David Gambell was sorting through his post in June this year when he found a letter addressed to his mother, who had died 25 years earlier. It contained a questionnaire from a local care home. Thinking it was junk mail, he nearly threw it away when he noticed in the top right-hand corner in tiny writing the name “Jean Gambell”.

It was the name of his sister, whom he had not seen for 60 years. Family legend had it that Jean had been committed to Cranage Hall, a mental institution in Cheshire, in 1937 when she was only 16. She had been accused of stealing 2s 6d (12½p in today’s money) from a doctor’s surgery where she worked as a cleaner. The money was later recovered but by that point, Jean had been moved from institution to institution and had been lost in the system. Her large family (her father had 15 children with two women) lost touch over the years and Jean’s whereabouts were forgotten.

“I thought she had died years ago,” says David, 63. “I must have been about three the last time I saw her.” He called Warwick Mews (a care establishment in Macclesfield), which confirmed that his sister was indeed in their care. Together with his brother Alan, 66, the siblings were reunited just days before Jean’s 85th birthday.

“We were warned that she would probably be confused and wouldn’t know who we were,” says Alan. “We saw her and said, ‘Hello Jean, we are your brothers’ and she looked at us and said, ‘Hello Alan, hello David’ and put her arms around us.”

Tragically, Jean suffered a stroke shortly after her brothers’ second visit in September. They believe it was brought on by the emotion of their reunion. She seemed to be rallying but died in her sleep last Thursday, only months after finding her family.

The idea that a teenage girl could have been sectioned for a crime she did not commit and then denied release even when the money in question was recovered is appalling. However, a search through the records held by Cheshire county council, who had been in charge of Jean’s care since 1989, reveals a rather different and tragic story.

According to records, Jean was found in 1937 at the family home in Birkenhead, Merseyside, “neglected and subject to emotional deprivation” at the age of 16. The order prepared by the health service described Jean as a “feeble-minded person” and decreed that she be interred in a psychiatric hospital for an indefinite amount of time under the 1927 Mental Deficiency Act. The order was signed by her father, James.

“Dad felt so guilty for what he had done, signing away Jean’s life the way he did,” says Alan, his face cracking with emotion. “He wrote many letters to the health authority begging for her to be released, but they didn’t do any good.” James committed suicide in 1957.

Just two years later, in 1959, an act was brought in that introduced an appeals system where people like Jean could have their cases reviewed. It is unclear whether the family even knew that they could appeal on Jean’s behalf.

The alleged theft, which Alan and David had always believed to be the reason why their sister was committed, didn’t occur until 1944. Jean had been released “on licence” to live as a maid at the Mary-Ann Scott home in Wallasey, Merseyside when the false allegation of theft was made. Her licence was revoked and she was returned to Cranage Hall.

According to the mental health charity Sane, it was not uncommon for people considered “inconvenient” to be committed for flimsy reasons. The charity believes that the health service used the term “feeble-minded” broadly to refer to people suffering from learning disabilities. Jean could have been suffering from autism, Asperger’s syndrome or even dyslexia, conditions easily dealt with today. But at the head of his poverty-stricken family, Jean’s father might have felt he had no other choice.

However, Alan and David are convinced their sister did not suffer from learning difficulties. She attended the local Birkenhead primary school and then went on to secondary school before she was committed.

“It is extraordinary that people like Jean Gambell could have been ‘put away’ indefinitely,” says Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of Sane. “It has only been by persistent campaigning for the rights of people with mental disorders that they now have the right to appeal against the views of doctors and others, so that today nobody can be detained under the law without the prospect of release.” The charity also says that it would be impossible to estimate how many others there might have been in the same situation as Jean in institutions across the country.

Despite the trauma suffered, Alan and David are quick to comment on the high standard of care that their sister received over the past seven decades. “I think we can safely say she wouldn’t have lived to the age of 85 if she’d been mistreated,” says David.

The brothers are just thankful that they made contact with their sister before her death. “I know that because we were finally reunited she will have passed away in peace,” says Alan.

“We had looked forward to doing the things that normal families do, like visiting her and sending birthday cards. It’s so sad she was taken from us when we’d only just found her.”

“She was robbed of a life,” says David pointedly. “She missed out on the chance to fall in love, get married and have a family. I bet she’s the tip of an iceberg. Who knows how many others there might be like Jean?”

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