Which entry into the archive do you find the most fascinating and why?
My favourite item in the archive is a hand written table created by the Co-Head Physician, Alexander Morison, for the 1841 Annual Report presented to the Governors. It’s almost a metre long and it covers every patient in the Hospital- who they are, where they’ve come from, and, crucially, how the Hospital is treating them. We don’t get this sort of comprehensive overview again in the archives, and 1841 is a really interesting year - the Hospital is moving away from being a place of containment for people with psychiatric issues and into being a provider of a kinder, more humane sort of treatment, and the table reflects a mix of old attitudes and new ideas. Plus it takes up most of my reading room space, which always impresses people! The statues that welcome our visitors to the Museum, Raving and Melancholy Madness, are the two last bits of surviving fabric from the 1676 Bethlem and are both striking and important depictions of mental health issues.
DAVID LUCK,
Archivist at Bethlem: Museum of the Mind
Why is it so important to conserve the historical archive of Bethlem?
Bethlem’s past is a strange tapestry of myth and fact, and I think it’s important to talk about historical truths (and also how the myths emerged). It’s also true that many of the people in our records had very difficult lives because of the stigmas that surrounded mental health conditions, and I think exploring the world they lived in and trying to understand what they went through enables us to look at things in our own lives with greater understanding and humanity. Psychiatry has such an interesting and contested history (and present), and being open about the past by being open with the archive is hopefully a way of building a better understanding of why things work the way they are.
Based upon your knowledge & experience of working with the archive, how do you think perceptions of mental health have changed over the past 100+ years?
I think things have changed enormously, though I think some of these changes are in some ways less about mental health, and more about society per se.
By the early twentieth century there were over quarter of a million people in mental hospitals in the UK. Some of your readers may have heard of Michel Foucalt’s idea of a ‘grand confinement’of ‘social maladjusts’ in the eighteenth century, but in reality this actually arrives 200 years later. At this point in time for most people there was no other treatment than to go to a residential hospital, sometimes for a relatively short time, sometimes for a much longer period. Any admission was accompanied with huge social stigma, at least partly derived from theories of eugenics and ‘degeneration’ that were in vogue. There was a worry that mental health issues were inherited and inevitable, meaning people known to have been in hospital were not fit to be married and have children. When we trace lives from Bethlem in this time we often see a life spent close to family, very often without a partner or children, very often working in family firms and living in family homes.
Things like the traumas of First World War, the discovery of anti-psychotic medicine, the growing awareness of PTSD since the Vietnam war, and I think the willingness of very famous people like Prince William and Prince Harry to speak about mental health have definitely helped remove some of the atmosphere that surrounds mental health issues in this time span.
However, I’m not sure it has necessarily increased understanding - very often serious mental health issues get confused with emotions (feeling depressed and being in a state of clinical depression are two very different things for example), and the recent emergence of neurodivergence in the public realm has further confused the picture. My impression is that the general public are only just starting to understand how common it is to have a mental health issue, and there is still a lot of room for more education - but there is an audience willing to listen to this in today’s society, at least. Steps like severe mental health issues being recognised as disabilities under the 2010 Equalities Act have really helped, and have also lent us a framework in how to think of living with those issues.
The other thing that has changed is that treatment for mental health issues now happens in the community. We are not in a world that would tolerate mass enforced hospitalisation of people. I don’t think anyone would say this is a bad thing in and of itself, but it has meant less money for mental health treatment and it has created a severe shortage of beds for those with acute and intense needs. I think this can create a very exposing environment for people, and it can mean that people can’t always get the help they need. With any luck the positive changes in public attitudes can be married up to a fully working system of care and help, but we aren’t there yet.
I’m thrilled to bring you a new Coffee with a Curator feature for 2025. Previous instalments have featured chats with curators, archivists, historians, and heritage managers from a variety of organisations including police museums, housing associations, and virtual museums. This time, I’m delighted to welcome David Luck, archivist at Bethlem: Museum of the Mind to chat about the history of this famous institution, the importance of preservation, changing attitudes toward mental health and more.
