97: Bedlam
Kathryn (00:10)
Hello everyone and welcome to I Scream You Scream. We're your weekly scoop of the most chilling histories, mysteries, and paranormal perplexities. And we have a very big announcement that we wanna share with you all. Ask and you shall receive friends because we have a brand new Patreon tier. That's right.
Gina (00:31)
Hooray!
Kathryn (00:32)
That's absolutely correct. If you are sick of ads, go on over and join us on our brand new ad-free and one week early tier, where you get your episodes in the state that I just mentioned, ad-free and one week early.
Gina (00:48)
Ha ha ha
Kathryn (00:50)
We're very excited. Thank you all for your patience. We know you've wanted it for a very long time.
Gina (00:56)
Yeah, technology's hard. I don't know if you guys know this, but it's just confusing. We're busy and
Kathryn (00:59)
We're so busy. We're
busy and confused. We did it.
Gina (01:05)
Yeah, but we did it. Which means that we're not only
hot, we are also smart.
Kathryn (01:12)
Yes. speaking of hot, it is oodie season. So I'm in my oodie. It's also spooky season, and yet it's like 95% humidity here. So I'm very warm. So we're gonna dig into our ice cream while we talk
Gina (01:27)
Mm.
Kathryn (01:27)
about hospitals. And we are eating vanilla ice cream. I decided to zhuzh mine up a little bit.
you tuned in, I think last week or a couple weeks ago, I mentioned the Bluebell ice cream that our listener mentioned to us and I got my full year's worth of ice cream. and this one is a honey vanilla from Bluebell.
Gina (01:52)
Honey, vanilla sounds so good.
Kathryn (01:54)
here's the thing, I was anticipating it to just be vanilla with like the memory of honey, kind of like
Gina (02:00)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn (02:01)
the LaCroix of flavor.
Gina (02:03)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn (02:04)
But this is like a this just tastes like a honey ice cream. Damn, that's good. my god, this is so good.
Gina (02:09)
I just have plain old borin vanilla from the shop across the road. It is actually very good. I am enjoying it, but I do
Kathryn (02:12)
Is it good? Nice. Good.
Gina (02:16)
think that as the month goes on I might gussy it up with some toppings and such.
Kathryn (02:21)
yeah, I was back when I just had my plain because we also have just a plain old whatever standard cheap vanilla because we did floats when my niece spent the night a few weeks ago. So I was planning on just having that. And then when I saw the honey vanilla on the bluebell ice cream, what? On the bluebell website. I
Gina (02:44)
Mm.
Kathryn (02:45)
just had to get it. You know how I am about honey. Ugh.
Gina (02:48)
Mm.
I do have one quick thing to share
I did watch the first episode of Monster, the Lizzie Borden story, and
I have to say it was the fucking worst. It was so bad. It was so
Kathryn (03:01)
my god, really? no.
Gina (03:03)
bad.
Like to each their own. I and I will say I did not go in expecting historical accuracy. This is not a well, actually
Kathryn (03:10)
No.
Gina (03:11)
the it happened at blah blah blah o'clock. It's not that kind of thing. It's
Kathryn (03:14)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (03:15)
the t and maybe it's because I hadn't seen enough of this like anthology series before that I should have known this. But within about 15 minutes of its starting, episode one, I was like, this has to have been written by a man, right? And then I looked it up and yeah, it was written. Like so
Kathryn (03:29)
yeah. Of course.
Gina (03:32)
extremely.
This is what y you think being a woman's like, like this is what you think women do. It was that kind of thing.
Kathryn (03:38)
that's the worst.
Is that like what was it? Like a hundred tampons for a week in space or whatever that was. You remember that story? Like that type of thing.
Gina (03:49)
I read
Kathryn (03:50)
Yeah.
Gina (03:50)
I read some review because after I watched the first episode, I was like, I can't wait to see what the reviews are for this. Like this is gonna be hilarious. And my favorite line that I found, I think it was in like The Guardian did a review of episode one. And one of the lines was something like,
it all started when Ryan Murphy discovered that women get periods or something like that.
Kathryn (04:09)
Yeah. See, yeah, I feel like
Gina (04:10)
Mm.
Kathryn (04:13)
Ryan Murphy, like people love him or hate him. I'm just not into his creations.
Gina (04:20)
I don't recommend it. I don't And they
Kathryn (04:22)
Okay. Yeah.
Gina (04:23)
They talk about Elizabeth Bathory in the episode. And
Kathryn (04:27)
William.
