Starcross Church and Churchyard

Captain George Peacock 

Here's a link to a brilliant video about Starcross and its Churchyard by Boots McTee.

St Paul's Church and Churchyard

Starcross Hospital. What the voices Tell Us. Instalment 8.

 

Part II What the voices tell us... about:

How people came to be there 

It should be remembered that male and female patients were admitted from every part of the country – from Newcastle to Portsmouth, and Kent to Cornwall – and many of those known as “high grade” were Poor Law children without caring relatives and would never have been certified under the Lunacy or Mental Deficiency Act had it been possible to place them in a less competitive environment. Arthur Mortimore, Hospital Secretary 

The classifications described in the Mental Deficiency Act were “idiot”, “imbecile”, “feeble-minded” and “moral defective”. 

Moral defective was usually the ladies, one criterion being to have more than one illegitimate child. A variety of reasons would be given in addition to the classification, for example found without visible means of support or ineducable. This went on until the late 50s. It was seriously and religiously applied. If a patient went out without permission they could be prosecuted. Peter Nutley, Hospital Administrator.

One revolutionary change for the better occurred with the Mental Health Act of 1959. Until then, parents had suffered the trauma of seeing their children or other relatives “certified” or received under a Place of Safety Order prior to admission…. From 1959, such procedure, with its degree of stigma, came to an end… Those who witnessed over the decades the heartache and guilt complex suffered by many delightful families shared this unbounded relief at such a forward, humanitarian reform. Arthur Mortimore, Hospital Secretary. 

We really had some bright ones. We had one there, he had an IQ of 120, a brilliant pianist, organist, but drink was his problem – he liked his tiddle… He practically finished all his days at Starcross. Len Vaughan, Nurse. 

We had some psychopaths… I remember [one]. He was highly literate. He could compose a damn good letter and he would abscond from the hospital from time to time and … go round knocking on doors saying he was the welfare officer from Starcross. Dr Prentice, Medical Superintendent.

The patients when I went there [1923], they shouldn’t have been there. They came from bad homes. Miss Ford, Dressmaker In Elm Court [a house owned by the hospital] they were moral cases and defectives – the girls had had babies. In those days they shut them away. They used to come to us pregnant. Sometimes they were found jobs and sometimes they stayed on. The babies were adopted. Lots were shut away that would never be shut away these days. Mrs Price, Nurse. 

I realise that the patients we had originally today would never have been there. But of course it was all moral behaviour, which, if you read the history of the hospital, it classes them as “moral defectives” needing care and attention and protection. That’s why it was originally set up. I am not going to say that they were all, but the biggest majority were. A lot of them you wouldn’t designate [mentally handicapped] today. Mary West, Nursing Officer. 

** had a brother who was a patient at Moorhaven, the mental hospital. I think it was a poor family background and ** could easily be led astray and she was rather unstable and could have been in trouble rather often, and therefore the hospital background was, on the whole, helpful to her. But she became too dependent on it. Dr Prentice, Medical Superintendent.

I can understand [the hospital order] for the delinquent patients who had to come to us through the courts… but most of our feeble-minded patients … now they call them sub-normal, and the lower grade patients in those days we called the idiots and imbeciles… Well, why did you need a legal procedure for idiot and imbecile children who had no knowledge, who were often faulty in their habits, come in front of a couple of magistrates once or twice a year and had to be certified… In the mental hospitals from 1931 onwards you could have voluntary patients… Unfortunately, in mental deficiency that didn’t happen till 1959… and you’ve no idea how that helped. Dr Prentice, Medical Superintendent.

This idea of the permanence of their disability bedevilled everything you tried to do for them… … The Board of Control – inspectors they had, not even medical personnel – were the same, which every textbook expounded, that it was a permanent condition… But the Board of Control altered completely and became far more progressive than we in hospital. 1949 I think it was, they said there should only be two years on licence… some of our patients had five years, 10, even 20, which seemed ridiculous to be out that length of time in the community [without being discharged]. Dr Prentice, Medical Superintendent. 

We had a lot of sort of high grade less handicapped… because people came in if they were at all promiscuous or people who just couldn’t cope in society and who fell foul of the law for one reason or another. If they were at all shown to be mentally handicapped they came into us… Much later on… we only had very severely mentally handicapped in and you didn’t admit willynilly. Dr Strange, Medical Officer. 

Hundreds of them [misfits]. Hundreds of them – sent into hospital because, perhaps, father had sexually abused them and they had a kid… Perhaps Mum was simple and she had a baby and they didn’t know where to put them, so they put them in the workhouse and they’ve been there ever since. Were they mentally handicapped? No, no they were environmentally handicapped – by the environment around them. Jean Waldron, Nursing Sister. 

Sometimes they came in just sort of “in need of care and attention”. They’d be picked up, sort of living rough in Torquay or somewhere. They were brought in and cleaned up and you’d either find them somewhere to go or the family would take them back…. I suppose their IQ would be somewhere in the 70s or 80s, they weren’t severely handicapped, just couldn’t really cope with living on their own… Two or three at Starcross seem to have been sent there simply because they had an illegitimate child – mentally, well they were maybe not very bright, I mean they weren’t that stupid either! Dr Mary Kemp, GP. 

When I worked at Stoke Lyne [in Exmouth, part of the same hospital group as Starcross], we had four living-in, what they called them was the “working girls”. One was 74… she was in because she had an illegitimate child. … There was quite a group that were elderly and I don’t think there was very much wrong with them. Shelia Easby, Nursing Officer. 

One lady, who had actually been sent to Rampton when she was 11, discharged when she was 61 … 50 years of her life, shut away in Rampton… that to me is criminal… and then the poor lady ends up with osteoporosis disease and is always breaking her legs… her life absolutely ruined … she came to me and she couldn’t understand that the cutlery wasn’t counted and that she didn’t have to have a locked bedroom. Jean Waldron, Nursing Sister.  

