nuffield College, Oxford

In the neurosis unit at "Northtown" a psychiatrist tried to organise group therapy by meetings which included "a patients' committee, and a patients' general meeting" "The patients' committee was stopped because it apparently ran a great deal too well. It developed a group entity of its own which became set in opposition against the staff - as one doctor said, 'It was at us the whole time, agitating'" "The patients' general meeting collapsed because the doctors felt the verbalisation level was too low for it to have any real value. A few patients from the patients' committee dominated it. The rest could not take any active part in it, and tended to sit passively." One reason the psychiatrist thought the groups failed was "the lack of any real delegation of responsibility - 'we just expected them to sit and talk'" (Jones and Sidebotham 1962 p.76)

1959

1959 Edward Peck born. See Nottingham Summer 1985

1959 Robin Farquharson wrote the chapter "South Africa 1958" in David Butler's Elections Abroad (Macmillan; St. Martin's Press, 1959).

1959 Bill Warwick "received the distinguished label Schizophrenic. My mistake was going to my doctors in search of an explanation of an experience that produced a somewhat bold statement in writing: 'Fear is at the root of all illness both Mental and Physical'."

February 1959 Adrienne Sinclair Chalmers born. See Awareness (1989) and June 2012

29.7.1959 Royal Assent to the 1959 Mental Health Act. Eric Irwin argued, from his experienced of being a patient, that this Act removed patient's rights. It follows that he had experience of English mental hospitals before, as well as after, the Act.

Zyra gazes at the stars from his 2001 website

11.11.1959 James "Jim" Graves, also known as Jim Felix and Zyra born. He went to Boston Grammar School between 1971 and 1978 (where he was known as the "professor". Graduated in Computer Science from the University of Manchester in 1982. About 1983 he established Felix Computers in Boston. This included open access to his Free Association Machine. Eventually he opted for the internet and made his fortune (from 2000) with zyra.org See National Voices Forum - 30.9.1999 - 2001 - Summer 2005 - 2008 DVD - December 2010 - Went to Panama as a tax exile on 22.1.2012. He died in Panama in October 2012 (aged 52). See archive of website

---

1960s Breakdown in the taboo of silence - people with conditions usually regarded as taboo talking about their own experiences

1960

"In 1960, [Eric Irwin says a] psychiatrist told him he was a psychopath and that psychopathy was inborn and incurable. 'I was shattered by that. But when I came out I looked it up in every textbook I could find, and found it meant so many different things that anyone could be one'"

From 1960 to 1962, Shulamit [Shula] Ramon was a student at the School of Social Work, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. See 1983 - MIND 1985 B2 - Interview 3 - Literature - December 1988

5.2.1960 David Roy Bennett was born in Jamaica. He came to England in 1968 to join his family who were already living in Peterborough. His father worked as an engineer with the London Brick Company. David became known as Rocky Bennett. He died 31.10.1998

Spring 1960 Thomas Ritchie discharged from Brixton Prison found his Brighton photography business had been destroyed by a burglary. He returned t Lanark, Scotland to live with his aunt. "I went to Hartwoodhill Hospital as a voluntary patient", but discharged himself within a month. Unable to find work in Lanark, he went to friends in Coventry [*], but still could not find work. "My chronic depression deepened and I was admitted to Leigh House, an offshoot of the Central Hospital, Warwick (again voluntarily)" for six weeks of treatment including ECT. On discharge, he had three months work selling ice-cream, and when this finished, with the winter, returned to his aunt in Lanark.

1.5.1960 Someone had suggested to Moyna Peters' parents that psychiatric treatment might help her keep a job.

19.6.1960 Orville Blackwood born Jamaica. Mother Clara [Buckley]. Orville moved to London "at an early age" and "in trouble with the police at an early age". His psychiatric history began when he was 22. See 28.8.1991 The picture shows Clara holding a framed photograph of Orville. It may be from the Caribbean and African Times in December 1992.

October 1960 Carol (Susan) Jenkin born. Started BUDDIES in 1994 - A Director of The UK Federation of Smaller Mental Health Agencies from 1.9.1998 to 7.4.2005. Correspondence address: 45 Wood Lane, Swain House, Bradford, West Yorkshire, BD2 1JU. Occupation: Trainer and Voluntary Mental Health Worker - 7.10.2000 an article about her life and Buddies - UKAN Chair - User Survey Steering Group 2003 - On Our Own Terms Research Team - Advocate June 2004

"It is not possible to do 'consumer research' in mental hospitals, for although patients often have very decided views, these are frequently conditioned by their illness and their own subjective experiences. Nevertheless, it is very important that the patients' own viewpoint should not be lost among the welter of administrative and statistical considerations, and we were fortunate in that a number of patients, meeting us in the ward and in the corridors, took a considerable interest in the project. They contributed observations and anecdotes from their own experience, and these were carefully checked by reference to medical or nursing staff, or to records. We are grateful to these patients - many of whom are now back in their own homes, and living normal lives at the time of writing - for a constant reminder of the human values which underlie this or any other piece of research into mental illness." Kathleen Jones and Roy Sidebotham. Dated 1961, referring to research between June 1958 and June 1959. (Jones and Sidebotham 1962, p.x)

About 1961 Daniel Iga Mwesigwa born in Uganda. "Mentally ill since he was thirteen" (Basic Needs 2004) - Mental Health Uganda - The photograph was taken at the Disability Rights Promotion International Africa regional training workshop in Kigali, Rwanda (28.1.2011 to 2.2.2011).

1961

Problems of the Ex-Prisoner. Report of the Pakenham/Thompson Committee published London, 1961 by the National Council of Social Service (Great Britain). 91 pages. Frank Pakenham Longford (1905-2001) (chairing) and Peter Thompson (1933-2003).

January 1961 Michael Dummett and Robin Farquharson "Stability in Voting" Econometrica 29, pages 289-286. Stability in Voting'. Pp. 33-43 in: Econometrica, Vol. 29, No. 1, January 1961.

11.3.1961 Richard Campbell born to Paulette Campbell in Stockwell, South London. As a young man (19 when he died) "he was a popular guy in South London helping to run the Mafia Sound System. He was a witty and good-natured youth - the reason for his nickname 'Cartoon'". See arrest and death 1980 - Inquest file - 29.4.1981

13.3.1961 Colin Sylvester Roach born Stepney to Pamella C. V. Roach (Ireland before their marriage in Poplar in December 1958) and James Martin Roach (born 1.4.1928, died November 1997 in Tower Hamlets. In 1983, James was described as "a 54 labourer from Exmouth House, Bow". Christmas 1982 in Pentonville - Died 12.1.1983 - Inquest file.

24.9.1961 Birth of Michael Dean Martin who died in Norfolk House, Broadmoor, aged only 23, in July 1984.. "Consideration had been given to the possibility of a planned transfer of him back to Bexley hospital".

December 1961 Incentive contained an account by Bertram A. Miller of the orgin (1960) of the Sheltered Workers Group. This was rewritten for the June 1963 edition. See Ingrebourne box

1962

By 1962 Eric Irwin had returned to London. 1962/1963 Living in a Church Army hostel, Livingstone House, in Willesdon. 1964/1965 living in a Richmond Fellowship hostel in Islington. In 1965 also shown in a communal house at 2 Wells Road, Bromley.

1962 Patrick Wood born.

About 1962 Peter Bullimore born. See: 2003 Paranoia Network - 19.10.2007 - Asylum 2010 - 2012 Pumpkin

About 1962 Simon Barnett born. See 2003

1962 Mary Barnes visited her parents in South Africa, where they had been for three years. (p.60) She returned to England after six months and went to stay at the convent in Wales. Peter came to stay. Dorothy was travelling to the Far East and Australia. "Soon after this Peter wrote saying he was in a mental hospital". (p.62) Corespondence with Anna Freud and James Robertson .

