neuroscientist, active 1970s-1980s Ray Cooper is a retired British neuroscientist. Between 1971 and 1988, he served as Scientific Director of the Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol, an independent research unit specialising in the investigation and treatment of neurological, psychological, and psychiatric disorders. His research at the Burden covered a variety of neuroscientific topics, including electroencephalography, brain injury, slow cortical potentials, and visual processing. He also wrote a history of the Burden’s first fifty years with his colleague Jonathan Bird, which was published in 1989.

(1860-1930), philanthropist Reverend Harold Nelson Burden was born in Hythe, Kent on 20 March 1860. After completing his theological studies in Cambridge and being ordained in Carlisle in 1888, Burden moved to East London to perform charitable work in slum areas. There, he met his first wife, Katherine Mary Garton (1856-1919), whom he married on 26 September 1888. Shortly after the marriage, the Burdens left to work as missionaries among Ojibway communities in Uffington, near Toronto, Canada. However, following the deaths of their two young children and Katherine’s own declining health, the couple moved back to England in 1891 to take up the curacy of Shoreditch. Between 1893 and 1895, Harold served as a chaplain while studying at Cambridge University. After his graduation, the Burdens moved to Bristol, where Harold took up the role of chaplain of Horfield Prison and Katherine became superintendent of the Royal Victoria Home for Women. Shocked by the conditions in the city’s prisons and shelters, the Burdens became increasingly active on issues of poverty, alcoholism, and mental disability. The latter became an increasing concern for the Burdens in the years that followed. Through his connections in the Home Office, the Inspectorate of Prisons and Reformatories, and the Board of Control, Harold secured a position on the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded in 1904, established to inquire into the institutional care of the mentally disabled. Here, Burden advocated for the institutional separation and rehabilitation of such individuals in newly built ‘colonies’, a view which was later enshrined in the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913. Pre-empting these legal developments, the Burdens had already begun setting up a network of institutions for alcoholics and individuals with mental disabilities, controlled by their charitable trust, the National Institutions for Persons Requiring Care and Control (NIPRCC). The largest of these sites, the Stoke Park Colony in Bristol, was established in 1909, and the Burdens provided financial support for physicians wishing to carry out psychiatric studies of its inhabitants. Stoke Park would later become home to the Burden Neurological Institute, a pioneering neuroscientific research unit founded in 1939. Katherine Burden died on 25 October 1919 following a stroke. The following year, Burden married a close friend, Rosa Gladys Williams (1889-1940), with whom he continued his philanthropic work over the following decade. Harold Burden died from heart disease on 15 May 1930.

(1891-1940), philanthropist Rosa Gladys Burden (née Williams) served as superintendent of the Stoke Park Colony, Bristol, around the time of the First World War. The Colony had been founded by the missionary and philanthropist couple Reverend Harold Nelson Burden (1860-1930) and Katherine Mary Burden (1856-1919) as an institution for the separation, rehabilitation, and occupational training of individuals with mental disabilities. Rosa became a close friend of the Burdens in her superintendent role, and, following Katherine’s death from a stroke in 1919, Harold and Rosa married on 12 May 1920. For the next decade, Rosa continued to support the Colony’s work and that of its charitable trust, the National Institutions for Persons Requiring Care and Control (NIPRCC). Following Harold Burden’s death from heart disease in 1930, Rosa took over his position as Warden of the NIPRCC and expanded his sponsorship of medical research at the Stoke Park Colony. She established the Burden Research Trust in 1933, a £10,000 fund to support medical and psychiatric studies of the Colony’s inhabitants. In 1936, the Trust oversaw the building of a dedicated clinic for the study of epilepsy, with a fully-fitted operating theatre, two small wards, and several laboratories. The clinic was officially opened on 12 May 1939 as the Burden Neurological Institute, under the directorship of neuropsychiatrist Frederick Lucien Golla (1878-1968). The Institute would go on to establish itself as a pioneering neuroscientific research unit in the latter half of the twentieth-century. Rosa Burden died shortly after the opening of the Institute, on 17 September 1940.

