Goldcord Asylum

By Jude Starling

'The threat is palpable... a great writer.'
(Rudy Simone, author of Aspergirls: Empowering Females with Asperger Syndrome)

Preston, 1866:
Time is running out for Goldcord Asylum. Once a progressive establishment dedicated to curing the mental problems of the inmates, now the asylum is under increasing pressure to treat and release patients whether they are ready or not. Professional pride, personal ideals, financial pressures and dark secrets compete to determine whether Goldcord will survive.

In the midst of this maelstrom of conflicting interests, Ivy Squire is committed. A strange young woman, so self-destructive that she must be kept in isolation, Ivy begins to reveal her story to new nurse Tilly Swann. But can Tilly find the key to Ivy’s madness before she is dragged into danger by Superintendent Enoch Gale’s increasing recklessness?

A gripping, intense work of historical fiction, brought vividly to life by Jude Starling.

'Goldcord Asylum promises a cure, but you will find no rest there, just shocking violations of women whose only crime was to feel.'
(Rudy Simone)

Included bonus material:
* The Eternal Tightrope Act: Asperger’s Syndrome, Women, Ivy and Me
* Hills to Hide Walls: Mid-Victorian Psychiatry and Asylums
* Refined Melancholy and ‘Nature’s Mistakes’: Mental Health Patients in the Victorian Era
* A Little Miscellaneous Trivia

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jude Starling
• Release date: Jun 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301589951

Jude Starling

Jude Starling is an author, editor, proofreader, Victoriana enthusiast and tattoo collector from North West England. Her head is almost always stuck in a book for one reason or another, whether she’s writing her own, editing someone else’s, researching her next story or just reading for the sheer joy of it, but when she looks up from the page she can be found on Twitter @JudeStarling and Goodreads (www.goodreads.com/judestarling).

Book preview

In consideration of Ivy Violet Squire having been admitted to the asylum as a private patient, I, the undersigned, undertake to pay the sum of three pounds and five shillings per week for her accommodation, medicine, clothing and care during her residence, and to pay the expenses of her burial or the removal of her remains should she die therein. I also undertake to remove the aforementioned patient from the asylum within six days upon receipt of a written notice of discharge from the Medical Superintendent, Mr Enoch Gale.

Dated this 13th day of December 1865.

Benjamin Squire

From the diary of Dr Ambrose Ballard

Monday 12th March 1866

She was beautiful, the first madwoman I ever laid eyes on, and from the moment I saw her, I knew my purpose on this earth. I was nineteen years old, and my family were visiting London. The Royal Academy was holding an art show, and among the paintings I found two portraits of the same woman: Ophelia. One artist had perched the poor girl upon a branch above that fateful stream, and in the ominous shadow of her surroundings, Ophelia’s golden hair was like a blaze of light, and as much as my dear mother would chide me for the blasphemy, as I looked at Ophelia I was reminded of the paintings of angels I have seen throughout my life. Innocent and almost childlike in her serenity, she contemplated the dark waters below, her arms filled with wilting blooms that threatened to precede her in death, and a crown of the same fading flora tangled in her hair. As I recall it I must blaspheme again, for I cannot think of Ophelia’s garland without remembering Christ’s crown of thorns.

This tragic creature had captured the imagination of two artists, but how differently the two men had immortalised her! The second Ophelia in the Academy’s exhibition lay in the stream, her life gone from her, although a delicate blush remained on her lips and cheeks. While the living Ophelia was little more than a child, this deceased Ophelia was a young woman and heartbreakingly beautiful in her moment of undoing; her lips parted in release and her eyes wide and dark. Many men gazing upon her could not keep their eyes from that face, although several glanced guiltily at their wives, or at the other men gathered to admire a painting of a pretty girl suffering an ugly death.

It’s something I have often considered: that moment in which I dedicated my life to those suffering in the cruel grip of lunacy. I too admired those paintings; I too saw the otherworldly beauty of one Ophelia and the sensuality of the other as she lay in the water’s cold embrace. I too made the death of a young woman – however fictitious – into one of many little entertainments on my visit to the capital. This is what has been known to wake me in the dead of night: have I followed my vocation with a pure heart? Can a man who once admired pictures of a young woman driven by her insanity, or perhaps just circumstance, into taking that most terrible escape approach such women – and indeed men – and say that he is motivated only to help them?

Perhaps I am attempting to justify myself, but as I sit in my new lodgings at Goldcord Asylum, surrounded by luggage and quite unable to sleep for excitement, my fondest hope is that I can. I cannot speak for the others at that exhibition, but for me, those paintings were not only admirable examples of their creators’ skill; they also allowed me a glimpse into the depths of despair that a person must surely feel in order to take their own life. Once I had experienced that, I could never again view the insane in quite the same way. Perhaps it was my youth and inexperience, but I had never imagined that a young woman who appeared so normal – who did not gibber and rage and foam at the mouth – could know such terrible fear, and I wanted to do whatever I could to prevent others from plunging to their deaths. Perhaps this redeems us all a little.

