Quest ends for historians who helped TOWIE star

A lost hospital record book has been given to the Surrey History Centre in Woking, which helped uncover the family history of reality star Gemma Collins.

In the Who Do You Think You Are? episode, it was revealed Gemma's grandmother spent time at several psychiatric hospitals in Epsom.

The discovery had been made by staff at the Surrey centre, which featured in the show, who had meticulously researched hospital records.

Julian Pooley, the centre’s public services and engagement manager, said the lost book, which was discovered in a south London attic, could "fill the gap" in its records.

The episode which took The Only Way Is Essex (TOWIE) star Gemma on an emotional journey was first broadcast in September.

She learnt her grandmother Joan Williams was in two psychiatric hospitals, once when she was 13, and again when she was 17, when Gemma’s mother was born and was taken into foster care.

Mr Pooley said the programme “was very poignant because it showed how the stigma attached to mental illness means that those admitted to these institutions were often not spoken about with the family".

He added: "So years on it is hard to piece together their stories.”

He said they were able to piece together part of Gemma’s family story using records from St Ebba’s and Long Grove.

They were part of the cluster of five psychiatric hospitals in Epsom, built to relieve pressure on hospitals in London and closed down in the 1990s and 2000s.

Each hospital had 2,500 beds and each record book documented 250 patients.

Mr Pooley added: “Many of these historical records were kept in the most atrocious conditions.”

He said the missing record book formed a gap in the centre’s collection “which has worried me for the last 30 years since I rescued these records in 1995.”

That was until a resident in south London contacted the centre to see if it was interested in a record book for the Manor Hospital, which he found in his attic.

“It is enormously exciting for us because it fills that gap and it shows that records have survived from these hospitals out in the community for the last 30 years since the hospitals closed,” said Mr Pooley.

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