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Low life

What I learned working in the lunatic asylum

The borders around normal behaviour grow narrower and narrower. And then you're fired

23 August 2014

9:00 AM

23 August 2014

9:00 AM

In 1984 I was 27. Since leaving school I had done unskilled manual labour, when I could get any. Then l worked as a nursing assistant and then a trainee nurse in an 840-bed psychiatric hospital at Goodmayes in Essex, formerly the West Ham Lunatic Asylum. It was like a walled town.

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