Woman's Hour - Women designing for women, The Sleep Room, Singer-songwriter Emilíana Torrini

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

A wave of female designers have been appointed to some of the leading high street brands - most recently Jacqui Markham at Whistles, Maddy Evans at M&S earlier this year, and Clare Waight Keller, the former Givenchy designer who joined Uniqlo last year. So how much of a difference does it make for consumers that women are at the helm? Nuala McGovern speaks to Jacqui Markham, who has only just become the creative director at Whistles and Catherine Shuttleworth, retail commentator, CEO and founder of Savvy Marketing.Imagine a medical facility where almost exclusively female patients are kept in a drug-induced slumber for months at a time, woken only to be fed and bathed and given electro-convulsive therapy to erase their memories- sometimes even their identities- all without their consent.  It sounds like the stuff of dystopian sci-fi, but in fact it was a real psychiatric ward in a 1960s NHS hospital, as uncovered in a new book, The Sleep Room: A Very British Medical Scandal. Nuala speaks to the author, Jon Stock, about his investigation and hears from a former patient, Mary Thornton, about her experiences and a consultant psychiatrist, Professor Linda Gask from Manchester University. Daisy Crawford says she was left feeling embarrassed and tearful by the treatment of Easyjet staff who threatened to charge her for an extra bag when she tried to board a flight with a bag containing her breast milk, a breast pump and cool packs as well as her hand luggage. Daisy joins Nuala to explain why she thinks her treatment was discriminatory against breastfeeding mums. Have you ever written or received any love letters? A new performance film, The Extraordinary Miss Flower, was inspired by just that – in fact a suitcase full of them - sent to just one woman. Icelandic-Italian singer/songwriter Emilíana Torrini felt so inspired by the letters that were sent to Miss Geraldine Flower, her friend Zoe’s mum, that it led her to get back into the studio to create her first solo record in 10 years as well as an accompanying film. She joins Nuala live in in the studio to talk about both – and to perform live.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Kirsty Starkey

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Hello, I'm Nuala McGovern and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Just to say that for rights reasons, the music in the original radio broadcast has been removed for this podcast. Hello and welcome to the programme. Well, first up, women are designing for women on the UK high street. Soap proclaims a headline in The Guardian today, as a new wave of female designers take to the helm of much loved brands.

We're gonna talk about the business of fashion with Catherine Shuttleworth and the new creative director at Whistles, that's Jackie Markham. And we're also going to offer some unsolicited advice to those designing for women. What do you think designers need to know when it comes to designing for you?

Okay, here's a few of mine. Pockets, yes, but I need them to be deep so stuff doesn't fall out. And I still haven't found an inside pocket in a woman's jacket, that I need. This weekend, I wanted a little loop on my T-shirt so I could hang my glasses. Is that too much to ask?

These are the things I think about when it comes to clothes. What about you? You can text the program the number is 84844 on social media or at BBC Woman's Hour or you can email us through our website or you can send a WhatsApp message or a voice note using the number 03700100444. Also in studio with us, the author John Stock. His new book is The Sleep Room, a very British medical scandal. It reveals the grim practices of William Sargent, often on young women who were subjected to months long Narcosis, drug induced sleep, electric and bolts of therapy and if need be lobotomies. John will be joined by one of Sargent's survivors. So that conversation also coming up.

We'll hear from the mother who says she was threatened with having to pay for an extra bag to carry breast milk and the breast pump on an easy jet flight. That's Daisy Crawford. And also today, a performance from the Icelandic Italian singer songwriter that is Emiliana Torini. She has created a most unusual, a mesmerizing and quite cheeky film, The Extraordinary Miss Flower, about a suitcase of love letters that were recently discovered. So that is all coming up.

But let us start with women designing for women. I spoke about the female designers that have been appointed to some of the leading high street brands. So we've got Jackie Markham at Whistles coming up. Maddie Evans at M&S was appointed earlier this year. Claire Waite Keller, the former Govanci designer, has joined Uniqlo. So how much of a difference does that make for consumers that women are there in those top spots? Jackie Markham, her new role is the Creative Director at the high end High Street Brand Whistles. But I was joined also by Catherine Sudworth. Now she's retail commentator, she's CEO

and founder of Savvy Marketing. And Catherine began by telling me about some of these women in these top spots. Well we've seen some fantastic women who are becoming design directors of some of the high street brands that we know and love. Across Marks and Spencer's we've got designers and fashion directors who are designing lingerie clothes for women and we're seeing women you know come to the top of whistles today. We've got Claire Wright-Keller who is now running the designer area of Uniqlo, she famously designed Meghan Marple's dress for her wedding when she was actually one. So we're seeing some of the top women in UK fashion who are now designing for all of us. And that's interesting and we'll talk about

that designer versus High Street in a moment but what do you think some of these women on the High Street are doing differently? Well, I think that's fantastic, Mila, is that these women have come through businesses, they've gone off, done design degrees and courses, and they've come up and they've learnt their craft through Rita's and they really understand how women think about fashion and about how women live their lives. So all of us have complicated lives, we don't have a work life, a home life, a social life. And what these women do is they reflect the way

that they live their lives in creating clothes that we want to wear at those different occasions. And I think we get much more into our psyche about how we feel about ourselves at different ages too, you know, not just in our teens, but right through to our 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. So do you feel that's working that concept that you're talking about there that kind of wearable or different demographics? Yeah, I think so. I think the big difference is now is that, you know, when I was younger, like you,

clothes for women who are 40 was sort of, you know, your mum wore and they looked like old ladies clothes, didn't they? You know, they were very, very old fashioned. Whereas now you look at the clothes that are available, my daughters and I might wear the same things. You know, I'm in the 50s, they're in the late teens, and we might share things, we might go to the same stores. And I think there has been a real sort of democratisation of fashion, the way that we wear clothes, and women understanding how they want to feel is a massive part of that. And instead of that being just for the few, now it's for everybody.