(1910-1977), neurophysiologist William Grey Walter (also known as Grey Walter) was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on 19 February 1910 to journalist parents Karl Wilhelm Walter (1880-1965) and Minerva (Margaret) Lucrezia Hardy (1879-1953). The Walter family moved from the United States to Britain in 1915, where William remained for the rest of his life. He was educated at Westminster School (1922-1928), before taking the Natural Science Tripos at King’s College, Cambridge (1928-1931). He went on to pursue postgraduate research on nerve physiology and conditioned reflexes, gaining his MA in 1935. After completing his MA, Walter was invited to work at the Central Pathological Laboratory of the Maudsley Hospital, London, under neuropsychiatrist Frederick Lucien Golla (1877-1968). Since the late 1920s, Golla had become increasingly interested in the clinical applications of the burgeoning field of electroencephalography (EEG), the measurement of the electrical activity of the brain via electrodes placed on the scalp. Noting his skill in technical matters, Golla encouraged Walter to develop increasingly sophisticated EEG devices, and supported his application for a Rockefeller Travelling Fellowship to visit the Jena laboratory of German physiologist Hans Berger (1873-1941), widely credited as the founder of electroencephalography. Walter went on to achieve several key ‘firsts’ in electroencephalography, including the first detection of a cerebral tumour using the technique in 1936. Between 1936 and 1939, Walter expanded his research programme and took readings from hundreds of patients, focusing particularly on the electrical patterns of epilepsy. In 1939, Golla was invited to become director of the new Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol, an independent research unit specialising in the investigation and treatment of neurological, psychological, and psychiatric disorders, and invited Walter to become director of the Institute’s Physiology Department. At the Burden, Walter further developed his EEG apparatus, developing the automatic frequency analyser and the toposcope in 1943 and 1950 respectively. His research programme also became increasingly ambitious, with investigations into the cerebral effects of stroboscopic light beginning in 1947 and, later, the discovery of ‘contingent negative variation’ (CNV, or the ‘expectancy wave’) in the 1960s. Walter also played a key role in the professionalization of electroencephalography during this period, co-founding the journal Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology and organising meetings of the EEG Society (1943-1989). Outside of his clinical work, Walter became a key figure in early British cybernetics, the study of feedback, control, and communication systems in humans and machines that synthesised approaches from engineering, biology, and mathematics. He co-founded the Ratio Club, an informal dining and discussion group which provided a key social outlet for cybernetic enthusiasts, which met between 1949 and 1955. He also built several cybernetic devices in his spare time, the most famous of which were his robotic tortoises, or Machina Speculatrix, designed to function as simple models of the adaptable human brain. These received national attention when they were exhibited on television in 1950 and at the Festival of Britain in 1951. He also became a prolific public intellectual, writing 170 scientific publications, serving as an expert witness in court courses, appearing frequently on the BBC, and writing an immensely popular non-specialist text on his neuroscientific work, The Living Brain (1953). His work also gained a surprising popularity among counter-cultural artists during the 1950s and 1960s, including Beat writers William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, who saw Walter’s research as part of a broader investigation of human consciousness. Walter was married twice, first to Katharine Monica Ratcliffe in 1934 and then to Vivian Joan Dovey (1915-1980) in 1947, with whom he had one son, Timothy Walter (1949-1976). Walter and Dovey separated in 1960 and divorced in 1973. After their separation, Walter lived with Lorraine Josephine Aldridge (née Donn) until 1972. In 1970, Walter suffered severe brain damage following a road accident, forcing him to retire from full-time research work. He died of a heart attack in 1977.