Chapter 1

There was a gap in the curtains, allowing a sliver of light to shine through the glass. Ivy’s eyes were already open, and she fidgeted under the sheets, legs twitching. The light cotton bedclothes felt as if they would crush her. Through the barred window she could see the anaemic grey dawn, but even in her nightdress she didn’t feel the chill lingering in the air, a legacy of the dying winter. It would be hours before the attendants arrived to wake everyone, and the only sound that could be heard was that of the clock hanging above the empty fireplace, ticking steadily. Ivy watched it intently, as if listening to a cherished friend.

There were no candles or matches on her bedside table, and the gas lamps had been fixed high on the wall: in isolation, she was trusted with very little. She pulled back the curtains and got out of bed. Padding barefoot across the carpet, she slowly picked up speed, before the papered surface of the wall stopped her in her tracks. She turned automatically and headed for the opposite wall, her pace gathering momentum until she was almost running. This time she hit the wall with greater force, but still she did not flinch. Instead she turned and ran for the third wall, the trailing hem of her nightdress tangling around her ankles.

Chapter 2

There was a knock at the door. Inside his office, Enoch Gale started at the unexpected intrusion, before remembering that the new Assistant Medical Officer would have arrived the previous night. Enoch hung his hat and coat on the stand in the corner; then leaned his rifle against the base.

‘Enter.’

The door opened, and Dr Ambrose Ballard entered the room.

‘Good morning, Mr Gale.’ Ballard was a young man, thirty or thereabouts, neatly dressed in a russet-brown suit and a crisp white shirt. Enoch was aware that his academic records were excellent – just the sort of fresh blood Goldcord needed – and yet when he had attended his interview two weeks previously, there had been something irritating about Dr Ballard. Still, he was newly qualified and keen, and that could prove invaluable. Perhaps he was rather too keen, though. Even before his interview, the man’s enthusiasm at the prospect of working at Goldcord had been infused into his correspondence, as if even the ink used to write his letter of application were honoured to be employed for the purpose.

‘Hunting man?’ Dr Ballard looked at the rifle propped up against the hatstand, smiling in the awkward manner of a virtual stranger attempting to appear like a trusted colleague.

‘Oh... yes. Thought I’d take the gun out first thing, but the damned birds are getting better at dodging my shot.’

Ballard smiled hesitantly. As he looked around the office, Enoch saw his dark eyes alight on the pine marten on his desk. Like all the other specimens dotted around his home and office, the marten had been shot by Enoch and mounted by his favourite taxidermist, but now he spied a swiftly concealed flicker of puzzlement as it passed over Dr Ballard’s neat features. There was a short silence before Ballard spoke again.

‘I spoke to Matron Harvey when I arrived last night. She said you were otherwise occupied.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry about that.’ Enoch had promised to meet Ballard for a glass of port on his arrival, but in the end it had not come to pass. ‘Please, sit.’ He gestured towards the chair in front of his desk and Dr Ballard took a seat. Enoch pulled out his own chair and eased himself into it, wincing at the sharp, lancing pains in his belly and the joints of his hips.

‘I’m glad you managed to get settled in, anyway,’ he continued, before Ballard could notice or remark upon his discomfort. A light sweat had broken out over Enoch’s face, and he swept his hand across his forehead as if to brush back his receding hair. ‘I had other things to attend to.’

‘Of course.’ Ballard smiled, and Enoch’s aching stomach churned as he recognised genuine admiration in the young man’s expression. ‘I’m sure a place such as this keeps you very busy.’

‘Indeed.’ Enoch drew himself up in his chair and laced his fingers together in the formal manner he frequently adopted when interviewing patients; a tactic he often found helpful when attempting to collect his fractured thoughts. ‘This asylum is not a large one, Dr Ballard, but the best treatment demands a great deal of time. And since my former Assistant Medical Officer departed, I have been solely responsible for maintaining the casebooks for all the patients, as well as performing my usual duties, of course.’

‘Dear me.’ Ballard’s forehead furrowed in sympathy. ‘And you have no resident students who could help? I spent a year at Bethlem when I was training, and I used to assist with record-keeping there. Progress notes, photographs, letters – I’m sure you do the same.’ The young physician smiled modestly.

Enoch shifted in his seat. The tips of his fingers had begun to tremble, and he folded his arms before Ballard could see. ‘Well, I do what I can in the hours God sends. I haven’t had any students here for the past few years; I simply cannot find the time to train them, I’m afraid.’

Dr Ballard’s smile suddenly seemed forced, as though he had just been handed an unsuitable gift but did not want to offend the giver. ‘I see. Well, I hope that I will be able to help you, Mr Gale. As I told you at my interview, I’m tremendously honoured to have been offered this position. I have read everything I could find on the history of Goldcord Asylum, and I’m proud to be a part of its future.’

Enoch’s left eyelid flickered, and one hand flitted up to rub at it. ‘Good. Well, this office isn’t the place to achieve that, is it?’

‘No indeed.’

‘No indeed. So why don’t you go downstairs and familiarise yourself with the place? Harry Smith is the chief attendant in the male wing if you have any questions, and in the female wing there’s Matron Harvey. Either of them should be able to show you to your new office if you haven’t seen it yet; it’s just down the corridor.’

