ABSTRACT
The front gate to Severalls led to an imposing facade; from here the front doors opened into a long corridor along which were located the medical superintendent's offices, the committee meeting room, the clerk and steward'sl offices, financial and administrative offices. It then divided into two branches which both bifurcated the male side from the female side and enclosed the kitchens, the stores, and the recreation hall. Matron's offices and flat ran along one side in the middle, the chief male nurse's (earlier, the inspector) on the other. At the far end was the pharmacy, the operating theatre and what was first the deputy medical superintendent's house, and later doctors' flats. Changes were made to these arrangements and the location of different offices from time to time, but throughout its life, this was the corridor where administrators and doctors met the outside world, both in person and in paper, a place where patients were rarely seen (at least during the first half of the century), but where decisions were made about their treatments, certification, rehabilitation, departures or, indeed, their deaths.