I think the difference of having so many great women in fashion retail in the UK is it proves it a really thriving and exciting industry. But you know the high street, a lot of people, there's been a lot of hand ringing about it over the years. How difficult, if you could put it in context for us, Catherine, how difficult is it to succeed on the high street? We do know that online global competition for that same consumer is fierce. Oh, it's unbelievably difficult. I mean, how do you come up with a outfit, a dress that has the right fit, the right color, is on trend and then sells to hundreds of thousands of women in the UK?

It's a really difficult thing to do and to do that at a price point that we can afford. And you know, what's happened a lot in UK fashion on the high street is it's sort of split up a bit. So we've got at the bottom end, we've got fast fashion, quite cheap fashion, the sort of thing you might buy at the supermarket or online. You've then got mid-market, the sort of Next, Mountain Spencers, John Lewis's.

And then I'd say you've got higher-market, not mid-market, so maybe Mint Velvet and Hobbs and those sort of places before you get to designer. So it's very difficult as a retailer and a designer for a retailer to get that right. But when you meet these women, my goodness me, they absolutely know their customer. They know who she is, where she lives, what she does, what she eats, and they buy for her. And when you get that right, it's really successful. And then you see retailers going wrong in fashion, it's usually because they don't understand that woman. I find that so interesting that it's like the full picture of the woman,

what time she gets up at her, what she eats or what she does, instead of thinking like the big event that she might be going to. Yes, and I think it's really important to understand that one. So we feel it's about big events, it's really important to understand that one. So we feel it's about big events, it's about what she wants to do. So, you know, you might want to go to the races with your friend and you might want a fantastic outfit

or you might want to go to a wedding, but most of us want some value out of that outfit. Gone are the days where we'd take one outfit and that would be it, we'd never wear it again. So I think, you know, that kind of construction of collections, how do things work together is really important and a lot of these women that work in the retailers are a kind of reflection of us too, they're working women who've got challenges, who you know got

different things they need to wear and I think they bring something different to it. What's the difference between High Street and Designer now, do you think? Because some of those upper levels of High Street, the prices can be eye-watering. How do you see it? Well, I think you're right. I mean, you look at the top end of the High Street, it can be really expensive, can't it? I was I'm going to the races soon. I'm looking for an outfit to buy. I want to have a look at a dress.

And some of the ones in what I would have called a mid-market chains are now £350-400. I think that's a lot of money for a dress. Other people listening might not agree, but blimey, I think that's a lot. I don't know about you, Mila, but it's a lot of money, isn't it? So I think, you know, one of the things is how much are we prepared to pay for the fashion that we want. But a lot of the high street retailers now are giving us accessibility into higher end designers. Do you think it's possible to make the high street profitable? I think it's hard work. But I think a lot of these fashion brands now are doing pretty well because they've got that mixture of online and in store. But we do know that there is

a big return to stores, particularly for things like fashion, where sometimes you look at things online, you buy them, but then when you go into a store, you get more excited and you buy more pieces and you look for things that perhaps you wouldn't have tried otherwise. Honestly, it's difficult on the high street, but it's certainly not impossible if you get your upper light. That's Catherine Shuttleworth, retail commentator, CEO and founder of Savvy Marketing. Thanks very much to her. I want to bring you now, Jackie Markham, the newly appointed creative director of the high street brand Whistles.

I started by asking Jackie what her new role will entail. So my remit, which I'm really excited about, is to, to reignite the spark that whistles is always held in my heart. I've kind of grown up, I remember being at college in the 90s and I used to come to London to go to the whistle store in St Christopher's Place. So it was a real kind of destination store of its time. So I'd love to go some way to servicing what women want today. We're having this conversation about women designing for women on the high street. We were hearing a little bit from Catherine there that the philosophy has changed. That is the whole woman, so to speak. And I'd be curious about how you're approaching it.

Yeah, I mean, throughout my career, I've never, I've never wanted to create this mythical person that I'm designing for or creating, you know, a visual proposition for. They're real, they're real women and they're all of us that we, you know, I've always been surrounded by amazing women. The teams I'm in are generally female dominated. So we are designing for ourselves at all different life stages, with all different pressures. Yeah, I've never wanted to pigeonhole her. I've never wanted to put her in a box.

