Asylums. Used a thousand times in horror films, the age-old trope of the tortured patients returning to exact their revenge. But what exactly happened behind the closed doors of the intimidating buildings? Here are a few facts about one of the most famous asylums, better known as 'Bedlam'.
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Bethlem Royal Hospital was founded in 1247 and was built to help fund the Crusades. It was initially just outside the walls of London, near Bishopsgate, before moving to Moorfields in 1676. In 1815, it moved to St George’s Fields in Southwark and its current location in Monks Orchard in 1930. It is now a modern-day psychiatric facility, but historically, it was a terrible place that tortured its patients to the point it was nicknamed ‘Bedlam’ in the 14th century. Chaos, confusion, madness and terror raged behind the hospital walls. Here are a few facts about the infamous asylum that has inspired countless tales of horror.
Two doctors had to sign to commit someone to say the patient was insane. Many of these doctors could be paid off.
In 1277, Bedlam started to take in patients classified as ‘insane’. A record from 1403 states that some of the equipment used included ‘four pairs of manacles, eleven chains, six locks and two pairs of stocks’.
Patients included those with learning disabilities and those with epilepsy. A lot of the patients in Bedlam were from impoverished backgrounds. Many people who had a mental or physical disability were abandoned there by their families.
Some of the patients had either attempted or committed horrific forms of murder.
Many women were committed for various conditions, including depression, hysteria, senile dementia and even infidelity. Women were sometimes committed simply because their husbands found them inconvenient.
During the Middle Ages, physicians believed that the body, not the brain, caused madness.
In 1450, the Mayor of London described Bedlam as a ‘place [where may] be found many men that be fallen out of their wit. And full honestly, they are kept in that place, and some be restored onto their wit and health again. And some be abiding therein forever, for they be fallen so much out of themselves that it is incurable unto man’.
Bedlam was run by the Catholic Church until 1346.
In 1601, the government passed an act that parishes could only care for those who were physically or mentally unable to work. As a result, some homeless people would act ‘insane’ so they could be housed in Bedlam rather than the workhouse.
In the 17th century, Bedlam was open to the general public. Like a human zoo, people would pay a shilling to walk around and view the ‘madmen’. There were up to 96,000 visitors a year.
William Hogarth (1697 – 1764) was an artist. He painted a series of paintings called ‘A Rake’s Progress’; this involved eight paintings of a man named Tom Rakewell. It depicts Rakewell inheriting a lot of money, gambling it all and losing it before ending up as a patient in Bedlam.
Alexander Cruden (1699 – 1770) was a writer. He was briefly incarcerated in Bedlam and said of the doctors there, ‘But is there so great Merit and Dexterity in being a mad Doctor? The common Prescriptions of a Bethlemitical Doctor are a Purge and a Vomit, and a Vomit and a Purge over again, and sometimes a Bleeding, which is no great mystery’.
In the 17th century, Bedlam had two sculptures at the entrance. They were called Melancholy and Raving Madness.
Richard Dadd (1817-1886) is considered a classic artist. After being committed to Bedlam, he did many of his paintings; he had stabbed his father to death, believing him to be the Devil.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, the Monro family became the physicians for Bedlam who ‘treated’ the patients. These treatments were so inhumane that Bedlam started turning away patients because they suspected the patients wouldn’t survive them.
Charles Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, invented the notorious ‘rotational therapy’. Patients sat in a chair, which was then suspended from the ceiling. The chair was then spun around up to 100 times a minute, leading the poor patient to vomit all over themselves. At the time, doctors believed vomiting would ‘purge’ the madness from the body.
Horrifically, doctors didn’t just believe vomiting purged the body. They would also strap patients into straight jackets and force them to consume laxatives. They literally thought you could shit the illness out.
Eliza Haywood’s 1725 play The distress’d orphan or, Love in a mad-house used Bedlam as a backdrop, describing ‘the rattling of Chains, the Shrieks of those severely treated by their barbarous Keepers, mingled with Curses, Oaths, and the most blasphemous Imprecations, did from one quarter of the House shock…tormented Ears while from another, Howlings like that of Dogs, Shoutings, Roarings, Prayers, Preaching, Curses, Singing, Crying, promiscuously join’d to make a Chaos of the most horrible Confusion’.
In 1811, Doctor William Black wrote his dissertation on insanity, stating ‘the strait waistcoat, when necessary, and occasional purgatives are the principle remedies’.
At the time, bloodletting was an acceptable way of curing many illnesses. Patients were bled painfully with leaches or had their skin deliberately blistered. This treatment often proved fatal.
Edward Wakefield (1774-1854), a leading reform advocate within asylums, visited Bedlam in 1814. He saw James Norris, an American marine committed and isolated since 1800. His arms were forced to his sides with iron bars, and he was chained to the wall by his neck for over a decade. Visitors, including members of parliament, stated that James was rational and did not appear insane.
In the 1800s, William Hood became a physician at Bedlam. He wanted to rehabilitate those who were in for illness and separate them from those who were committed for crimes. Later, Hood would be knighted for his services to the hospital.
In 1857, 23-year-old Eliza Josolyne was committed to Bedlam. She had been the only servant to work in a 20-room house, and every room would need a fire lighting every day as well as cleaning. Eliza’s records stated insanity from overwork.
When the new Crossrail System was being built, they dug into the ground at Liverpool Street. They found a mass grave: patients from Bedlam who had died and been unceremoniously buried.
In 2010, the medical staff and police used excessive force to restrain 23-year-old Olaseni Lewis. Nobody intervened, as he lost consciousness and died as a result.
Historian Roy Porter (1946-2002) wrote that Bedlam was a ‘symbol for man’s inhumanity to man, for callousness and cruelty’.
The legacy left by Bedlam is genuinely horrendous, and one cannot begin to imagine what those poor patients suffered. Much work is still needed to remove the stigma of mental health and those who are neurodivergent, but thankfully, society is progressing, and I hope we never see asylums like this again. As always, thanks for reading, take care, and I will see you next time.
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