If you got admitted to Exminster [a psychiatric hospital near Exeter], in Exminster you stayed, but if you got admitted to Starcross and you were mentally ill, there you stayed. The fact that you should have been up the road [at Exminster], they just didn’t have a swap. Jean Waldron, Nursing Sister. 

I think we did once take a mentally handicapped patient, who’d been in [the Exminster psychiatric hospital] for donkey’s years and who blossomed when she came to us, but not really any cross-over at all. You had occasional links with Rampton because your worst patients you tried to get in there, the really disruptive ones, and they’d maybe send you back someone who’d “burnt out” and was now a quieter member of the public. Dr Mary Kemp, GP. 

We used to have what were called “working boys”… They’d got ordinary jobs out [of the hospital] and they were coming back to stay the night. It was just unbelievable that that was going on…. Psychiatrists working there had special interests in forensic work… so they would then have people referred who were mildly mentally handicapped, or non-mentally handicapped, been in trouble with the law and they were banged in hospital. Dr Chris Williams, Psychologist. 

I think people were put into Starcross because they weren’t acceptable outside. Whereas now it’s changed. I don’t think people accept them more now but they have accepted they will live in the community. Some of the older ones that were there, obviously you would never have put them there. Some of them had done silly little things… and they were put there. Night nurse. 

The children: 

They would be from school age, I suppose eight years of age b’time they discovered they weren’t getting on in the normal school…. And they used to send them here… the welfare workers used to say to the parents: “Johnny’s going to a special school at Starcross for further education.” Well, it was a bit of a con… because the attendants weren’t qualified to teach them really…. And then they graduated from the juniors into the seniors, see, and it wasn’t really a good thing, I didn’t think in those days, they ought to have a special school for them, somewhere other than the institution. I remember where the parents lived [in one part of Plymouth]. And they lived in terrible conditions… I felt sorry for them in lots of ways because their child in some cases might have just done a trivial thing like, for instance, smashing a telephone cap [on the telephone wires] or misbehaving himself in some way. They [the parents] would be under the impression that they [the children] would go there [the Courtenay School or Starcross] for a short space of time, because he would be about nine or 10 or 11 years old. Well, during the … course of time, Johnny would be 14, 15 and 16… they would have a devil of a job to get their boy released because [of] the Board of Control… Those poor little children… were virtually dumped in amongst all the number of patients that were there. They were frightened and scared… Stormy Adams, Hospital Mechanic. 

At Stoke Lyne [Exmouth, part of the hospital group] … Parents had died of some of them and nobody wanted them and they were brought in as children. Sheila Easby, Nursing Officer. 

Some never had any parents at all… I knew so many like that … if you’d say to a boy that had nobody at all “Where do you live then, Charlie?”, “Up the line” he’d say. He’d hear the other patients say “Up the line”, he’d automatically say “Up the line”. Well, it could be anywhere… there were so many who had no Mum and Dad… Stormy Adams, Hospital Mechanic.

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Starcross Hospital. What the voices tell us. Instalment 7.

 

PART II What the voices tell us… about:

Starcross as seen from the outside

By June 1877, the original house for 40 children gave place to the first central section of the new institution. Built for £7,000 of lime stone brought by barges into the estuary of the River Exe, the stones were moved at low tide to sheds where masons “nobbled” them into their intended shapes and sizes to erect an elegant structure.

Wings for male and female classroom/dormitory accommodation were added as funds became available and, later still, a demand for two further wings of a matching stone completed the principal building.

These splendid three storey premises were part of the Starcross architecture and a welcome centre to which villagers and other country folk came from miles around for Christmas pantomimes, cricket and football matches, concerts, dances and other social functions on the lawns and gardens, prettily decorated with fairy lights and Chinese lanterns. It was a way of life.

Arthur Mortimore, Hospital Secretary, written contribution March 1988

I more or less grew up in the village and [we] were associated with the hospital. They used to have pantomimes every year where the village people used to go into, and the male patients had a pantomime and the female patients did a [separate] pantomime. Mary West, Nursing Officer

Open days were not just for fund raising [by the League of Friends]. They were also intended to open the hospital and bring the community into contact with the patients, and to some extent they succeeded.

Peter Nutley, Hospital Administrator, writing in the Health Service Journal, December 1986

Royal Western Counties comprised eight small units scattered throughout the Exeter District, and two main hospitals: Starcross and Langdon. Starcross Hospital, the headquarters, was generally considered to be of no architectural merit but it occupied an imposing site on the banks of the Exe estuary 10 miles to the south of the city. The grey stone four-storeyed main block, fronted by a magnificent and lovingly tended formal garden, was a familiar landmark to Westcountry travellers on the main railway line and road which passed Starcross [hospital] on the narrow strand between the hospital buildings and the high-water line of the estuary. 

David King [2]

When I got there, the thing that impressed me most was the grounds. I thought with an institution like that, all these grounds, with the people they got in there, how can they keep the standard up? But I was surprised after I got there and settled in. 

Stan, ex-resident

Going inside – first impressions

When I went there first [about 1930] it took a bit of getting used to… to start with, having to sleep with the patients…. You had to live in, at least for three years, and then after that if you wanted to get married you had to get permission from the superintendent. 

Len Vaughan, Nurse

It was a strange world of mental defectives. [1931] It was such an enclosed thing that you very rarely saw the patients outside the hospital… I had no idea what they lived like. 

Stormy Adams, Hospital Mechanic

I started on the Wednesday… and the Thursday morning a member of staff said: The head attendant, Mr F, wants to see you in his office… inside there, was an adult patient… and Mr F said: This lad is accusing you of saying stupid things behind my back about me… I said I barely know you. He realised then the patient was telling a lie and he made him touch his toes and he give him a whack across the backside with a cane…Mr F then apologised: That’s the sort of thing you’ll have to accept… So that was my first initiation. 

