The British Journal of Developmental Disabilities

Vol. 48, Part 1, JANUARY 2002, No. 94, pp. 73-76

POINT OF VIEW

BY THE BY:

Why?

Life in the community, and not in a remote institution, is the in thing, isn't it? I™m not arguing, not at the moment anyway. But as you know, probably to the point where you don't want to hear any more about it, life in Northern Ireland has, until recent years, been rather fraught. Children and adults with a learning disability should have the same rights and privileges as anyone else. No question about it. But should they be exposed to the same knocks as everyone else? That's a different one. In their massive book, ‚Lost Lives', McKittrick et al. (2001) tell the stories of the men, women and children who died as a result of the troubles in the years 1966 to 2000. Over three thousand six hundred souls. Some of the victims had to be individuals with a learning disability. Understandably, this was not a feature the compilers investigated in any depth. All the same, I counted between twelve and fourteen people who had a learning disability of some kind, probably a marked under- estimate. In this piece I'd like to tell you about four victims I knew, all male, all of high ability, who had at one time or another been resident in this hospital. Three I'll describe briefly. The fourth I'll devote more space to, simply because he's the one I remember most clearly. Andy Kelly is the first. I got to know him in the early 1960s when he was a young adult. He came from a large, ‚respectable', working class family, but was in trouble from an early age. Initially, most of the offences he committed amounted to petty theft. Later, though, and during a period of heavy drinking, he faced a charge of robbery with violence. He worked here in the province and in England in a series of unskilled jobs: groom, labourer (farm and building yard), mill worker, cinema doorman and so on. Darkly handsome and tattooed on both arms, he knew he was ‚slow' but claimed this was the result of poor schooling. IQ estimates varied between 67 and 80. Andy married in 1970 and had two children. But he didn't settle. Four years later he was discharged from our registers when he went to England. He returned to the province shortly afterwards. Rumour had it that he was on the fringes of paramilitary groups but no-one knows for sure. Easily influenced, he would take risks other people would shy away from. In 1975 he was shot point blank in the head in front of his wife and mother-in-law. The intruders then killed his mother- in-law. Freddie Thompson is the second. His mother and sister were also learning disabled. Nothing is known about his father. Freddie was taken into care at the age of four months and spent most of his life in institutions, one of which was investigated by police for paedophile activity. He came to us when he was in his late teens or early twenties. He liked the idea of being gainfully employed but detested work. He used to come to the Social Training Centre here: humorous, cocky, eternally optimistic, inquisitive. Everywhere he went, he had a reputation for causing trouble, usually fights, while appearing to be an innocent and concerned bystander. He had his own ideas about trendiness: hair dyed orange, trousers petering out just below his knees, gaudy socks, buckled shoes.

