Fair Mile Hospital

Who were the patients?

Contrary to popular belief Victorian asylums were not vast prisons where eccentrics and social misfits were kept locked up for their entire lives. The Victorians themselves were so concerned about the civil liberties issues raised by asylums that they made admission very difficult. As a result many mentally ill people endured years of the workhouse’s punitive regime before being admitted to an asylum. 

Asylums did grow very large because there was a lack of effective medical treatment for both mental illness and for physical illnesses with mental symptoms. Many of the patients would now be easily cured or not have fallen ill, for instance the many women admitted suffering from mental health problems as a side effect of post-natal infections caused by poor hygiene. There were also a large number of patients with tertiary syphilis, a fatal condition affecting the brain and nervous system, causing severe neurological problems. It became extremely rare once effective treatment with penicillin became available in the 1940s. 

Fair Mile’s patients also included the elderly and people with serious learning disabilities, who would not normally be admitted to a mental hospital now. It was not until 1930, when the Berkshire and Oxfordshire County Councils created the Borocourt Institution, that a local alternative to the mental hospital became available for people with learning disabilities. Borocourt offered inpatient care and day care, and a variety of therapies and training to enable many of its residents to move into sheltered accommodation, or to live independently.