ACCRINGTON-BORN Frank Swain first became an NHS patient in 1952, four years after the birth of the NHS, and lived in hospitals for 40 years. His older brother, Sydney, watched the treatment of mental illness change as he visited him every Saturday at Calderstones Hospital, Whalley. On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the NHS, he spoke to reporter AMY BINNS.

FRANK Swain's life changed forever after he fell ill with meningitis and TB when he was 16.

For two years he endured lumbar punctures - injections into his spine - three times a week in the isolation ward at Park Lee Hospital, Blackburn.

The painful treatment succeeded but the illness affected his brain and when he came home he threatened his family, smashed the windows and was committed to Calderstones.

"It was very upsetting for my parents. It was like a prison," remembers Sydney, of St Leger Court, Accrington.

All letters and parcels were opened by staff until 1961 and families needed visiting cards to see their relatives at set hours twice a week.

The grounds were surrounded by railings and each building was separately fenced in. Sydney, now 69, said: "The head nurse had a long chain with a big bunch of keys on and when you wanted to go into a ward he would unlock the door and then you would all be locked in together."

Sydney's mother, Florrie, had to apply for written permission to take her son for a walk in the grounds. When they took him on holiday, the medical superintendent's letter added the condition: "Precautions must be taken to prevent the formation of attachments with members of the opposite sex and any sign of this must be reported to me at once."

In the 1950s, patients slept in long dormitories and were strictly segregated. Without the benefit of modern drugs, force was used to control violent patients who were locked in small, windowless rooms if they were unruly and Sydney said one or two nurses beat patients. "My dad used to write to the hospital every time he saw a mark on him, but what could we do?" he said. "A lot of the nurses had started in the 1930s when there wasn't a lot of work and it was just a job for them, not a vocation.

"Then a lot of women took over and they were good with them. It was a different atmosphere when they started using drugs in the 1960s."

But despite the problems, Sydney said his brother seemed happy most of the time.

"He wasn't miserable or frightened. They would make things like garden gnomes to sell in their shop and some worked on the hospital's farm or garden."

The 1959 Mental Health Act meant many patients were no longer legally detained and restrictions were removed.

Since the 1970s he said the regime had changed. Residents were at last "treated as individuals," a club was opened so patients could mix and the days of regimented communal living disappeared.

"When it was easier Frank would go into one ward for lunch and then to another for lunch and so have three or four lunches," said Sydney. "Everyone knew but they were all fond of him."

Frank died in Blackburn Royal Infirmary of a tumour of the colon in 1992, aged 57, but Sydney still visits Frank's old friends at Calderstones and keeps in touch with the nurses who now make the place so different.

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