old people's home

Ms Beal said that a secure old people's home would need a higher ratio of trained staff to each prisoner and would be expensive.

“My mother died on Monday 7 April in the old people’s home attached to the hospital at Pontoise, where I had installed her two years previously,” she starts her 1987 reminiscence “A Woman’s Story,” which echoes Albert Camus’ opening sentence in “The Stranger”: “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.”

Originally built as a home for businessman and mill owner Henry Hoyle Hardman, Horncliffe House had also served as an old people's home and a hotel before closing in 2007.

Just after midnight on 4 January this year, 93-year-old Eileen Dean was severely beaten by a fellow resident at her south London old people's home, and died in hospital that evening.

“When they are forced into old people’s homes, many go into depression, into dementia … they are confused that their children or relatives have abandoned them,” said Daniel Francis, the administrator at Melfort Old People’s home.