February 1962 Birth of Abena [Ade Dansu] Simba-Tola. See September 1980 and March 1981

14.9.1962 Birth of Peter [Anthony] Shaughnessy [mother's maiden name Bell] in Lambeth, London - His parents were "Irish working class" and Peter's childhood ambition was to become a bus driver. Instead, he studied drama at the Rose Bruford College in Sidcup from 1983 to 1986. His first child was born at about the time he left the college. He worked in a children's home and as a carer for people with disabilities, before becoming a bus driver in 1990 on route 36 from New Cross to Queens Park. In 1992 he went on a silent hunger strike outside his bus garage in protest at the privatisation of the service. By the end of the year he was hospitalised with "manic depression". On 2.10.1995, one of Peter's sisters, Evelyn (born 2.1.1970) was killed by her "psychotic boyfriend", who stabbed her fifteen times whilst her sister tried to save her. Peter says "when Brixton police let me back in the flat, they let me find the bloody duvet that she was attacked on". Peter punched a policeman and was admitted to Robert Gillespie Ward, in Guys Hospital. He joined Southwark Mind in 1997, helping to consolidate it as a user group, and came to prominence with the street drama of Reclaim Bedlam in the autumn of 1997. From early 1998, Peter was groomed as Mental Health Media's lead performer: See National Headlines 12.2.1998 - 8.10.1998. In 2000, Peter told his own story in the Mad Pride book. He married married Penny L. Mount, Worthing, Sussex, December 2000 - Suicide 14.12.2002 (age 40). Death registered Wandsworth - Inquest 10.4.2003 - Asylum tribute issue - Advocate. Mental Magazine records. Frank Bangay recorded (Survivors History Group Meeting 30.9.2015) that Peter's death took a lot out of the momentum of Mad Pride. Peter, he said, was "a one-off who turned campaign into theatre". He "moved mental health demos forward".

Autumn 1962 Valerie Argent confined in Essex Hall. She was later moved to the Ingrebourne Centre (a therapeutic community). Her Ingrebourne medical notes say:

"She has been an in-patient of the Royal Eastern Counties Hospital, Essex Hall, Colchester, which is a hospital for mental defectives. She was sent there as other suitable accommodation was not available, following an attempt at suicide by holding her head in a basin of water. She is an intelligent girl with an IQ of 120 and has been attending Hornchurch Grammar School" - "We really took her because it seemed so terrible to leave her in this environment"

1963

About 1963 Graham Morgan born - He became a mental health activist in the 1980s in Sheffield after witnessing the harsh and often undignified treatment of people with a mental illness. He initially became a volunteer with an organization helping young people live in the community. After this he helped set up a a user run drop in centre (McMurphys) for young people in Sheffield. He was a Director of McMurphys. Moved to Edinburgh about 1988 where he quickly became involved in a campaigning group.

Graham was active in Awareness a collective advocacy group in Edinburgh and then worked in Lothian with CAPS where he helped establish the Lothian Users Forum and a network of other advocacy groups. He moved to the Highlands in 1997. MBE 2004 when he had had "over 20 years experience in the field of mental health". See 2012 and 2015.

February 1963 In about 20 minutes, Bill Warwick was "instrumental" in writing This Mad World, a six page spiritualist cosmology that included "look to the mental hospitals to see the havoc some are creating to what could be some good and desirable instruments to us" [spirits] "if they but know how to help themselves and us ... Some of you already know from experience that the treatment meted out to those unfortunates only frightens the life out of them and is completely unnecessary. Raise you voices. Ask for permission to cooperate with the mental authorities to rescue those poor souls from the ignorance of mankind".

Monday 11.2.1963: Suicide of Sylvia Plath. 6am. Yeats' House. Freda Hughes, daughter of Sylvia and Ted, was two years old. She grew up in Devon.

April 1963 Lanark Court sent Thomas Ritchie to Crichton Royal Hospital at Dumfries "on a year's probation". He was there for five months. "... it was discovererd that I was again taking drugs (brought by a friend from Dublin)". "I quite enjoyed my stay there, being able to get some drugs most of the time". This was seen as "a breach of probation, for which offence I did 30 days in Barlinnie Prison, Glasgow" On release, Tommy went almost directly to Hartwood.

18.5.1963 Edward Christopher Clunis [known as Christopher Clunis, who sometimes called himself Allajah] born Muswell Hill, London, N10. His father, Lester Oswald Clunis (born Jamaica 20.4.1924 /39 years old) and mother, Daisey M. McClarey (also born Jamaica. Died Jamaica 1985), lived with several other people at 54 Rathcoole Gardens, Hornsey N8 in 1964. Christopher was their only child, but had 4 half brothers and sisters on his father's side and a half brother on his mother's side. "He came from a supportive and loving family". Lester and Daisey were "able to marry" in the spring of 1968, just before they moved to Luton, where his father worked at the Vauxhall car plant. He went to school in Luton. His ambition was to be a jazz guitarist and he toured the Aqua Vita Showband. His parents returned to Jamaica, where his mother died in 1985. Christopher joined his father in Jamaica in 1986 and was admitted to Bellevue Hospital, Kingston, Jamaica, with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. Returning to England, he stayed with (half) sisters in Birmingham and then north London.

During 1987, Christopher had several admissions to Chase Farm Hospital in Enfied. This was close to his family, but in 1988 he was admitted to Dulwich North Hospital (South London). In 1989 St Charles' Hospital, Kensington and Chelsea. He then lived largely in hostels. August/September 1992 Guys. Murdered Jonathan Zito 17.12.1992

28.5.1963 4pm: Inauguration Committee of The Ingrebourne Society by patients of the Ingrebourne Centre. Its first aim was to "help maintain contact after discharge, and to allow useful relationships to continue". A future aim was to "organise and run a Hostel for the rehabilitation of persons after mental illness".

June 1963 Incentive edited by Jenny - Rosemary Glendenning having left for the Richmond Fellowship - [Described as "the Centre's magazine". The centre was Ingrebourne. The two copies owned by Andrew Roberts (June 1963 and November 1963) were produced entirely by patients, with very occasional, and minor, written contributions from two of the doctors]

3.7.1963 Andrew Roberts admitted to the Ingrebourne Centre following a suicide attempt. He had (foolishly) taken an overdose in the catchment area of Warley Hospital. Fortunately, the ambulance took him to Romford.

"I had three books that I was using to try to understand what was happening: Thomas Szasz, 1961 The Myth of Mental Illness (A library book) - James Drever, 1952 (Revised edition 1964) A Penguin Dictionary of Psychology and David Stafford-Clark, 1952 (second edition 1963) Psychiatry Today (Both bought in a Brentwood bookshop). Ingrebourne staff discouraged an academic approach. My habit of carrying the book I was reading around with me, and putting it by my chair in group, drew unfavourable attention - especially to Szasz."

28.7.1963 Start of a camping holiday in France that had been planned in the Ingrebourne Centre by patients. In the event, three patients/expatients went. At one time it was thought half the centre's patients would go.

September 1963 Thomas Ritchie detained in Hartwood Hospital, Shotts Lanarkshire under Part 5 of the Mental Health (Scotland) Act, "with a restriction on my discharge which could only be lifted by the Secretary of State for Scotland". "On the very night of my release from Barlinnie I was arrested and charged with Breach of the Peace, once again at Lanark Court. The Sheriff sent me to this hospital, Hartwood, nearly three years ago, and here I still am. Ward 22, Hartwoodhill Hospital. Summer 1966"

November 1963 Incentive edited by Jenny

17.11.1963 Katherine Sirockin (Kathy Sirockin) born Edmonton, London. She died in August 1991: Kathy taught us to hear with our eyes.

