While researching funeral arrangements for pauper lunatics at the Three Counties Asylum, we uncovered evidence of patients' bodies being sold off after death for the purpose of anatomical dissection and dismemberment at the Cambridge anatomical teaching school at Downing Collage. It is hard to believe that 'body snatching' could have possibly been going on, but it was. To look at this we have to go back to an article we found.

In May 1901 an article appeared in the Yarmouth Advertiser and Gazette entitled ‘Alleged Traffic in Pauper Corpses - How the Medical Schools are Supplied - The Shadow of a Scandal’.

It recounted that, although a pauper named Frank Hyde aged 50 had died in Yarmouth workhouse on 11 April 1901, his body was missing from the local cemetery. The case caused a public outcry because the workhouse death register stated that Hyde had been 'buried by friends' in the parish five days after he had died. An editorial alleged that 'the body was sent to Cambridge for dissection' instead and that the workhouse master's clerk profited 15 shillings from the cadaver's sale.

Read more: Body Snatchers

Prisoner X16663 - Arthur William Everett – Cellar man – Cause of Insanity Drink – Transferred from St Albans Prison

Arthur William Everett was born on the 9th January 1857 in St Ives, Huntingdonshire, to Arthur William and Mary Ann Everett and was baptized at St Mary the Great in Cambridge aged 4 on the 21 April 1861, the year after the death of his father.

Arthur lived with his mother, sister and step siblings in Falcon Yard. Cambridge. This was one of the yards off Petty Cury which is where the Lion Yard is today. Falcon Yard would have housed up to 300 people. In 1903, on the order of the Medical Officer of Health, it was declared one of the worst slums in Cambridge and was demolished. In the 1871 census, aged just 14, Arthur was listed as working as an errand boy, and in 1881 he was working as a grocer's warehouseman. On the 15th April 1884 Arthur (now a cellarman) married Mary Watts in Bottisham, Cambridgeshire, and the following year they had a son Arthur.

Read more: Criminal Lunatic Arthur William Everett

John Edward Crofts, Prisoner X17012 - melancholia due to an adversity to drink

John Edward Crofts of West Lydford, Somerset, had been charged with obtaining food to the value of £1.10s by means of false pretences with the intent to defraud while staying at the Dolphin Inn, Gold Street, Northampton.

He had arrived at the Dolphin Inn on Saturday 16th July at around 1 o clock where he had some dinner. He described himself as a garrison sergeant-major on furlough from Bombay, and that he had been in India for 14 years. He asked the landlord if he would look after his bag and went out in the afternoon and returned in the evening where he had supper. He said he was due to be married the next week and had come to buy a ring and a bracelet for his future wife, however the truth was that he was already married and had been for nine years. He asked for his bag back and produced his furlough papers and said he was enjoying himself so much he would like to stay a few more days. On the Monday he told the landlord he was off to withdraw his pay, took his bag and never returned.

Read more: Criminal Lunatic John Edward Crofts

The contributions below were posted anonymously on the original Three Counties Asylum website, and are reproduced here for completeness. These contributions do not represent the views of Fairfield Parish Council, any individual parish councillor, or any person involved in the production and/or maintenance of this website.

Contribution 1

Richard, I've seen your website about Fairfield’s Hospital. It was a place that struck fear into many peoples' hearts. I was frequently threatened with it and lived in terror of Fairfield’s for years. Many of the staff were very cruel. They'd stick a needle in someone just because they cried. Young people were subjected to incarceration on the basis of what their families said. I witnessed so-called nurses being very cruel. I also knew someone who died a very suspicious death there - he was said to have fallen out of a window. How could someone fall out when windows were fastened and security pretty tight?

On the good side, I know someone who managed to escape and got the milk train to London! I know this isn't exactly what you were looking for but it's part of the story.

Read more: Personal Stories

Here's a bizarre case

A curious accident happened to a patient on the 25th July 1870 at 4pm. As he was returning from work he was struck by lightening. His clothes were set on fire, both legs were deeply burnt, all his hair was singed, and his shoe blown off his foot. He survived the shock for two months.

