Sunnyside, Conan Doyle and the House of Madness

For those who do not know, Sunnyside is a name which perhaps conjures up a happy, warm place, basking in a content and peaceful location.  In fact, Sunnyside – near the village of Hillside - is a former mental hospital in north Angus, which closed its doors finally in December 2011.  The institution (and its predecessor) had been in operation for over 200 years.  As a personal aside, I can vaguely remember mention of the name from childhood, bandied about by adults in a black humoured context about certain acquaintances who had ended up there via a weakness involving drink.

   
Publicity surrounding the condition of Sunnyside Royal Hospital, the state of the complex and plans for redevelopment, brought it back into the minds of local people. Montrose Lunatic Asylum, Infirmary and Dispensary was the creation of Mrs Susan Carnegie of Charleton and was the first purpose built institution of its kind in Scotland. Before this foundation, unfortunate mental patients in the burgh were incarcerated in the tollbooth. Miss Charlton expressed the reasoning behind her civic benevolence (in a letter 16 July 1815):

My view in this undertaking was merely to rid the Town of Montrose of a nuisance – that of mad people being kept in prison in the middle of the street – and the hope that, by providing a quiet and convenient Asylum for them, by good treatment and medical aid, some of these unfortunate persons might be restored to society. 

 Ten years after its founding (in 1781) it was recorded there were 37 lunatics domiciled in the asylum, of which 12 belonged to the town an parish of Montrose. Some patients received free treatment, while offers were fee paying. (A report in December 1836 noted 67 patients, 10 of them free, while the others paid sums between £10 and £40 per year. This compares with 53 patients in 1818.)  

   Far from being a stigmatised institution, the asylum was looked on with pride by locals from the beginning, as evinced by the proud inclusion of the building on one side of an unofficial conder halfpenny minted in the town in 1799 (issued by the Montrose tobacconist Nichol):

Official reports also show that the institution was far from a grim place of confinement which popular imagination might suppose it being in early Victorian times.  The report in autumn 1832 states:

The Asylum at Montrose was clean and well-aired; and the Patients well attended to by the Superintendent and Matron, and those acting under them. The male patients were 37 in number, and the females 38. Six or eight of the males work constantly in the garden. A clergyman preaches weekly on Thursday, and says prayers on Monday, to a select number of the Patients, who listen attentively. On Friday a fiddler attends, and the Patients are allowed to dance – the males together and the females together. This is said to delight them very much, but has no permanent effect on them either to the better or the worse. The general state of health was good; and the Registers were accurately kept. [Memoranda Regarding the Royal Lunatic Asylum, Infirmary and Dispensary of Montrose, Richard Poole (Montrose, 1841), p. 55.]

   Three years later the visiting Sheriff witnessed a ‘religiously insane’ female  inmate who was in the habit of sternly denouncing visitors, bible in hand, was found to be happily participating in the revelry.  She came up to the Sheriff, ‘and made some observations as to turning their kirk into a ball-room, and laughed heartily’. 

   It was noted in several reports that idleness affected the patients badly and that separation from the surrounding scenery of the countryside was not beneficial.  This was taken into consideration by the late 1830s and patients were allowed out to places such as Dunninald Woods, and were allowed to spectate at ship launches in Montrose.  Despite this the authorities were frustrated by lacking leisure activities to distract patients:  A difficulty is often experienced in devising means of re-educating the obscured or barren mind – means which shall be sufficiently attractive to create an interest, and yet so little exciting as to be compatible with perfect serenity and equanimity.   In 1835 it was advised:  'No visitors, whose motive is curiosity, are allowed to see the Patients.  The public have a right to know whether such an establishment be conducted on principle of justice and benevolence, and the law has provided that this right should be duly exercised.'  [Memoranda, p. 128]

   From the initial site on Montrose Links, the hospital moved to Sunnyside farm in 1858 following a nationwide review three years earlier by the Scottish Lunacy Commission. There was a growing site for patients on the new site, leading to the provision of a new facility for private patients named Carnegie House, which opened in 1899.  Howden Villa and Northesk Villa opening in 1901 and 1904 to house non-paying patients.  Angus House, an annex for dementia patients, was built 40 years later.  Around this time, in 1940, patient numbers reached  the maximum recorded, 1052.  But pressure on the hospital’s resources had levelled off, in terms of inpatient need, throughout the 1950s and 1960s because of new drugs and improved treatments.  In 1962 the institution was renamed Sunnyside Royal Hospital and came under the jurisdiction of new management. Sunnyside Royal Hospital celebrated its bicentenary in 1981, at which time the number of patients was nearly 400. 

