In the first of a new series on Isle of Wight hospitals, Island Echo examines Whitecroft Hospital – the Isle of Wight’s institution for those with mental health problems for close to a century.
At one time, there were around 20 hospitals operating around the Island.
The story of Whitecroft Hospital – originally known as the County Lunatic Asylum – begins in 1890, when the Isle of Wight became a separate administrative county. At that time, Island mental health patients were all transferred to Knowle Hospital in Fareham, which was costly and inconvenient.
The new chairman of the County Council – General Somerset Gough-Calthorpe – oversaw the new County Asylum Committee. Isle of Wight farmers were invited to sell a plot of land of at least 50 acres for the new asylum. After considering sites in Northwood, Blackwater, Longdown (Ventnor), Hale, Carisbrooke, Rookley and Pan, the Whitecroft site was bought for £4,150 (£460,000 in today’s values).
The building contract was given to the London firm of Garlick and Horton, who had submitted a tender of £47,290 (Over £5million in today’s values). Some 6million bricks were said to have been used in the construction of the asylum – all made from sand and clay excavated on site.
The building work did not go as planned with bricklayers striking for higher pay in September 1894 – from 7d to 8d an hour as described in the following Island Echo article.
There was to be no opening ceremony, with General Gough-Calthorpe commenting:
“It is undesirable. A lunatic asylum, however necessary it may be, is a burden to the tax payer, to care for and alleviate a malady, the most distressing of which human nature is liable. It is therefore in my judgement an institution better kept in the background.”
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The asylum opened on 3rd July 1896. The first patients were transferred by boat to Cowes before taking a train to Blackwater then walking up Sandy Lane.
When completed, Whitecroft Asylum looked something akin to a small town when lit up at night. The locals had been afraid of some 300 mentally unstable inmates roaming the area. One old gentleman was said to have told his wife to “lock away the cutlery or we shall have our throats cut”.
However, Whitecroft soon became part of the scenery, with most ‘lunatics’ proving perfectly harmless and farmers and labourers of the district – before the days of radio, television and the internet – thankful of the opportunity to check the time from the clock tower.
Initially, the County Lunatic Asylum was run with strict Victorian values. Inn 1907, male patients were allowed 2 visits a month – the 1st and 3rd Monday – with female patients allowed visits on the 2nd and 4th Monday. No visitors were permitted if there was a 5th Monday in the month. The cost of each patient was put at 11/1d (55p) per week – £55 in today’s values.
Political correctness was largely unknown a century or more ago. Hospital wards were described as being for ‘idiots’, ‘imbeciles’ and ‘lunatics’. Some patients were referred to as ‘mental defectives’.
Colloquially, on the Isle of Wight, Whitecroft patients were referred to as ‘Moonies’ – affected by the influence of the moon. Someone being treated at Whitecroft was euphemistically referred to as ‘going under the clock’.
Positively, the asylum became part of the community with regular dances and social evenings and snooker, billiards, cricket and football teams. The highly successful football team – Whitecroft & Barton Sports (WaB) – continues to this day. Whitecroft had its own farm with many male inmates gainfully employed there. Women were provided with occupational classes and taught cane tray making and knitting.
On the negative side, there are stories of patients subjected to cruel and invasive surgery (lobotomies), electric convulsive therapy (ECT) and padded cells. It has been claimed that unmarried mothers haven given birth to children out of wedlock were once incarcerated there. After World War I the wards were said to have been full of shellshocked soldiers.
A child of a woman diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia recalled:
“As a child, I visited her many times in Whitecroft. I can remember many things, the corridor leading in, the locked doors, the crying, the screaming, the dead eyes. My mother had electric shock therapy.”
Another remembered her mother being treated at Whitecroft after losing her child:
“Those dark corridors and the noise of the other patients was enough to send anyone mad. She took her own life once she was discharged.”
However, for many , Whitecroft was ‘home’. Patients entered the asylum and never returned to normal life, not because they were still mentally ill, but rather because they did not have a home to go back to.