Asylum inmate sentenced as sane man

20th October 20th 1927, at the Bedfordshire Assizes: Yesterday Mr Justice Rigby Swift sentenced Issac Mitcham, 43, an inmate of Three Counties Mental Hospital, Arlesey, to two months imprisonment for assaulting Dr Finiefs, a member of the hospital staff. He was also charged with threatening to assault Dr Fuller. It was stated that the accused rushed out of the bathroom threatening to kill with a wooden plunger anyone who approached. Dr. Finiefs endeavoured to pacify him, but Mitcham struck him on the head with the plunger. The defence as put forward by Mr J. Cremlyn was that Mitcham, failing to ventilate a grievance and establish his sanity by other means, took this course. The Judge said he assumed the accused to be sane, and treated the case as an ordinary common assault.

Asylum brewer dies in a vat

This is a very bizarre accident, 26th March 1906: On this date the asylum brewer was found dead in a vat of beer. Mr Prime, the asylum brewer, was a reclusive type of man who worked independently of his supervisor. Perhaps, because he lead a secluded life, he was not missed even at mealtimes. Sometimes took his meals with the hall porter, so it was not unusual that he was not at the meal table. Mr Prime the brewer often took leave with permission so it was not totally surprising that the brewery workers did not miss him. Though it was strange that they carried on their normal working duties between the death and the discovery of the body, some 40 hours later!

Read more: Strange deaths and bizarre cases

There are many ghostly happenings and tales from the past, present, and perhaps there will be in the future at Fairfield Hall. These stories are reproduced here just as they were told by members of the staff who worked at Three Counties Asylum.

Penny Webb

I was down the bottom of F11 one day, as a young nurse, being shown the padded cell. Whilst I was in it the light switch went off on its own! No one was near it!! The room felt really cold and I just had a horrible feeling in there. I didn't hang around.

Read more: The Ghosts of Fairfield Hall

Reginald Rowley murdered Muriel Gertrude Emery, 21, in the grounds of the Three Counties Hospital between 18th and 19th August 1943. This is the story of the murder and police investigation.

Nurse found dead in hospital grounds, 20th August 1943

Scotland Yard officers are investigating the death of nurse Muriel Emery, aged 21. Her body was found in the hospital grounds at Arlesey, Bedfordshire, on Thursday morning. She was last seen on Wednesday night, and early on Thursday morning she was reported missing. Nurse Emery was employed at the Fairfield Emergency Hospital, which, though a separate institution, is in the grounds of the Three Counties Mental Hospital. A police constable found her body with severe head injuries suggesting that she had been violently attacked. She was wearing uniform but without her cap which was found a short distance away. 

Read more: The Murder of Muriel Emery

This is the story of the murder of nurse orderly Veronica Ryan.

Woman's Body Found

May 12th 1958: The partly clothed body of Veronica Ryan, aged 28, a nursing orderly at the Three Counties mental hospital near Bedfordshire, was found beside the road near the hospital early yesterday by Mr J. Bendick, a male nurse at the establishment. Miss Ryan's home was at St .Vincent Street, Cork. Plain clothes police with dogs searched the ditches and thick undergrowth on each side the road while other officers made inquiries at the Three Counties Hospital and Fairfield Hospital, its annexe, and at the adjoining London Chest Hospital.

Dr F. E. Camps, the home office pathologist, made a preliminary investigation before the body was removed. It was believed that death was from strangulation. Miss Ryan had been at the hospital for about a year and had living quarters in the Fairfield annexe. It is believed that on Sunday night she cycled into Letchworth and that on returning to the hospital she was walking, pushing her cycle, when she was attacked.

Read more: The Murder of Veronica Ryan

Psychiatry’s treatment for homosexuality (in a bid to cure it) included behavioural treatments such as aversion therapy and covert sensitisation. The first recorded use of aversion therapy was in 1930 for the treatment of alcoholism, but by the 1950s and 1960s up until early 1980’s it had become one of the more popular methods used to 'cure' sexual deviation, including homosexuality and cross-dressing. Treatments were mainly carried out in NHS hospitals throughout Britain. The most common treatment was behavioural aversion therapy with electric shocks. Also, nausea induced by apomorphine as the aversive stimulus was used, however this was reported less often. Moreover, there is very little published research on this interesting part of mental health history. 

Tommy Dickinson, a senior lecturer in mental health nursing at the University of Central Lancashire, conducted a PhD study exploring 'the historical intersection of homosexuality and psychiatry'. In the study he interviewed former patients who received these 'treatments', and also nurses who helped administer them.