From January to June of 1981 I worked as an auxiliary psychiatric nurse in a mental institution on the edge of Sheffield. I had intended to study art

therapy and in order to do so I had to gain some experience of working with mental patients.



I commenced work on the male long stay ward. Many of the patients were in their 50’s, 60’s and 70's and suffered from a range of illnesses.



As well as general nursing duties the opportunity arose for me to encourage the patients to develop their drawing skills.



One day, on completing my morning shift I was on the bus home when a senior nurse from my ward sat next to me. He asked what sort of a day I had

had. “OK", I replied, "but Harry xxxxxxx was a bit difficult today.” The senior nurse answered curtly, “Don’t ever mention his name. In fact, your contract

prohibits you from discussing patients outside the grounds of the hospital.”



Though I was rather humiliated at the time, it did later occur to me as significant that not only had society institutionalised huge numbers of people since the Victorian age but we had also

effectively created a wall of silence around them.



Since the policy of Care in the Community (1990) has largely closed these institutions down, it has come to light that many of these ‘forgotten’ patients

had been buried in unmarked graves. One such hospital, Prestwich, buried more that 3000 unclaimed patients over a period of 150 years. These hospitals

provided a home for those society deemed social misfits: people suffering from a range of conditions such as epilepsy, alcoholism or mental or

physical handicaps. On their deaths, many had no relatives to claim them and they were often buried in mass graves.



My own powerful response to the experience was the creation of a short play, written on an old manual typewriter with lettraset headings, which

recorded conversations that occurred between staff and patients.



The aim of this book is to resurrect and memorialise these forgotten people through photographic simulations, fragments of their drawings and snapshots of my short play.



The drawings act as a trace of Harry: a unique and creative individual.



Standing in for the absent subject, these drawings, together with the faceless portraits and fragments of the play, offer a memorial to the many forgotten

souls who shared Harry's predicament. They give a greater presence to that which society has preferred to render forgotten and unspoken by name.



The full text of the play is on the following website: http://www.ideas-elastic.co.uk/maphotos.html