Horses and Humans (The Old Brown Mare)

 

Horses have accompanied humans throughout history; they are part of our life and our memory. This image is from Chauvet Cave and is thought to be a drawing done 30,000 years ago.

When two Kingsmead horses stepped out of a horsebox last month at the Bethlem Royal Hospital it might have been the first time in seventy-five years that hooves had trodden that turf. 

Last week, John and I revisited the archive at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind to try to discover the date as precisely as we could. The archivist had kindly retrieved file HCQ-06 from the strongroom so that we could peruse the minutes of the Farm and Garden Committee from 1951 to 1975 (Bethlem). 

As soon as we opened the manila folder the words from the very first page, dated December 1950, leapt out to meet our eyes. Item (f) “arrangements [to] be made for the old brown mare to be humanely slaughtered at the farm in the presence of the farm foreman.” A flush of emotion swept over us both at the stark dignity of the description; we turned over the page to find the partner to this further down the agenda in Item (m): “That if and when it is found possible to dispense with horses, the old horse implements be put into a collective sale.” 

 “If and when it is found possible to dispense with horses … ” The old brown mare and the old horse implements were fading from the pages of history, fading from memory. We didn't find another reference to horses in the entire file. The pigs proved enduringly popular, however; as long as the swill was produced in the hospital, they were needed.

 We visited the archive for the first time a year ago to consult the records kept that related to Warlingham Park Hospital. The archivist had brought a few box loads of documents from the strongroom relating to Warlingham. One of the many documents we read contained a single line referring to the final demise of the farms (of which there were two) at Warlingham. 

The Sixteenth Annual Report of the Croydon & Warlingham Park Group Hospital Management Committee, 1963-1964: “The year saw the closure of the Hospital Farm ...” (page seventeen). Further up the same page there is a note about the resignation of the Physician Superintendent and the decision to dispense with the position altogether because “The removal of the traditional .... father-figure ... follows the pattern” that was spreading across all the other psychiatric hospitals. This statement gave me a small shock. They knew what was happening, they could see what was “coming down the road,” they knew, in so many words, that patriarchy––this ancient way of organising society––was dissolving, and that the farm and the traditional relationship with horses (being intricately stitched into that old order) would be going the same way.

The old brown mare, slaughtered humanely in the presence of the farm manager, starts to emerge from this history as an image of the passing of something archaic. Now, seventy-five years later, horses are returning to the Bethlem, but in a very different relation. The interim period in this hospital’s history is the era of the NHS: it began in 1948. Before and during the war, patients of the hospital could work on the farm. 

Here’s an extract from the 1944 report by the commissioners of the board of control at Warlingham Park Hospital. 

“Sixty female and 120 male patients work on the ground or the farm. Men and women who were barely articulate, and certainly unable to give any account of themselves, were pushing barrow loads of garden material about the grounds with a minimum of supervision. A woman patient was wandering about the coal yard; a male patient who came in a few days ago with depression among his symptoms was walking alone round the drive; he had been here before and already admitted that he felt better. We saw a girl who frequently makes what are meant to be taken for attempts at suicide: she was sorting potatoes at the farm. Male and female patients with very varied types of mental disorders, staff and visitors (including ourselves) were using the club-room, which is run as a café. 

“It might be thought that the freedom which is allowed might bring dangers with it. We saw, for instance, one male patient, in a non-observation ward, who had taken in a large piece of broken glass from the garden, and a female patient who had, as she said, “helped herself to an armful of flowers.” Dr Rees and his staff are aware of the risks: they were able to tell us how rare is any serious trouble. There are minor bruises and abrasions which occur at work, but since the last visit (nine months ago) the only serious casualties were accidentally caused (two from falls and one during electric treatment) in the wards, and were only three in all. Patients do from time to time wander away, but are usually either brought back by their relatives or get on the bus and come home to the Hospital by themselves. Most employable patients have some money in their pockets. Quarrels are reported to be much fewer and much less serious than formerly. 

