While researching Watnall Hall's Rolleston family graveyard, I discovered a mysterious third brother who was conspicuously absent from the graves. He is mentioned in early census records as a child but then disappears from the family records for over 60 years until his death in 1924.
So what happened to him and why the mystery?
 |
| The Rolleston graveyard in 2022 for Sir Lancelot's 175th anniversary |
 |
| Henry Rolleston c.1897 aged about 46 |
Lunatic Asylum
It seems poor Henry was consigned to a mental hospital in 1875 aged 24 and remained institutionalised until his death in 1924 aged 73. His "Previous Place of Abode" is listed as Wynburg, Cape of Good Hope, today a suburb of Cape Town, South Africa.
Today he would be described as "mentally subnormal" or with "learning disabilities" but in his day "weak-minded", "defective" or "idiot" were still used. He'd had this condition since childhood.
For reasons currently unknown, he was admitted to a private hospital in London called Northumberland House on 12th Jan 1875. He is listed as a "private" patient rather than a "pauper". It seems that the fee-paying private patients helped to subsidise the pauper patients.
Northumberland House was built as a private mental hospital in 1822 on the south bank of the New River on Green Lanes, opposite Finsbury Park. It was licensed as a lunatic asylum by 1829 and there are records of visits by officials from the "Metropolitan Commission in Lunacy" from that date.
 |
| c.1900 - Northumberland House private mental hospital |
Victorian Asylums
Perhaps surprisingly, from our 21st century perspective, Victorian attitudes to treating the mentally ill were quite progressive. There was a large programme of developing public lunatic asylums from 1808 onwards and Northumberland House seems to fit the style in which they were constructed in the early nineteenth century. It was purposely set in lovely gardens with a very grand country house style interior...
"The majority of asylums were purpose-built because of the belief that the insane were best treated away from their own homes in an environment which was specifically designed to meet their treatment requirements. Lunacy reformers and medical practitioners of the nineteenth century were largely concerned with therapeutic and humanitarian means of treating patients rather than promoting custodial regimes. This was manifested in a prominently held conviction that the asylum institution possessed inherently redemptive powers, drawn in large part from the ornamental landscape laid out for therapeutic uses, in which the building was firmly rooted. Superficially the purpose-built asylum estate appeared to be based on the model of the country house estate, which was still a popular and developing model of domestic residence for the wealthy classes."
"The Landscapes Of Public Lunatic Asylums, In England, 1808-1914", Sarah Rutherford, PhD Thesis, De Montfort University 2003
 |
| The spacious gardens at Northumberland House |
Many of the hospitals were built on spacious grounds in urban as well as rural locations, not only because more land was available, but also because space had therapeutic and practical value. One of the design principles laid out by the Victorian "Commissioners in Lunacy" stated that...
"An asylum should be placed on elevated ground and should command cheerful prospects, should be surrounded with land sufficient to afford outdoor employment for males, and exercise for all patients, and to protect them from being overlooked or disturbed by strangers."
 |
| 2010 - Holloway Sanatorium,Virgina Water, Surrey now a gated housing complex |
Transferred to the Holloway Sanatorium
Henry stayed at Northumberland House for over 20 years until 1st Dec 1897 when, aged 46, he was transferred to the even more grand Holloway Sanatorium in Virgina Water, Surrey. He was admitted by his brother Sidney.The sanatorium's meticulous case books are available online and list all the people admitted, including Henry as we'll see below. They often have pictures of the patients and give a full history of their symptoms and treatment. Some patient's issues would today be viewed much more sympathetically and include alcoholism, insomnia, homosexuality and "persistent masturbation". Many also had relatively short stays, akin to a short period of respite care, before being discharged.
The Holloway Sanatorium, set in 24 acres of private walled parkland, was built in 1885 by the pharmaceutical businessman and philanthropist Thomas Holloway.
