A friend told us about this place, as we were planning to go walking in a nearby beauty spot.. this is a chapel that was used to bury 2,861 patients at the nearby mental hospital, High Royds, which is a short distance away.
All of these patients are buried without gravestones, unmarked other than a number (Most of which, have been buried too now I was told today), and were buried 3 or 4 deep, between 1880-1969. All the grass you can see has former patients underneath - families were either too poor or too ashamed to mark a grave. There was also a railway line that ran from the hospital to the chapel that ran just behind the building.
Locals have, in the last two years, restored the chapel and restore some dignity to the patients and the chapel, which had been left to ruin. I'd read in the local press that some volunteers were former patients at the hospital, and wanted to do something to remember their fellow patients - of whom a few where treated appallingly. One patient remembers being a guinea pig of experimental brain surgery at the former hospital and was given electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) in an attempt to control aggression.
He claimed he remained conscious during a partial lobotomy and was strapped down to a table while doctors burned out areas of the brain that were claimed to be responsible for his anger and aggression.
Its astonishing how people were treated, and not so long ago...
Just throwing people away - terrible! I read a very interesting book about Henrietta Lacks (a poor black cancer patient in Baltimore whose cells became the first immortal cell-line - much used in medical research). Some of the stories about the way patients were treated in the 20th Century (and especially black and/or psychiatric patients) are unbelievable..... Good to know the locals are trying to make small amends for these poor people.
what a horribly sad story. I saw this documentary about needle lobotomies and read the story of a man who survived one. so barbaric. not a proud chapter in medical history.
@judithg Sounds like a good book, tho hard to read I bet?
i have some tales about here and the old hospital..