Nowadays, we have a decent understanding of mental health and many who need help can find it in psychiatric hospitals.

That was not always the case, though. In the past, people with mental issues were sent to lunatic asylums; not to get treatment, but to keep them out of the way of the general population. Many historical figures finished their days in such an institution, long forgotten by the world around them.

10. The Savior of Mothers

Nowadays, Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis is remembered as the “savior of mothers” for his efforts to get maternity doctors to wash their hands to limit the spread of childbed fever. And the reward for his work was getting locked up in an asylum where he was abused and beaten by the guards, dying a short while later from an untreated gangrenous wound.

Semmelweis began his medical career in 1846 as an obstetrical assistant at the Vienna General Hospital. The institution had two maternity wards for underprivileged women, and Semmelweis noticed that the one where he worked had a much higher maternal mortality rate caused by childbed fever – almost five times higher, in fact. 

What was the source of this huge discrepancy? Semmelweis eliminated each possible motive one by one until he concluded. His ward was staffed by doctors, the other by midwives. What did they do differently? The midwives washed their hands, that’s what. Semmelweis told his students to start washing their hands before working with patients and he saw the mortality rate plummet. He then published his findings, hoping to start a medical revolution.

The medical world, however, was not ready to listen because Semmelweis’s ideas went against established opinion. Instead, he was ridiculed and criticized by his colleagues and spent the next two decades screaming into the void uselessly. Semmelweis became a pariah. He took to drinking and openly bashing his critics with vitriol and desperation. 

Eventually, Semmelweis had a mental breakdown and was committed to an asylum in 1865. He died of sepsis just a few weeks later and his passing was barely acknowledged by the medical community.

9. The Woman Who Joined the Army

Hannah Snell was an 18th-century British woman who became rather notorious for disguising herself as a man and joining the military. 

Snell’s unusual career path started in 1745 when she decided to assume the identity of her brother-in-law, James Gray, and head out into the world alone to find her husband who had left her a few years earlier. After discovering that he was dead, she enlisted in the army as James Gray. She kept her secret for a while but deserted after spotting an old neighbor and fearing that he might recognize her. Instead of going home, though, Hannah simply traded the army for the Royal Marines, thus likely becoming the first woman to join this fighting arm of the British military. 

She served for several years, sailing first to Lisbon and then to India where she took a bullet to the groin in battle and enlisted the help of a local woman to remove the bullet to maintain her secret identity. Snell finished her tour of duty in 1750 and returned home to her sister. According to legend, she revealed her deception in a pub full of soldiers. Hannah later sold her story to a London publisher and even received a lifetime pension for her service. She lived a long life, but her mental condition deteriorated towards the end, and she was committed to the infamous Bedlam asylum where she died in 1792.

8. The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet

Described as England’s finest rural poet, John Clare had an unrivaled knack for writing poetry that vividly depicted the natural beauty of the English countryside. 

Born in 1793 in the East Midlands, Clare’s working-class credentials were unimpeachable – he was the son of a farm laborer, who had to work the fields himself from a young age to help support his family. He published his first book, Poems Descriptive of Rural Live and Scenery in 1820, but despite his writing receiving lots of praise, he struggled financially all his life and had to keep working manual labor jobs to make ends meet.

This took a toll on Clare, both physically and mentally, and in 1836 his doctor recommended he stay at High Beech asylum in Essex to recuperate. He spent five years there before simply walking out one day and making the 80-mile journey home on foot. However, his respite was brief, and five months later, he was back inside, this time at the Northampton Lunatic Asylum where Clare lived out the last 23 years of his life. He described the place as “the purgatorial hell and French bastille of English liberty, where harmless people are trapped and tortured until they die.”

7. The Man Who Drew Cats

From an English poet, we move on to an English painter – specifically, Louis Wain, a 19th-century London outsider artist who became best known for his pictures of cats. It’s a shame he didn’t live in the Internet age, he would be the most famous artist in the world. Instead, he ended up penniless in a pauper’s asylum.

Unfortunately, his career had a tragic start. Married at 23, Wain’s wife was soon diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. To cheer her up, Wain would draw caricatures of their family cat, Peter. These were meant to be private, but an editor for the Illustrated London News saw them and liked them and commissioned Wain to draw more for his newspaper. Before you knew it, all of London knew Wain as “the man who drew cats.”

Compared to other entries, Louis Wain ended up in an asylum at an advanced age. He was always a bit on the eccentric side, but in his later years, his eccentricity turned to abuse and violence towards his sisters who lived with him. Therefore, in 1924, the 64-year-old Wain was committed to Springfield Hospital in Tooting. He was later moved to nicer accommodations in Bethlem Hospital following a public campaign backed by the Prime Minister at the time, Ramsay MacDonald, and he was allowed to quietly work on his art for the rest of his life. 

6. The Murderous Mathematician

In the mathematical world, André Bloch is remembered for his work in complex analysis, and for having a theorem and a constant named after him. However, his achievements sit under a dark cloud, as Bloch did all his work inside a mental asylum, where he spent most of his adult life after killing three people.

