Antiquities, Quackery, Authority And Tradition

A lengthy period has now passed since that meeting of minds in Madison Daisy Bartlett’s home; a time of mutual strife, frustration and anger between the girl and her guardian. All those bitter disputes over all and sundry that had hung in the background have long been resolved, overshadowed by Lavinia Vitesse’s move to her aunt’s home.

In truth it has been a decision not entirely of Lavinia’s own making - though if pressed she would undoubtedly have cited her own free will. Rather it has been as much the result of subtle coercion at the hands of her strong willed, overbearing aunt than anything else and a measure of that woman’s influence and control. It was a change in circumstance prompted by promises of support and of a place of respite and recuperation, just as has been her subsequent recent enrolment as a volunteer subject in a residential behavioural psychology study running within a private psychiatric hospital that both her aunt and her aunt’s psychotherapist friend have links to.

Now her aunt, the formidably resourceful and dictatorial Ms Julia Soames, has another temporary charge to look after...

Turning the key in the lock of the door that served to section off this separate self-contained section of her home, Julia Soames began briskly climbing the last three flights of creaking stairs, her wide full skirt brushing past balustrades of white-painted ash and walls of bleak white plaster finished with whitewash, the court shoes she favoured patting near soundlessly on the spongy white lino underfoot. The dado rail running along the narrow hallway and stairs and that she used from time to time to steady herself was the only sign of continuity with the rest of the house, albeit here painted a clinical white in contrast to the muted tones of elsewhere.

Today she was dressed in what might have almost been taken as an updated take on the style of the Victorian nanny. Her severely-cut navy-blue dress with its high neck, long fitted sleeves and swinging broad flared skirt was covered by a stiff white pinafore of starched cambric and fastened up the front with white pearl buttons, being trimmed in stiffened white lace at both collar and cuffs. A matching velvet choker drew the eye to her slender, almost aristocratic, silk encased neck, as much as the ornately embroidered white nurses’ cap drew attention to her rich deep-brunette bun, and the plain but serviceable antique tortoiseshell comb that held it tightly in place.

Even with her sheer black nylon stockings and shapely legs hidden away beneath a calf length skirt, here was a vision of mature, stately beauty. Her large, firm high bustline and impressively trim waist were a tribute to an eye for detail and an understanding of the importance of ‘image’ that extended to the expensive, if old-fashioned, heavily boned corsetry she had recently invested in. With her full sensual lips tastefully picked out in deep ruby lipstick and just sufficient blusher to subtly enhance her high and somewhat aristocratic cheekbones, the image produced was one of a strikingly handsome, attractive yet authoritative woman - a woman unused to any form of disobedience.

Turning another of the keys that hung on the chatelaine at her waist she quietly opened the furthermost door across the broad landing from the top of the stair, entering softly. The attic room she had installed her niece in was deathly quite, the sense of isolation, tangible. The newly installed steel framed window sat behind thick metal bars. The triple glazing made for a suitable restful atmosphere and as the dormer encasement was mounted relatively high in the sloping ceiling, giving outlook to little more than a treetop or two and the open sky, it hardly mattered that the glass was so densely frosted. The admitted light had a strange splintering ethereal quality about it, even on the sunniest of days and gave the impression that the world outside was permanently shrouded in mist or fog.

But this was ‘nap-time’ for the teenage occupant and the heavy, dark velvet black-out curtains having been drawn across ensured a suitably nocturnal light level, approaching near total darkness despite it being mid-afternoon. Beside the bed, the speaker box rustled and hissed, oozing out the soothing, sleep-inducing sounds of raindrops falling in summer puddles, the sound coming in continuously repeating waves to which the gentle rising and falling of the sleeping girl’s breathing seemed perfectly synchronised.

Looking down at the slumbering girl in the soft yellowish half-light coming from the landing outside she smiled to herself, absentmindedly smoothing down her skirt and apron with both hands as if about to undergo some sort of inspection: Laying there like that the tawny haired young thing reminded her of her own niece, Lavinia. How long had it been since young Lavinia had passed through her hands? Lavinia had been the first of the three teenagers she had now been personally involved with outside of the institution itself.

