15. Being an Asylum Patient 2: Letters from the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, late 19th century

History of Psychiatry Podcast Series

Last week I looked at some regulations from Cardiff District Asylum at the start of the twentieth century. One of their main functions was to restrict communication between patients and the outside world, but it is often difficult to see how patients experienced their lives within institutions. The most abundant records are of what doctors and their staff did to patients. Yet patient letters to the staff or ones they tried to get to outsiders give unique insights into the spectrum of heartfelt attitudes from gratitude to anger and dislike, shown by patients. The uses and abuses of power in the narrow compass of a mental hospital come through very clearly. IMAGE: Wellcome Library, London V0012576. Edinburgh Lunatic Asylum, Scotland. Line engraving by R. Scott after R. Reid. Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/