Fears of wrong road for hospital

their relatives cared for by the most eminent doctors in the land. The

Crichton, funded from one man's private fortune, became an

internationally-acclaimed centre of excellence in caring for the

mentally handicapped and a proud part of the heritage of Dumfries.

Indeed local people developed an amiable relationship with those of

the Crichton's patients -- including some splendid eccentrics -- who

daily visited Dumfries via one of the three leafy roads which led to

town. I suppose in a way it was an early experiment in returning the

mentally ill to the community.

In Dumfries it is still said that anyone not quite normal was ''up the

middle road . . .''

Being thrawn Scots, the good folk of the town were at first hostile to

the idea of a local asylum and quickly adopted the Nimby attitude: there

would be no place for lunatics in their back yard. In a searing

editorial headlined ''Crichton Foolery'' the Dumfries Times remarked in

1834: '' . . . the erection of a public madhouse is a mode of

appropriation which the town and neighbourhood entirely object to as

wasteful and uncalled for.''

It denounced the Crichton family trustees, adding that the asylum

would be ''their own foolery from the foundation to rooftree, theirs

solely and indivisibly and Heaven give them good of it!''

Today it is all rather different. ''Crichton Hospital has a long and

enviable reputation . . . '' said the Dumfries Standard last week

commenting on the latest round of feuding over plans by the local health

board to sell off parcels of the Crichton's peripheral land. To some

this smacks of abusing the town's heritage and selling off the family

silver. To others it is prudent fiscal management.

What is certain is that the debate now raging in Dumfries demonstrates

public sensitivity to the care of the mentally ill. It also shows how

unpopular are the actions of other health boards which, in the best

traditions of Thatcherism, have closed wards, sent home patients, and

made some fast money by turning fine old buildings into blocks of flats.

Indeed, as Morag Williams, archivist of Dumfries and Galloway Health

Board, points out, Mrs Thatcher herself would have been impressed by the

style of Elizabeth Crichton who made certain her husband's bequest was

used to her own satisfaction. Mrs Crichton effectively pioneered private

health care in the south of Scotland by funding the Crichton, whose

history does not always accord with the popular local understanding that

it was a charitable gift, inviolable for all time, to the people of

Dumfries.

Her husband, Dr James Crichton, made his money in India and the Far

East -- some of it from opium dealing, it is said -- and used some of it

to set up home in Friars' Carse, next to Ellisland, where Burns had

farmed a generation earlier. Dr Crichton set aside #100,000 in his will

for charitable purposes.

His widow wanted the money used for a univeristy which, inexplicably,

the south of Scotland lacks to this day. The idea of a Dumfries

University was too much for the four already in existence at that time

and was strangled at birth. Mrs Crichton decided instead to found and

endow ''a lunatic asylum in the neighbourhood of Dumfries upon the most

approved plan and capable of accommodating 100 patients''.

Space was taken in magazines advertising the Crichton Institution for

Lunatics where patients most able to pay could, for 350 shillings a

year, enjoy a private parlour and bedroom, bathroom -- ''elegantly

furnished'' -- where the daily menu would include wine, dessert, game in

season, served on a silver platter. Use of carriage or horse would be

provided daily and the patient/attendant ratio was one to one.

The place quickly became profitable which helped to fund the

charitable aspect of the Crichton. This meant that paupers, or at least

some of them, were also looked after. The penniless, or ''patients of

respectibility in reduced circumstances'', could, for ten or 15

shillings a year, have a private room with an iron bed but no curtains

or carpets; animal soup daily and animal food thrice weekly, and bread

and vegetables.

There would be tea to the females, tobacco and beer to the industrious

males. One keeper would attend 10 patients. Paupers from outside what is

now Dumfries and Galloway region had to pay an extra three shillings a

year.

As the money rolled in the Crichton quickly expanded. At one point in

the middle of this century it covered 1000 beautiful acres containing

some magnificent sandstone Victorian buildings. It even had its own

resplendent church and a huge hall, one of the biggest in the south of

Scotland, which was recently used -- at considerable profit to the board

-- for the Lockerbie fatal accident inquiry.

The Crichton had become a town within a town, a self-contained

community in surroundings more elegant than any other in Scotland, with

patients from all over Britain and beyond.