(1877-1968), neuropsychiatrist Frederick Lucien Golla was born in Fulham, London on 11 August 1877 to Italian parents Peter Alexander Evasio Golla and Alice Amelia Tingey. He was educated at Tonbridge School and Magdalen College, Oxford, before pursuing medical training at St George’s Hospital, London. He graduated in 1904 and became resident medical officer at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, Queen Square, under surgeon Victor Horsley (1857-1916) and neurologist Gordon Holmes (1876-1965), where he began to pursue research into the human nervous system. During the First World War, Golla volunteered for field ambulance duty with the Royal Army Medical Corps in August 1914 and was invalided out of the army after contracting bronchial pneumonia in June 1915. In August 1915, he returned to the Royal Army Medical Corps and rose to the rank of captain. His wartime research on tetanus was widely celebrated, leading to his post-war promotion to consultant physician at St George’s Hospital, where he worked on nervous conduction with neurophysiologist Charles Scott Sherrington (1857-1952). In 1923, Golla was appointed director of the Central Pathological Laboratory at the Maudsley Hospital, London. As well as controlling the educational programme of the Maudsley Hospital medical school, Golla continued to conduct research with junior colleagues. In the 1930s, he collaborated with neurophysiologist William Grey Walter (1910-1977) in pioneering studies of electroencephalography (EEG, the measurement of the electrical activity of the brain), including the first detection of a cerebral tumour using the technique in 1936. In 1939, Golla was invited to become director of the new Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol, an independent research unit specialising in the investigation and treatment of neurological, psychological, and psychiatric disorders. Under Golla’s direction, the Burden achieved several ‘firsts’ in British psychiatry, including the first trials of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) in 1939 and the first leucotomy (lobotomy) in 1941. He retired from the Burden in 1959. Golla was married twice, first to Thérèse d'Haussaire in 1908, who fatally contracted bronchial pneumonia while nursing Golla back to health in 1915, and then to Yvonne Lilly Brisco Ray in 1919. He had one daughter, Yolande Golla, who would later co-author research at the Burden Neurological Institute. Golla died of heart failure on 6 February 1968.

(1903-1972), psychiatrist, pioneer in cybernetics and systems theory William Ross Ashby (also known as Ross Ashby) was born in Lewisham, London on 6 September 1903. He was educated at Worcester College and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and gained his BA in Zoology in 1924. Ashby then went on to pursue a medical degree at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, before receiving his Diploma in Psychological Medicine from Bethlem Royal Hospital, London in 1930. Ashby spent the next three decades in various psychiatric posts, serving as a Clinical Psychiatrist for London County Council (1930-1936), a Research Pathologist for St Andrew’s Hospital, Northampton (1936-1947), and then Director of Research at Barnwood House, Gloucester, a private psychiatric institution. In 1959, Ashby succeeded Frederick Lucien Golla (1878-1968) as Director of the Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol, an independent research unit specialising in the investigation and treatment of neurological, psychological, and psychiatric disorders. However, his tenure at the Burden proved unpopular with several key researchers, who resigned in protest over his management methods, which included mandatory examinations and the hiring of private investigators to look into employees’ private lives. Pushed to resign from the post, Ashby left Britain entirely to take up a position at the Biological Computer Laboratory at the University of Illinois in January 1961, where he remained until his retirement in 1970. Beyond his psychiatric work, Ashby is recognised as an early pioneer in the field of cybernetics, the study of feedback and control systems in humans and machines. He co-founded the Ratio Club, an informal dining and discussion group which met between 1949 and 1955 and provided a key social outlet for cybernetic enthusiasts. He also wrote the seminal cybernetic text Design for the Brain in 1950 and invented several cybernetic machines, most notably the “homeostat” in 1946-1947, a self-correcting electronic feedback machine designed to model the adaptive qualities of the human brain. In March 1972, Ashby was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour. He died on 15 November 1972.

(1900-1970), endocrinologist Max Reiss was born in Stanislau (now Ivano-Frankivsk), western Ukraine on 1 May 1900. He received his medical education from the German University of Prague and worked as a demonstrator and assistant in the clinic of endocrinologist Artur Biedl (1869-1930) before qualifying in 1925. After this, Reiss expanded his clinical and experimental interests in endocrinology, particularly focusing on the influence of gonadal and anterior pituitary hormones on metabolic processes. With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Reiss was forced to flee from Prague and came to Britain on the invitation of neuropsychiatrist Frederick Lucien Golla (1878-1968). Golla provided Reiss with a research post at the Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol, an independent research unit specialising in the investigation and treatment of neurological, psychological, and psychiatric disorders. Reiss later became Director of the Institute’s Endocrinological Department. While at the Burden, Reiss was a key player in establishing the field of ‘psychoneuroendocrinology’ (the study of the interactions between genetics and hormones in cases of psychiatric illness and mental disability) and encouraged the expansion of endocrinological treatments in various Bristol psychiatric hospitals. In the early 1960s, Reiss promoted this approach in the United States through his new role as Director of Psychiatric Research at the Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, New York, where he made several investigations into potential links between mental disability and reduced growth hormone levels. Willowbrook later attained international notoriety for hepatitis experiments conducted on children in its care and was shut down in 1987. Max Reiss died suddenly of an embolism in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire on 27 July 1970.

