Historic Bedlam records go online

A sketch of William Norris, a patient at Bethlem Royal Hospital in London, circa 1814 (Getty Images)

Family history sleuths have long been able to scour digital databases for evidence of the character of their forebears, from military records to shipping manifests. But until now they have been unable to search online for proof of mental illness.

The patient records of Britain’s best known - and at times most infamous - psychiatric hospital are placed online today for the first time to cast new light on the treatment of mental illness over nearly 250 years.

Some 125,000 personal files and staff records from the Bethlem Royal Hospital, the “Bedlam” of days of yore, are being digitised to reveal the cases of people who found themselves committed for offences from attempting to assassinate George III with a dessert knife to obsessive behaviour caused by writing a dictionary of technology in three languages in 1886.

The documents are being placed online by genealogy website Find My Past in a collaboration with the hospital’s museum, the Bethlem Museum of the Mind in Beckenham, south east London.

Organisers hope the archive, which stretches from 1683 to 1932, will allow researchers to understand the evolution of understanding of mental illness by chronicling not only the treatment meted out to patients but also the writings of the inmates themselves.

Debra Chatfield, senior genealogist for Find My Past, said: “These records provide real insight into life in this infamous institution through letters written by patients, photographs at different stages of their illness and reports on their day to day behaviour by close family members and medical staff. It’s hard not to empathise with the inmates as you learn about their often harrowing and tragic stories.”