Gina (04:29)
I can't this this is one of the many ways this podcast has changed my life for the better, is I can't hear anyone
Kathryn (04:34)
Ha ha.
Gina (04:34)
talk about Elizabeth Bathory anymore without being like, That's not how it went. It's not it's not true. Always.
Kathryn (04:38)
It's always Elizabeth Bathory. Yeah, I feel like
for me, it's always Elizabeth Bathory and Sarah Winchester. But I feel like Sarah Winchester
Gina (04:45)
Mm.
Kathryn (04:46)
at least like more people are talking about, kind of
Gina (04:49)
Mm.
Kathryn (04:49)
like what we talked about in our episode. Bathory, it's like, man, no one's listening to our boy Tony Thorne.
Yeah, I wonder how he's doing.
Gina (04:58)
More people need to listen to Tony
Thorne.
Kathryn (05:00)
We should
see if we can contact him.
Gina (05:04)
I'm actually blushing right now. Can you imagine? What if we interviewed him for the podcast?
Kathryn (05:06)
my god, wait. We
should. Also, one thing we did not mention, we made the Patreon announcement. We did not talk about the fact that it's our birthday. Yes. Wow, guys. This is fantastic. my god. I just realized
Gina (05:16)
yeah! And it's almost our hundredth episode. We have so many exciting things coming up.
Kathryn (05:25)
that because it was exactly that Elizabeth Bathory would have been exactly two years ago.
Gina (05:30)
Yeah.
Kathryn (05:31)
Well, look at us. Look at us and look at all of you. This is great. Thank you for being here, you guys. Yeah, shall we shall we transition? Yeah, let's on this
Gina (05:37)
We're having so much fun. Do you wanna get real sad for an hour?
Kathryn (05:43)
very happy note, let's take him to Depression Town. That might be a little too on the nose, sorry.
Gina (05:47)
Sweet. Honestly, yeah, that's very apropos of this.
Yep, so speaking of Depression Town, today I'm going to tell you about one of the oldest psychiatric hospitals in the world, in fact, one of the oldest hospitals in the world. It is a place that has such a storied history full of so many scandals that its name has literally become synonymous with chaos. I am talking, of course, about Bethlem Royal Hospital, aka Bedlam.
Possibly the most notorious psychiatric facility in the world? I don't know how true that is. Certainly in my mind it is. Yeah, okay. So we'll say
Kathryn (06:30)
I think that's fair. Yeah, I think that's fair.
Gina (06:33)
that for a fact. You heard it here first. Ver
Kathryn (06:35)
Definitively.
Gina (06:37)
verifiably true.
Kathryn (06:38)
Yeah.
Gina (06:40)
fair warning, the story I'm about to tell includes descriptions of extremely outdated medical procedures, patient abuse, and death. This is very much an episode about the history of mental health treatment in London.
And therefore, it is just as disturbing as you are imagining. So be warned. But things didn't start off that way. The hospital actually had a very nice sounding beginning. Bethlehem Royal Hospital was founded in 1247. So recent. Yes, so new.
Kathryn (07:10)
Okay. Super f super fake
year by the way. Nothing existed before
Gina (07:15)
Super doesn't exist.
Kathryn (07:17)
before like the fifteen hundreds. In even fifteen hundreds, I'm like, okay, sure.
Gina (07:21)
Well listen, can we start that conspiracy theory? Because if there are no pictures, I'm not believing it,
Kathryn (07:25)
Yeah.
Gina (07:25)
and they did not have pictures back then. You
Kathryn (07:27)
Okay, wait. Wow, like pretty
much all the years you're passionate about talking about also don't exist then.
Gina (07:36)
You bel you expect me to believe
in engravings? I'm sorry. What?
Kathryn (07:40)
Sure.
I thought that's cute.
Gina (07:43)
Man jokes
like that aren't even funny anymore now that AI can just make pictures. That makes me sad. Yeah.
Kathryn (07:46)
I know, I kind of feel bad, but you know what?
It's fine. It's fine. Everything's fine.
Gina (07:50)
It's fine. Anyway,
speaking of crying and being existentially depressed,
Bethlehem Royal Hospital. As I said, it was tw founded in 1247, and it was a place where pretty much anyone in need could go to get help. It was an asylum in the true sense of the word, in that it was a safe place to go when you didn't have anywhere else. So, yes, that includes people suffering from mental illness, but not just people suffering from mental illness. Really, anyone could go there and you would get some bread.
