Ox Bow

Janet Cresswell was born in 1931 in Bushey, Hertfordshire, she is the only child of a research chemist father and schoolteacher mother. She was educated at Watford Grammar School, became a secretary and married and divorced an architect by whom she had a daughter. She was erroneously committed to a mental hospital; the treatment and psychological horror of the event made her both physically and mentally ill and she emerged psychologically traumatised by the experience but determined to obtain an explanation for her committal. After her experience at the hands of the mental health services she withdrew from society, emerging only to work to earn a living, her shattered confidence was partially restored by employers treating her well but she was puzzled that psychiatrists labelled her paranoid schizophrenic and wanted her medicated for life. After treatment she experienced some precognitive voices but found no explanation for these paranormal experiences in books by Freud and Jung. Janet stabbed a psychiatrist with a vegetable knife to get him to court to explain why she had been committed to him. As a result Janet was sent to Broadmoor, where she stayed for twenty-seven years. In 1987 the Sunday Times printed her article in their 'Day in the Life' series, it was again published, in abridged form in 2003 with a hundred of the best pieces over the past twenty five years. Her Play, 'The One-Sided Wall' (1988), directed by Nikki Johnson, was performed at the Bush Theatre and elsewhere published by Methuin in their series 'Plays by Women 8'. Janet was transferred to an RSU (Regional Secure Unit) in 2003 where she remains.