- ReferenceX611
- TitleSpringfield Hospital
- Admin/biog historySpringfield House Private Asylum, which opened at Kempston in 1837, was the only purpose-built private asylum in Bedfordshire. The County Asylum, opened in Ampthill Road, Bedford in 1812, admitted both pauper and private patients but this arrangement had proved unsatisfactory. The asylum was financed by the county rate so there was constant pressure to reduce expenditure. This became more marked after 1834 when the Asylum Committee expected an increase in the number of pauper patients admitted after the passage of the new Poor Law Act. At a meeting held on June 30th 1835 the committee recommended that "...the institution be confined entirely to an establishment for pauper lunatics". John Harris, the Medical Superintendant, proposed "...to establish a lunatic asylum for private patients on his own account". John Harris was a successful Bedford doctor who had started work at the Bedford Infirmary as House Surgeon in 1823. In 1828 he was appointed Medical Superintendant of the County Asylum at a salary of £200 a year, with an extra 5/- a week for each private patient admitted. He stood to lose this sum if the County Asylum admitted only paupers, so a compromise was arranged. Harris remained Medical Superintendant on a visiting basis at a reduced salary of £140, to be supplemented by income from his private asylum. In the summer of 1835 John Harris began looking for a site for the new asylum. He approached Thomas Bennett, the Duke of Bedford's estate agent, and asked if his Grace would lease him the site occupied by St. Leonards farmhouse near the junction of Ampthill Road and London Road, Bedford. Bennett was doubtful. The value of the surrounding building plots would be reduced if the asylum was built too near to Bedford town centre. Would Harris consider a site adjacent to the County Asylum in Ampthill Road? "To this site he has no objection", wrote Bennett on July 7th. However by mid August John Harris had changed his mind. "Mr Harris says there is an insuperable objection to it from being so close to the County Asylum", Bennett noted drily on the 18th. "...between the patients' yard there would only be a narrow close bounded by a brick wall and that the language of many of the patients is such that he could not place his private patients within hearing..." Harris eventually found a site on the north side of Elstow Road, Kempston. Thomas Gwyn Elger was commissioned to draw up the plans. Building work began in the Spring of 1836 and in March 1837 the asylum was licensed to receive thirty patients, each of whom paid a guinea a week in fees. On April 28th Springfield Asylum opened and the private patients were transferred from the County Asylum to the new buildings in Elstow Road. The asylum had cost John Harris over £2000 to build. The Springfield House Visitors' Book provides interesting glimpses of conditions in the asylum in the nineteenth century. The reports date from 1845 when an Act of Parliament created the Commissioners in Lunacy empowered to inspect asylums and make recommendations. Restraint of the patients by belts, muffs and strait-jackets was commonplace in the early years. The Commissioners recommended in February 1851 that the staples and chains attached to some of the bedsteads should be removed. John Harris was unwilling to comply, being "...unable to dispense with restraint". By the 1870s seclusion was increasingly used instead of restraint and padded rooms were built in 1894 off the main dormitories. Patients were encouraged to meet in the evenings for cards, music and reading. During the day patients could walk escorted around the grounds and some visited Elstow church on Sundays. Food was apparently of good quality. "We saw the patients at dinner which consists of beef, potatoes, peas and pudding", the Commissioners recorded in July 1855. On April 12th 1859 there were "abundant portions...of roast pork, two vegetables and rhubarb pudding". In 1855 Springfield was licensed to admit ten extra patients and the clothes room in the staff block was changed into a dormitory to accommodate them. A new bathroom was added in 1858. The alterations were approved by the Commissioners, in particular the enlargement of the dayroom windows, but they also recommended that "...the walls of the airing yards be lowered as they have a depressing aspect." John Harris died in 1861 and was succeeded by his son Henry as resident surgeon. Henry was in failing health and died suddenly in 1878. His mother Sophia, who worked as matron, wanted to continue running the asylum, but the Commissioners considered that "The licence ought not to be permanently renewed to her unless she introduces...some approved medical man who will be resident." In June 1879 the asylum was sold to Dr David Bower a Scotsman who had worked at Saughton Hall private asylum in Edinburgh. By this time overcrowding had become a problem at Springfield. The asylum was licensed to admit 47 patients, yet the building had remained substantially unchanged since 1837. Improvements were soon coming. New wings containing dormitories and dayrooms were added between 1890-5 and a new dining room in 1912. The energetic Dr Bower also introduced the "employment system", what would today be called occupational therapy. Patients were encouraged to do gardening or work at embroidery. An advertisement of 1885 lists billiards, tennis, boating and carriage drives among the recreations. Dr Bower died in 1929 after 50 years in charge of Springfield Asylum. His son Cedric became Medical Superintendant. A combination of rising costs, falling applications and the problems of recruiting adequate staff led to his decision to close the asylum at the end of August 1962, and most of the patients were transferred to St Andrews Hospital at Northampton. In 1963 Springfield was demolished to make way for the expansion of Kempston New Town. Henderson Way, Fearnley Crescent and Whittingstall Avenue now occupy the site but "Springfield Cottage" built for Dr David Bower when he married in 1888 still stands in Spring Road, Kempston.
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