Growing old at St Bernard's Hospital, Hanwell

The 1939 Identity Register for England and Wales was far-reaching. Among those people it enumerated were patients of mental hospitals. Thus we find my great-grandfather, David Scott Ritchie Sr listed as an inmate of St Bernard's Hospital, formerly the London County Asylum, in the month that England declared war on Germany.

The entry is straightforward. David S. Ritchie, born 1874, is married and worked as a butler before admission to the institution. The stated birth date, marital status and occupation tell us this is the right person. From here, we can fill out the picture with what we already know, and this is where it becomes both interesting and extremely sad.

David Ritchie Sr was admitted to the lunatic asylum in 1909. At the time of the 1939 Register, therefore, he has already been an inmate for 30 years. He has a wife named Maude who is 60 years old and temporarily out of work. it is possible that he has not seen her for years because of his mental illness. He has a son who is 37 years old and an electrical engineer heading up an overseas office of a big international company. This son may or may not know where he is or whether he is still alive. He has a daughter-in-law and two young granddaughters who, at the time of the 1939 Register, are holidaying in Dorset and visiting relatives in London. He has a brother, Thomas Scott Ritchie, who is still alive and living nearby, plus grown-up nephews and nieces, the children of his deceased older brother William, living in Canada. All these family connections could have provided meaningful relationships and yet he is alone and being looked after in a paupers' institution for the insane.

I can't help comparing attitudes towards the mentally ill in those days with attitudes today. Times have changed, to be sure, and much has to do with advances in treatment. if David Scott Ritchie Sr suffered from what we now call bipolar disorder, for example, his doctor would have diagnosed lunacy and ordered him to be locked up as a matter of course. Today the same symptoms can be managed with medication and those suffering from it can generally go on with their normal lives, pursuing professional careers and making valuable contributions to the world. Moreover, there isn't the same stigma attached to mental illness as there used to be. Whereas families were inclined to hide away their so-called "mad" relatives, nowadays we extend compassion, encouraging treatment and offering support to those who are afflicted.

Because of the way things were back in the first half of the 20th century, a diagnosis of insanity meant that my great-grandfather was cut off from the outside world. The First World War would have completely passed him by. The Second World War would affect him more personally as the hospital at Hanwell would take a couple of direct hits from German bombers in the Blitz, but even so, the deprivations, losses, hardships and movements to and fro as a result of fighting would probably touch him very little. Spending his days working in the garden, baking bread, doing handcrafts or playing cards, he would go through the war only dimly aware of the changes taking place beyond the hospital walls.

Photo credit: "The Bedroom [1889] by Vincent van Gogh," photographed by Rawpixel Ltd.