800,000 Pages of Patient Art and Mental Health Archives Are Going Online

A few weeks ago, the Wellcome Library announced a new initiative to digitize more than 800,000 pages of material from British psychiatric hospitals. Dating between the 18th and 20th centuries, the trove includes examples of patient artwork and writing, as well as patient-produced publications.

Some of these are shaky pencil drawings stuck amid further details on patient conditions — like this casebook on a patient at Ticehurst Hospital that includes a portrait of a doctor from 1891. Others are more elaborate oil paintings, like the above late-19th-century piece by George Sidebottom at the York Retreat, showing an eclectic scene of recreation. Together these visual details and the greater archives record a period of change in mental health management, when the mistreatment of patients began to be be addressed and institutionalization became more popular (and then gradually less so in the 20th century). The effort sees  the Wellcome Library partnering with the Borthwick Institute for Archives, London Metropolitan Archives, Dumfries and Galloway Council Archives, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Archives, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

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