Dr Ballard’s eyes widened. ‘Aren’t you coming with me?’

‘No.’ Enoch was acutely aware of being a disappointment. His eyelids felt heavy, and he feigned a yawn, politely hidden behind one hand. ‘I still have tasks to catch up on from last night, so you must excuse me.’

‘But don’t you visit your patients first thing in the morning? To observe them at different times of the day?’

‘Not every day, no.’ Irritation crept into Enoch’s tone, and Dr Ballard backed away in his chair. The back of Enoch’s neck was prickling in an unholy manner. ‘For now, I think you should go and get yourself acquainted.’

Dr Ballard got to his feet. ‘Of course. Thank you, Mr Gale.’

As the door closed, Enoch rubbed irritably at his neck, listening to the fading sound of Dr Ballard’s boots. Once he was certain that Ballard had gone, Enoch stood and crossed the room, then locked the door, leaving the key in the lock. He unbuttoned his jacket and shrugged it off, then drew the curtains closed. In his waistcoat pocket was a little brass key that unlocked a drawer in his desk, from which he retrieved a glass vial, an old necktie and a black leather-covered box. Enoch removed his right cufflink and rolled up his sleeve, then knotted the necktie just above the crook of his elbow, pulling it tight. Inside the black box, a hypodermic syringe nestled on a bed of black velvet, and Enoch assembled it, his breath becoming shallow and rapid, like that of a man undressing a lover. He reached for the vial of morphine, drew a measure of the drug up into the syringe and injected it into the hungry vein straining below the makeshift tourniquet. Then he reclined in his chair and closed his twitching eyelids, letting the warmth wash through him like a pleasant childhood dream.

Chapter 3

The moving cab slowed. Sitting in the back, Tilly Swann licked her lips nervously. Out of the window, she could see the narrow asylum driveway, flanked by rows of landscaped greenery, opening out into a courtyard. A house of cream-brown stone stood to the left, and to the right a couple of modest buildings that Tilly took to be the medical staff lodgings. A rectangle of garden sat in the middle, a crop of spring daffodils forming a lush bed of buttery cream and golden yellow around the base of an ornamental fountain. As the cab drew to a halt beside the fountain, Tilly came face-to-face with the stone figure of a woman perched on the edge. Her eyes were downcast, as if watching the water splashing beneath her, and skilful sculpting had allowed her hair to tumble loose and her dress to slip from one shoulder, as if she were not really frozen in her seat, but simply choosing to remain still.

The cab shook as the driver jumped down and made his way around the back to collect Tilly’s cases. She had left Chester with everything she owned packed into those two cases. The driver set them down on the cobbles, and Tilly reached up to ensure that her hat was sitting straight. The driver opened the door, and she stepped out. The asylum itself was the first thing she noticed. Goldcord Asylum looked more like a country manor house than a lunatic asylum: a quietly dignified creation of the same pale stone as the buildings in its courtyard, with large double doors of thick oak set below a stone archway. On either side of the doors, a stone gargoyle snarled, as silent and lifeless as the girl on the fountain.

‘Here you are, miss.’ At the sound of the driver’s voice, Tilly collected herself, and she smoothed her cloak, brushing away the creases of the journey.

‘Thank you.’ She paid the driver, shaking her head when he asked whether she would like him to carry her bags.

‘You sure, miss?’

Tilly smiled weakly. Why did strange buildings – even ones as beautiful as this – always look so unfriendly?

‘Really, I’ll be fine. They aren’t heavy.’

The driver nodded. It was difficult to deny that Tilly’s possessions were modest in both number and weight: her entire life packed into two cases, and the vast majority of it related to nursing. Sometimes Tilly wondered who Matilda Magdalen Swann was when she wasn’t busy being Nurse Swann. Reaching into her pocket, her fingertips found the smooth wooden beads of her rosary, tucked away out of the sight of critical eyes. She remembered the letter she had received from Matron Harvey; the cramped officiousness of the handwriting, small and pinched like a disapproving mouth. I take it from your name that you are of the Catholic faith. While Mr Gale is prepared to appoint you to the position of nurse in his hospital, I should warn you that ostentatious displays of your beliefs will not be tolerated. It was nothing Tilly hadn’t heard before. In her girlhood there had been the taunts of neighbouring children, and as her father’s chain of fish shops grew, a couple of them had been vandalised; their windows smashed and NO POPERY daubed on their doors in white paint. Pushing the beads further into her pocket, she picked up her cases.

‘I presume Mr Harling had Mr Wrigley take your things over to the staff lodge?’ The matron didn’t even look at Tilly as she swept along the corridor. Hurrying along in pursuit, Tilly glanced back over her shoulder at the clerk on the front desk who had rung for the porter to collect her cases.

‘Yes, matron.’ Tilly had been worried that after two years as a private nurse, she would forget to address Goldcord’s matron in a suitable manner, but within moments of meeting Matron Harvey, she doubted such a thing would be possible. The woman was every bit as officious and chilly as her letter had been.

