MENTAL HOSPITALS

One of the sadder stories that Warwick discovered was about the life of his paternal great grandfather, Dennis Manning, who died when his grandmother, Edith, was only a child. Warwick was intrigued that Edith never really knew him and decided to learn more. When he delved into this he learned that Dennis died tragically in a mental hospital in 1918.

We firstly discovered the place of Dennis’ death, Croydon Mental Hospital, by ordering his death certificate, which also gave the cause of his death and mental illness – tertiary syphilis. We researched more by obtaining his admission records. Dennis’ record gave more information about the length of his disease and its symptoms. Croydon’s records were found among the collection at Bethlem Museum ( museumofthemind.org.uk). This website also has a great online section for learning more about the history of Bethlem hospital and mental health in general. Hospital records are usually held in local archives and TNA also has a database listing the location of extant hospital records ( www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/hospitalrecords). You may learn about your ancestor’s time in an institution from their civil registration records or by a census entry. Either way, you can obtain more details by trying to find patient records.