2.12.1963 The Beatles live on the Morecombe and Wise show. It meant a lot to Valerie. Nothing to me.

1964

1964 Dr Wolfgang Huber began work at the Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Heidelberg.

1964 GIHP: Groupement pour l'Insertion des personnes Handicapées Physiques (Group for Integration of Physically Handicapped persons) established by Gerard Crombez a quadriplegic student at the University of Sciences in Nancy. (See France)

1964 Brian Hartnett born Limerick - 1991 - 1996 - Phrenz - 2003 - Phrenz of the Media - Hearing Voices Ireland (2006) - (external link to personal recovery story)

1964: Robin Farquharson's Research Fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge. "the wrench I felt resigning my Churchill College fellowship after one year and three nervous breakdowns. Marvellous folk, they gave me £3,000 journey money... under the control of two trustees... [who] let me take it out of the trust account to present to the Home Office, a little disturbed already by my two certification orders, with proof of my means". (Drop Out pages 10-11) [Robin had his South African passport withdrawn in 1965 and became a British Citizen in 1968]

In 1964 (and 1965) Eric Irwin was registered as living at [St George's House] 263 Camden Road, Islington - A Richmond Fellowship residence. But in 1965 he is also registered as living in Bromley.

31.1.1964 Sarah Wheeler born, Leicester. Declared a girl by the doctor. However "until the age of five, Sarah Wheeler identified fully and unquestioningly with the role of being a boy. She liked cap guns, cowboy hats, bows and arrows, bicycles, climbing trees, wearing shorts, all that kind of thing. She was happy. Between the age of five and fifteen, environmental pressures being what they are Sarah Wheeler gradually morphed into the feminine identity... she became during this time strangely unhappy, with the first depersonalised symptoms emerging in her mind, inexplicably, when she was about ten. During her childhood, Sarah Wheeler always knew that if she had been born a boy she would have been called Thomas Tobias. Sarah was admitted to Springfield Hospital in 1990. Late on Christmas Day in 2002 she was released from the six month grip of psychotic depression. To calm and focus her mind she read a poem called Mental Fight by Ben Okri. She started the Mental Fight Club in Southwark on 1.2.2003 and this led to starting the Dragon Cafe on 21.3.2011 in the Crypt of St George the Martyr Church, Borough Hill.

Tuesday 31.3.1964 to Wednesday 27.5.1964 Valerie Argent (aged 15/16) was a patient in Belmont Hospital. "... she was treated with Electro Convulsive Therapy and drugs, and it was suggested to her that the only way she would escape from her depressions would be a brain operation (Leucotomy). She was very tempted to accept this suggestion, but eventually decided to escape from the hospital instead" (source). Valerie's medical records show that Valerie was sent to Belmont to separate her and Andrew Roberts.

Summer 1964 Harry Cumberbatch arrived at Bow Bus Garage from Barbados to start work as a conductor, later driver. Through the Territorial Army he made contacts that "helped in getting my next job as a chauffeur for the Director of the Royal Mint". He qualified as a mechanical engineer, but in the 1970s became a Newham Youth Worker. In 1994 he began retraining in person-centred therapy and began work as a counsellor with Mind in Tower Hamlets. See THACMHO and MBE

2.7.1964 Jasna Russo born.

12.7.1964 Esther Leslie born - Archives of her CV - Archives of the whole militantesthetix website - Mad Pride on militantesthetix - Current University web page

end November 1964 Norman was admitted to Clyde Ward, St Bernards, Southall. "Very good treatment and nursing. Discharged after 13 weeks". The next November he went in for four and a half weeks and then, after a week, was readmitted for thirteen weeks. He was readmitted after four weeks and discharged after six weeks. He was admitted to another hospital in 1971:

"My only complaint about hospitals is that some stroppy night nurses bully one back to bed when one cannot sleep. Instead they should be allowed to brew up and sit in the day room. I believe females get a rougher deal in this and many other respects than males... I have had some hairy episodes, but find the system works."

16.12.1964 Robert Dellar born Watford. - 1987 onwards working for local Mind associations - 1983: City and Hackney Mind Advocacy Service - May 1994: Hackney Patients Council - April 1996: Spare Change Books and An Anthology of Punk - 1998? Development worker for Southwark Mind - June 1998: Seaton Point - June 2000: Mad Pride (the book) - 14.11.2002 exhausted - 2014 Splitting in Two: Mad Pride and Punk Rock Oblivion - died 17.12.2016

1965

1965 Disablement Income Group (DIG) formed

1965 Following a knife attack on three au pair girls, Peter Thompson was sent to Broadmoor under Section 60 of the 1959 Health Act. He was released by a Mental Health Review Tribunal in 1969.

1965 Patricia Chambers born. See Odessa Chambers - Patricia entered the mental health system in 1990 - In 1996 Patricia conducted her own research into "different ways, pathways or reasons that young black men were coming into the mental health system". [See Bugs and 2007] Through her local user group, she took part in "a study of the current provision for housing for mental health patients in the borough". - In 2006 Patricia reported from a group of black mental health service users in London on the importance of Service User Networking. - 2009 seminars - Patricia was appointed the Catch-a-Fiya Manager in 2009. Patricia led work on the Dancing To Our Own Tunes recommendations to develop the TOOTS charter - died 2016 - Friends and colleagues gathered at the Rose Pub in Vauxhall on 25.2.2017 to remember and celebrate her life. "For some of us, the endless discussions and strategizing we've had with each other and with other friends around the dining table at the Afiya Trust have been transformative. But the Afiya Trust, too, has passed away, and so has Catch-a-fiya", (Jayasree Kalathil) - legacy

13.1.1965 Philip Lee Morgan born in the London Borough of Lambeth. After an insecure childhood in foster homes and institutions he became homeless. With counselling and social work help he was rehoused and became a pioneer of "health through history", which explores recovering yourself through knowing who you are and who you relate to. See Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation - 14.5.2008 interview - met Sam Shakes - 30.10.2009 F.E.E.L. presentation - Pageant - Birmingham 2010 - messages - died 6.5.2017 - funeral - spirit - legacy

15.3.1965 Letter about Eric Irwin's French translation to 38 Masons Hill. 38 Masons Hill was the address of Stepping Stones House, a Psychiatric Day Hospital in the same area (Bromley) as Cane Hill. In 1965, Eric Irwin is shown in a communal house at 2 Wells Road, Bromley, after being in a Richmond Fellowship House in Islington - .

2.3.1965 Cherry Allfree seventeen. "There has been a lot written about ... institutions for the so-called subnormal. But little has been written about the reasons why people end up in these places. I want to tell you what happened to me when I was 16 years old. It all began in the year 1965" (Cherry explains why she wants her story published) - After 1975: "I am one of the homeless people of Welby Squat. I Demand Rehousing. I have been shoved around in different homes and hostels since I was 16.. I had a heart operation a year or more ago.." (Published Peace News. Date not known)

May 1965 "9 p.m. on a Friday night was definitely the wrong time to be admitted". Judith Watson

Saturday 5.6.1965 Mary Barnes first saw Kingsley Hall

early summer 1965 "Unfortunately, the doctor decided to send me to Horton Hospital for a rest" - August 1965 "the doctor... informed me that he had already called an ambulance to take me to Rubery Hill Hospital". (Joan Martin - See also winter 1967)

1.1.1965 All Saints Day. "In the Games Room it suddenly piereced through me about the convent" Mary Barnes p.164

Toward the end of November 1965 "one Saturday.. Joe gave me a round toffee tin of grease crayons whih he had found in the house" (Mary Barnes p.142)

"I took to my bed for four months until Joe (Dr Berke) got me out. He would sit me in a chair and I would stay there for hours until he moved me again. One day Joe gave me a set of 'grease crayons and told me to scribble something. I did, on and on. Suddenly a picture emerged, a woman kneeling with a baby at her breast. I found some tins of paint, left over from decorating, and I painted picture stories about mermaids, tramps and children on the back of old wallpaper." (Sunday Times 13.4.1969)

Mary Barnes "this time over Christmas '65 through the spring of '66 was a time of being up and out, of doing, of exploding, of running and screaming. The house was a minefield..." (p.224)

1965 The Sir John Cass School of Art, formed through a merger, moved into newly built premises at Central House, opposite the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Mary Barnes started classes in January 1966.