Born in 1893 in Besançon, France, André and his brother Georges were drafted into the army during World War I and both were injured during service. Georges, after losing an eye, was released from service. André, meanwhile, although he was allowed to return home to recuperate, was expected back. This never happened, though, because while on leave, André Bloch murdered his brother, his aunt, and his uncle. 

Afterward, Bloch was committed to the Charenton asylum in the suburbs of Paris, where he spent the next 31 years of his life. The motive behind his crimes remains unclear, but Bloch described it to his psychiatrist as a simple matter of eugenics. He said that mental illness ran in his family on his mother’s side, so he wanted to wipe out that entire branch and only lamented that he didn’t get to finish the job. When his doctor told him that this was a terrifying approach to life, Bloch simply responded:

“You are using emotional language. Above all there is mathematics and its laws.”

5. The Minister of Murder

Born in England in 1880, Thomas Ley moved to Australia in 1886 where he later served as the Minister of Justice for New South Wales and then a Member of Parliament. His career, however, was fraught with controversies and accusations, the most serious of which was the fact that several of his opponents and detractors ended up dead under mysterious circumstances. 

Eventually, the dark clouds surrounding Ley cost him his political career, so he moved back to England with his mistress, Maggie Brook, where he continued his dubious shenanigans. These included some shady real estate deals, promoting a bogus sweepstakes, and acting as a black market dealer during World War II. 

Thomas Ley reached the end of the line in 1947 when he was accused, charged, and convicted in a sensational crime dubbed by the British press as the “Chalkpit murder.” He arranged the death of a man named John McBain Mudie whom he believed was having an affair with Brook. He was due to hang but had his sentence commuted to life in prison at the Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Ultimately, it didn’t matter, since Ley had a cerebral hemorrhage and died soon after being imprisoned.

4. The Mad Archer

Despite what the title might suggest, this story is not about a deranged hunter, but rather a man named Archer – specifically, a 19th-century Scottish actor named Richard Archer Prince. Born near Dundee in 1858, Prince began working in theater from an early age and around 1875 moved to London to make it big.

He didn’t. He mostly had bit parts and always struggled financially, sometimes having to rely on a charity known as the Actor’s Benevolent Fund for assistance. He began drinking heavily and exhibiting odd behavior, which earned him the moniker of “the Mad Archer” from his fellow thespians.

At the exact opposite end of the spectrum sat William Terriss. He was one of the most popular actors of his day. He knew Prince and occasionally tried to find him work, but this did not stop the latter from resenting him due to his success. Eventually, Prince was denied assistance from the Actor’s Benevolent Fund and he, somehow, got it into his head that this was Terriss’s doing. He got his revenge one night by waiting for Terriss outside the Adelphi Theater and stabbing him to death when he arrived.

Prince showed no remorse for his crime. He was obviously found guilty, but judged insane and was sent to Broadmoor. He spent the next 40 years of his life there and became involved with the local entertainment, finally finding a captive audience.

3. America’s First Supermodel

That is just one of the monikers of New York beauty Audrey Munson. She was also dubbed the “American Venus,” “Miss Manhattan,” and many others. She was the model for the Walking Liberty Half Dollar and statues of her still stand proudly at American landmarks such as the Manhattan Bridge, the Pulitzer Fountain, and the Sleepy Hollow cemetery. And yet, she died forgotten in an insane asylum and was buried in an unmarked grave. 

Her troubles began in 1919. The man who owned the boarding house Audrey lived in with her mother, a doctor named Walter Wilkins, had become dangerously obsessed with her to the point that he murdered his wife so the two of them could be together. Although Audrey had no role in the killing, the scandal torpedoed her career and, unable to find any more work, she moved to Syracuse with her mother. Despite her fame, she never earned that much as a model, and what she did earn she spent, so the pair was broke and Audrey’s mother had to sell kitchen utensils door-to-door to make ends meet.

This drastic lifestyle change caused Munson to attempt suicide in 1922. In the years that followed, she became more unstable, so on her 40th birthday, her mother had her committed to the St. Lawrence State Hospital for the Insane. She was briefly moved to a nursing home, but Audrey kept running away from there, so she was moved back to the mental institution. She died in 1996, at the age of 104.

2. The Marquis de Sade

Donatien Alphonse François de Sade might be the most notorious French author in history, although everyone knows him better under the name of the Marquis de Sade. His novels outraged 18th-century France due to their depictions of sex, violence, blasphemy, and sadism, a word which, you guessed it, is named after him. 

It seems that the Marquis enjoyed at least some of the topics he wrote about in his own life, which led to his arrest and imprisonment on multiple occasions. Usually, he was let off with a fine or his family used its influence to secure his release following a brief stay in custody. 

This worked until it didn’t. Specifically, until the French Revolution which ended the monarchy and brought Napoleon to power. He absolutely loathed de Sade’s work, calling it “abominable” and the writings of “a depraved imagination.” Napoleon had the Marquis arrested again in 1801 and, this time, there was no reprieve. De Sade was diagnosed with “libertine dementia” and committed to an insane asylum for the last 11 years of his life. He spent that time writing and putting on plays. At least, until 1809 when he was sent to solitary confinement, had all pens and paper confiscated, and was denied any more visitors. 

