1930's mental asylum

[Ringo]

Hi guys,

I'm busy writing a new theatre performance/dinner show which includes ghostly characters. One of them is a psychiatric nurse from the 1930's (for reasons which are too long to go into here). The guests will come into close contact with the various characters.

What I'm missing is her back story and props. What sort of girls/women worked as nurses in mental asylums? Were they trained? Or just two helping hands?

What equipment did they need/use?

What sort of procedures were carried out? What sort of instruments/tools would they be using etc etc

I know I coul dspend the next few months researching this but time does not allow nor os it necessary to be an expert. I just need the equivalent of Sherlock's deerstalker and pipe.

Any help, input, links etc is greatly appreciated. Because of this, I'm in the market for photographs, medical tools etc which would fit the bill as props.

Thanks guys.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

Perhaps have a sense of a nurse trapped between past and present practice - uncertain of which way to turn? Old text-books may say one thing, colleagues another; you would not have the Internet to consult . . . :?:

 

[Belshazzar]

The first thing you should known is that there is no such thing as a "Mental Asylum". Lunatic Asylum or Mental Hospital, yes, but never Mental Asylum as it simply doesn't make sense and was historically never used as a term to describe any psychiatric hospital. You can offer asylum to lunatics, and you can have a hospital which deals with mental illness, but you can't offer asylum to mental.

All kinds of girls became psychiatric nurses, and they were trained as such by the 1930's. Much like any other type of nurse the main tools of their trade was kindness and compassion and the desire to help others.

Treatments in the 1930's consisted mainly of sedatives, hydrotherapy and insulin shock therapy. The leucotomy/lobotomy and electroconvulsion therapy (ECT) didn't become widespread until the 1940's but, needless to say, those procedures would have been carried out by a doctor and not a nurse.

The majority of the asylums were built outside of the cities as it was thought that large open grounds in the countryside would have a calming effect. Patients who were fit enough were encouraged to work - The men in the hospital farm, etc., and the women doing needlework or helping in the kitchens. That was actually a large part of their treatment and it was considered extremely beneficial and conducive to regaining a healthy mind.
So the tools of a psychiatric nurse in the 1930's would have been much the same as a general nurse.

 

[Ringo]

Thanks for the info, Belshazzar. And you are quite right about the terminology.

The place I intend using for my back story was indeed a Lunatic Asylum and I'm not sure why I wrote Mental Asylum.

My Nurse character died in a fire which swept through the building, started by one of the patients. I just wanted to know what would be in her pockets/on her person during a regulat shift?

A pocket watch for taking pulses?
Handkerchiefs?

 

[Belshazzar]

My Nurse character died in a fire which swept through the building, started by one of the patients. I just wanted to know what would be in her pockets/on her person during a regulat shift?

A pocket watch for taking pulses?
Handkerchiefs?

A pocket watch and a very large set of keys.

 

[Heckler]

There an excellent Mentalism effect called Luna by Outlaw Effects that could be worth looking at. It revolves around a mental hospital, the prop a book of hospital admissions in the mid 1930's.

It is a powerful effect but I can't say more without obviously revealing the secrets of the effect.