tony redhead

Z Ward - Landing on the Steel Staircase

The steel staircase provides access between the ground floor and level 1

Only a minority of patients who were accommodated in Z Ward were Governor's pleasure patients: those acquitted of their crime on the grounds of their insanity.  The majority were people charged and convicted of a minor offence, but exhibiting sufficient signs of psychiatric instability that it was thought more beneficial for them to be placed in an asylum rather than in a goal to serve their sentence. 

Another small group of patients were those who were considered to be dangerous to themselves or to others and were placed in the ward for the protection of the Asylum's other inmates.