John Harding - The Girl Who Couldn’t Read

‘Get the cover!’ she said to the other women.

They reached under the bath and pulled out a rolled-up length of canvas. The patient tried to scream again but it came out as a wounded-animal whimper that pierced both my ears and my heart.

‘Let me up, for the love of God,’ she begged. ‘The water is freezing. I cannot take a bath in this!’

O’Reilly grabbed the woman’s wrist with her free hand and placed it in a leather strap fixed to the side of the bath. One of the other women let go the canvas and repeated the operation on the other side, so that the woman was now firmly held in a sitting position. Then the attendant returned to the canvas, taking one side of it while her colleague took the other. I saw it had a number of holes ringed with brass along each edge. The woman stopped her screaming and watched wild-eyed as the attendants stretched it over the top of the bath, beginning at the end where her feet were, putting the rings over a series of hooks which I now saw were fixed along the bath under the outside rim. The woman was fighting frantically, trying to get up, but of course she couldn’t because of the wrist restraints, and when this proved to no avail she began thrashing about with her legs, which were under the canvas and merely kicked uselessly against it. O’Reilly stood back now, arms folded, on her face the grim satisfied smile of the practised sadist. In a matter of half a minute the canvas was secured snugly over the top of the bath, the edges so tight it would have been impossible for the woman to get a hand through even if they had not been shackled. At the very top end there was a little half circle cut into the canvas and from this the patient’s head protruded, but the opening was so tight she could not pull her head back down into the water and drown herself.

While this was happening the noise in the room was hellish, the woman’s screams and curses alternating with bouts of calm, when she sobbed and pleaded first with O’Reilly, then the other women and finally with Morgan. ‘Please, doctor, let me out, I beg you. Let me out and I promise I will be a good girl.’

This all came out staccato, for her teeth were chattering, leaving me in no doubt that the water was indeed as freezing as she claimed. When these appeals fell upon deaf ears, she began screaming again and pushing her knees vainly against the canvas, which was so tightly secured it moved scarcely at all.

One of the women went to a cupboard, took out a towel and gave it to Morgan. He dried his face and hands and tossed the towel to me and I did the same. Then he shrugged. ‘We may as well go now, nothing more to be done here.’

He strolled over to where our jackets hung, and began putting his on and I followed suit. I must have looked puzzled and he said something that I could not catch because of the screams of the woman echoing around the room. He rolled his eyes and motioned toward the door. O’Reilly strode over to it and unlocked and opened it and we passed through. The door clanged shut behind us with a finality that made me shiver and I thanked my lucky star that I was not on the wrong side of it, or one like it. The cries of the woman were instantly muffled and Morgan said, ‘She will soon quiet down. The water is icy cold and rapidly calms the hot blood that causes these outbursts.’

‘She seemed calm enough before she was put into the bath,’ I said, forgetting myself and then realising I had perhaps sounded a note of protest.

He began walking swiftly, so that again I had trouble keeping up. ‘Momentarily, yes, but she has been given to fits of violence, such as you witnessed a little of, ever since she arrived here a week ago. The hydrotherapy has a wonderfully quiescent effect. Another three hours in there and—’

‘ Three hours! ’

I could not help myself. It was unthinkable to me that you could put someone in freezing cold water in the fall and leave them like that for three hours.

He stopped and looked at me, taken aback by my tone. Before I had time to think about it, I raised my hand to cover the bruise and was suddenly conscious of how I must appear to him, with my too-small jacket and my bashed-about face.

‘I know it may seem harsh to the untrained spectator,’ he said, ‘but believe me it works ninety-nine per cent of the time. She’ll be as meek as a newborn lamb after this, I assure you. And I’d go so far as to wager that after another three or four such treatments there will be no more violent fits. We will have her under control.’

‘You mean she will be cured?’

He pursed his lips and moved his head from side to side, weighing up his reply. ‘Well, not exactly. Not as you probably mean.’ He began walking again, but this time slowly, as though the need to choose his words carefully forced him to slacken his pace. ‘We must be sure of our terms here, Shepherd. Now, she will not be cured in the sense that she can be released and live a normal and productive life. Immersing her in cold water will not repair a damaged brain. So from that point of view, no, not cured. But think of what madness involves. Who is most inconvenienced by mental affliction?’

‘Why, the sufferer, of course.’

‘Not so, or rather not necessarily so. Often the patient is in a world of her own, living a fantasy existence, in a complete fog, and does not even know where she is or that the mental confusion she feels is not the normal state of all mankind. No, in many – I would even go so far as to say most – cases, it is the people around her who endure far more hardship. The family whose life is disrupted. The children who are forced to put up with bouts of abuse and violence. The poor husband whose wife tries to hurt him or turns the home into a place of fear. The parents who are too old to restrain a daughter undergoing a violent episode. And, not least, us, the doctors and attendants whose duty it is to care for these unfortunate beings. So not a cure for the patient, but one for everyone else, whose lives are made better because the illness is being managed.’

We continued walking in silence for a minute or so.

‘So the patient can never resume her place in society, then?’ I asked at last.

‘I would not say never, no. After a period of restraint, of being shown again and again that making a nuisance or herself will gain her nothing, a patient will often become subdued. It is the same process as training an animal. The fear of more treatment leads to compliance. In the best cases it becomes the normal habit. Oh, I know some may not like to admit it, but it’s a tried and tested regimen. It worked for King George III of England, you know. He went mad, but after a course of such treatment the merest hint of restraint would cool his intemperance and he was able to take up the reins of government again for another twenty years.’

After our visit to the hydrotherapy room, Morgan took me on a brief tour of the institution. We began on the second floor, where the dormitories were arranged along a long corridor that must have run a good deal of the length of the building. Most of the women slept in large rooms accommodating twenty or so beds, although some were in smaller rooms, and a few were in isolation.

‘It may be that they are violent or that there is something about them, some habit or tic that is a nuisance to others that makes them a victim of violence, or simply that they continually make a racket and keep everyone else awake,’ Morgan explained. ‘We try to keep things as peaceful as possible.’

Each sleeping area had a room nearby where two attendants alternately slept and kept watch. ‘Is this to prevent the patients escaping?’ I asked.

‘Escaping? Escaping?’ He looked askance at me. ‘Good God, man, they cannot escape, because in order to do so they would first have to be prisoners. They are not; they are patients . They do not escape; they abscond. Or would do if we were to let them. Anyway, the sleeping quarters are locked at night so they cannot wander.’