Some cheese, some ale, and a place to lie your head. So people would go there to get help for themselves, but it was also very common to bring someone else there who you might need help taking care of. There's this misconception that I learned about in researching this that I think is really interesting, that at this point in history, people would kind of sweep the chronically ill or the mentally ill under the rug.
especially the mentally ill, like they would cast them out of society and pretty much ignore them or like ostracize them. But the evidence suggests that actually, unless someone was considered to be really dangerous and like very likely to hurt others, everyone just kind of lived alongside everyone else as part of society. They weren't thrown
Kathryn (09:03)
Hmm.
Gina (09:03)
into a dungeon to rot, which is not what I think about when I think about this time period.
Kathryn (09:07)
That's that's interesting because I'm having the same reaction as you, but alongside the idea that it feels like it makes sense because so little was known about mental health, it's almost like how much of that was just they didn't know they were ill or whatever.
Gina (09:26)
Mm.
Kathryn (09:26)
in the way that I'm so used to hearing everything you just said, like if someone's acting weird, they just get like tossed away.
that goes against everything I thought I knew.
Gina (09:35)
Yeah, right?
So very often the people you would find in Bedlam would have been brought there by family members who were just desperate for help. So it wasn't like they were always abandoned, you know, their family would visit them, they would still bring them food and gifts and all that.
It would just be like, hey, I have been taking care of my little brother since I was 10 years old. He has seizures all the time. I'm struggling to make ends meet. I'm at the end of my rope. Can someone just please help me? And that is what Bedlam was for. It has a very pure, altruistic beginning. And about a century after it was founded, two important things happened. The first is that we see the first documented reference to it as a hospital.
It came in the form of a license that they were issued. And the second thing that happened is that it ran out of money. And we know that because that license I mentioned was a license to beg.
Kathryn (10:28)
What?
Gina (10:29)
Yeah, because back then not just anyone could go around begging for money. You needed to have a license. I'm not sure if that goes for private citizens, but at least
Kathryn (10:38)
okay.
Gina (10:39)
the
church 'cause this was the Bedlam was run by a church back then, they couldn't just go around begging people for money. They had to have permission to do it.
so a century after this hospital opens, things are not going well, right? Like they're completely out of money. The building falls more and more into disrepair. Begging isn't getting them very far. And within a couple of decades, the city stepped in to help run it.
And I don't know if you know this, but sometimes governments can be very corrupt.
Kathryn (11:06)
What?
Gina (11:10)
What?
I'm sorry.
Anyway, so yes, the government steps in. and a lot of times what you'll find is that
Quite frequently people who are in no way qualified for a job will still get that job just because they're cozy with some big cheese guy in the government. Don't know if you're familiar with this phenomenon.
Kathryn (11:33)
I
was gonna say, I feel like now you're just trying to bug me.
Gina (11:38)
How far can I push her before she smacks her screen off of her
Kathryn (11:38)
Yeah.
Gina (11:42)
desk? But this corruption is exactly what happened at Bedlam. They started appointing what were called masters to manage things at the hospital, and those masters were supposed to be overseen by the local government, but of course nobody could actually be bothered to do their jobs, and so things kinda went to shit.
For real. And the timing of this corruption beginning in earnest happened right around when Bedlam stopped being a place that looked after everyone, and it started to specialize in mental health care specifically. We don't know exactly when this shift happened because it didn't happen all at once. There's not like a start and an end date, it was a slowly over time kind of thing. But a very big turning point came in the 1370s.
Now at this point there was another mental hospital in London. It was called the Stone House. And the king at the time decided to shut it down because he said that all of the noise from the quote mad people was upsetting his pet falcons.
Kathryn (12:48)
Literally not a single moment in that sentence did I know you're gonna say it next.
Gina (12:53)
That's
a roller coaster, wasn't it? Mmm. Yeah, so this
Kathryn (12:57)
But
Gina (12:57)
is an example of someone having a job that maybe they shouldn't have. Although actually, I don't
Kathryn (13:03)
Yeah.
Gina (13:03)
know anything else about this king. Maybe he like overhauled taxes or something in a great way. No fucking idea. But this stuff was stupid. so everyone in Stonehouse was transferred to Bedlam, and by the 15th century, most of Bedlam's patients were there for mental health concerns.
Which put society's most vulnerable people directly in the hands of corrupt officials who saw the hospital as their own personal bank account. And unfortunately, when you look at hospital inventory records from this time, this is also when we start seeing things like chains and manacles popping up. One example of a very corrupt piece of shit was known as Peter the Porter.
