From The Murders At White House Farm:
When June didn't respond to medication or psychoanalysis,she was given a course of electroshock therapy,receiving the treatment on at least six occasions at St. Andrew's. Lying on a gurney in a hospital gown,the patient would be injected twice;first with a general anaesthetic,then with a muscle relaxant. A mouth guard stopped her from biting her tongue,and oxygen was administered through a face mask. Two metal plates were applied to the temples where conducting gel had been rubbed onto her skin,delivering a series of high-voltage electrical pulses into the brain to produce an epileptic fit. Electroshock took half an hour ,with pulses lasting between five and fifteen seconds. The patient was then turned on her side,ingesting oxygen until the muscle relaxant wore off. A severe headache,sore muscles,and nausea habitually followed. Memory loss was another side effect,usually short term,although some patients reported permanent partial loss.
June was said to have made a full recovery as a result,but the procedure could not address underlying issues or prevent remission. During her absence,Nevill had shared the care of Sheila with family members. When his wife returned home,a seventeen-year-old girl was taken on as full-time nanny. Julia Saye was never aware of any problems in the household and regarded her employers as friends,remaining in touch with them until the end of their lives.
From Colin's book "In Search of the Rainbow's End"
In their book The Family Crucible,family therapists Augustus Napier and Carl Whitaker talk about the family as a "system" in which all members actively participate-albeit unconsciously-as in a biological organism. For example if one part is "sick",then all the parts are sick,and the person referred to as the "presenting problem" is often not really sick but a manifestation of the entire family dynamic-like the fruiting body of a fungus being only the outward representation of something that inhabits and eats away the fabric of an entire tree. It can emerge on any part of the tree,or family.
This all begins to back up my own suspicion that the sickness in the Bamber family had little if anything to do with Bambs's and Jeremy's families of origin but was connected,instead,to their environment-the home they grew up in. In that respect,it was obviously not congenital.
The unfortunate knock-on effect-I see this now but could not have known then-is that by keeping Bambs away from June as much as possible,giving her both space and time to heal,the disturbance was likely to break out in the next weakest link of the family structure,that being Jeremy. It was unlikely to re-emerge in June because her condition had been effectively contained through medical treatment rather than worked out through a process of psychotherapy;the underlying emotional causes having still not been dealt with.
