EDITH HAITHWAITE was sent to Rampton Mental Hospital before the
war. For years she worked all day on the sock-making machine (for I Is. a week); and cleaned and swept up the place at night after the patients were in bed. Two years ago the .courts ruled that she had been illegally detained, and she was released. At the time she had managed to save £1 4s. from her salary; she was also—I quote the Minister of Health— 'in accordance with existing practice given an outfit of clothing and a payment of In the circumstances, Mr. Norman Dodds's suggestion that this reveals 'the shocking system of slave labour in mental hospitals' cannot be dismissed, as the Minister sought to dismiss it, as extravagant.
The Ministry of Health has produced a deplor- able quibble that Miss Haithwaite might have been sent to Rampton legally if it had been realised her detention was illegal; the fact is she was wrongly detained there for seventeen years, and £1, in the circumstances, is grotesque as com- pensation. I hope Mr. Dodds will continue to press her case; there have been far too many instances of people wrongly detained in Rampton.
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