Association of Therapeutic Communities
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RECENT ACCESSIONS AND ADDITIONS
In a small archive small things can have big effects. The birth of the archivist's son just before Christmas 1995, at a time when we were completing work on the new archive store and work rooms, and in the middle of a five month court case requiring substantial support from the Archive, got the better of a Christmas/New Year 1995/6 Newsletter. Then, having been working within a construction site for the better part of a year and a half, our desire to put out a newsletter for the Christmas/New Year season of 1996/7 was overtaken by the greater desire to complete the construction on the new library and user facilities, bring the books, journals and remaining archive collections over from the old archive rooms, and to bring a new computer system and Web-site on-line. The latter is still idling, but the construction is substantially done, and the floor of the User's Room is covered in books and journals waiting to be re-catalogued and put on to their new shelves. With apologies for the delay, welcome to the second annual Archive and Study Centre Newsletter. What have we done in the two years since the first one?
Most obvious is probably the new facility. During the course of 1995 we built a new archives store room, dark room and work room, and made a start on an Archive office. During 1996, and over the turn of 1997, the User's Room, library stacks, Computer Room, and Fellow's Research Room were built, and the office completed.
The archives store is a secure, environmentally-controlled series of rooms with a single entrance, a combination of static and mobile shelving, and an automatically-triggered gas fire-extinguishing system.
The Archive work room and dark room house the equipment and facilities for precessing the collections and for developing exhibitions: We can now do in-house most of the day-to-day work which arises while working on paper archives, reel-to-reel and cassette audio tapes, VHS and BetaMax video tapes, and photographic materials.
The User's Room is simply that: a reasonably large, light and well-lit room for researchers, meetings and seminars, with areas for changing displays and exhibitions. The library stacks open onto the User's Room, with mobile shelving and space for fixed shelves giving room probably for about six thousand volumes.
A separate research room for long-term researchers, group work, or complex and sometimes noisy projects such as publication; a room in which books and papers can be left lying around safe and undisturbed and ready for work the next day.
Given the extraordinary opportunity to discover and share information and research which the Internet presents, we have set aside a small room, installed a new computer system, and laid the foundations for going onto the Internet in a full way, with a growing information service as familiarity and ability increase.
Over the past two years there have been seventy-two additions to the archive collections. These range in quantity from single audio cassettes (such as a recording of music and poetry made by David Wills and given to the Archive by his niece, Kathleen Jennett), to fourteen boxes of material given by Dr. Joseph Berke, representing three distinct sub-collections (including the archives of the Institute of Phenomenological Studies), to eight file cabinets in a collection related to George Lyward picked up just before Christmas. They include materials as diverse as a computer disk, phonograph records, reel to reel audio tapes of various sizes and formats, 8mm and 16mm cinefilm, videotapes, photographs, negatives, slides, a painting by Elizabeth Wills and a whistle that had belonged to David Wills given by Margaret Barling, and paper documents of all kinds including letters, notebooks, and logbooks.
One of the most un-conventional accessions has been a fragment of the Northfield Military Psychiatric Hospital (Hollymoor Hospital in Birmingham), salvaged during its demolition, given by Dr. Tom Harrison, and now built into the wall of the User's Room, where it keeps company with a statuette which once belonged to David and Elizabeth Wills, and a table once at Peper Harow.
The bulk of the additions have been along more conventional lines. Without attempting to list them all, these include:
The papers assembled by David Wills in the course of writing his biography of Homer Lane, given by Jonathan Croall. These include letters written by Homer Lane and former members of the Little Commonwealth, photostat copies of contemporary newspaper articles on Lane's work in America, Wills' interview notes, and magazines produced at the Little Commonwealth.
A range of material related to Trench Hall Special School and given by its former head, Cynthia Martin, including scrapbooks, photographs, logbooks, cinefilm.
Magazines produced by patients at Littlemore Hospital, which Dr. Bertram Mandelbrote has kindly allowed us to borrow and photocopy, along with other materials related to Coney Hill and Horton Road Hospitals in Gloucestershire.
The script of the play "Mary Barnes", broadcast in 1995 on BBC Radio 4, kindly given by its author, David Edgar.
Significant elements of Chris Beedell's archives.
The archives of the the Arbours Association of Therapeutic Communities.
Further archives of Shotton Hall School.
Dr. Bob Hinshelwood's papers relating to his consultancy with Kensington and Chelsea Association for Mental Health (MIND) day therapeutic communities (1975-1979); relating to his editing of the "International Journal of Therapeutic Communities" and the Routledge series on Therapeutic Communities; and research notes and an extensive collection of papers delivered at conferences of the Association of Therapeutic Communities.
