Gluck Diana Souhami (smart books to read TXT) 📖

I should be punished like this?’ ‘I have been shut away here to be got out of the way.’ ‘They have been given power over me and can do as they like with me.’

She was resigned about it, quite aware of her situation, of the nature of the place and the fact that she was helpless. It was horrible and to comfort her I said ‘I will get you out of here.’ ‘Oh no,’ she said ‘You can’t do anything.’ But I assured her I could and would. Not once in the whole time I was with her did she wander or talk inconsequentially. Her pillow was very small with the ticking showing through the thin cover. Her bolster was so small and useless that when she sat up all she had to lean against was the hard wooden bed back. Her mattress was a disgrace and hard and sagging in the middle. Her bed linen was filthy, soiled, as was her nightdress. I had lunch with her. The lunch consisted of large unappetising slabs of cold, tinned meat, greens and potatoes. I could hardly touch mine, but M. ate every scrap of hers and some of mine.

I had made an examination of her room before lunch. The cupboard was locked so I asked for the key. Inside I found her handbag. As I did not find her wedding ring in this, I asked Sister Jane for it. She said it was locked away in a cupboard in the hall. In the handbag I found M’s magistrate’s book, a terribly worn little purse with nothing in it, and a scrap of linen. No pen or pencil which she always had. On the linen I found some writing, done obviously in great distress. It must have been written before they took her pen away. ‘All things closing. Taken away. Watch. Very badly treated, no breakfast or tea or anything … water or drink.’ … It was like finding a message in a bottle in the sea. Dreadful.

… I then asked her if she wanted me to share the responsibility for her affairs. At first she thought I meant that I wanted to share her possessions with L. and said ‘of course I want you to share equally’. I told her that was not what I meant, I had no interest in that, but did she want us to handle things for her together. She said ‘Yes’. So I told her if she would write this it would help. She agreed and wrote the following and signed and dated it. ‘May 3rd 1950. I want my daughter to share equally with my son any responsibility concerning my affairs. Francesca Gluckstein MBEJP. ‘Having written this M. then said ‘I want to keep a copy of this, I won’t give it to you till you give me one.’ I therefore wrote a copy and when she had satisfied herself by making me read her statement while she checked it with my copy, she gave me the original. I then put the copy in her bag with a footnote to say I had the original.5

Gluck mounted this message behind a piece of perspex and kept it among her papers. She then started a ‘campaign’ to improve her mother’s circumstances and establish the facts of her own rights in the matter. She wrote down everything she saw, felt and heard about it all and got Edith, as witness, to sign and date these notes. Equal to her distress at her mother’s condition, was her anger with her brother. She wrote to Dr Solomons querying the committal orders. He urged her to come and talk to him. She refused, so he wrote to her with the details (12 April 1950): her mother had been seen twice by two senior physicians; she was suffering from senile mania; her physical condition was poor; she needed treatment; she had been certified ‘in accordance with the normal legal requirements … I would only add that I myself feel perfectly sure that the right steps have been taken.’

He again urged her to come and see him, which she again refused to do. Instead she fired questions at a solicitor, a Mr Woodroffe: was it legal for her brother to commit her mother to mental hospital without consulting her? ‘I am the elder of Mother’s two children.’ Could not her brother and the doctors be compelled to give her full information? What were her powers to appeal against the certification? What were her visiting rights? Mr Woodroffe gave her no comfort. No information was being withheld from her. The doctors wanted to see her. Everything had been done according to procedure and ‘in a normal manner (apart of course from the fact that your brother has been so secretive about it)’. If Gluck felt her mother had been wrongly certified she was entitled to notify the Lord Chancellor’s Visitor, who would then give another opinion.6

While seeking to get ammunition against Louis Gluck was, at the same time, trying with both anger and desperation to make peace with him:

Luigi dear things cannot go on like this. You and I must be able to meet and discuss Mother’s future together. Whatever grievances you may feel, real or imagined, must be forgotten now. We must really act together and make her last years decent and happy. At the moment the state of affairs is not only indecent but tragic. The only reason I am writing instead of rushing to see you is that the present situation is too serious for a meeting between us to be anything but pacific and loving and I don’t want to meet you till I know that our meeting can be so. I will try and tell you as briefly as possible what I found as I hope you will want to meet me in the way I suggest and then I can tell you everything:

She then described in voluminous detail how sordid her mother’s quarters seemed to her – the