'Bedlam' exhibition traces the meandering history of mental health

The meanderings of the world's oldest mental health institution, and its search for secluded asylum, are documented in an exhibition of rare, antique prints that opens today.

Bethlem Royal Hospital – from which the derogatory term "bedlam" is derived – is displaying engravings from the 18th and 19th centuries that trace the journey of "lunatics, debtors and petty criminals" through London's ­hospitals and prisons. The selection of 100 works donated by Michael Trimble, emeritus professor of behavioural neurology, charts the ­development and ­migration of some of the most venerable health ­establishments.

The priory of St Mary of Bethlehem, built just outside London's city walls, began as a religious refuge. Founded in 1247, it stood on a site now occupied by Liverpool Street station, and by the 14th century was specialising in the treatment of mental illness. Its techniques – restraining with manacles and chains those deemed dangerous – would not earn a three-star rating from the Care Quality Commission these days. Such care, however, marks the beginning of specialised medical institutions.

Bethlem was transferred to the City of London authority and became one of five royal hospitals. It was jointly administered with Bridewell hospital – later a prison – from 1557 until 1948.

Rebecca Morrison, ­curator of the exhibition, says the process of emigrating to the ­margins – Bethlem has had four sites in its 750 years – was not the result of a desire to remove the mentally ill from society. "The idea instead was to find ­areas just outside the city that were open and green – rural asylums."

Bethlem transferred from its first home to Moorfields in 1676, entering a baroque building designed by Robert Hooke. Sightseers were, notoriously, allowed to view inmates, until indiscriminate ­visiting was banned in 1770. The practice was recorded in one of Hogarth's more famous scenes of debauchery.

The hospital moved to its third site in 1815, south of the Thames to Lambeth. Part of the grandiose, enlarged establishment survives now as the Imperial War Museum. In 1930, Bethlem Royal Hospital settled into its current site at Beckenham, near Croydon.

"Starting my training in psychiatry at the Bethlem immediately made me aware of the proud and ­fascinating ­history of psychiatry, and the elegance of some of its associated architecture," Trimble says. "This led to my building up a library of antiquarian books in ­neurology and psychiatry. These ­pictures and prints relate to the history of one of the most important intellectual disciplines within medicine."