Her mind ran back to her time with Lavinia. There was no doubt in her mind that Lavinia’s guardian had done the right thing in having her remove the girl from that school of hers at the stage she had, even if it had been prior to Lavinia having had the chance to sit for her final exams. It had been a shame, but that was just the way it was. Of course Lavinia, for her part, had not been of the same opinion, taking the stance that such a disruption to her life and the likely impact on her prospects went wholly against the spirit of the conditions woven into her legacy and, indeed, the decisions of the court that had upheld those conditions. She recalled how that particular upheaval had only settled down once she had explained to the tempestuous young thing that she was actually on her side, that if she held her temper, appeared to meekly acquiesce, at least temporarily, to her guardian’s wishes, then, before long, once she came of age, she would be in a much stronger position to challenge the legality of that woman’s actions through the courts.

She remembered how she had explained to Lavinia at the time how if she were to make her move prematurely, especially if she were to start making accusations that, in the absence of hard evidence, might appear improbable or, worse still, irrational, then she would be in danger of playing straight into her guardian’s hands.

The poor young thing’s guardian was a clever woman; and that was putting it mildly. The moves she had made - and particularly the convoluted way she gone about them - were designed to invite incredulity, especially as interpreted and reported through the mouth of a young woman of such socially sheltered naiveté as Lavinia had been.

As it stood, any allegation could be rebuffed with the supporting testimony of an appropriate professional. And an accusation of irrationality - as she had repeatedly warned Lavinia - was one to be particularly wary of; once made it would taint any further allegation, no matter how concrete the supporting evidence. Furthermore it could herald counter allegations of paranoia and pathological fantasist tendencies that had the potential, if upheld, to do far more than undermine the girl’s credibility as a complainant.

Indeed, a diagnosis of mental incompetence might be constructed from such an argument and if upheld would do far more than lose Lavinia the case; it could potentially result in her being deprived of her freedom. Unless, of course, she had someone willing to fight her corner for her, someone willing to offer support, guidance and a place of respite until such a time as the storm blew over and she might be strong enough to once again retake the helm. And Julia Soames had taken it on herself to be that person, the one to step forward, to step into the breach and metaphorically wrap a supportive arm around Lavinia’s sweet shoulders. It had been she, Julia Soames, who had pointed out the hidden pitfalls, she who had offered up the explanations, who had come to the young sweet thing with reassurances that all was not lost, not even academically.

As she had explained to Lavinia when things had come to a head with her guardian and she had moved to take the girl under her wing: If Lavinia wished to progress - perhaps go on to university as most of her friends had, perhaps resume her dance classes and go for that scholarship that had been on the table - then with her help, she still could. But there had been provisos she had set out even then: Lavinia would have to be prepared to help herself, and that meant learning to accept the better judgement of others. She had explained to Lavinia, there and then, that one thing she would have to accept was that her schooling would henceforth continue outside of the mainstream education system, with its lackadaisical standards. She had told the girl outright that her education would from that point on follow a more traditional path, one more to her own sensibilities.

Though of course she had said nothing to Lavinia about it, the latter path had been one more in line with Lavinia’s guardian’s vision for her ward’s future also. Julia Soames’ task had been to initiate the unravelling of all the nonsense, attitudes and aspirations Lavinia had picked up in that school of hers - and few better had the knowledge and skill to begin to unpick the stitches.

The latter was why Julia Soames had been chosen to take on her present role; the care of this girl, Meredith Hewson, another one who had the potential to level damaging allegations against certain parties. Not so long ago this girl had been lying safely in a hospital bed, her limbs immobilised in plaster. But even at that point it had been obvious that she would have to be moved on at some stage. The girl having been unable to return home and living in fear of pursuit by a shadowy figure she had by that time been half-persuaded might well be a figment of her own imagination, it hadn’t taken much to encourage her to allow herself to be brought under her saviour’s wing upon her ‘recovery’.

Slipping back out Julia Soames wandered in to one of the adjoining rooms to wait for the alarm to ring, waking her charge. She had little desire to wake Meredith early, upholding the clockwork-like nature of the girl’s routine was important in developing the emotional dependency that gave her such a hold over the girl.

