For this next activity you will be looking at a short film.
During the following film, you will see Howard Mitchell talking about the kinds of written records he found in the archives when he was researching the history of Lennox Castle Hospital.
Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.Transcript
1 Which records does Howard Mitchell identify in the archives?
Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.In the film you see Howard Mitchell looking at the admissions book for the maternity hospital that was sited at Lennox Castle for a while. It includes the record of his birth. He also shows us patient case notes, a misconduct book, a visiting book and a register of escapes.
2 From what you heard and saw of the records what words came into your head about the kind of place Lennox Castle Hospital might be to live in?
Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.Howard himself uses words such as ‘harsh?, ‘rigidly regulated?, ‘a prison regime?. You might also have felt like adding: ‘cruel?, oppressive?, inhuman?, ‘depressing?, ‘isolated?, ‘peculiar? and ‘frightening?.
3 How does Howard Mitchell describe the residents who lived there?
Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.From what Howard says there must have been very many different sorts of people living at the hospital. In the film you heard him mention ‘criminal types?, ‘patients? and ‘a boy who was multiply-handicapped?.
4 As you saw from questions 1 and 2, segregation was a key characteristic of life at Lennox Castle. From what you saw of the records, how was segregation managed at the hospital?
Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.You?ve already seen in questions 1 and 2 how segregation was managed by building the hospital in an isolated area and that, within it, men and women were kept in separate living and working areas. From the records it seems that keeping people confined and punishing them if they tried to escape and regulating visiting very strictly were also ways of segregating people. You might have added that segregation was also managed by imposing discipline on staff members who were responsible for controlling residents? movements.
You might think it odd that a place that called itself a hospital, and where apparently so many different people lived, should be run on prison lines. You?ve seen what the place looked like and you were able to find out about how lives were ruled and regulated at Lennox Castle but why were places like this run in this way?
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
