Oakwood
On New Year’s Day 1833, 174 patients moved into the West Kent County Asylum built on Barming Heath to be greeted by beds made of straw, wireclad windows and dungeonstyle cells.
The eerie site has since made way for homes and St Andrew’s House was converted into flats.
The grand sum of £50,000 was spent securing the site to build a new asylum to cage the criminally insane on Barming Heath.
Stone lined the floors and chairs with straps awaited the “pauper lunatics and dangerous idiots” on the 37-acre site.
A witness’s account from an inspecting officer tells of two men chained to their beds for half a decade while one woman was bound to a chair.
Sergeant Adams’s report to magistrates in 1841 depicted the harrowing vision of up to 30 men and women deprived of mobility.
It told of convicted murderer James Ward’s four-and-a-half years strapped into his bed.
A “ferocious” second man, William Doolan, had on one occasion struck down a keeper with a metal poker before he was stopped from landing a second potentially fatal blow.
An extract from a Kent County Council history publication read: “Mr Sergeant Adams in his report to the Middlesex Magistrates said that he found in this asylum two men, who had been chained to their beds for four-and-a-half years, and one female fastened in a coercive chair by a large cuirass of thick leather.
“There were also some 20 or 30 others in manacles.”
In October 1833, John Nichols Thom was admitted following delusions of character during bouts of believing he was the King of Jerusalem and the Knight of Malta.
Patients deemed incurable sent to live away from those who could be helped while a second building branded the Chronic Asylum was constructed.
Medical Officer Dr Huxley revealed sports such as football and badminton were introduced to minimise the monotony of patients’ existence.
In 1864 the Third Asylum was built to include a large hall and corridors to connect the previous two buildings.
The asylum’s appearance began to improve.