‘Good,’ Matron Harvey continued, still walking ahead as if she were holding her conversation with the air and not the nurse hastening behind her. ‘Once I have shown you around, you may go to your room and change for work. Now,’ she added, stopping abruptly in front of a door and laying a weathered hand on the knob, ‘this is the great hall.’ She threw open the door to reveal a large room with a polished wooden floor and papered walls adorned with gold-framed pictures. Tilly looked at it in bewilderment.

‘What happens in here?’

‘Why, the dances, of course,’ the matron exclaimed, as if one would have to be simple not to know such a thing. Her voice was throaty and mannish, and when she raised her tone in surprise, she sounded as if someone were attempting to throttle her. ‘They’re very popular with the asylum’s benefactors, and extremely therapeutic for the patients.’

‘The patients?’ Tilly’s lips parted in astonishment.

Matron Harvey closed her eyes in distaste at Tilly’s Liverpudlian accent. ‘But of course,’ she declared, enunciating each word much more clearly than she had until now. ‘It is a great treat for them, and provides excellent practice in fitting back into decent society. I’m surprised you ask, as a matter of fact – didn’t you say in your letter of application that you have experience of dealing with nervous conditions?’

Tilly looked at her boots. ‘Yes, matron. Not in an asylum, though.’

‘I see,’ Matron Harvey said, although her tone suggested that she didn’t believe a word of it. ‘Well, in an asylum we provide the proper treatment for our patients. I daresay that the patients you worked with were not adequately treated, were they?’

Tilly shook her head. In her mind’s eye, she saw the implacable rage in Captain Murray’s eyes as he knocked Mrs Murray to the floor; his animal snarl as she cowered beneath him; his white-knuckled grip on the heavy lamp he’d snatched from an end table, just as Tilly walked into the room.

‘Now,’ Matron Harvey continued, ‘behind the hall, we have visiting rooms for when patients’ families wish to see them. The Medical Superintendent Mr Gale has an office at the top of the stairs, but he’s a very busy man so you mustn’t trouble him unless absolutely necessary.’

‘Of course, matron.’ As soon as she’d spoken the words, cold fingers of fear snatched at Tilly’s insides – had her growing frustration with this lecture seeped into her voice? But if it had, Matron Harvey didn’t appear to notice.

‘The pharmacy.’ Matron Harvey clutched a nearby doorknob with her bony fingers and flung the door open. A thin man with impossibly untidy hair wheeled around, startled, with a glass bottle clutched in each hand and his shirt a welter of dull-hued stains. Without so much as a glance in his direction, Matron Harvey continued with her speech. ‘This room is also kept locked when unattended, although you may find it open if Mr Theakston the pharmacist is in.’

The man (whom Tilly presumed to be Mr Theakston, although Matron Harvey didn’t bother to introduce them) regarded them with wide eyes, but Matron Harvey didn’t apologise for the intrusion, instead continuing down the gallery. Tilly mumbled an apology before hurrying after her.

‘Now,’ Matron Harvey croaked, ‘the women’s wing.’ At the end of the corridor was a door; sturdy, yet not so sturdy as to resemble a prison door. Matron Harvey produced a key from her pocket. ‘This door must be kept locked at all times,’ she warned, emphasising each word with a flick of her wrist. ‘This is the door to the wing of the asylum reserved for female patients; at the other end of the corridor you will find a similar door leading to the male wing. You will receive a key to this door, and you must never forget to lock the door after you have unlocked it. Should you find it unlocked, lock it at once and report it to me.’

‘Yes, matron.’

‘On the occasions when a nurse is required in the treatment of a male patient, you may be summoned to one of the treatment rooms in that wing. However, as the day-to-day care of patients is conducted by attendants of their own sex, you will spend most of your time in the women’s wing.’ She unlocked the door and Tilly followed her through, and Matron Harvey shut the door with a bang, locking it with deliberate care.

The gallery of the women’s wing was decorated in much the same way as the rest of the asylum, but as she followed the matron down the gallery, Tilly noticed signs of wear: scuffs and scars in the wooden surfaces; wallpaper blackened around the wall-mounted gas lamps; rugs faded and threadbare. In the mustard-wallpapered day room, a cluster of patients sat around on armchairs and sofas (also somewhat shabby), busying themselves with needlework. At the sight of Matron Harvey, the attendant sitting beside one of the women roused herself and plucked the needle from the fingers of her charge, who had scratched at the pad of her thumb and was now tracing thin trails of blood across the cloth. But once again, Matron Harvey didn’t appear to notice.

‘Here we have the treatment rooms,’ she was saying, hastening further down the gallery, ‘and then the dormitory.’ Tilly peered over her shoulder at the rows of narrow iron bedsteads with crisp white linen – a comfortingly familiar sight.

‘Do all the patients sleep in here?’ she asked. The dormitory was so quiet and neatly organised that she couldn’t imagine hoards of lunatics occupying it, and female lunatics, no less, who were said to be considerably more disturbed than their male counterparts.

