Another World

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Record Number: 13.100

Record Type: Text

Caption:

This is a photograph entitled: The Royal Albert Institution. The view is from the current site of Haverbreaks estate where Malcolm Alston, a former nurse, grew up in the 1940s and 50s. This would have been an earlier time, maybe the 1910s or 1920s (unlikely to be before these times when the hospital was called The Royal Albert Asylum). With further research we may be able to date it more accurately. (© Lancashire County Museums Service Ref. LMRAH 389-1)

Summary:

Malcolm Alston, who became a Charge Nurse at the Royal Albert Hospital, recalls growing up near to the institution in the 1940s and 50s. As he put it, he lived in the ‘shadow’ of the Royal Albert. In the family home on Haverbreaks estate one of residents did their garden. When he himself, in the 1960s, came to work at the hospital his memory was of it being ‘a completely new world for me.’ As a child he was unaware of what the place was:
‘It was just another world. Something behind a wall… that we didn’t know anything about… I wasn’t as a young lad, I wasn’t even curious about. It was a place that we used to walk round on the way to Scotforth School and that was it.’
(Recorded Interview on September 12th 2005 - Ref 9.1)

Notes:

Keywords:

Child's View Lancaster View Life Before Hospital 1940s 1950s

Patients' Work - Gardening Buildings

Royal Albert Institution Photograph

Biography:

Name: Malcolm Alston
Gender: Male
Date of Birth:1940
Role: Nurse
From: 1964 To 1992