“I think when I first worked there in 1981/1982, people were still in long dormitories with no spaces between the beds; every bed was the same.”

“In 1951, I think the age range was from 10 to 90.”

“Unit 2... that was a grim place before it was changed. It was almost akin to Hogarth’s drawing of Bedlam... where they sat on the floor, and in fact, one patient did get a broken femur there, through another one walking over him”

“[In the 1980s] there were still lots of very strict routines, like bedtimes. People had a strict bedtime and getting up time... there were so many people that it was difficult for the staff to give people more enriched lives... there would still be a lot of the wards that might have 20 people on, with just 2 or 3 members of staff. I think some people, if you’d asked them at the time, would have said that they did like it there...

Sometimes when when we’re not aware that our life can be better, we can think everything’s fine. So, it wasn’t that everybody was unhappy, it was just that you could see that people’s lives could be much fuller.”

“From the information I got from John, I wouldn’t have said that it was a particularly unhappy time, it was just an institutional time, in the ways that institutions are different.

I think the most stressful time would actually be being told he’d got to leave and that he couldn’t live there anymore. ”