London, July 29: Forty-three women who tested positive for the bacterial disease typhoid were locked up in a British asylum for decades between 1907 and 1992 even though they were cured of the disease, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported on Monday. Most of the women died in solitary confinement at the Long Grove asylum in Epsom, in southern England, it said. Most of the women were given antibiotics to treat the bacterial disease, the report said. But according to two volumes of records discovered in the ruins of the hospital, and nurses who spoke to the network, some of the women were driven mad by their prolonged detentions, the report said. The hospital closed in 1992. Even after they received antibiotic treatments, the BBC said, records show the women continued to be detained on mental health grounds. The report did not indicate why the cases referred to were all female. Some of the women were locked in single rooms where they had no visitors and little social interaction, former nurses told the BBC. "Life was pretty tough; they were seen as objects," Jeanie Kennett, a ward manager who worked at Long Grove for 40 years, said. Former ward worker May Heffernan told the BBC staff members refused to go inside the isolation ward. In a response to the report, the department of health said it was not official health policy to treat people that way. "There was not, and never has been, a policy of incarcerating anyone, in this context," the department said. It said there is longstanding legislation that allows magistrates to order people detained in a hospital if they suffer from a highly infectious disease, and if proper precautions against infecting others would not be taken. Typhoid, caused by bacteria and often spread through contaminated water, was a deadly threat for centuries until the development of antibiotics.