Stormy Adams, Hospital Mechanic

When I left Dawlish Hospital [a cottage hospital], she said: “You won’t like it, nurse, it’s quite different.” The first day [1931], I was taken to the mess room. There was nobody there to introduce me, and one nurse came in, slung her things down saying: “Bloody this, bloody that” … and I was very shocked. I hadn’t come across it at all… 

Mrs Price, Nurse

My first impression [1938] was: I think I shall be here a week… It seemed bleak and truly Devonshire and you can be accepted or you can’t… I didn’t think that was ever going to happen at Starcross… I was a “foreigner” [an outsider]. 

Sybil Sivyer, Nursing Officer

Poor, really poor [but on the whole pretty similar to other hospitals]. Starcross itself was old fashioned, stone stairways leading up to the dormitories. The kitchens were absolutely deplorable. In one of my early medical reports [soon after 1938], I said there was bound to be an epidemic of some type of food poisoning… Charles Mayer [the superintendent] said to me: “For goodness sake, don’t put that in your report…” and I omitted it. Dr Prentice, Medical Superintendent

When I was shown around [1950s]… I went into the villas and it was the smell and I thought: Oh God, I can’t stand this. But actually where I worked in the OT [Occupational Therapy] was in the basement, terrible rooms really, but you were on your own and you weren’t interfered with.

Dorothy Davey, Teacher

I thought we were the only hospital in the south-west where the dispensary and the toilet were in the same place! It was magnificent! The dispensary basically came to us from the newer section which was Langdon Hospital, and it was sent down twice a week or something. What there was of a dispensary in Starcross was a little glassed-off annexe off the general waiting room… that had a glass door that swung either way and you could either shut yourself in the toilet or you could shut yourself in the dispensary. So it was a little primitive in that respect but then there wasn’t all that much medication. 

Dr Strange, Medical Officer

When I came to Starcross [1964] I was very surprised, comparing [it to] Hensol Castle [Hospital, Wales, where he said patients were marked with numbers]*. I would say Starcross was 15 to 20 years more advanced. Especially when I saw the patients with knives and forks. Nobody intelligent enough to introduce them [at Hensol]. I could feel there was a lovely atmosphere…that extra special atmosphere. A happy atmosphere. 

Mr Khadaroo, Deputy Charge Nurse

When I joined [1965] wards deemed to be luxury by some of the longer-serving members of staff and patients, say no more than 20 in a bedroom. Conditions in the front block… were quite austere. Quite Dickensian. I can still remember in 1965 cutting lumps of soap off a large block… baths were probably weekly, shaving was in the main still done with a wet razor. 

Trevor Buckler, Senior Nursing Officer

Before I ever went there, I think everyone who didn’t work there tended to tiptoe around it rather. I’d never been for any of their Open Days to look around or anything… I think I thought it was a bit on the dingy side and I think it was the staff who impressed me mostly. The majority of them were really very caring people and I knew a lot of them as patients in the [general] practice, which eased my going in quite a bit. 

Dr Mary Kemp, GP

When I first walked into Starcross [about 1968] it was almost like the original, no upgrading had been done. You walked in through a tiny green door, into a very narrow green corridor, into the main corridor of the hospital. I thought: My God, where have I come. It really was terrible. They hadn’t then even moved as far as the Royal Albert [Hospital] that I had left much earlier. 

Tom Harrison, Director of Nursing

At my first visit to Starcross [about 1969] I was absolutely appalled. I think it was the Bude Ward – 74 beds in one ward, some were tiered bunks, with nowhere to store clothes. There were suitcases in the corridor and clothes up on a shelf. 

Geoff Bird, Parent

Funnily enough, I wasn’t shocked. It was very overcrowded; 1967 I think was a low point. I remember very much the sense of community, the village was very much the hospital, and I loved it. They made you feel very welcome…My second day [1967] … one of the charge nurses actually took me back to his house at lunchtime… and at Christmas… the night superintendent and his wife… brought me back to their house and I had Christmas day night with the family.

Tom Bush, Nursing Tutor

The conditions weren’t bad, but they weren’t good [about 1970]. It was very crowded and the beds in the dormitories, they had, I don’t know, maybe 18 inches between them… and their clothes were absolutely ghastly. I think they were still … getting through the last of the old institution clothes, you often saw that. The men had trousers halfway up their legs, that kind of thing. They looked fairly rough, then they personalised the clothing, people began to look a lot better then. The clothes fitted, which must have been good for their morale. 

Dr Mary Kemp, GP

It was still a bit workhouse-ish. [1970s] 

Frank Lovell, Catering Officer

My first recollection of Starcross [1973] was as a student. I was allocated to Dawlish Ward which had 45, 50 men living there… There was myself and a pupil nurse – a lady – about the same age as me… It was bathing day. We went into this bathroom where there were bundles of clothes and a bench seat… These men were obviously used to the routine because they sort of lined up in turn. It was awful because you thought this just isn’t the way it should be done, but obviously the way they had always done it. 

Viv McAvoy, Nursing Officer

The actual environment in Starcross had a completely different feel to it than Langdon. Langdon was very much a unit thing and you really saw little of the rest of the hospital… But Starcross was like one big family… most of it was all in one big building and there was a tremendous sort of rapport between the wards, some rivalry as well… in the nicest possible way, like if one ward had … new armchairs or a new bedspread… 

Viv McAvoy, Nursing Officer

It was very strange [1974]. Quite frightening actually. Well, not frightening really – strange, seeing those strange people acting funny… Although I’d lived in Starcross from when I was 14 and my father worked in the place, I’d not actually been around the place, it was very peculiar.… we were quite young and never come across anything like that before. 

