LiveTheirStory

Archive records of people who become ill and seek (or are forced to have) medical attention are protected for 100 years in the UK. Their stories therefore need to be presented sensitively, hence my choice in this post to protect the identity of its subject. R was a coir (coconut fibre) mat weaver, originally from Suffolk, who moved to Chatteris when the matting industry in Suffolk declined. He married a local girl and worked in the new mat factory in Chatteris alongside members of her extensive family.

Widowed relatively young, R still lived in Chatteris in 1911 with his two sons, still working as a mat weaver. The closure of the mat factory, however, clearly had an impact on him. Aged 54, he is listed as a resident at the Doddington workhouse in 1919, but he is recorded as supporting his stay from his own funds. He then took labouring work at Chatteris Engineering Works where his son was an apprentice fitter.

Three years later, however, the Board of Guardians archive records show that R had entered Fulbourn Mental Hospital, and he is listed as a resident there again in 1929. We do not know if this is a continuous stay, or what kind of mental illness he was suffering. Reading between the lines of these minutes, it is clear that many people transferred to Fulbourn (whether directly or from the poor law institution at Doddington) were simply elderly, possibly showing signs of mental frailty.

R’s story was not one of extreme poverty, however. The BoG minutes for 1930, when he was still in Fulbourn, note that the Ministry of Health had granted 2 shillings and 6 pence per week out of his contributory old age pension to allow ‘extra comforts’ for him during his stay, a sum that was to be administered by the Guardians. Again what these comforts were is unclear, but they may have helped him. In January 1931 he was subject to a ‘trial discharge’ which was confirmed in March of the same year. R died in 1936, and the probate records show that he had died at his old address in Chatteris (where his son now lived), not the Doddington institution. He left an estate of £100.