The Asylum Soul

Lunatic asylums were an inescapable hangover of Victorian Britain and they harnessed a certain stigma borne from an environment of fear and shame as well as the great unknown. For many families the asylum system helped create their darkest ‘skeletons’, and for Thomas (Tommy) Compton, it was unforgiving. In 1929 he was 23 years old when his mother had him sent to the Brookwood Lunatic Asylum in Surrey, his only ailment - a simple speech defect. Based on Tommy’s own diary notes, The Asylum Soul is a disturbing account of an innocent young life ripped apart by unthinkable institutional failings, false hope and ultimate family betrayal.