IQ estimates ranged from 68 to 84. Freddie was discharged from our registers in the early 1980s, and lived in various hostels. In 1987, he was battered to death and buried in a shallow grave. Paramilitary groups were said to be responsible for the deaths of both Andy and Freddie. Norman Donnelly is the third man. Born in 1940, he came to us in the mid 1960s after a spell in prison. Very affable and talkative, he attended an Adult Training Centre where, though able enough, he was a perfunctory worker. Norman didn't want much: cigarettes, a drink, company, television. Unlike Andy and Freddie, he had no ideas about being a cut above others. In later years he lived alone in a small, terrace house. A niece called in every day to help with domestic chores and organise his day. The last time I saw him, three years ago, he was sitting on a wall with a group of unemployed men. He was, he assured me, in the best of health and he would feel even better if I gave him a cigarette. He was battered to death one night and his house was set on fire. My understanding is that paramilitaries were not involved. The fourth man, Jimmy Colhoun, had a dual diagnosis. He's the most interesting because he was a compulsive letter writer, sending as many as seven letters to the same person in the one day. Only a fraction of what he wrote has been kept but even so it amounts at a rough estimate to thirty thousand words. Of these, about a third are of little interest: during periods of acute thought disorder he scribbled furiously about UFOs, Christ's death and resurrection, circulation of blood, and so on, illustrating points with crude diagrams. In calmer moments, he wrote about his daily activities. His spelling was poor and his punctuation highly idiosyncratic. He didn't use commas, full stops or quotation marks. Sentences flowed or crashed into one another. For emphasis, he used capital letters, bracketing phrases or words. As well as note-paper, he wrote on used envelopes, toilet paper and the margins of pages torn from magazines. On one occasion he used squares he had cut from a cloth-backed road map. But, most of all, he used paper towels. Postage was not much of a problem. Letters addressed to staff at Muckamore Abbey he took to a branch office in Belfast. Others he delivered personally, often walking miles through all weathers. In a letter to a Tribunal he accurately described himself as being five feet ten inches tall, of medium build, with brown hair. As I remember, he was a handsome man but his skin was pasty. He had a mild speech defect. Born in the 1930s, he lived with his mother in an aunt's house in North Belfast - in later years one of the most troubled areas in a troubled province. The parlour house was small: two bedrooms, living room, kitchen, no bathroom, outside toilet. The narrow, dingy street and the draughty houses have long since disappeared. Estimates of Jimmy's IQ ranged between 70 and 81. Between 1950 and 1976, the year he was discharged from our registers, Jimmy had spent seventeen years in institutions - Dublin, Armagh and Muckamore Abbey. He had also been in prison for spells adding up to about two years. How best to sum him up? A Government employer interviewed him several times and declared herself confused. He could be charming and considerate (but rarely generous or patient); truculent, foul-mouthed and threatening; elated, confused and uncertain; silent, aloof, remote. Never long out of trouble, he turned over more new leaves in a week than a book reviewer does in a month. And his plans for reform carried enormous conviction. Once out of Muckamore, he would, he wrote, dispense with our services entirely. He didn't want snotty social workers nosing into his affairs, or nosey community-based nurses rapping his door, looking through his letter box, and telling him to take his medication. Pills were for head cases. He didn't want prospective employers to know about his background. He would get a job without help, would marry and settle down in a civilised society here, in England or in Canada. As earnest of his intent he absconded on twenty-one occasions to make a new life for himself.

But when he ran into difficulties in the community, his reform plans eventually ran into reverse. Now he would write about his need to return to hospital to have his nerves settled, learn a trade, ‚develop' concentration, get a steady job, save money. Transcending these changes of mind were three obsessions: his appearance, usually squeaky clean, neat clothes, carefully groomed hair; Lourdes; and a gas meter box. The first is self explanatory. The other two will be described later. He had narrow and flickering shafts of insight. He knew he was ‚unsmart' and ‚childish in thought', and attributed the problem to an accident when he nearly drowned in a park pond. The result was a ‚dodgy' personality with learning disability as a by-product. As a boy he'd spent a fortnight in Lourdes and had seen for himself miraculous cures. He was determined to return there: ‚cure' the personality and the learning disability would disappear. But in other letters he stridently insisted that he was ‚100%' intellectually - ‚I'm bravely intelligent'. At the age of seventeen, he threw his mother and aunt out into the street. The two ladies, very frightened and nervous, rented a room some distance away, but continued to pay rent for the parlour house. They wouldn't tell social workers or police where they now lived and begged them to say nothing to Jimmy - ‚It'll just upset him'. Jimmy was to do this several times. By his own account, they were the happiest periods of his life. In the morning, he would run the city streets looking for people he'd known in hospital. Knowing that the most able were likely to call at the Labour Exchange, he visited it regularly, always ready to proffer advice. He knew all about his entitlements. He was also a hustler, full of impractical plans for raising money. While Jimmy was bobbing along the streets, whispering conspiratorial advice, nodding and winking, nicking cigarettes and soft drinks, his mother and aunt, arms tightly linked for courage and reassurance, would cautiously return home to handwash clothes. Neighbours told them they should stand up to Jimmy, but, forefinger tight on pursed lips, the two ladies would hurry away with their wet bags. Afternoons were usually given over to letter writing. In the evening Jimmy often ended up in a pub, tots of rum and pints of Bass to round off the perfect day. Social workers and other professionals did call with him, did try to reason with him. One report reads, ie(Jimmy) poised and confidently in residence . . . very nonchalant and self-possessed . . . Not at all worried about his mother and aunt . . . snap-the-fingers attitude towards the (Learning Disability) Servicelt. Making enough money to get to Lourdes was no problem. Wasn't that what the dismal betting shop on the corner was for? If that failed, there were scams enough. Of course, he didn't make money. He lost it. But that wasn't a problem either. He'd simply break into the gas meter box. On two occasions that meant prison. Lourdes and the gas meter box appear time and again in his letters. Pawning clothes and bed linen was another handy source of income. Jimmy understood the repeated logic of the social workers'  arguments about this being a grossly unfair arrangement for his mother and aunt in much the same way as I understand the arguments of the Flat Earth Society - quaint, amusing and attractive in a way. But utterly irrelevant. Then came the troubles in 1969. Jimmy adapted remarkably well. He knew North Belfast like the back of his hand. He knew every alley, every short-cut, every hidey-hole. But he did make mistakes. One night he walked into a pub, frequented by paramilitaries, with a parcel under his arm. Three men (™gun men'  he wrote, but, then, Jimmy was apt to exaggerate) took him outside, questioned him at length. He told them he was ‚unsmart', that he'd been in this hospital. That seemed to satisfy the men ieI'll niver go back therely, he wrote. On another occasion, he describes how he huddled on the floor listening to heavy gunfire between paramilitaries and army. I checked the date and there was indeed a lot of trouble that night.