   Following the transfer of services to the new £20 million Susan Carnegie Centre at Stracathro in 2011, Sunnyside site was declared surplus and was empty and in limbo for four years until it was put on the market by NHS Tayside.  A victim of changing times and perceptions, the hospital buildings soon fell into disrepair and dereliction, like that other major mental facility, Strathmartine Hospital, just north of Dundee.  Collections from the on-site museum and archive were split between Montrose Museum and Dundee University. Exhibits included nursing uniforms, lantern slides, straigh jackets, and – most poignantly – crafts completed by long gone patients, including some Victorian paintings.   In common with other abandoned buildings the complex became the target of criminals and much copper and other material was robbed from the upper floors.  The place also attracted other unauthorised visitors, including various official and amateur investigators who heard that the hospital was haunted.  Whether this rumour of haunting was inspired by its history or dereliction, at least one ex patient advised the place was haunted by the sound of female footsteps.  One Arbroath based paranormal team, Afterdark, were refused permission to enter when they asked, on the basis that the buildings were too rundown to ensure physical safety.  The site was eventually sold in 2016 to an Edinburgh-Montrose business partnership and plans were drawn up to rejuvenate the site as a ‘development of distinction’, a process which is still in the pipeline.  Memories of the institution are preserved not only in the archives, but in a good website devoted to the place: Memories of Sunnyside

  Sunnyside’s most famous inmate was the father of author Arthur Conan Doyle.  Born and raised in England, though from an Irish family, Charles Altamont Doyle (1832-1893), was an artist who moved to Edinburgh in 1849.  Struggling with depression and alcoholism he was dismissed from his employment at the Office of Works, with a pension, in June 1876. The extent to which drink got a grip of him is described in a letter by his wife Mary:   ‘He would strip himself of all his underclothes, take the very bed linen, climb down the water spout at risk of his life, break open the children’s money boxes. He even drank furniture varnish.’  Five years later he was sent to the nursing home of Blairerno House at Drumlithie in the Mearns, and shortly afterwards he developed epilepsy.  Following a violent attempt to escape he was sent to Sunnyside on 26 May 1885, where he remained for some years.  At that time, Doyle was one of 500 patients at Sunnyside.

   His mental state on arrival was perilous, with Doyle telling staff that he was receiving messages from the unseen world.  He then accused staff of being devils and refused to speak to them.  But by the summer he was more calm, though he later had recurring delusions that he was going to die.  Doyle, the doctors noted, was always drawing and sketching while at Sunnyside, though his talents almost entirely drained away towards the latter part of his incarceration there.  A record art, completed between March and July 1889, while he was a patient at Montrose Royal Asylum, was eventually published in 1978 as The Doyle Diary.  Doyle’s work combines fantastical images of animals and imaginary creatures.  ‘The Spirits of the Prisoners,’ a picture now in Australia, shows those creatures swooping and circling around the asylum.  The image, whether intended as symbolic or real, brings to mind Arthur Conan Doyle’s later fascination with the spirit world, and perhaps unfairly those infamous Cottingley Fairies he believed in (which were actually a photographic hoax by two schoolgirls).

   Some of Charles Doyle’s work also reflects more placid times at Sunnyside.  Doyle was described by his famous son in his autobiography: 

full of the tragedy of unfulfilled powers and of underdeveloped gifts. He had his weaknesses, as all of us have ours, but he had also some very remarkable and outstanding virtues. A tall man, long-bearded, and elegant, he had a charm of manner and a courtesy of bearing which I have seldom seen equalled. His wit was quick and playful. He possessed, also, a remarkable delicacy of mind which would give him moral courage enough to rise and leave any company which talked in a manner which was coarse… He was unworldly and unpractical and his family suffered for it.