The waist-high obstetric examination table upon which she seated herself in the adjoining room possessed a padded leather top presently covered in a childishly decorated plastic fabric featuring powder-pink and baby-blue cartoon bunnies, comic baby elephants and cuddly-looking pastel teddy bears. At the head an antiquated wheeled medical drip stand loomed, bearing four extending metal hooks on chromed steel branches from which various transparent bags and bottles hung like sinister plastic fruit, two snaking coils of clear plastic tubing trailing down like tendrils. A bag bloated with viscous, pearly bluish-white soap solution vied for attention with the silvery hue of another, emptied collapsed and winkled, and stood out in sickly contrast against the ghastly greenish-yellow fluid-filled bottle hanging closest to the rear. It was the latter, she knew, that particularly filled her teenage charge with revulsion when she had her draped across her lap: There was something charming about the manner the girl always took such care to keep her eyes turned away, so shamed that the mere sight had become a punishment in itself.

To the foot of the couch a square-topped stainless steel and chrome-framed tower cabinet arrangement mounted on casters had been drawn up to within convenient reach of the seated blue-uniformed woman. Standing perhaps a half-metre taller than the exam couch, perhaps slightly less, the hygienic beige check-pattern Formica top of this movable cupboard was festooned with jars of Vaseline and massage oil and the like, obsessively aligned behind a light-blue cylindrical plastic container - the tip of a moisturised sterile paper wipe protruding from its centre, ready and waiting. Towards the front a box of soft tissues of a well known brand nestled alongside, a kidney-shaped, white-enamelled tray in which rested a rectal thermometer and a scattering of a half dozen or so pink safety-pins, the latter not unlike like those that might once have been used to secure a baby’s terrycloth nappy.

Lower down were housed numerous shallow white-fronted pull-out drawers; some as shallow as an instrument tray - accurately reflecting their function, as it turned out, at least had the furnishing been encountered in its more usual habitat. Other drawers mounted closer to floor level were of a much deeper profile, suggesting a less-specialised utility. Two were stuffed with unopened cellophane packs just as they had been when the cabinet had been delivered, each marked with a peeling age-yellowed paper label. Sealed packs of adolescent-sized terry nappies jostled side by side with others containing suitably accommodating sized sets of hygienic pants made of a greyish institutional weight rubber. Small, neat, semicircular chromed-steel handles curved outwards from the whitish steel frontage of each drawer and pull-out tray and were surmounted by a chrome-framed label-holder. A few of the latter still held their cardboard identifiers and although these were not written on, across the top of each could just be discerned the name of a well-known but now long-gone London psychiatric hospital, spelled out in a faded outdated typeface.

The latter establishment had been shut down, or rather, ‘phased out’ in stages, in the more enlightened, if misguided, period encompassing the late 1970s to early 1980s - an era in which the buzz-phrase, ‘care-in-the-community’, had become the in vogue term whispered in psychiatric and governmental circles. Despite the obvious and rapidly-surfacing shortcomings, no subsequent government had deemed the situation sufficiently vote-catching to be worthwhile wrestling with. In the fullness of time this once-great edifice eventually went the same way as countless large historic houses and even some churches in the great housing bubble of the 1980s; converted as luxury housing and marketed at the new elite ‘young professional’ class.

That so much in the way of this renown institution’s fixtures, fittings and equipment had been available through the specialist auction market - and for so long - had been an eye opener to Julia Soames; not least because there was so much that seemed to date back to the mid 1960s or even as far back as the late 1950s. To her mind it was little wonder that the political will had not been there to save the place - virtually each and every sale she had attended had provided some interesting piece of through-back clinical furnishing, evident of just how little investment there had been over the years. Clearly there had been cutbacks that had bitten deep way before the era of so-called ‘community care’.

She sometimes wondered how many attending those auction house sale rooms and witnessing a tight-knit knot of obviously well-heeled designer-clad women bidding for what was obviously outmoded medical equipment could have hazarded a guess, even in their wildest imaginings, as to the use it might one day be put to. Who would have imagined, back then, that any of it might be one day rehabilitated and returned to service to fulfil its original function?

