Escaping The Asylum

Jimmy in Gogarburn Hospital in the late 1950s

An extract from ‘Fight or Flight’, Chapter 7 of As Long as We’ve Got a Voice: The Life of Jimmy McIntosh by Lesley Fox

Each of the patients in Gogarburn Hospital responded to their confinement at the hospital in their own way. Jimmy's reaction to his ill treatment was remarkable, he bided his time until conditions were right before taking any serious action. His energy, rather than born out of frustration and despondency, was motivated by and channelled towards a positive purpose: to help others in his situation. Variations in patients’ reactions to ‘total institutions’ were well documented by Erving Goffman (Asylums, 1961), who proposed that patient responses could be categorised into ‘conversion,’ characterised by an eager acceptance of the identity imposed upon them, ‘colonisation,’ denoting a begrudging or passive acceptance, or ‘withdrawal,’ an outright rejection of the identity and routines associated with the institution.

Behaviour of patients in the last category is driven by a desire to create distance between their self and the institution, often resulting in the initiation of social interactions ‘forbidden’ by the institution, and some aspects of this category come close to Jimmy’s response. What made him different was his ability to identify constructive outlets for the injustices he was subjected to.

Some saw extreme action as the only way possible to change their situation. One patient in particular remained etched deeply in Jimmy’s memory. This patient on several occasions expressed his desperation and despair by discarding all of his clothes, breaking out of the institution, and running down the adjacent busy motorway exposed to all the elements. Such incidents represented patients’ attempts to claw back a fragment of the control over their own lives that they had been forced to relinquish.

‘Oh, what! Patients did escape alright!’ Jimmy said. ‘They’d squeeze their selves out the top window, climb down the down pipe and then get away. If you ran away they would phone the police. The police would catch you, take you back… they put you in the security ward. Some of them never got far because they had their battledress clothes on, and their names were on the back inside their clothes with the same number of the ward. And if you get caught, you got put to Ward Seven. And then you had to wear the light blue battledress tunics.’ When the superintendent [Dr Bailey] raised the bar in his security measures, some patients simply retaliated by raising their game. ‘I mind when Doctor Bailey got steel windows, with squares in, for the high security ward, to stop the patients from getting out. But that didna stop them, they had ways...they used to take the hinges out of the kitchen door when the staff warna looking and they got out of Gogarburn that way.’

Uniting in their quest for liberation may have provided the patients with some much-needed solidarity, but their strength in numbers proved no match for the staff who had the Lothian and Borders Police force on their side.

‘One guy who worked about the grounds at night-time, he got shut in the cupboard, he got very battered, so did another staff. The patients did it so they could take his keys to open the door. I think there was about twenty patients that ran away. Everybody was caught and brought back to Ward Seven. Some of them went to Carstairs prison.’

One patient’s more peaceful strategy hints that ingenuity and a good sense of humour can sometimes reap plentiful rewards.

‘The staff laid their keys down one time, on the table. And this chap who was crafty took the keys and hid them back in the toilet behind the cistern, so the staff couldna get them. And when the staff warna looking he opened the door and he ran away. And he posted the keys back – “Thank-you very much for all your keys,” he wrote.’

In 1957, the National Council for Civil Liberties publicly recognised those unnecessarily detained in hospital under the Mental Deficiency legislation had been held prisoner by a national travesty of justice. This at last acknowledged that the overwhelming majority of patients residing in long stay hospitals and institutions had been compelled to do so. Hopeful though the Council was that its campaign was of instigating a revolution in the system, it seemed society was not yet prepared for the infiltration of ‘defectives’ into wider society, and so Gogarburn’s doors remained firmly locked and bolted. For some residing on the wrong side of these it all became too much, and their previous failed attempts eventually found alternative vents for their frustration.

‘Someone set fire to the curtains in Ward One; it was one of the patients. They got everyone out in time but the ward had to be rebuilt, and the patients living in there had to go live in the nurses’ quarters, and the nurses had to go live in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital. So they changed the name of the building from the nurses’ quarters, to Gogar House, and that’s how it got its name.’

In Gogarburn Lives Jimmy tells an amusing story of another act of rebellion. ‘Well this patient was called George. We used to call him Corky the Cat. That was his nickname. I think George was annoyed with something Doctor Bailey said to him when he come round to see him in the hut at that time. And so George waited his time. When he was near the laundry. So he just got hold o him and he just put him in the hamper and shut the lid on it. And he put the strap or an iron bar to close it. And he padlocked him in. And Doctor Bailey was screaming to get out. But George got punishment for that. Very heavy punishment...’

The withdrawal response to the institution was expressed by Jimmy in far subtler and thoughtful ways, showing both patience and wisdom by keeping his cunning concealed and waiting until the moment was ripe to bring his ideas to the surface.

By the early 1970s, the social disadvantage endured for so long by people with disabilities could no longer be contained and increasing political pressure from all sides eventually erupted into collective action and protest aimed at changing society, not the individual. The welcome arrival of a new superintendent to replace Doctor Bailey's autocratic command, along with the transition into a new era of thought at long last set the wheels of change in motion to make Gogarburn a more permissible place to live. In this more emancipated climate, Jimmy played an integral role in making sure the long-suppressed voices of his fellow residents were heard. The energy accumulated from years of frustration provided a most efficient fuel to finally put his plans and aspirations into place.