1966

1966 Paul Hunt's book Stigma; The Experience of Disability is published. See UPIAS

1966 Fortnightly International Times (IT), alternative newspaper, founded in London.

"I begged my GP to get me into hospital so as I could get some care and help" Daniel Morgan

"the spring of '66 saw Mary enter a 'down' from which she did not emerge for almost a year... her 'down' began in February, accelerated in March, held steady in April, and plunged forward in May. By june she had taken to her bed and was refusing to eat. Her body had begun to look like a bunch of bones loosely covered with skin" (Joseph Berke, p.274)

March 1966 Mary Barnes encouraged by Felix Topolski. The works he saw were oils on wallpaper backing paper. He showed her hardboard he was painting on.

Feeding the five thousand (1966) by Mary Barnes is the earliest in the Glasgow collection of her work. "The Feeding the Five Thousand was the first one I did on canvas. Stretched on the wall above my bed, a mattress on the floor, it was about seven feet across and six feet high" (Mary Barnes, p.152)

2.3.1966 Cherry Allfree eighteen. About 1966 that Cherry was admitted to Kingsmead in Colchester.

Sunday 10.4.1966 Easter Sunday

"On Easter Monday, in the dining-room, I painted a big canvas of the Mother of God. Her breasts were revealed, the succour of men... My paintings had emerged from black lines and breasts on the walls and paintings in shit, to moving figures and scribble on paper: from undercoat paint and wall brushes, to pencils, crayons, charcoal, poster paint, water colour, and oils." (Mary Barnes, pp 157-158)

Summer 1966? Frank Bangay left school, aged 15.

Mary Barnes "June '66 down, in bed, going inside myself..." (p.224)

Summer 1966 On Ward 22 of Hartwood Hospital, Thomas Ritchie wrote an account of his life up to his admission to Hartwood.

In Cork, Ireland, Tessa Redmond started "Friends Anonymous", a self-help therapy group in September 1966. It was run on the lines of Alcoholics Anonymous - whose open meetings Tessa attended, "to give me the right ideas". The group was the first of its kind in Cork. At least one doctor and a dentist used to send their nervous patients to the group. "I mentioned it when I appeared on a television program about 'phobias'. Sadly, it was an entertainment program, and not at all respectful towards us. Participants were asked about their specific phobias, and then unexpectedly presented with the object of their fear, which of course terrified them - I found this disgraceful" (Tessa Redmond) Recovery Groups (now Grow) in Ireland started in 1969.

Mary Barnes Chapter 12: "Autumn 1966 - coming insight - how I used my paintings to seduce people - bonfire night" (p.194) - "Up a bit as if to breathe. Writing and pastelling in the autumn of '66' Then down again, the third time, less body now, more mind, understanding coming. Moving away out of the web, getting separate. (p.224)

"I feel it's just possible, so great was my state of self- deception, so clever was I at deceiving others, that if God had not resuced me through mental breakdown I might have worn a habit, been a 'nun' outwardly, without ever really encountering all my anger, jealousy, sexual feelings and guilt." (Barnes and Berke 1971/1973 p.225)

7.10.1966 Ronald Laing's 49th birthday. Mary Barnes wrote her story The Hollow Tree as her birthday present.

October 1966 Trace Methods for Sulphate and Nitrate by J.M. Martin, Graduate of the Royal Institute of Chemistry, a candidate for the degree of Master of Science. University of Birmingham. Joan's autobiography describes how her degree was preceded by a period in a mental hospital.

November 1966 Mary Barnes' Baby Bear

Mary Barnes Chapter 13: "Christmas 1966 - Further experiences with Noel and Paul"

December 1966 Birth in Poplar of Sarah Jane Yiannoullou who became manager of the National Survivor User Network (NSUN) in March 2009. See 14.11.2017

1967	Declaration of a summer of love

2.3.1967 Cherry Allfree nineteen. After her nineteenth and before her twentieth birthday, Cherry was admitted to Lexden House in Colchester.

Mary Barnes "This last, fourth time of going down was in the spring of '67. It was short and drastic, six days without food and water" (p.226) "since the spring of '67, I have grown up" (p.227)

"May 1967 saw the start of my finger painting with Peter before Christ. Using more and more colour I raced on, through the Red Sea with the Children of Israel, to the Nativity, the Resurrection, the Ascension and across the dining room wall came Christ Triumphant, done with my fingers as all my work since then."

Stephen Ticktin graduated B.A. Philosophy June 1967 - M.A. Philosophy December 1969 - M.D. June 1973 (University of Toronto, Canada). See May 1982 - 1983 - Psychiatric Oppression - MIND 1985 - Asylum Spring 1987 - Autumn 1987 - literature - Asylum Summer 1991 - Asylum Autumn 1991 - Asylum Spring 1992 -

June/July 1967 Release national drug helpline established in London "by Caroline Coon and Rufus Harris, who established it as a direct response to the growing number of young people being arrested and/or imprisoned under the Dangerous Drugs Act 1965". [Archives description] The ideas about mental distress and its relief that were expressed in COPE were often related to the images of drug experiences. People "freaked out" and needed a "crisis centre" to come through their experience in the friendly company of people who knew what was happening to them. Release groups also formed in Germany and the Netherlands where they have been credited with playing a part in the mental patients' movement and/or the anti-psychiatry movement.

15.7.1967 to 30.7.1967 Roundhouse Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation. Some of Mary Barnes' paintings were exhibited at this. In the spring of 1968, Mary was given the old posters "to cover the floor and benches of the Games Room so I could paint without spoiling the room, which had then been newly decorated" (p.297)

September 1967 In "The Sick Room, Ward Seven" of Hartwood Hospital, Thomas Ritchie wrote an account of his life in Hartwood, concluding with his "grievances for redress". His case for a union (later) included that such individual grievances got him nowhere, but the collective complaints of patients were attended to.

autumn 1967 Mary Barnes took Joseph Berke to visit Peter Barnes in hospital. (p.338)

6.11.1967 Robin Farquharson dismissed from his job in computer programming for "taking liberties" - decision to "drop out" (leaving his money in the bank and his furniture with friends). The first entry in his book about this is Monday 20.11.1967 - Which may have been the day he walked into Anthony Blond's office and secured a £2 a week advance on a book about his experiences.

Joan Martin: "I spent the winter of 1967 at Rubery Hill Hospital but did not get on too badly, because during this period I was not given heavy tranquillisers" - See November 1969

1968

1968 "We Shall Overcome" started in Norway by mental patients and ex- patients in 1968 continues to represent users and survivors of psychiatry in the 21st century. website - facebook ["Landsforeningen We Shall Overcome (WSO) - Bruker- og interesseorganisasjon for menneskerettigheter, selvbestemmelse og verdighet innen psykisk hels" means in English "The National Association We Shall Overcome (WSO)-user and interest group for human rights, self-determination and dignity within mental health"]

The first edition of Drop Out by Robin Farquharson was published in 1968. Its cover had this cartoon of Robin. In the preface (dated 30.1.1968), he wrote "I am a manic-depressive. When I'm up, I have no judgement, but fantastic drive; when I'm down, I have judgement, but no drive at all. In between I pass for normal well enough." (See Chaos Invocation)

At Heidelberg, Wolfgang Huber developed a Patientenkollektivs (Patient Collective) in 1968. Later development: Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv (Socialist Patient Collective). This published SPK - Aus der Kranheit eine Waffe Machen [Make Your Illness a Weapon] in April 1972.

