r/todayilearned • u/AhmedMostafa16 • 1d ago
TIL that in 18th century England, people would pay to attend Bedlam, a private lunatic asylum, to watch the mentally ill as entertainment
https://retrospectjournal.com/2024/03/24/bedlam-the-mental-asylum-that-became-londons-top-tourist-attraction/193
u/NeddTwo 1d ago
That's where terms such as 'It's bedlam in there', to describe a crazy situation, comes from.
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u/fnord_happy 1d ago
Is that not in use anymore?
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u/Squirrel_Q_Esquire 1d ago
It is. In fact, it’s the name of the rivalry game between Oklahoma and Oklahoma State.
But yes, it is still used.
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u/Lost_In_Tulips 1d ago
Humans have always found a way to make the worst things into a show. Reality TV’s got nothing on this.
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u/Savings-Plant57 1d ago
I mean 2000 years beforehand the Romans were eating bread while watching their own countrymen be torn apart by lions or slaves fighting to the death and called it “games”
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u/starkistuna 1d ago
You don't have to go that far, 150 years ago slave pregnant woman were laid in the ground in a small hole for her belly in order to be whipped some times to death for refusing to work while pregnant in front of the other slaves in good old liberty for all America.
The hole was to protect future merchandise from damage.
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/Bacon4Lyf 1d ago
It’s not really an exception if the colosseum was bigger than most stadiums today at 87,000 people, and was hosting fights for 300 continuous years, if that’s an exception I’d have to see what the norm is
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u/Savings-Plant57 1d ago
There are always people who criticize things they perceive as wrong but society at large has always enjoyed violence and mayhem, so long as it’s not directed at anybody they care about. If orangutans evolved slightly further I can guarantee they would cage fight each other for money and we would watch them do that too
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u/Johannes_P 1d ago
Public executions were a fashionable show, to the point of the best places being rented.
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u/just_breadd 1d ago
Theres a fascinating account of a Roman Diplomat writing about his Mission of reaffirming Peace with the Huns, one of the things that always stood out is that at a banquet, after the Nobles and Dignitaries had drunk and composed Poems praising Attila they brought in a Mentally Ill man as entertainment to listen to his ravings
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u/Malone_Matches 1d ago
Not much different from reality TV really
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u/Articulationized 1d ago
Or the thousands of scripted movies and tv shows about mentally ill people.
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u/curtyshoo 1d ago
Or just living in the USA.
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u/OperationPlus52 1d ago edited 1d ago
Today's president and his administration would definitely qualify, nothing like watching Laura Loomer or Stephen Miller crash out, and there's so many others just like them, it would be hilariously cringe if it wasn't our actual government.
Edit: Aww looks like team Red has shown up to down vote because they know they voted for a clown and his circus for a fn third time, yall really gotta learn how to stop being such easy marks for these conmen and grifters.
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u/curtyshoo 1d ago
Well, my facetious comment was that we were waiting for the observation, the glitch in the Matrix, which the theory we're actually living in a computer simulation would explain.
Trump is that long-awaited glitch.
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u/OperationPlus52 1d ago
I think if anything Trump's rise shows there is no "matrix", no scripted/programmed reality, and no intelligent design/superior being guiding us, Trump is the type of person that reoccurs time and time again when the dumb and angry seek a leader as dumb and angry as they are. If this is the matrix it just seems poorly coded and lacking in quality control.
Trump fits exactly what the universe and nature are, chaos that sometimes prevails.
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u/shockjockeys 1d ago
I think calling them mentally ill is kind of brushing aside just how evil they are. I am mentally ill (any possible ableist gotchas can be saved. i have heard it all and i dont care) and think its gross to put the administration in the same ballpack that I reside in. They are pulling insurance and pulling funding for mental health services, which then harms us who need it to survive and be functioning. If i didnt have the care i could afford i dont think I would be here. Please dont compare them to us.
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u/Varnigma 1d ago edited 1d ago
I seem to recall an old computer game I had in the 80s called Bedlam. I think it was about trying to escape a mental institution.