1. The Great Composer

As one of the greatest German composers of the Romantic era, Robert Schumann needs no introduction. Born in 1810 in the Kingdom of Saxony, Schuman began studying music at age seven and, not long after, was working on his own compositions. Despite dying at the age of 46, Schumann composed almost 150 works. 

He might have been even more prolific if he hadn’t struggled with mental illness throughout his life. In 1854, his delusions became strong enough that he feared he might harm his family. After attempting suicide by jumping off the Rhine Bridge, Schumann requested that he be committed to an insane asylum where he spent another two years before his death.

What exactly was the cause of his psychosis has been hotly debated ever since and there is still no concrete answer. His doctor at the asylum claimed Schumann’s condition was brought on by overwork and exhaustion. Others believe that the composer suffered from schizophrenia or manic-depressive disorder, and even studied his works to see if any symptoms were reflected in his music. It’s possible it ran in the family, since Robert’s mother had bouts of depression, his father once suffered a nervous breakdown, and his sister committed suicide. 

Even the Nazis tried their hand at diagnosing Schumann, although they quickly concluded that he suffered from vascular dementia – a physiological condition. After all, to them, Robert Schumann was a hero of German music, and they couldn’t promote anyone with psychiatric problems like that.

The 1845 County Asylums Act made it mandatory for every county in England and Wales to build at least one asylum large enough to contain its “pauper lunatics”—the official term used for those too poor to afford private care.

Soon after, over 130 immense buildings appeared across Britain, housing between 350 and 3,500 patients each. As their gothic towers loomed from secluded hilltops, the terrifying notion of the lunatic asylum lodged itself in the public imagination forever.

While they deserve their reputation for the very real horrors inflicted on tens of thousands of patients, either through direct abuse or the many horrific and ultimately discredited “cures” used in asylums at one time or another , this list attempts to show that not everything about them was negative. It will also reveal how rumor, imagination, and popular fiction still stoke misconceptions that make their legend appear even darker.

10 Committal

While many believe that an “inconvenient” family member or spurned lover could be locked up in an asylum almost on a whim, this was not the case, by Victorian times at least.

The County Asylums Act saw standardized regulations applied to all buildings housing patients. All were regularly inspected by the Lunacy Commissioners to check adherence to the legislation and minimum standards of food, exercise, entertainment, etc. However, inspections were made without notice and not considered complete until they had seen or accounted for every single patient in the case files.

The asylums were always overcrowded, and those who ran the building understood overcrowding was bad for the “recovery rates” they would have to publicize each year. As a result, those who paid for the asylums and those inspecting them were not keen to allow people to be taken in and be clothed, fed, and managed purely because some family member had dumped them at their door, claiming they were insane.^[1]

9 Padded Cells

Little evokes the horror of the asylum quite like the padded cell. Popular fiction and film, in particular, present them as the ultimate embodiment of a human life discarded and left to suffer in terrifyingly absolute isolation. However, they were created as a solution to a far worse problem.

“Mechanical restraints” have been used to prevent patients from harming themselves or others since the earliest days of the asylums. Manacles held hands and feet together, and brutal strait jackets, leather harnesses, or chains bound patients to chairs or beds. Eventually, pioneering superintendents such as Dr. Robert Gardiner-Hill and Dr. John Connolly rejected the medical thinking of their day and began reducing their use, having padded cells fitted instead.

Although open to abuse or misuse, they served the same function but with far less risk to patients and staff—both often injured as patients were wrestled into awkward mechanical restraints in the past. The padded cells were introduced because they were believed to be safer, more dignified, and generally more humane than what preceded them.^[2]

8 Alcohol

Alcohol may not seem an obvious substance to introduce into a lunatic asylum, but all would have kept “medicinal” spirits such as brandy in locked cupboards. And up until the 1880s, many even had their own breweries. For example, at Bedlam, the corridors contained pipes with taps on them, and each attendant working there had a special key so they could pour themselves a glass whenever they wished.

Beer was viewed differently in the past and seen as a food supplement and a way of providing something safe to drink when clean water was harder to come by. Generally speaking, it would be a weak ale at only 2-3% alcohol and served with meals, so it wasn’t intended to get anyone tipsy. Male patients who worked on the asylums’ farms were often given a pint of beer with their evening meal. It was phased out in the 1880s as asylums began increasingly treating mental health problems believed to have been caused or exacerbated by alcohol.^[3]

7 Pregnancy

Perhaps the most commonly-repeated story regarding committal to an asylum is that of the young girl or unmarried woman who finds herself there due to pregnancy. As noted in the first entry, by the 1840s, all asylums were subject to scrutiny by the Lunacy Commissioners, and reasons for admittance had to be documented and justifiable.

Pregnancy outside marriage was certainly a taboo topic in Victorian society. Still, the workhouses, orphanages, and the Poor Law schools were set up to cater to people in such a position. Birth outside wedlock was not a category for certification as a lunatic. Doing so would have required the collusion of a doctor, a judge, the committee, and the staff at the asylum.