biochemist, active 1950s Leslie D. MacLeod was a biochemist and researcher at the Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol, an independent research unit specialising in the investigation and treatment of neurological, psychological, and psychiatric disorders. His research focused on the effects of alcohol and alcohol addiction on the brain and was supported by funds from the Society for the Study of Addiction.

biochemist, active 1950s Arthur Tingey was a biochemist and researcher at the Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol, an independent research specialising in the investigation and treatment of neurological, psychological, and psychiatric disorders. His research focused on the neurochemical aspects of various psychiatric and neurological conditions, including leukodystrophy and Niemann-Pick disease.

(1915-1980), radiographer Vivian Joan Aldridge (née Vivian Joan Dovey, later Vivian Joan Walter) was born in Edmonton, Middlesex on 12 August 1915. She trained as a radiographer and received a diploma of M.S.R. (Membership of the Society of Radiographers) before taking up a position as scientific officer at the Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol, an independent research unit specialising in the investigation and treatment of neurological, psychological, and psychiatric disorders. After the Second World War, Dovey played a key role in the Burden’s expanding electroencephalographic (EEG, relating to the measurement of the electrical activity of the brain) research programme. She collaborated closely with colleagues on the use of the EEG to identify sub-cortical tumours, as well as in investigations of the effect of stroboscopic light on the electrical activity in the human brain. In 1946, Dovey was part of the Burden team which discovered that seizures similar to those encountered in cases of epilepsy could be produced in ‘normal’ subjects when flickering lights were applied at particular frequencies. She also co-authored several key papers which helped to establish the Burden’s credentials in these areas, including in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry (1944) and Nature (1946). Dovey married neurophysiologist and Burden colleague William Grey Walter (1910-1977) in 1947, with whom she had one son, Timothy Walter (1949-1976). The couple separated in 1960, and later divorced in 1973. Following her separation from Walter, Vivian lived with greengrocer Keith Aldridge, whose surname she eventually took. She died in 1980.

(1920-2007), electrical engineer Harold William (‘Shippy’) Shipton was born 29 September 1920. He was educated at St Michael’s School, Shrewsbury and Shrewsbury Technical College, before joining the Royal Air Force in 1939. During the Second World War, Shipton’s worked as an electrical engineer in a secret project developing night-fighter radar. After the Second World War, Shipton joined the Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol, an independent research unit specialising in the investigation and treatment of neurological, psychological, and psychiatric disorders. Shipton was part of the team responsible for developing electroencephalographic (EEG, related to the measurement of the electrical activity of the brain) equipment under the direction of neurophysiologist William Grey Walter (1910-1977). While working at the Burden, he met his wife, Janet Helen Attlee (1923-), a psychologist at a local hospital. The couple married on 20 November 1947 in a wedding considered ‘the society event of the year’ due to a reception at Chequers held by Janet’s father, then-Prime Minister Clement Attlee (1883-1967). The Shiptons immigrated to the United States in 1958, where Harold had been offered a research associate position at the University of Iowa. There, he continued his EEG research, developing a multichannel toposcopic display system in the early 1960s. In 1963, he became director of the Medical Electronics Laboratory in Iowa, before becoming Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Washington University, St Louis, in 1979. He retired in 1989, but continued working in the field of brain research, including collaborations with NASA on experiments investigating the measurement of brain activity. The couple moved to Utah following Harold’s diagnosis with Parkinson’s Disease in the early 2000s. He died on 9 April 2007.

