The third Bedlam was on the site now occupied by the Imperial War Museum. This version of Bedlam operated from 1815 to 1930.


The main gate in Southwark, 1896.

The original Bedlam was situated just outside Bishop's Gate and, as LiR said, was on the site now occupied by the commercial buildings lining the south-east corner of Liverpool Street Station, just beyond St Botolph's Without:



The one that Cibber's statues adorned was used between 1676 and 1815, lining the south side of Moorfields and with its back to the street (it used London's Wall as a giant screen between it and "normal" life on that side), the main entrance facing the recently drained Moorfields park. You can just make them out on top of the gateposts in this engraving:



Dance's Obelisk (actually a disguised ventilation outlet for the tube running underneath and erected as recently as 1999) occupies roughly the spot of Bedlam's entrance. Ironically it is a reconstruction based on the architect George Dance's original commemorative Obelisk which for many years was displayed outside the Imperial War Museum.

Didn't know whether to put this here or on TV thread, but there is a very good "Documentary of the Week" tonight on BBC1. It is about Stephen Fry and is called The Not So Secret Life of the Manic Depressive: Ten Years On. Apparently we shall sit in on sessions between Fry and his psychiatrist: according to the Radio Times, "Fry's contribution is once again searingly honest and self-revealing." What a brave man. There are other case studies besides Fry's.

Clashes with the Renaissance Art programme on BBC4 - thank goodness for recorders and for IPlayer.

I have recently got to know someone who has been diagnosed (is that the correct word?) as having Asperger's Syndrome. Such people are often remarkably intelligent, but they do not deal with "emotion" in the way that so-called "normal" (neurotypical?) people do.They can be baffling, even infuriating, individuals. Yet many men and women with Asperger's Syndrome have done so much for humankind: they can leave the rest of us standing when it comes to complex scientific, mathematical or computer work.

Alan Turing, whom I do not think we have mentioned on this interesting thread, was one such. Our debt to him, of course, is beyond calculation.

I should add that perhaps I should not post this here: Asperger's Syndrome is not a mental "illness". It is simply another way of being. No offence is intended - my interest is on the word "debt" in the thread title, rather than "illness".


Alan Turing and the Bullying of Britain's Geeks




John Turing talks in the family's reminscences about his younger brother Alan, recalling how the future computer genius was noted for "bad reports, slovenly habits and unconventional behaviour".

The 'neurotypical' John says that neither he nor his parents "had the faintest idea that this tiresome, eccentric and obstinate small boy was a budding genius."

It is still very common for geekishly irritating little boys and girls to suffer misunderstanding and routine bullying at school. Nowadays Alan would probably have been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome.

I start again Temperance while my message disappeared.

Yes Temperance, the human complex brain...it seems even among animal experts that even animals can suffer from brain disorders...that means perhaps that they too are a bit human...
PS: I have a slow reaction time now on Res Historica. Is that on your computer the same?

Kind regards, Paul.

nordmann wrote:

Someone we know or knew, maybe even we ourselves - have had to face up to the fact that they were "different", "abnormal", "mentally sick" or any of the equivalent terms we use and have used to describe such aberrational behaviour. Yet what about those of whom we know only by repute? The "great and the good", our "leaders", our "cultural icons", our "heroes and heroines", those people who for better or for worse society and fate has placed above us and apart from us, men and women who shape our lives by design or accident, whose existence has touched on ours and even for whom we have had reason at times to be grateful that they existed at all.

How many of them have been "mentally ill", and indeed how many of those who were owe something of their success to that fact?

Greta Thunberg, the sixteen-year-old climate change activist, has "humbled" politicians and has been suggested as a possible canditate for the Nobel Peace prize. She has been/is a troubled girl who comes from a troubled family. Greta, like her sister, has suffered from complex mental issues: this is from an article written five years ago:


Greta is eleven years old and has gone two months without eating. Her heart rate and blood pressure show clear signs of starvation. She has stopped speaking to anyone but her parents and younger sister, Beata.