In hospital, Jimmy was often stirring it. Nurses™ reports variously described him as a ‚legal adviser', ‚counsellor' and ‚lawyer' for less able residents. He was the leader of several ‚upsconding' trips. He fired off indignant letters to the authorities saying that he'd held four jobs in England, but failing to add that he lasted in none and ended up in a hospital for the learning disabled, stone broke. A stock request was for ‚employment with suitable accommodation'. Our two employment officers were patient. They got him several jobs - kitchen porter in hotels, labourer, factory hand - and for the first week in post, the reports were excellent. By the second week, Jimmy was usually gone. He failed a test for the Royal Navy. He wrote to a consultant psychiatrist saying he wanted to train as a ‚mental nurse™: iuI would know what to do espacialy bluffing my way about haf of the time ha ha . . . just supervize patients and wright reportsle. In fact, the only sustained and satisfactory work he carried out was in the old shoe repair department of the hospital, under strict supervision. Back in the community, Jimmy continued to record events (I've corrected the spelling in this excerpt): in. . . she was wearing wranglers light-green with leather jerkin hair hanging long suede shoes with attractive fringed handbag she was well dolled up and can hold her own smart . . . I followed her to see if she had a fixed address but no (she) ended up down at the docks . . . good time alcoholic males and females . . . most of them on the game so I said to myself I see and blew home at 2am.l. He went to a church service for ‚alcahalics and down in outs' and pronounced it ‚wanderfull'. In the late 1970s, long after his mother and aunt had died, Jimmy spent less and less time in hospital. He was discharged from our registers after he'd settled into a Belfast hostel. He was drinking heavily but had learnt to manage his money. I met him three or four times near the city centre. The nods and winks and advice were still there. It took him two prolonged attempts to get to Lourdes. On the first go, he arrived at the International Airport too drunk to travel. But he made it the second time and wrote enthusiastically about the trip. One night in 1985 he was severely beaten in a dimly lit street. He lay in a coma for over a year and died on a winter morning. No-one has ever been charged. Andy Kelly and Freddie Thompson appear in ‚Lost Lives'. Jimmy Colhoun and Norman Donnelly don't. Four lives lost unnecessarily, cruelly, unjustifiably. What price normalisation?

D. N. MacKay

Muckamore Abbey Hospital

The four men have false names. I've been deliberately vague about events, have juggled dates and ages. Once again, I'd like to thank Mary Drain and Edna Clarke of the Psychology Department, for all their help with this script.

References

McKittrick, D., Kelters, S., Feeny, B. and Thornton, C. (2001). Lost Lives. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing.