(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.

(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.

The Burden Neurological Institute (BNI) is an independently-funded research unit and registered charity specialising in the investigation and treatment of neurological, psychological, and psychiatric disorders. The BNI opened in 1939 at the Stoke Park Colony in Bristol, England. The BNI was named after philanthropist Rosa Gladys Burden (1891-1939). Burden’s husband, Reverend Harold Nelson Burden (1859-1930), founded the Stoke Park Colony with his first wife Katherine Mary Burden (1856-1919) in 1909. The Colony became the first certified institution for the care of individuals with mental disorders in Britain following the passing of the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act. After Harold Burden’s death in 1930, Rosa continued his sponsorship of medical research by founding the Burden Research Trust in 1933, a £10,000 research fund to support medical and psychiatric studies of the Colony’s patients. In 1936, the Trust built a dedicated epilepsy clinic on site 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 BNI’s work was soon disrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939. Throughout the conflict, the site was used as a neurosurgical hospital by the Emergency Medical Service (1938-1945), a state-run network of free hospital services organised by the Ministry of Health. Despite these duties, the laboratories remained open and research projects continued, such as a programme of electroencephalographic (EEG) research on war casualties who had sustained head injuries. Following the end of the war and the establishment of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948, Golla fought to keep the BNI independent to ensure that researchers could continue to choose their own projects. The BNI did, however, provide neurophysiological services for nearby hospitals for an annual fee. From its foundation, the BNI took a leading role in the development of neurological and psychiatric expertise in Britain. Researchers at the BNI carried out the country’s first trial of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) in 1939, closely followed by the first prefrontal leucotomy in 1940. The BNI also established itself as a centre of innovation in engineering, cybernetics, and early robotics during the post-war years, due in great part to the work of neurophysiologist William Grey Walter (1910-1977). Walter’s best-known inventions, his Machina Speculatrix (small robotic tortoises designed to model the basic functions of the human brain) attracted national attention, appearing in newspapers, on television, and at the Festival of Britain in 1951. After several years of financial uncertainty, the Trustees of the Burden estate sold the Stoke Park site to the Ministry of Health in 1968. While clinical work continued under the NHS at the newly constituted Burden Neurological Hospital, the Institute’s scientific researchers decided to remain separate, turning the BNI into a Company Limited by Guarantee in 1970. In 2000, the BNI moved its headquarters to the Rosa Burden Centre at Southmead Hospital, Bristol, following the final closure of the Stoke Park site in the late 1990s.