By 1770, unrestricted public visiting was a thing of the past
and only those with a ticket signed by one of the hospital's
Governors were allowed to enter. By 1799, a report described the
Moorfields Bethlem building as "low and melancholy" and the
hospital's foundations were unstable.
At the time of its move to Moorfields, Bethlem was the only
public institution for those with mental disorders. The only
alternatives were private madhouses which flourished up to the
eighteenth century. These were not restricted to wealthy patients
but often built their business on paupers sent by parish
authorities.
Throughout most of its history, Bethlem has been an acute
hospital for short stay patients. Those who had not recovered at
the end of a 12 month period were generally discharged. From the
1730s, however, an incurable wing was added for a small number of
those discharged uncured from the main hospital and for whom no
alternative existed. Admissions to this department ended in
1919.
Image: The life-size statues of "Raving and
Melancholy Madness" that were displayed at the entrance to Bethlem
Hospital from 1676 to 1815 are the most famous works of the Danish
sculptor Caius Gabriel Cibber, and were significant London
landmarks of their time. These reclining figures dramatise the
binary opposition between manic and melancholic symptoms which lay
at the heart of pre-medieval and early modern understandings of
mental ill-health. Raving Madness is depicted in furious agony (and
in hospital chains, by the way) whereas Melancholy is free of
restraint, but expressionless and unengaged.