I've never wanna put an age to her. It's just women that are really into style and want those kinds of style solutions in their wardrobe to enhance their lives and keep it as simple as that. It's so interesting, the age thing, because Catherine spoke about that, that she might wear the same clothes as some of her teenage daughters. But I would have thought going in as creative director instead, there would be demographics of age for that woman. There is definitely a sweet spot but you know I would say it's probably the mid

30s is the sweet spot but I do I really do believe that if you're creating stylish clothes in beautiful fabrics with really flattering fits they will appeal to everybody you know whether you're in your 30s, your 40s, your 50s, your 60s. That's my mission, is to create really contemporary stylish clothes that enhance women and their figures and be really inclusive like that and not try and stick too rigidly to an age demographic. Do you think there's a difference between women designing and men designing for women? Well, I suppose I can only speak from lived experience.

So, I mean, I would say a visionary creative is visionary, whatever their gender. But I do, when I was thinking about this question, I was thinking, oh, it doesn't really matter. But then when I hear stats like, I think it's 12% of women are at that creative director level in fashion, I find that quite upsetting, you know? You know, 12% just doesn't seem enough, really. And I do think of those kind of visionary designers that I look to and that I'm inspired by.

And they all do tend to be women. Also, you bring up designers there. I'd be curious for your thoughts, which I touched on with Catherine, between designer and High Street. I mean, Whistles is at the high end of the high street, as we were talking there when it comes to a price point. But I'm wondering, for you, you're working in Whistles. I know you have worked at Topshop and ASOS, I believe, previously. Is there a snobbishness between whether as a designer or as a creative director, whether you work for a designer label or whether you work for the high street? I think throughout my career, I mean, so much of my career was spent at Topshop when it was on that upwards trajectory.

And as a designer there, I was always taught that we had to operate like a designer's design team. So we looked at the same references, you know, we were inspired by the same things that are the culture, the exhibitions. We don't have to be in this high street box, we need to kind of disrupt the market. And that was such a huge part of Topshop success right at the beginning. So I have always, I've always approached it in the same way that my friends who work for high-end labels, that's how they approach it. And I've got that same kind of outlook in how we visualize and how we bring things to life creatively.

I have to ask you about Topshop. I saw they're going to have a pop-up. They're on the way back. What do you think? Well, I'm... It was such a big part of my life that I kind of do sometimes feel like it was a moment in time when all the stars aligned and whether you can recreate that, I hope they can, but I don't know. It was an incredible time to be there and everything did align. There was such talent there. Everyone was on this absolute mission to create the place that really disrupted fashion at the time. So yeah, good luck. So that's a non-committal answer.

So that's a non-committal answer. No, I mean, I've got a lot of love for the brand. So, yeah. But it's a tough world out there to succeed, as we were hearing from Catherine. I mean, the world has changed hugely. So I think they'd have to be really, really clear about who they're aiming to attract, really. You know, is it nostalgia? Is it a whole new generation? I think, yeah, it's a really tough environment. It's a very crowded marketplace now.

And that's why everyone has to kind of bring their A game. And it is that sharpening of the lens. That's what I really, really wanna do here at Whistles is sharpening the lens and really elevate that whole brand proposition to give women what they really want because I do believe there is a gap, there is a need there. Jackie Markham, the creative director at Whistles, I thought she was going to say sharpening the elbows instead of sharpening the lens, maybe a little bit of both and we also

spoke to retail commentator as I I mentioned, Catherine Shuttleworth. Now I asked you what should people, particularly these women that have got these roles down the high street, what do they know about what they need to design for you? And you did not hold back. Here's Sonia. I really, really want trousers that actually fit. Sonia, I'm with you on this one. Trousers that allow for a tummy, but don't gape at the back. Most women's trousers seem to accept we have bottoms.

Yes, but forget that we go in above them and have small backs to our waist. Thank you. Thank you, Sonia, for your message. Here's another one. Jennifer, please make something for women with bingo wings. Everything is, as I was talking about, like the flabby bit of your arm that hangs down for those that haven't got there yet. Everything is either short sleeved or sleeveless at this time of year. I could feed a family of six on my upper arms. And I don't particularly want to wear a cardigan. Come on designers use your imagination. Jennifer

I hear you although I kind of feel we need to free the upper arm. Maybe we shouldn't be covering it up. Maybe we should just let it fly free. Here's another what I want from women's fashion, fastenings that I can do up with require without requiring a maid or a husband. Eight, four, eight, four, four. Another arms too narrow, necklines too low. What should designers know? I should just send these all in shouldn't we? 84844 if you would like to get

touch with us today on Woman's Hour, one of the questions that we are putting out to you. Now I want to turn to something that was called the sleep room. It was a most distressing place. Imagine a medical facility where almost exclusively female patients are kept in a drug-induced slumber for months at a time, woken only to be fed, bathed and given electroconvulsive therapy or ECT to erase their memories, sometimes even their identities, all without their consent. Now if this sounds like the stuff of dystopian sci-fi, you might think that but you would be mistaken because in fact it was a real psychiatric ward in the 1960s in an NHS hospital that was uncovered in a new nonfiction book called The Sleep Room, a very British medical scandalist by the journalist and the author John Stock.

Personal testimony is given in the book by six women who were patients on Ward Five at the Royal Waterloo Hospital in London. That includes the actress Celia Imrie who remembers seeing the sleep room while she was being treated for anorexia at the age of 14. I used to peer through the portholes in the swing doors and gaze at the dead looking women lying on the floor on gray mattresses. Silent in a kind of electrically induced twilight. I can remember the distinctive smell too, the smell of sleep. People have asked me if I ever spent any time inside that room.