January 1968 Meeting of Mary Barnes with her parents (chapter 19). After this meeting, Mary "discovered her hands" and began to use hands and fingers instead of brushes and palette knife. (Joe Berke, p.368). Mary says her finger painting began in May 1967

February 1968: Start of the democratic "anti-university". The mental health meetings, in which R.D. Laing and David Cooper were active, were called "anti-psychiatry". After the collapse of the anti-university (by 1969) the anti-psychiatry group continued to meet in a flat in Belsize Park. The term anti-psychiatry has also been used generally for the movement critical of the orthodox psychiatry of the 1960"s. (See Mental Health and Civil Liberties Article) In this very lose sense, COPE and even the Mental Patients Union have been described as part of the anti- psychiatry movement. However, some MPU members would warmly reject the title on the grounds that MPU groups were open to all patients and ex- patients, irrespective of their views on psychiatry and psychiatric treatment. The use of the term in the sense of holding society and psychiatry responsible for what is called mental illness was developed by PROMPT - which was not, initially, a patients' organisation.

2.3.1968 Cherry Allfree twenty. Before her twentieth birthday, Cherry was admitted to Lexden House in Colchester.

Spring 1968 Mary Barnes painted Christ Triumphant, depicting three stages of sacrifice, on the dining room wall at Kingsley Hall.

May 1968 Paris student rising

16.5.1968 Article by Richard Boston in New Society about the Anti-University.

June 1968 BIT 24-Hour Free Information and Help Service (London) started. Its name indicated that it evolved out of International Times (IT) and also related to BIT=Binary Information Transfer 'the smallest unit of information that can be processed by a computer'. COPE evolved out of BIT. They had similar styles of publication, with similar names (Bitman and Copeman for their magazines) and, at times, shared offices.

Summer 1968 Grace Conner's friendship with Mary Barnes. They went to the cinema and to the Matisse exhibition [Hayward Gallery to 8.9.1968]. "I painted He Shall Come as the Sun and a huge sun on hardboard for the Hampstead Open Air exhibition" (p.297).   August 1968 Hampstead Open Air Exhibition was amongst the listings in the first edition of Time Out. 9.8.1968 to 1.9.1968 "Art and Mental Health" at the Commonwealth Institute.

The squatting movement began to develop in London from 1968. Initially it was housing families. Eventually, a diversity of people and groups were living in squats or short life properties "licensed" from councils. The death of Robin Farquharson, which overshadowed the start of the Mental Patients Union, was against the background of squatting. The first headquarters of the MPU at Prince of Wales Road, Camden, was in a squat. Robin Farquharson House was on a short life licence agreement.

" Robin Farquharson in full cry was able to wreck havoc in a commune of freaks as well as in a straight organisation and when this happened to us and we could not get through to him or calm him down we also ended calling for men in white coats. It must have been a terrible blow for Robin to be rejected by his own tribe and although he did not bear a permanent grudge, I understand now he would rather anything than fall into the hands of the men in white coats. I heard he put up a good fight when they cornered him and about ten men were needed to subdue him on this occasion, tho' on the grapevine the story may have growed a bit I dunnow. Three years later in 1971 Robin came to Bath..." George Firsoff archive (1944-10.11.2004) in Bitman 8, September 1973

1968: Nick Crossley born. BA and PhD in Sociology, University of Sheffield. Lecturer in the sociology and philosophy of psychiatry, in the Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies (part of the Deptartment of Psychiatry) at Sheffield from 1993 to 1998. Helen Spandler his student from Autumn 1992. Had begun research into mental health movements by 1997. Joined Manchester Sociology in September 1998. Professor 2005. Head of sociology summer 2007 to summer 2010. Co-founded Mitchell Centre for Social Network Analysis. Also involved with Social Movements Research Group. Involved in a project on complexity theory with colleagues in the Institute for Social Change, and on the advisory board of the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research. (2010) See January 1998 - 19.6.1998 - Literature - 1999 - Contesting Psychiatry (2005) - information box

1968 Clare Allan born. See Lost decade - East Anglia - Poppy Shakespeare - Guardian column - Disability Living Allowance 2010

1969

Recovery Groups were started in Ireland in 1969 by Father Seán O'Hanlon who had come in contact with the organisation whilst working as a missionary in Papua, New Guinea. He held the first meeting in Athea, Co. Limerick with the help of another Sacred Heart priest, Father Brian Dunleavy. From there, groups formed throughout the country, especially in the areas of Limerick, Cork and Dublin. external website Ireland Seán O'Hanlon was curate in the parish of Athea from 1971 to 1977. He died 8.2.1978. (parish website) Eamer O'Keeffe worked as an artist and film-maker in Ireland. She came to London in 1969 and "decided to stay after discovering feminism" - See 9.3.1999 - 25.10.2008

1969 to 1972 - Peter Barham interviews and group discussions with patients diagnosed as schizophrenic in Winterton Hospital, Sedgefield, County Durham. Peter was researching "schizophrenic thinking"

1969 Jacobus Gerrit (Koos) Postema (born Rotterdam, 17.8.1932) made Dutch television programsfrom 1969: "A small hours You" and "You A large hour" in which taboo-breaking issues were discussed such as abortion, sexuality pedophila, assisted suicide and transsexuality. (See Netherlands) - Wikipedia

1969 Birth of Joseph Atukunda, whose father, Mzee James Kahigiriza, was the last prime minister of Ankole until 1967.

"I studied at Kings College Buddo secondary school and in my final year in 1989, I had my first episode of mental illness". 1990-1991 - 2003 - A founder of Heartsounds in 2008. - 2009 - 16.5.2011 facebook started - 26.5.2011 interview - visiting - in Britain - 14.5.2013 - 16.9.2013 interview - 20.9.2013 video - 15.12.2014 interview - 21.2.2015 interview

January 1969 The first "claimants union" met in Birmingham. This rapidly developed a participatory democracy style of organisation. A National Federation of Claimants Unions was formed in March 1970 by Birmingham, Brighton, East London, North London, West London and North Staffordshire claimants unions. Some members of the Mental Patients Union (1973) had experience in claimants unions.

By 1969, the Anti-University had collapsed - the "Anti-Psychiatry" group was meeting at Ken Smith's flat in Belsize Park, and David Cooper rarely came, because he found members wanted therapy, not political action. Andrew Roberts went once.

end of February 1969 Mary Barnes returned from a trip to Paris and began to prepare for her exhibition at the Camden Arts Centre.

February 1969 Tower Hamlets Art Group, Members Exhibition, included some work by Mary Barnes.

2.3.1969 Cherry Allfree twenty-one. After a year in Lexden House Cherry was admitted to Essex Hall in Colchester. "Why were you at Essex Hall? I ran away from Lexden House" (more than once) "Because I didn't like it there" I asked about going somewhere different, and they said there wasn't anywhere else at the moment". "Speaking up for our rights" was "playing up". I used to insist that I was quite capable of going out by myself; so I used to go out by myself without their permission". Cherry was in Essex Hall for three years before moving back to Lexden House for two years and then to Kingsmead for two years.

