Padded Cell

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Record Number: 11.100

Record Type: Video

Caption:

This video was shot on February 19th 1988 when a Royal Albert reminiscence group walked around the hospital. Frank Cochrane, who was still resident at the time, talks about the padded cell (on Ashton Wing Lower) used for male patients deemed to have transgressed.

Here is a transcript of what Frank says in the video clip:

Frank: There’s a padded cell there and anybody that was very bad they got pushed in here.
NI: Was that before or after it was a barber’s? Jim was saying this used to be a barber’s.
Frank: Yes after padded cell.
NI: So it was a barber’s after it’s been a padded cell?
Frank: Yes.
NI: So when was that Frank?… It must have been quite a time ago.
Frank: Oh yes. It was Doctor Thomas that got it closed. He didn’t believe in it… See you was in here all day and all night – in there, you know. It was terrible for them. And the place used to smell of rubber. Thick rubber like that it was, all over. And bars on the windows.
NI: So who would be put in here? Was it just people from Ashton Lower or people from all over the hospital?
Frank: All over. If they misbehaved their selves and got very bad like chucked them in here, just chucked in, picked up and - !
H: Thrown in.
NI: Were there other padded cells in the hospital?
Frank: There was one over the female side.

Notes:

Keywords:

Male               Barbers            Routines                Female               Punishment                              

Padded Cell Photograph         Seclusion