   In January 1891  he was transferred to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and died in the Crichton Royal Institution in Dumfries in 1893.  Doyle junior organised an exhibition of his father’s work in 1924.

Some Ghosts to Keep You Going

In between some weightier historical posts, please find below an assortment of ghostly doings to fill the gap.  Perhaps I should have hoarded these for Halloween of Christmas, but the segregation of the actively deceased to certain times of the year smacks of discrimination in this day and age.

Big Hoose Ghaists

Castles and mansions seems to favour larger properties, as if spirits develop an inexplicable sense of snobbery after death.  The House of Dun in the north-east of the county, was built in the Georgian era for the Erskine family who lived here into the 20^th century.  The house can be said, without exageration, to be fully infested with ghosts.  The House of Dun probably first came to national prominence after its inclusion in Catherine Crowe’s classic compendium The Night Side of Nature (1848):

Not very long since, a gentleman set out, one fine midsummer’s evening, when it is light all night in Scotland, to walk from Montrose to Brechin.  As he approached a place called Dunn, he observed a lady walking on before, which, from the lateness of the hour, somewhat surprised him. Sometime afterwards, he was found by the early labourers lying on the ground, near the churchyard, in a state of insensibility.  All that he could tell them was that he had followed this lady till she had turned her head and looked round at him, when seized with horror, he had fainted.  “Oh,” said they, “you have seen the lady of Dunn.”  What the legend attached to this lady of Dunn is, I do not know. [The Night Side of Nature, 226.]

  This ghost cannot be definitely identified, but in more recent times there have been sightings of an woman riding a horse through the grounds; unusually, she is facing backwards on her horse. Other ghosts on the estate include a headless horseman, plus – near a certain yew tree -  the spirit of a knight killed after he returned here from the east and found his lover had betrayed him. In recent years voices have been heard inside the house, plus the sound of a crying baby and an invisible harpist.  More bizarrely, a phone has been heard ringing in a part of the house where there was no actual physical telephone.  Diverse other phenomena include:  unseen dogs,  a dress floating around without a body inside, plus an array of spirits both male and female, some of whom resented modern, living intruders. 

   Letham Grange is a well known golf and leisure complex near Arbroath and although the main house was only built in 1830 the amalgamated estate represents old church lands associated with the Abbey of Arbroath. The house was requisitioned by the forces during World War Two. The ballroom was used as a dormitory by a party of WRENS and during their stay strange things happened. Several of them were woken at night by the presence of a shimmering grey figure of a man with thin cheeks and sunken eyes. He was wearing old fashioned clothes with a high collar and a wide brimmed hat. The bottom half of him was indistinct. When Letham’s owners were consulted they informed the WRENs that the spectre would not harm them, but they would be better off moving their sleeping quarters to another section of the house. Letham Grange also had a resident Green Lady whose name and origins are unknown. Other Green Ladies haunt Ethie Castle (see my previous post

http://angusfolklore.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/cardinal-beatons-ghost-and-other-castle.html) and the old house known as The Craig, near Montrose.

Haunted Kirks and Manses

Relatively few religious buildings in the county have the reputation of being haunted.  There are insubstantial stories about ghosts at Arbroath Abbey and one or two other places, such as ancient Restenneth Abbey.  But such traditions as exist speak more about strange atmosphere rather than reporting real stories which would give credence to hauntings. It might be expected that cemeteries and kirkyards would be hotspots for paranormal anomalies, but in fact there are few reports of incidents throught the county.  Kirriemuir ghost investigator Isaac Stewart states that Newmonthill Cemetery in Forfar is a conspicuously haunted place. One of the most haunted buildings associated with the kirk in Lunan Lodge, a former manse (built in 1789) which operated as a B&B until recently. With a canny eye on marketing, the owners claimed the building housed a nearly unsupportable 43 ghosts. One of the most active was a spuirit nicknamed ‘George’.  Another is a Victorian maid, and the most conspicuous was the so-called ‘Shouty Man’ who behaved as his name suggests and seemed to particularly object to females invading his space.  Yet another, but more passive presence was a six year old child named Amy who sadly died of diptheria.

