Secrets from the asylum. [1/2].

The first of a two-part documentary looking at the history of the mental asylum. Three well-known actors learn the fate of a relative who experienced incarceration due to 'mental illness'. In Victorian times, people were sent to asylums suffering from conditions that today would be treated very differently - dementia and epilepsy for instance. These were all conditions that couldn't be treated elsewhere at the time. Ray Winstone visits Colney Hatch where his great-great grandmother's first husband was an inmate who died there suffering from general paralysis caused by syphilis. He pays particular attention to finding out what happened to Hannah, his great-great grandmother who herself had been diagnosed with syphilis. Claire Sweeney visits Ballamona Asylum where her great-great step-grandfather was sent aged 71. It appears that he would had been suffering from senile dementia and didn't survive long in the institution. Al Murray looks back at the treatment of Isabella, wife of his great-great grandfather, William Thackeray, who suffered from post-natal depression at age 23 and was sent to Maison de Sante to be cured. He was paying for her treatment and eventually removed her from the asylum and paid for her to live with a family nearby. She outlived him by thirty years.