‘Most of them. We do have a few rooms set aside for the more troublesome cases, but Mr Gale thinks it best to teach them to live with others where possible.’ At the mention of the Superintendent, Matron Harvey appeared to grow another inch in height, pride positively radiating from her. ‘Indeed, only one of the isolation rooms is occupied at present, and Mr Gale hopes to reduce that number even further. Goldcord is not a shabby little county asylum, nurse, nor even a private lunatic house where the incurably insane from decent families can be left until they die. We have no need for refractory and infirm wards, filled with troublesome, sickly pauper lunatics. We admit only private patients, and aim to cure them.’ Matron Harvey looked out of the large gallery windows, the glass free from prisonlike bars but double paned for security, over the gardens outside where a handful of younger patients knelt beside a flower bed, picking daffodils under the supervision of an attendant.

‘This is how we ensure that there is no injury to a patient’s reputation,’ Matron Harvey continued. ‘This is a respectable establishment, and the community understands that those who are discharged from this asylum have been treated for their illness as well as anyone suffering from a fever or a dislocation of a limb. We expect the best from our patients, nurse, just as their kin expect it from us.’

Chapter 4

Leaving the men’s wing, Ambrose strolled past the great hall and over to the women’s, a smile lingering on his lips. He had been hesitant to present himself to the staff and patients without the presence of the Superintendent to ease the introductions, but fortunately as he arrived in the men’s wing he’d happened upon Harry Smith, the chief male attendant, and taken the opportunity to introduce himself. A tall man with light blue eyes and hair the colour of weak tea, Smith had a quietly welcoming manner about him, as well as a Lancashire accent as broad as his meaty shoulders and back. On a couple of occasions as Smith showed him around, Ambrose caught himself narrowing his eyes as he attempted to understand the bubbling stream of cant and dropped consonants, but in the main he was finding that the Prestonian accent was not so very different from those he had heard every day on the streets of his native Nottingham. Moreover, he’d soon discovered that Smith’s imposing stature and abrupt tone of voice belied the man’s true nature, for he frequently smiled and joked, diffusing his mock-serious expressions with a sly wink.

‘So, Dr Ballard,’ he’d asked, ‘where will you be wanting to see your patients, then?’

Ambrose ran his fingers through his small, neat beard. Glancing across the day room, his gaze fell on a group of men playing cards.

‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t speak to them in the wing, providing we can find somewhere suitably private,’ he’d said eventually. ‘Familiar surroundings and all that. I plan to spend a few hours in my office every evening so that I can write up my notes; I don’t need access to the casebooks while I’m speaking to the patients as well.’

‘That’s good to hear, doctor,’ Smith remarked, his wide face broadening even further into a grin, ‘‘cause there’s nothing stops these men’s tongues faster than a desk or a notebook between them and the person they’re supposed to be talking to.’

Now as he fumbled in his pocket for his key to the women’s wing, Ambrose’s smile gave way to a thoughtful frown. This was Goldcord Asylum; the hospital built by the great Enoch Gale, a man whose ideas had shaped Ambrose’s own philosophy and ambitions when he was training. The seed that was sown when Ambrose was a young man in London admiring portraits of Ophelia had begun to sprout when, in his first year of study, he had happened upon an illustration of the French physician Philippe Pinel, who in the previous century had liberated the lunatics of Paris’ Salpêtrière asylum and freed them from their chains. Later, he discovered John Conolly, an Englishman who had taken Pinel’s principle of non-restraint into England’s asylums, until his influence spread and now the Queen’s own government included a Commission in Lunacy intended to protect the insane from abuse while in the custody of an asylum. Ambrose had immersed himself in Conolly’s theory of moral insanity and its treatment of moral management: the postulation that insanity’s aetiology lay in the patient’s deviation from society’s accepted rules of conduct, and that recovery therefore lay in retraining the insane person in such matters. One couldn’t expect to turn anyone’s heart to pleasantry and sensitivity in harsh, primitive surroundings, and so Conolly turned the design of the asylum on its head, advocating comfortable, attractive buildings with walls and doors made to look as unimposing as possible, so that the inmates should not feel as if they were in prison and therefore behave like criminals.

Of course, not everyone in the medical community had appreciated John Conolly, and following his recent death Ambrose had been saddened to read a number of critical obituaries penned for the man, their disrespectful tone serving only to underline, in Ambrose’s mind, what Conolly had said about the importance of good social conduct. But Ambrose’s new place of employment had been built by the young Enoch Gale in accordance with his contemporary’s guidelines, in order to provide his patients with an uplifting and appropriate environment in which to begin their recovery. True, Ambrose had been somewhat unsettled to find the place looking rather worn; concerned that the faded rugs and sun-bleached wallpaper, already a little depressing even to his spirit, would have an even stronger effect on the sensitive patients, but with the best intentions in the world one could hardly expect a place through which so many had passed to remain pristine. Still, Harry Smith’s reaction when Ambrose had told him of his plans to continue with what in moral management terms was a good, conversational style of interacting with one’s patients was confusing. Mr Gale had founded Goldcord Asylum on the principles of moral management. Why had the chief attendant seemed so pleasantly surprised?

