Curing Queers': Mental Nurses and Their Patients, 1935-74
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‘Curing queers’ ‘Curing queers’ Mental nurses and their patients, 1935–74 ‘This challenging and engaging Drawing on a rich array of source materials book will inform and, on occasion, including previously unseen, fascinating (and astonish those with an interest often quite moving) oral histories, archival and in mental health problems and news media sources, ‘Curing queers’ examines service delivery. This book is a the plight of men who were institutionalised in tour de force and should be read British mental hospitals to receive ‘treatment’ by everyone with an interest in for homosexuality and transvestism, and the mental health care and by all perceptions and actions of the men and women who recognise their democratic who nursed them. responsibility to ensure that those in need are assisted and neither The book begins in 1935 with the first official deceived nor abused.’ report on the use of aversion therapy to combat homosexual desire and continues Peter Nolan, Professor of Mental until 1974, when the American Psychiatric Health Nursing (Emeritus), Association removed homosexuality from its Staffordshire University diagnostic manual as a category of psychiatric ‘…an accomplished, lucid, disorder. It thereby covers a critical period in important account, well British queer history during which the reigning contextualised and full of public and professional discourse surrounding fascinating and often quite moving homosexuality shifted from crime to sickness to (and horrific) detail. Dickinson is tolerance. The majority of nurses followed orders to be congratulated on a very fine in administering treatment in spite of the zero piece of scholarship that deserves a success-rate in ‘straightening out’ queer men, wide readership.’ but a small number surreptitiously defied their Brian Lewis, Professor of History, superiors by engaging in fascinating subversive McGill University, Canada behaviours. This book provides an in-depth examination of both groups, and offers some ‘The book provides a beautifully intriguing insights into the hidden gay lives of balanced argument to make visible some of the nurses themselves, and the inevitable the brutal “treatments” and care tension between their own identities and desires practices people were subjected and the treatments they administered to others. to in the name of biomedicine and ‘Curing queers’ makes a significant and substantial Dickinson psychiatry. The text gives voice to contribution to the history of nursing and the the courage of queer people and history of sexuality, bringing together two practitioners to resist these norms sub-disciplines that combine only infrequently. [and] succeeds in giving an account Therefore, it will be of interest to scholars and of the advance towards gender and students in nursing, history, gender studies, health sexual plurality.’ ‘CURING care ethics and law, as well as the general reader. Laetitia Zeeman, Senior Lecturer in Mental Health, University of Tommy Dickinson is Lecturer in Nursing at the Brighton University of Manchester QUEERS’ Cover image: Patient receiving electrical aversion therapy at www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Nerthern Hospital, UK. Photograph reproduced Mental nurses and by kind permission of Times Newspapers Ltd/ ISBN 978-0-7190-9588-7 NewsSyndication.com their patients, 1935–74 9 780719 095887 Tommy Dickinson ‘Curing queers’ This series provides an outlet for the publication of rigor- ous academic texts in the two closely related disciplines of Nursing History and Nursing Humanities, drawing upon both the intellectual rigour of the humanities and the practice-based, real-world emphasis of clinical and professional nursing. At the intersection of Medical History, Women’s History and Social History, Nursing History remains a thriving and dynamic area of study with its own claims to disciplinary distinction. The broader discipline of Medical Humanities is of rapidly growing significance within academia globally, and this series aims to encourage strong scholarship in the burgeoning area of Nursing Humanities more generally. Such developments are timely, as the nursing profession expands and generates a stronger disciplinary axis. The MUP Nursing History and Humanities series provides a forum within which practitioners and humanists may offer new findings and insights. The international scope of the series is broad, embrac- ing