(1923-2019), psychologist Janet Helen Shipton (née Attlee) was born in 1923 to parents Clement Richard Attlee (1883-1967) and Violet Helen Millar (1895-1964). Her father Clement, a Labour politician, served as British Prime Minister between 1945 and 1951. Janet was educated in Stanmore, London, before being evacuated to Tintagel, Cornwall during the Second World War. Later in the war, she served as a member of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). After the war, Shipton worked as a psychologist in Bristol. There, she met electrical engineer Harold ‘Shippy’ Shipton (1920-2007), who was working at the nearby Burden Neurological Institute, an independent research unit specialising in the investigation and treatment of neurological, psychological, and psychiatric disorders. The couple married on 20 November 1947 in a wedding considered ‘the society event of the year’, with a reception at Chequers and most of the post-war Labour Cabinet in attendance. Janet and Harold immigrated to the United States in 1958, where Harold had been offered a research associate position at the University of Iowa. While living in Iowa City, Janet became increasingly involved in community politics, playing a key role in the organisation of the Hoover Health Council and serving as Johnson County Supervisor in 1978. Shipton also served in leadership roles in the Iowa and Missouri League of Women Voters, the Missouri Women’s Network, and the Missouri Older Women’s League, focusing on issues of women’s health and voter registration. Janet died on 13 February 2019.

(1923-2015), psychologist Alastair Charles Mundy-Castle was born in Teddington, London on 28 March 1923. He was educated at Tonbridge School, Kent and served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. After the war, he studied at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and spent a year studying electroencephalography (EEG, the measurement of the electrical activity of the brain) at the Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol, an independent research specialising in the investigation and treatment of neurological, psychological, and psychiatric disorders. Mundy-Castle graduated from Cambridge in 1948 and took up a position at the National Institute for Personnel Research (NIPR) in Johannesburg, South Africa. There, Mundy-Castle set up Johannesburg’s first EEG laboratory and conducted research on a wide variety of topics, including alpha rhythms, photic stimulation, and senile psychosis. With the election of the National Party in South Africa in 1948 and the gradual introduction of apartheid policies, Mundy-Castle fled the country for Ghana, where he was offered the post of Principal Research Officer at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research. Continuing his EEG research and collecting data from across the country, Mundy-Castle developed an increasing interest in child psychology and intellectual development. On the basis of this work, Mundy-Castle was invited to join the Centre for Cognitive Studies at Harvard University in 1967. In 1970, Mundy-Castle returned to Africa to establish a Department of Psychology at the University of Lagos, Nigeria, where he remained professor until 1982. During this period, Mundy-Castle trained several of Nigeria’s leading psychologists, including Kayode Oguntuashe, Tune Makanju, and Ameche Nweze. Mundy-Castle died on 11 December 2015.

(1920-1987), neuropsychiatrist Henry James (Harry) Crow was educated at Aberdeen University following a successful career in the Royal Air Force as a navigator, a role for which he received the Distinguished Flying Cross. After qualifying in medicine, Crow took up a post as neurosurgical houseman at the Frenchay Hospital, Bristol, where he developed a lifelong interest in neuropsychiatric research. In 1956, he became a consultant at the Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol, an independent research unit specialising in the investigation and treatment of neurological, psychological, and psychiatric disorders. He later became the Burden’s Clinical Director, a post which he retained until his retirement. Crow’s clinical practice and research focused on the treatment of epilepsy and anxiety conditions. He also played a key role in developing the Burden’s EEG department alongside neurophysiologist William Grey Walter (1910-1977). He was a founding member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, becoming a Fellow in 1971 and later Chairman of the South Western Division. Crow died on 10 May 1987.

(1930-1991), psychophysiologist Cheyne McCallum was born in Gosport in 1930. He was educated in Fareham, before undertaking National Service in the Army Intelligence Corps. After a brief period in the Civil Service, he enrolled as a mature student in psychology at Bristol University, before pursuing a Ph.D. at the Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol, under neurophysiologist William Grey Walter (1910-1977). In 1965, McCallum was offered a research post at the Burden, where he worked for the rest of his life. McCallum’s research at the Burden focused on slow cortical potentials (slow changes in the electrical activity of the brain, as identified by EEG recordings, in response to external stimuli), particularly the effect of increased mental workload on individuals in charge of complex systems, such as pilots and air traffic controllers. This work also led to his close collaboration with Walter on Contingent Negative Variation (CNV, or ‘expectancy wave’) in the 1960s. McCallum was married twice and had two children. He died following a short illness on 19 November 1991.