I can't be sure, but I can picture it so clearly. And although I saw many female patients come back to the ward from there, I never saw anyone emerge from the place awake. You went in asleep, and you came out asleep, and you were totally unconscious while inside. So you wouldn't necessarily be aware that you'd had the treatment, who knows, maybe I was in the sleep room. Today I must accept the very real possibility that I was. Certainly the insulin treatment that I received was often a precursor to

Narcosis. Celia Emry reading from her own account from the audiobook Off the Sleeproom by John Stock. Happy to say John joins me in studio this morning. Good morning John. Good morning, good to be here. And we also are joined down the line from Carlyle by Mary Thornton who was a former patient of William Sargent. Good morning Mary and thank you so much for joining us. Good morning, hello there. of William Sargent. Good morning Mary and thank you so much for joining us. Good morning, hello there. Let me begin John with you, I mean even hearing that a little bit from Celia there, it sounds horrifying. You've spent two and a half

years researching what took place on the top floor of the Royal Waterloo more than 50 years ago and the man at the heart of it is the late Dr. William Sargent. Tell us a little bit more about him. Yeah, thank you. Sargent was a psychiatrist. He was head of the Department of Psychological Medicine at St Thomas's, which was part of the Royal Waterloo. And he believed in a very physical approach to problems of the mind. He said, if you've broken your leg, it should be splinted. If there's a problem with the brain, it should be splinted too. So he championed a very physical mechanistic approach to psychiatry. So he was one of the very first people, as

he said, slightly proudly to flick the switch on an ECT machine in 1941. He championed lobotomies and these treatments, his physical approach to mental health came together, as you say, in the sleep room where he discovered that if he put people to sleep for three, in one case five months, he could give people treatments which they wouldn't normally tolerate if they were, if they're awake. And as you say in your introduction, one of these things was three times a week he would give them electroconvulsive therapy. And his sort of belief was that it was in some way a factory reset. It would reset troubled thoughts and troubled minds and allow him to reprogram the mind with more positive thoughts. You know we have some archive of William Sargeant speaking to the BBC on some of those

points that you just mentioned there. So this was about his practices, this is in 1971 he was speaking about it, it was a year before he retired from the NHS. If you give a person too much shock they get very upset so what I did in the end was put them to sleep and give them their electrical treatment and their antidepressant drugs under sleep and we're now finding that we can keep people with modern drug therapies asleep for up to three months. How are they asleep? Are they actually asleep? Well they're likely asleep and we get them up for lunch and supper. if you have been well and you came into hospital With an acute illness like depression you could now be put to sleep

You would have all your treatment under sleep and you could wake up say in a month's time better without any memory of all illness in other words, this is almost a an anesthetic treatment of mental illness Are there no side effects though if you're asleep for three, four, five months under heavy doses of drugs? Are there not dangers in the long term? Well I've only kept one patient semi-asleep for five months. This is a case that did get better but I suppose for two months. They need of course very skilled nursing and at St. Thomas' in Belmont I have got a special unit.

William Sargent speaking to Jonathan Dimbleby on Radio 4's World at One back in 1971. An extraordinary to hear his voice, for me anyway John after reading your book. Like he wasn't breaking the law by using some of these methods right? He wasn't breaking the law, I just find that interview so disingenuous. Elsewhere in that interview he talks about modified operations, which was a lobotomy. He would never really say it as it was. He used all these euphemisms. He wasn't, he was operating, as you say, the sleep room ran from 62 to sort of 72. There was this window between the 1959 Mental Health Act and the 1983 Mental Health Act, where people like Sargent could treat patients

without consent. The 1959 Act was designed to reduce stigma around mental health but actually what it meant was that people could be admitted on a voluntary basis and they had no legal protection at all. If they'd been sectioned they would have a lot more legal protection. That's one of those cruel ironies. What evidence did you find about his methods? We've kind of outlined them here a little bit. Yeah, I spoke to a lot of former patients, a lot of these six women in particular who were good enough to trust me to tell their stories. They'd never really been heard before. I spoke to a lot of nurses who I have to

say, the Nightingale nurses, he does credit them in that interview, they were on the whole fantastic and kept a lot of patients alive who otherwise would have died. They shared their testimonies with me. I also spoke to some people who were junior registrars, including Lord David Owen, he was a registrar in 64 for Sargent. I spoke to a lot of other colleagues who'd worked with him and Sargent also published some papers about the nature of the treatment and in a funny way it was sort of hiding in plain sight. It was this, he was quite proud of the sleep room.

He thought it was this extraordinary revolutionary way of treating people. And he wasn't very good on long-term follow-ups. A lot of people might have come out of their feeding. Some people felt a little bit better for a bit. And then sadly they would relapse down the line. And five people died. We shouldn't forget this. Five people died.

Some of them, this condition called paralytic ileus where the stomach, the intestines basically become paralysed. Like a constipation in an extreme form from being in this drug induced sleep. Yeah, so I discovered that five people died there and there's never really been an inquiry here. There was a similar sleep room in Australia run by a disciple of his in Chelmsford, a suburb of Sydney, Dr. Harry Bailey. Twenty-five people died there.