Peter was a janitor at the hospital who wound up being appointed its treasurer. and the story behind that is like Peter's boss didn't really care about running the hospital at all, so he just delegated all of his work to Peter. And Peter just got to do whatever he wanted. There was no one checking his work, so he pillaged as much as he could. Public donations that were meant to go towards caring for patients went directly into his own pocket.
He started selling things that were already in the hospital, including items from the hospital's chapel, which was like a very big no-no. And he also started forcing patients to pay for the food that had been donated to the hospital. And if they couldn't pay, they didn't eat.
Kathryn (14:24)
What the fuck?
What the hell? That is messed up.
Gina (14:27)
Yep.
He also opened up a bar in the hospital, a little pub for him and his friends, where he and his wife would serve all kinds of unsavory folk late into the night, keeping patients from sleeping.
Kathryn (14:40)
Okay,
so at first I did think the bar was for the patients and I was a little excited. I was like, that actually is kinda nice.
Gina (14:46)
Not for the fish.
Kathryn (14:50)
Like maybe not the best care, but you know, gotta give something. That's so annoying.
Gina (14:50)
Yeah, I didn't think about that. Better than being chained up. Yeah. No.
Yeah, he was horrendous, like a truly an evil person. And eventually
Kathryn (15:02)
Yeah, that sucks.
Gina (15:04)
the city did notice that all the hospital's money kept disappearing, and Peter did eventually face charges for this. He wound up being ordered to pay a fine or replace what he stole. And he definitely didn't replace what he stole.
And I couldn't find any record of him paying a fine, but he was fired, so that's something.
Kathryn (15:26)
Yeah, that is something, isn't it?
Gina (15:28)
Yeah. And that is just one example. But the corruption in Bedlam just passed from one person's hands to another's to another's. And it's no surprise that this is also roughly when people started avoiding Bedlam at all costs. This is when it got a really horrible reputation for patient care. That's not to say that patients didn't receive care at all. They did, just not good care, especially by our standards.
And a very large part of that comes down to the people who were in charge, because the people running things were not doctors, they were just like chums with whoever was appointing people. But a pretty big part of it also has to do with the way people understood medical disorders at the time, and especially mental health conditions.
Because back then there were essentially two ways of understanding mental health. The first was the classic approach, which is the idea of the four humors. And that's the theory that someone's health and personality completely depends on the balance of four different fluids within your body. So it's like a physical thing. You got black bile, blood, phlegm, and yellow bile. And all of those fluids were nut in your face. It's disgusting.
Kathryn (16:41)
like trying
to just be a grown up right now. That all sounds
Gina (16:46)
Not think about all the phlegm.
Kathryn (16:47)
yeah, dude. Even the word phlegm the only thing worse than phlegm is the word phlegm and the only thing worse than the word phlegm is the way it's spelled. It's just all gross. It's all disgusting to me.
Gina (17:02)
Hagum.
Kathryn (17:03)
Yeah, that's disgusting.
Gina (17:05)
Yeah, that is vile. Well, I'll stop mentoring phlegm mentioning phlegm. PhlM? Sorry, I won't talk about phlegm anymore. PhlEM, okay. So all four of those liquids were necessary to humans. We all had all of them in this theory, but if they got thrown out of balance, you would become either physically or mentally ill. So for example, if you were melancholic, aka depressed, well that means you got too much black bile in your body.
So you need to get some leeches on you to suck some of that blood out, get the black bile out with it. That was the cure for melancholia.
Kathryn (17:40)
Sure. Yeah.
Gina (17:41)
So that's one approach. The other approach was the Christian approach, which was basically that if you were mentally ill, you were possessed by a demon. Very straightforward, this one. Preach, you know what? Yeah.
Kathryn (17:50)
Yeah. Where's the lie? Sorry, I'm gonna mute myself, I'm sorry. Yeah,
Gina (17:59)
And the only cure for possession by a demon, of course, is exorcism, or literally beating the demon out of them. And also by the 14th and 15th centuries, this expanded to include witchcraft as well. So it was basically like you're possessed by a demon or you've been bewitched. And the idea of mental illness being some kind of curse from a higher power.
Wasn't just a Christian thing. It also shows up in ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, even ancient Mesopotamia. There's links between mental health or mental illness and the gods But Christianity definitely carried that concept into medieval England and certainly into Bedlam. And I will say I'm using the term mental illness very loosely here.
