Networked Knowledge - Media Reports

[This edited version of the report has been prepared by Dr Robert N Moles]

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On 28 July 2008 the BBC reported "Typhoid women were kept in asylum"

It said at least 43 female typhoid carriers were locked up for life in a mental hospital, the BBC has learned. The women were held at Long Grove asylum in Epsom, Surrey, in the period between 1907 and its closure in 1992. They had recovered from the disease but still excreted the bacterium and posed a public health risk.

Nursing staff told a BBC investigation that some of the women may have been sane when they were admitted but went mad because of their incarceration. Most of the records from the hospital were destroyed after it shut down.

However, former nurses have told the BBC how the asylum was run like a prison. Even after the advent of antibiotic treatments in the 1950s, the women were detained in the hospital because of the state of their mental health.

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