The hospital, which was designed by
George Oatley and Willie Swinton Skinner, was built at a cost of £200,000 and opened as the Croydon Mental Hospital on 26 June 1903. This was reputedly the first institution to be called a 'mental hospital' and never appears officially to have been called an asylum. designed by Neurosurgeon John Crumbie, 1955 The hospital was a pioneering centre for
psychosurgery. Neurosurgeon John Crumbie designed his own
leucotome (instrument for cutting the white matter in the brain) which was constructed by Warlingham's assistant clerk of works, and referred to by
Wylie McKissock, who operated with a Cushing brain needle, as a "mechanical egg-whisk". If the patients resisted the surgery they were given electroconvulsive shocks before being anaesthetised. Crumbie performed 20
leucotomies with the instrument, it tended to catch small blood vessels causing cerebral haemorrhaging, resulting in the deaths of two patients. The hospital also had a specialist Regional unit to treat patients suffering from alcohol dependency, Pinel House. Demolition of the hospital began in 2000. Although the
Grade II listed water tower was retained, the remainder of the buildings were demolished to make way for an up-market housing estate known as Greatpark. ==See also==