Because oftentimes it wasn't the mental illness that we know or categorize it as today. Certainly not within like the categories and subcategories that we use now. Back then, pretty much everything that didn't have an obvious physical cause was put into like the mental illness bucket. So that includes things like patients with epilepsy, dementia, learning disabilities, depression, rabies. They were all seen as basically the same thing.
Either an imbalance of humours or a fucking demon. Or a witch, depending on what century you're in.
And it was thought that the best thing you could do for people suffering from these conditions was prevent them from hurting themselves or hurting others. And so that's one of the reasons why the chains and the manacles pop up. It wasn't just because they wanted to chain people up and forget about them, which they did, but it was also one of the prevailing medical treatments to keep people in darkness and isolation for days and weeks at a time. Because they believed that if you removed as much stimuli as possible.
People might eventually recover. And that's obviously a horrible thing to do, but I kind of understand the logic that went behind it. Like if you see someone getting really aggravated
Kathryn (19:56)
Yeah.
Gina (19:57)
at certain triggers, well, let's just remove all the triggers. Like I get why they would think that would work, but it very obviously doesn't. You know what I mean?
Kathryn (20:06)
Yeah,
absolutely. This is all very one plus one equals two for that time period. You know what I mean?
Gina (20:13)
Yeah. And if that didn't work, you could always just beat the demon out of them. So you did have options. Yeah.
Kathryn (20:17)
Yeah. Yep.
Gina (20:19)
And also the kind of treatment that I'm talking about, with being like left in the dark and the removal of all stimuli, that's like best case scenario if you had a physician who really cared about you. So you can only imagine how dark it got at Bedlam when the people in charge of treatment were not physicians and they didn't care about you at all.
Over time, Bedlam's treatment plans would expand to include all sorts of other horrible things. Cold water therapy was a really big one. This came from a belief that the mentally ill don't experience temperatures in the same way that others do. I know. Right? Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Kathryn (20:53)
What the fuck? I n did not know that. That's that's weird.
Gina (20:58)
Wild. And so it was thought
Kathryn (20:59)
Yeah.
Gina (21:00)
that like if you had a someone who was struggling with mental illness, if you expose them to cold water very rapidly, like dunking them in cold water
Kathryn (21:08)
Yeah.
Gina (21:08)
or spraying them down or even wrapping them in towels that had been soaking in ice, it would be like a shock to their system
Kathryn (21:14)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (21:15)
and it would kind of mentally c recalibrate them. It's it's kind of to me, it reminds me of a version of electroshock therapy.
Kathryn (21:22)
Th this is just so I'm I wanna hear more of them because this is one of those things where I'm like
I I don't know what I'm trying to say. I can see like the thread that connects quote unquote mental health care from yesteryear to
Gina (21:39)
Mm.
Kathryn (21:40)
today. Because like when I'm feeling anxious, the number one thing that I like doing is I'll run my hand under cold water. You know what I
Gina (21:47)
Mm.
Kathryn (21:48)
mean? Or something like that. So like if it's everything
That happened way back in the day. It's like, I guess there could be some truth to it, but not A to the extent that they took it and B for the reasons they thought. You know, those are
Gina (22:00)
Yes.
Kathryn (22:01)
the two missing things. It's like you're so close, you're almost there, but like heading
Gina (22:06)
Yeah.
Kathryn (22:07)
in the complete wrong direction is gonna take us centuries to get you back on track. Do you know what I'm saying?
Gina (22:12)
The the way
that I a hundred percent get what you're saying. The way that reading about this kind of stuff makes me feel is it makes me feel like I'm watching my younger sibling, who I don't have, but I'm watching my younger sibling do a science project and I'm like,
Kathryn (22:21)
Yes Mm Yes
Gina (22:24)
I know it's the baking soda and the vinegar, but they don't know that. That's how it feels. Mm-hmm.
Kathryn (22:28)
Yeah, that's such a good analogy. Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah.
Gina (22:32)
So there was cold water therapy. There was also something called rotating therapy. Have you heard of this one before?
Kathryn (22:38)
No.
Gina (22:40)
it's very disturbing. So it didn't come about until much later, but it's related to the whole four humors thing. So I'm gonna talk about it
Kathryn (22:46)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (22:47)
now. Basically, with the four humors approach, mental illness was seen as a disease of the body, not of the mind. And so they thought they could cure it through expelling bodily fluids. Take from that what you will. So the rotating chair.
was designed to do this mainly through inducing vomiting. Picture
Kathryn (23:10)
my god.