However, pregnancy was listed as a potential cause of madness, so in combination with the thinking of the time (and based on many unconfirmed testimonies), prejudiced doctors may have assumed that any girl or woman must surely be mad to have become pregnant before marriage. Those with money may indeed have been able to pull a few strings and grease a few palms to have a “shameful” family secret quietly disposed of in a private asylum.^[4]

6 Secret Tunnels

Many county asylums are said to have had “secret” tunnels running underneath them, built to provide a hidden entrance away from public view. At London’s Colney Hatch Asylum, for example, a tunnel ran between the railway station and the asylum, rumored to have been used to bring in members of the royal family, politicians, or other VIPs in secret if they had some sort of mental breakdown.

In truth, all would have been built for more disappointingly mundane reasons, such as bringing in or moving around supplies that needed to be kept dry. Also, county asylums were designed for paupers, and anyone well-off enough to need to be hidden from the public would have sought more discreet private treatment elsewhere.^[5]

5 Broadmoor

Broadmoor is often referred to as a “prison” due to the horrific acts committed by many who have resided there over the decades. However, although it has gone by various names over the years, it has always been a high-security psychiatric institution and never a prison.

Opening in 1863 as “Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum,” it took all of the criminal lunatic patients formerly housed at Bedlam in central London. The M’Naghten trial of 1843 eventually led to laws that essentially meant a person could be either a criminal (responsible for their actions) or a lunatic (unable at the time of the offense to fully understand or control their actions) but not both at once. So the “criminal” component of the name was later dropped. Strangely, Britain’s second such institution opened as “Rampton Criminal Lunatic Asylum” decades later in 1912, giving more insight into how unclear legislation relating to crime and insanity has traditionally been.

Broadmoor has housed many of Britain’s most notorious law-breakers, including the “Moors murderer” Ian Brady, the “Yorkshire Ripper” Peter Sutcliffe, and two patients incidentally both portrayed on film by the actor Tom Hardy. These include London gangster Ronnie Kray in Legend (2015), and Charles Bronson, dubbed “the most violent prisoner in Britain,” in Bronson (2008).^[6]

4 Labor

The county asylums were planned to be as self-sufficient as possible, producing most of their own food, completing their own laundry, providing most of their own services and amenities, and making or repairing the buildings themselves and the clothing patients wore. It is often assumed this was “forced labor,” tantamount to slavery, but although it was certainly strongly encouraged, forcing the patients to work was not legal.

Men tended to be allocated to work on the grounds and landscaping, farms, and occupations such as woodworking, boot and shoe-making, painting and decorating, etc. In keeping with the notions of the time, women were usually given domestic roles such as needlework and hair-picking (for mattresses), along with work in the laundries and kitchens.

While some patients saw it as a chore, rewards of extra food, alcohol, tobacco, or even money were usually offered as incentives, and some patients enjoyed their roles. Patients even participated in building parts of the asylum, including some beautiful chapels constructed with completely willing patient labor.

While their massive in-situ workforce conveniently kept running costs down, it was also genuinely seen as beneficial to the patients, as idleness was viewed as being detrimental to both their recovery and general well-being.^[7]

3 Cells

Film and other media favor images of patients perpetually locked up in dark, dank cells unless being dragged off for some arcane medical experiment or torturous therapy.

By Victorian times, most patients slept in dormitories with as many as fifty other patients. Some were given individual cells, usually because they could not be trusted during the night. But in the daytime, all patients were moved into the day-rooms, verandahs, courtyards or gardens, or out to work.

It was not permitted to keep patients locked in cells for extended periods without documenting exactly how long they had been kept there and for what reasons. Since an attendant or nurse had to be constantly posted outside any cell where a patient was kept during the day, it was not something the asylum’s management wanted to do any more than they (rightly or wrongly) believed they had to.^[8]

2 Clock Towers

The clocktower is another pervading and often chilling image of the Victorian lunatic asylum. These ornate but austere Gothic constructions, some as tall as 140 feet (42 meters), appear to survey the surrounding landscape, inevitably stoking speculation about exactly what unseen horrors might exist beneath them.

Most were actually water towers, with the clock added as a convenient secondary function. Water towers drew from deep wells, and some had filtration to provide cleaner water, but the main reason they were introduced to most asylums from the 1860s onward was to fight fires. In the days before motorized fire engines, and bearing in mind most asylums were located some distance from towns and cities, the tower had to be tall enough so that an attached hose would offer enough pressure to project a jet of water up to the highest floors of the building.^[9]

1 Patients

Even without considering what any given patient may have suffered due to their particular mental illness, it is almost universally accepted that no patient would ever want to be locked in an asylum. Who would?

However, there are many reports spread throughout history (going back as far as Bedlam in the 17th century) of patients who begged not to be discharged or to be allowed to return. While institutionalization sometimes played a role here (the person had been in some institution so long, it becomes unthinkable to live outside it), the appalling conditions for the poor outside the asylum from Medieval times until even as late as the 1970s in some cases are also telling.

For all its restrictions and regimens, the asylum offered three square meals a day, a clean bed and clothing, and many luxuries we would now take for granted, such as indoor toilets, bathing facilities, lighting, and central heating. Some patients even left the asylums cured and went on to lead happy and fulfilling lives because of or despite their time there.

