Sharon Palfrey delves into the background of Glenside Hospital museum

This year sees nursing volunteers at Glenside Hospital Museum celebrating the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Bristol Lunatic Asylum, later renamed Beaufort War Hospital, Bristol Mental Hospital and Glenside Hospital.

Housed in the old hospital church, Glenside Hospital Museum houses collections relating to the history of Bristol psychiatric hospitals, and learning disability hospitals.

Highlights include a display of an array of medications and remedies, drawings by patient Denis Reed, a fully operational church organ, ECT machines, a padded cell, a strait-jacket, mortuary equipment and reconstructions of a ward, operating theatre and GP surgery.

“I am committed to preserving of our heritage for future generations,” said Museum Chairman Dr Ihsan Mian. “Learning is the core purpose of our museum. We encourage student visits from all disciplines. Our main aim is to inform, to educate and to destigmatise mental illness.”

The museum is still in the early stages of evolution and all the staff are volunteers. Trustee Viv Jenkins has been an RCN member since the 1970s. “Even in retirement, I like to keep abreast of developments in modern nursing, not only on a personal level but to assist nursing student visitors to the museum with contrasting nursing methods from the past in the fields of mental health and learning difficulties with the present,” he said.

Viv began his nursing career in 1966 and was employed in one of the hospital’s industrial therapy departments, supervising patients constructing Sellotape cardboard dispensers with metal serrated cutters. The department was located in a large former communal bathroom serving the whole hospital which at its greatest capacity, a decade or two earlier, had around 1,600 beds.

Industrial therapy

Industrial therapy was established at Glenside in 1958; and the opening of a factory in the city called the Industrial Therapy (Bristol) Organisation Ltd (ITO) in 1960, by senior consultant Dr Donal Early and Bristol industrialist John Turley, led to a gradual drop in bed occupancy.

A few years after ITO was set up, Mr Turley also set up the Bristol Industrial Therapy Housing Association (BITHA) which meant it was possible for some of the service users at ITO to live in the community again. Bristol ITO became the model for other ITOs established around England, Ireland and Northern Ireland.

In the first 14 months of operation the industrial therapy programme at Glenside Hospital returned 19 men and 17 women to employment whose combined time in hospital totalled 314 years and whose previous unemployment amounted to 403 years.

Getting involved

The question is why a former mental health nurse would want to continue working in a museum dedicated to the discipline.

“I knew of the museum since its creation in its original location on the balcony overlooking the staff dining room in the hospital in 1986. It moved to the church in 1994. I hadn’t in all that time stepped over the threshold of this building except in my working life, when I escorted patients to the Sunday service in the 1960s and 1970s,” said Viv.

“Part of me, didn’t like the thought of harking back to the past where the stigma of mental illness prevailed to a much greater extent than it does now and physical treatments were the norm. However I visited the museum and observed there was a lot more friendly interaction between volunteers and visitors than you would find perhaps in a municipal museum.

“They were patently keen to impart their knowledge and contrast mental health care from the past with current practice. Without this almost one to one visitor experience with the volunteers, visitors left to browse alone may have thought that what happened between World War One and the 1960s was current practice. I felt with my extensive knowledge and experience, I could provide valuable support to the museum.”

The museum has established links to the two other mental health museums in the UK at Wakefield and the Bethlem Royal Hospital collection at Beckenham in Kent.

Glenside Hospital Museum is open to the public 10.00am until 12.30pm every Wednesday and Saturday.