11.4.1969 to 25.4.1969. Exhibition of the work of Mary Barnes at Camden Arts Centre, London. The works on display (listed in the catalogue) were 1. Birth - 2. Back of the Cross - 3. Disintegration *. 4. Angel on the Verge of Hell. 5. Crucifixion. 6. Moon. 7. Moon Surface. 8. Sun. 9. Wheat. 10. Spring. The Resurrection. 11. The Vine. 12. Fatima 1917. 13. Fire. 14. Gathering Manna. 15. Resurrection *. 16. Mountains and Clouds. 17 He shall come as the Sun [With Healing in his Wings]. 18. Time of the Tomb *. 19. Our Lady of Africa *. 20 Break Through *. 21. Triptych. * Illustrated in Something Sacred 1989

13.4.1969 The Sunday Times "Making the Break" review of the Mary Barnes exhibition by Atticus

end of June 1969 Peter Barnes moved into Kingsley Hall

July 1969 People Not Psychiatry - See 24.12.1971 - PNP Manchester 1971 -

Robin Farquharson wrote to Michael Barnett from a mental hospital in Pretoria, South Africa, where he had read Michael's article in the International Times. In his letter he spoke of the Situationist Housing Association which he had set up in the hope of providing a "house like Kingsley Hall", but with support, which would be a "sanctuary" for him. Eventually (in London), Rhaune Laslett found a "small mews house" for him (18 Russell Gardens Mews), apparently a short life tenancy for about three years. This was the "PNP House". The first tenants were Jenny James and Becky (about nine years old?), Robin Farquharson, Chris Cade and Graham Spowatt. Robin's tenancy seems to have lasted no more than a few weeks before he was admitted to an Epsom Hospital and the other tenants moved someone else in.

6.8.1969 Helen Spandler born. See 1974 - July 1990 analysis of anti-psychiatry and mental patients movements - BA (East London) by Independent Study 1992 - Asylum Autumn 1992 (Socialist Patient Collective) - Sheffield University from 1992 - Helen became involved with Asylum and has remained so since - - MA (Sheffield) Psychiatry, Philosophy and Society (1994) - 42nd Street 1994-1996 (based there as a research worker from August 1994 to August 1995) - worked for Having a Voice from 1995-1998 - July 1995 - 1996 - advised Nick Crossley - Manchester Course in Group Psychotherapy (Institute of Group Analysis) 1997 - PhD Manchester Metropolitan University Discourse Unit, Department of Psychology and Speech Pathology 2002 - Asylum to Action - Spring 2006 - Post Graduate Certificate (UCLAN) Research Student Supervision 2007 - 2008 - 29.5.2008 - Literature Review Notes - Helen Spandler Literature

Late 1969 "My second admission, nearly five years later, was a quite different and much more positive experience." Judith Watson

"Nothing that has happened to me since has ever been as bad as those two years between November 1969, and November 29th 1971." (Joan Hughes)

1970

In the United Kingdom, the 1970s saw the birth of several independent democratic organisations of mental patients, organised locally, but attempting to link together. These unions formed inside and outside of mental hospitals. There were similar developments in several other countries, including Camada and the United States. In European countries other than Scotland and England, the patients movement appears to have been generated by psychiatrists (sometimes called anti-psychiatrists). In Scotland it was started by patients. In England, some professionals (not psychiatrists) were involved in a pilot group. But much research is needed in all countries because the names of psychiatrists and anti-psychiatrists often attract an attention that those of patients do not.

Anne Plumb moved to Rochdale in 1970, following eighteen months of emotional and mental crisis while at university that placed her in hospital on several occasions.

About 1970 Lesley Mitchell (later Lougher) qualified as an Occupational Therapist. See 1972

Oregon: The Insane Liberation Front

Hans Wiegant, in 1985, traced Dutch organisation back to 1970. A web history says that in 1970 "the first official patiëntenraad" (patient council) was formed in the (large) psychiatric hospital at Coudewater (western Netherlands) and says that "creating opportunities to participate in the psychiatric hospitals is a first important step towards recognition of the empowerment of patients". (See Netherlands) Organisations include the Clientenbond - "de Cliëntenbond in de geestelijke gezondheidszorg" (Customer/client association/union in the mental health care system), formed 11.1.1971 [11.9.1971?] , and De Gekkenkrant - [See external link to history: Geschiedenis van de Cliëntenbond - an archive - complete list ]

Recovery began to change to GROW about 1970 when the name G.R.O.W. (Group Recovery Organisations of the World) was adopted by an international federation of Recovery groups which included Australia, New Zealand and Ireland.

1970 Anthony Kendell and Glen Thompson founded Centerprise. Glen was working for the Hoxton Cafe Youth Project. The project was an ILEA one for "detached youth", that is young people who did not join orthodox clubs and classes. Glen and Anthony founded Centerprise as a project where one had to walk through a bookshop to get to the cafe. This was the plan of the building in Dalston Lane, where I first knew it in 1973. One of the functions of grassroots community centres like this was to make community publishing possible. Groups and individuals could use the centre's typewriters and duplicator and more advanced facilities, like the Silk Screen Workshop (in Dalston) were linked to the project. Mental Patients Union publications from early in 1974 tended to use Centerprise.

Centerprise and the Mental Patients Union

February 1970 At Heidelberg, patients held several "assemblies", some with the press present. This may have been the origin of the Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv (Socialist Patient Collective)

2.3.1970 Cherry Allfree twenty-two.

April 1970 (France) First issue of Cahiers pour la Folie, decribed by Jacques Lagrange as "a journal of the extreme left... which sought to struggle against 'class psychiatry'". (Foucault 1973/1974c p.365) Notebooks anti-psychiatriques and Marxist. 15 numbers from 1970 to 1974. No. 5 was April-May 1971. Editor Jean Claude Polack psychiatrist [Sometimes given as Jean-Yves Pouilloux]. Each number 12 or 14 pages illustrated. See Fresnes Conference June 1973

Bit Information Service (London) published Bitman. numbers 1 to 6 from May 1970 to May 1973. COPAC lists in British Library. No 6 (May 1973) was the "special Robin issue) following the death of Robin Farquharson. The British Library does not have numbers 7 and 8 (Late September 1973) - AandV Archive includes some extracts

May 1970 The Phobics Society established

September 1970 to November 1970 Peter Campbell a patient in Murray Royal Hospital, Perth, Scotland

October 1970 The Gay Liberation Front held its first meeting (At the London School of Economics). Seventeen people attended. (external source archive) - See 1971 and 1997

18.10.1970 Alastair Kemp born. See Asylum Summer 2012 - Newhaven Journeyman

19.11.1970 Janet Cresswell appeared before Hampstead Magistrates charged with assault on Dr Henry Stoll (1913-2006), her G.P. She had hit him over the head with a milk bottle, causing lacerations to his scalp. Janet was committed to Friern Barnet under section 60 (1) of the 1959 Mental Health Act. [Date from 1976 Court transcript, but Janet dates 1972]. She was released in May 1971 (Bill Warwick 16.6.1981, Janet did not question the 1970/1971 dates on her annotated draft).

1971

Campaign for the Mentally Handicapped started in 1971. Its name changed in turn to Campaign for Mentally Handicapped People, CMH) - CMH (Campaigning for Valued Futures with People who have Learning Difficulties) - Values into Action (VIA) - (External link to present website) - Almost from the beginning, CMH ran small scale "participation events" for people with a mental handicap.

Early 1971 GAP (Glasgow Advisory People) information and advice shop started at 190 New City Road, Glasgow, by Felicity Harris, a Glasgow graduate. (See SUMP 1971) A legal clinic, Claimants Union, Black Box news agency, White Panther group, Seed Centre and Drug Care unit, all found a base there. The base collapsed under financial and other pressures in October 1971, reforming briefly as "Forever People", after which groups that had been part of it reformed as separate entities in different parts of Glasgow. [See International Times, January 1972]. Paul Ramsay and "all the young people of GAP" played an important role in the formation of the Scottish Union of Mental Patients.

January 1971 Raza Griffiths of Kindred Minds born. BA English and German, University of London 1993. In the second year of a post-graduate thesis he was forced to give up his studies by a "life threatening breakdown" (See survivors CV 7.6.2005). He has worked as a freelance journalist since 1997. Trent Radio sponsored him to study Investigative Journalism (MA distinction) at Nottingham Trent University from 1998 to 1999. From January 2001 to October 2003 he worked for Mental Health Media.

