Typhoid Women were kept in Asylum

asylum

a BBC investigation has revealed that nearly 50 women were locked in an isolation ward in a mental asylum in Surrey – not because they had a mental illness – but because they carried typhoid and were deemed a public health risk.

They were held at Long Grove Hospital – a mental asylum in Surrey – which started admitting carriers of typhoid as early as 1907 and continued through the 1940s and 1950s. Once admitted, those women never left.

When you think you have heard it all. All of the women came from the London area and between 1944 and 1957 three new carriers entered the unit each year. After the antibiotics came these women were detained in the hospital because of the state of their mental health. They were held there until 1992 when Long Grove finally closed.

With the discovery of antibiotics the number of typhoid carriers began to decline and in 1972 the isolation unit closed and most of the patients were transferred to other open wards in the hospital.

You can listen to a podcast interview with one of the former nurses on this article from BBC Today.

You can listen to a broadcast about this on BBC News UK here.