The BBC is reporting that at least 47 female typhoid patients were locked up for life in a Surrey mental hospital. The patients were admitted between 1907 and the hospital closing in 1992. Read it for yourselves. Words fail me.
Indeed, it begs that very question, and I'm willing to bet that this isn't the only hospital where this practice went on, and that these poor women weren't the only victims. Incidentally, wasn't Where Are The Typhoid Men? an early Bowie album?
Whatever. I think you just gave me the title for my next collection. Where Are The Typhoid Men? by Dave Hutchinson. That'd just leap off the shelves at you, wouldn't it?