all historical periods and including both detailed empirical studies and wider perspectives on the cultures of nursing. Previous titles in this series: Who cared for the carers? A history of the occupational health of nurses, 1880–1948 Debbie Palmer ‘CURING QUEERS’ Mental nurses and their patients, 1935–74 TOMMY DICKINSON Manchester University Press Copyright © Tommy Dickinson 2015 The right of Tommy Dickinson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 978 0 7190 9588 7 hardback First published 2014 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow To Mum, for all that you are and In memory of Mrs Lyle, a truly inspirational teacher I can no other answer make but thanks, And thanks, and ever thanks. (William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night) Contents List of figures page viii Note on terminology x Acknowledgements xiii List of abbreviations xvi Prologue xviii Introduction 1 1 Oppression and suppression of the sexual deviant, 1939–1967 39 2 Work and practice of mental nurses, 1930–1959 91 3 ‘Subordinate nurses’ 145 4 ‘Subversive nurses’ 179 5 Liberation, 1957–1974 200 Concluding remarks 231 Epilogue 241 Appendix: biographies of interviewees 244 Bibliography 250 Index 273 vii Figures Front cover: Patient receiving electrical aversion therapy at Nerthern Hospital, UK. (Photograph reproduced by kind permission of Times Newspapers Ltd/NewsSyndication.com) 1 Male attendants at Bristol Lunatic Asylum, c.1910s (Photograph reproduced by kind permission of the Glenside Hospital Museum, Bristol) page 26 2 Side-room at Glenside Hospital, Bristol (Photograph reproduced by kind permission of the Glenside Hospital Museum, Bristol) 68 3 The Sunday Pictorial: ‘“Twilight” [homosexual] Men – Now They Can Be Cured’ (Article reproduced with permission from the Trinity Mirror Group, London) 71 4 Electrical aversion therapy (Photograph reproduced by kind permission from Nursing Times) 75 5 Walter Freeman performing a leucotomy in 1949 (Photograph reproduced by kind permission of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection, Museum of History & Industry, Seattle, Washington, USA) 101 6 Male ward c.1946 (Photograph reproduced by kind permission of the Glenside Hospital Museum, Bristol) 109 7 Communal bathroom at Glenside Hospital, Bristol c.1950s (Photograph reproduced by kind permission of the Glenside Hospital Museum, Bristol) 111 8 Female ward c.1960s (Photograph reproduced by kind permission of the Glenside Hospital Museum, Bristol) 122 viii List of figures 9 Mental nurses c.1950s (Photograph reproduced by kind permission of the Glenside Hospital Museum, Bristol) 169 10 Sunday Times ‘Fears Over Aversion Therapy Grow: Using Shock Tactics to Bend the Mind’ (Article reproduced with permission from Times Newspapers Ltd/ NewsSyndication.com). 221 The inclusion of places or people who appear in the photographs in this book does not imply anything about their sexual orientation or their involvement with treatments for sexual deviations, either now or then. Every effort has been made to trace copyright owners of the images used in this book and anyone claiming copyright should get in touch with the author. ix Note on terminology Homosexuality At this stage, in books on queer life at least, it is customary to offer a note about terminology, as finding appropriate language with which to discuss the historical organisation of male sexual practices and identi- ties is particularly challenging. Matt Houlbrook argues that the terms ‘gay’/‘homosexual’ and ‘straight’/‘heterosexual’ are modern terms, and position such practices within a specific interpretive framework that cannot be applied easily to the past. Indeed, prior to the early 1970s, many men who had sex with other men did not consider themselves to be gay. The word only came into popular usage in the United Kingdom with the advent of Gay Liberation during the 1970s. Different labels were given to these men in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and included ‘mollies’, ‘sodomites’, ‘inverts’, ‘maryannes’, ‘homosexuals’, ‘queens’, ‘queans’, ‘trade’, ‘gays’, ‘artistic’, ‘so’, ‘queers’, and ‘TBH’ – ‘to be had’. However, these labels were not necessarily synony- mous, with each representing a different understanding of identity and desire. Therefore, I have used the term ‘queer’ in the title of this book to reflect queer in its broadest sense – not to collapse people together but to mean those considered queer in whatever (gendered or sexualised) ways. However, for many men