So very, very sad...

 
Over the weekend, I was searching around online for old photos and information on some of the long-closed Working Men's Clubs and other venues that used to be part of the once booming Worcester Billiards & Snooker Leagues. Armed with a fading memory and some old League handbooks I was dismayed to find little or no reference to most of the old haunts we used to visit.
 
However, one venue that cropped up a lot was "Powick Hospital" (formerly: Worcester County Pauper and Lunatic Asylum).
 

 
Up until the hospital closed in 1989, the Staff Club entered a team in the League.
 
On the few occasions I played there, I can vividly remember what a thoroughly sad and depressing place this old relic of the past was. With its walled enclosures and bars on some of the windows, its austere and imposing aspects always reminded more of a prison than a hospital.
 

 
Part of my strummaging around led to my discovering the following YouTube videos showing an episode of World In Action from 1968. Filmed partly inside the hospital's notorious 'annexe' and Ward 13F, the documentary shows the unbelievably dire conditions  the 'inmates' had to put up with - poor hygiene, no privacy, no dignity and little respect.
 
It's absolutely hocking that such conditions were not only permitted, but were in fact commonplace in many of the Victorian 'asylums' still operating until relatively recently.
 
Here are the videos if you're interested, they're not an easy watch but it's hard to believe scenes like these were nothing particularly remarkable just a generation ago.
 

 

 
 
Watching the film brought a tear or two to my eye, most poignant was remembering that not long after this documentary was filmed, my dear old dad received treatment for severe clinical depression as a resident of the very same Powick Hospital. Thankfully, he was looked after really well, and never saw the inside of the 'annexe'.
 
As I was just 6 at the time, my mum shielded me from the experience as much as possible, although I do remember visiting my dad once; they had thoughtfully arranged for us to join him in the hospital gardens so I didn't actually have to go inside the place.
 
This still from the first video (from around 10:50) shows one of the activities in which I know my dad participated:
 

 
 
As it happens, I still have one of the three stools he made during his stay...
 

 
 
As part of his therapy, my dad was also encouraged to paint and draw, and I still have two much-cherished pencil sketches he drew while a patient...
 

 

 
 
I wonder just how much the treatment of those suffering with their mental health has improved since the dark days when the documentary was made. And I wonder how, in 40 or 50 years time, people will look back and view our current 'modern' methods of treatment.
 
At least that god-forsaken 'hospital' is no more - after sitting empty for a while, the site was developed for housing, and seems to encourage the patronage of owners of Porsche Boxsters and Range Rovers.
 
How times change.
 
 

I know it's nowhere near as bad, but I always remember my short stay in the RVI children's ward in Newcastle in the 70's as being very depressing because of how antiquated and institutional the place looked. Despite the attempts to brighten the place up with paintings of Disney characters on the cold stone walls, it still felt like a borstal. Thankfully the nurses were quite nice.

I'll second what Rain said about the sketches, they're great! I wish I could draw like that.

 
Hey guys, thanks for the kind words about my dad
 
He wasn't really much of an artist in the 'creative' sense. He was a engineering draughtsman by trade and worked designing (mainly crushing/compacting machines at Heenan & Froude) and producing technical drawings and engineering blueprints.
 
As far as memory serves me, the two drawings I have from when he was in hospital were copied from postcards.
 
My dear aunt Diana was the real artist in the family. Her sketches and paintings were incredible pieces of work, and as many of you will already be aware, she was also a gifted viola player, who performed for many years as a member of the CBSO.
 
 

Lovely drawings Steve, and that stool is work of art too. They may have been copies from postcards, but he obviously had a great eye for detail.
 
I can't bring myself to watch those vids..my grandfather Sid Evans (Queen Victoria Rifles) was mustard-gassed at Ypres in WWI, and suffered with severe PTSD (as we now know it) afterwards. Eventually he ended up in Coney Hill Hospital near Gloucester, which I suspect was similar to Powick; it was referred to as a 'mental hospital'. I never went there, but he would get a bus to visit us every two weeks, and I can just about remember him, he died in 1977.

 
Having done a bit more research, I came across this rather interesting article that appeared in The Telegraph.
 
Such a coincidence that the first recording of these works was made with members of the CBSO (as mentioned above, the orchestra my aunt played with). What ties it all neatly together is that I live just over a mile away from Elgar's birthplace!
 
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The sound of Elgar’s dances for mental patients
 
Finally collected on disc, the recordings of a young Elgar's shunned   compositions for a Worcester asylum's staff band are insightful pointers to his future style.
 

 
In the late 19th century, most aspiring young English composers wanted to   study abroad, preferably at a German conservatoire.
 
But Edward Elgar’s family hadn’t the funds for foreign travel, and in 1879, at   the age of 22, Elgar took up the post of bandmaster at the Worcester County and City Lunatic Asylum, in the village of Powick.
 
The asylum’s resident physician, Dr Sherlock, practised an early form of music   therapy. Each Friday evening, his patients danced to music performed by a 22-piece band of asylum staff.
 
It was a tricky ensemble to write for: the regular forces of piccolo, flute,   clarinet, cornet, euphonium, strings and piano were occasionally   supplemented by trombone and viola. But during his five years in the post,   Elgar composed a steady stream of quadrilles, polkas and minuets.
 
For more than a century, these early works lay forgotten at his birthplace   until the conductor Barry Collett found a dusty collection of volumes, stamped with the Powick Hospital insignia, and realised that the handwritten manuscripts must be the Powick Asylum music.
 
When he suggested performing the works with his amateur orchestra, the Rutland Symphonia, the trustees of the time were shocked, he says. “'My dear boy,’ they said, 'you can’t do that! We can’t have the composer of Gerontius and the Symphonies being seen to have written this juvenile rubbish’.”
 
Eventually they relented and in 1988, the year that Powick Asylum was closed, Elgar’s music was performed once again in the place for which it had been written.
 
“One of the thrills of my life was thinking: 'This music is coming to life for the first time in over 100 years,’” Barry says. “It was obvious that it wasn’t juvenile rubbish at all. It was a step towards greatness.”
 
A further quarter-century was to pass before these early works received their first professional recording. But now the Innovation Chamber Ensemble, drawn from the players of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, have recorded them with Collett conducting.
 
They are, he says, “not great, forgotten masterpieces, but pointers to the future by a young composer in the first flush of youthful exuberance.
 
“Some are quirky, some are foot-tapping and some are full of grace. I love them all.
 
“The fact that he didn’t study at a German conservatoire forced him to become original, and that is the astonishing thing. You can see him here, finding his own style.”