We welcome contributions to Asylum Years, please use the email address below. We are happy to advise or assist you if you'd like that. All contributions may be edited for length and detail, but we always seek to preserve your intention, and we will let you see the final version before it appears. While there are no plans, at present, for a follow-up book, every item on these pages would be considered for such a book, and should that happen, we'll be in touch.
Contributions to all these sections are welcome:
Picture Galleries - History in pictures.
Eye Witness - Memories from the aylum.
In The Media - St. Augustine's in the news.
Treatments - Unusual, unorthodox or esoteric
Contributions are published anonymously, but contributors are listed here. Pictures are credited (unless anonymity is requested)
Robert Hayward was employed as a Nursing Assistant in January 1972 and became a student nurse in May of the same year, qualifying in July 1975. Like all students, he did a series of three month placements on admission, long-stay and geriatric wards as they were called at the time. He also did a spell on the adolescent unit, medical ward and was part of the first set to do a community placement. He worked briefly as a staff nurse on Cypress Ward before leaving to take up a post at the Royal Free Hospital in London. Whilst a student he undertook a survey on ward teaching (with Ray Rowden) and secretly published the “Underground Echo” a leaflet criticising the hospital management that was circulated throughout the hospital. He contributed to the second Critique on policy and gave oral evidence to the Inquiry in 1975. Robert graduated from the University of Kent in 1984 with a BA (Hons) in Social Psychology and Social Policy. He worked at Leeds Polytechnic and Bradford University before co-founding the Hamlet Trust which promoted and developed self-help initiatives in Central & Eastern Europe, The Caucuses and parts of Central Asia. He has published articles on mental health policy and is (with Dr Peter Barham) author of Relocating Madness (1995).
Andrew Heenan started his career in 1970, as a Nursing Assistant, and qualified as RMN in 1973. He left St Augustine’s in 1975, having worked in many wards and departments. While an RGN student nurse at the Kent & Canterbury Hospital, he provided documents and gave oral evidence at the St. Augustine’s Inquiry. Taking a break from the NHS, Andrew studied for his BA (Hons) in Sociology and Politics & Government, then returned to nursing, specialising in cancer nursing at the Royal Marsden Hospital, then went on to manage the commissioning of a new Bone Marrow Transplant Unit at the Royal Free Hospital. A change in direction led to becoming Clinical Editor at Nursing Times in 1988, followed by launching the Journal of Wound Care, and relaunching Professional Nurse, and later becoming commissioning Editor of the Nursing Times web site. While working at Nursing Times, Andrew was also a Trustee for The Hamlet Trust, and among other projects, he worked undercover at a psychiatric facility in Greece (‘Still Life on Leros’, Nursing Times, 1993). Throughout the 1990s, he kept in touch with the NHS by periodic agency nursing, including undercover journalism as an agency nurse at several hospitals for a documentary on agency nursing for Channel 4’s Dispatches (1995). Finally, after several years nursing at St Thomas’ Hospital, Andrew returned to Kent, working on the Bowel Cancer Screening programme. Now long retired, he still lives in Canterbury.
Carol Lewis trained between 1967 and 1970, leaving soon after the result of the Final exams to train as an SRN in Sussex.
Nigel Warton was a student nurse at Augustine’s Hospital 1971-1974; he also worked as a staff nurse during the time of the Inquiry. He gave supportive written and verbal evidence to the Inquiry Panel. Advised that his career progression in mental health was blocked, he left the NHS and worked for many years in nursing homes, caring for elderly people with dementia.
Plus anonymous contributions.
09 February 2025
