abandoned insane asylums

Whittingham Hospital

London's Whittingham Hospital was once the largest mental institution in Britain, and it was a pioneer in the use of electroencephalograms. But the hospital's legacy was forever tainted in 1965, when a series of bizarre allegations against the staff of the St. Luke's division began to emerge. Over the next few years, these allegations began to spill out into the mainstream press, and the papers jumped on claims that patients were fed mixed-together food as "slops," that some were given only bread and jam to eat, that they were locked out in the courtyard during inclement weather, that they were put to bed wearing only vests, that some patients were locked out of the bathrooms. One patient alleged that staff members would sometimes apply a "wet towel treatment" to patients, twisting a wet towel around a patient's neck until the patient lost consciousness. Others claimed that patients were punched and subsequently locked in a storeroom. One claimed that two nurses had poured alcohol onto the slippers of one patient and the dressing gown of another and then set both on fire.

The allegations were routinely denied by the staff, but both the head nurse and the matron retired as a result of the scandal. And the official inquiry into the matter came after a nurse was convicted for manslaughter after one of the elderly patients he had assaulted died. The hospital closed in 1995, and most of the buildings on the premises are still standing.