ABSTRACT
E arly modern Bethlem attracted a negative public image which was exploited by later reformers and became passed down into conventional historical judgment. 'Bedlam' has often thus been portrayed as the epitome of squalor, characterized by naked, starved and abused patients, dabbling in their own excrement, languishing in dark cells, sleeping on straw, constantly in chains and subject to lashings.! As recently as 1982 one historian declared:
Bedlam (or Bethlem) was ... a wretched place ... The records show that patients were beaten, starved and manacled, and for months at a time they were placed in filthy dungeons, with no light or clothing; they were given only excrement-sodden straw on which to lie. Amputations of the toes and fingers of patients, due to frostbite, were not uncommon.2
