THE quality of meals served to the hundreds of inmates of the Powick Mental Asylum was under discussion by Worcestershire County Council at this time 100 years ago.
The Journal of 1903 said the councillors had before them an official report from the Commissioners in Lunacy claiming that the dinners served at the Asylum were "very poor, composed mainly of potatoes with a very small proportion of meat".
But one county councillor, a Dr Dixey, stressed that whether the food was poor or not, the Asylum inmates "gained flesh".
Councillor G. Grosvenor stressed too: "The Irish stew I tasted on a visit to the Asylum was fit for anybody."
Looking at the weights of patients when admitted and when discharged, he found that many of them had gained at least a stone in weight!
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