Stanley Royd Hospital, Former Pauper Lunatic Asylum Wakefield

Stanley Royd - Former, Pauper Lunatic Asylum - Wakefield

Archive footage from the sixties and nineties.

The building was necessary to care for the treatment and care of the insane poor, and work began on it in 1816. The main builders were John Robson, John Billinton and William Pockrin - all from Wakefield. Work was completed and the hospital occupied by the 23rd of November 1818. The eventual cost of the building work was £23,000 being £7,000 more than the contracted price. The total cost was shown in the records as £36,448. 4s. 9¼d.
The building stood in an area of 25 acres. For privacy the grounds were surrounded by plantation in either Wakefield or Stanley to be quiet, peaceful and secluded. It was a much needed hospital for in the early part of the 19th century very little was available by way of treatment for mental illness.

Before the opening of this asylum, sufferers were incarcerated in prisons, workhouses or in their own homes at none of which treatment was available except for purging, bleeding or mechanical restraint. Some of records of mechanical restraint make horrific reading. There was a case of a James Norris who, at Bethlem Hospital, London, was chained for several years to a vertical bar fixed to a wall, able only to slide in his chains from a sitting to a standing position. Records tell at Wakefield of a woman patient admitted from Barnsley Workhouse where she had been chained in a cell for no less than 36 years.

www.highroydshospital.co.uk - www.meanwoodpark.co.uk and now www.stanleyroydhospital.co.uk

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Education

Tags:

• stanley royd hospital
• pauper lunatic asylum
• west riding asylum
• out of sight
• pauper lunatic
• stanley royd wakefield

[TheCaty5789]

rest in peace for all the people who died in the insain asylums all over the world

[flyby501]

i find this fairly fascinating

[AngelFluttershy767]

@erictheviking871

Either you're one strange troll or one seriously brainwashed individual. Which is it then?

[TheLuke494]

lots of stories of insane asylums

[erictheviking871]

@MrHistoryman45 WHAT THE CONSERVATIVES WOULD LOVE TO HAVE NOW.SHUT US UP ,AND KEEP IN LINE. BUT THEN AGAIN THE TORYS SHUT THESE PLACES DOWN,AND CALLED IT CARE IN THE COMMUNITY=FEND FOR YOUR SELF.

[naynay250]

The ward which your nan spoke about was Juniper - it was one of the ladies wards at the far end of the hospital - the side rooms on the ward were haunted there as well, there was one which was permanently cold and unpleasant to be in, it was used as a store room. The majority of wards had ghosts, you didn't go to certain parts of the hospital on your own when it was dark! Me and my mum probably worked with your grandma!

[redishio]

Interesting, Thanks.

[dramaqueenbecky]

I live in one of the apartments now. It's really weird to see it like this.

[MrHistoryman45]

The average workhouse was a kind of concentration camp for poor people. Take them out of circulation, humiliate them, treat them with brutality and provide barely enough food to live. Victorian Asylums are notorious in their own right. This is a very dark chapter in British history; While the 'glorious' British Empire was making money around the world, many of its poorest and most vulnerable people were being treated in this manner.

[1980Grafik]

You can live there Grondalist. It's now apartments. My mate's sister lives in one!