The Sleep Room

The Sleep Room is thriller novelist Jon Stock's investigation into one of the most revered figures in British postwar medicine, the private world of the Sleep Room in Ward Five, and the science of the psychology that produced it. Dr. William Sargant ran a lucrative private practice and published multiple books on psychiatry, and he was awarded the Starkey medal and prize by the Royal Society of Health for his work on psychiatric medicine. But what he was best known for was the apogee of his career: the Sleep Room in Ward Five. This was a dark gallery where patients selected by Sargant were subjected to deep narcosis, sleeping for more than twenty-one hours per day for weeks at a time, and roused only for sessions of electroconvulsive therapy. When his patients finished their treatment, they had lost not only memories of trauma, but also any sense of who they were or why they were there. At least four of them died in the room. Between 1964 and 1972, hundreds of women were treated in the now-shuttered ward of the Royal Waterloo Hospital for Women and Children. A group of survivors, now in their sixties and seventies, have come forward to share their stories and advocate for change.