Night nurse

It was sort of [frightening] [1974] … It was a bit of a shock going on to a ward and seeing hardly any furniture, and what there was was pretty rough, no carpets on the floors, the telly bolted to the wall, [I was] shown the side rooms… It was strange. Once you worked there it was fine, exactly the way it had to be. Some of the windows had plastic, things like that. When I first went to Starcross I worked on Teignmouth Ward and all the clothes were locked away. In fact, some of the boys didn’t have their own clothes, they shared clothes. 

Night nurse

Strangely enough, I was not shown round [during my interview] [1975] and I thought I knew what I was letting myself in for… When I was shown around …the wards and … peripheral hospitals… I saw cases of mental handicap that I had never dreamed in my wildest dreams existed. It was a very humbling experience… Some of it almost repelled me at the time. 

Peggy Cordell, Volunteers’ Co-ordinator

Starcross: its size, its variety of scope and range of the degree of handicap… Also the feeling there particularly of the sort of team thing. 

Peggy Cordell, Volunteers’ Co-ordinator

The first thing that struck me, when I arrived at Starcross [late 1970s], it seemed like it was a castle and the stones and the size of the buildings that you walked through, at night, really were so appallingly dominant, and the façade was so big, it would be there forever. 

Nigel Pyart, Adult Tutor Organiser

I’d got so used to things being appalling [in institutions], I was beyond the point of being appalled. [1977] It’s incredible to think that you can be like that. I saw it as my job to see things that were awful and try to work with the staff that were there to try and make it different. It didn’t worry me greatly, I saw it simply [as] that was the job, and I had seen it in hospitals all over the country, I had seen awful things. 

Dr Chris Williams, Psychologist

*Hensol Castle Hospital, Llantrisant, Wales, closed 2003. An exhibition of photos of patients taken in 1967 and an oral history contributed to an exhibition “Hidden Now Heard” in 2015, supported by the Heritage Lottery, and intended for permanent exhibition at St Fagans, the Museum of Wales. The hospital had over 800 patients at one time.

See www.peoplescollection.wales.

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Starcross Hospital. What the voices tell us. Instalment 6.

The voices

Most importantly, the voices and words of one-time Starcross Hospital residents were recorded. Staff however, especially senior staff, were easier to engage and more forthcoming.

The interviews explored how people (staff and patients) came to be at the hospital, and the pros and cons of life there.

They are presented objectively, in the hope that they are an honest reflection of the realities of institutional life and the varied experience of transition.

The interview extracts gathered here cannot, of course, claim to be fully representative of the range of views held at the time.

There is far more material in the interviews than has been selectively reproduced here; what has been left out is no less important, but found no place in the format of this compilation.

The time-consuming work of recording and transcribing the interviews failed to continue for long enough to capture experiences of community care as it developed in later years, or to show how views may have changed over subsequent years. 

Nor are there the voices of those who know community care now, but never experienced institutional living.

However, the project captured voices and words at an important milestone.

Limitations

It should be noted that:

At least one ex-resident who agreed to be interviewed found it hard to talk about the past because they found it so upsetting.

Some interviewees asked for certain comments not to be recorded and used; this has been respected.

As a result, some claims, for example about nursing practices or individual staff, are not reflected here – but neither were they reflected in other interviews and to that extent unsubstantiated.

The purpose of this collection of memories is not to judge but to bring together a variety of shared experiences. In the main, the picture painted by interviewees is consistent. 

There were very few “outlier” comments made, even those off tape, and these were characterised by disaffection with the system, both previous and current.

Patient experiences are, sadly, not as well represented here as those of staff.

This is largely due to the logistical difficulties in arranging to meet with ex-residents across their new locations, and making the necessary introductory visits, as well as finding those who felt sufficiently confident and articulate to be tape-recorded, and who were deemed able to give informed consent.

Gathering ex-resident interviews was also made problematic because the years spent in institutional care had, in some cases, impacted on their ability to fully remember or describe their experiences.

It in part reflects that the more able patients had long since left care, and it was the less able or more institutionalised who had more recently moved to community care and could be contacted more readily.

Apologies to anyone, if any, who gave an interview at the time whose contribution has not been rediscovered to be quoted here or has not survived the intervening years.

The interviews – carried out from summer 1986 to 1988 – each lasted around two hours. Only a fraction of the material has been reproduced in this compilation of extracts. 

Please see the Appendices to find out more about where the full transcripts can be found.

A portrait of the realities of life at Starcross

The next pages use extracts from the interviews, giving different perspectives on the realities of life at Starcross over several decades. Some of the memories stretch back more than 50 years prior to the closure.

Interview extracts are brought together to illustrate what life in the hospital was like and the views that people held. The memories are presented largely chronologically within each theme.

There are a number of themes that emerged from the interviews conducted for the oral archive project, and they echo David King’s identification of: institutionalisation with no way out.

To see more about each interviewee and what else they said, please see on to Part III, In Their Own Words, which describes the era and role in which they experienced life in Starcross as well as reproducing further extracts from each of the full transcripts. Again, their memories are presented as chronologically as possible.

Finally, in the Appendices, you can find information about other sources of information about Starcross Hospital.

 Please note appendices will be published at a later date.

This completes Part I of the book, the next instalment will commence Part II.

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The Undesirables by Sarah Wise review — Britain’s own ‘Magdalene Laundry’ scandal

THE TIMES -  Saturday, 30th March 2024

The book that puts the Starcross Western Institution into its context.  

The Undesirables by Sarah Wise review — Britain’s own ‘Magdalene Laundry’ scandal

Under the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act, unmarried mothers were classified as ‘moral imbeciles’ and had their babies taken away

Alice O’Keeffe

Saturday March 30 2024, 12.01am, The Times

Dolly, who had a baby aged 14, spent her life in Moor Park psychiatric hospital

IAN BEESLEY

You will have heard about Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, in which “fallen women” were incarcerated and put to hard labour between the 18th and late 20th centuries. The Irish government issued a formal state apology for these institutions in 2013 and set up a compensation scheme for survivors. The laundries have since been the subject of many books and films, including Claire Keegan’s Booker-shortlisted novella Small Things Like These.