And there was one in America. Actually, it was run in Canada by an American psychiatrist who was a friend of sergeants. And there was a big inquiry there. And legal cases are still rumbling on there. Is that what you're calling for, do you think, with this book? I'm not sure it's for me to call for it. I think the patients who are still alive, I've tried to give them a platform and wanted to make sure in the book that their accounts were front and centre. Because it'd be very easy to make Sargent

this sort of almost like a pantomime villain. He was incredibly charismatic, six foot two, old school, patrician consultant, a slight sense of what to senior about him. He sort of strove through the hospital with minions trailing behind him, swing doors opening for him, you know. And I want it very much to foreground the patients' accounts. And I've got St Thomas's, they have issued an apology in the book. But I think more needs to come out about this, definitely. Indeed. And I will read a little of that as well.

They talk about being very sorry for any distress caused to patients. This is from Guy and St. Thomas's NHS Foundation Trust, which appears in the book. We're very sorry for any distress caused to patients treated by Dr. Sargent at a sleep service at St. Thomas's Hospital and the Royal Waterloo. Due to the historic nature of the service, we unfortunately do not hold any records from this time, but we fully acknowledge the impact of these treatments may have had on patients and their families. Just before I

get to Mary, and we really want to hear her story, you focus on a certain number of patients, but most of his patients were women. They were. They were. Why? It's a question that comes up a lot really. Why were they? To give one example, in 1972, a patient came to Sargent who was depressed, a female patient, and she was in a very difficult marriage. And this is 1972, he said this. He said, in that situation, it is better for her, in order for her to cope with her husband, that the woman should have a lobotomy and then go back into that marriage and she'll be better able to cope with her difficult husband. So you can see it's a form of sort of a control there, of social control and that was something that came out in the book that parents were sending their children, their wayward daughters to sergeant to be corrected, to have all memories of unsuitable boyfriends erased. That word really stayed with me afterwards as well, wayward and of

course there wasn't the same definition of consent that we would have now as well. Let me bring in Mary Thornton, former patient on ward 5 and in the sleep room, you're very welcome. When and why were you treated by William Sargent? Mary? Oh hello, just a quick aside before I go into that, today I am wearing green top-to-toe as a symbol of hope and strength to the psychological, societal and emotional wellness because it's Mental Health Week next week. Well I'm glad that... I'm a bit premature but I'm glad you've brought that out for the radio listeners as well. Definitely we always appreciate a description so thank you for that. If I may bring you back to, you were 20 right? I was, I was yes. And what do you remember of that time and why you went in and how you met him? I was a

student nurse at the Westminster Hospital in London and I just before I went nursing, well at the Christmas 1969, I met my the man who became my husband and it was one of those classic love at first sight. So we started courting. Unfortunately my parents took an instant dislike to him, didn't like him at all and made it very difficult for both of us and eventually I had a bit of a meltdown. They used to call it nervous breakdown and I was admitted to the Waterloo. What do you remember of what happened in there? My memory, I've emphasized this, is like black and white photographs. Photographs

I have are very clear but there's no continuity between them. So I can remember somebody wrote about the sleep room, I can't remember if it was Celia or one of the others, about looking through and seeing six beds, there were six divan beds, I always thought that was a bit strange, why would they have divan beds in a very small room in a hospital, but it was because it was up a very narrow staircase, I don't suppose they would have been able to get anything else in. What do I remember? I remember having the ECT, but I don't remember anything about it.

I remember waking up after it and not panicking because I didn't know who I was, and I couldn't remember my name, which was absolutely awful. So, and thinking, one day I looked in the mirror and I saw my face and it looked, I looked absolutely dreadful, my hair was in rat's tails, my skin was grey and I thought how on earth am I going to get out of here? I need to do something about this. I do remember that thought. Clearly I had better sort myself out and then I started going to all the horrible occupational therapy lessons that they wanted us to do. I hated it but I did it just to just to play the game really. And you got out. And I got out, yes. What do you remember about Sargent though at that time? Did you have much interaction with him? Sargent had very little concern for the psychological, societal, emotional

well-being of any of his patients. He wasn't terribly concerned. He was only concerned, as John has said, with the physical approach to it in a brutish and I think fairly non-intellectual heavy-handed manner. I have to let people know because there is a beautiful part to your story that you found after you'd left the hospital and you went to live with your brother, I believe, and you found a number or a note in a suitcase and you wondered who it belonged to. Can you tell me about that? Certainly, yes. We call that light bulb moments now, don't we? I didn't remember John at all when I came out of hospital. Your boyfriend?

