Throughout its long history, the Bethlem Royal Hospital in London, colloquially
known as Bedlam, has been the center of rumors of patient abuse and neglect. These
rumors continue to permeate the history of madness even though recent studies have
tried to depict Bethlem as a misunderstood institution which did the best it could. The
truth lies somewhere between these two poles. Historical Bethlem was a place where the
insane were indeed mistreated, and 1642 and 1658 were the years when abuse became
the norm for centuries to come. The years of the Civil War and Interregnum were of
special importance to Bethlem, marking the point when it became not only a hospital
with an undeclared policy for the tolerance of patient abuse and neglect, but a financially
solvent hospital as well. After the careful examination of the administrative records of
the Bethlem Court of Governors for the years 1642-1659, this study reports that not only
did abuse occur in Bethlem, but that the administration at the hospital, its Court of
Governors, was aware of such abuse and preferred to turn a blind eye to patient abuse
and neglect, occasionally becoming party to such offenses themselves if the price was
right.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/3995 |
| Date | 16 August 2006 |
| Creators | Bilhartz, Jessica Lee |
| Contributors | Rosenheim, James |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | 427157 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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