Two other things many former patients also expressed their appreciation for were the beautiful grounds in which they could escape the trappings and pressures of daily life. And perhaps above all else, a community of people who understood them and were therefore far less judgemental than many of those outside, something often so lacking to those suffering from mental health problems today.^[10]

What kind of people ended up in a lunatic asylum? Melancholy teenagers? Violent criminals? Unmarried mothers?

Most of the hundreds of thousands of patients in the dark days of the “madhouses” were unknown paupers and not remembered. Occasionally though, throughout history, certain patients have been rather more well-known.

Here are ten examples of the somewhat famous, very famous, and downright infamous locked away in an asylum.

10 King George III

England’s King George III reigned from 1760 until his death in 1820 and suffered severe mental health problems at times. Although causing occasional mockery, the idea that even a king could suffer from madness also generated increased sympathy toward other sufferers.

He became prone to ranting, convulsions, erratic behavior, and depression and was taken to the private Greatford House Asylum in Lincolnshire. His treatment there would have been typical of its time—painful and completely ineffectual—including bleeding, induced vomiting, and blistering of the skin with hot glass vials.

While historians often suggest his condition may have been a genetic blood disorder called porphyria rather than madness, recent studies by London’s St. George’s University suggest it was most likely a mental health problem, possibly bipolar disorder, which afflicted the king.^[1]

9 Ronnie Kray

Ronald “Ronnie” Kray was one-half of the notorious “Kray Twins,” born in East London in 1933. With his brother Reginald “Reggie” Kray, the identical twins ruled London’s gangland during the 1950s and 60s, glamorizing it with their penchant for stylish suits, celebrity parties, and brutal violence.

Imprisoned in 1956 and separated from his beloved brother, Ronnie’s already ailing mental health deteriorated further. In 1957, he was committed to one of the secure wards at Long Grove Asylum in Surrey, where he was so unwell he formed a relationship with a radiator and believed another patient to be a dog.

An audacious plan was hatched to break him out—Reggie and his entourage visited, with Reggie dressing as similarly as possible to Ronnie. Meeting in the bathroom, Ronnie handed his distinctive black-rimmed glasses to Reggie before the two returned. Ronnie walked out with the others as Reggie remained, staff, assuming Reggie was Ronnie while his brother made good his escape. Shortly, Reggie took off his brother’s glasses and signed out, leaving unchallenged to join the others back in London.

Both received life sentences for murder in 1969, with Ronnie being transferred to Broadmoor Asylum in 1979, where he would remain until his death in 1995.^[2]

8 Louis Wain

Born in 1860, Louis Wain drew for newspapers and magazines in the 1880s to support his mother and five sisters after his father’s death. His greatest success came when he began drawing stylized cartoons of cats engaged in human-like activities, bringing him modest fame and fortune.

When his wife and love Emily died of cancer three years into marriage, his mental state deteriorated, while his cats began to take increasingly bizarre form. He also made a series of incredible futurist pottery figures during this time.

Increasingly ill, his trusting nature saw him swindled out of most of his money and eventually admitted to Springfield Asylum in London as a pauper in 1924. Discovered there a year later, a fundraising campaign (endorsed by the likes of War of the Worlds author H.G. Wells) was organized. Wain was moved to the more comfortable Bethlem Royal in Kent and then Napsbury Asylum, where he continued to paint stunning, psychedelic images of cats until he died in 1939.^[3]

7 Vincent Van Gogh

Van Gogh admitted himself to the asylum of St. Paul de Mausole in Saint Remy, France, in 1889. He had two rooms there—one to sleep in and another to use as his studio. Although the regime was not deliberately harsh, he received only meager food and water, his “treatment” consisting only of bathing. Eventually, he was allowed to wander the picturesque gardens, then finally, the fields beyond. He would paint many images of the asylum and its surroundings while there.

His shift to darker colors during his time at the asylum led to Starry Night, one of his most famous and evocative works created there.^[4]

6 Margaret Nicholson

Margaret Nicholson lost several prestigious housekeeping jobs due to scandalous affairs with other employees, eventually struggling to eke out a living as a seamstress. She developed a fixation on the royal family, believing she should be queen. In 1776, she was injudiciously allowed to approach King George III when she whipped out a knife and lunged at him. The king was unharmed—she made her assassination attempt wielding only a blunt cake knife.

Nicholson then suffered the indignity of being strip-searched to confirm she was not, in fact, a man. After stating, “England would be drowned in blood for a thousand generations” if she wasn’t queen, she was declared mad, escaping almost certain execution and being sent to Bedlam asylum instead. King George wrote to say she should be given sympathetic treatment while there.

Nicholson received many well-to-do guests who brought her gifts and were keen to meet the “celebrity madwoman.” She remained in Bedlam until her death at age 83.^[5]

5 John Clare

Born in 1793, Clare lived in the small village of Helpston, UK, working as a “potboy” at The Blue Bell Inn. He sold poetry to stave off his parents’ eviction, meeting with quick success and early recognition.

When his last collection, The Rural Muse (1835), gained praise but poor sales, his existing mental problems and alcoholism intensified. After attacking an actor on stage, he was advised to attend High Beach Asylum in Essex and said to have believed he was Lord Byron and had two wives, one of whom was his first love Mary who died three years earlier. Missing his family, he left and walked the 80-mile (130-kilometer) journey back home alone.

