Bethlem Royal Hospital

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Among madmen (book illustration from 1710)
BethlemRoyalHospital.jpeg

The Bethlem Royal Hospital is a psychiatric hospital in London . It is also commonly referred to as Bedlam , a corruption of the English word for Bethlehem . The term bedlam has found its way into the English language as a synonym for chaos or tumult .

Along with the “ Narrenturm ” in Vienna , it is one of the oldest facilities for people with a mental disorder . Although it has been one of the pioneers of humanitarian therapy in recent times, it is still known today for cruel and inhumane conditions in the 17th and 18th centuries.

history

The hospital was built in 1330 at what is now Liverpool Street Station in London , and from 1357 patients with mental illnesses were admitted. The name Betlam first appeared on city maps in the early 16th century. The conditions were devastating, patient care was limited to the bare essentials, and irrepressible inmates were chained up. Around thirty inmates were kept in the building on average at that time. In 1675 Bedlam moved to a building just outside the city limits designed by Robert Hooke . The playwright Nathaniel Lee was imprisoned there for five years. The “mentally ill” were referred to as patients for the first time in 1700 , and between 1725 and 1734 the building was divided into two wards for “curable” and “incurable”. In 1815 Bedlam was relocated to a new building in Southwark , which now houses the Imperial War Museum . Eventually she moved to south London in 1930, where she is based in Bromley to this day .

literature

Web links

Commons : Bethlem Royal Hospital  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 51 ° 22 ′ 53 "  N , 0 ° 1 ′ 55"  W.