“Suicide is almost unknown; there has been only one case in decades (1941)––it could not be attributed to the freedom given since the patient was with a walking party at the time. 

“We are, in fact, satisfied that the general relaxation of rules and restrictions has not only been harmless but has been actively beneficial. There is no doubt that it contributes greatly to the happiness of the patients.”

 The current incarnation of the Bethlem (which had been founded in 1247 as the first psychiatric hospital in the world) opened in Beckenham in 1930. A few miles down the road at Warlingham, T.P Rees was deputy Chief Medical Superintendent. He was promoted to the Chief in 1935, and immediately “ordered that the gates of the Hospital were to be left unlocked, and thus embarked on a course of reform and progressive administration in the treatment for which he was to become widely famed”[1]. He wrote, “if our patients want to run away from us, we must ask ourselves why.” [2]

Warlingham was still in the time of patriarchy, when one man could impose his style and philosophy on an entire institution. This particular man was avuncular, well liked and had an ability to talk to patients, especially those suffering from chronic psychoses. He barely published any scientific articles but gave many public lectures until he retired in 1956. He could make mental illness understandable to a lay audience. He had the gravitas required to bear the risk of his policy and to establish it so well that it was still quietly underpinning work practices when I was employed as a nursing assistant at Warlingham in 1997. 

I never heard him mentioned during my time there, and the fact that the doors were not locked was simply part of the ethos of the place. Warlingham closed in 1999 and the last few patients were moved to the newly furbished wards at the Bethlem, which were locked and still are today. This example of an element of patriarchal structure shows how one man made use of the structure to make some particular ideas come alive which had an effect on the lives of the patients. He wasn’t the only one to make things work like this, and there were plenty of others who did things differently, but I think it worth noting and remembering what he did and especially how long the effects lasted even after he left. He was awarded an OBE in 1949, a four-part television documentary was made at his hospital in the 1950s, and articles about Warlingham were written and published as far away as the USA [3]. 

We asked the archivist whether he had heard that horses had returned to the hospital for a visit the previous month. After a brief pause, his whole body responded to our words as if we had sent a shock of electricity through him ... in a good way! He smiled and asked who had organised this, but before we could tell him, he had guessed that it must have been the head of the Occupational Therapy Department. 

Warrior and Haribo, from the Kingsmead Equestrian Centre, Warlingham, 

checking out the quality of the blades at the Bethlem Royal Hospital, October 2025

(Video by Sophie Greene)

Footnotes:
[1] Richard R Trail, Biographical Update for Thomas Percy Rees (1899-1963), published on the Royal College of Physicians website, https://history.rcp.ac.uk/inspiring-physicians/thomas-percy-rees

[2] T.P. Rees “Back to Moral Treatment and Community Care: The Presidential Address Delivered at the One Hundred and Fifteenth Annual Meeting Held at Warlingham Park Hospital, 18 July 1956.” Journal of Mental Science, Vol. 103, No. 431, April 1957. See also previous blog on this. 

[3] Three of the most interesting: Albert Deutsch, “A Visit to Warlingham Park,” New York Star, 8 and 9 September 1948, reviewed in The Hospital, December 1948, 567: “An American Looks at an English Mental Hospital.” Murray Teigh Bloom authored a four-page article published in the Readers Digest. BBC TV Cameras Visit Warlingham Park with Mr Christopher Mayhew, MP, “The Hurt Mind,” a five-part TV documentary: “Dr Rees said it was easier to make patients worse than better in hospital. One of the things patients disliked most was their loss of freedom. He told how one of his first acts was to have the hospital railings sawn down.” Croydon Advertiser, 4 January 1957 (1,121 patients at that time). 

We are very grateful to the management, staff and archivist at the Museum of the Mind for the remarkable work they do to keep the history of these institutions accessible to human enquiry. If you would like to visit the Archive, check the website for details. You can see a list of what they have for Warlingham Park by using this link: https://archives.museumofthemind.org.uk/WPH.htm There is a written history of Warlingham Park Hospital kept in the archive. 

Janet Haney, 18 November 2025