An album given to Mary F. Smith upon her retirement from active involvement with Barns School in Scotland in 1951, with photographs, children's paintings, and other material from the early days of the school. Given by her son, Robin Hodgkin.
Articles, notes and typescripts by Arthur Barron given by Margaret Barron, and examples of his professional work given by Sylvia Green.
Wall newspapers from Summerhill School dating from 1954-1955 and 1961-1962 and various other materials related to Summerhill and other democratic/alternative schools given by Albert Lamb.
Materials relating to Judah Weinstein, to David Wills, and to Bodenham Manor School given or lent for copying by Pauline Weinstein, including correspondence, and photographs of Bodenham during the period that David Wills was warden.
We have been allowed to borrow and make copies of photographs by: Audrey Jennett (photographs related to her uncle David Wills and the Wills family); Dorothy Ross (photographs taken for her marriage while she was stationed at Northfield); and Dr. Sandra Grant (photographs of Maxwell Jones and his wife Jeanette in 1973).
Family films, papers and other materials related to the life and work of Dr. Josephine Lomax-Simpson, the films (on video) for copying.
A considerable body of material related to New Barns School, much of it given by former children and members of staff.
Surprising things continue to come to light. During the course of demolition and new building at the Cassel Hospital in 1995, for example, a whole new tranche of "lost" hospital archives came to light in the store room of a maintenance shed - files, tape recordings, cinefilm and logbooks which had lived quietly for some years among and behind maintenance bits and pieces, coated in dust and visited occasionally by birds. Fortunately, the materials had been kept dry. With the concurrence and support of Dr. Richard Burman they were brought back to the Archive for cleaning, cataloguing, and re-housing in archivally appropriate materials, to be ultimately re-integrated into the archives already processed and catalogued by the Archives at the Cassel.
Then, in an unexpected package from Noel Hustler, the known remaining record of Hawkspur Camp for Boys (1944-1946) effectively doubled. Having been Bursar there under Arthur Barron, he had saved a typescript "Introduction to Hawkspur Camp" intended for new boys, and some letters from the Secretary of the parent Q-Camps organisation, Marjorie Franklin. Prior to this, the only known documentation consisted of a one-page description of the Camp by a Hawkspur boy found among David Wills's papers, a published brochure saved by Chris Beedell (whose career in therapeutic child care began there; the only other known copy of the brochure is in Cambridge University Library), and photographs belonging to Margaret Barron.
At the beginning of 1995 there were just over two thousand books and pamphlets in the Study Centre library; now there are something like two and a half thousand, with further books, journals and magazines among the archive collections. Just over a hundred of the new books and pamphlets have come as gifts. Again, so many of these have been exciting:
Among books given by Caroline Whitehead, for example, were a pamphlet on the Caldecott Community by Leila Rendel and a 1966 issue of "The New Era" which includes an article by the Planned Environment Therapy Trust's founder, Marjorie Franklin (who wrote few articles and published fewer).
Mike Nellis gave a copy of Maxwell Jones' "Social Psychiatry in Practice" published by Penguin in 1968, a book which we had fruitlessly sought in secondhand bookstores throughout Britain and the United States. Along these same lines, Hector Christie of Dingleton very kindly sent us a copy of an important and little known monograph by Maxwell Jones entitled "Painful Communication", and published by the Hospital in the key year 1967/68 - a publication which was not on Maxwell Jones' own bibliography nor among the books, offprints and typescripts he kept with him in his office in Nova Scotia.
Among books given by Albert Lamb were a copy of "Jack's Self-Educator", published in Edinburgh in 1916, with contributions on "The English Language", "Arithmetic and Algebra" and "Geometry" by A.S.Neill, and a 1932 first edition of "The Problem Parent" by A.S. Neill, which Albert picked up in a secondhand bookstore in the Summerhill town of Leiston.
Anne-Marie Sandler of the Anna Freud Centre very generously allowed us to have a set of the Bulletins of the Hampstead Clinic/Anna Freud Centre 1978-1995. The Centre played a central role in the life of Arthur Barron, one of the Planned Environment Therapy Trust's founding trustees, a pioneer in residential therapeutic work with children and young people, and among the first generation of child psychotherapists trained at the Centre after the war.
Pauline Weinstein gave a number of books and pamphlets, including a series of rare pamphlets by Stephen Hobhouse, referred to in David Wills's study of him as 'a modern Quaker saint'; an equally rare 1944 Ministry of Health pamphlet entitled "Hostels for 'Difficult' Children: A Survey of Experience under the Evacuation Scheme"; a 1946 issue of the "Friends' Quarterly Examiner" with an article by David Wills; and Mark Benney's "Gaol Delivery", published for the Howard League for Penal Reform in 1948.
