For this activity you?ll be watching Howard Mitchell and Allan Williamson talking about their time at Lennox Castle. Both worked at Lennox Castle as young men. Now they look back at what they remember from the 1970s and at how things finally changed at Lennox Castle. This film is in two parts.
Activity 9 Lennox Castle: a workplace in the 1980s
Now watch the films.
Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.
Part oneInteractive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.
Transcript 
Part twoThe conversation lasts for almost thirty minutes. It has been edited into short sections, each following a different theme. As you watch, note down:
1. Points where what Howard and Allan say matches Margaret?s, James?s and Colin?s accounts
Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.
Comment
- They mentioned getting help from residents when they were talking about shaving 50 or 60 men each morning, helped by a ‘soaper upper?.
- They both talked about Lennox Castle as if it was a kind of community, one that people rarely left, but they also said that local people treated it like a ‘country park?.
- They describe how drugs were given out, the Largactil that Margaret mentioned and the laxatives that James talked about.
- They talked about lack of privacy and space between the beds and how people had no personalised clothing.
- Like Colin they talked about broken windows and sometimes frightening behaviours.
- Allan mentioned going to Christmas parties and entertainments when he was young, living on the Oval.
2. Anything that is new or that surprised you in what they say.
Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.
Comment
- You may have been surprised to hear Howard describe working at Lennox Castle as ‘exciting? and ‘fun? ? this was not an impression to be gained from the record books.
- It is also surprising how different all the people were who were residents. Howard and Allan describe a number of people, including women, who grew old there having been labelled as ‘moral defectives? and who ‘no more had learning difficulties than you or I?.
- You may have been shocked to hear how drugs were given out, how people were bathed and given enemas and for how long these practices carried on.
- From what Allan Williamson said, and he seemed surprised too, people were still not allowed their own clothes well into the 1980s.
- Given that people were treated in such a regimented way and were so restricted in their lifestyles it was surprising to hear Howard and Allan talk about the residents showing so many differences. They talked with admiration and affection about the men and the women they met: Allan talks about the ‘lovely old ladies? and Howard talks about the man who had been brain damaged when he contracted ‘Spanish flu? at the end of World War 1; and he also mentions a ‘Glasgow fly boy? who went home for the weekend and then came back with stolen goods to sell.
When you?ve finished, look at Part 2 of the Lennox Castle timeline and find dates for the changes they mention.
Comment
You might have noticed from the timeline how both Colin Sproul and James Lappin spent most of their lives either working or living at Lennox Castle and how many changes they lived through.
Howard and Allan are talking about a period in the life of Lennox Castle Hospital when things were beginning to change. You?ll have seen from Part 2 of the timeline that after the 1960s residents were no longer working as domestics on the wards. Allan mentions the impact of new policies. You?ll be reading about these later in the unit. What you might want to weigh up, having listened to their accounts, is to what extent Lennox Castle was, as Howard and Allan suggest, ‘a community? albeit an ‘alarming? one, or to what extent it was ‘a total institution?.
Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence
