Page 16 - Community Living Magazine 34-3

coronavirus

two washrooms. The asylum also had its
own cemetery.
Overcrowding was an issue from the
start. As early as 1871, barely a year after
the hospital opened, there were 1,638
patients and, in 1914, more than 2,000.
Because of staff shortages during the
First World War and the need to billet
troops at the asylum, some patients
were discharged.
What Monica Diplock, who wrote the
1990 history of the hospital that is the
source of this information, did not
When epidemics bring mention was that the population of the
hospital declined for other reasons during
the war, with extraordinarily high death
too many deaths rates from causes including the Spanish

flu and other infectious diseases.
The graph below shows the number of
deaths for three years: 1918, 1919 and
The entrance to the cemetery at Leavesden Hospital 1920. Three features are striking.
The first is that there was some
People with learning disabilities have been dying at high rates in seasonal variation in the number of
this pandemic, as they did during the Spanish flu epidemic, as Jan deaths, with fewer deaths being reported
for summer months generally.
Walmsley, Stuart Todd, Jane Bernal and David O’Driscoll found The second and most obvious is the
spike in deaths in November 1918. There
were 131 deaths – the greatest number of
worldwide pandemic strikes the The records we could access allowed us deaths reported for any month in the three
UK. People with learning disabilities to look at the impact of this epidemic on years. There were more than 30 deaths a
A die in large numbers. This comes on the population of a large asylum. week, almost eight times as many deaths
top of death rates that were already high. Leavesden Hospital in Hertfordshire was than reported in November of 1919 or
What can the flu pandemic of 1918 one of the largest institutions, serving a 1920. There were 96 burials that month.
teach us about today’s pandemic and the diverse range of pauper patients from the
histories of people with learning northern half of London, including people
disabilities? Looking at death registers with learning disabilities and those with After 1918, the death rate
from Leavesden Hospital for the years mental health issues. remained high. Few may have
1918-20 raises some interesting questions. It opened to patients in 1870. It was
Death rates for people with learning initially planned to accommodate 1500 asked whether around one in
disabilities during the Covid pandemic of people in 11 blocks, each designed to hold 10 people in the asylum dying
2020-21 were, according to Public Health 160 beds. The ground floor of each block
England (PHE, 2000), six times as high as was a day room and the upper floor every year was acceptable
those in the general population. sleeping quarters, with four toilets and
Furthermore, PHE found that deaths
were more widely spread across age
groups, with disproportionately higher 140
mortality rates in younger adults. People
with learning disabilities aged 18-34 120
were 30 times more likely to die with
the virus than their counterparts in the 100
general population.
To some extent, this reflects the 80
greater prevalence of health problems 60
such as diabetes, obesity and
respiratory vulnerability in people with 40 Bazj/Wikimedia Commons; Jan Walmsley; Provisional Board of Health, Alberta
learning disabilities. However, the
well-documented failure to protect 20
their health was also undoubtedly a factor.
Our concerns about this prompted us to 0
look back at a previous pandemic. The March May July Sept Nov March May July Sept Nov March May July Sept Nov
Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-19 killed Jan 2018 Jan 2019 Jan 2020
between 50 and 100 million people
worldwide, around 2-5% of the global Deaths 1918-20 in Leavesden Hospital
population (Spinney, 2018: 1296).

16 Vol 34 No 3 | Spring 2021 Community Living www.cl-initiatives.co.uk