Dear Thomas

Sheila Templeton

Or Tommy. Maybe Tam. What does your wife call you?
There’s no clue in your case notes, copious though they are
nor do we know if you have children, or even grand-weans.

Were they scared? Did their nana hurry them next door
as you spat and bit, tore your clothes, yelled abuse at her
sure she’d poisoned you…and worse. For three whole days
you ranted, until she could take no more. Who did she get
to help? You’re not a big man, but still…dangerous to others
written copperplate clear. Thank goodness Father Donoghue
stands six feet in his stocking-soles and sees no censure
in manhandling one of his flock when needs must.

And you’d not slept for these three whole days. Oh Thomas,
what sleep was there for you in the East House at Gartnavel
your £400 per annum pauper rates paid by Old Monkland Parish
one sheet per bed all you were allowed the whole year long.
I hope so much that you didn’t have to suffer a dirty-bed
that rough canvas over the stinking pit, a daily cold water sluice.
If you were constrained, did they use the kinder leather-cuff
not the old metal links which rubbed wrists and ankles red-raw?
You did get extra diet. I’m thinking your indifferent state of body
and reduced in condition did not happen overnight in three days.

And in only eight days, by July 6th, you’re improving. We know
now that you can read, because you fancy that paragraphs
in books refer specifically to you and that this shows a conspiracy.
What would we diagnose today? You wouldn’t be described
as loquacious, fatuous, weakminded, eccentric, childish –
but delusional, incoherent, suspicious of others might time travel
and paranoia, depression feature, as would medication,
whereas you, two centuries away, are left to heal from fresh air
better food, encouragement back to work at your life’s trade.

It’s now October – you’ve been in this place for fully four months
and your physicians are reporting that you are much improved.
Your asthma is better, your body more robust. You are daily
working in the tailor’s shop. No one is claiming you are cured
and no word of discharge, your nature still not easy…but Thomas,
there is surely some cause for small celebration? Does she visit
daily now? Can you bear to be touched, even hugged? Has she brought
the smallest one, the shy one, with your mother’s dark Irish curls
safe now to sit on her granda’s knee, smile as you show her
the bright kerchief you sewed as a surprise on this autumn day.

Commentary

My first challenge was a simple one: how to enlarge the Gartnavel archive extract enough to be able to read it. So it became purely a techie/computer knowledge puzzle, which by trying all sorts of clicking on different headings, I managed to solve…though with no real clear idea of how I’d actually achieved this! But that didn’t matter. I now had the case notes of Thomas Boyle, in beautiful 19th century copperplate, enlarged enough to be able to read them.

It wasn’t as hard as I’d imagined. The writing was not unlike my grandmother’s script…I still have some of her letters. She was born in 1888, so would have learned the same style of handwriting as the medics who were writing about Thomas. Gillean McDougall’s advice of just letting a puzzling word sit as a gap, until the sense came, proved immensely helpful. Every time I thought I’d stumbled over a word I couldn’t make out…if I just left it alone, read on, every time, the meaning would come to me.

I then decided to write out the entire extract by hand. I thought that by writing it all out, I’d feel more into Thomas’s story, have some connection which I wouldn’t have if I’d typed it up. And I think this was true. I never typed it up, instead preferring always to use my handwritten version for soaking up Thomas’s experience and beginning to write about him. I had decided that a poem would work best as a creative response to Thomas’s story. And that all I would aim to do was to feel into his story and write as sympathetic a biographical poem as I could.

Something which fascinated me, the more I read Thomas’s notes, was the type of language used in describing his condition; words like querulous; loquacious; reduced in condition; absurd; grotesque movements of body; morbidly suspicious; indifferent. The variety and tone of language is the same as would be used in writing any kind of description…even a novel…not at all the scientific, more narrow text book medical phraseology of today. I liked this in his case notes. I could hear them discussing him…it made Thomas and his doctors much more real.

The more I read of Thomas, the more I realised that I wanted to read around conditions in asylums in 19th century Glasgow. It was easy enough to find accounts online of the Royal Asylum after it moved to Gartnavel, to realise there were two distinct buildings…one for paupers and one for private patients. That paupers were paid for by their local parish, which then made sense of Thomas being chargeable to Old Monkland Parish. So Thomas was in the East House and cost £400 per annum. And that it was the sheriff’s duty to visit the inmates and check on progress….some sheriffs even made it their business to regularly visit patients. That was an astonishing piece of information! It gave such insight into the thinking behind the care of the mentally ill in 19th century Glasgow…that a complete lay person had the responsibility of checking on how the patients were doing, as well as checking that the institution was doing all it was supposed to do.

This project has opened my eyes to aspects of mental health care in the 19th century, which were previously unknown to me. My own degree was in History…many years ago, so I was maybe a little bit prepared for some of what I’ve now discovered, but still…learning that the patients were allocated only one sheet each…and that ‘dirty’ patients had to have a canvas bed contraption over a pit, so all could be daily sluiced away…was certainly shocking.

What did surprise me though, was the underlying patience and kindness in Thomas’s case notes. I did read in one description of 19th century Gartnavel (a list of advice for nurses and other staff caring for the patients) that staff ‘should remember the inmates were not responsible for their behaviour and that sarcasm from patients should be ignored’. Taking part in the project got me thinking about the very word asylum, because that seems to me to sum up the approach to helping people heal then from disorders of the mind…that they needed shelter, a safe place in which to recover, fresh air, good food….no word at all of any kind of medication. The lack of drugs, compared to today’s practice, again was something which took my attention. And Thomas did begin to make a fair recovery. So for some, this approach had positive results. Maybe Thomas’s poor physical health had contributed to his deteriorating mental state? Lack of vitamins? Lack of proper nutrition? Though one would have thought that regular work as a tailor would have brought in a reasonable income. This did puzzle me, because he was clearly able to work in the tailor shop once his health had improved.

All the research was really the easy part of the project for me. What was more difficult was getting down to writing a poem which honoured Thomas. I think in some ways, I made it more difficult for myself because I ended up with so much information, it was hard to know what to leave out. I so much wanted to convey something of Thomas which would ring true. I don’t know if I’ve achieved it, but that has been my aim. I decided to write in English; athough Thomas would doubtless have spoken in Scots, like everyone else at that time in Scotland he would have learned to read and write in English.

So my poem account of Thomas Boyle is now written. I hope it conveys something of him, his terrifying onset of mental illness…and also something of the prevailing conditions for him at Gartnavel.

[Patient record for Thomas Boyle, HB13/5/61]