In among all of these and many others, the most satisfying gift in many ways was a copy of Axel Kuhn's "Alexander S. Neill", published in Germany in 1995 by Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag (Reinbek bei Hamburg). Axel was one of our first visiting researchers, and this book the first formal publication to draw on the Archive's collections.
The oral history programme continues to have a special place in the work of the Archive and Study Centre, if only because of the huge body of experience and understanding which are available in no other way. Not counting conferences, lectures and similar events the Archive has recorded some fifty-six tapes over the past two years, in conversation with some thirty-seven people. Conferences and such account for another forty-eight tapes. A further sixteen tapes have been made and given to the Archive by others.
A significant part of the Archive's oral history work has gone into a project on the life and work of founding trustee Arthur Barron, one of the pioneering figures in planned environment therapy. Noel and Margaret Hustler and Mary Crowley worked with Arthur Barron at Hawkspur Camp for Boys in the 1940s. In the 1970s and 1980s he worked with Josephine Russell at New Woodlands School, Bella and Maurice Dobbs at Eagle House Approved School, Rachel Bord at Greenacres, Sylvia Green at Bristol, Richard and Marion Miller at Bodenham Manor School and Bath, and Rosemary Lilley at New Woodlands School and in Bristol. Elizabeth Yeo - who had briefly worked under David Wills in Wales in the mid-1930s - met Arthur Barron when they were both training in the Anna Freud Centre and later renewed the friendship. The texture of relationships which emerge, and the insights into therapeutic work, and the history and development of the work could not really be discovered in any other way. It is overwhelmingly clear that documentation - where it has not been lost or destroyed - can not so fully record the love and detail of the work, and of the people who have been involved in it.
One of the places for which this is especially true is Northfield Military Psychiatric Hospital, where the post-war use of the term "therapeutic community" was coined. Despite being one of the most significant institutions within the therapeutic community movement there is virtually no contemporary official documentation and only slightly more in the way of private papers. Dr. Tom Harrison's research, in which he has interviewed staff and others involved with Northfield, has been a rich source of new information, and in the early part of 1995 we were able to help him with recordings of George Siddall and James and Dorothy Ross who had all been involved with Northfield.
More recently Harold Bridger, one of the founder members of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and a key member of the therapeutic team at Northfield Military Psychiatric Hospital, very kindly made time, before dashing off to Australia, for a discussion of life and influences before Northfield.
Chris Beedell initiated a series of interviews with Mr. and Mrs. Dockar-Drysdale which took place over the course of the Autumn of 1995.
Dr. Bertram Mandelbrote, formerly Medical Superintendent at Littlemore Hospital in Oxford, and founder of the Ley Community there, has recorded very generously about his life and career, as has Maurice Bridgeland, author of "Pioneer Work With Maladjusted Children", and Miss Kate Pate and Miss Cynthia Martin on Trench Hall Special School. A brief recording was made with Dr. Joseph Berke concerning collections being deposited in the Archive.
Pauline Weinstein recorded a discussion about her husband, who first met David Wills in Richmond Borstal, in which Wills served as Housemaster for seven months in 1935/6 before leaving to establish the first Hawkspur Camp. She herself was a member of staff at Bodenham Manor when David Wills was warden there, and these friendships remained close ones until David Wills's death in 1980. Pam and Robert Laslett, who were also at Bodenham, and who were long-standing friends of the Wills and the Weinsteins, also joined in the discussion.
Further recordings were made with Dr. Josephine Lomax-Simpson, founder of the Messenger House Trust, and closely involved with the pioneers and with the pioneering therapeutic work with children and young people which has grown up since the war.
Dr. Breda O'Sullivan very generously spoke about her life and work, and particularly about Maxwell Jones and about Heronbrook House, a very special therapeutic community (of which she formerly was Director) sponsored by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Paul in Knowle, near Birmingham.
Kay Carmichael recorded a discussion of her career and Maxwell Jones, and very kindly organised a discussion about Maxwell Jones, the Henderson Hospital and Dingleton with Dr. Fergus Stallard, Mona Stallard and Dr. Sandra Grant.
Specialist Curator Albert Lamb interviewed Jerry Mintz who founded the Shaker Mountain School in Vermont, was involved in setting up and running a related group home, and runs and has run various networking organisations related to the field of "alternative" and "democratic" education.
