Conference Season

Further to the conference announcement we posted last month, here are details of more upcoming conferences which may interest our readers:

The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL is hosting a one-day postgraduate History of Psychology and Psychiatry Conference on 19 March 2011. It is intended to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas amongst postgraduate students in the UK and abroad conducting research in this field.

Birmingham City University has organised a one-day conference on Insanity and the Lunatic Asylum in the 19th Century for 13 May 2011, to be held in the redundant chapel of All Saints’ Hospital (formerly Birmingham Lunatic Asylum), now closed.

Birkbeck College is hosting a weekend conference on The Language of Illness and Pain on 2-3 July 2011. It will be supported by an exhibition exploring the creative interaction between medicine and the humanities.

The 24th Congress of the British Society for the History of Medicine will take place at the University of Guildford from 31 August to 3 September 2011, and will cover topics ranging from ‘museums and archives’ to ‘medicine and madness’.

The 2010 Conference of the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health, devoted to the theme of ‘Body and Mind in the History of Medicine and Health’, will take place at Utrecht University on 1-4 September 2011.

Life in a Victorian Asylum 2: Clerks and Governesses

While certainly connected to moral treatment, improvements at Bethlem were presumably also related to the changing patient profile: throughout the nineteenth century the Hospital became increasingly middle class – by the 1860s, the majority of patients tended to come from lower middle and “educated” working class backgrounds. As Hood lamented in 1854, “The records of all Asylums show how liable are clergymen, authors, artists, governesses, professors and similar persons to be attacked by this terrible calamity. None are more subject to this visitation, none are less able in a pecuniary point of view, to struggle through the trial of such an affliction, yet none are less cared for by the many charitable institutions of our country.” This changing patient profile is indicated in the admissions: 10% of male admissions to Bethlem in 1845-55 were clerks (compared to just 0.01% of the population), while 7% of female admissions were governesses or school mistresses (again, just 0.01% of all women were governesses).

In reflection of this changing class of patient, the Hospital’s wards increasingly came to resemble the Victorian domestic ideal: as the Illustrated London News put it, “that which was once a prison-cell has now become a cheery, domestic room,” while Freeman’s Journal later described photographs of the late nineteenth century hospital as “luxurious” and of “hotel-like magnificence.” This was in line with similar changes described at St Luke’s by Charles Dickens, in his article A Curious Dance Round a Curious Tree. Nonetheless, most contemporary observers were aware that these changes might be little consolation for many patients. As the correspondent from the Illustrated London News concluded: “I thought of the luxuries and the comforts, the plants and the pet animals, the books and the periodicals, the billiard and the ball room, the skill and tenderness of the physician; but all these, to my mind, would not fill up the vast abyss of human mental misery yawning beneath the lofty dome in St George’s fields…”

Bethlem Sunfayre: History, Art and Plenty of Sun!

Well, the weather turned out beautiful for the Sunfayre last Saturday, 10 July. So, on a wet and dreary Tuesday morning, let us transport you back to the gloriously sunny weekend, where those who came on our historic tours of the site needed parasols rather than umbrellas! A big thank you to everyone who visited the museum and archives, and participated in our talks and tours in the education room. We had nearly 300 visitors in total, a remarkable number given the small physical size! Most of the visitors were local, and many had strong connections to the site: we met former Bethlem employees who were fascinated by the history, or those who had been previously treated or visited relatives under treatment here. Others found the event, particularly the guided tours, reassuring, remembering previous concerns in the local press but never having been to the site before.

As well as viewing an exhibition of Louis Wain’s anthropomorphised cat paintings in the museum, huge numbers of visitors attended talks on the history of the hospital: ‘Meet a Victorian Patient’, and ‘Bethlem Patients in the 1850s’. The studio portraits of patients on the walls of the education room fascinated many. Photographed by Henry Hering, a well-known society photographer, in the 1850s, many of the images come in pairs to show a patient during their illness and following recovery. The education officer explained that this was perhaps an attempt to understand insanity through the comparison of facial expressions and posture. The talk was followed by a guided tour of the site, led by the head of the Archives & Museum. The tour offered a rare opportunity to visit the Hospital’s historic boardroom, as well as taking in Dower House, built as a home for the superintendent in the days when he was resident at the Hospital: the remains of one of the Hospital’s air raid shelters can also be seen in the garden. Juxtaposing the old and the new, we passed River House, a state of the art medium-secure unit, opened in 2008, ending at the recently refurbished Walled Garden, an important part of the Hospital’s occupational therapy unit.

One visitor’s experience was not uncommon: “I’ve lived locally for years, and drive past the site all the time, but I never realised it was such a fascinating place with so much history. There should be more days bringing the community in!”

Until next year’s Sunfayre, you can still visit the museum every weekday, from 9:30am – 4:30pm while, from August, we aim to open one Saturday a month (in conjunction with Bethlem Gallery opening): watch this space for more details! You can also arrange group visits to enjoy talks and activities, including those around the Hering photos. For more information, or to book a visit, go to: www.bethlemheritage.org.uk (no booking necessary for individual visitors to the museum or gallery).

Life in a Victorian Asylum 1

Following investigation and subsequent reform in the early half of the nineteenth century (1815 and 1852), Bethlem Hospital increasingly became a very domestic environment, as pictured in the Illustrated London News in 1860. The accompanying article attributed the changes in the Hospital entirely to Bethlem’s new “skilful and benevolent” resident-physician, W. Charles Hood, appointed in 1853; however, the published annual reports show that a large number of changes had already been made under the previous charge of Sir Alexander Morison and Edward T. Monro, the visiting physicians. In 1845, they reported that “much attention has been paid to the amusements of the patients during the past year. The library, billiard and bagatelle rooms are very generally occupied on the male side by the better classes, and much interest excited by books, cards and games.”

These additions to activities in the Hospital, and improvements in the therapeutic environment, were continued by Hood, who adhered strongly to the twin ideals of moral treatment (cure through re-education, with a clear emphasis on environmental and occupational, rather than strictly medical, therapies) and non-restraint (complete abandonment of any type of mechanical restraint, including straps, straight-waistcoats etc. Seclusion, however, was permitted).

Welcome to the Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives and Museum Blog

This blog has been set up by the Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives and Museum and will provide regular updates on the Museum Relocation Project and other activities of the Archives and Museum, written by the small staff team, as well as interesting historical notes from the archives – 450 years of mental health history, including personal accounts of mental illness before 1900 – written by staff and researchers.