How surprised would you be to discover that a comparable system operated in Britain during the 20th century? A system that has not been acknowledged nor apologised for, let alone compensated for? If the answer to that is “very surprised” then brace yourself for The Undesirables, Sarah Wise’s sprawling, shocking study of the impact of the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act.

This appalling piece of legislation, which remained in force until 1959, involved a system of institutions in which anybody judged to be “feeble-minded” or a “moral imbecile” could be incarcerated indefinitely, with no recourse to appeal. Its targets were almost invariably poor people. In the late 1940s, 50,000 were detained in such institutions, with no psychiatric diagnosis, no treatment, no conviction and no time limit to their detention. About 30 per cent of these people had been detained for 10 to 20 years; 5 per cent for more than 30 years. Some of those featured in this book were detained when they were toddlers as young as three; some were released only in the late 1990s, having been effectively institutionalised and locked up for their entire adult lives.

Take David Barron, who was sent to the Mid Yorkshire Institute for the Mentally Defective (later known as the Whixley Colony) in the late 1930s, when he was in his early teens. There was nothing wrong with Barron other than rotten luck: he was an orphan, and had been mistreated by his foster mother. The solution was to classify him as mentally defective and lock him up.

Since he was intellectually perfectly normal, he was classified as a “high-grade defective”, meaning that he could do the hard labour of maintaining the building and caring for the more disabled inmates. He worked in the “sewing room” and looked after a boy called Trevor who was disabled and needed intensive personal care, “more or less a full-time job”. He was not allowed to fraternise with the opposite sex or form a relationship. Barron was not released until he was 30.

Having been judged incapable of leading independent lives or contributing to society, inmates of the residential “mental deficiency colonies” such as Whixley were, paradoxically, found to be useful labour. In Whixley’s laundry, they worked six days a week cleaning linen and clothes for the local community and earned between halfpence and fourpence, which they could spend on sweets. Other colonies supplied cut-price labour to the agricultural sector, picking fruit. During the Second World War, when many staff were redeployed elsewhere, one colony ended up being entirely run by the inmates. “In theory this should be full of pitfalls; in practice, it seems to work amazingly well,” an internal memo recorded. When convenience dictated, these people weren’t apparently so deficient after all.

Many of those detained — it is unclear from this book how many — were poor women who had given birth out of wedlock. Indeed, under the terms of the act “any female in receipt of poor relief at the time of giving birth to an illegitimate child” could be classified as a moral imbecile, separated from her child and locked away. In 1972, three women in their sixties and seventies were found at St Catherine’s Hospital for the Mentally Handicapped near Doncaster. Each had been put away in adolescence in the 1920s for having a baby out of wedlock under the same “moral imbecile” clause. All three had lost contact with anyone on the outside who once knew them. “All I want now is a little job doing domestic work,” one of them said on her release.

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“Dolly”, a lady who spent her life in Moor Park psychiatric hospital, had been detained under the same legislation because she had a baby aged 14. She was still there, an elderly lady, when Moor Park closed in 1996.

There was a reason why mothers were particularly targeted by the act: its origins lay in the eugenics movement of the early 20th century. Alarmed by the poverty in the slums of Britain’s big cities, a group of keen social Darwinists decided that the best solution would be to prevent the poor from breeding. The concept of “survival of the fittest” was taken to mean that they had landed at the bottom of the social heap for a reason. As the eugenicist George Mudge put it: “The stunted individuals are not the product of a one-roomed tenement, but the one roomed-tenement is an expression of [their] inherent incapacity.”

The Eugenics Education Society was founded in 1907 and found a sympathetic ear in Winston Churchill, who once wrote that “the improvement of the British breed is my aim in life”. Influenced by an American book called The Sterilisation of Degenerates, Churchill, when he was home secretary in the Asquith government, advocated “a simple surgical operation so the inferior could move freely in the world, without causing much inconvenience to others”.

Sterilisation was mercifully rejected by Whitehall, so the society lobbied for permanent detention of the feeble-minded into sex-segregated colonies to “regularise the lives, and if possible, prevent the increasing propagation of half-witted people”. The 1913 bill found support in some surprising quarters. The working-class Labour MP Will Crooks observed that such people “are almost like human vermin. They crawl about … polluting and corrupting everything they touch”.

Such debates were an inspiration to Nazis in Germany, who compulsorily sterilised 200,000 to 400,000 “defective” Germans between 1934 and 1939. As Leon Whitney, of the American Eugenics Society, observed: “Many far-sighted men and women in both England and America have been working earnestly towards something very like what Hitler has now made compulsory.” Ironically, considering its parallels with the Irish system, one consistent opponent to the mental deficiency legislation was the Catholic Church, which always argued against its “gross materialism”.

Wise’s is in some ways a frustrating book. The author of well-received social histories of the Victorian period, she has made a first foray into the more recent past here and seems — understandably, perhaps — overwhelmed by the material. I longed for her to focus more sharply on, for example, unmarried mothers and bring their stories to life. Instead, she roams far and wide, from eugenics experiments in America to the detention of autistic people today.

Part of the problem seems to have been that the inmates of mental deficiency colonies were detained for so long and were so effectively silenced and marginalised that it has not been easy for her to access their stories. “I have only been able to scrabble together a few of these case histories,” she writes. “The rest is silence.”
The Undesirables: The Law That Locked Away a Generation by Sarah Wise (Oneworld, 352pp; £22). To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members

Starcross Hospital. What the voices tell us . Instalment 5

The oral history’s intended purpose

In April 1986, I wrote about the aims of the oral history, as David King was going to send a letter about it to the Principal Medical Officer at the Department of Health and Social Security in London:

The project will give a refreshingly telling, new approach to the recording of a service at the point of change.