In February 1995 the Archive recorded the "Paranoia and Persecution Conference" organised in London to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Arbours Association. Among the main session speakers were Brian Keenan, Otto Kernberg and Norman Stone, with the Plenary Session chaired by Hanna Segal. With the help of Ian Ostroff we were able to record all of the main sessions and most of the eighteen seminar sessions. Tapes of the main sessions were subsequently made available to conference attendees.
Later that month the Archive hosted and recorded segments of a mini-conference in which representatives of the small school and democratic/alternative school movements, therapeutic communities for adults, and therapeutic communities for children and young people met to discuss mutual concerns and the possibilities for creating a network of communication and support.
In September 1995, on behalf of the Archive, Raimund Clews recorded Andrew Gay's talk, "To Boldly Go", the annual David Wills Lecture organised by the Association of Workers for Children with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties.
In August 1996 the assistant archivist, Jenny Blackmore, recorded community meetings and other events over the course of Summerhill School's 75th anniversary celebration weekend.
The Cassel Hospital celebrated its 75th anniversary with a one-day conference at the end of September 1996 entitled "The Psychodynamics of Interdisciplinary Work in Mental Health", recorded by the Archive. The Main speakers were Dr. Jon Stokes of the Tavistock Clinic Consultancy Service, Denis Flynn of the Cassel, Dr. Jeremy Holmes of the North Devon District Hospital, Peter Griffiths and Steve McCluskey of the Cassel, and Prof. Anthony Mann and Jann Oliver of the Maudsley Hospital.
The Retreat in York celebrated its 200th anniversary one week later with a conference entitled "Social Values and Mental Health". The keynote address was given by Prof. Kathleen Jones on "Moral Treatment in Perspective", and subsequent presentations were made by Prof. Elaine Murphy, Dr. Ian Jones and Prof. Bob Young on the theme "Could we have a revolution now?" The recordings made by the Archive on DAT have been transferred to standard audio cassette format and are being made available to conference attenders.
And finally, at the beginning of November the Archive recorded the speakers in "What is a Therapeutic Community?", a study day at the Caldecott College organised by the Association of Workers for Children with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties. Robert Laslett spoke of "Therapeutic Communities: The Pioneers", John Whitwell spoke from his experience as Principal of the Cotswold Community, Rich Rollinson as Principal of the Mulberry Bush, and Simon Rodway, Chairman of the Caldecott Council, provided the inter-linking commentary.
A grant from the Summerhill Foundation made it possible for the assistant archivist, Jenny Blackmore, to photograph and record various events at the 75th anniversary celebration gathering of the extended Summerhill community at the school in 1996.
The Homer Lane Trust is making possible an oral history of the five month New Barns School trial, with the main body of recording being conducted by Gill Connan. A unique sense of community developed among almost all those who were involved, and the unanimous not-guilty verdict was followed by the jury expressing their unanimous support for the defendants and the school, with a letter to the Lord Chancellor protesting that the prosecution should not have been brought. The intention is to record defendants, parents, children, former staff, solicitors and barristers; to explore the history, the experience and the impact of the process on those involved.
A grant from the Shotton Hall Trust made possible the purchase of a DAT tape-recorder and of a set of lenses to enable the Archive to make its own copies of colour and black and white photographs. The state-of-the-art DAT format produces excellent quality recordings from which very clear multiple copies can be made, a feature which we have been able to use in producing conference tapes for participants in the Retreat's 200th anniversary celebration conference in October 1996.
Dr. Josephine Lomax-Simpson has made a substantial grant to support the administrative and research costs involved in producing a volume on the Messenger House Trust the people involved with it, and Dr. Lomax-Simpson's life and career before and around it, for the projected publication series on people, places and organisations within the therapeutic community movement. The basic projected format for these volumes - an historical/biographical essay, a set of articles by or about the subject with a critical introduction, and a bibliography and guide to relevant sources - is intended to inform and hopefully to encourage further research and thinking.
The Planned Environment Therapy Trust in 1996 appointed its first Archive Fellow. Dr. Leslie Caldwell is a psychotherapist and lecturer at the University of Greenwich who has been involved for some time in a study of the Cassel Hospital. The Fellowship will enable her to immerse herself more deeply in the Cassel archives and to carry out research outside. In a joint effort between the Cassel Hospital and the Planned Environment Therapy Trust she will also be organising a series of seminars in Bristol during the course of 1997/98 around the theme of the social and community approach to problem solving in penal, therapeutic, educational, and social work settings.
WEB-SITE
http://www.pettarchiv.org.uk
Join us over the next few months (and years) at the above address as we build and explore a radical extension to the Study Centre, creating an information service which will bring collections to an international public and seek to help to build understanding and connections. Expect a slow start, but if you are on the Internet, or know someone who is, please pay us visits and let us know what you think about what we have done and are doing.
