"Suburban Nightmare"

Various draft sections and complete manuscripts for Beales' essay Suburban Nightmare along with related correspondence. The essay gives a brief history of the treatment of mentally ill people from the Middle Ages to the 20th century and then talks about art created by people with mental health problems. This is followed by a history of the West End of London and drug use from the mid 18th to the 20th century, then a biography of Terry Burns, his family and half brother David Bowie. This is interspersed with a memoir of Beales' own life growing up in 1970s London including details about drug taking, living in squats and being admitted to various psychiatric hospitals. The essay also gives details about the 1970s music scene. Much of this content was later reproduced in The Road to the Asylum. Draft covers for the essay are in PP/DBL/C/2.

A few files have retained accurate timestamps, dating the files from 2013 and 2014, but many have been corrupted, thus the date provided has been estimated by the cataloguer.

c.2010-c.2014

123 document files, 1 audio file 67.9 MB (71218694 bytes) Original media: Windows formatted flash drive

Wellcome holds a copy of The Road to the Asylum

Digital material has been transferred from the original physical media to secure storage. The physical media has not been retained.

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