Lost Souls: Scottish Lib Dem leader lodges Holyrood motion for national asylum memorial
Alex Cole-Hamilton has lodged a motion at the Scottish Parliament calling for the lives of asylum patients to be recognised
Last updated 17th Nov 2025
The leader of the Lib Dems in Scotland has called for a national memorial to recognise people who lost their lives in Victorian "lunatic" asylums across Britain.
Alex Cole-Hamilton has lodged a motion at the Scottish Parliament calling for the lives of asylum patients to be recognised.
Patients who died in the mental health system during the Victorian era were often buried in anonymous graves, in plots that have since become overgrown, neglected, or simply forgotten.
So-called "pauper lunatics" who died in what were then called mental asylums have been doomed to an eternity of anonymity.
But now, following our Lost Souls investigation, a motion has been lodged at the Scottish Parliament calling for national memorial to be created to return dignity to potentially thousands of people whose final burial sites have been forgotten.
LISTEN: Our Lost Souls documentary uncovers "national scandal"
Calls for action to remember Scotland's "Lost Souls"
The motion for a memorial has been lodged by Scottish Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton who wants to see that:
"Parliament acknowledges the presence of unmarked graves outside former psychiatric hospitals across Scotland, 831 of which have been identified so far; understands that these graves represent the last resting place of patients of asylums and psychiatric hospitals who died in isolation and were interred without memorial in the care of the state.
Mr Cole Hamilton tells us:
“I've been very greatly moved by the Lost Souls investigation.”
“I think it's uncovered the reality that for decades - if not centuries - in Scotland, people who found themselves in mental institutions and asylums were largely regarded as second-class citizens and forgotten about.”
“Not only were they forgotten about, but they often died without marker or memorial and were buried in mass graves.”
“This is, I think, symptomatic of a bygone era and the stigma of mental ill health at the time.”
“It's important that we campaign, and I hope to, by lodging this motion in Parliament, spearhead this campaign to see those souls recognised and indeed memorialised.”
“The Lost Souls investigation has uncovered the much bigger journey that we've been on as a society."
"In bygone eras, people were locked away."
“They died in exclusion and isolation and then were unceremoniously interred in the ground without marker.”
“I like to think we've come a great distance, but it's a reminder that we're still on that journey.”
Our Lost Souls investigation was launched earlier this year, after we identified up to a quarter of a million graves across the UK at risk of being neglected, or even sold.
Some have been reclaimed by local communities, where heritage and history are now celebrated, while many more lie untouched, often in plain view, but with no clear markings that show what really happened there.
Petition calling for a national memorial
In the summer, a Westminster petition was launched calling for a UK-wide national memorial to be created, while also empowering volunteers to research and uncover other grave sites in their local area.
The Motion going before MSPs goes on to call up the Scottish Government "to work with local authorities to identify these graves and to provide a fitting national memorial to commemorate all those buried in the grounds of psychiatric institutions over the centuries".
Since we launched the project and the Lost Souls documentary, charities, mental health campaigners and politicians in all Parliaments have called for action to right an historic wrong.
SNP Health Secretary Neil Gray is among them.
And Cole-Hamilton acknowledged the work we'd done in raising this issue, congratulating Cool FM for "uncovering the facts of this story through their Lost Souls investigation."
Returning dignity to "Lost Souls" across the UK
Listen to the Lost Souls documentary here.
If you want to contact our Senior Correspondent Mick Coyle about the Lost Souls investigation email mick.coyle@bauermedia.co.uk