ABSTRACT
The lolly scramble was a feature of some days and held both for the amusement of the staff, who often described themselves as ‘going dippy ourselves, stuck on duty here all day’, and for the pleasure of the patients. The nurses, feeling bored because there hadn't been a recent fight, would fetch a bag of sweets from the tin which was brought every fortnight as part of the Social Security allowance for patients. The paper-lollies would be showered into the middle of the day room and it would be first come first served, with fights developing, people being put in strait-jackets, whistles blowing; and the tension which mounted and reached its peak at intervals both in the patients and in nurses who long ago had had to suppress any desire to ‘nurse’ and were now overworked, degraded, in many cases sadistic, custodians, found its release, for a while.
