"Rake's Progress" in 1733

Source:  Wellcome Library, London.

William Hogarth was an English artist and engraver, who painted a moralistic series about Tom Rakewell, a symbolic dissolute young man who over time marries wrongly, spends all his money, drinks all the time, and eventually ends up in Bethlem Hospital.  Have you ever used the term, “bedlam”?  The word came from the colloquial description of what happened at Bethlem Hospital (check the spelling – it was not “Bethlehem.”)  Hogarth painted the series to be made into engravings people would buy, and this is probably his best known series.

The Bethlem Hospital website says it best, “The engravings depict Bethlem in caricature but of course Londoners and visitors had another, more direct source of information about conditions inside the hospital – until 1770 they could visit the hospital in person without restriction.  At holiday times, especially, Bethlem attracted quite large crowds.  It was even listed as an attraction in tourist guides of the time.  There is no suggestion that the Hospital ever objected to the way in which Hogarth had depicted it – indeed, he was elected onto its Court of Governors in 1752.

“This last scene takes place in one of the long corridors or ‘galleries’, which ran the length of the building and functioned as ward space.  Patients were housed and treated in separate areas of the hospital according to gender and diagnosis.  Metal grilles helped maintain the separation.    Though some patients were secluded, the majority had relatively free movement through the gallery as can be seen here. 

“Tom Rakewell lies in the foreground in a pose reminiscent of the statues by Caius Gabriel Cibber which surmounted the entrance to the Moorfields building.  [I’ll post a picture of that tomorrow.]  He already appears to be manacled.  His fellow patients exhibit signs of different disorders.  The man standing on the stairs represents religious delusion; the seated man below him, disappointment in love. In a cell on the other side of the gallery, a man wearing the crown (but otherwise naked) suffers from delusions of grandeur.

"Surveying the scene, and using their fans to hide their blushes, are two lady visitors.” – from www.bethlemheritage.org.

More on Bethlem Hospital and care of the hospitalized mentally ill tomorrow.