Identity area
Type of entity
Authorized form of name
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Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
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Description area
Dates of existence
History
Colney Hatch Asylum opened at Friern Barnet in July 1851 as the second pauper lunatic asylum for the County of Middlesex. The first Middlesex County Pauper Asylum, now Saint Bernard's Hospital, had opened at Hanwell in 1831 (see H11/HLL). In 1851 Colney Hatch, designed in the Italianate style by S. W. Dawkes, with 1,250 beds was the largest and most modern institution of its kind in Europe. Within ten years it was enlarged to take 2,000 patients. It had its own cemetery (closed in 1873 after which patients were buried in the Great Northern Cemetery), its own farm on which many patients were employed, its own water supply, and its own sewage works built after local residents complained of untreated sewage from the asylum flowing into Pym's Brook.
On the creation of the County of London in 1889 Colney Hatch Asylum was transferred from the control of the Middlesex Justices to the London County Council, although it remained geographically within the administrative county of Middlesex. The need for more accommodation for lunatics led to construction in 1896 of a temporary wood and iron building for 320 chronic and infirm female patients in five dormitories. This was destroyed by a fire in 1903 with the loss of 51 lives. Between 1908 and 1913 seven permanent brick villas were built, one for behavioural disordered subnormal and epileptic boys, two with verandas for tubercular and dysenteric cases, and the remainder for women who had survived the fire. In 1912 a disused carpenter's shop and stores at the railway siding were converted into additional accommodation for male patients. Brunswick House at Mistley in Essex was leased in 1914 to provide 50 beds for working male patients supervised by a single charge attendant and four assistants. After the First World War, Brunswick House became a separate unit for higher-grade “subnormals”.
Construction of a male admission villa in 1927 and a female nurses home in 1937 freeing 89 beds for female patients brought the number of patients to its highest total of almost 2,700. In 1937 it was renamed Friern Hospital. Patients were admitted from the Metropolitan boroughs of Finsbury, Hampstead, Holborn, Islington, Saint Marylebone, Saint Pancras and Shoreditch. Jewish patients from the whole of the County of London were as far as possible congregated at Friern, which provided special arrangements for the preparation of food and religious ministrations. The staff included nine full time doctors, 494 nurse and 171 probationers.
On the outbreak of the Second World War 12 wards along the main front corridor containing 215 male and 409 female beds were taken over by the Emergency Medical Service run by units from Saint Bartholomew's Hospital. Patients were sent to other hospitals or distributed around the remaining wards. Five villas were either destroyed or damaged by air raids in 1941 in which 36 patients and 4 nurses died. Shortage of accommodation resulted in acute overcrowding.
In 1948 Friern Hospital became part of the National Health Service under the control of the North West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board. It had its own Hospital Management Committee, which was renamed the New Southgate Group Hospital Management Committee on the opening of Halliwick Hospital in 1958. This was a new 145 bed block built in the grounds of Friern at a distance from the main hospital. It was intended to serve as an admission unit to separate recent cases from confirmed, long stay patients. In practice it became a 'neurosis unit' for 'less sick, socially superior, and fringe patients' (Hunter and MacAlpine p.50) selected by the medical staff. By 1972 it ceased to be treated as a separate hospital and, now known as Halliwick House, provided admission and convalescent beds for the main hospital.
By 1973 the official maximum number of patients in Friern had been reduced to 1,500. On the reorganisation of the National Health Service in 1974 the hospital became the responsibility of the North East Thames Regional Health Authority and Camden and Islington Area Health Authority. On the abolition of area health authorities in 1982, Friern was transferred to Hampstead Health Authority, which in 1993 merged with Bloomsbury and Islington Health Authority to form Camden and Islington Health Authority. By 1989 it had been decided that Friern Hospital should close as part of the policy of replacing large long stay mental hospitals with care in the community. The hospital finally closed on 31 March 1993.