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Asylum: Gransha (HOS/17/7)
Registration Number: 5999
Hi, my name is Joanne Glasgow. I am from Belfast.
My character is called William Bradley, an elderly man of 96. He was admitted to Gransha Asylum Hospital in 1915.
William Bradley enters the asylum on the 31st of the 7th, 1915, and he dies on the 18th of December, in 1915. He dies quietly and peacefully aged 96.
A wood sawyer by trade he was from the tiny hamlet of Doon, just outside Draperstown. In the photographs, he stares myopically at the camera, perhaps amazed at this unfamiliar gadget. In one of the photographs, he brandishes his right arm which is missing a hand; perhaps a work accident?
There are very detailed medical notes on his entry into the asylum. Due to ulcerated corneas, he has very poor eyesight. The second and third toes of each foot are webbed. He has a hernia, suffering from chronic constipation, a weak heartbeat and poor circulation.
His senility appears to have been aggravated by chronic ichthyosis (skin disease) which caused him to itch constantly and thereby creating a persecution complex exacerbated by the noise of the rats and the vermin in his gaol cell. As he became more paranoid, he attempted suicide by gashing his throat.
Londonderry County Asylum Hospital however has a much more caring environment than the gaol. The Resident Medical Superintendent, Doctor Hetherington, appears a kindly man, noting that William changes from ‘an excited old man, shouting and scolding using profanities’ to only one week later, when he finds ‘a quiet, content and pious man who is very grateful for the attention he is receiving’.
William Bradley never left the hospital. He died five months later from senile decay and heart failure.
The previous year Doctor Hetherington had almost lost his life as a result of a manic patient in the same hospital. The Assizes from Hansard state that in December 1914 a patient named Thomas Baird had attacked the doctor with a knife wrestling him to the floor. Baird inflicted 2 inch lacerations on his face, neck, lower jaw and the fingers of both hands, leaving the doctor in a state of shock.
It is quite a surprise to discover that Dr Hetherington went back to work and perhaps also surprising to discover that doctors were not allowed to marry. Once they married, they left the hospital.
I have also compiled a haiku on William Bradley:
Scritching, scratching itch
Ichthyosis finds his brain
Stop! Desist! Cease, please.
I thoroughly enjoyed this project. It’s been really interesting, being given a character about whom you know nothing, but the case notes were very helpful and also there were two photographs.
The photograph of William Bradley was quite reminiscent of Patrick Bronte, the father of the Bronte daughters who wrote novels, in that he had a white scarf around his neck tied very tightly. On reflection, this was possibly because he had tried to kill himself by using a knife.
I was quite pleased to discover that at the end of his life he was much more comfortable than I am sure he had been in previous times. He was in a comfortable situation, he was looked after very well and he was fed and watered. He had come from the gaol where his ‘senile decay’, as they referred to it, had got much worse because of the vermin and the rats in the gaol.
And there is no mention of any relatives surviving, so I think for a lonely old man, perhaps under the care of Dr Hetherington in the Gransha Asylum was perhaps the best that he could have hoped for and I would like to find out a little bit more about him.
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