Dangerous Asylums

Book excerpt: A successful London Welshman after the Great War tells his grand-daughter of the madness that infects the family blood. A former inmate at Denbigh Asylum throws herself under a train. A woman made notorious by killing her own child prepares herself for release, and a businesswoman touring a derelict hospital is troubled by the lingering horrors of its past. When Denbigh Hospital was opened in 1848, it was considered one of the most progressive and humane institutions in Wales, yet it was dogged by over-crowding and rumours of abuse. Now some of the leading writers in Wales tell its story, drawing on the records of patients long dead to give us a portrait of mental illness and care during the Victorian and Edwardian era. The North Wales Mental Health Research Project was established by Prof. David Healy and other clinicians and academics to explore the history of mental illness and treatment in north Wales, with support from Merfyn Jones, Hywel Williams, Ieuan Wyn Jones and others. Now they are joined by award-winning writers, Glenda Beagan, Carys Bray, Manon Steffan Ros, Simon Thirsk, Gee Williams, and others, in eight short stories that bring the hospital and its patients to vivid and compelling life.