Starcross Hospital. What the voices tell us. Instalment 4.

 

Western Counties Institution
Starcross
Twas a never ending world

Why the Starcross era came to a close

quotes are from David King , The District General Manager,  Exeter Health Authority, recorded as one of the interviewees for the Starcross Oral Archive Project in 1988 .

With more and more admissions, but few discharges, of patients, the buildings became overcrowded and too full – not as intended by their philanthropic founders.

It is shocking that people were packed into hospitals in the recent past and hypocritical that the conditions were described as “Dickensian”, for in Dickens’ day the inmates enjoyed a better environment. Not only was the overcrowding squalid, it also contributed to the lowest standards of behaviour.

The peak in numbers was reached in the 1950s, but then there was a gradual removal of social pressure to place people in institutions.

The official attitude to learning disability was changing… No longer… regarded as disqualifications from membership of society but disadvantages to be solved or helped within it

In time, there was a realisation that institutional care was unsatisfactory.

For people with learning disabilities, the hospitals did more harm than good… there were better and more practical alternatives to help them. 

Why Starcross should not be forgotten

David King asked for an oral archive to be created before the memories of Starcross faded. He thought it right that the good intentions of those who had set up and run the institution should be recognised, and at the same time that the limitations should be remembered.

He foresaw a day when potentially the institutions would be recalled through rose-tinted glasses, and the realities forgotten, or those involved wrongly maligned.

Institutional care was a phase in our social history that should be recorded so it would be better understood in future years when the bricks and mortar of the Victorian hospitals were no longer there to remind us.

The project was also intended to help society understand the importance of succeeding with the difficult transformation from institutional to community care: 

Enthusiasm for community care will only be generated if more is known about the handicaps of hospital life and how community solutions can better serve the varied needs of people. 

Interviewed for the Starcross oral archive David was asked: What made you decide it was worthwhile to chronicle the history of Starcross and attempt this reconstruction of what it was like to be in Starcross? 

It’s nice to get the voices and experiences of people down. Much that has been written about the hospitals has failed to bring out the fact that they, particularly the mental handicap hospitals, were creating a “sub-class” in society, people who were excluded from society permanently and, if they had any abilities, were treated as slave labour…One of the particular reasons was that funny little book called “The First Hundred Years” and its glowing appreciation of the Institution.

The First Hundred Years was a booklet published by Starcross Hospital in 1964