In 1841, he was admitted to St. Andrew’s Asylum in Northampton as a pauper, where he was encouraged to continue writing and produced his most famous work, “I Am.” He would remain in the asylum until his death in 1864. In obscurity by that time, his work was reappraised over the following century, and he is now among Britain’s most highly-regarded poets.^[6]

4 Richard Dadd

Richard Dadd was a talented young painter recruited to accompany a grand tour of Europe and Asia, providing sketches and paintings of the trip as was fashionable among the wealthy of the time. In Egypt, he suffered intense headaches and sunstroke, believing he could hear the voice of the sun god Osiris. When the expedition reached Paris in 1843, his behavior had become so odd he was dismissed.

At London’s St. Luke’s Asylum, he was diagnosed insane, but his father was reluctant to commit him and took him home instead. Osiris urged him to battle the devil, and Dadd began to see Satan in everyone around him. He withdrew to his rooms, living only on ale and hard-boiled eggs.

Dadd’s father asked him to “unburden his mind,” taking him for a meal and walk on a local heath, where Richard stabbed his father to death. Tragically, he planned the attack believing his father was the devil in disguise. His rooms were searched, with police discovering drawings of friends and relatives with their throats cut. Dadd fled to Calais intent on killing the Emperor of Austria, but after attempting to kill a fellow passenger, he was arrested and committed to Clermont Asylum at Fontainebleau. Confessing to murder, he was then extradited to England.

Dadd was committed to Bedlam and then moved to Broadmoor Asylum, where he produced many of his most celebrated works, including The Fairy-Feller’s Masterstroke (1864). He would eventually die in 1886. His works, now worth millions, can be seen at The National Gallery and the Tate Gallery, among others.^[7]

3 James Tilley Matthews

Matthews was, by day, a mild-mannered London tea seller but had a remarkable alter-ego. In Revolutionary France, he worked brokering peace between England and the new Republican leadership. When those he supported failed to gain power, he was arrested, accused of being a spy, and imprisoned. Eventually liberated, he claimed the English government had abandoned him to the French and that the Home Secretary was at the heart of a series of conspiracies. His wild and often very public talk about having been a Scarlet Pimpernel-esque double-agent saw him committed to Bedlam asylum in 1798.

Two doctors certified Matthews sane, but Lord Liverpool stated he was “a dangerous lunatic who should be confined in perpetuity,” backed by Bedlam’s apothecary, John Haslam, who studied Matthews for his book Illustrations of Madness (1810). Many consider this to be the first case study of paranoid schizophrenia.

Matthews believed a criminal gang constantly interfered with his mind through “pneumatic chemistry,” using magnetic waves from their “air loom” device. This would inflict on him such pains as “lobster-cracking,” which made his circulation stop, and “apoplexy-working with the nutmeg-grater,” which tracked his thoughts and movements. Haslam’s book is still used to show the terrifying thoughts and conspiracies which can be typical of schizophrenia.

Subsequent research suggests Matthews had indeed been in France unofficially backed by the British government, keen to see the “correct” people end up in power. These “invisible forces” then denied all knowledge of Matthews upon capture and maintained a wall of silence upon his return, suggesting his illness may not have been the only factor ensuring he remained conveniently locked away in an asylum for good.^[8]

2 Nellie Bly

Elizabeth Seaman (1864-1922) was a journalist born in Pennsylvania, better known by her pen name Nellie Bly. She is most famous for two particular journalistic endeavors, the second of which was traveling around the world in just seventy-two days (a world record at that time) in emulation of the famous book by Jules Verne.

She first made waves in 1887 with an undercover exposé of life in a lunatic asylum. Taking up residence in a women’s boarding house, she tried to act as strangely as she could but found such behavior was so common there as to be barely noticed. Eventually escalating until she began to scare the other residents and the police were called, she was finally committed to New York’s Blackwell’s Island Asylum for women.

Once inside, her task was to appear as “normal” as she possibly could, to see how she would be treated knowing she was sane and exhibiting no unusual behavior. Her subsequent exposé, “Ten Days in a Madhouse,” hinged on how difficult she would then find it to be taken seriously or affect her release despite her obvious sanity and the appalling conditions experienced by the other women incarcerated there. She was unable to convince anyone, and the newspaper she worked for eventually had to contact the asylum to arrange for her release.^[9]

1 Jack the Ripper

While the true identity of the world’s first celebrity serial killer has never been proven, several suspects ended up in asylums. One Aaron Kosminski was even named as a prime suspect by two of the case’s key investigating police officers.

Some believe Kosminski may have been mixed up with another patient named Nathan Kaminsky, who had been arrested in Whitechapel in December 1888, at which time the murders abruptly stopped. This would explain why Kosminski did not at all fit the description of a killer when he was visited by the investigating officers and essentially suggests that the asylum brought them the wrong suspect to see.