With the advent of care in the community, Whitecroft Hospital closed in 1992. It is now an upmarket property development called ‘Gatcombe Manor’.
However, some lost souls may remain in situ. When work began to convert the hospital to a residential development in the 21st century, it is said that some builders walked off site and refused to work on the project due to feeling uneasy, unexplained activities and real or imagined ghostly sightings.
It has been claimed that Whitecroft is one of the most haunted locations on the Isle of Wight. Faceless figures in white coats are said to be seen walking the corridors of the former hospital and to look out from the windows; an unknown patient in pink and beige pyjamas has been reportedly wandering the corridors before disappearing…
Did you work at Whitecroft or visited a relative there? Have you experienced any unexplained happenings on the site of the former asylum? Has ‘care in the community’ been a positive development or are institutions such as Whitecroft still needed? Let us know in the comments.
In the next edition of Isle of Wight Hospitals, we shall examine the Frank James Hospital in East Cowes.
Great article, too think the island once had 20
Hospitals and there was a low population.
Nowdays with such an increasing population
just St Mary’s.
Well a Medic was seen walking around the grounds shooting pigeons with his umbrella.
Sounds like Steed from The Avengers
Well I think some of the practices there were beneficial to some inmates who worked in the grounds growing vegetables which they then ate for lunch. Gave them a purpose in life and ensured they received the necessary treatment.
Care in the community might have been satisfactory if there had been any. The reality was that many vulnerable people, some institutionalised from decades of residing in places like Whitecroft Hospital, were pushed out to fend for themselves with little or no support. It had nothing to do with care and everything to do with saving money. Of of many examples of the cruelties of Thatcherism.
Bigger population, more nutters than ever and the morons in charge of mental health think it’s a good idea to indulge in “Care in the Community”, better known as “Don’t care; dump them on the community”.
As a nipper, I was told, “You keep doing that, you’ll end up at the clock tower”. It scared me as I had never seen Whitecroft as a hospital, more like a prison.
Back then, autism was hidden, not talked about. I recall hearing that ‘special kids’ attended Watergate School, and I’d often see them on the ‘Banana’ buses. The language used back then in the ’70s to describe them was negative; spastic, handicapped, looney. Other children in school would often joke about Whitecroft.
A couple of years ago, I learned that mothers going through menopause ended up at Whitecroft, never to be let out.
It was right to discharge many into the community after the closure, yet, there are some who, for their own and ours, ought to live in a secure hospital.
The article mentions the ghosts. I’d love to hear from those who abandoned living at the now Gatcombe Manor due to goolies at night.
So sad the way the authorities have treated persons
over the years.
Yes, I trained there for my then RMN (Registered Mental Nurse) from Jan 1968 to 1971 completion. It was a small class (it wouldn’t be allowed now – pack ’em in’!) with Michael F, Keith B, Sue C (later Sue B when she married Keith B), Phyllis and Tom R. The latter left the class early and became an EN. Any of you still around?! I’d love to hear from you. I had worked as a Nursing Orderly there from Sep 1967 until the start of the course in 1968. I also had a short spell as a qualified RN there later in 1971 perhaps early ’72.
I don’t know about menopausal ladies being admitted; I saw no evidence of that but I can confirm with 99% accuracy in at least one case that an unmarried woman had been admitted in the early part of the century for just that ‘condition’. Being keen and inquisitive students at the time, Michael F and I could find no clear reason why a particular lady was an in-patient. We found her old records (copper plate writing in the main!) in the cellars and it was very clear that she was admitted only for having a child ‘out of wedlock’. We also found the old record of another female patient and I think I would be 95% confident in her case that too was the sole reason for her admission.
It’s the same here in Australia. There have been some successes of de-institutionalisation but also some very serious drawbacks.
Nowadays the declassify them as a different gender call them green party or labour pop some pills and ignore the mental health issues