February 15, 2021
In the ten years I have been researching the patients of the Bristol Lunatic Asylum, the thing that most struck me was the disparity between the popular view of asylums and the results of my studies.
April 19, 2020
The mysterious Lady of the Haystack. Why was Louisa admitted in 1781 to the lunatic ward of St Peters Hospital?
May 5, 2019
History portrays a neat progression from medieval and early modern supernatural belief toward the 19th-century science, but is that a simplification?
April 16, 2019
Albert James Home was born in Midsomer Norton, Somerset, then a mining town and new railway hub. The only child of William Home and Sarah Smith.
December 11, 2018
In the 80s and 90s, a very common complaint about psychiatric hospitals was that many patients were admitted numerous times; this was called the ‘revolving door problem’.
November 6, 2018
This first article will be part of a series considering the continuities and changes to life in the asylum, often focusing on individuals whose stories illustrate facets of the era before the asylum became Beaufort War Hospital in 1915
March 13, 2018
Dr Donal Early (1917-2004) pioneered a radical new way of treating mental illness in Bristol in the 1960s and with his wife Dr Prudence Early
February 28, 2018
Over his lifetime Denis Reed painted some 250 oil-paintings as well as watercolours and sketches. In 1934, he studied Drawing and Pictorial Design at the Royal West of England Academy (RWA) and went on to study in London at the Royal College of Art in London (RCA) in 1938.
December 3, 2017
History is often portrayed as a series of narratives in which great men (and they always seem to be men) changed the world with their strength and leadership, intellect or malevolence