Strolling down the women’s gallery, Ambrose’s gaze took in all the patients he passed. There were more than there had been in the men’s wing, but this was not unusual: from those first paintings he’d seen of Ophelia to the images of Pinel freeing the Parisian lunatics, in this day and age depictions of lunacy focused quite noticeably on women, and as had been the case in every asylum Ambrose had visited, the more sensitive sex were well represented at Goldcord. Young girls and women old enough to be his mother; neat, tidy patients and those more obviously afflicted; some noted his presence with interest, while others scarcely acknowledged him. A couple of the younger girls stared at him as he passed the day room, and when Ambrose smiled a friendly greeting, the pair flushed scarlet and dissolved into giggles behind their hands. During his year of student residency at Bethlem, he’d become used to such reactions. Shut away in an all-female ward and deprived of male contact save for that of medical men, those patients on the brink of womanhood frequently became inordinately excited when in the presence of younger men. Then Ambrose’s gaze fell on a woman a few feet ahead, and he and his thoughts were stopped in their tracks.

The girl before him wore a soft pink uniform with a white apron and cap: a nurse, Ambrose recognised the attire immediately. There was something cherubic about her – a sweet, open face; milk-pale skin and hair the colour of corn ripening in the sun – and yet as she met Ambrose’s eye, there was a hint of mischief; a playful tugging at one corner of her mouth that lent her smile a fresh edge. Ambrose brushed down the buttoned front of his jacket and approached.

‘Good morning, nurse.’ He heard the warmth in his own voice, and the apples of the young nurse’s cheeks flushed to the colour of a summer dusk. Her eyes were periwinkle blue, and the bridge of her nose dusted with a pinch of pale freckles.

‘Good morning...?’ Her voice tailed off, and Ambrose remembered that they had not been introduced.

‘Oh, I’m sorry – I’m Dr Ballard. I’ve just arrived and I was hoping to learn a little more about the patients in this wing.’

The nurse smiled apologetically, and for a moment Ambrose’s attention was distracted by the soft curve of her mouth.

‘I wish I could help, doctor, but I’m new here myself.’

Ambrose looked the fall of her uniform, hinting at the soft, plump curves beneath, and swallowed hard. In the pit of his stomach, something began aching.

‘Well, nurse...?’

‘Swann.’

‘Well, Nurse Swann, perhaps we ought to walk together for a while. We can learn together, can’t we?’

Nurse Swann beamed at him. ‘I’d like that.’

He knew that she would accept his offer, but he had expected her to do so out of polite obedience.

*

Matron Harvey turned the key in the lock of the isolation room, sighing heavily. She had no idea who had told Ivy Squire her Christian name, but now the insolent creature insisted on referring to her as Eugenie. No one at Goldcord had ever called her Eugenie – Eugenie was the name of her girlhood, and later, the name he had called her for those few short weeks. Now she was Matron Harvey to all but her mother and sister, a noble title that ignited within Eugenie a deep, near-forgotten spark of pleasure. Most of all, she loved to hear Mr Gale speak her name; the deep rumble of his voice, weighted with decades of experience and wisdom, calling her to his right hand and bidding her to carry out his will; years of mutual trust and professional admiration lending a hint of respectable warmth to his tone. A subtle hint, true, but Eugenie heard it well enough. And now the Squire girl seemed determined to address her as if she were a flower seller at a town market. Eugenie felt the sinews of her neck knotting in irritation. Behind her eyes, a headache was building, and her mouth felt dry. Her shift was almost over, although with a silly girl like the new nurse on the staff, she intended to remain on the grounds in case she was needed.

And there was Nurse Swann now, strolling down the gallery alongside the newly appointed Dr Ballard. Recently arrived and already consulting flighty young things instead of seeking out an experienced guide – hardly a promising sign. Lines of doubt and distrust creased Eugenie’s forehead. Nurse Swann was smiling girlishly at Dr Ballard, and he looked back at her as if he would gather her up in his arms and devour her whole. Eugenie couldn’t hear what they were saying, but from the smiles and soft laughter that punctuated their conversation, she doubted that their minds were on their duties for the day. It had been many years now, but she could remember the giddy flutter in her chest; the way she had inclined her head as he spoke, as Nurse Swann was inclining hers now. Drawing herself upright, Eugenie marched towards the pair, an expression of stern disapproval on her face. But before she could speak, the young doctor interrupted.

‘Good morning, Matron Harvey,’ he said, glancing at her black uniform and the trailing lace veil that draped from the back of her cap; the signs that set her apart from the pink-clad Nurse Swann and the attendants in grey. ‘Nurse Swann was just showing me around.’

Eugenie arched a sparse eyebrow. The girl didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed. Eugenie shot her a hard look and swallowed the sharp retort on the tip of her tongue.

‘Very well, doctor. If you would care to know anything about the patients in this wing, you need only to ask me. I am familiar with their histories.’

