‘No Cure, No Fee, Boarding Excepted’: ‘Mason’s Madhouses’ in Old Fishponds

Journalist, Fishponds Voice History columnist and Bristol Radical History Group author Mike Jempson will reveal some of the fascinating facts his research uncovered about the private madhouse which dominated Fishponds in the eighteenth century. His talk includes some of the institution’s more startling treatments, the sensational public inquiry and the shameful end of the Mason dynasty – the family firm that ran this biggest private asylum outside of London for 120 years. Drawing on museum archives and patient testimonies, this fascinating and meticulously researched book, No Cure, No Fee, Boarding Excepted: Mason’s Madhouses In Old Fishponds is full of little known Fishponds facts – including the surprising origin of the term ‘Spin doctors’.