Single mum who fled asylum is reunited with family after 60 years

[oldironside]

"The 17-year-old had been sent by her mum and step-dad to the asylum for the “immoral” crime of having a child out of wedlock and bringing shame on the family.

Driven by a sense of injustice and a fear she would spend the rest of her days locked up alongside dangerous lunatics, she searched for a way out of the place she had been dragged to by “men in white coats”.

Her opportunity to flee the living hell came when she spotted the gates had been left open for a food delivery, and she took it without a moment’s hesitation."

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/03/10/single-mum-who-fled-asylum-is-reunited-with-family-after-60-years-115875-22978519/

I make no apologies for posting a human interest story from the Daily Mirror, simply because it shows just how far we have come in 60 years. Alan Turing and this lady are two sides of the same coin. Beware of Conservatism!!!

[LeftishBrit]

1. +1. Strongly agree with your last paragraph!

I am glad that she did escape, but many did not. It does indeed show what the Good Old Days were like for too many.

[oldironside]

2. If we had let conservatives have their way through history...

...we wouldn't even have made it to the bronze age.

[LeftishBrit]

3. As the conservatives said to the inventor of the wheel...

'What's the use of that newfangled round thing? My grandfather never used any wheels; my father never used any wheels; and what was good enough for them is good enough for me! I carried everything on my shoulders for miles, and it never did me any harm; made me the man I am today! This sinful immoral new round thing will just make the youth of today even lazier than they are already!'

[oldironside]

4. And don't even get them started on...

... fire.

"That's the devil's way of luring you to hell! Freeze with the rest of us or you won't get to heaven!"

[Hopeless Romantic]

5. I'm not sure that you can hang that on the Tories

This poor girl was "put away" in around 1950/51, towards the end of the Atlee government, a time of great social change.

Also, aren't there some parallels with the incidences of honour killings, forced marriages & female genital mutilation which sadly still happen in some sections of modern society?

I would say that the root cause of such things is more likely to be patriarchy, rather than conservatism (although some might argue that the two go hand in hand)

[LeftishBrit]

6. I think the point was more that the Tories nowadays would wish to go back to that time.

Many Tories (and some right-wing Labourites like Blunkett) sneer at the social reforms and 'immorality' of the 60s and 70s, and want to go back to Good Old-Fashioned Family Values, forgetting or ignoring what this meant for many people.

[Hopeless Romantic]

7. Hmmm... dunno about that. Most of the Tories I've encountered have been

randier than a three-balled tom cat.

[oldironside]

8. Yes, but...

... their attitude is always "Do as I say, not as I do".

Remember John Major and that Back To Basics bollocks while he was shagging Edwina Curry? And in my original post I used conservative with a small 'c'. I don't mean Tories per se, but anyone who hankers for the good old days of proper morality.

[Hopeless Romantic]

9. Indeed. Although that is something found in politicians of all flavours imo