|
Patients: Terry Burns 'David would confirm in 1972 that All The Madmen was "written for my brother and is about my brother."' Nicholas Pegg, The Complete David Bowie 'On 16 January 1985, Bowie's 47-year-old half-brother Terry walked out of Cane Hill Hospital in South London and took his life on the railway track at Coulsdon South station ... Bowie explained to NME's Steve Sutherland that Jump They Say was "semi-based on my impression of my step-brother [sic] and, probably for the first time, trying to write about how I felt about him committing suicide ..."'Nicholas Pegg, The Complete David Bowie 'Bowie agreed to see his half-brother after he had attempted suicide by throwing himself out of an asylum [Cane Hill] window. He brought him clothes, books and a collection of his own albums, and led Terry to expect further visits in future. Over the next three years, Bowie's office dashed such hopes with a series of noncommittal letters. The two never met again.'Christopher Sandford, Bowie: Loving The Alien 'In June 1982 Bowie's half-brother Terry Burns threw himself out of a window at Cane Hill in an apparent suicide bid. He fractured his arm and leg and was taken to Mayday Hospital in Croydon. Later that month, a nurse (whom, Terry noticed, had hurriedly put on make-up) informed him that 'Mr Bowie' was in the visitors' room. The two men spoke alone for an hour. Over the course of the next year, at Mayday and Cane Hill, Terry gave the nurses to believe that Bowie would be back to rescue him. When she realised that that promise was not going to be kept, Peggy's [David's mother's] sister Pat called in the press. In her version, Bowie was afraid of losing his sanity and 'terrified' to visit Terry. This brought an angry response from Peggy, though no comment from her son. As the true emotional bonds between Bowie and his half-brother had been broken so many years before and never repaired, he may not have experienced any great shock at Terry's desparate plight ... It was another ten years before Bowie wrote about his brother in a song.'Christopher Sandford, Bowie: Loving The Alien 'On the morning of the 16th [January, 1985] Peggy Jones rang from her flat in Beckenham. There had been an accident. Bowie's half-brother, Terry Burns, had been struck by a train and killed ...Over the Christmas holiday ... Terry had scaled a wall at Cane Hill and walked to the nearby Coulsdon South station. He lay down with his neck on the rail. As the London express bore down, shedding sparks over the icy track, Terry jerked his head away at the last second and rolled onto the frozen embankment. Then he began scooping up handfuls of sleeping pills and crushing them between his teeth. He was jumped by two railway workers, who up-ended him on the ground and held his feet high while a third man gripped his throat. Terry had already lost consciousness ... At some time during the undignified struggle over the next fifteen minutes, Terry regained his senses, demanding to be driven to Peggy's home, where 'David would be waiting' for him ... The next morning, Terry was taken back to Cane Hill and left to his own desires. History repeated itself three weeks later. By then southern England was swept by unremitting gale-force wind, lashed by alternating rain and snow, and, for all practical purposes, at a virtual standstill. Several of the staff at Cane Hill were stranded at home. Terry left the hospital grounds unchallenged, passed over the empty road and through the station booking hall. The trains that morning were running late. The few other passengers ignored the heavy-set man who walked casually to the end of the platform ... Terry waited until the express appeared from the south. Then he lay down with his head on the track, looking away. The driver tried to brake but it was too late. All ten carriages struck the body, the cry giving way to the more urgent tempo of a woman's scream. Terry Burns was forty-seven. There were eleven mourners at the funeral at Elmers End cemetary in Beckenham.' Christopher Sandford, Bowie: Loving The Alien Patients: Michael Caine's Half Brother Michael Parkinson asks the actor about the recent revelation that he had a half brother which his mother had kept secret from the family for over 50 years. Michael Caine explains: "[My mother] had an illegitimate child before she married my father. What happened was a newspaper was doing an article on mental health establishments in England. Unbeknown to me, my half brother [who was an inmate there] had a girlfriend who was a bit brighter than him - you couldn't understand what he said but you could understand what she said." He continues: "The newspaper man got together a group of the more lucid, brighter ones - amongst which was my brother's girlfriend. Unbeknown to me, my mother had visited [my brother] every Monday - with the exception of