AUSTRALIAN Lauren Smith-Mitchell hopes Devizes author and historian Keith Genever may hold the key to a family mystery involving the former Roundway Hospital.

Mrs Smith-Mitchell has been researching the life of her husband's grandmother Elsie Smith-Mitchell and discovered she died in Roundway Hospital in 1968 aged 71 despite her children being told she had died many years earlier.

She is now determined to find out more about how and why her grandmother-in-law ended up in Roundway and why she was kept there.

She said: "After years of searching I also managed to finally find Elsie’s death certificate a few years back.

"It was a massive shock to her remaining family to learn that Elsie actually lived till 1968 and died in the Roundway Hospital at Devizes aged 71. The whole story intrigues me and I really want some justice for Elsie who seems to have abandoned for 44 years in a mental institution in England.

"Poor Elsie never saw her children or family again to my knowledge and spent her entire life locked away. I can’t even imagine what horrors she must have endured and I really feel compelled to find out her entire story and retell it."

Mrs Smith-Mitchell was pleased to read a Gazette on-line article about a book written by Mr Genever charting his 36 years as a nurse at Roundway which revealed much about life in the old psychiatric hospital in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

He said: "I will be very pleased to do everything I can to help Lauren. We have already spoken on the phone and I am going to try and do some more research. It turns out I was working at the hospital at the time her relative was in there and died. There are only four of us who worked as nurses there in those days that I think are still alive.

"She seemed very pleased that she has been able to get in touch with me."

Mrs Smith-Mitchell contacted the Gazette after reading about Mr Genever's book in a bid to take her research into her relative's history forward.

She said: "She was only 26 and the mother of two young children when she was declared a lunatic in Shanghai, China in 1924. There are crown documents that I have that support this. These documents also state that there are no adequate facilities to treat her there, so she is to be sent to England for treatment. I then managed to find the record of Elsie being transported to England on the Glentara, 4 March 1924 escorted by a doctor, a couple of nurses and police sergeants.

"Elsie’s crime was that she had tried to drown her young daughter Nancy. This information was long covered up by the family and was finally revealed just a few years back after many attempts to find out from a very elderly relative in the USA.

"Elsie’s children had been told when they were still quiet young that their mother had passed away and tragically they were supposed to have lost their English father John Smith-Mitchell, who was 21 years older than Elsie, in 1924 which was the same year that Elsie was sent to England for treatment. The children were then left as orphans. Nancy was adopted out to a spinster in England and my father in law also John Smith-Mitchell remained in China and attended boarding school."

Documents Mrs Smith-Mitchell has obtained from the Supreme Court for China say that Elsie started to act strangely in 1923.

She said: "It’s not recorded in the documents, but just a few years ago we found out from an very elderly relative in the USA that Elsie actually tried to drown her young daughter Nancy, who would have been about four at the time. Postnatal depression was mentioned as a possible cause but we don’t know for sure if this was the case.

"What a great shame if it was, as it would have been very treatable today."