Inside Carstairs: Shocking secrets of notorious psychiatric hospital

FOR many years Carstairs has been a forbidding enigma a locked institution kept well away from the public gaze.

But today The Sunday Post can take readers through its gates, revealing for the first time the stories of some of its most notorious patients.

They include former garage mechanic Phillip Givens.

Like so many who ended up in Carstairs, his appalling crimes shocked the country.

Mild-mannered Givens kidnapped teenage schoolboys and left them to escape from disused warehouses across Glasgow.

He would later tell cops the Devil had warped his mind when he went one step further and killed 15-year-old Fred Dowden in 1963.

The search for Dumbarton teenager Fred had been a massive manhunt, only solved by an eagle-eyed PC who chanced upon his body in a disused shop.

The author on the new book on Carstairs, crime writer David Leslie, said: “The solitary clue police had was a possible sighting of Fred getting into a black Ford Anglia car on the day he disappeared.

“After a massive trawl of 9,500 vehicles in the city, they traced the car back to Givens.”

When hewas confronted by officers he broke down and admitted the killing.

David added: “While in Barlinnie prison awaiting trial, his main concern was about who was looking after his beloved pet dog Bruce.”

By this stage, authorities had decided he was insane, and when he pled guilty, he was sent to Carstairs.

It wasn’t just men who found themselves in Carstairs.

From 1961, women judged criminally-insane were sent to the Lanarkshire institution as well.

Just months after the rule change, in a horrific case involving five children, Jean Waddell would become one of Carstairs most infamous patients.

The former hotel receptionist, then aged 37, lured five children aged from four to seven to her third-storey home in Glasgow’s East End with the promise of seeing a litter of puppies.

But when they got in to her home, she slammed the door shut and began throwing the children out of the window.

Incredibly, her crazed behaviour would kill just one of them four-year-old Majorie Hughes.

David said: “Doctors would later tell her heartbroken family that if she had suffered, her pain had been brief, because she died almost immediately.”

During the subsequent police investigation and Jean’s trial, a picture of a deeply troubled individual emerged.

Following the break-up of her short-lived marriage to soldier Floyd Oakman, Jean suffered a total mental breakdown.

She suffered delusions, believing she was the Empress of Japan, and had been subjected to terrifying electric shock treatment while being treated for her mental instability.

Despite her clear problems, after her initial treatment Jean was allowed back to Glasgow where she went on to commit her crime.

Carstairs psychiatric hospital (Alamy Stock Photo)

David said: “What would save Jean from being hung as much of the public called for, was by 1961 politicians and most of the public had lost the stomach for marching a female to the scaffold.

“There was also much more sympathy for someone like her, as she was clearly mad.”

As for Jean, she faded into anonymity living until the age of 86 and dying in Dumfriesshire in 2009, long after being released from Carstairs.

While some like Mone and McCulloch have tried to escape Carstairs, some have actually tried to get in.

Serial killer Peter Manuel murdered eight people in a brutal killing spree across Lanarkshire in the late ’50s.

After being caught and facing the gallows he tried to convince the authorities he was mad in a desperate bid to dodge the hangman.

Evil Manuel tried to escape his fate by hiding a bar of soap under his tongue to make it appear he was foaming at the mouth.

He would also only say the word “chips” for days on end, in a crude attempt to convince the world he was insane.

But his ruse failed and he was hanged at Barlinnie in July, 1958.

“He hoped the ploy would secure safe passage to Carstairs,” said writer David.

“But he wasn’t mad only bad.”

One of the most troubling cases in the book is of religious fanatic Iain Simpson a man who would achieve as much infamy as a murderer as he would as a murder victim.

The 40-year-old was one of Mone and McCulloch’s victims on the night of the Carstairs breakout.

Pint-sized Simpson narrowly escaped the gallows in 1962 after committing a double murder.

Leaving the army, he posed as an antiques dealer in Germany, conning people out of their valuables.

On returning to the UK his behaviour became increasingly bizarre and his family found him digging up coffins in a cemetery.

Committed to Hartwood psychiatric hospital in Lanarkshire in 1960, he later escaped.

Incredibly, because he evaded authorities for more than 28 days, he could not be returned.

Simpson moved to Manchester where he fell in love with pretty nurse Estelle Kierans, 18, with Simpson posing as a university lecturer.

David said: “He would woo her with tales of how he loved her and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her in a dream home in the Cairngorms.”

It was on a trip to the Cairngorms that Simpson’s madness turned to murder.

Hitching a lift on the A9, he was picked up by electrical engineer George Green, 30.

After a row about religion, Simpson pulled a gun on Green near the village of Carrbridge and killed him, dumping his body by the side of the road.

Callous Simpson kept Green’s Anglia car as a bizarre trophy and returned to his normal life.

Months later, with police still hunting George Green’s killer, Simpson headed back to Scotland where he picked up Swiss student hitchhiker Hans Ruedi Gimmi, 24.

Again an argument erupted over religion with the same result Simpson shooting his victim dead.

When cops finally traced Simpson through George Green’s missing car, he admitted killing the Leeds man.

In a matter-of-fact fashion he even told officers where they could find Hans a man they didn’t even know was missing.

Author David said: “When I researched the book I found that by the time Simpson was due to come to trial, psychiatrists were convinced he was insane.

“And it’s hard to disagree.

“He was regarded as a very dangerous, insane person.

“But by 1976 he had settled into a peaceful life in Carstairs.

“It’s ironic that his life was cut short by people just as insane and dangerous as he was.” Carstairs: Hospital for Horrors by David Leslie, copyright David Leslie. Published by Black & White Publishing on Monday 5thOctober at £9.99 (pbk)