ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at some of the historical details which emerged in the group through the processes of personal and joint reminiscence. It explains those accounts respectively with personal revelations from elsewhere, and with local, documented accounts of past institutions and regimes. Margaret’s account reflects the first hand experiences of people in other institutions where a strict regime of work operated, and where punishments, such as extra scrubbing duties, solitary confinement and loss of privileges were everyday occurrences. Margaret was ‘put away’ as a child of 14 into Cell Barnes Hospital because, in the language of the time, she was ascertained as ‘backward’ at school. Family life had its difficulties, but Margaret could remember quite a few details of home and village life in the years prior to the start of her hospital career. However, there were other consequences of the vendetta for Margaret. She was very fond of her father.