See 7.6.2005. Worked for the National Survivor User Network from July 2012. See See 14.11.2017

9.1.1971 In London, a very gay [meaning cheerful] contingent from the Gay [meaning homosexual] Liberation Front joined a march against the Industrial Relations Bill calling the slogan "Poof to the Bill". This proud, self-confident, public appearance was one of the inspirations for some MPU members who saw themselves as "coming out" publicly as mental patients rather than hiding it.

8.2.1971 (France) Manifesto of the Le Groupe d'information sur les prisons (Groupe Information Prisons or GIP) (Group for information on the prisons) signed by Jean-Marie Domenach, Michel Foucault et Pierre Vidal-Naquet. (French Wikipedia)

2.3.1971 Cherry Allfree twenty-three.

16.7.1971 Informationezentrum Rote Volksuniversitat [Information Centre of the Red People's University] formed in place of Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv. See Fresnes 1973

26.7.1971 "Petition for the Redress of Grievances put forward by the patients in Hartwood Hospital, Shotts Lanarkshire". - "The signatories to the petition are the Foundation and Permanent Members of SUMP" [Scottish Union of Mental Patients - see mental patients unions] SUMP archive - SUMP box Undated: "Tabulated grievances and some suggested remedies - These are for the attention of the Mental Welfare Commissioners" [inside "These list are for presentation to the commissioners in Edinburgh who came to Hartwood to redress the complaints of the petitioners of July, 1971.] See Thomas Ritchie

11.9.1971 (See Netherlands)

Tuesday 27.9.1971 Politics of Psychology Conference. London School of Economics

29.9.1971 Feast of St Michael the Archangel. Mary Barnes wrote "The Miracle of Mary. A Baby Bear Story for Michael" for Michael Dempsey who edited Mary Barnes: Two Accounts of a Journey Through Madness.

"Baby Bear, safely in her lair, was making pictures, with paint and papers, wood and canvas. Big Bear got them hung in an exhibition, so she got recognition. - Michael from the land of green bears, wondered what this rainbow was. He thought, maybe she can paint in words. Big Bear told her, you can growl, you lick and sniff, and paint with shit. You can put the world in words. - Big Bear was very pleased, because without catching Baby Bear he had saved her from extinction. She was so free, she danced with glee. - Together, they wrote all about it. Michael, moving to another cave, took with him all that they had made. There he cooked it to a book, and when all was set and served, Baby Bear leapt with delight for the 'colour' was just right"

Monday 18.10.1971 The Times "Going down to come up again straight" "Victoria Brittain reviews a new book on madness". (Mary Barnes. Two Accounts of a Journey Through Madness. Mary Barnes and Joseph Berke. Mac Gibbon and Kee, £2.95,) - "Mary Barnes lives alone in an attic in Hampstead painting with furious energy picture after picture, often of Christ crucified or The Resurrection." This is one of a series of pictures taken in Mary Barnes' flat in Hampstead in connection, I think, with the Sunday Times review.

November 1971 In discussion with Noam Chomsky, on Dutch television, Michel Foucault said

"I admit to not being able to define, nor for stronger reasons to propose, an ideal social model for the functioning of our scientific and technological society. On the other hand, one of the most urgent tasks, before everything else, is that we are used to consider, at least in our European society, that power is in the hands of the government and is exerted by some particular institutions such as local government, the police and the army, These institutions transmit the orders, apply them and punish people who do not obey.

But I think that political power is also exerted by a few other institutions which seem to have nothing in common with the political power, which seem to be independent, but which actually are not. We all know that universities and the whole education system that is supposed to distribute knowledge, we know that university and the whole educational system maintain the power of a certain social class and exclude the other social class from this power. Psychiatry, for instance, is also apparently meant to improve mankind, and the knowledge of the psychiatrists. Psychiatry is also a way to implement a political power to a particular social group. Justice also.

It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticise the working of institutions, that appear to be both neutral and independent. To criticise and attack them in such a manner that political violence that has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so one can fight against them. If we want right away to define the profile and the formula of our future society, without criticising all the forms of political power that are exerted in our society, there is a risk that they reconstitute themselves, even though such an apparently noble form as anarchist unionism." (Transcribed from You Tube)

The first public annoucement that Thomas Ritchie had started a Scottish Union of Mental Patients came in the undergrounD newspaper Ink on 16.11.1971 See Thomas Ritchie and Ink

30.11.1971 "THREAT TO A COMMUNITY SERVICE" - Statement by Pam Elliot-Lord - Jane Pimlott - Jill Rynveld and Howard Taylor "Patients in the joint staff/patient protest group - Paddington Clinic and Day Hospital"

10.12.1971 "Staff and patients at the Paddington Clinic and Day Hospital have formed a protest group"

Friday 24.12.1971 "Christmas Day in the Nuthouse" edition of Time Out - [The film Family Life opened 13.1.1972] End piece said that 500 people a month go to Release, BIT, and Street Aid because they "feel themselves to be in kinds of mental trouble". An alternative to the NHS was being sought with "People not Psychiatry as the possible basis to the existing out-patient system... housing associations like the Philadelphia Association as alternative to the existing in-patient system."

PNP Manchester: In 2006 Gabrielle Cox (Gay Cox) had lived in Moss Side for 34 years. Alistair and Gay (226 3258) were contacts for PNP (People Need People - People Not Psychiatry) in Manchester about 1971/1972. "PNP is a loose network of friends with a number of focal points. The current focal points are the Basement of Gaddum House," [Closed 1973] "Queen Street (off Albert Square), Manchester, next door to the Rising Sun, where we gather every Tuesday evening from 7.30 onwards; and a number of homes of individual members where we gather as the spirit moves us."

Alistair Cox met Tony Riley while Tony was living in a "(then called) Group Home for people with mental health issues around 1971", run by a small voluntary charity called Community Action Projects. Tony became involved with Alistair in the organisation of its work. Community Actions Projects expanded into providing housing for homeless young people and Paul Baker, Alistair and others wrote up its approach in a small book called Beyond the Hostel (1982). Tony met Mary in 1971.

24.11.1971 Incorporation of Community Action Projects Ltd as a company limited by guarantee. Registered address 47 Upper Lloyd Street, Moss Side, Manchester, M14 4HY (Alistair Cox's adress). Registered as a charity 16.3.1972: To provide ... living accommodation and associated amenities ... persons in necessitous circumstances, including persons in receipt of or in need of psychiatric or medical treatment and persons who for any reason are unable to maintain themselves without supportive care, and to promote, aid and further rehabilitation of such persons in the community and their welfare generally." See Bowker Street and Egerton Road

1971 (First edition?) Treatment and Care in Mental Illness edited by Edith Rudinger. Consumers' Association, London. 168 pages including index. A revised edition, with 176 pages, was published in 1973.

Frank Bangay: "In my early twenties, through looking for work I took on employment in the Health Service as a Hospital Porter, then as a Hospital Orderly. Here I worked alongside people from the Caribbean and got to understand how hard these people worked, thereby getting away from the myth I grew up with, that these people were lazy and scrounging of the Welfare State. During this period I also experienced depression and started taking tranquillisers, which later led on to a dependence on anti-depressants and seeing psychiatrists on a regular basis. This later led to a breakdown and hospitalisation. Through this I learnt what it was like to be prejudiced against and stigmatised. (1997 footnote to "And We Can Learn" (August 1996), Naked Songs and Rhythms of Hope p.129)

1972

(France) Groupe d'information sur le Asiles (Groupe Information Asiles or GIA) (Group for Information on Asylums) formed in 1972. Jacques Lagrange says that this was formed, on the model of Groupe Information Prisons, by "young psychiatrists whose less pronounced corporatist concerns allowed them to take a more political position". He says it was "soon taken over by the 'psychiatrised' themselves to denounce the scandals of arbitrary confinement" (Foucault 1973/1974c p.353). At Fresnes in 1973, Lesley Mitchell said that the French Groupe Information Asiles and the English Mental Patients Union were the only groups "organised solely by patients and ex-patients".