Holloway is remembered for the two large institutions which he built in England, the Holloway Sanatorium and the Royal Holloway College, a college of the University of London in Englefield Green, Surrey. Both were designed by the architect William Henry Crossland, and were inspired by the Cloth Hall in Ypres, Belgium, and the Château de Chambord in the Loire Valley, France. They were founded by Holloway as "Gifts to the nation".
A French idea that plain walls were obnoxious to the mad caught Holloway's imagination and so every inch of wall is richly decorated including portrayals of small devils amidst the florid design. The initials of Holloway and his wife Jane figure in the ceiling designs of the entrance hall and his own especially designed coat of arms is celebrated in stained glass on the great stairway.
 |
| 1885 - Holloway Sanatorium opens |
Architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner regarded the two buildings as the "summit of High Victorian design" with their elaborate Franco-Gothic style and imposing and highly decorated exteriors and interiors. Like Northumberland House, Holloway was set in very grand ornamental gardens. It closed in 1980 and still stands today converted into luxury housing but unfortunately with new housing built in the grounds.
In Popular Culture
Before the 1994 housing conversion it lay semi-derelict and uncared for but found its niche as a gothic pop video location. The Cure shot the video for "Charlotte Sometimes" here and Bonnie Tyler did the surreal and dramatically backlit video for "Total Eclipse of the Heart". The travel writer Bill Bryson recorded that the sanatorium had a charm about it because "it was full of wandering lunatics". Bryson worked at the sanatorium in 1973 as a nurse. Many patients were allowed to wander freely down to the shops and back, mingling on equal terms with the locals, who affectionately referred to the institution as "the sanny."
 |
| The Holloway Sanatorium as shown on the inside front cover of Holloway's Almanac and Family Friend (1892). |
Daily Life for Henry
It was considered very important that the patients should occupy themselves to take their mind off their problems. There were leisure activities such as tennis, croquet and billiards and a recreation hall for concerts and parties. There were trips to Ascot and Henley and cricket matches. There was a seaside branch where patients went for short stays. The men lived in one part of the building and the women in another, but they came together for entertainments and outings.
 |
| 2006 - The Holloway Sanatorium converted into a gated residential community with luxury housing. It is grade 1 listed. |
Henry Rolleston's Patient Record
It is in the handwritten pages of the Holloway's 1897 case book that we finally meet Henry face-to-face and learn why he was admitted. On the date of his admission he is described as "weak-minded and child-like" and has been so since childhood. It adds... "He is quite contented to be under control and restraint, is childishly happy and thinks this is a most lovely place to live in. His memory is very defective, does not remember how long he was at Northumberland House or how old he is. Is quiet and well-behaved. He eats and sleeps well."
 |
| Henry Rolleston pictured c.1897 on his Holloway patient record |
In the subsequent months and years, Henry's condition does not alter very much.
His character and thoughts start to emerge from the notes though and there are occasional flashes of something deeper perhaps too easily dismissed by the staff. One doctor notes... "Talks nonsense about a "pneumatic sole" for his boot, he has an unpleasant habit of buttonholing you and boring you with silly, rambling conversation." Was Henry on to a prototype Doc Marten boot?! They weren't invented until 1945.
His conversation is generally described as "harmless chattering", "silly and purposeless" or "long-drawn out, rambling and incoherent" but when a new doctor's handwriting appears in 1907 he comments "will talk quite rationally on some subjects but is deluded on others".
Seaside visits
His records show him leaving Holloway for regular visits to "Hove Villa" near Brighton lasting several weeks. His first visit was in Sept 1898. This was a summer seaside convalescent home bought by the sanatorium in June 1891.
 |
| St. Ann's convalescent home with Poole harbour in the distance |
In 1912 Hove Villa was replaced by a new, £46,500 purpose-built seaside convalescent home at Canford Cliffs near Bournemouth in Dorset. It was like a grand hotel overlooking the sea and had 14 acres of grounds. It was was named St Ann's Hospital (after St Ann's Heath, the location of Holloway Sanatorium). In his later years Henry goes on extended stays to this new seaside branch of the sanatorium.