Gina (23:11)
yeah. Picture like when when you're on a swing set, you're sitting on a swing and you twist yourself around a bunch of times so that when you let go, me too, it's the best thing to do on a swing. Yeah.
Kathryn (23:21)
That was my favorite thing when I was little. Yeah.
Gina (23:23)
But you can take it too far. And they very much did. They can, yeah.
Kathryn (23:26)
You can see this is another one.
Gina (23:28)
But that's basically what they would do. They would spin you a bunch of times and then they would let you go, and you would spin really fast in the opposite direction. And weirdly,
Kathryn (23:35)
my god.
Gina (23:36)
this type of therapy was invented by Charles Darwin's grandfather. Which is wild. Yeah, why not? I just I couldn't not mention that part. But
Kathryn (23:41)
Sure. Why not? You know? Yeah. Okay,
why is it so weird to think that Charles Darwin had a grandfather? If wasn't he like the first guy ever? I don't know.
Gina (23:53)
You're telling me that man didn't just crawl out of the Galapagos Islands fully formed.
Kathryn (23:57)
Yeah, I'm sorry.
He did not grow from a tadpole? What? Isn't that what all the diagrams say?
Gina (24:03)
Everyone knows Charles Darwin had gills.
Kathryn (24:08)
This is a science podcast, by the way.
Gina (24:09)
Yeah, we're rebranding.
For a second birthday we're rebranding as a science and math.
Kathryn (24:14)
Yeah.
no.
Gina (24:19)
but yeah, Charles Darwin's grandpappy invented this, which is wild. and with the rotating treatment, they would use that, you know, as treatment for patients, but they would also use it as a punishment when they didn't obey hospital staff. So the treatments and the punishments were the same thing, which is not great. Just do have to
Kathryn (24:37)
Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Gina (24:39)
point that one out.
Kathryn (24:40)
Yeah, that's fucking weird.
Gina (24:42)
Yep. In 1598, Bedlam's Board of Governors, or whatever you want to call it, like the governing board of the hospital, decided to inspect conditions in there for the first time in 40 years.
And they found that patients were living in horrifying conditions. One of the roofs had caved in, the sinks were blocked, and the cells, not rooms, cells,
were so filthy that they declared no human being should have to live there. And again, that's in 1598 when the standards of medical hygiene were fairly different than they are now.
Kathryn (25:18)
And just reminder for everyone, because I literally forgot that we are talking about hospitals, not prisons. Like literally the whole time you've been describing this, I've been imagining l like I love the cell, not room call-out because I was imagining a prison.
Gina (25:35)
It functionally kind of acted
like one
Kathryn (25:37)
Yeah.
Gina (25:37)
at this point. And it's interesting that you say that because at some point, I can't remember the exact history that goes into this, there was some type of legislation
that changed the legal status of patients from prisoners to patients. So like their legal status was prisoner.
Kathryn (25:51)
So, okay.
I thank you for saying that because when I saw this on the spreadsheet, I was a little confused because my whole life I did always think that Bedlam was a prison. I I did not know it was a hospital. Or supposed to be, I guess. The line is blurry.
Gina (26:06)
Yeah, it kind of it c it was supposed to and I think as
yeah, and especially for women, I think it functioned as a prison because
Kathryn (26:15)
Mm.
Gina (26:16)
women have always been or at least in European history, I don't know about the rest of the world, but they've always been seen as more prone to mental illness and you know, hysteria, wandering womb theory,
Kathryn (26:24)
Yeah.
Gina (26:25)
all that garbage. And so a lot of times it would be like husbands or parents that didn't want you in the house anymore just sticking you in there because you I don't know.
Kathryn (26:34)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (26:34)
Cried last Sunday or something, you know? It's
Kathryn (26:36)
Right.
Gina (26:37)
for a lot of people it very much was a prison. And once you were in, there wasn't really a way out. And we'll talk a little bit more about that later.
Kathryn (26:44)
Okay.
Gina (26:45)
but yeah, so the board of governors declared that, hey, no human being should have to live here, regardless of who they are, what their social status is. But of course, people did live there and they continued living there, even when multiple follow-up inspections confirmed that the conditions were still absolutely awful.
