Its first superintendent, Dr William Charles Ellis, was known in his lifetime for his pioneering work and his adherence to his "great principle of therapeutic employment".

Some parishes were growing in population due to industrialisation, and the existing charitable institutions and workhouses could not cope with the increasing demand.

The cost of keeping lunatics in jails and workhouses had previously been charged to their parish of birth, and continued indefinitely as there was no attempt to cure them.

removed the right of poor people to use the common lands to support themselves, causing added mental distress to the already impoverished.

The local judiciary (before whom the lunatics would have appeared charged with various offences or running amok) decided on 15 November 1827 to exercise their powers and build an asylum.

[14] Both wings turn north, and each terminates at its own panopticon tower, which again has a basement and two floors; the overall building forms three sides of a square.

From the air the design is roughly symmetrical with services: kitchens; laundry; management; chapel and hall (used for parties, theatre and dances) all located in the middle with wards laid out to each side, male to the left of the entrance and female to the right.

[16] Hanwell became a model for future hospitals and was copied and modified by the designers of countless other asylums across England and Wales (for example Horton, Colney Hatch, Claybury, or Springfield).

As a traveller by the Great Western Railway dashes through it, his attention is arrested for a moment by a large building on the southern side of the railway, a plain but handsome structure, which stands cheerfully in an open country, and discloses even to the hasty glimpse of the traveller, as he hurries past, evident indications of careful and attentive management.

[20] The main view most people see of the hospital is the elegantly proportioned gatehouse entrance which adjoins the Uxbridge Road.

At first the number of paupers admitted was low due to the charge of nine shilling per week each, this being higher than the workhouses and jails, but by force of the law the asylum was full within six months and more space was badly needed.

In November of the same year, work on building extensions began to address this problem, and so started the almost continuous process of rebuilding and improvements that go on in the present day.

With the Anatomy Act 1832, the body was first kept in a building called the 'dead house', on the west side of the burial ground (see diagram above).

This must have taken enormous powers of persuasion: the existing staff would have to change their work practices and learn how to nurse more effectively those patients with troubling behaviour.

For four years it has been the settled Rule of the House, that no harshness nor coercive cruelly should be used in any case, but that every Patient, however violent, should be treated with uniform kindness and forbearance; and during that time such has been the undeviating success of this Plan, such has been the even tenor of it course, that it now presents no new fact nor features either to vindicate or explain.

[23] On 11 June 1910, nurse Hilda Elizabeth Wolsey followed a female patient who climbed one of the fire escapes and then along the guttering of the ward roof.

[19] A postcard displaying an aerial photograph taken in the first half of the 1920s shows that the nurses' home has still to be built in the top right corner of the frame.

Further to the top right is the railway iron bridge at the junction of Uxbridge Road (A4020) and Windmill Lane (A4127) which runs south to the left of the frame.

It was close to two strategic targets: the AEC factory in Windmill Lane which built fighting vehicles, and the Wharncliffe Viaduct which carried the Great Western Railway, a vital transport route.

His approach of creating a "therapeutic community" with a 12-week inpatient stay to help patents come to terms with their problems and explore new methods of living in the future without their addiction was found to be a great success.

It is currently run by the Central North West London Mental Health NHS Trust Substance Misuses Service.

[40] Part of this guidance called for women who suffer mental problems, and for whom only medium secure accommodation was needed, to be treated in way that was sympathetic with their gender.

The West London Mental Health Trust commissioned Tuke Manton Architects of Clapham to design the centre[41] and Kier Group to build it.

This went down especially well with the staff as an earlier film of Nicholson's, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), set in an American psychiatric hospital, was at that time a favourite.

Dame Peggy Ashcroft starred as Lillian Huckle, a woman who was institutionalized 60 years before whilst still a young girl, simply because she did not conform to social norms.

From these parallel journeys, he draws an argument that the rational materialist, just like the madman, lives in a bubble which is entirely self-consistent, but also entirely unreal, having constructed a world which is isolated from the actuality of human relationships and experience.

Phonetics Professor Henry Higgins, after successfully telling strangers where they were born by their accent, was jokingly told he came from Hanwell Insane Asylum.

The largest item by far was the last original "seclusion room", with white stained leather-covered straw padding walls and floor.

^ m: Although the sedatives Paraldehyde (invented 1829 by Wildenbusch) and chloral hydrate (in 1832 by Justus von Liebig) were known about, they were not used (except for perhaps recreational purposes) in medicine.

Also, the normal working day back then was twelve hours long with little in the way of street lighting, so the proximity of these facilities was of great benefit.