ABSTRACT
I n his 18 58 annual report William Charles Hood, Bethlem's first Resident Physician-Superintendent, informed the Governors that 'the events of the year 1858 have been but the history of 1857'. He added that he sincerely prayed that 'the same harmony may exist among officers, patients, and servants, during the year 1859'.1 There had been a symbolic change in 1858 when the Cibber statues, curtained (except on committee days), were moved to the South Kensington Museum, and there was a further change a generation later in 1888 when they moved yet again to the Guildhall Crypt museum. The City of London had reclaimed them.2 Bethlem appeared a very different institution from the one that had been investigated in 1815.