There is now a price for this institutionalised grace. Today the

Crichton is probably the most expensive hospital to run in Scotland,

perhaps Britain. Most of its wards and offices are in listed buildings

where alterations are often impossible. Heating, lighting, and cleaning

costs are enormous. Much of the land was unused and even the Crichton's

own golf course has potential value far beyond its nine holes in a town

where both the other local clubs have long waiting lists.

When the NHS was introduced in 1948 the Crichton, grounds and all,

were transferred by legislation to the Secretary of State for Scotland.

Any lingering notion that no-one could interfere with the original terms

of the trust seems to have disappeared. ''We have no doubt that what we

are doing is both legally and morraly correct,'' said Mr Michael Cook,

board general manager recently.

The NHS (Scotland) Act of 1947 stated that property transferred to the

Scottish Secretary freed him from any existing trusts. The Act also

states, however, that the Scottish Secretary should, as far as

practicable, secure that the objects for which the property was

previously used were not prejudiced.

Over recent years changes in the treatment of the mentally handicapped

have brought a reduction in patient numbers in the Crichton as

elsewhere, as more and more have been returned to the communities --

sometimes against their own interests.

Up and down the land mental hospitals have used this clearance

programme to sell assets. This has not yet happened in the Crichton but

recent events have set alarm bells ringing.

Some, like Sir Hector Monro, the local Tory MP -- no sympathiser with

those who would sell family silver -- believe there is nothing wrong

with the health board offering land bought in more recent times and

outside what is known as the Crichton's curtilage: in other words the

central area of wards and administration blocks.

''They have made it absolutely clear at two meetings and in writing

that they are not selling anything within the curtilage. They are

offering for sale bits of agricultural land bought in the 1940s for

growing potatoes but they are not touching the curtilage at all. People

are just stirring up a row. When your patient numbers go down from 1250

to 350 you must find a better use for some of the place.''

But there are those who are not impressed. In Dumfries there is

widespread suspicion of the board's motives. Regional Labour councillor

John Dowson says the entire Crichton complex was built from the proceeds

of a charitable trust and should not simply be sold off, even in part.

''We have offered to form a new trust to take it off their hands and run

it as a charity but nothing came of that,'' he says.

''The Crichton should be kept intact. It is part of the heritage of

Dumfries. Selling off bits of it is the thin end of the wedge. We want

at the first hurdle to stop the break-up of the estate for gain.''

According to board officials the money raised from selling or leasing

property will go to caring for the mentally handicapped, not just in the

hospital itself but in the community. Mr Dowson says mental health care

is the Cinderella of the NHS and he worries that income from disposals

will ''just go into the general pot''.

Several Crichton buildings have been leased already to local

businesses including the local enterprise company, tourist board, and

radio station. Mr Dowson says the superb environment of the Crichton

will be spoiled if this process continues. ''We could see the break-up

of the whole estate and in a few years it could become an industrial

estate.''

Mr John Hanlon, director of Nithsdale's Council of Voluntary Service,

says every health board in Britain has been given targets by the

Government for savings and disposals of assets -- ''and the Crichton is

no different''. This is denied by Mr Les Callaghan, official spokesman

for the board, who says the board sets its own targets.

Over the century and a half of the Crichton's existence it received

many gifts and endowments, including some magnificent antique furniture,

much of it from the Crichton family. A visitor wandering through the

cathedral-like buildings, wondering at the ambitions and vision of the

Victorians, occasionally passes tables or sideboards which must be

priceless.

The buzz in Dumfries is that much of this treasure trove has

mysteriously disappeared over the years, including the era before the

health board came into being. Mr Callaghan says: ''We have looked into

this. There is no truth in this. Like any establishment this place loses

things.

''Pilfering takes place. We have taken steps to minimise this. We have

disposed of low-value furniture some of which had developed antique

status. All of our valuable antiques are now bar-coded and checked and

catalogued.''

This story will run. If the Crichton is to lose some of its

surrounding grandeur to commerce or housing the move seems likely to be

met with hostility in Dumfries, despite the board's explanations. It

makes me wonder how vociferous the protests would be if the board went

the way of some of the others and began asset-stripping in earnest.