Towers Hospital
| Towers Hospital | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Opened | 1869 |
| Closed | 2005 |
| Current Status | Preserved |
| Building Style | Corridor Plan |
| Architect(s) | Edward Stephens |
| Alternate Names |
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History
The Leicester Borough Lunatic Asylum was opened on 2nd September 1869. The building, designed by the Borough Surveyor Edward Loney Stephens, could accommodate 300 patients. Extensions were added in 1883 and 1890, increasing capacity to 581 patients. In 1919 the asylum was renamed Leicester City Mental Hospital, and records show that by 1928 patients numbered 375 men and 569 women. By 1932 the number of staff had increased so much that a Nurses Home had to be built. In the following year overcrowding on the women’s side of the hospital was noted as being “somewhat serious”, and so again the hospital was extended. During the 1940s the number of patients grew to over 1,200, and in 1947 this by now extensive facility was renamed the Towers Hospital.
As an administrative institution, the Towers Hospital held regular meetings with staff and with staff in other Leicester Health Institutions. There was also a General Meeting held in London which served as an assessment of mental health care throughout the country.
Although in the 18th century mental asylums had become synonymous with barbarity and abuse, with the illegitimate confinement of the sane and the inhuman living conditions, some philanthropists endeavoured to bring these misdemeanours to light. In 1808 it had been made law that each county was responsible for erecting an asylum which would be publicly funded. Of course, Leicester already had its county asylum by the time the Borough asylum was erected in 1869.
In the early days there were teams of ‘hospital visitors’ who regularly inspected the premises to make sure that the buildings and hospital regimes were appropriate to patients’ needs. On November the 6th, 1873, inspectors reported that patients’ food was “of a good quality and well cooked with the exception of the milk, which instead of fresh milk, as required by the contract, was found to be skimmed milk diluted with water”. In 1938 it was noted that Francis Dixon Lodge (which stood where Humberstone Heights golf club is) had birds in cages, a skittle alley, and even a bowling green, that proved very popular with the male patients. It was also noted that the hospital had a cinema, which in the afternoon gave carefully chosen screenings suitable for the more disturbed patients.
As with most similar institutions, the asylum had its own farm which produced much of the fruit, vegetables and meat the asylum needed. Patients were used extensively on the farm for labour; a practice, which at the time, was considered a kind of occupational therapy. However, this ceased in the 1960s when it was felt that it was instead exploitation of patients; soon afterwards the farms ceased to operate. At some point, probably around the middle of the 20th Century, The Towers Hospital acquired an ominous stigma in local mythology. Sometimes, if people were considered to be different or ‘a little strange’ they were said to have “escaped from The Towers”.
The Towers Hospital remained on the original site at Humberstone until its eventual closure in 2005. The site is currently being re-developed, and some of the original asylum buildings have become residential housing. Leicester Partnership Trust has launched The Towers Hospital Legacy Project, which will “combine a physical and online collection and historic record”. This will include documenting personal recollections, both positive and negative, from ex Towers Hospital patients and staff.
