Controversial Asylum Calendar

[Section 106]

I first noticed this on the Croydon Advertiser website a few days ago >> http://www.thisiscroydontoday.co.uk...ar-revolting/story-13697649-detail/story.html

Now it has hit the mainstream with the Daily Mail picking up on the story >> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...lendar-featuring-Britains-mental-asylums.html

So is this a welcome 'raising of awareness' for the much maligned and forgotten asylum, or the 'trivialisation' of the now taboo practices that went on within them??

The promotional tag-line which reads: "Pop those luscious LSD pills and strap those shocking and electrifying electrodes to your temples… then join us on an amazing trip around the Asylums of England" is surely not in the greatest of taste?!

 

[krela]

I shall give it the contempt it deserves and say nothing. His previous efforts say everything.

 

[UrbanX]

...and not a single corridor shot? Pah, won't be buying one of them then!

 

[PaulPowers]

Mental asylum is a bit no PC isn't it

I might buy his cat calender for the wifey

 

[The Archivist]

In summary: crass, poorly-researched and sensationalist.
It's difficult to tell how much is the Daily Mail's poor journalism and how much is the calendar itself, but the second article at least is riddled with errors and generalisations.

These 'choice quotes' from the sales pitch should tell you all you need to know:

Our latest irresistibly controversial, ‘Insane Asylums of England’ 2012 calendar, which even pips our ‘Road Kill’ calendar past the most ’Un-PC Finishing Post‘. Yes fellow patients, endure 12 mind-bending, hallucinogenic hospitals ever constructed.

Its medication time folks , so pop those lovely LSD pills and strap those shocking and electrifying electrodes to your temples (being careful to bite down hard on your rubber-thingy and not bite your tongue off of course). Then join us on an amazing trip around the ‘Asylums of England’.

Shocking as it seems now, electric ’bolts from the blue’ treatment was considered de-rigueur for its day. It was also rumoured certain rooms were haunted by past patients. Let’s hope they spooked all the past quacks.

In 1863 the possible causes of insanity were listed as - anxiety, epilepsy, intemperance, vice, poverty, religious excitement, fright and exposure to hot climates….Ah! So that’s why Johnny Foreigner was never the full shilling. .