(1899-1961), electrical engineer Geoffrey Parr was born in Muswell Hill, London, on 29 December 1899. He was educated at Finsbury Technical College, receiving his college certificate in electrical engineering in 1917. Between 1917 and 1919, he worked as a technical assistant for the Admiralty in Portsmouth. He returned to London in 1919 to take up the post of lecturer and demonstrator at the City and Guilds Technical College. In 1926, Parr joined the Edison Swan Electric Company as a research engineer in the Valve Department. He was promoted to Head of Technical Services in the Radio Division in 1932. In the 1940s, he turned to technical journalism and publishing, serving as Editor of the Electrical Engineering journal between 1941 and 1949, and later Technical Editor of the science and technology publishing house Chapman and Hall, Ltd, a position he held until his death. He also became a Fellow of the Television Society in 1934, the honorary editor of its journal from 1944, and was elected its honorary secretary in 1945. During the interwar period, Parr developed a close friendship with neurophysiologist William Grey Walter (1910-1977) and corresponded closely with him regarding the technical aspects of his research in electroencephalography (the measurement of the electrical activity of the brain) at the Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol. Parr died on 30 May 1961.

(1904-1956), psychiatrist Effie Lilian Hutton (also known as Lilian Hutton) was born in Teesdale, County Durham on 25 March 1904. She trained in medicine at the Royal Free Hospital, London in 1928, before gaining psychiatric experience at Harton Hospital, Newcastle and Rainhill Hospital, Liverpool. Between 1933 and 1939, Hutton worked at a neurosyphilis clinic at Horton Hospital, Epsom, conducting research on the use of malarial therapy. In 1939, Hutton was offered a post at the Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol, an independent research unit specialising in the investigation and treatment of neurological, psychological, and psychiatric disorders. She rapidly rose through the ranks of the Burden and was appointed its Clinical Director just a year later. During the Second World War, Hutton’s work focused on the introduction of new physical treatments for psychiatric conditions, such as electro-convulsive therapy (ECT). She was also in charge of organising Britain’s first leucotomy (lobotomy), which was performed at the Burden on 19 February 1941. In July 1941, Hutton published the results of the first eight patients to be given the procedure in the Lancet. Despite her initial enthusiasm for such treatments, further research on their negative side effects led Hutton to successfully argue for the discontinuation of psychosurgery at the Burden. Hutton’s later research instead focused on the more spiritual aspects of psychiatric care, arguing for the importance of both religion and love in the treatment of neurosis and similar conditions. Hutton died on 8 August 1956 following a long illness.

The National Institutions for Persons Requiring Care and Control (NIPRCC) was a charitable trust founded by missionary and philanthropist Harold Nelson Burden (1859-1930) in 1902. The NIPRCC was responsible for the funding, maintenance, and direction of a network of institutions for the care and treatment of individuals with mental disabilities, located in Bristol and its surrounding areas. Motivated by the poor conditions he observed while serving as chaplain of Bristol’s Horfield Prison in the 1890s, particularly those of prisoners suffering from alcoholism and mental disability, Burden established the NIPRCC in 1902 to advocate for institutional solutions to the housing and care of vulnerable individuals. In the following years, the NIPRCC became a key player in changing government policies on institutional care, in great part due to Burden’s involvement in the 1904 Royal Commission for the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded. The subsequent Mental Deficiency Act of 1913, which mandated the removal of those with mental disabilities from the country’s prisons and workhouses, ultimately supported the NIPRCC’s aim of institutionally separating such individuals into newly built ‘colonies’. The first institution to be certified under the 1913 law was the Stoke Park Colony in Bristol, established by Burden and the NIPRCC in 1909. Built on the site of Dower House, an eighteenth-century manor bought from the Duke of Beaufort in 1901, the Stoke Park Colony was held up as an exemplary site where individuals with mental disabilities could be given both medical care and occupational training, such as lessons in weaving, gardening, and carpentry. In 1917, the Colony was granted an extended licence to house 1,528 ‘inmates’, making it the largest licenced institution in the country. In the years following the establishment of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948, many NIPRCC institutions, including the Stoke Park Colony, were handed over to the Ministry of Health. The NIPRCC remained active in its original form until the mid-1950s, before changing its name to the Burden Trust. The Trust remains active today as a non-fundraising charity which provides grants for hospitals, medical research centres, retirement homes, and schools.

