Victorian Mental Health Care
In 2005 I discovered that one of my maternal great-grandfathers had been incarcerated in the North Riding Lunatic Asylum at Clifton for 27 years being locked up at the age of 48 and dying there aged 75. I wrote the poem below which I read on the BBC Radio York North Yorkshire Folk Programme where I was, at the time, Poet in Residence. It was only in 2007 that I examined his case notes at The Borthwick Institute of Historical Research at the University of York and discovered that my 2005 poem touched on what happened to him with considerable accuracy.
ANOTHER STORY
I stared out of the window.
I saw the walls of other lives.
I thought of my life.
I began to cry.
The road I had travelled was rutted mud and ice,
The road to travel was full of stones to be broken.
Even when the sky was blue and the gulls soared
I saw only the road behind, saw only the road before.
My body was weary with walking.
I carried a pack of troubles, mine and others.
The weight bowed my back like an old man.
Old before I was old. I was never young.
When I cried for my never youth
When I cried from the weight of my burden
When I cried and could not stop crying
They said the Moon was my mistress and I cried for her.
They took me away arms fast about me.
They shut me in a place of screams in the night
And shouting all day, day after day
For twenty-seven years I did not know.
Then death freed me.
Tell my story my shamed children never told.
Tell my story of times long past.
Cry a little for a lost life, as I cried.
Now, they will not imprison you for crying for me.
©Tony Morris 2 March 2005