Ootdoors Ghaists and Beasties

There is a theory among those who favour the idea that ghosts are primarily residual recordings of actual events that there are a prevalence of sightings in the vicinity of water, for some reason.  Forfar Loch, on the rare occasions when it freezes over, is said to be haunted by an unknown party of men, visible only from the waist up and apparently struggling to free themselves. This tradition is probably not linked to the equally shadowy tradition that the supposed assassins of King Malcolm II fled to the loch and perished here following his death in 1034, a tale which has all the hallmarks of late invention.

   Unusual apparitions which occur in open countryside can be harder to identify or even speculate about than those linked to a specific building. Identification is even harder if the form is vague or incomplete. Such is the case of a ghost which was seen annually in fields on a farm at Newtyle.  The figure seen was a decapitated woman who walked on the evening of 2nd June each year. No story says who she was, but she is seen no more as housing has now covered her place of haunting.

   There is a case to be made that sightings of figures seen from cars may be dubious, as the high speed of modern traffic means that things on the wayside are never seen in detail or for long. One figure was seen fleetingly on the A92 road, approaching Arbroath, when a driver and her son spotted a woman standing at the roadside. No ordinary woman either, for the area was absolutely unlit, yet the lady’s face was fleetingly illuminated as if by a lantern.

   Certain wild or sparsely inhabited areas often have an uncanny aura, but finding stories or even clues to justified reputed reasons for this is rare. The mountain Mayar, which towers 928 metres above Glen Clova, has – or once did have – an eerie reputation. There has never been a satisfactory explanation of this, to my knowledge.

In the same area, Jock’s Road is periodically haunted. A frustratingly anonymous (and anomalous) figure in winter clothes was seen here in 1993. Some strange creatures seen are even more difficult to explain. Around ten years ago two walkers in Glen Prosen heard a loud scream and turned around to encounter, on a wooded hill, a black cat. But the beast was at least four feet long and it vanished after a moment. Its presence was evidently sensed by dogs in the neighbourhood, for there was barking from several different areas of the glen. Was this an actual escaped large cat, a hallucination, or something else entirely? Further south, in countryside near Arbroath in 1989, a mother and daughter watched in disbelief as a large white cat crossed their line of sight and then vanished. Even more disturbing, possibly, are those sightings which bear little resemblance to actual physical creatures. Close to a disused quarry in Carmyllie in the early 1980s a woman walking her dog unexpectedly came across a huge, 7 foot high creature with broad shoulders but, alarmingly, no head. Her dog bolted at once. She screamed and followed it. As has been noted previously in this blog, Carmyllie was (for reasons unknown) quite a notable supernatural hotspot in this past. Odd beings, however, are known from elsewhere.

    Parks are places where there re few recorded ghosts, despite them being a feature of towns are cities for a considerable time. Perhaps the reason for this is that parks are places where people resort to for leisure, exercise and contemplation, and therefore unlikely one supposes to be scenes where strong emotion has imprinted itself upon the atmosphere. However, the green space near Mains Castle in the north of Dundee was invaded in 1960 by a vision of the past.  A couple witnessed a blatantly Victorian garbed gent and his lady pushing an old fashioned perambulator in the Den o Mains. 

   At this point I will sneak in of a story which did not happen in Angus, but it did happen to a Montrose man, albeit he was adrift from home somewhere in the Highlands.  The tale was related by the prolific ghost hunter and author Elliot O’Donnell in his Haunted Waters (1957) (pp.134-7).  

