Temple Lodge, Torquay One-Place Study

I started researching the Temple Lodge Home for Inebriate Women in Torquay, Devon, when I found one of my ancestors was a patient there in the 1901 census. I was intrigued… What was this institution like? What treatments did they use? Unable to find much information, and with the only surviving records being two minute books covering part of the time that Temple Lodge operated, I decided to research Temple Lodge and its patients myself.

I have identified 64 patients. I’m researching their lives and gathering data on their ages (when they were patients in Temple Lodge), marital status, birthplaces, and occupations (their own, father’s and husband’s), whether they had any criminal convictions, the age they died and their cause of death to try to understand more about them and the impact alcohol had on their lives.