Health and treatments
A common theme is his "enormous appetite for food". His notes also say.. "...has to be watched at mealtimes as is in the habit of bolting his food. In good health.". Unfortunately though this makes him... "grossly fat and flabby". He develops diabetes and a suffers with a large and troublesome hernia. In later years he developed a fear of some impending catastrophe or of being burned alive during the night. There is no treatment mentioned for his mental condition, only his general health ailments are treated.
Henry's Death and Burial Place
Henry remained a patient at Holloway for 26 years until his death aged 73 in 1924 on 15th June. He is buried nearby at Christ Church Churchyard, Virginia Water. He outlived his sister Eleanor and her husband Robert Tennant. Like Henry, they too lived in the London area and were both buried in the family graveyard at Watnall. It is a shame Henry was not given the same final honour.
Despite his lifelong care in specialist, state of the art facilities, which was no doubt a large expense for the Rolleston family to bear, his burial place perhaps indicates a lingering element of shame that shadowed poor Henry Rolleston even after his death.
 |
| Henry Rolleston perhaps c.1918 from his Holloway patient case notes |
---------- END ----------
Notes and Sources
Ancestry.com - various documents to do with Henry Edward Rolleston (subscription required)
Northumberland House
Northumberland House
By Stevie Smith
I was always a thoughtful youngster,
Said the lady on the omnibus,
I remember Father used to say,
You are more thoughtful than us.
I was sensitive too, the least thing
Upset me so much,
I used to cry if a fly
Stuck in the hatch.
Mother always said,
Elsie is too good,
There’ll never be another like Elsie,
Touch wood.
I liked to be alone,
Sitting on the garden path,
My brother said he’d never seen a
Picture more like Faith in the Arena.
They were kindly people, my people,
I could not help being different,
And I think it was good for me
Mixing in a different element.
The poor lady now burst out crying
And I saw her friend was not a friend but a nurse
For she said, Cheer up duckie the next stop is ours,
They got off at Northumberland House.
This great House of the Percies
Is now a lunatic asylum,
But over the gate there still stands
The great Northumberland Lion.
This family animal’s tail
Is peculiar in that it is absolutely straight,
And straight as a bar it stood out to drop after them
As they went through the gate.
November 1964
Holloway Sanatorium
https://www.exploringsurreyspast.org.uk/themes/subjects/living/1-2/
Patients Case Books https://wellcomecollection.org/works/sbssedcn/items?canvas=190
Henry Rolleston's patient record https://wellcomecollection.org/works/zjqxubuy/items?canvas=547
Henry Rolleston's case notes continue from Sept 1907 in "Case book A, p.275" which cannot (yet) be found.
Henry Rolleston's additional case notes, "Supplementary volume of case notes on various patients. Gives cross-references to original case note volume. The notes cover the period Jan 1911 - Oct 1926" pages 45, 50, 53 and 169: They continue until his death in 1924.
Lost hospitals - https://ezitis.myzen.co.uk/holloway.html
The conversion of Holloway Sanatorium - Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , April 1997, pp. 232
St Anns, Bournemouth https://pooleshealthrecord.wordpress.com/2023/03/01/the-origins-of-st-anns-hospital-poole/
Mental Illness
Those They Called Idiots: The Idea of the Disabled Mind from 1700 to the Present Day Hardcover by Simon Jarrett (Author)
BBC Radio 4 - Thinking Allowed - Learning Disabilities
Henry Rolleston's documents trail
 |
| 1851 - Henry's baptism by his uncle Rev John Rolleston of Burton Joyce at Greasley St. Mary's |
 |
| 1875 - Henry's admission to Northumberland House private mental hospital, London |
 |
| 1897 - Henry's transfer to Holloway (actually aged 46) |
 |
| 1924 - Henry's burial record at Virginia Water, Surrey |
Comments
Post a Comment