I Don't Want To Go To Chelsea

Elvis Costello & The Attractions - (I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea Lyrics here
Watching The Detectives got me started, and then this tune popped up. I recognized the tune, and I must like it because I went back and played it again. Never had this opportunity before. Always before I had heard it on the car radio, and then it was gone. Yes, it would be nice to have everything-all-the-time but life seldom goes like that, especially when you are running just as fast as you can.

Anyway, a comment about this song got me to looking for Chelsea Asylum. Seems The Grand Old Duke of York (he of ten thousand men) started the trend of considering the welfare of the common soldier, which led, I suspect, to the consideration of peasants as people, and you can see where that has got us. Anyway, he founded the Royal Military Asylum (which is where the modern term of RMA comes from - not) which was an orphanage for children of soldiers.

That was 200 years ago and I don't think that's what Elvis was singing about. The RMA seems to have gone out of business. In modern times I imagine there have been a number of clinics set up to treat various kinds of mental problems, like drug habits, for people who could afford them. People (with money) have a bright child with problems, a psychiatrist sees that there are people he can help (or at least try to help) and they can afford to pay for the staff necessary to run an inpatient facility. So he opens a clinic. He might have some success, he might have none. Word gets around, or it doesn't, which could be any combination of good and bad*, or he gets tired of the dealing with people with more money than brains and pulls the plug.

* he has some success (good), and word gets around (good), or
   he has no success (bad) and word doesn't get around (good), etc, etc.

Natasha and Elsie considered here.