Woman wrongly kept in mental hospital for 70 years - for stealing two shillings

Daily Mail ^

[2001convSVT]

You have that right! I vote against Big Government every time I can. No to government run anything!

[PAR35]

I would expect the guilty parties are all dead by now.

[PAR35]

Losing such indifferent family members is no great loss.

Any guesses as to what went on in England between 1939 and 1945?

And did you miss this? "she was moved to numerous care homes across the north-west of England"? It's a technique used in the federal prison system here to break contact between the prisoner and his family as a punitive measure. The slang term is 'diesel therapy'.

[IronJack]

For every one kept wrongly, there are a dozen who are NOT being kept but who SHOULD be. I mean, we’ve got Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Cynthia McKinney, Barbara Boxer, Rosie O’Donnell, ...

[Kevmo]

BMFLR.

There was a Barney Miller episode similar to this, but that was a comedy and this is deadly serious abuse of authority.

[Comstock1]

Well, there was this little thing called WWII that might have gotten in the way. Little thing liked bombed buildings, burned records, unrecorded evacuations, etc...

Just saying...

[109ACS]

Unbelieveable. And at the other extreme, here in the States, the mentally ill are dumped on the streets.

Thanks to the ACLU.

[Clock King]

Find the grave pf the doctor who put her there, dig up his bones, smash them, and then throw them in the garbage for dogs and rodents to gnaw on.

[scan59]

Read something or saw on TV once about a guy who’d been charged with a violent crime and had successfully plead insanity to avoid prison time. Was all happy and such until someone informed him at the mental institution that when doing prison time your sentence has a definite end. In a mental hospital they can keep you as long as they want.

[A Strict Constructionist]

A class system in operation. Truth is usually the victim if the accused is of a “lower” class. Typically British.

[A Strict Constructionist]

“the mentally ill are dumped on the streets.”

You can thank the lawyers and the liberals for that.

[Badeye]

Lost ‘in the system’ for 70 years?

Tell me again about the ‘wonderful’ system of socialized medicine....(eyes rolling)

[hoe_cake]

and the British are suppose to be so proper.

[UKrepublican]

This was before the NHS.

[krb]

If you haven’t done anything wrong you have nothing to worry about.

[UKrepublican]

At least the initial injustice......

[Navy Patriot]

Did the UK have socialized medical care in 1937?

[G Larry]

“...a doctor could sign away a life with the stroke of a pen.”

Just think how much better off the country would be if Ted had received the lobotomy, instead of his poor sister!

[Badeye]

How long has NHS had her bouncing around in the system then?

Too long, obviously.

Private medical doesn’t make that kind of mistake, if for no other reason than profit margins.

[Verloona Ti]

Actually, this happened in the USA until as late as the 1970s, maybe later in some states-to women. See Ann Jones' Women Who Kill : Seems that if a man and a woman (e.g) committed a bank robbery together and were caught, tried, and convicted, the man might get an imposedsentence of 3-5 years. But the woman might be in prison 20 years later. It was believed that women were "more susceptible" to rehabilitation methods, and so they were given 'indeterminate' or 'indefinite' sentences that could keep them locked up for decades (again, for crimes that might get a man only a few years), till they showed the responses the parole board thought all people with two XX chromosomes and a womb "should" show automatically.