AIDS: THE LOST VOICES
Will & Gloria look at the story of Angela Wilson who was diagnosed HIV positive in 1987 while on remand for shoplifting. Angela shares her story with a tabloid that dubs her "The AIDS Timebomb" before sharing Angela's heartache of becoming a drug addict at the hands of her abusive partner, turning to prostitution, and attempting suicide after her son is put up for adoption after she is diagnosed with "AIDS".
Staying in Manchester, this time In 1985 a 29-year-old man named Roger Youd was subject to a court order to be detained in Monsall Hospital when expressing he wanted to merely “go home”. Manchester council stated the order under the Public Health Act 1984 was sought because Roger was "bleeding" and given he had “AIDS” he was in their view “very dangerous” to the public. Little did they know the story would cause a national "furore" and Roger would eventually appeal to the Crown Court.
IN ORDER OF PODCAST EPISODE - CLICK TO ENLARGE (OPENS IN NEW WINDOW)
ANGELA MARY Wilson was born on 10th April 1965. It appears from light research that her adoptive parents, Mary (nee Daly) and Melvin Wilson who married in December 1964 registered Angela as a new-born in Preston, Lancashire the following spring.
As Angela shared with the Sunday Mirror journalist, life had not been easy for her. Her first love and father of her child Liam had introduced her to drugs. This led on to petty crime and prostitution before Angela learnt she was HIV positive in 1987.
ROGER GEORGE Youd was born on 22 May 1956 in Flintshire, Wales to parents Nellie (nee Hughes) & Joshua Spencer Youd. Roger was one of three boys, his eldest brother James Duncan was born in 1951 but sadly passed away in 1952 aged only 14-months.
Roger born 1956, was followed by his younger brother Carlton in 1960. The boy’s father Joshua ‘Spencer’ Youd passed away in 1974 when Roger was 18 years old. The boy’s mother Nellie Youd passed away in 1998, Roger had sadly passed 13 years prior.
38 Detention in hospital of person with notifiable disease
Where a justice of the peace (acting, if he deems it necessary, ex parte) in and for the place in which a hospital for infectious diseases is situated is satisfied, on the application of any local authority, that an inmate of the hospital who is suffering from a notifiable disease would not on leaving the hospital be provided with lodging or accommodation in which proper precautions could be taken to prevent the spread of the disease by him, the justice may order him to be detained in the hospital.
An order made under subsection (1) above may direct detention for a period specified in the order, but any justice of the peace acting in and for the same place may extend a period so specified as often as it appears to him to be necessary to do so.
Any person who leaves a hospital contrary to an order made under this section for his detention there shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 1 on the standard scale, and the court may order him to be taken back to the hospital.
An order under this section may be addressed—
(a) in the case of an order for a person's detention, to such officer of the hospital, and
(b) in the case of an order made under subsection (3) above,
to such officer of the local authority on whose application the order for detention was made, as the justice may think expedient, and that officer and any officer of the hospital may do all acts necessary for giving effect to the order.
Section 38 taken from the original Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984
BMJ: Click to open article
On the 19 October 1985 the British Medical Journal published an article also questioning the validity of section 38 being applied in the case of Roger Youd.
The legal correspondent seems to have the same questions we had when trying to make sense of section 38 when HIV/AIDS was/is not a “notifiable disease”. You can read the one page article HERE.
Manchester News 14 Sep 1985
ANNA ELIZABETH Jones. Manchester’s Medical Officer behind the application for the local authority to detain Roger Youd against his will, died from old age on 17 August 2023.
It is disappointing we will not get to ask Mrs Jones if her detaining Mr Youd was due to her underlying prejudice, ignorance or hysteria to someone having the “gay plague” as the press dubbed it?
And what was it that made Mr. Youd to be “very dangerous” to the public that set him apart from everybody else who was HIV/AIDS positive, and could spontaneously “bleed” from a whole manner of accidents or injuries? Purportedly specialising in ‘infectious diseases’ was she really not aware of the routes of transmission of HIV/AIDS that were documented well before 1985?
Did she really “retire” as Manchester’s Medical Officer the same week Mr. Youd won his appeal or was she pushed given she caused a national “furore”.
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