With many thanks to all who have helped and taken an interest in our work over the past two years, I am
Yours sincerely,
Craig Fees, Archivist
New Barns School. Since its closure in 1992 there has been a steady stream of materials from friends and former members of the community. Most recently there have been photographs from Tim Spencer and Helen Frye, and miscellaneous files and other materials (e.g., tape recordings; Christmas cards; drawings) from Chris Parker, Raimund Clews, and Mary Jannaway.
Fulbourn Hospital. Ruby Mungovan has lent a folder of materials, including newspaper cuttings, photographs, and articles, to be copied.
David Clark has lent two video tapes in which he is featured: "The Journey Back" and "Hei Jo Shin".
Maurice Bridgeland has given a draft transcript of his monumental book, Pioneer Work WIth Maladjusted Children.
Simon Rodway has given copies of the tapes of an interview he conducted with David Wills just before the latter's death.
John Hopton has given a variety of materials, including the typescript and computer disk for "Prestwich Hospital: An Oral History 1922-1975, collected and edited by John Hopton"; tapes of an interview with David Clark; and translations from the French of two articles by Franz Fanon.
The Peper Harow Foundation has given a substantial body of non-clinical materials related to Peper Harow Therapeutic Community.
The archives of Highdene Therapeutic Community.
John Potter has given a book, an article and a tape-recorded interview with his son, Akira Potter, concerning Kinokuni School in Japan.
Dr. Bob Hinshelwood has given further papers from the annual ATC Conferences.
Dr. Breda O'Sullivan has given a box of materials related to her doctoral research on therapeutic communities and to the Maxwell Jones Memorial Service held at Heronbrook House in 1990.
A segment of the Messenger House Trust archives has been given by Dr. Josephine Lomax-Simpson.
The Reference Library is continuously growing. This list is therefore only intended to give a glimpse of some of the books and other materials which have recently come in and which have in some way excited our attention.
Roy Prideaux has given us 104 books and pamphlets from his collection, among them a 1934 impression of Talks to Parents and Teachers by Homer Lane, given to him in 1946 by Hilda Rees, Secretary of the Birmingham Society for the Care of Invalid and Nervous Children; the second (revised) 1937 edition of George Benson's tract for the Howard League entitled Flogging: The Law and Practice in England; a 1958 pamphlet published by the Fabian Society, written by David Donnison and Mary Stewart, and entitled The Child and the Social Services; and Ethel Mannin's Commonsense and the Adolescent, the revised edition published by Jarrolds (London) in 1945, with its 1937 preface by A.S. Neill and an extended additional section on the Q-Camps.
Among some 114 books given by Dr. Josephine Lomax-Simpson is the rare and exciting Biologists in Search of Material: An Interim Report on the Work of the Pioneer Health Centre Peckham by G. Scott Williamson and H. Innes Pearse, published by Faber and Faber in 1938. This is accompanied by a hardback copy of The Peckham Experiment: a study in The Living Structure of Society by Innes H. Pearse and Lucy H. Crocker, published by George Allen and Unwin (London) in 1943, and Being Me and Also Us: Lessons from the Peckham Experiment by Alison Stallibrass, published by the Scottish Academic Press (Edinburgh) in 1989. Dr. Lomax-Simpson has also given us 23 volumes (volume three is missing) of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud published by the Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis in London.
David Gribble has given a set of Hadera Conference Journals, 1993-1996.
Books recently purchased include:
ARTISS, Kenneth L., Milieu Therapy in Schizophrenia, Grune and Stratton (New York), 1962.
DENBER, Herman C.B., ed., Research Conference on Therapeutic Community Held at Manhattan State Hospital, Ward's Island, New York, Charles C. Thomas (Springfield, Illinois), 1960.
O'SULLIVAN, Breda, Characteristics of Therapists in a Therapeutic Community: Expected and Perceived Therapist Qualities in a Psychotheological Therapeutic Community, PhD., Boston University Graduate School (Boston, Massachusetts), 1985.
PARGETER, William, Observations on Maniacal Disorders, Routledge (London and New York), 1988. Originally published 1792.
RAY, Isaac, A Treatise on the Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (Cambridge, Massachusetts), 1962. Originally published 1838.
STANTON, Alfred H., and Morris S. SCHWARTZ, The Mental Hospital: A Study of Institutional Participation in Psychiatric Illness and Treatment, Basic Books (New York), 1954.
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PLANNED ENVIRONMENT THERAPY TRUST |
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This page authored by: Craig Fees