Stolen Lives

Directed by Jane Gabriel

“My life was wasted. I was 19 when I went in… all my life’s gone. I could have been happy.” Meanwood Park Colony for mental defectives opened 1920. One man, Samuel Wormald, stalked the teenage mill girls, forced them into his car, and took them straight to Meanwood. He rounded up more than 2000 mill girls, factory workers and children in the Leeds area, who were incarcerated. This film was made as the Colony was closing, and men and women who had been incarcerated against their will for more than 40 years were being set free. Now living independent lives in the community in their old age, they tell their dreadful stories.