On the other hand, Kaminsky was apprehended in a state of severe aggression less than a month after the final killing, after which he attacked anyone he could at the asylum and had to be kept in restraints. While it will likely remain only a theory, it is a fascinating potential explanation of the demise of the world’s most notorious serial killer—the killings stopped because he was locked up in London’s Colney Hatch Asylum.^[10]

The Victorian era saw hundreds of vast buildings spring up across the UK, Europe, and North America as governments sought to address the “epidemic” of madness that appeared to be growing in lockstep with the industrialization of the western world. The agreed solution was to build immense institutions run under strict regimes and isolated from the rest of the community.

Urban sprawl eventually surrounded many of the old asylums. By the 1960s, it was decided they would need to be wound down and closed, “releasing” their patients back into the community whether appropriate housing and care had been arranged for them or not.

While scant consideration was given to patients, alternate uses for the buildings themselves were rarely considered either. So hundreds of well-built, often astoundingly beautiful, historic structures were left to rot and face eventual demolition. Here is a handful of those that found other fates besides the wrecking ball.

10 Royal Bethlem, London

The original Bethlehem Priory was founded in Bishopsgate in 1247 and used to house “mad” patients since as early as 1377. A brand new version of the institution (by then commonly known as “Bedlam” was built at Moorfields in 1676 and designed by the eminent scientist and architect (as well as great rival of Sir Isaac Newton) Robert Hooke (1635–1703).

The third version, known as “Royal Bethlem,” opened at Southwark in 1815 and was the largest of all, housing up to 425 patients at any one time. It also initially confined all of Britain’s “criminal lunatics.” Bedlam was notorious throughout its history as a place of cruelty and suffering, although by the 1860s, it had begun housing only fee-paying middle-class patients.

Today: Closing in 1930, the former “lunatic palace” is—with unavoidable irony—now the London home of the Imperial War Museum, documenting the history of warfare and conflict, which typifies mankind’s madness at its most extreme and destructive.^[1]

9 Claybury, Essex

Built as the Fourth London County Asylum at Woodford, Essex, Claybury was the largest of all British asylums in terms of its overall footprint. It housed around 2,740 patients at its peak.

It was designed by George T. Hine (1842–1916), who was responsible for the building of more asylums than any other architect; he exclusively created asylums for the whole of his career. Fifteen across the UK are attributed to him, with extensions or additions made to five more.

Today: This immense building, which was once secured and surrounded by railings to keep its pauper patients inside, closed in 1997 and is now a gated community. Its wards are now converted to housing, its chapel is now a swimming pool, and its lavish recreation hall is now a gym. It is among the most desirable locations on the outskirts of London and, besides the still rather exclusive gym, is closed off to the public, meaning that these days, the paupers are all locked outside its grounds instead.^[2]

8 Traverse City, Michigan

This third asylum for Michigan opened in 1885. It quickly became the city’s largest employer, growing to encompass over 1,400,000 square feet (130,064 square meters) of floor space with around 3,000 patients in residence by 1959.

Its first medical superintendent, Dr. James Munson (1848–1902), oversaw the asylum’s regime for its first 39 years (retiring at the age of 76). He believed that the patients being within beautiful surroundings with plenty to keep them occupied was the key to wellbeing and recovery. He also abolished the use of straitjackets and other forms of restraint.

Today: Frustratingly, the asylum’s beautiful Italiante central block—the most handsome part—was allowed to fall into disrepair and be demolished in 1963, while the remainder closed in 1989. A $60,000,000 redevelopment program began in 2000, with the remaining 1880s buildings and extensive grounds renovated to a mix of residential, shopping, catering, hotel, and conference facilities.^[3]

7 The Lawn, Lincoln

The Lincoln Lunatic Asylum, later the Lawn, was a charitable public asylum that opened in 1820 at the center of the ancient town, next to its huge castle and overlooked by its cathedral. When the church’s main tower was completed in 1311, it was the only structure in the world taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza.

The Lawn took patients on a charitable basis, meaning most did not have to pay at all. It had a good reputation, inspired by its first visiting medical physician, Dr. Edward Parker Charlesworth (1783–1853). Charlesworth insisted that mechanical restraints (bindings, cuffs, straitjackets, etc.) were abolished and that violence and physical coercion should never be used upon the patients, which was then a controversial approach.

Today: The Lawn closed in 1982 and was later used by the local council. It is now a conference center and coffee shop, with its grounds open as a public park.^[4]

6 Mapperley, Nottingham

Nottingham was progressive during Georgian times when medicine for the poor was usually left to unqualified quacks and questionable herbal remedies. It built its general public hospital as early as 1781 and opened the very first of Britain’s “county asylums” at Sneinton in 1812.

As its first asylum became grossly overcrowded, middle-class patients were moved to new accommodations at The Coppice in 1859. However, as Nottingham continued to grow into a large industrial city, Sneinton again became overcrowded, with the much larger Mapperley Asylum eventually built in 1880. This, too, was full by the end of its first year and soon expanded.

During the 1950s, Mapperley’s superintendent, Dr. Duncan MacMillan, reclassified all the chronic (long-term) patients as “voluntary.” Instead of assuming rehabilitation for them was impossible, as was the case at most asylums, he encouraged confidence-building and their integration back into society. No new patients were allowed to be shut away in the dingy old chronic wards, and the doors to all wards were gradually kept unlocked.