Yes. He had been in to see me. I had not recognized him and he was very, very angry and he attempted to strangle Dr. Sargent and then he was ejected forcibly and told never to come back, which he didn't. So I was up in Yorkshire having convalescing with my brother's family, and suddenly I remembered John, and I found a phone number, which is extraordinary, really. There was actually somebody around to even answer the phone, because mobiles didn't exist in those days. But he answered, and I said, meet me at King's Cross, I'm coming down and bless him he was there he met me and we literally went to ground then we we sort of cut

ourselves off I left nursing we found a bed sit and we were just I didn't tell my parents where I was or anything. I can imagine why not John must have got an awful shock that when he saw you after all that time. Well, he never said whether he got a shock or not. And but we did get married and stayed together 50 years and he did put up with all my strange moods and quirks and foibles. So, he must have got a shock, but he knew what I was like. I had not recognized him so he was prepared in a manner of speaking really. It's quite the story Mary. I'm so glad that you had that happy marriage with John as well for all those years after

such a difficult, I mean distressing doesn't really sum up either that situation that you went through. We have Dr Linda Gask listening as well, who's an Emeritus Professor of Primary Care Psychiatry at Manchester University and author of Out of Her Mind, which takes a critical look at how we're failing women's health and also what needs to change. Welcome Linda, we're hearing of some of the questionable practices to say the least, some would call abuse, of one post-war male psychiatrist who was very prominent in his day. What are you thinking when you hear that, particularly with women and how they are treated?

I'm absolutely horrified. I think John's book's incredibly well researched and the stories of the women who experienced Sargent's care are so immensely powerful. I was a medical student in the 1970s and I didn't see anything like what Sargent was practicing so I think he was at the extreme end of a particular approach to care but he was utterly obsessed with physical treatments, took absolutely no interest as Mary has said in women's psychosocial well-being and what was going on in their lives. Now some of the practices just to reiterate for people, perhaps I didn't hear from the beginning was continuous Narcosis, so this is this drug induced sleep that could go on for months.

Insulin Coma Therapy, ECT, which is electro convulsive therapy, Lobotomy, particularly for conditions of eating disorders, anxiety, depression. Are any of those used in any way, shape or form? I suppose ECT could perhaps still be. Well ECT is still used for very severe depression, particularly in older people and also in postnatal psychosis, which is an emergency when you really have to try and get someone better very quickly. It's not used in the way that Sargent was using it. It's not used with the frequency that he was using it at three times a week. Lobotomy? I mean, no. Absolutely no. Yes. How do you understand how he flew? Well, it wasn't under the radar because there he was on Radio 4 World at One

talking about his practices. If in fact a more sanitized version perhaps as John describes than what was happening in the rooms. I think it's hubris. He was just incredibly self-confident and self-promotional and he was also practicing in the way that people do when they're doing things that perhaps they shouldn't in a very kind of isolated place. His unit was up a staircase away from everything. He was also a man of a particular type, I think, who was very determined that he was going to establish a reputation. He has been credited, however, with bringing psychiatry into the mainstream. Do you think that's a fair characterization, Linda?

I'm not sure it's a mainstream I would wish to practice in. But you know what I'm saying in the sense of it was something like, let's think about Victorian asylums, for example. He brought it to a hospital with nurses that were caring as far as John, as far as I can understand, even if they didn't agree with these particular practices he was doing. Yeah, I think that's probably the only tick in his in his favor. I mean, he was in, I found out he'd been admitted to Hanwell Lunatic Asylum in 1934 himself. I think that really shocked him.

And he did have a mission to empty the asylums. But he did that in order to sort of control some of these more unwell patients. It involved either giving them lobotomies or giving them such large doses of largactyl, the chlorpromazine, this antipsychotic drug, that they would be so subdued and flattened, similarly with lobotomy, it flattened the personality. So you got them out of the asylums, but at what price? Did any of the treatments work? Well, as I say, they might have worked for a little while and then a lot of patients relapsed and I think that's what he wasn't good on those figures on long-term follow-ups. Of what Mary brought up as well.

And treatment today, Linda, do you see, I don't know, an openness or a change drastically? Because I was thinking 1971, I'm going to say it's not that far away. I mean, you know what I mean? We're talking about 50 years. It's not that far away, I think we've still got major issues about how women are treated and there's still a lot of shortcomings, the kind of problems that women have, mental health problems still get inadequate research and funding such as eating disorders, so we've still got an awful lot to do. And I think it's really important not to be complacent and say, this was 50 years ago.

This man was actually part of the establishment and was able to achieve quite considerable. He was on radio, he was on the radio, he was talking about it, he was fated and we must never forget how people can reach those positions. Thank you Dr Linda Gask, also John Stock, Mary Thornton, John's book is The Sleep Room, a very British medical scandal is out now, Dr Linda Gask's is out of her mind, is her book also out and if you have been affected by anything

you've heard on the program today you can find links to support on the BBC's Action Line website. Thanks to all of you getting in touch, I'm talking about fashion this morning, the business of fashion. Julia to Woman's Hour, my dream is shoes that come in different widths. To make my dream complete you can mix and match a pair, a wider shoe with a standard one. I have two pairs of shoes I can wear without pain and they are far from glamorous. Okay, we're getting into the shoes. Could we please have some pants that cover our whole bum,

but without the ridiculous high waist that bothers my belly button. If you want pants that don't convert themselves into thongs all day, you have to put on them. With granddad armpit waistlines. I know lots of women love high-waisted items, I do. But can we just have a choice? Choice is too much to ask. 84844 if you'd like to get in touch. Right. Let us turn to Daisy Crawford.