To her annoyance, Dr Ballard merely nodded, with the polite, disinterested manner of one who sees little point in accepting the offer that has just been put to them. ‘As a matter of fact, Nurse Swann and I were just talking with some of the younger girls out in the gardens, weren’t we?’

The young nurse nodded eagerly.

‘They were saying that they rarely have an opportunity to dance, and Nurse Swann and I were discussing the possibility of bringing in a musical box.’

Eugenie frowned. ‘We often hold dances here, Dr Ballard.’

‘Oh, I have no doubt.’ The young doctor’s words were coming faster in his growing enthusiasm, and with a glance out of the corner of her eye, Eugenie could see the little Catholic nurse’s colour rising. ‘But in my time at Bethlem, I found that the younger women in particular like to practise before such an event, and when we introduced a musical box it was very popular. And what young woman doesn’t love to dance?’ He addressed this last remark to Nurse Swann. Before Eugenie could say anything more, there was a rattling of the lock in the door at the end of the gallery, and Mr Gale appeared with Dr Adshead.

‘Ah, Dr Ballard!’ Mr Gale slowly made his way along the gallery, and Eugenie watched him in silent admiration. His every movement seemed considered and deliberate, as though years of setting a moral example to his patients had infused every part of him with careful dignity; the disciplined man raised above the impulsive beast. Dr Adshead, the physician who visited the asylum once a week to sign a register confirming that all was up to the required standard, was much the same age as Mr Gale, but he did not have his stately demeanour.

‘Dr Adshead, this is Dr Ballard, my new Assistant Medical Officer. Dr Ballard, this is Dr Adshead. He signs the weekly register.’

The two men shook hands. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you,’ Dr Adshead declared, his smile broadening. ‘I gather you’re quite the young protégé.’

Dr Ballard seemed embarrassed, although with Nurse Swann eyeing him as if he were the second coming of Christ, Eugenie was hardly surprised. ‘Please.’ He waved a dismissive hand. ‘It will be an honour to learn from Mr Gale.’

The Superintendent shuffled his feet, and a golden warmth glowed in the dark space of Eugenie’s stomach: modesty was a virtue. Dr Adshead, however, arched an eyebrow in surprise.

‘Really?’ he said, his tone deliberately neutral. ‘Well, I look forward to working with you. Now what say Dr Ballard accompanies us while I check on the female patients before I sign the register, eh, Enoch?’

Mr Gale took a tiny step back, and Eugenie held her tongue. Dr Adshead had become increasingly disrespectful of late.

‘Actually, I was hoping that you would pop back over to the male wing, Dr Ballard,’ Mr Gale said. ‘We’ve just had a new patient admitted – an alcoholic, I believe – and I think it would be good for you to perform the initial assessment.’

‘Oh.’ Dr Ballard nodded. ‘Yes, I’ll go over there now. Good day to you all.’

He hastened back down the gallery, and before Mr Gale and Dr Adshead could continue on their way, Eugenie cleared her throat.

‘Mr Gale? I just wanted to let you know that Ivy Squire’s bruised herself again.’

Dr Adshead looked on with interest, and Mr Gale closed his eyes. ‘And she still claims not to know how the injuries have come about?’

Eugenie joined him in a companionable sigh. ‘Precisely.’

‘Very well, I shall check on her. Very good, Matron.’

Once she had hurried across to the female staff lodge and changed out of her uniform, Eugenie made her way around the back of the asylum and stopped outside the little chapel that sat just behind the patient gardens, surrounded by a modest graveyard used for the burial of patients who had no family, or whose families did not wish them to be buried in the cemetery at Ribbleton. Despite the lengthening days, it was chilly in the shadow of the chapel and the landscaped hills that concealed the sight of the walls around the asylum grounds from its well-to-do patients, and Eugenie seemed to feel the cold more acutely with every passing year. Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, she retrieved from her pocket a cigarette case and a box of matches. Holding a cigarette between her lined lips, she lit a match and touched the flame to its tip. The smoke reached deep inside her, caressing her with ghostly fingers, and she felt some of the irritations of the morning melting away. When she had finished, she dropped the cigarette end into the grass and crushed it with the toe of her boot (she wouldn’t dream of stubbing it out on the chapel wall), then walked around to the front door. The chapel was empty, and Eugenie made her way to her usual place in the front pew, kneeling on the embroidered cushions made by Goldcord patients long departed. With her head bowed, she thought back to Mr Gale’s parting words to her. Very good, Matron. Very good, Matron.

Chapter 5

‘And how are you feeling today, Mrs Squire?’ Hugh Adshead’s tone was courteous yet confident; an approach that Enoch imagined stood him in good stead with his own patients. Still, the chances of it persuading Ivy Squire to confide in him (or indeed anyone) were considerably slighter, and just as Enoch had expected, she uttered not a single word, but kept her gaze fixed on the handful of stones laid out on the low table at the side of her bed. Her thick mass of tangled brown hair hung over her shoulders, the matted locks obscuring her face from view.

‘Wouldn’t you like to have your hair brushed?’ Dr Adshead continued, managing to keep all but a hint of offence at being ignored from his voice. ‘You’d feel much better for it, I’m sure.’

