Too Much to Bear
Poetry Helps
An article by Anwyl Cooper-Willis
The museum houses the story of the institution opened, in 1861, as Bristol Lunatic Asylum. Before the asylum was built it was derided by the mayor and city councillors as the ‘Lunatic Pauper Palace’. They were adamant that the building was an unnecessary expense and for 16 years the city managed to resist its legal requirement to provide decent accommodation for lunatics.
These images were derived from historic, documentary photographs which relate to the hospital and in the collection of the museum. The art collective, alldaybreakfast, to which I belong, were funded to be artists-in-residence at the Museum. While we were getting organised I joined the museum as a volunteer, to me it is a grippingly interesting, and deeply eccentric, place and I have never left. The outcome was that I made quite a lot of work relating to the Hospital.
These blocks are a graph of 5117 patient outcomes based on the case records held at Bristol Archives. Each one represents 10 patients; green is for people discharged as Recovered or Relieved (improved). Grey is for people who died in the hospital. The darker the colour the longer their stay in the hospital.
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