She is a breastfeeding mother who says she was threatened with paying for an extra bag when she attempted to bring a bag with her breast milk and a breast pump, in addition to her hand luggage on a recent easy jet flight. Well, let me let Daisy tell the story. What happened? Hi there. So I was traveling from a visit with family. It was the first time I was away from my youngest. I've got three kids and the first time I was away from my youngest. I've got three kids and the first time I was away from my youngest. So I went through security without

a problem and then at the gate I was told that my additional bag, which was a tote bag, so it was just a tote bag and inside it had a little cool bag. I had the bits and pieces I needed. I was told that that was additional luggage and I needed to pay. And the fee for that is £48. So I said, sorry, it's breast milk. It's, you know, it's kind of it's separate to that. And they said, no, no, you've got to pay. They were adamant that there was no difference with what I was carrying with them than just having additional stuff.

You had done the research, Daisy, though, right, about bringing milk, breast milk, I should say. I checked beforehand. And even if you're not traveling with an infant, you are allowed to bring breast milk, you're allowed to bring it in more than 100 milliliters as well, so, you know, hence it was fine for security. So I told them that, I said, you know, there are different guidelines around breast milk, and the staff at the gate said, well, if you can show me on your phone, then you're then fine. So I'm then in a position where I'm kind of trying to Google the exact information that I'd had before, having not thought I'd needed to access it again. And the signal wasn't very good.

We're kind of at the basement, you know, and I'm starting to get frazzled. People are coming, walking past, and I'm starting to get frazzled, people are coming walking past me and all of this. So I found some information about breast pumps and medical devices and I started sort of trying to explain and they said that's just for security, that doesn't mean that you don't have to pay basically is what they said. So at this point I said breastfeeding is protected by law and if you're going to charge me to carry breast milk you're effectively penalizing me financially for bringing that with me. For being a breastfeeding mother. Yes that's that's certainly how it

felt and they then said I was escalating the situation. They said, oh, we're just doing our job. Sort of treated me like I was being difficult. I spoke. They put me onto a manager at this point, who I explained the situation to. She said, oh, I'm going to speak to a colleague. The line went dead. She phoned back and she wouldn't speak directly to me.

She spoke to the gate staff again, who she and they then said, no, I'm sorry. You've got this inflexibility or hardening of a stance. I think I'm hearing from you. How do you understand it? I mean, what do you want them to do? I will read the response from EasyJet. They say we're very sorry for Miss Crawford's experience while boarding her flight as this is not the level of service we expect. We advise customers to carry baby milk in their cabin baggage and should customers wish to take a breast pump with them and need to do so in a second cabin bag we ask them to let us know in advance of travel so it's

added to their booking, falling under medical equipment to prevent issues at the gate. I can understand if you're traveling with a large or outsized bag you would need to inform them beforehand but on my journey I had such a small amount, it was comparable to a bag of duty-free you know I could have had a bottle of gin in there and it wouldn't have been questioned so despite their apology I don't feel they've really acknowledged the disproportionate response that their staff had to a situation. So what are you calling for Daisy? I think I'm calling for clarity with their policy and more of an acknowledgement of how personal it felt to have to share the contents of my bag to try and justify it to staff who felt antagonistic. I think it wouldn't take very much for them to be a lot clearer about where breast milk falls within that if you're with or without a child. And

I do think that an acknowledgement that it was discriminatory because I don't think I'd have been in that situation if it was any other medical device. Are you going to leave us with that apology or are you taking it any further? I think I'm going to take it further. I also feel like if you consistently treat people poorly in that situation with luggage that it's only a matter of time before you cross a line and I think that in this case they have. Daisy Crawford, thank you very much for coming on Woman's Hour. Daisy says she was threatened with paying an extra for an extra bag when attempting to bring breast milk on the plane

and a breast pump as we heard on that recent easy jet flight. Thanks for all your messages coming in on clothing. My problem says Alex with clothes is the way they scale up patterns for bigger sizes just because my bust is 40 inches doesn't mean that my wrists are huge. Sometimes the cuffs go round my wrist twice. Kate definitely pockets in everything. Yeah, which Kate? 84844, if you would like to get in touch. Now to love letters. A new performance film, The Extraordinary Miss Flower,

was inspired by a suitcase full of them sent to just one woman, Geraldine. The Icelandic Italian singer-songwriter, Emiliana Torini, felt so inspired by, so inspired even, by these letters that were sent to Miss Geraldine Flower. She was the mother of her friend that had led her to get back into the studio to create her first solo record in ten years and also most beautiful accompanying film. She's with me in the studio today to talk about both and to perform live.

I'm delighted to say, Emiliana, welcome. Thank you. So good to have you with us. Your album came out last July. The film is just out now. When I heard the name Geraldine, I was like, there has to be some Irish background to that woman. I nearly always hear it in an Irish context. But tell us a little bit about who she was. How I knew her. I nearly always hear it in an Irish context. But tell us a little bit about who she was.

How I knew her. She was the mother of my friend, Zoe. Simon, who's here to play a song with me. His, his, his wife, her husband, and Geraldine used to live upstairs from them, from her daughter, and we would work in the studio in the garden. And when I had kind of overstayed my welcome sometimes on their sofa, they would send me up to Geraldine to drink a cocktail with her or something. And I would have these conversations with her. And she was, you're right, she was an but from Australia as well. And she had come to London to have some fun and work and, you know, have an adventure. She traveled a lot. She was extremely adventurous, very intelligent and extremely naughty and funny.

