For the next set of activities you?ll be listening to former staff and residents as they remember their time at Lennox Castle Hospital. You will be able to see how their accounts fit in with what you have already learned about the hospital. You will also have an opportunity to compare the value of the different kinds of evidence you?ve been shown about the past: documentary and oral history.
For this task you?ll have two film extracts to look at: interviews with two ex-residents of Lennox Castle, James Lappin and Margaret Scally.
View the extracts and fill in the boxes below with any new points for:
You might find it helpful if you note down any words or phrases that James or Margaret uses as you watch.
As you listen to the residents of Lennox Castle talking about their experiences, what can you learn about life at the hospital?
Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.Transcript
Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.Transcript Characteristics
Batch living: People are treated as if they are all the same, without any individuality and controlled by strict rules so that there is little freedom.
Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.Margaret mentions living 32 to a ward, getting up ‘between 7 and 8?; lack of privacy: ‘You didn?t have privacy when you were living with 32 crowd?. She mentions punishments like scrubbing floors in short nightgowns and moleskin trousers and being put to bed or being made to eat separately at the ‘punishment table?; she could go out if she told the staff where she was going. She was given drugs, Largactil, Mellaril and paraldehyde ‘jags? (injections) ? all her life ? ‘to help me to calm down?.
James also talks about drugs, in his case laxatives. From what he says these were given to everyone, once a week. He couldn?t choose not to have them, only what kind.
Binary management: Staff and ‘inmates? are controlled and kept separate by two different sets of rules and treat each other with suspicion, with staff feeling superior and inmates inferior.
Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.There were staff that Margaret didn?t like and all had some control over her, even the ones who trusted her with messages or errands.
Residents were strictly controlled as they moved about the grounds; they worked in workshops next to the wards they lived in.
The inmate role: People are stripped of their past lives and lose the identity and previous roles they had before entering the institution. This happens on admission when someone may have what is personal taken from them and instead are given the identity that the institution has decided on.
Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.Lack of individuality: Margaret mentions shared clothes given out every day, ‘I used to wear the ones frae here? and ‘everybody felt rotten about that?. James had lived in institutions since he was a young boy. Though he mentions going out to visit relatives you don?t get much of a sense of his personal life. He did have a girlfriend but was only able to see her once a week at the dances or on their way to work in the morning. He thinks he?s better off single.
The inmate role for residents seems to have been created from a number of practices that would have seemed extraordinary if they?d been applied outside. Being disabled meant that you lived in conditions more appropriate for prisons or military barracks. Reality was stood on its head: cruelties were defended as right and appropriate; defenceless people were confined and herded together.
The institutional perspective: The institution?s way of life takes over and determines the way in which inmates and staff experience and understand their lives ? often through events and activities designed to create a sense of community.
Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.Margaret says she felt like running away but didn?t. She sounds as if she gave in to a way of life that for her had some good parts but mainly she hated.
James seems to prefer institutional life. He?s heard about ‘murders? outside and thinks he needs ‘folks? to look after him. He says he wouldn?t want to live outside, though he does say he used to ask, ‘When?s my time up??
Not a ‘total institution??
Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.Margaret mentions staff who were her friends and, from what she says, she had jobs with some responsibilities attached, but these were hospital jobs and her pay was only £5.00 a week. She talks about going out to ‘Kirky? (nearby Kirkintilloch) when she had money to spend. James? account doesn?t give us much sense of any alternative lifestyle that he was able to follow. For him the institution was total; in fact he describes his life as ‘institutional?.
Margaret and James provide us with vivid pictures of what it was like to be a resident at Lennox Castle Hospital. They were separated from the outside world and from others in the hospital, seem to have had no control over their daily lives and lived under the threat of humiliating punishment. Goffman?s definition of a total institution might have been based on Lennox Castle.
But what about the staff perspective? Might this change your understanding?
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