Perhaps one or two items, if refurbished, might have made for a welcomed donation to an impoverished overseas institution and they may well have been viewed as well-meaning, if misguided philanthropists. The purchases they made of certain of the smaller and more unusual items might well have marked the group out as dealers in antiques and curios - after all, a thriving collector’s market did indeed exist, even back then. But what would have been made of their bidding, as a group, for a lot that included several iron-railed and padlock-secured cage beds?

Discovered in a disused basement storage area where the beds had festered collapsed down into bolt-together sections and unused since as long ago as the 1930s if not earlier, their use was banned or at least frowned upon throughout much of the world. As with certain other, now outlawed, psychiatric restraint devices that had come to light - and that they had gone on to bid for - these items had scrap value but little else. Eyebrows might well have been raised had they not passed on such bids through a trusted intermediary - after all this little huddle of well-to-do middle-aged women hardly had the appearance of scrap metal dealers.

Julia Soames’ own, more recent, personal purchase of a pair of 1950s drop-sided hospital beds, each complete with its own humane restraint system, her present patron’s purchase of four of the same, and much of the furnishings presently surrounding her teenaged charge and herself, had been made discreetly through the same intermediary.

Tough canvas straitjackets, nylon or cotton patient examination gowns, bed-curtains made from washable plastic sheeting, leather straps and even nurses’ uniforms had come up for sale, but such items, especially as a bulk purchase, could be bid for quite openly under the pretext of recycling textiles. One of their number - a woman closely involved in the drapery industry - would make such purchases through her company and indeed, much of what had been purchased in that manner actually had gone the way one would have assumed. Even though the quantity of each individual item required to furnish their intentions had been relatively limited, the sheer breadth of the acquisitions made in that way had usefully served to disguise the specificity of their interests.

How many looking on would have grasped to what extent one institution’s investment-deprived ‘legacy’ might be viewed as a windfall in terms of the setting up of another, entirely different, form of institution? But that was precisely how Ms Julia Soames and her compatriots had viewed their prospective purchases. After all their small group had been acting together in their collective capacity as patron, fund manager, governor and founder of the behavioural-research project that would one day come to be known simply as ‘The Unit. As far as this group of women were concerned, the antiquated clinical artefacts they had purchased represented far more than the stuff of museum displays. Indeed, these carefully-considered acquisitions embodied everything they intended to recreate within their project.

The clyster apparatus, that now graced the wall at the far end of the couch, she had come by through the same route. Replete with a variety of nozzles, tubing types and refillable tanks it approximated in function, if not in appearance, a modern colonic irrigation machine, its versatility very much belying its antiquity. Aesthetically, though, it told a different story and was very much a product of its time. The machine’s ornately realized brass fitments, valves and gauges, its etched brass-plate instructions and its maker’s name proudly sign-written in the style of an opened scroll, the flowing gold script slanting earthward corner to corner across its enamelled white frontage, owed much to its Victorian, enema-delivering, forebears, of which it was a direct descendant.

Nonetheless the apparatus was surprisingly advanced for its time - it had been the absolute state-of-the-art when first built and represented a very early and historically-important example of an electrically-powered device in use in a clinical setting. Every bit as efficacious in the present as it had been when first constructed, its complexity went well beyond anything one would expect to come across outside of a specialised clinic, let alone in an attic room at the back of a gentile farmhouse-style cottage in Surrey.

Several such pieces of equipment originating from the same source had been sent to sale. There could be little doubt that in their time these quite complex devices would have been hugely expensive to purchase, even if available off-the-peg, as it were. Yet, their appearance suggested a bespoke design - certainly those involved in the sale had never seen the like before - and for the hospital to have had this equipment constructed to order; well, the cost must have been extortionate. Taking into account the utilitarian function and the apparent lack of relevance to mental health issues, to the uninitiated it begged the question as to why a specialized psychiatric hospital in that far off and less-enlightened era should have invested so heavily in such apparatus.

This was a question that Julia Soames herself could answer easily - indeed, few were in a position to do so quite as authoritatively: As so often when, in hindsight, one examines the case for something apparently extravagant beyond all reason, the answer lay as much with the sensibilities of the age, with what had simply become fashionable, as with anything else.