Today: Closing in 1994, half of the old buildings are now converted to luxury housing, while the northern side is still in NHS use as the University of Nottingham Medical School. There is also a large medium-security forensic unit built within the grounds.^[5]

5 Matteawan State Hospital, Beacon, NY

Located in pleasant surroundings between the Hudson River and Fishkill Mountains, Matteawan opened in 1892 and catered for various classes of mental health problems. It also incorporated a significant quota of those then labeled as “criminally insane.”

Its most famous patient to fall under that category was George Metesky, aka the “Mad Bomber.” He terrorized New York with homemade explosives planted in public locations from the 1940s until his arrest in 1957. Perhaps surprisingly, he was released just sixteen years later, in 1973.

Today: The role of Matteawan evolved from the 1970s into what is now Fishkill Correctional Facility, which still uses the old asylum buildings to house a mix of high-security and medium-security psychiatric patients. It also operates a minimum security work-release program for those undergoing rehabilitation.^[6]

4 Royal Albert Idiot Asylum, Lancaster

The first “idiot asylum” was founded in Surrey by John Langdon Down (1828–1896), who first described the syndrome that now bears his name. It was then formally known as “idiocy.” Langdon Down created an asylum designed to house, educate, and support people with learning differences to live productive lives beyond its walls.

Similar institutions appeared in the west, east, and midlands of England, and Royal Albert was originally known as the Northern Counties Idiot Asylum, designed in an extravagant Flemish style in 1870. It would initially house 500 children between six and fifteen years of age for up to seven years each before they were “ready” to use their skills in the outside world.

These high ideals were gradually lost over time; by 1948, its population had swelled to over 800, 35% of whom were aged over thirty-five and considered long-stay cases.

Today: The building closed in 1996 and was converted to the Jamea Al Kauthar Islamic College, a private Islamic boarding school for girls aged eleven to eighteen.^[7]

3 Buffalo State Hospital, NY

Buffalo State hospital opened in 1880 and was designed by Henry Hobson Richardson (1838–1886), who went on to be widely regarded as the first American architect to achieve international renown. It was designed in the Kirkbride style, which saw staggered sets of ward blocks spreading out from the central administrative block rather like the wings of a bird in flight.

Buffalo was arguably the most impressive of all the American asylums, with its incredibly imposing gothic towers looming down from the enormous central block like something from a dark fairytale.

Today: Despite the addition to the State and National Registers of Historic Places in 1973 and designated an official National Historic Landmark in 1986 (one of only seven in Western New York), it sat empty and neglected for years. A lawsuit eventually forced state authorities into proactively pursuing its renovation. The Hotel Henry (named after its architect) occupied the central third of the complex but closed in 2021 but fortunately reopened as The Richardson Hotel. Tours are available of the remaining abandoned areas of the old asylum, with an expectation they will eventually become apartments and offices.^[8]

2 Glenside, Somerset

Glenside opened in 1861 as the Bristol City Lunatic Asylum, built to a corridor-pavilion layout typical of its time.

Its first departure from psychiatric use was during WWI when it became the Beaufort War Hospital. During the war, 29,434 wounded soldiers were treated there, while all its psychiatric patients were sent home or decanted into other asylums. When the patients returned in 1919, they included one Elsie Leach, mother of the actor Cary Grant.

Today: The buildings were modernized and converted into residence halls and training areas for the UWE Faculty of Health and Social Care, with its grand recreation hall, adapted into a cafeteria. It is a rare example of a former hospital building finding a genuinely fitting new use that makes the best of the existing buildings rather than lazy demolition and/or partial conversion to housing. The former chapel now hosts a museum packed with information and objects about Glenside’s long history as an asylum and war hospital.^[9]

1 Gheel, Belgium

Dymphna was born in Ireland to a wealthy family in the 7th century and sunk into depression after the death of her mother. Her father mourned, too, his advisers eventually suggesting he remarry to overcome his pain. He sent emissaries across Europe, who returned claiming they could find none so delightful and suitable as… his own daughter, Dymphna.

Unsurprisingly horrified, she fled to the continent, accompanied by a priest, the court jester, and his wife. They traveled to Antwerp in modern-day Belgium and settled in the small village of Gheel. Dymphna’s father pursued her and executed the priest when he tried to defend her, and when she continued to resist, he murdered Dymphna, his own fifteen-year-old daughter. She was martyred, becoming Saint Dymphna in around AD 650.

Miracles and cures were said to occur for those suffering from mental health problems who visited Gheel, and so St. Dymphna became the patron saint of the mad, with increasing numbers then brought to the village by friends and relatives. At first, patients were housed in a small asylum building attached to the church built in St Dymphna’s honor. But they were eventually accommodated in the homes of ordinary families living in Gheel.

Today: Remarkably, although the original buildings are gone, the system at Geel (formerly Gheel) remains very similar to this day. While most other western countries (including the rest of Belgium) adopted a similar model of placing patients in vast out-of-town institutions away from the general populace, Gheel families continue to provide similar care to patients with mental disorders. Some families have been doing so for many generations, and it has become as normal and accepted as any other practice handed down through a family line.^[10]