Peter Thompson's Bound for Broadmoor published. It was followed, in 1974, by Back from Broadmoor

1972 Women and Madness by Phyllis Chesler published by Doubleday and company, Garden City, New York. A copy given to the Mental Patients Union by Pam Edwards in September 1974.

25.1.1972 Sam Shakes born in the maternity unit of Hackney Hospital, London. Her parents had come to London from Montserrat and Jamaica. She was the first of their four children. She started her education at London Fields Primary School and then went to Kingsland Secondary School in Shaklewell Lane (now demolished), re-sitting GCSEs at the Sir George Monoux Sixth Form College in Walthamstow. She began her career as a sales clerk in 1989, first selling bathrooms in the City of London and then with Dudley Stationers (now defunct) in Bow.

An Access course in Humanities, at Waltham Forest College led to her begining an English Literature degree on the Enfield Campus of Middlesex University in September 1997. In her second year she was "hit with raging Ulcerative Colitis... Struggled to be well and study on medication, but ended up having her colon cut out in November 1998. It was the start of a new life. See 1999 - 2000 (madness) - 2002 (graduated) - 2008 (paintings) - 30.10.2009 at Philip Morgan's F.E.E.L. presentation - 2010 (first book) - 14.7.2010 Birmingham Seminar - 2011 wrote first fairy story - roaming India - 2.1.2013 Philip on fairy story - 2014 first fairy story published - Rev. Lucy Winkett - 2016 Fish in Head fairy story - 6.5.2077 death of Philip - Christmas greetings 2017 - Spirit of Philip Morgan

February 1973 [1972? CHECK Community Action Projects took on three short life properties in Bowker Street, Salford. [To August 1975]

Friday 3.3.1972 Paddington Day Hospital meeting

12.3.1972 Politics of Psychology News Letter Number 3.

SPK - Aus der Kranheit eine Waffe Machen [Make Your Illness a Weapon] written by the Socialist Patient Collective of Heidelberg University and published by Trikont Verlag, Munich, 1972. - April 1972. In a letter published with the Socialist Patient Collective book (above), Jean Paul Sartre described it as "the sole possible radicalisation of anti-psychiatry" and "also a coherent praxis which aimed at abolishing the alleged 'therapeutic methods' for mental illness". - Being translated into English Spring 1973

2.3.1972 Cherry Allfree twenty-four.

By March 1972, Thomas Ritchie had secured the support of the Scottish Council for Civil Liberties for the concept of a union of mental patients. The Journal of SUMP days (April below) begins "SUMP is associated with S.C.C.L" and list the names of its secretary, Robert Thompson; Chairman, Peter Wallington; and Vice Chairmen: Edgar Prais and James J. Wilson (Solicitor). The Journal was started two weeks after The Herald published an article on 27.3.1972 (page 2) "Special Union to be formed for mental patients".

SUMP (Scottish Union of Mental Patients). Tommy Ritchie's "Journal of SUMP Days" begins Friday 7.4.1972, but the prefatory note says "We are late in the starting of recording SUMP's activities - But the Manifesto is only half finished and not yet recorded. Moreover we have had no General meeting yet." - See also 26.7.1971 Friday 28.4.1972 Tommy Ritchie rang his Member of Parliament. "I told him I was speaking for Sump not Self". "Was he in favour of Sump being autonomously in the hands of patients?". He was not sure on this till he consulted experts. (Journal page eight) SUMP membership records (page one below) were kept at the back of the journal

00001 Thomas Ritchie * wards 7 and 15 (Hartwood). Following to 00025: Ward 7: 00002 James Corrigan - 00003 Robert Forrest - 00004 George Henderson - 00005 Hugh Crosbie - 00006 James Lee * - 00007 Charles Brunton [not on typed list] - 00008 David McCaughtree [not on typed list] - 00009 James Mailey - 00010 Thomas Bell - 00011 Roderick U. Reid - 00012 William Murray - 00013 J. Hannah - 00014 Andrew Daisley * - 00015 Fred McLaughlin - 00016 Hugh Murphy [not on typed list] - 00017 Hugh McMullen [not on typed list] - 00018 R. Mannering [spelling on typed list] - 00019 Hugh Reilly - 00020 John Maxwell - 00021 George Patterson * - 00022 Richerd. R. [Dickie] Dobie - 00023 Robert Waddell - 00024 William McCourtney - 00025 Robert Cameron * - 00026 A. Stewart. [Also on Ward 7 is M. Malroony, on the typed list but not in the journal] - Next page: 00027 "Gemmel"? [James Taylor on typed list] Ward 8 - 00028 James Mcguiness Ward 10 - 00029 John McCahon * Ward 8 - a red line - 00030 Bruce McKenzie Ward 15 [Typed list "In addition to the Petitiners, Bruce McKenzie is also a Permanent Member"}

* Thomas Ritchie - James Lee - Andrew Daisley - George Patterson - Robert Cameron - and John McCahon made individual grievances, along with James Urquhart [00053]

Typed list said following membership numbers "will be reserved for all the generous people and organisations on the outside who donate one guinea or more" [In practice, I do not think this was followed, but Tommy did use membership as a means of raising money. The last member is 00100]

Robin Farquharson is member number 00034 in the SUMP membership list. He is the first not from Hartwood. Under "hospital" it says " Gartloch (7) transferred to Epsom". The story I remember being told is that Robin was confined (on this occasion) after successfully ordering a (military?) aeroplane - or aeroplanes.

Bill Ferguson is member number 00034: ex-patient Hartwood, 12 Rutheren Street.

11.5.1972 Press conference launching PROP (Preservation of the Rights of Prisoners) in the Prince Arthur pub on the Caledonian Road opposite Pentonville Prison. Platform: Dick Pooley, Ted Ward (London organiser), Douglas Curtis (anonymous - Mike Fitzgerald fronted for him), and Pauline (no second name given). The language of PROP was adopted in an adapted form by the Mental Patients Union in March 1973 and and April 1973: "Statement of Intent" and "Charter of Rights" with "demands". Ted Ward the London organiser of PROP was a founder member of the MPU and he was the person who spoke most effectively on the control of the MPU by patients only.

May 1972 Alternatives to Holloway published by the group Radical Alternatives to Prison, which had been estblished in 1971. (See alternative projects)

7.5.1972 Thomas Ritchie first visited Gartnavel

after 20.6.1972 Thomas Ritchie came to London

4.8.1972 PROP (Preservation of the Rights of Prisoners) called the first national prison strike [The Prison Strikes were called by the dates being given in reply to questions in television and radio interviews. It took the Home Office a long time to realise the simplicity of this - They were looking for a complex communication organisation. In the formation of the Mental Patients Union, Radio Four's Today Programme played an important role.]

September 1972 Spare Rib "Agoraphobia" "At sixteen Carolyn Maniford became a patient in a psychiatric hospital because she was too frightened to leave home"... "At seventeen Carolyn Maniford is a patient in Goodmayes... and has been in hospital for three months"... "I don't think I'll ever get better. Sometimes I think I'm in here to get worse"...

September 1972 Nathalie Fonnesu born in Italy. (Now resident London). See Nat 2001 - F.E.E.L. - 2001 - Ravaged - 2017 walk

20.9.1972 Letter in The Guardian from Paul Hunt, calling on disabled people to form their own organisation. " UPIAS functioned mainly through confidential correspondence and circulars circulated amongst its members, many of whom were living in residential institutions (Campbell and Oliver 1996). These exchanges led to the production of a Policy Statement and constitution in 1974. Two years later, it expanded on its thinking in the Fundamental Principles of Disability (UPIAS 1976)" (source)