The Stoke Park Colony was an institution for the housing, care, and treatment of individuals with mental disabilities in Bristol, England. The Colony was founded in 1909 and reconstituted as the Stoke Park Hospital in the 1950s. The Stoke Park Colony was founded by the National Institutions for Persons Requiring Care and Control (NIPRCC), a charitable trust responsible for the funding, maintenance, and direction of a network of institutions for the care of individuals with mental disabilities in Bristol and its surrounding areas. The NIPRCC’s founder, missionary and philanthropist Reverend Harold Nelson Burden (1859-1930), played a key role in the 1904 Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded and the subsequent Mental Deficiency Act of 1913, which together advocated for the institutional separation of those with mental disabilities into newly built ‘colonies’. The Stoke Park Colony was the first such institution to be certified by the British government under the 1913 Act. Built on the site of Dower House, an eighteenth-century manor bought by Burden from the Duke of Beaufort in 1901, the Colony was held up by the NIPRCC as an exemplary site where individuals with mental disabilities could be given both medical care and occupational training, such as lessons in weaving, gardening, and carpentry. The Colony was greatly expanded between 1909 and 1917 through the buying up of surrounding land and the building of new accommodation blocks. In 1917, the Colony was granted an expanded licence for housing 1,528 ‘inmates’, making it the largest licenced institution in the country. The Colony became a key site for neurological and psychiatric research in the following decades, with Burden encouraging physicians to visit and study its inhabitants. This research agenda was greatly expanded after Burden’s death by his wife, Rosa Gladys Burden (1889-1940), who founded the Burden Mental Research Trust in 1933. The Trust provided £10,000 to fund investigations, and later oversaw the building of a dedicated epilepsy clinic on the site in 1936. The clinic opened in 1939 as the Burden Neurological Institute, which established itself as a pioneering site of neurological, psychiatric, and neuroscientific research in the latter half of the twentieth-century. Following the establishment of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948, direction of the Stoke Park Colony was passed over to the Ministry of Health in the early 1950s. The Colony was reformulated as the Stoke Park Hospital, which remained open until 1997.

Frenchay Hospital was a hospital in the village of Frenchay, north-east of Bristol, England. The hospital was founded in 1921 and closed in 2014. The hospital was established in the grounds of Frenchay Park, a Georgian mansion purchased by the Bristol Corporation in July 1921. With the support of the Ministry of Health, the Corporation transformed the mansion into a sanatorium and orthopaedic hospital for children with tuberculosis. The site had space for 35 beds, and children received a combination of treatments including rest, fresh air, improved diet, and sunlight therapy. In 1931, with growing patient numbers, the sanatorium was expanded beyond the mansion with the building of purpose-built wards and accommodation. Anticipating the imminent outbreak of war in the late 1930s, the Corporation began planning for the provision of hospital beds for air raid casualties. In 1938, plans were drawn up to construct an Emergency Medical Service hospital on the Frenchay site. New wards and facilities were completed in early 1942 but remained empty for several years. The site was then handed over to American Medical Units as a station hospital and training centre and began receiving casualties following the D-Day landings in June 1944. American units expanded and reorganised the hospital site, creating specialist sections for neurosurgery, orthopaedics, and plastic surgery among others. After the war, responsibility for the hospital was handed over to the Bristol Health Committee on behalf of the Ministry of Health, and plans were put forward to transform the site into a civilian general hospital under the newly created National Health Service (NHS). Tuberculosis patients were transferred to other sites in 1947. In the late 1940s, it was agreed to build a permanent neurosurgical theatre on the site in an attempt to establish the hospital as a leading site of neurosurgical expertise. The Neurosurgical Unit was opened in 1953. In the subsequent post-war decades, the hospital’s other wartime facilities underwent a slow and uneven process of modernisation. In 2004, the reorganisation of NHS services in Bristol into two major centres brought the future of the hospital into question. With an extensive redevelopment of the Bristol Royal Infirmary already underway, it was decided that services at either the Frenchay or Southmead Hospitals would need to be relocated. In 2005, it was determined that Southmead would become the major hospital site, and the Frenchay would be redeveloped into a smaller, community hospital. However, these plans were delayed in 2012, before being cancelled entirely in 2014, despite community campaigning. In 2014, services were progressively transferred to the Southmead Hospital and Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, with only brain injury services remaining onsite. In 2016, the Frenchay site was sold to a housing developer.