Behind the messy curtain of her hair, Ivy Squire laughed – a bitter, half-hearted little mutter; the sort of laughter Enoch had often found himself suppressing over the years whenever a patient uttered some fantastical statement or became fixated on asking banal, pointless questions. Ordinarily, Enoch would have found the girl’s reaction comical – how anyone could visit Goldcord Asylum on a weekly basis and not expect such insolence from Ivy Squire was beyond his comprehension – but in the past few months Adshead’s attitude when he came to sign the register had changed, as if he were becoming less of an observer and more an active participant in the patients’ care, and Enoch had grown increasingly suspicious.

‘One of the attendants could put it up for you,’ Adshead was saying. ‘A woman’s hair should be put up during the day, now I’m sure you know that.’

‘It hurts,’ Ivy muttered. The dratted girl insisted on doing this whenever there were visitors: grunting in abrupt monosyllables as if she were an imbecile. Enoch knew that she was not – indeed, when she was so inclined she could spout detailed, academic sentences that Enoch was certain she must have parroted from books at some point – but when Ivy Squire decided to be unresponsive, a man could get more conversation out of the stone woman perched on the edge of the fountain at the front of the asylum. Indeed, the stone woman was probably a more natural representative of her sex.

‘Oh, come now,’ Adshead scoffed. ‘Every lady in the country wears her hair up, and none of them complain about it hurting.’

‘It hurts me. Makes my head ache.’ A white hand darted up to the mass of chocolate tresses, twisting through the knots and snarls and working it in small spirals until it was even more tousled than before. Adshead sighed wearily.

‘Do you know how long you’ve been here now?’

‘Yes.’ Still Ivy didn’t look up, and her fingers continued to work her hair into an irredeemable mess. When she took it upon herself to be contrary, she could be quite maddening. Now, despite Adshead’s pointed silence, she didn’t elaborate, and before Enoch could interject and advise Adshead to play along for expediency’s sake and specifically ask her how long, the man spoke again.

‘Four months,’ Adshead declared. At once, Ivy shook her head.

‘It’ll be three months this week. Not four.’

Hugh looked at Enoch, and Enoch nodded. In all honesty, he wouldn’t know for certain until he checked Ivy’s casebook, but she had a vexing habit of being right about little trifles such as this, and it couldn’t harm Enoch’s standing for him to appear to have memorised such information.

‘And you aren’t eager to recover?’ Adshead asked. Again the dismissive silence, and Adshead’s chest puffed out in indignation. ‘Mrs Squire,’ he scolded, ‘are you listening to me?’

‘Of course I am. There’s nothing wrong with my hearing.’

Enoch’s heart was sinking rapidly. His damned jaw ached, and the throbbing was spreading upward, across his cheekbones and over the bridge of his nose. Dr Adshead huffed.

‘Then why do you not look at me, nor reply to half the things I say?’

Ivy sighed; a deep, shuddering sigh that was almost a groan. ‘I do not need to look at you to hear you: I hear with my ears, just like everyone

Reviews for Goldcord Asylum

[lauriebrown54 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Set in northwest England in the year 1866, this heartbreaking novel is of a woman put into a mental institution by her husband- a husband she never wanted. Ivy Squire, nee Greenlake (having to change her name was an irritation to her) was married by her parents to Benjamin Squire as a social and economic move; Squire’s mother, who made the match, only wanted someone decorative and fertile. Ivy was not consulted at all- not at all unusual for that time. Ivy, an avid reader and devoted to her invalid sister, had no interest in leaving home. But her odd ways had always been an embarrassment to her mother, and this marriage offer was a good arrangement in her eyes. Sadly, her odd ways make her less than satisfactory to her new spouse and mother-in-law, and Ivy is revolted by her husband and his demands. When she finds secret ways to maintain some autonomy, her happiness proves short lived. Ivy’s odd ways are simply Asperger’s syndrome, unheard of in the Victorian age. In our day, people with Asperger’s are just beginning to be accepted as normal (whatever that is); imagine how much worse it would have been back then, when every inconvenient female was considered to have a mental illness, as was every one who did not adhere closely to the prevailing way of life. Problems at the institute make Ivy’s – and the other patient’s- situation worse. Enoch Gale, founder of Goldcord and Medical Superintendent, has secrets that would ruin him were they known. To add to Gale’s problems, the Commission in Lunacy, which oversees mental hospitals, is starting to frown on the fact that very few patients are released as cured. Dr. Ballard, new to Goldcord, and the new nurse, Tilly Swann, show promise of making humane changes, but can they do this before a panicked Gale destroys lives? While told in the third person and weaving together the stories of Ivy, Ballard, Swann, Gale, and the Matron, Eugenia Harvey, the heart of the story is Ivy’s, told to Tilly Swann. Ivy comes through as a determined person who may not always make choices that everyone would but has to be admired for her strength, loving nature, and intellect. The characters all come to life on the page, but I felt I knew Ivy as a living, breathing person. A lot of research went into this book and the historical aspects are spot on. I very, very rarely do this, but I cried at the end of this story. I highly recommend this book.