I think it was a text based game.
Edit: found it
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u/SuspendeesNutz 1d ago
Text with static graphics? I think I saw this once, you go through a maze and meet crazy people?
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u/Varnigma 1d ago
Man it was a long time ago. The game was on a cassette tape and played on my trs-80 (that I still have).
It was all text. Commands like “go east”, “open door”, “pick up key”.
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u/MajesticBread9147 1d ago
As somebody who worked in a psych word for a little bit I'm not going to lie, the ratio of interesting stories to time spent was way higher than any other job I've done.
When I tell people about it I usually ask " did I ever tell you about my time at the psych ward" before clarifying that I was an employee.
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u/scrubjays 1d ago
And now we get it for free on public transportation.
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u/SUCKMEoffyouCASUAL 1d ago
Wed people watch in Walmart after midnight in highschool
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u/Thomisawesome 1d ago
This reminds me of a journalist, Nellie Blye, who in the late 1800s who got herself admitted to a mental institution in New York to expose the terrible conditions patients endured. It’s called Ten Days in a Mad-house.
She also wrote another fascinating book called Around the World in 72 Days.
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u/ghostsnstuf 1d ago
Similar thing happened in 1972 when a news reporter named Geraldo Rivera went and secretly filmed conditions at Willowbrook State School. The footage aired all over the news and opened a ton of people’s eyes on how patients were being treated. I don’t think it was meant to be malicious by the workers, but instead a sign of understaffing and the facility being overcrowded
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u/Thomisawesome 1d ago
Gerardo used to be a really serious journalist. He left that track pretty quickly.
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u/GarysCrispLettuce 1d ago
I mean if this level of cruelty in Gregorian England disgusts you, just reflect on the fact that it was around this time that the English were practicing child chimney climbing. They would force kids as young as 5 up narrow flues as small as 9 inches that were usually still scalding hot from the fire. They'd have to climb up the rough, hot bricks, taking the skin off their knees and elbows, and work their way through hot soot that often had burning embers in it - in complete darkness. They'd have to make their way through twists and turns in the flues, would often get stuck and suffocate to death and would also get trapped in burning chimneys and burn alive. The job was usually accompanied by a lot of screaming and sobbing, with the master sweep beating them if they were too afraid to go up. They'd stick pins in their feet and also light the fire in the grate to scare them up away from the flames and heat. It was probably one of the cruelest, most macabre instances of child slavery anywhere in the world throughout history and "respectable, well-to-do" people in England would be quite happy with this happening in their homes. England never really started to properly civilize until the end of the 19th century when they finally banned the practice.
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u/jesuspoopmonster 1d ago
The connection between environmental conditions and cancer was first made due to the large number of chimney sweeps that got scrotal cancer. They generally did their work in the nude because they were too poor to own more then one pair of clothes so they had to preserve what they had.
Also most were too crippled and deformed to get any work once they were too large to fit into chimneys. The only possible job prospect was to become a master otherwise most became beggers
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u/larrylevan 1d ago
Gregorian England
I think you mean Georgian England, the period 1714-1837.
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u/GozerDGozerian 1d ago
No way, it’s that time in English history that everyone became a monk and sang deep eerie chants. :)
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u/erinoco 1d ago
This practice wasn't specific to Great Britain, although the British dependence on coal made the practice more visible.
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u/WTFwhatthehell 1d ago
Almost every society distant in time from our own is pretty horrifying in various ways.
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u/starkistuna 1d ago
Or only a couple thousand miles away... In some countries as a woman you report you were raped only to be put in jail or stoned to death.
Post something about Hamas or Palestine in Facebook and get put on a plane to some random jail in salvador without a trial if you don't want to travel at first.
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u/lotsanoodles 1d ago
If we want to watch people masturbating or eating shit we've got the internet. Hell we can even watch executions. Look how far we've come.