The medical literature from that era that she had examined had been fairly brimming with articles and letters - frequently penned by men quite eminent in their field - extolling the virtues of various ‘bodily hygiene’ cleansing regimens. It was an era Julia Soames could readily identify with, when a governess with an established reputation as a strict disciplinarian would have been seen by some as a valuable commodity, not as someone of questionable motives. It was a time when nurses wore proper blue and white striped uniform dresses, starched aprons and caps, and black cotton stockings and rank was denoted by different Petersham ribbon belts. An age when a woman as worthy as Ms Soames might well have been quite legitimately employed by some reformatory or other and responsible for overseeing a ‘focused programme of re-education and character improvement for the young’.

At the time that particular piece of equipment had be constructed medical experts had had no compunction in claiming efficacy for such therapies, for dealing with everything from ‘hysteria’ - a catch-all term if ever there was one - to ‘mental derangement’ to ‘compulsive self-abuse’ and ‘wantonness’. It was notable - if not downright startling to the modern eyes - just how often such missives sat quite comfortably, side by side on the page, with others, claiming equally authoritative credentials, advocating the imposition of long-line, tightly-laced and heavily-boned corsetry, skin-tight elbow-length kid gloves, stiffened backboards and even neck corsets in combating such pernicious conditions as ‘over-exuberance of spirit’ and ‘boisterousness’ in teenage girls. Such ‘therapeutic schedules’ - those issuing from either school of thought - were on occasion accompanied by outline recommendations, intended to ensure the patient’s compliance to the particular advocated regimen, that appeared to border on the fetishistic and that did not shy away from the subject of corporal punishment.

One letter, Julia Soames remembered, had particularly caught her imagination. Gazing down hot-eyed as if already the greyish-pink plastic-clad half moon plumpness of her teenaged charge’s bottom lay across her lap, she could see the yellowing, frayed-edged page in her mind’s eye. It was as if the journal were presently lying spread open before her. She could still see each and every word laid bare in that characteristic antique late-Victorian type. She could almost hear the idiosyncratic language used, as if the writer were actually present in the room beside her and speaking aloud: It would be a confident dark brown timbre, she imagined, one voicing thoughts that were simultaneously euphemistic yet explicit, earnest, astutely-concerned, sophisticatedly-perceptive and yet somehow naïvely unaware of the hypocrisy embodied in every phrase.

“Sir, I had long intended to bring to your notice just how the system of keeping girls in short frocks as long as possible is an excellent one. There is no particular hurry needful in the dressing of girls as women and I’m sure that the mere fact of wearing a short frock and with having her hair kept unsophisticatedly coiffured is enough to keep the silly thoughts and inclinations of many girls of sixteen or so in check. There is something about the delicate combination of the dress of a young girl of thirteen or fourteen with the rather slender yet womanly figure and confined waist of a young lady of perhaps seventeen or eighteen - a woman in her own right - or even one approaching her early twenties that makes for a rare and rather lovely picture. I would argue that one can have no hesitation in punishing a girl dressed in this manner by means of the rod or whip, while I would suggest that one would hesitate in caning a young lady if her true age was clear and her appearance appropriately adult.

Two girls of my acquaintance are much marked upon on account of their short frocks and young appearance. Should it be desired to retain some extra element of modestly, then silk knickerbockers of a suitable colour may be worn reaching almost to the knee but the frock should be kept short enough to allow the trimming of the drawers to peep out. The latter perhaps might be decorated around the cuffs with ribbon bows so as to soften the severity of the costume while retaining the necessary formality so important in instilling good discipline. Despite the childish brevity of the skirt, there is no reason why a girl’s neck and arms should be left to the ravages of the sun and the frock should therefore be high in the neck, long in the sleeves and may be quite constricting in both, thus discouraging any unladylike extravagance of movement and instead encouraging passivity and a sweet, submissive demeanour.