Both staff and residents will, in their own words, be able to record their personal experience of change itself, and of life before and after the change. What more fitting memorial to the lives of these people?

The project achieved much of this, but fell short when it came to following up on experiences in the years after the change. Nevertheless...

By presenting the words of the staff and the residents themselves, rather than impersonal and dehumanising facts and figures, a unique impression of the reality of Starcross will unfold. Supporting documentation will be preserved so that points of fact may be substantiated.

This was done. (See the appendices for details.)

Such an archive will not be one researcher’s analytical viewpoint – with all the bias that that inevitably carries with it. This will, instead, be a vehicle for these people to present themselves for what they really are; a series of snapshots or portraits of people at this fascinating point in history.

This is the evidence we need to bring to people who continually put the point that “they” would be better off in hospital. Documentation relating to management and committee work would only serve to put “them” over even less as people. We do not want to promote the idea of people with mental handicap [today I would prefer to say learning difficulties or special needs] merely being statistics.

My view, looking back, is that the later interviews, carried out in collaboration with the university, were conducted from a more analytical viewpoint. Instead of being quite so simple and objective as the early ones had set out to be, they focused to a greater extent on the management of change.

The project will, in the exciting and well-received mode employed by the best of America’s current researchers, be a revelation to the many people who have no idea what has transpired behind the walls of institutions like Starcross, and it will illuminate the plight of people who lived there.

Overly-grandiose words! It was really to try to preserve a first-hand record of reality, before time distorted it.

The tape-recorded interviews will be a valuable resource of candid first-hand accounts for future researchers, historians, other health authorities, and the public to benefit from. Much interest in the project has already been expressed, both by the people who will be the subjects and by academics here in Exeter, London, Essex and even Canada.

I also saw it as a gift back to the village of Starcross, because the institution had been central to life there, to employment, to family life, and the building was such an imposing landmark. I anticipated creating access to the stories, through exhibitions, open days... 

Today, we wonder what went on in the minds of the Starcross builders. However, future generations will know through this project what was on the minds of people now [at the time of closure in 1986 and the subsequent demolition of the building]. The intentions of carrying through change to care in the community should not be lost along the way.

The recording of impressions at the moment of change, as distinct from a written evaluation, surely has its place.

This is a story of Starcross Hospital which could not be told so colourfully or so memorably in any other words, or by looking in the records.

Although many documents were preserved [see Appendices], this oral history, as with any, is arguably more truly representative of the realities, and at the very least balances, or contrasts with, the written evidence. 

  Please note appendices will be published at a later date.

Link to instalment 6

Link to instalment 4  

Link to instalment 3  

Link to instalment 2  

Link to instalment 1

Link to Introduction

Powderham Event Wednesday April 17th 2024

KENTON PAST & PRESENT and STARCROSS HISTORY SOCIETY [SCHS]   Wednesday 17th April 2024 7.00-8.30 pm   The Music Room, Powderham Castle, Kenton by kind permission of the Earl of Devon   David Holland explores:   The Exeter Conspiracy Through The Eyes Of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell   ADMISSION FREE

 

 

Introduction to an historical whodunnit  In the 1520s Henry Courtenay, King Henry VIII’s cousin and very close friend, was the most likely male heir to the throne. However, during 1536/37 the mood music dramatically changed.

 

Henry Courtenay and his family, staunch Catholics, were suddenly in deadly danger from Henry VIII’s all-powerful minister, Thomas Cromwell, a Protestant. Cromwell accused the Courtenays and their powerful Catholic allies of plotting, The Exeter Conspiracy, to depose King Henry VIII, and replace him with a Catholic monarch… David Holland now takes up the story.

 

Please note the change in venue from the SCHS’s and Kenton Past and Present’s usual ones.

 

HILARY MANTEL’s WOLF HALL TRILOGY OF NOVELS and the TWO HENRYS: KING HENRY VIII & HENRY COURTENAY

Prelude to David Holland’ talk on 17th April 2024 in the Music Room, Powderham Castle: The Exeter Conspiracy Through The Eyes Of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell

The Courtenay connection

Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived [just!] (1) is the well known chant to help remember the sequence of Henry VIII’s wives: that clutch of unfortunate, largely doomed ladies. Beside them sit other, less well-known victims like Sir Thomas More of Henry VIII’s psychopathic paranoia.  In Henry’s paranoid mind his victims were possible threats to his throne and dynasty. So, anyone whose head popped above the successional parapet was liable to have it involuntarily removed. None more so than the family members [Plantagenets] of Queen Elizabeth of York (d.1503) wife of Henry VIII’s father, the Lancastrian Henry VII (r.1485-1509), 

A Courtenay Story 

A starting point for a Courtenay Story is the marriage of Queen Elizabeth’s youngest sister Catherine to William Courtenay of Tiverton Castle, at this time Powderham Castle was not the family’s main residence. The Yorkist curse fell on the shoulders of their son, Henry Courtenay, Henry VIII’s cousin, childhood buddy and then close friend. The Courtenays were the most powerful family in the West of England with extensive estates from which it could raise its own private army that could even threaten the king’s. For Henry C. all was well throughout the 1520s; he was Henry VIII’s leading courtier. And, as Henry VIII’s oldest male relative, he was a heartbeat from the throne.  But note Henry C’s wife, Gertrude, was devoutly religious, a companion and friend of Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s ageing, infertile wife whom Henry VIII hoped easily to replace with the fecund, doe eyed Anne Boleyn. 

