Haunting Photos of Patients Treated at Britain’s Most Notorious Psychiatric Hospital, 19th Century

It was called Bethlem Royal Hospital, but it was nicknamed “Bedlam”, London’s famous horror hospital. Founded in 1247, It was the first mental health institution to be set up in Europe, and reaches up to the present day, resulting still active today in the heart of the English capital.
Among the most famous treatments are the “rotational” treatments, invented by Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of the most famous Charles, which involved positioning the patient on a chair suspended in the air that was turned for hours, with the declared aim of inducing vomiting.

Here are some portraits depicting patients of the hospital around the middle of the 1800s. It is a photographic work done by Henry Heiring which aimed to identify the mental illness thanks to the study of the face physiognomy.
These haunting photographs show people who attended the infamous Bethlem Royal Hospital where patients were “treated” by being spun round in chairs in front of paying punters. Most of the patients at the London asylum were diagnosed with acute mania and some arrived after killing people.

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