Carstairs State Hospital

The State Hospital is a psychiatric hospital located close to the villages of Carstairs and Carstairs Junction, in South Lanarkshire, Scotland. It provides care and treatment in conditions of high security for patients from Scotland and Northern Ireland. Carstairs Hospital was constructed between 1936 and 1939. Although it was planned and financed as a facility for "mental defectives", it was first used as a military hospital, during the Second World War. The War Office relinquished control of the hospital in 1948, when it became the State Institution for Mental Defectives. On 1 October 1957 there was a large transfer of 90 criminally insane prisoners from the criminal lunatic department at HM Prison Perth to Carstairs, and this new combined unit became The State Mental Hospital.