High Royds solitary confinement

Image: © philld Taken: 8 Dec 2007

This is away from the marble floors, Glazed tiles and grandiose of the Main administration block of High Royds. This is the side of High Royds the visitors wouldn't see. Here people considered unfit to live in society, would be kept under lock and key, and forgotten about as a problem nicely brushed under the carpet. Not all people interned in Asylums had mental health problems, single mothers whose only crime was to have a child outside of wedlock were considered a disgrace to society in Victorian days, and were locked away for there crimes against morality. Experimental lobotomies were carried out to try find a cure for insanity here. High Royds was one of the last remaining psychiatric hospitals of its kind still functioning when it closed in February 2003. Opening on 8 October 1888 it was then known as West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum. It was the third establishment of its kind in the former West Riding of Yorkshire, The hospital site included at one stage a library, surgery, dispensary, ballroom, butchers, dairies, bakers and even its own railway. By the 1930s a sweetshop, cobbler, upholsterer and a tailor were all added turning the hospital into a small self-contained village.

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