Hilary Mantel’s First Two Novels in the Trilogy and Henry Courtenay

Wolf Hall Fate now cast its long, deadly shadow over Henry Courtenay. Henry VIII’s bitter divorce from Catherine of Aragon and the split from Rome saw Henry VIII replace the Pope as head of the Catholic Church in England so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. From c. 1530 Gertrude Courtenay, Catherine of Aragon’s staunch supporter, became closely involved with her and the Pope’s backers: Henry VIII’s enemies whom he hung, beheaded or burned. Hilary Mantel details how Gertrude’s religious fervour pointed to Henry Courtenay’s possible entanglement in this fevered poisonous web of rumour, accusations and duplicity but without any evidence of a conspiracy against Henry VIII. So, Henry C. survived, just, as a leading courtier. 

Bring Up The Bodies continues the tale, with the Courtenays perhaps surprisingly in 1536 playing a major role as Henry VIII’s allies in getting rid of their hated enemy Anne Boleyn once Henry VIII’s love for her turned to loathing and his eye latched on to a younger, more fertile possible queen. So, in 1536 Henry had Anne decapitated and he married Jane Seymour. A year later Jane bore Henry VIII his greatest wish: a baby Lancastrian son - Prince Edward. Yorkist Henry Courtenay was now in deadly danger - a potentially murderous wicked uncle who on Henry VIII’s death would kill Prince Edward and seize the throne as had a Yorkist uncle Richard III some 50 years ago.

Note: wicked uncle Richard III, line 2, Catherine, line 4, fifth person along - second sister of Elizabeth of York who married the Lancastrian Henry VII

 

Henry Courtenay 

Henry is ranked second in the kingdom in the pecking order the procession reveals.  

The three oval red circles on his surcoat are taken from the Courtenay coat of arms.

Please join us on Saturday afternoon

A STARCROSS HISTORY SOCIETY WORKING PARTY: STARCROSS CELEBRATES THE 1920S

 

§  We need your help to plan and manage a Starcross Celebrates the 1920s project. Starcross History Society is establishing a working party in liaison with Devon History Society to review what the Starcross programme might entail.

The project will happen in 2025.

 

§  If you are interested in the Starcross Celebrates the 1920s project and might like to join its working party, we would be delighted if you could attend a public meeting on:

 

Saturday, 16^th March at 3.00 p.m. in

Starcross Pavilion, Generals Lane, Starcross, EX6 8PY

 

If you cannot attend, but are interested in participating in Starcross Celebrates the 1920s, please let us know at starcross.history@gmail.com and we will keep you informed.

 

Meeting at Powderham Castle Wednesday 17th April

STARCROSS HISTORY SOCIETY [SCHS)

 with 

KENTON PAST & PRESENT 

Wednesday 17th April 2024

7.00-8.30 pm

The Music Room, Powderham Castle, Kenton

by kind permission of the Earl of Devon

David Holland explores:

The Exeter Conspiracy Through The Eyes Of

Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell

 

ADMISSION FREE

Introduction to an historical whodunnit  In the 1520s Henry Courtenay, King Henry VIII’s cousin and very close friend, was the most likely male heir to the throne. However, during 1536/37 the mood music dramatically changed.

 

Henry Courtenay and his family, staunch Catholics, were suddenly in deadly danger from Henry VIII’s all-powerful minister, Thomas Cromwell, a Protestant. Cromwell accused the Courtenays and their powerful Catholic allies of plotting, The Exeter Conspiracy, to depose King Henry VIII, and replace him with a Catholic monarch… David Holland now takes up the story.

 

The connection with the Courtenay family and hence their relevance to Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy is previewed in A TALE OF TWO HENRYS - Henry Courtenay and Henry VIII on the Starcross History Society’s website https://starcrosshistory.blogspot.com

 

David Holland is kindly giving this talk as a prelude to the “Wolf Hall Weekend” event he is arranging in June at Cadhay House - https://wolfhallweekend.com/

 

Please note the change in venue for the 17^th April meeting from the SCHS’s and Kenton Past and Present’s usual ones.

 

 

Prelude to David Holland's talk on 17th April 2024 The Exeter Conspiracy Through The Eyes Of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell

HILARY MANTEL’s WOLF HALL TRILOGY OF NOVELS and the TWO HENRYS: KING HENRY VIII & HENRY COURTENAY

Prelude to David Holland’ talk on 17th April 2024 in the Music Room, Powderham Castle: The Exeter Conspiracy Through The Eyes Of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell

The Courtenay connection

Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived [just!] (1) is the well known chant to help remember the sequence of Henry VIII’s wives: that clutch of unfortunate, largely doomed ladies. Beside them sit other, less well-known victims like Sir Thomas More of Henry VIII’s psychopathic paranoia.  In Henry’s paranoid mind his victims were possible threats to his throne and dynasty. So, anyone whose head popped above the successional parapet was liable to have it involuntarily removed. None more so than the family members [Plantagenets] of Queen Elizabeth of York (d.1503) wife of Henry VIII’s father, the Lancastrian Henry VII (r.1485-1509), Fig. 1.   

A Courtenay Story 

A starting point for a Courtenay Story is the marriage of Queen Elizabeth’s youngest sister Catherine to William Courtenay of Tiverton Castle, at this time Powderham Castle was not the family’s main residence. The Yorkist curse fell on the shoulders of their son, Henry Courtenay, Henry VIII’s cousin, childhood buddy and then close friend. The Courtenays were the most powerful family in the West of England with extensive estates from which it could raise its own private army that could even threaten the king’s. For Henry C. all was well throughout the 1520s; he was Henry VIII’s leading courtier. And, as Henry VIII’s oldest male relative, he was a heartbeat from the throne.  But note Henry C’s wife, Gertrude, was devoutly religious, a companion and friend of Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s ageing, infertile wife whom Henry VIII hoped easily to replace with the fecund, doe eyed Anne Boleyn. 

