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Posted: 05-06-2008 02:14 Post subject: Disappointments Room

I was watching a real estate show recently about finding interesting things in older homes. One family had discovered a very small hidden room, and they could not figure out what it may have been used for. Eventually a senior member of the community tactfully informed them that the room they found was a "Disappointments Room". According to the old lady, in the past such rooms were built to house members of the family who were considered "embarrassments" due to some "socially unacceptable" illness (such as mental retardation). They would be shut in the room from as young as possible, and live a secluded and unacknowledged existence.
Upon further investigation the new homeowners discovered that their house was built by a very influential and important judge. He and his family were well known, but much less known was that he had an ill daughter, who was shut in the room from infancy, and who died around the age of five. Her name was inscribed on the family tomb.
The homeowners were so disturbed and touched by this discovery that they now dedicate the room to the young girl, decorating it like a child's bedroom, complete with dolls and a crib.
I looked up Disappointments Rooms on the internet and could find no information similar to this story. Has anyone else ever heard of these before?

Posted: 05-06-2008 05:17 Post subject:

The owners just speculated that the girl was shut in the room - and a five year old would hardly need a secure room to hold her - the fact that the floor was lined with sheet metal makes me wonder if they didn't use it for coal for the upstairs fire.

Posted: 05-06-2008 07:58 Post subject:

Yup, sounds like a version of the 'Monster of Glamis' story.

Posted: 05-06-2008 08:10 Post subject:

Feaky! I remember seeing a BBC docu-drama about a child of the British Royal Family that had to be hidden away to to him being "a bit slow"...

Can't remember his name now, but it was around WWI to the late 1920s - maybe some of you Poms know more about it?

Posted: 05-06-2008 10:06 Post subject:

I think that Zilch is referring to George V's youngest son John. He started having seizures when he was about 4 and was sent to live in Wood farm on the Sandringham estate with his own set of staff (gardeners, cook, nurse/nanny and driver) He was very well cared for by the standards of the day but was undoubtedly sequestered from the rest of the royal family. He was 14 when he died in 1919.

There are other rumours that Albert Victor, eldest son of Edward VII did not die in 1892 but was kept at Glams until well into the 20th century. He too could be said to have been an embarassment to the establishment.

Posted: 08-06-2008 06:47 Post subject:

I've never before encountered the phrase "Disappointments Room" and the failure of your Google search suggests that it never enjoyed any wide circulation. But the concept is certainly widely-enough known. It's a plot-element in both the Berkeley Square Legend and the novel JANE EYRE.

And Escargot of course nailed it cold with her reference to Glamis.

Posted: 08-06-2008 07:58 Post subject:

Posted: 09-06-2008 15:53 Post subject:

It doesnt seem likley to me either.

If you think about it statisticaly, every house over a certain age should have one.

And the couples reaction to the news is somewhat sick. What must visitors think?

Posted: 09-06-2008 17:52 Post subject:

Sick? Gullible, more like! Laughing

Posted: 09-06-2008 19:42 Post subject:

Posted: 11-06-2008 21:21 Post subject:

However, here in the States, my friend used to have the job of finding the shutaway children, getting them diagnosed, and sent to whatever schooling they could handle. Most of the children were in attics or barns.

We're talking the 21st century, here.

Posted: 12-06-2008 13:13 Post subject:

[quote="OldTimeRadio"]...It's a plot-element in both the Berkeley Square Legend ...quote]

please enlighten us on this element!

Posted: 12-06-2008 14:27 Post subject:

50 Berkeley Square is one of the places called "Most Haunted House in England". There have been a number of sightings of an apparition on the 4th floor and some theories have been put forward that the phenomena is due to a physical monster (even one that is cryptid).

There are a number of stories about a young girl dying in the nursery on the top floor, either by kumping out of the window or being killed by a brutal nurse/nanny

A man called DuPre was alleged to have kept his insane brother locked up on the top floors. Another man, called Myers owned the property and became a recluse after being jilted, he was said to confine himself to the upper floor as he had furnished the others ready for his new wife.

During the 19th century there were a number of deaths said to occur in what was called the haunted room, a maid, a young man staying in the room as a challenge, among others.

There is a story of two sailors deciding to doss down in the house and encountering the entity, one escapes to return with a policeman to find his riend dead. The details of this particular story vary, it occuring on either Christmas Eve 1887 or during WWII in 1943. The cause of death is either falling out of the window (impaling optional) or dismembered in the basement.

People who have witnessed the entity describe a horrific slithering shapeless mass, others have seen shapes of brown mist, there is a feeling of despair and depression felt at times.

It has been an antiquarian bookshop for about 50 years or so and the haunted room is said to be used as the accounts department.

Posted: 13-06-2008 03:07 Post subject:

Thanks, Tilly! You did a better job than I could have managed.

The whole story seems to have been one of those things which "growed considerable in the tellin'."

By the way, part of the legend was related in either 1968 or 1969 on the South African horror radio anthology series BEYOND MIDNIGHT, under the title
"The Yellow Room" or just "The Room," although the name Berkeley Square was not used. (This excellent horror series is available several places free online.)

And around a dozen years later it was re-enacted on the Canadian (CBC) series NIGHTFALL.

Posted: 15-06-2008 15:17 Post subject:

The strange idea in the original post is the notion of a purpose-built room. Yes, it is common to add-on rooms as your family grows, and architects are a recent innovation at most levels of society, but think of the logistics here! Either you build your house with the notion that you're likely to have a defective kid you want to shut away (implying that you were syphilitic, came from a long line of inbreeders, or otherwise had known genetic defects that should have prevented you from marrying at all) OR you have a defective child and then hire workmen from among your neighbors to build a house to hide her away in. 'Cause y'know, your neighborhood workmen aren't going around to everybody else's house gossiping about the special room Judge Wilkins needs. Rolling Eyes

And nobody'll gossip if you bring in strangers from the nearest big town. And nobody noticed that you had a baby and don't bring her to church anymore.

Shutaway children tend to be shut into out-of-the-way existing, normal spaces - attics, basements, closets - or into easily-constructed spaces normally reserved for pets, such as kennels. There's no reason to think this would have been any different in the past.