Posted on 09/30/2007 12:46:27 PM PDT by BGHater
A WOMAN was locked up and “lost” for 70 years after being wrongly accused of stealing 13p.
Jean Gambell, 85, was “certified” indefinitely in 1937 over claims she had taken the cash while cleaning at a doctor’s surgery.
The money was found — but Jean still spent 70 years in a maze of care institutions.
She was “found” when brothers Alan, 66, and David, 63 — who thought she was dead — read a letter sent by a care home to their mother, who died 25 years ago.
David said: “I was about to throw it in the bin when I saw a name in the corner — Jean Gambell. I rang and they said our sister was there.”
The two brothers travelled from their homes in Liverpool to see Jean at the home in Macclesfield, Cheshire. Staff warned them she was deaf and may not remember them.
David said: “We were very nervous. We wrote on a piece of card ‘Hello Jean, we’re your brothers’. But she took one look at us and said, ‘Hello Alan, hello David’ — and flung her arms around us.”
He added: “Nowadays there are appeals — but back then a doctor could sign away a life with the stroke of a pen.
“They basically locked her up and threw away the key and she was stuck in the system.
“She just got moved from one institution to another.
“What a waste of a poor, innocent girl’s life.”
Jean had a stroke after meeting her brothers, believed to have been sparked by the shock of the reunion. She is said to be recovering.
No words.
Hillary is taking notes.
This is what you get when you put the government in charge of things.
An example of socialized medicine, at its extreme.
I’m not sure what any of that has to do with this. Unless of course you just wanted to bring it up for some odd reason. No matter what, there always seems to be someone who is eager to remind us all that we are not perfect either. OK, so noted. Now...can we just get on with the thread?
susie
"Three generations of imbeciles is enough." - Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in Buck v. Bell.
He was right. Nothing to be ashamed of.
Can someone explain to me how a person can recognize two men in their sixties, who were not even born when this woman was put away? Qhat part of reading comprehension am I not understanding?
Jean Gambell, 85, was “certified” indefinitely in 1937 over claims she had taken the cash while cleaning at a doctor’s surgery.
The money was found — but Jean still spent 70 years in a maze of care institutions.
Thirteen pence. Which she didn't even take. And if she had taken it, a verbal reprimand would've been an appropriate level of punishment -- not to be "certified" indefinitely when there was never anything wrong with her.
If ever a case merited a comment of "un-f******-believable," this would be it.
Obviously, while she had probably never met them before, somebody had told her she had two younger brothers, and what their names were. And she remembered that fact and those names.
‘This is what you get when you put the government in charge of things.’
No, that’s what you get when you combine govt with a family who don’t even enquire about, let alone visit their sister for 70 years!
Of course the report is in The Sun, a tabloid that never lets the facts get in the way of a story.
What I take from this is, if you get stuck in “the system,” you have given away any hope of living your life without intrusion and interference by complete strangers who care little about you. This woman’s case is like living in continual subservience to the welfare state all your life, only on a much grander scale.
L
“The System” are the very words that government employees use, especially prosecutors. I find it very disturbing. I feel sorry for this woman, what a shame.
“and the 40 year syphilis test on unknowing blacks (the “Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment”).”
Actually the blacks knew what was going on.
I do not claim to be a historian of Britain, but I don’t believe that Britain had socialized medicine in 1937.
I also believe that the same sort of treatment was possible in the US at the time.
‘I do not claim to be a historian of Britain, but I don’t believe that Britain had socialized medicine in 1937.
I also believe that the same sort of treatment was possible in the US at the time.’
Right on both counts, but it’s a good, emotive story to have moan about either way! :)
Oooo...snap!
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