Text + Transcription © F.Coakley , 2020
This brief report on Colney Hatch Asylum was produced by two special Attaches, F Schwyger and Dr A J Vischer, of the Swiss Legation who had taken over from the Americans to represent German interests in the UK.
We have the honour to submit a report on a visit of inspection to the London County Asylum at Colney Hatch, New Southgate N. visited on Saturday July 21st, 1917.
Colney Hatch is an asylum for mental cases and is under the superintendence of Dr. S. W. Gilfillan. The building is a large and complicated stone structure, with a number of courts and gardens.
At present there are about 3,000 patients in the institution, of whom 44 are German civilian prisoners of war.
The German patients are not in a special ward, but according to their diseases, have been placed among the British patients and receive exactly the same nutrition and treatment.
We were very favourably impressed by the management of this Asylum. The institution ranks among the best lunatic asylums we have seen here, or in other countries. The German patients there deserve pity because they are ill, not because they are prisoners.
Colney Hatch Asylum was opened in 1851 on a 119acre site, - its Italianate building was huge with a frontage of 1884 ft (~600m) with six miles of corridors. It had its own water supply, brewery, cemetery and even railway station (New Southgate), its own farm of 75ac provided employment for many of the inmates - a common approach in these large Victorian asylums and even followed at the Island's asylum at Ballamona. Like Ballamona on the Island its name became used by Londoners to as a generic term much as Bedlam is still used today. With 1500 patients in the mid 1850s it was expanded several times and by 1937, when it changed its name to Friern Mental Hospital to avoid the opprobrium associated with its past, it had 2700. Closed in 1993 allowing the site to be redeveloped as the upmarket Princes Park Manor and Friern village.
Its extensive Achive is held at London Metropolitan Archives.
There would appear to have been some Home Office decision to move many of the insane cases (often used as a euphenism for final stages of Syphilis) to Colney Hatch Asylum (CHA) as 6 internees from Knockaloe were moved to CHA over six days from 2nd December 1916 and noted as CHA #48-53. However there had been earlier transfers of internees to CHA as 3 internees are noted in one of the surviving letter books as ready for discharge from CHA in the period 19th March to 3rd May 1916. The second death of a Knockaloe internee on 17 May 1915 was at the IoM Asylum and recorded as General Paralysis of the Insane (final stage of Syphilis). Several transfers to CHA are noted as having died there usually from General Paralysis of the Insane. At least 12 internees, including several exKnockaloe, noted as held at CHA, were repatriated in March 1918, one party of 6 on the 16th and the second party a week later on the 23rd.
I have a list of some 150 names that passed through CHA - some for just a few days as it would appear to have been used as a transit camp for mental cases prior to their repatriation along other internees transiting via Stratford camp during 1916 - after Stratford closed in 1917 such repatriatrians were via Spalding and Boston.
. [names TBA]
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| Any comments, errors or omissions gratefully received The
Editor Text + Transcription © F.Coakley , 2020 |
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