What Does The Inside Of An 18th Century Mental Asylum Look Like?

[cuddyclothes]

Hello, it's me again, the author of THE STORY THAT WILL NOT DIE.  All of the information I have gotten here has been absolutely invaluable

Comments

[ooxc]

here are two you could do more research on - opened in 1880s and were still in use as psychiatric hospitals in the 1970s:
Cane Hill, Coulsdon and St Bernard's Hanwell

http://www.abandoned-britain.com/PP/canehill/1.htm

http://www.europeanjourneys.org/biogs/E000007b.htm

[conuly]

I'm guessing that communal meals are easier for staff, and (if they're trying to help people, or at least claiming to do so) easy to justify as "Good For Them", socializing and all that. I don't know much about it, but it makes sense that meals would predominately be served communally.

[ooxc]

Yes, I'm sure that meals would be an important social event

[ooxc]

Just noticed a muddle - your tag is 1800s but you say eighteenth century in the post

[cuddyclothes]

Yes, I kept getting mixed up there. The timeline is sort of 1810-1850, sort of.

[wildemoliere]

William Hogarth's "The Interior of Bedlam." Google it, the pic will come up. William Hogarth's engravings are a good visual indicator of a lot of the 18th century. Madhouses didn't change from that a great deal until well into the 1800s.

Also, the beginning and end of the film Amadeus (probably somewhere on YouTube) is by all accounts pretty accurate (the events in the movie = almost totally fictitious, but the madhouse is accurate).

Try googling "Bedlam" and see what happens.

[moon_custafer]

Here's the wiki entry on St Luke's, where Kit Smart was held - it has links to images of the interior and exterior.