Yes, that comes across. and extremely naughty and funny. That comes across. And she, yeah, she was really incredible. You know, she would later life have a dog named Reggie. She would go out in the park and of course, suddenly the whole dog park is her friend and they're drinking wine at five o'clock. And, you know, she was just that kind of Christmas tree. A Christmas tree that everybody wanted to dance around. Yeah.

But you found these letters, they were found after Geraldine sadly passed away. We're talking about a suitcase, right? Yeah, a small suitcase, you know, that easy jet wouldn't let you maybe go on the plane. You've been listening carefully. But what was it about these letters? What did it bring up in you? What feeling? So I had come over to help Zoe with just the memorial and to sing at it. And so I was at their house and that's when she actually finds this suitcase. It's a leather case, beautiful one. And we kind of sit on the floor and opening and going through it and she's telling us stories about her mom. And we, you know, these

are hundreds of letters and we find that she had nine proposals but never married. She had a very beautiful love life with Reggie, who was basically so his kind of father figure and godfather and probably was her soul mate but they had a very open relationship, he travelled a lot, they had a very modern relationship basically and fiery I guess But he was kind of our favorite guy when we were reading these stories. And I should say, like in the film, which we'll talk about a bit more, you have people like Nick Cave reading some of these letters, you know, these characters that come to life. The men were smitten with Geraldine.

They were completely obsessed with her. Yeah. And I think she was an incredibly free spirit and like often with people like that and especially at times that are, you know, that's not quite acceptable. It was quite restrictive in other times. Yeah. And speaking about an earlier item just about, you know, if a girl was at all wayward, I put that word in inverted commas, what could happen to some of them? But the song, the first song you wrote is the one you're going to be performing for us. This is called Miss Flower.

Just give people an idea of where it came from. So this is the first letter we actually read together. And I thought it was so witty and beautiful and it's kind of sexy. And we were just wanting to make Zoe feel better. And I can't. Who wrote this one? Me and... No, I mean not the song, but the letter. Do we know? No, we don't.

We don't? No! We can't actually say. So all the letters... Every song on the record is a different man, but we can't... And they used to be called by those names, but we can't do it clickily. Okay, okay, okay. No problem. Gotcha, because I was trying to make that out as well. But these letters were so poetic, it's like they were all writers, don't you think?

Yeah, it was, some of them were better than others. Isn't it always the case. But with this, you also, I see in the film, we have the men's stories and Nick Cave and others that are articulating them. But you want Geraldine's voice in it. And she comes to you in a fever dream. Yes. This is really what the movie is about, was that it's happening in this fever dream that actually happened. We were going to finish the record. We had two weeks to do it and we were being pressured to do it and I was just really not on board with that. I felt like, well how can we finish a record and not have the voice of the woman that we're talking about because we only have the letters from the men. And so it got a

bit of an obsession with me but the day I land I get a fever and a really bad one but we managed still to write a song or two, and then I was just completely finished. And I'm three days away from us having to kind of give the record away. And we, I'm in her, because I lived in her flat while I wrote the record. And I'm in bed and I'm kind of see her at this round wooden table. This is the fever dream. The fever dream with my dad

and there's a full ashtray of cigarettes and there's red wine and there's lots of writers. There's Lerner Cohen and Janis Jarl. And then, you know, my wish. And I'm just going like, Geraldineine come on. We really need your help here And the whole record had been like some kind of current in a river pulling us along through this unbelievable Happening story and I'm like, please we really need you and they're just looking at me kind of smoking and laughing and the next day I go in the studio and Simon is nerding

out with a synth and we see Zoe coming down the garden with the letter, holding this letter in both hands and her eyes are kind of wide open. I'm like, Oh, what's going on? And she's like, look what I found. And it just seemed like the most impossible thing that we hadn't found this letter, you know. And it was by Geraldine to Reggie, our favorite guy. And it was a love poem and a very, you know, about love making, about them making love. Up on there that all the boundaries fall away, that they're floating on top of the world. Over shrines of fallacies. Fallacies forever. It was just like, I mean, I can't even explain.

I have to let people know the film is the extraordinary Miss Flower. It will be available in cinemas from Friday the 9th of May. That is Emiliana Torini, also joined by Simon Burt today. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Love the album. Love the film. Joined tomorrow by the model, Leomi Anderson, we were talking about fashion,

but we're going to talk a little bit more about that tomorrow. And the last word goes to I'm not sure who, but she says sleeves, please. No, no, no. We do not want to let our bingo wings fly. We want sleeves. So much for my campaign to try and free the upper arm. We'll talk again tomorrow. Thank you very much for joining me on Woman's Hour.

That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. I'm David Dimbleby and from the History Podcast and BBC Radio 4, this is Invisible Hands. The story of the free market revolution. The free market isn't solving the problem of homelessness. Classic liberal values of free speech, free enterprise, free markets. A hidden force that changed Britain forever.

Popular capitalism is a crusade. And the invisible hands that shaped it. I thought I was a conservative. I thought I was a conservative. There's a massive schism between those who believe in the continuity of our society and those who wish to destroy it. Listen to Invisible Hands on BBC Science now.