And just for context, at this time the hospital had capacity for like 16 to 20 people. But they didn't always respect that capacity, obviously, so overcrowding was another issue that they had. It was a heinous environment. But the public also found it kind of morbidly fascinating. And in the 1600s, Bedlam started becoming something of a tourist attraction.
By this time the city of London had grown quite a bit since the hospital had been founded, and it was now located right by the local zoo, right by the theatres and the gardens. Bedlam was essentially on the tourist trail. So it slowly started to become an early version of like a nineteenth century freak show where people would go out for drinks with their buddies, and then on their way home they would swing by Bedlam to like point and laugh, essentially.
Kathryn (27:54)
my god. Can you I don't I'm sorry if I missed it, but what year did this start happening? What you're describing right now?
Gina (28:00)
So we're in like
very late fifteen hundreds, early sixteen hundreds. I think the first
Kathryn (28:04)
Fifteen. Okay.
Gina (28:06)
yeah, I think p p more sixteen than fifteen, because I think the first
Kathryn (28:10)
Okay.
Gina (28:10)
documented evidence we have of someone paying to visit Bedlam, I wanna say was sixteen ten, and it was a guy who took
Kathryn (28:17)
Okay.
Gina (28:18)
his wife and two sisters or something. And so it wasn't just people with their buddies, it was like people with their families too, which is kinda gross.
Kathryn (28:24)
Yeah.
Man, that's rough. I'm just I'm thinking of like how public executions used to be such a big thing. It has that same vibe. Like the things we did before social media, you know?
Gina (28:34)
Yeah. I know.
Well, I was listening to an episode of Betwixt the Sheets recently, which is a great podcast that I do recommend.
Kathryn (28:43)
my god, w
I feel like one of us recommended that to the other one.
Gina (28:48)
It might have been me, because I'm obsessed with Betwixt the Sheets.
Kathryn (28:49)
Yeah.
Gina (28:50)
It's it's a history of sex and scandal in society or something like that. It's fantastic. It's hosted by a great historian named Kate Lister. And they have an episode on Bedlam that I was listening to. and they were talking about a question was raised of like, has that desire to watch ever left humanity? Like public executions, people visiting Bedlam as a tourist attraction, 19th century freak shows, like, are humans is society over that? And the response
Kathryn (29:16)
Mm.
Gina (29:16)
was like, no.
We have things like Big Brother and Jersey Shore and we've
Kathryn (29:20)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (29:20)
just replaced what used to scratch that itch with reality TV, basically. And I thought
Kathryn (29:25)
Yeah.
Gina (29:26)
that was such an interesting point.
Kathryn (29:27)
And like I intentionally bring up social media because social media has stuff
Gina (29:33)
Yeah.
Kathryn (29:34)
like that now, you know?
Gina (29:35)
Mm-hmm. I just I I think it's interesting. It's easy to feel very separated from a point
Kathryn (29:40)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (29:41)
in history like this,
but there definitely is still the voyeuristic I want to watch people do wild things in front of me thing. Like that's still such a human quality. Yeah.
Kathryn (29:50)
one hundred percent. It's
just like wearing a different outfit now.
Gina (29:55)
Yep, same impulse, different font.
Kathryn (29:57)
Mm-hmm. Right, exactly.
Gina (29:58)
Yeah. This is also around the time when people started calling it Bedlam. Because I know that I've been calling it Bedlam this whole time, but its actual name was Bethlehem, which over time people shortened to
Bethlem which became Bedlam. So Bedlam,
Kathryn (30:14)
Hmm.
Gina (30:15)
it like if you say, like, I went Black Friday shopping and it was Bedlam, Bedlam is just a slang term for that hospital. That's where it comes from,
which I think is very interesting.
Kathryn (30:24)
Okay, there's also like a very creepy layer of the original name being Bethlehem. That's I
Gina (30:31)
I know, yeah.
Kathryn (30:32)
didn't realize that. That's that's uncomfortable.
Gina (30:36)
Yep. Yeah. It's
ironic? Iron it's ironic, right? That's the right use of irony.
Kathryn (30:41)
That's the correct word,
but doesn't it feel weird to say that? But it's true. Yeah, yes, exactly. Yeah.
Gina (30:45)
It feels like too flippant that's ironic. Yeah.
Kathryn (30:50)
But it but that's the correct feeling. Like
Gina (30:53)
Okay.
Kathryn (30:53)
that plus, you know.