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u/shockjockeys 1d ago
And in the 21st century they do that but instead they call them diff subreddits like "fakedisordercringe", and "tumblrinaction" (old shoutout). Really wish this kind of shit would die out
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u/7LeagueBoots 1d ago
Now we have Twitter (X), Tik Tok, Reddit, Facebook, 24 hour news, and more.
Same thing, but piped directly to guy without you having to go anywhere.
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u/Indifferencer 1d ago
Not surprising. People paid to see Charlie Sheen on tour when he was experiencing a serious mental health crisis.
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u/Count_Dongula 1d ago
If you go 100 years in either direction in time, you're gonna know real quick that you were born in the right generation after all.
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u/Infinite_Fall6284 1d ago
I went to bedlam for schoop trip. I highly recommend it. We got to see records of former patients there
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u/tremynci 1d ago
The Museum of the Mind, or the Imperial War Museum?
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u/Infinite_Fall6284 13h ago
The museum of mind
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u/tremynci 13h ago
I love that place! Their archivists have an amazing collection, and they're so passionate about it. 🥰
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u/adamlechamp 1d ago
There's actually an action movie in early stages of production right now about a guy trying to break his sister out of this asylum whilst fighting off a bunch of people.
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u/Brownie-UK7 1d ago
yep, crazy. Thankfully we now have reality TV shows so we don't have to drive to Bedlam.
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u/brandalfthegreen 1d ago
Well that name is in point at least
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u/SteelPaladin1997 23h ago edited 23h ago
It's the origin of the word. Officially, it was Bethlehem Royal Hospital, but it got the nickname "Bedlam" (a corruption of "Bethlehem"). When people started saying a situation was "bedlam," they were saying it was like the conditions in this asylum. Eventually, it became a generic word for chaos and madness, but this is where it started.
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u/TheSpiralTap 1d ago
TIL this is why the old 80s-90s pro wrestling fed WCW used to have a match called "The Bedlam Brawl"
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u/ToastedCrumpet 1d ago
Not really dissimilar to so many subreddits on here, and you all mock and guffaw at people suffering on there…
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u/starkistuna 1d ago
All that can be achieved today by taking a cheap bus or train ride! How far we have come.
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u/Kinky-Green-Fecker 1d ago
also Middle Class folk like to visit the Slums & famous murders of the day in/of London !
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u/OutsideInvestment695 1d ago
at least theyhad an asylum, in the usa they just let them roam around in public
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u/TheDarkFader88 1d ago
So this is where scully threw his little dj party before the zeds took over… splendid
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u/Johannes_P 1d ago
Not only to watch them but sometimes to hit them with a stick.
Yeah, if they wondered why their patients didn't get better: this is one of the reasons.
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u/Askymojo 23h ago
Well this Elvis Costello song "Bedlam" is more intense now that I know Bedlam is a real place.
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u/Haunt_Fox 23h ago
"Went to see Mad Tom of Bedlam,
Ten thousand miles I've travelled
Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes
For to save her toes from gravel.
Still I sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys
Bedlam boys are bonny;
For they all go bare and live by the air
And they want no drink nor money."
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u/notyogrannysgrandkid 17h ago
Now they pay to attend Bedlam, the annual football game between Oklahoma and Oklahoma St, to watch the mentally ill as entertainment.
Hook ‘em 🤘🏻
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u/matt82swe 1d ago
Well, I do read subs like r/politics and r/childfree occasionally so pretty much the same
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u/unflavourable 1d ago
Now we just go on Facebook and wait for people talking about how their 5 year old child is trans
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u/xSounddefense 1d ago
The world pays with taxes to watch the mentally ill americans rebuilding their land to an asylum for lunatics lol
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u/RobotDinosaur1986 1d ago
I walked by a patient's room the other day and she screamed at me that she no longer had a belly button. Sometimes it is a little entertaining.
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u/TheTerribleTimmyCat 1d ago
And how many subreddits are there devoted to people losing their shit in public or fighting each other? And before that, how long was Jerry Springer on the air? What's the difference?