Is Truth Sitting on the Fence?

 

As part of Project Bree, I invited people to meet some horses and to hear about the idea of taking equines to the Bethlem Royal Hospital. I sent an invitation to somebody we had bumped into at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind when we were doing research in its archives. John and I had first met Angela* at another community project about ten years ago. I spoke to her this week on the phone, and one of the things that came out of the conversation blossomed unexpectedly into the story of Seni Lewis. 

Shortly before COVID an artwork was commissioned by the Museum of the Mind, and eight posts were erected along a boundary fence of the hospital to which were attached reflective placards with words asking a series of provocative questions. But the real point of the story is this: overnight, on 24 June 2020, someone sprayed a message across seven of the placards. Seven letters and a gap which read: RIP SENI. The Guardian has a twenty-minute video documentary about this which raises a lot of questions and leads me to ask another. 

Seni Lewis (born 22 March 1987) died at the age of 23 on Tuesday 31 August 2010 on Gresham Ward at the Bethlem. I had read reports about this incident a couple of years ago, when I began thinking about taking horses there. I returned to the documents last night to try to find the facts that I thought I had remembered. 

Seni’s death was eventually pronounced on Friday 3 September 2010. He had been admitted onto Gresham Ward at 5pm on the Tuesday, where he had gone with his mum and dad to seek asylum. By 10.30 on Tuesday evening he was lying “unresponsive” under a pile of police officers. One of the eleven officers involved had initiated the climax to this final scene of the tragedy by shoving Seni through the door of the seclusion room and fixing him face down on the floor. This was recorded as happening at 10pm. Apparently Seni had hesitated at the threshold of this room; his paranoia, presumably, had made him very sensitive to a possible danger lurking near at hand. 

Earlier that day, Seni’s symptoms had been on display both to staff at Croydon’s Mayday Hospital and to staff at the Maudsley in Camberwell, as well as to police officers who had quietly de-escalated a situation at a railway station. At the inquest, CCTV images from Mayday Hospital showed Seni running around asking for help, asking “What is happening to me?” But within a few hours of being admitted to Gresham Ward eleven police officers and a selection of restraint gadgets immobilised Seni to the point where he “became unresponsive.” 

Like Seni himself, the story of how this tragedy unfolded has been smothered by too many people piling into the fray and using gadgets that just get in the way. 

Seni’s question “What is happening to me?” has got lost, but we can try to answer it. 

Another question waiting in the wings is “What would T.P. Rees have to say?” 

Research Links

1. Record of Inquest. Following an investigation (commenced on Monday 13th September 2010), an Inquest was opened on Monday 13th September 2010 which reported on 9th May 2017. The final part of this process was a hearing in front of a jury over about 30 days between 6 Feb – 9 May 2017. 

2. Coroner’s Report by Selena Lynch, 28 June 2017, SBPI-00539 Record of Inquest. “In the South London Coroner’s Court Inquest touching the death of Olaseni Lewis: Narrative Conclusion.” “The admission process of Mr Lewis onto Gresham 2 ward Bethlem Royal Hospital (at 1700 hours on 31 August 2010) was unsatisfactory due to the lack of a full doctor’s assessment, inadequate risk assessment and the failure to acknowledge the calming influence of family members.” This is the first paragraph. The questions that occurred to me were: (a) Why did staff think it necessary to call the police? and (b) what kind of police support consists of eleven officers? I couldn’t find these questions in the reports I found last night, but I remember reading a report a couple of years ago which touched on the first question. I will have to keep on digging. 

3. Selena Lynch’s Coroner’s Report “In the South London Coroner’s Court Inquest touching the death of Olaseni Lewis: Report to Prevent Future Deaths.” This report was sent to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, and the Chief Executive, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Her report and their replies can be found online: The SLAM NHS Trust Response and the Police response. The signatures to both these letters are redacted for some reason. 

4. A report by a charity called INQUEST summarises the inquest hearing (6 Feb to 9 May 2017). 

5. Royal College of Nursing report. 

6. Sectioning a patient under the Mental Health Act requires two registered doctors and an Approved Mental Health Professional to agree that someone has a mental disorder, requires hospital assessment or treatment, and poses a severe risk to himself or herself or to others. Section 5(2) gives the psychiatrist or an approved clinician the power to hold a patient for up to 72 hours. 

7. Guardian documentary directed by Daisy Ifama, August 2021.

8. Mark Titchner artwork “Some Questions About Us,” commissioned by Lucy Owen, initiator and producer of the Bethlem Gallery Mental Health and Justice project, funded by Wellcome. The artwork is based on “research” with “service users.” The questions are described as “provocative” and “confronting.” AI says: “Wellcome funds arts and cultural projects that explore or intervene in mental health challenges by integrating artistic practice with scientific and humanistic research. They decide which projects to fund through a highly structured, multi-step assessment process focused on research evidence, community relevance, and inclusion.” This is the weblink quoted by AI as the source of its information. 

9. For T.P. Rees see my blog post and his paper “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 by T.P. Rees, OBE, BSc, MD, FRCP, DPM, Medical Superintendent Warlingham Park Hospital, Croydon, Surrey” in The Journal of Mental Science, Vol. 103, No. 431, April 1957.