After years of depression, eating disorders, and anxiety attacks, she finally receives a medical diagnosis: Asperger’s syndrome, high-functioning autism, and OCD. She also suffers from selective mutism—which explains why she sometimes can’t speak to anyone outside her closest family. When she wants to tell a climate researcher that she plans a school strike on behalf of the environment, she speaks through her father.


The book Scenes from the Heart (“Scener från Hjärtat,” 2018) recounts these medical difficulties and the events that led to Greta Thunberg’s now-famous “school strike for climate,” in which hundreds of thousands of children have refused to attend school to protest about government inaction over climate change. Greta herself strikes every Friday and spent three weeks sitting outside the Swedish Parliament at the beginning of the school year. Written by her family—mother, father, Beata and Greta—the story is told in the voice of Greta’s mother, the opera soprano Malena Ernman, who was a celebrity in Europe long before her daughter’s fame. Although the book is only available in Swedish for the time being, it is already being translated into numerous languages—a development that reflects the global fascination with Thunberg’s campaign.

We are offered a story of “a family in crisis and a planet in crisis”—two phenomena that are presented as inextricably linked. The book posits that oppression of women, minorities, and people with disabilities stem from the same overarching root problem as climate change: an unsustainable way of life. The family’s private crisis and the global climate crisis, the authors argue, are simply symptoms of the same systemic disorder.


Greta is clearly an intelligent and remarkable girl, but her story worries me: is there exploitation going on here of a vulnerable child by a dysfunctional family and by a public hungry for a celebrity with a cause? Will Greta's story end in tears, in personal tragedy? I sincerely hope not. Five hundred years ago I think she would have been one of those angry and desperate "Holy Maids" who starved thenselves, and who were considered - often, not always - to be saints. Visionaries maybe, angry at the oppression and corruption they saw all around them, but visionaries who were often seriously disturbed and unhappy women. This child, now a young woman on the brink of adulthood, is undoubtedly doing good, but at what cost to herself?

Greta addresses the activists in London:



https://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2019/apr/24/the-greta-thunberg-effect-her-activism-in-london-in-two-minutes-video



This is a thoughtful Guardian article on autism which I hope is relevant to the OP:



https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/23/greta-thunberg-autism

Mm, you pose food for thought, Temperance.  People probably aren't going to like me for this but although I agree with the cause the methods used by the climate change protesters annoyed me mightily.  Gluing themselves to commuter trains so that people who already have a difficult time getting to work have an even worse time of it (well it was awful commuting in London back in 2010 before I moved on retirement).  I can't remember the exact terminology but didn't the young girl saying something about wanting other people to follow her example.  I'm limited what I can do as just one person but I try in small way to be "green" and recycle etc. etc. and there is nothing more annoying to me than it being implied that I'm not doing  what I'm already doing.*  Of course people suffering from autism can't help it any more than I can help having coeliac disease.  Also, I found a certain famous actress going on about aeroplane travel questionable - said actress has worked overseas at times - does she swim to the USA when she goes there?  There is an argument to be made for perhaps cutting out domestic flights (not that I've ever taken a domestic one) in small countries like the UK.  I thought it was mean of the protesters to target Easter weekend when people who had very likely saved up and put money aside to be able to travel abroad.

* On the other hand the young lady is VERY young.  Also now seeing that one at least of her parents is a famous (in her own country at least) person, I couldn't help wondering if a child from Sweden's equivalent of a council estate would be allowed to camp out outside a school on strike.  Also, isn't it important for Greta, no matter how clever she may be, to continue her education rather than strike?  (I'm sure there are Swedish less well off kids who do "bunk off" school though).

I can't foresee how the young lady's future will progress.

I agree that the methods used have been daft. Annoy the politicians and the greedy and irresponsible global business giants by all means, but keep the general populace on side! The protesters should read The Art of War by that Chinese chap - oh, and always be sure to clear up their own litter.

Sun Tzu. I knew it was Sun something.