The Montrose man was fishing in a remote landscape and was trudging through a bleak ravine towards a small tarn where he wanted to fish. The enclosed ravine was unnaturally cold and still, with an odd oppressive atmosphere that made his accompanying dog nervous and stick close to him as they walked. Suddenly a wave of nauseous dread made him stop and he was too unaccountably terrified to proceed. He huddled against the sheer cliff wall on one side of the ravine. When he recovered somewhat he went back rather shamefully to his hotel where he learned that the tarn was reputedly haunted and several guests had returned in the same state that the Montrose man did. The conversation between landlord and guest was overheard by another man, a Londoner, who scoffed at the superstition. Soon the Scot found that he had accepted a wager to return to the haunted place in the dead of night. Next night, near midnight, he found himself in the pitch dark ravine, which now was alive with all sorts of nocturnal sounds which made him nervous. As soon as he reached the same spot as before, there was that familiar wave of awed dread. He had to struggle very slowly on until he reached the shore of the tarn. There, lying on the shore, was a white figure. He nearly ran, but instead he bent over and was astonished to see his cockney tormentor unconscious, wrapped in a sheet. When the man recovered after a minute of two he confessed that he had intended to scare the other, but he had seen something terrifying come out of the dark water and collapsed. The Montrose man had at first felt like beating up the Londoner, but he took pity on him when it was evident he was telling the truth. The Londoner would not reveal what he had witnessed, but he paid the guinea wager money next day.

Not Quite Spectres?

Those who will not countenance the reality of any psychic phenomena can cleanse their mental palates with this post script detailing ghosts which almost definitely have a mortal hand behind them. From The Scotsman’s Library by James Mitchell (1825) comes the following anecdote (p. 472):

A white ghost having appeared at Dundee several nights, and terrified many people, a gentleman fell on a mode of laying to rest this perturbed spirit. He sent round the town-drummer, with a notice that he should be out with a great dog to hunt the ghost, when he next appeared, and the consequence was, that this spirit was not seen after.

   A final story, drawn again from Crowe's Night Side of Nature, is set in Monifieth, and may have actually happened in the late 18th century, though it contains folklore elements and is similar to other 'true stories' collected elsewhere in Scotland:

The following very singular circumstance occurred in this country towards the latter end of the last century, and excited, at the time, considerable attention; the more so, as it was asserted by everybody acquainted with the people and the locality, that the removal of the body was impossible by any recognised means; besides, that no one would have had the hardihood to attempt such a feat. ‘Mr William Craighead, author of a popular system of arithmetic, was parish schoolmaster of Monifieth…It would appear that Mr Craighead was then a young man, fond of frolic, without being very scrupulous about the means, or calculating the consequences. There being a lykewake in the neighbourhood, according the custom of the times, attended by a number of his acquaintance, Craighead procured a confederate, with whom he concerted a plan to draw the watchers from the house, or at least from the room where the corpse lay. Having succeeded in this, he dexterously removed the dead body to an outer house, while his companion occupied the place of the corpse in the bed where it had lain. It was agreed upon between the confederates that when the company were reassembled, Craighead was to join them, and, at a concerted signal, the imposter was to rise, shrouded like a dead man, while the two were to enjoy the terror and alarm of their companions. Mr Craighead came in, and, after being some time seated, the signal was made, but met no attention; he was rather surprised; it was repeated, and still neglected. Mr Craighead, in his turn, now became alarmed; for he conceived it impossible that his companion could have fallen asleep in that situation his uneasiness became insupportable; he went to the bed, and found his friend lifeless! Mr Craighead’s feelings, as may well be imagined, now entirely overpowered him, and the dreadful fact was disclosed. Their agitation was extreme, and it was far from being alleviated when every attempt to restore animation to the thoughtless young man proved abortive. As soon as their confusion would permit, an enquiry was made after the original corpse, and Mr Craighead and another went to fetch it in, but it was not to be found. The alarm and consternation of the company were now redoubled; for some time a few suspected that some hardy fellow among them had been attempting a Rowland for an Oliver, but when every knowledge of it was most solemnly denied by all present, their situation can be more easily imagined than described; that of Mr Craighead was little short of distraction. Daylight came without relieving their agitation; no trace of the corpse could be discovered, and Mr Craighead was accused as the primum mobile of all that had happened. He was incapable of sleeping, and wandered several days and nights in search of the body, which was at least discovered in the parish of Tealing, deposited in a field, about six miles distant from the place whence it was removed. ‘ “It is related that this extraordinary affair had a strong and lasting effect upon Mr Craighead’s mind and conduct, that he immediately became serious and thoughtful, and ever after conducted himself with great prudence and sobriety.”’