Billiards at Bethlem 1

Here is the first of two guest posts by Dr Jane Hamlett of Royal Holloway, University of London, produced in association with its ESRC-funded At Home in the Institution project.

As has been previously noted on the Bethlem blog, games such as billiards played an important part in the lives of Bethlem’s Victorian and Edwardian era patients. Here we take a look at closer look at Bethlem’s green baize tables in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Billiards was well established in Victorian Britain. By the later part of the century, the billiard room was a common feature of upper class homes. Billiard rooms and the games that were played there were particularly associated with the men of the house (although we do know that women sometimes joined in). Often decorated in dark colours, adorned with stags heads and even tiger skin rugs, these rooms conveyed elite masculinity.

This image, taken from a domestic advice manual published in 1910, shows an idealised version of the room in the art nouveau style of the early twentieth century.¹

Billiards were found in many asylums but were particularly popular in private establishments like Holloway Sanatorium and Ticehurst, and may have been viewed as especially suitable as they were an accepted upper class pursuit.

At Bethlem there were tables on some male wards, and there was also a billiard room.

In 1909, the hospital magazine Under the Dome noted that Arthur Ward has acquired a table of a very high specification: “This has been carefully levelled and there should be no excuse for missing the balls, provided they are round, since the illumination of the table is equivalent to nine hundred candle power.”

Bethlem’s billiard room, shown here, wasn’t quite as lavish as some at other asylums. But it was carefully decorated. The image shows a rich carpet, highly polished mahogany furniture, and framed prints. A number of well-tended aspidistras are elevated on ornamental pedestals. A glass fronted bookcase at one end of the room, topped by a couple of busts, aligns it with the opulent libraries found in wealthy houses.

But while billiards made institutions seem more like high-end homes, the meaning of the game was transformed within the walls of the asylum.

Patients’ success at the game was often monitored at an institutional level. In 1896 (again, as previously noted), the magazine announced that: “In order to keep a permanent record of the “form” displayed by numerous billiard players in our small community, we propose to keep a quarterly return of all breaks of over 20 made on any of the hospital tables”.

At Bethlem and other private asylums, doctors took a keen interest in patients at play. The game required motivation, concentration, dexterity and some memory, so it is easy to see its practical value as an indicator of mental health. In some asylums, there are even quite lengthy comments on the game in patient case books. It could be a means of making sure that patients followed an established moral code, by refraining from cheating.

But what was the value of this sport for patients?

To be continued

¹ Photograph of Billiard Room from copy of Mrs C.E. Humphry, The Book of the Home, vol.4 (1910), from author’s private collection, not to be reproduced without permission.

Biography and Psychology V: Henry Francis Harding (1826 – 1896)

In September 1896, the editor of Bethlem magazine Under the Dome had “a very serious loss” to report: the death of the un-official “Sub-Editor”, Henry Francis Harding, at the age of seventy. Harding had contributed regularly to the magazine since its foundation, compiling a regular column, Notes Apropos, (which related articles in the outside press to events in Bethlem and vice versa), writing a variety of articles on historical and other topics (signed X. or H.F.H.) and compiling the index to each annual bound volume.¹ In addition, Harding received credit in publications going beyond the Hospital. When Theo Hyslop’s Mental Physiology was published in 1895, he thanked “his friend, Mr. H.F. HARDING, for revisal of the proof-sheet”.²

It would not be obvious from either of these sources that Henry Harding was,throughout this time, a patient at Bethlem, although Harding himself made no secret of this fact. Indeed, he often took it upon himself to remind others of the need to avoid the potential separation (at least to outsiders) between the official function of the hospital and its therapeutic one. For example, in a lengthy report of the opening of the new recreation hall in June 1896 by the Duke of Cambridge, Harding listed the many prestigious persons present, before concluding:

Last but not least (seeing that the raison d’être of the Recreation Hall and of the Hospital, generally, is the patients, and which, it should be added, is practically and in kindly form recognised by those governing, or otherwise controlling the inner life of the Hospital), we were pleased to see present a fair contingent of the said patients, with nurses and attendants..³

In one of his earlier columns, Harding commented that “we who write these notes are of the genus patient (species: “Voluntary”) – and very patient, if a somewhat lengthy abiding in Bethlem be taken – and should it not? – as evidence thereof.”.⁴ When he wrote these lines in 1893, Harding had indeed been at Bethlem for an unusually lengthy period, following his admission in December 1886. His casenotes state that the former Law Stationer (who had left work the previous March, feeling “overworked”, perhaps not surprising at the age of 60), came to Bethlem ”because he felt his misery & agitation would make him lose control.” Nonetheless, he was never certified, and it is entirely possible that it was Harding’s personal situation, rather than his state of mind, that led to his lengthy stay. Elderly and un-married, Henry seems to have come to regard the Hospital as the family he never had, emphatically stating of Bethlem: “therein are we not a happy family! We are, we are…”.⁵

While it is obvious to see the benefit to the Hospital of such an enthusiastic advocate, Harding also reminds us that life within the Hospital was varied, and one person might have multiple roles. Henry Harding was not “just” a Bethlem patient, but also Sub-Editor, social campaigner, chronicler, companion and friend: someone who could legally have left Bethlem at any point, but chose not to. An unusually personal note in the usually factual Physician’s Weekly Report of 19 August 1896 records that “Mr H Harding VB has died of natural causes & his loss will be much felt.”

Photograph of Henry Harding, c. 1886

¹ “Mr H.F. Harding”, Under the Dome , vol. 5, no. 19 (Sept 1896)
² Hyslop, T.B. Mental Physiology, London (1895)
³ Harding, H.F. “Opening of the Recreation Hall by H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge” Under the Dome, vol. 5. No. 18 (June 1896)
⁴ Harding, H.F. “Notes Apropos” Under the Dome, vol. 2, no. 8 (Dec 1893)
⁵ Harding, H.F. “Notes Apropos” Under the Dome, vol. 2, no. 7 (Sept 1893)