I started by asking him to tell us a bit about himself and the archive at Bethlem: Museum of the Mind.
Bethlem Royal Hospital is the oldest psychiatric hospital in Europe, and possibly the world, and has its roots in the establishment of the Priory of the Order of St Mary of Bethlehem on the edge of London in 1247, near where Liverpool Street Station is today. As time went on the Priory shifted into being a Hospital (initially it provided ‘hospitality’- cheap rent- and then shifted into care), and by 1400 it was specialising in the care of people with mental health issues. Over time the ‘Bethlehem’ was abbreviated both into ‘Bethlem’, the name adopted by the Hospital, and also into ‘Bedlam’, the nightmarish place of chaos that Londoners thought existed within its walls.
Three moves and some 600 years later, Bethlem Royal Hospital is now an NHS psychiatric hospital located, once more, on the edge of London - considerably further out of the centre than it was initially though! Now it is in 200 acres in West Wickham, located on the edge of the Croydon/Bromley border. We moved into the NHS in 1948 having been a charity up until then, and we established a Joint Hospital with the Maudsley, a prestigious psychiatric hospital in Camberwell, south London. The Joint Hospital has evolved into an NHS Trust providing services to four London Boroughs, Lambeth, Southwark, Lewisham and Croydon, as well as some national services. Bethlem provides some 400 in patient beds, and plays its part in helping thousands of outpatients at any one time.
This very short history gives you an idea of why the Museum exists- to explore our history, but also to look at the nature of mental health issues and the experience of those who go through those issues, and to try and tackle the stigma that surrounds these experiences and celebrate the achievements of people with lived experience. We do so using an array of objects, archives and artworks from the past and present, sometimes with a link to the Hospital, but sometimes from other sources. We also try to look at as many voices as possible- and what we might call service user artwork is an excellent way of getting the patient perspective on treatment.
The Museum has a very broad role, but the archive is quite specific- it’s mission is to safeguard and provide access to the records of the Trust and its predecessors. To that end I hold the records of Bethlem, the Maudsley, and also Warlingham Park, a large residential hospital that was run by the Trust in the 1990s.
I’ve been working in archives since 2007, and a trained archivist for fourteen years. I came here five years ago from what was then London Metropolitan Archives where I was involved in running some of the teams that give public access to the records. Today I catalogue records, I provide access to the collections for researchers, I give talks, help manage our busy school group programme and I work with the modern day Hospital to identify and preserve their records- a real challenge in the digital world!
I’ve absolutely loved working here. It feels like important work to be exploring the stories from our history and getting them out into the world.
Artwork by Peter Spells
Can members of the public, e.g., authors, genealogists, etc, access the archive? If so, how?
Absolutely, we are the place of public deposit for the records of the NHS Trust and so a big part of my duty is to give access to the records as best I can to anyone who wants to see them!
Unless there’s something specific someone is looking for, I always recommend visiting The Museum, which is open Wednesday to Saturday 9.30am to 5pm. The displays incorporate the archives, and give a taste of what we hold. You can see how to get here on this page: https://museumofthemind.org.uk/visit
The archives are open by appointment with me Monday to Friday 10am to 4.30pm, but it’s really about finding a convenient date. There’s more about our holdings here: https://museumofthemind.org.uk/collections/archives and our catalogue is here https://archives.museumofthemind.org.uk/brha.htm, and you can get in touch with me by selecting ‘Archives’ on our contact page here:
https://museumofthemind.org.uk/contact
I’d like to thank David Luck for taking the time to answer my questions. I’m sure you found his answers as fascinating as I did. If you’d like to visit Bethlem: Museum of the Mind, follow the instructions outlined by David above. Clicking on the button below will also take you to their website.
~ T.G. Campbell, January 2025
Bow Street Society logo artwork by Heather Curtis: mouseink@gmail.com
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Above: Handwritten table created by the Co-Head Physician, Alexander Morison, for the 1841 Annual Report to Governors.
Above: The statues Raving and Melancholy Madness, the last pieces which survive from the fabric of Bethlem Hospital in 1676.