Portraits from a "lunatic asylum"
Inmates at West Riding Asylum, in Yorkshire, England
Europeana
c. 1869
Mania of suspicion, monomania of pride — obsolete diagnoses that would be seen as part of wider mental illnesses today. The men and women in these portraits became the labels themselves, rather than people first.Still, by the 1800s, psychiatry was becoming established as a medical speciality and treatments were considered more humane, with a basis in clinical science. The West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum, where these portraits were made, was a prime example of an operating Victorian mental institution. Designed to keep patients isolated from the rest of society, the hospital was entirely self-sufficient with its own bakery, butchery, dairy, shop and laundry and a large estate devoted to farming and market gardening, where the more able patients were expected to work. The hospital closed in 1995 and was converted into apartments.Another example and one of Britain's first psychiatric hospitals, Bethlem Hospital in London raised money by opening its doors to casual onlookers, who were expected to make charitable donations. From at least the year 1610, patients were put on display, partly as a form of moral instruction. Eventually, people nicknamed the hospital "Bedlam," synonymous with chaos and disorder.
Lunatics of every description are shut up. Many inoffensive madmen walk in the big gallery. The second floor is reserved for dangerous maniacs, most of them being chained and terrible to behold. - César de Saussure's account of a visit to Bethlem, 1725