Hilary Mantel’s First Two Novels in the Trilogy and Henry Courtenay

Wolf Hall Fate now cast its long, deadly shadow over Henry Courtenay. Henry VIII’s bitter divorce from Catherine of Aragon and the split from Rome saw Henry VIII replace the Pope as head of the Catholic Church in England so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. From c. 1530 Gertrude Courtenay, Catherine of Aragon’s staunch supporter, became closely involved with her and the Pope’s backers: Henry VIII’s enemies whom he hung, beheaded or burned. Hilary Mantel details how Gertrude’s religious fervour pointed to Henry Courtenay’s possible entanglement in this fevered poisonous web of rumour, accusations and duplicity but without any evidence of a conspiracy against Henry VIII. So, Henry C. survived, just, as a leading courtier. 

Bring Up The Bodies continues the tale, with the Courtenays perhaps surprisingly in 1536 playing a major role as Henry VIII’s allies in getting rid of their hated enemy Anne Boleyn once Henry VIII’s love for her turned to loathing and his eye latched on to a younger, more fertile possible queen. So, in 1536 Henry had Anne decapitated and he married Jane Seymour. A year later Jane bore Henry VIII his greatest wish: a baby Lancastrian son - Prince Edward. Yorkist Henry Courtenay was now in deadly danger - a potentially murderous wicked uncle who on Henry VIII’s death would kill Prince Edward and seize the throne as had a Yorkist uncle Richard III some 50 years ago.

Figure 1 Yorkist Family Tree  :  showing Catherine – sister of Elizabeth of York, wife of William Courtenay

Note: wicked uncle Richard III, line 2, Catherine, line 4, fifth person along - second sister of Elizabeth of York who married the Lancastrian Henry VII

 

S

Figure 2 Henry Courtenay, in a royal procession in 1535 

Henry is ranked second in the kingdom in the pecking order the procession reveals.  

The three oval red circles on his surcoat are taken from the Courtenay coat of arms.

Villages in Action Archive

Click HERE to link to the archive footage from the Unearth project, which was run in Starcross in 2016 by Villages in Action

The project was organised by then Churchwarden Alison Miles. 

The video footage includes The Starcross Ferry,  The Annual Swim Race from Starcross Pier to Exmouth followed by Hugh Payne presenting the prizes, The Royal Western Counties Hospital and scenes of The River Exe

These are some of the photographs, but the link above takes you to much more. For example:

letters,  which include one to his wife from Isambard Kingdom Brunel,  newspaper cuttings and 2 songs about Starcross from Jim Causley

Talk on Armistice Day

Todd Gray will talk about the First World War war.memorials in Devon 

His talk will be at the Starcross Pavilion on Saturday November 11th, from 3pm until 5pm. ADMISSION IS FREE but to cover costs we sell teas and coffees and have a raffle. Please bring a raffle prize.

Starcross’s war memorial does not stand alone – there are some 2,000 in Devon, a network of memorial beacons that uniquely recognise and light up the collective identity of each community. Each memorial was the outcome of its community’s local committee that discussed, argued, rowed, debated and decided upon what kind of memorial it wanted and the form it would take, and then built it.

 When you pass Starcross Station, do you ever stop to look at the war memorial at the bottom of the station’s steps, A and B, see page 2? If so, have you thought how  it, and similar memorials, relate in the past to your family or friends who died in World War I, 1914-18? ‘Our family roots are now our branches’ applies to our own family members, some four generations ago, who were killed in the World War I fight for national survival against Germany and Austria-Hungary.

 

What had the deaths of that generation of our relatives achieved? And today,

what memories of what they fought for do we remember, recognise, honour and meditate upon annually during the 11^th of November commemorative national Remembrance Day two minutes of silence on the 11^th minute of the 11^th day of the 11th month of 1918 that marks the end of World War I?

 

From 1918 to the mid 1920s the British government supported every community in Britain, be it a hamlet, village, town or city to create, design and build its own war memorial to remember and honour men and women who ’Died For King and Country’ in World War I, some 12,000 in Devon alone.

The Swan of the Exe on Exeter Quay

 On Saturday, September 23rd and Sunday 24th, FREE RIDES will be offered on The Swan of the Exe Rickshaw on Exeter Quay . 

Places can be booked by emailing info@burnthecurtain.co.uk by today, Friday 22nd September, or by booking from 2pm on the Saturday and Sunday at Exeter Custom House

This is part of the Heritage Harbour Festival. Here is the link to the program on the Exeter Custom House website 

Heritage Harbour Festival

Could this be the old Starcross Racecourse?

William Morgan would please like opinions about the site of The Stsrcross Racecourse. for his second book about the history of racecourses.. 

William has discovered that the 1863 course was on land in the occupation of John and Thomas Haydon of Staplake and 5 minutes from the station (in 1865). His research on Google Earth demonstrates that the area is " pretty flat " and he suggests that the course  would be 6 furlongs round, positioned as shown on this map. He asks "How does this seem to you?"

 

Videos from the Royal Western Counties Hospital

Many thanks to the Royal Western Counties Facebook for these 4:YouTube links

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oTjwpa9bZqE&feature=youtu.be#bottom-sheet

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxlvWEYvPBg&feature=youtu.be

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KDRMWJwl7fE&feature=youtu.be

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5zXz4JuNMs4&feature=youtu.be

Meeting in Starcross Pavilion Saturday April 15th

Saturday 15th April

3pm until 5pm

Starcross Pavilion on Starcross Sportsfield,

General’s Lane, EX6 8PY

Dr Kathryn Edwards 

"In Vogue: William Courtenay, 9th Earl of Devon"

ADMISSION FREE

but to cover the room hire, we will sell tea and coffee,  have a raffle and a collection pot 

Please bring a raffle prize 

Contact: Monica Lang 890650

starcross.history@gmail.com

https://starcrosshistory.blogspot.com