Early drafts of ‘Outbreak 1917’ had quite a substantial preamble, but I got rid of it in the end. I think it was Alwyn who said that it didn’t add a lot to the story: thus it was axed in favour of the far shorter opening that you see below. (Or in the freebie preview at Amazon.)

Item: a pocket diary for 1921, used not for recording appointments but as a notebook. Written largely in pencil. Found during building renovations at St George’s Hospital – formerly Stafford County Asylum. Top Secret.

final version

Dredging through my old drafts, though, I found this… and thought it might be interesting. Superheroes all have origin stories nowadays, so why can’t stories have origins?

I never knew my grandfather, Malcolm Lawrence. Until recently, virtually all I could have told you about him was that he served as an Assistant Surgeon in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War – and that when at last he returned home, he was a sick man. Almost at once, he was admitted to the Stafford County Asylum, and it was there that he lived until his death in 1937.

As children, we all used to joke about the asylum and its inmates. At that time I didn’t know that my grandfather had once lived within its forbidding walls. In the 1950s it was renamed St George’s Hospital and the building continued to house disturbed people for four more decades until it was finally closed. Then a property developer began work to convert the vast building into luxury flats. The workmen found basement storerooms packed with masses of rubbish that had accumulated over almost a century, and in one dark corner, a safe. This they hauled out and levered open, probably hoping there might be valuables inside. Instead, they found some papers.

A friend of mine who is a keen local historian managed to rescue the contents before everything was thrown away. He found himself in possession of some ledgers, some architect’s drawings and a fat file containing case notes for a single patient: my grandfather. He brought these to my house soon afterward.

Since his admission to the County Asylum in 1919, it seems that Malcolm Lawrence had exhibited the symptoms of what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder: anxiety, social withdrawal, nightmares, and emotional outbursts. His treatment was crude, by modern standards. Psychoanalysis was in its infancy and all but unknown outside of London. The asylum must have been more prison than hospital, in those days.

In the file were photographic portraits taken at intervals of two years, showing a man ageing steadily and clearly declining in health. The notes from his doctors made reference to his being ‘delusional’, although this was not elaborated upon.

“I think perhaps you should read this,” my historian friend said, producing one final item from the file. It was a pocket diary for 1921, but instead of detailing appointments it had been used as a notebook, written entirely in pencil.

My friend left, offering no further explanation. I got myself a drink and settled down to read the notebook. What follows are my grandfather’s words, and without a doubt the strangest tale I have ever read.

Dennis Lawrence
Victoria Park
October 2012