Posted on 09/30/2007 12:46:27 PM PDT by BGHater
A WOMAN was locked up and “lost” for 70 years after being wrongly accused of stealing 13p.
Jean Gambell, 85, was “certified” indefinitely in 1937 over claims she had taken the cash while cleaning at a doctor’s surgery.
The money was found — but Jean still spent 70 years in a maze of care institutions.
She was “found” when brothers Alan, 66, and David, 63 — who thought she was dead — read a letter sent by a care home to their mother, who died 25 years ago.
David said: “I was about to throw it in the bin when I saw a name in the corner — Jean Gambell. I rang and they said our sister was there.”
The two brothers travelled from their homes in Liverpool to see Jean at the home in Macclesfield, Cheshire. Staff warned them she was deaf and may not remember them.
David said: “We were very nervous. We wrote on a piece of card ‘Hello Jean, we’re your brothers’. But she took one look at us and said, ‘Hello Alan, hello David’ — and flung her arms around us.”
He added: “Nowadays there are appeals — but back then a doctor could sign away a life with the stroke of a pen.
“They basically locked her up and threw away the key and she was stuck in the system.
“She just got moved from one institution to another.
“What a waste of a poor, innocent girl’s life.”
Jean had a stroke after meeting her brothers, believed to have been sparked by the shock of the reunion. She is said to be recovering.
No words.
Hillary is taking notes.
This is what you get when you put the government in charge of things.
An example of socialized medicine, at its extreme.
I’m not sure what any of that has to do with this. Unless of course you just wanted to bring it up for some odd reason. No matter what, there always seems to be someone who is eager to remind us all that we are not perfect either. OK, so noted. Now...can we just get on with the thread?
susie
"Three generations of imbeciles is enough." - Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in Buck v. Bell.
He was right. Nothing to be ashamed of.
Can someone explain to me how a person can recognize two men in their sixties, who were not even born when this woman was put away? Qhat part of reading comprehension am I not understanding?
Jean Gambell, 85, was “certified” indefinitely in 1937 over claims she had taken the cash while cleaning at a doctor’s surgery.
The money was found — but Jean still spent 70 years in a maze of care institutions.
Thirteen pence. Which she didn't even take. And if she had taken it, a verbal reprimand would've been an appropriate level of punishment -- not to be "certified" indefinitely when there was never anything wrong with her.
If ever a case merited a comment of "un-f******-believable," this would be it.
Obviously, while she had probably never met them before, somebody had told her she had two younger brothers, and what their names were. And she remembered that fact and those names.
‘This is what you get when you put the government in charge of things.’
No, that’s what you get when you combine govt with a family who don’t even enquire about, let alone visit their sister for 70 years!
Of course the report is in The Sun, a tabloid that never lets the facts get in the way of a story.
What I take from this is, if you get stuck in “the system,” you have given away any hope of living your life without intrusion and interference by complete strangers who care little about you. This woman’s case is like living in continual subservience to the welfare state all your life, only on a much grander scale.
L
“The System” are the very words that government employees use, especially prosecutors. I find it very disturbing. I feel sorry for this woman, what a shame.
“and the 40 year syphilis test on unknowing blacks (the “Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment”).”
Actually the blacks knew what was going on.
I do not claim to be a historian of Britain, but I don’t believe that Britain had socialized medicine in 1937.
I also believe that the same sort of treatment was possible in the US at the time.
‘I do not claim to be a historian of Britain, but I don’t believe that Britain had socialized medicine in 1937.
I also believe that the same sort of treatment was possible in the US at the time.’
Right on both counts, but it’s a good, emotive story to have moan about either way! :)
Oooo...snap!
It isn’t an indictment of the UK’s implemenation of government health care. It is an indictment of ALL governments’ health care systemic abuses.
Forced sterilization went through our courts and was part of the eugenics movement.
Putting them in charge of all of society’s medical care/payments/options only opens the door for it to happen again.
The murder campaign in Nazi Germany began with those in hospitals. There were people asking “how can the State have such nice places for idiots and terminal people when others are starving?”.
The State does not always look out for our best interest. They look out for the bottom line and easiest solution sometimes.
You are not supposed to notice such things.
Precisely. Such things CAN happen here. And with John Edwards pushing for mandatory government health care, including mandatory mental health screening, they will.
This woman had to have numerous doctors assigned to her case over 70 years of commitment.
It is totally incomprehensible that in those 70 years that none of them ever suspected that she was not mentally incompetent.
It is my suspicion that there was probably financial incentive for that hospital and the doctors to keep committed patients in the hospital.
I agree that the doctors cared less about this unfortunate woman than they did about their own financial gain.
Sorry I am an incurable busybody;)
Yes, but this was how many years ago? However, they're still finding them over the pond in their socialized abyss.
That is the most dangerous proposition by a candidate that I have ever heard.
Anyone that has ever taken the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) test will quickly agree with me.
Interpretation of test results is everything in psychology. Anyone who says that psychology is a true science is a fool.
Take any of these test on a bad day and you are a goner.
Government anything, anywhere, is guaranteed to create stories like this.
Yeah there is more to this story.
Yes, and Papa Joe had her “lobotomized”...
...ergo, Teddy’s favorite expression:
“I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.”
two people took me to task for my comments. I obviously was wrong just said the first thing that came to mind.
I was always told “Think before you speak” lol, guess I better go back to that lesson.
Thanks.
How do you get classified as crazy for stealing?
70 years for minor theft?
Maybe we should certify our own felons, and thus keep them locked up for life.
Yes, and when combined with laws like the proposed Veterans Disarmament Act (HR 2640), we will see the systematic and automatic denial of some civil rights, starting with the right to keep and bear arms based on such screening. This is made possible by mandated electronic medical records (EMR) which is a vital component to the destruction of privacy and civil rights.
Based on how law enforcement and the legal system treat other mass database records about individual activities, everyone’s EMR will not be anymore private than are electronic toll booth (easyPass) or cell phone location records. All it will take is someone to flash a badge and fax a demand to produce your records. Of course “strong laws” will protect all of us from abuse, like they protected all the people whose FBI files were found in the White House the last time Hillary lived there.
see: Short-Form Analysis of HR2640—
http://www.gunowners.org/ne0701.htm
You can get certified as “crazy” for a theft of 13 pence if the system for certifying people as “crazy” is run by evil, tinpot petty dictators who enjoy having the power to destroy somebody else’s life, and if said system does not include protections for those whose lives might be thus destroyed by these kinds of people.
That’s it.
Well she wasn’t “transported”. Not that it made a difference.
Thursday, October 18, 2007 Prisoner Jean Gambell dies- A life wasted. It is less than a month since I posted on the illegal imprisonment of Jean Gambell in one of the States institutions for seventy years.
This morning the Telegraph has reported Page 12 1 paragraph in brief, that she has died of a stroke. I just feel ashamed, no doubt all claims against the State must now be null and void, the Lord Protector and his caring cohorts must be overjoyed.
Posted by Guthrum at 9:24 AM
http://lookingforavoice.blogspot.com/2007/10/prisoner-jean-gambell-dies-life-wasted.html
Jeeze. Thanks.
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