the war - for 50 years…" Caine continues: "My mother was dead by the time I found this out, she was gone for two or three years. I asked the matron at the hospital, 'how did this all keep quiet?' The matron said 'your mother used to bring a Bible and every new nurse had to swear on the Bible that this [boy] was not [your] brother.' She'd given him a picture of me from [the film] Zulu so he knew who I was when [he saw me] on the television. [My brother's] girlfriend told the reporter that he was [my] brother." Caine tells Parkinson how keen he was to meet his brother after all these years. "I wanted to go and see him immediately. I went to see him. Do you know, the odd thing was that the name of the asylum was Cane Hill, on the other side of Streatham, but he'd been moved to another place by the time I found him." He continues: "He died about 18 months after I got to know him. I went and saw him and had long conversations with him through the nurse because I couldn't understand what he was saying. He suffered from epilepsy when he was young and in those days they used to lock him in the cellar, with a stone floor. And of course he's bouncing about on that, and he was probably quite intelligent, but he'd bashed himself into a bloody brain abnormality. My mother gave him to the Salvation Army to look after him... There was this incredible story." Parkinson then asks Caine if his mother had told his dad? Caine replies: "Oh no, he'’d have killed her [laughs]!" Caine continues to say: "I felt absolute amazement, how she'd fooled us all for years, every Monday. She used to come to the country every Sunday and my driver would drive her home the next day in the Rolls Royce. One day the driver said, 'she always gets out at the bus stop on Streatham High Road' and the penny never dropped, but she was catching the bus to the asylum round the corner.[1] "She'd buy and pick up chocolates, candy, cake and ice cream but when I'd go and see her, there was never anything in the fridge and I used to think, 'where's she putting all this stuff?' She was giving it to him. It's amazing." He concludes: "Some of the most successful people I know are bastards! [Laughs - with audience] Hard to get a laugh out of that story isn’t it?!"
Michael Caine, Parkinson: 30th November 2002 ([1]: Cane Hill is about 10-15 miles south of Streatham, so it wasn't literally around the corner.)
Patients: Hannah Chaplin Hannah Chaplin gave her address as either the Lambeth Workhouse or Cane Hill asylum in the 1910s. She used to work as a vaudeville artist but her voice gave out. She also suffered from an undiagnosed mental illness. "It was a depressing day, for she was not well. She had just got over an obstreperous phase of singing hymns, and had been confined to a padded room. The nurse had warned us of this beforehand. Sydney saw her, but I had not the courage, so I waited. He came back upset, and said that she had been given shock treatment of icy cold showers and that her face was quite blue. That made us decide to put her into a private institution - we could afford it now."
Charlie Chaplin, writing about a visit to Cane Hill in 1912. "...The same day Sydney (Charlies' Brother) went shopping and outfitted me with new clothes, and that night, all dressed up, we sat in the stalls of the South London Music Hall. During the performance Sydney kept repeating: "Just think what tonight would have meant to Mother." That week we went to Cane Hill to see her. As we sat in the visiting room, the ordeal of waiting became almost unbearable. I remember the keys turning and Mother walking in. She looked pale and her lips were blue, and, although she recognised us, it was without enthusiasm; her old ebullience had gone. She was accompanied by a nurse, an innocuous, glib woman, who stood and wanted to talk. "It's a pity you came at such a time," she said, " for we're not quite ourselves today, are we, dear?" Mother politely glanced at her and half smiled as though waiting for her to leave. " You must come again when we're a little more up to the mark," added the nurse. Eventually she went, and we were left alone. Although Sydney tried to cheer Mother up, telling her of his good fortune and the money he had made and his reason for having been away so long, she sat listening and nodding, looking vague and preoccupied. I told her that she would soon get well. "Of course," she said dolefully, " if only you had given me a cup of tea that afternoon, I would have been alright." The doctor told Sydney afterwards that her mind was undoubtedly impaired by malnutrition, and that she required proper medical treatment, and although she had lucid moments, it would be months before she completely recovered. But for days I was haunted by har remark: "If only you had given me a cup of tea, I would have been alright."" Return to: The Cane Hill Project |