ABSTRACT
M any have argued that the everyday voices of the mentally ill have been silenced by institutional psychiatry. For Michel Foucault and the anti-psychiatry movement this became the hidden purpose at the heart of the mental hospital.! The nature of the institution and the illness has often deprived psychiatric patients of a voice. References to Bethlem's day-to-day management do not appear because there was no need to explain to those intimately connected to the Hospital how it worked. It is a problem common to many institutions. From this it might appear impossible to reconstruct how patients were treated. However, evidence can be gleaned from the rules, case notes, and personal memories to provide a glimpse of Bethlem's changing therapeutic regime.
