Tales from the AsylumTales from the AsylumTales from the Asylum

This painting shows the Bethlehem Royal Hospital London, the first asylum for the insane in England from the 13th Century. The word Bedlam is derived from the name of the hospital and became a generic term for all asylums, and colloquially to mean random disorder or chaos. Bedlam was infamous for its ill treatment of the inmates and this picture shows visitors and a man being shackled by attendants (early psychiatric nurses?) and the overcrowding and squalor of the hospital during the mid 1700s..

An account of life on the other side of the walls




Padded Cell Productions