Although of nearly seventeen summers their stepmother is very careful of their looks in spite of their schoolroom dress. They are fair, each possessing a splendid mass of light brown hair falling over their shoulders and are generally dressed in blue, their skirts reaching two or three inches above their knees, displaying legs encased in black stockings. Their figures are invariably enclosed in regular rather closely-laced corsets which as many people used to say gives the promise of very slim tightly laced figures. Their hands and complexions are always carefully protected from injury from the sun or air”.

Of course the correspondent’s evaluation of what might qualify as ‘short’ in this context would have been very different to the modern day view and Julia Soames both appreciated and adjusted for that fact, subconsciously transposing the salient terms on the fly so as to suit her own viewpoint. That particular gentleman’s vision of hemlines swinging tantalizingly above ‘well-formed calves’ and ‘neat ankles’ - let alone hovering around knee-length - other than if part of a child’s costume, would have been deemed scandalous in an age when the exposure of a feminine ankle would have been considered provocative. But in the context of his missive, wherein a precocious young lady, however physically mature, was to be subject to such dress restriction as constituting part of a disciplinary regimen, then such exposure was apparently to be vindicated, despite any effect it might have on the observer.

The reprinted letter, among others extolling a similar theme, had passed around their formative little group at or around the time of the founding of the research unit; though from whom this addition to their research dossier had originated was somewhat cloudy. What she did know was that it had been taken from a journal entitled the ‘Family Doctor’ dated circa 1898 and having read it she had barely looked back. There was another she recalled from the same source. Albeit paraphrased:

SIR,- I can quite endorse the opinion of several of your correspondents advocating corset discipline in the management of refractory young ladies. A lady friend of mine was advised to clap the two somewhat boisterous girls in her charge in very long, heavily-boned stays, with stiff, broad busks, which, of course, quite prevented stooping, besides being very uncomfortable. They were laced very tightly when they next appeared, and I never saw girls so much improved, for they were now well-behaved young ladies. Their figures were slim¬-waisted, and the lacing was so effective that, standing or sitting, they were obliged to keep erect. Their hands were encased in long, well-fitting kid gloves, which they were not allowed to remove, and they looked very pretty and graceful, being laced so tightly that ungainly movements were impossible. There can be no doubt that this means of restraint is very beneficial, as it enforces patience and submission. When there is any need for punishment it is easily done by tightening the culprit’s laces so as to entail an extra degree of discomfort as discipline, as well as improving her figure and carriage. These girls never know now what it is to be without con¬stant pressure and restraint, for at night their already slender waists on being released from their day corsets are immediately enclosed in others having flexible busks and laced in an inch smaller than before. Their hands are kept constantly gloved both day and night in very tight kid, and fastened by bracelets to prevent them being removed, and are becoming beautifully white in consequence.

Yes, they understood the psychology of control back then, even if not formally described as such. There was that ever-present degree of physical constraint of course, then couple that with a regimen of petty rules and restrictions, administer corporal punishment for even the most minor indiscretions and infringements, encourage and reinforce a girl’s emotional dependency on you - and you have her; for life. But then again few grasped the role of psychology when it came to the imposition of a régime of strict discipline over a recalcitrant teenager like Dr Anne Ecclestone - and talking of whom, she had yet to organise getting the girl to the good doctor’s office in the morning...

There was always so much to be done, not least of which was to persuade the girl to accept wearing the leg braces that Anne had suggested. The trouble was the girl’s mind told her one thing while they were trying their level best to convince her of something else entirely. But she knew there were interested parties that would not be satisfied until they had the girl confined to a wheelchair, a prisoner of her own mind. They also wanted the girl eventually to be persuaded to volunteer for that residential behavioural psychology study they had running at the clinic, the self-same project Lavinia had joined, or some sub-section of it. Well, it would certainly serve to keep the girl out of harm’s way, just as it had Lavinia.

The girl had certainly become more amenable to discipline since she had been under her care and was no stranger to the persuasion of the cane or the strap across her bare behind, but what Julia Soames most wanted now was for the girl to accept having to wear those leg callipers of her own volition. The power of suggestion was all well and good but what was needed was a ‘convincer’, some physical symptom to underline the wisdom of her carers. Now, if the girl happened to experience a little temporary muscle weakness from time to time...