The Sleep Room: a sadistic psychiatrist and the women who survived him

Part 1. "Lobotomy would be the next course of treatment for me"

Celia Imrie

"The full horror of Hanwell was closing in on me"

"Thrashed time after time"

"Took first dose, wrote this story"

"With skilful handling death sould be avoided"

"Roasted alive in a white-hot furnace"

Mary Thornton

"Wizardry of surgery restores sanity to fifty raving maniacs"

"The Versailles of the New York rich"

"A fifth nurse would hold the head"

"Sara"

"There are all sorts of ways of spending a honeymoon"

"This form of therapy remains dangerous"

"His wife is very well indeed but not quite perfect"

"Every dog had its breaking point"

"The upper eyelid of the patient is pinched between thmb and finger"

Part 2. "The final one did it. The final one did it!"

"Somehow they took his soul apart"

"Such sudden social degradation can prove most effective"

Linda Keith

Part 3. "Ewen was being fished by the CIA"

"A Manhattan Project of the mind"

"We must always remember to thank the CIA and the Army for LSD"

"The big radiator in front of us...began to play like a concertina"

"He said, 'Norm, did you ever see a man die?'"

"Massive electroshock seemed promising"

"The voice seems to scream at me all the time"

"It was terrifying...you become very small"

Anne White

"The thing to do is to give continuous sleep"

"I don't suppose it's breaking the Official Secrets Act to say this..."

I couldn't imagine why the CIA would be interested in my work"

Part 4. "There was nothing about them that was human"

"Actually, Dr Sargant, I feel suicidal this morning"

"She told me that Sargant killed...a patient"

"Freya"

"There was a Russian man...it was the talk of the hospital"

"Reduced him to a zombie, poor dog"

"The Narcosis room appeared to be particularly overcrowded"

"Can I buy you a Rolls-Royce?"

"Wanted: information on William Sargant."