Gina (30:55)
Yeah, yep. Anyway, so by the early 1600s, the powers that be realized: hey, this is a hospital. We should probably have the person in charge be a fucking doctor. And so they decided to make an attempt at reforming. Unfortunately, they picked a guy named Helkiah Crook, which is the most Disney villain-ass name I've ever heard.
Kathryn (31:16)
Jesus Christ, Gina.
You keep doing things like this to me. You keep bringing me these episodes with shit like that.
Gina (31:23)
I know.
Kathryn (31:24)
And what? I'm just supposed to have a straight face? Like what am I supposed to do with this information?
Gina (31:31)
I don't just comfort me because I don't wanna be alone with it. I can't sit here knowing that.
Kathryn (31:34)
We gotta
you gotta get your oodie for next week because this is too much.
Gina (31:39)
It's too hot. Otherwise I would.
Kathryn (31:41)
I know, guys, I am sweating. I'm sorry. I
Gina (31:44)
Ha ha
Kathryn (31:44)
just it's October now. It's gotta be oodie season. It is time. Yeah. I
Gina (31:47)
It's time. Whether or not the weather agrees, it it's time.
Kathryn (31:52)
was gonna make hot tea and then I was like, that's just a step too far.
Gina (31:55)
And see, I just had a cup of hot tea, so I think an oodie would oodie would overheat me. Yeah.
Kathryn (31:57)
Okay, yeah. Yeah,
that's too much.
Gina (32:01)
Yeah. You know what else was too much? This Helkiah Crooke guy. I mean, okay, things with Helkiah started out okay. He was a professor of medicine, so that's a step in the right direction. He was a bit of a bootlicker. He like made sure to throw out nice shout outs to the powers that be every time he wrote a book on anatomy, but whatever. And he was handed the job of overseeing the hospital.
However, he soon lost interest in doing this job, and he just kind of stopped keeping an eye on his staff. Eventually, he started only coming in on days where patients had to pay their bills, and once again, the money from patients was going directly into his pocket. He was dismissed in 1634, and he was forced to resign from the Royal College of Physicians, so that's something. And you would think that surely.
After centuries of corruption by this point, things might start looking better from here. But no. The hospital's long tradition of abuse continued, and another big, big, big scandal came in 1680, when one of the female patients was found to be pregnant by one of the male attendants. And this is what made them decide, hey, we should probably separate the men and women here,
Kathryn (33:13)
Okay, that was another thing that I was wondering about because you mentioned previously that they were all too in my head it was a men's. See, this is the thing. I almost did it again. In my head, this was a men's prison, not an everybody hospital. So I was like
Gina (33:27)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn (33:31)
thrown when you mentioned women and like hysteria and all that kind of stuff. Wild. Okay.
Gina (33:36)
What the ratios were. Like I don't know if it was
mainly male patients but I'm also sure it changed because this hospital's been there since
Kathryn (33:42)
Yeah.
Gina (33:42)
the 1200s. Like at different points in history, it probably had different ratios, but
Kathryn (33:46)
That's true.
Gina (33:47)
yeah, it's a combination. And it's also worth noting that people who were institutionalized for committing a crime, let's say like murdering your kid or something like that, and people who were not institute people who were just like depressed or had really bad anxiety or OCD or something, they were all kept together. That's worth noting because it it put
Kathryn (34:04)
good. Yeah.
Gina (34:06)
People in serious danger. So patients were in danger of not just the attendants and the people in charge, but also in danger because of each other, which sucks.
Kathryn (34:13)
Yeah
Gina (35:14)
Over the next century, things continued to get worse and worse, and by the 1750s, Bedlam had moved to a new location further away from the center of London, much bigger than the last place. Big enough to welcome tens of thousands of tourists a year. Bedlam became one of the top
Tourist attractions in the city. The way that it's written about, it's similar to, like if you think about London now, you think about Big Ben and the London Eye and things like that. Bedlam was right up there with things like that, like massive London tourist attraction. People would go just to stare and laugh at patients, they would also bring booze with them, get the patients drunk just for a laugh, actively harm them and impair their treatment.
And just otherwise humiliate them. And if that's not depressing enough, the hospital got especially crowded with tourists around Christmas and Easter time.
Kathryn (36:09)
It's like I have things to say, but what are they? You know what I mean?
Gina (36:13)
Yeah, just screams.
Kathryn (36:16)
Yeah. It's like this is what we're doing on on holiday. Literally. Yeah. Hmm.
Gina (36:21)
Yeah, on holiday? Well, we just got done
with church and we have a few hours before the big meal. Should we abuse people?
Kathryn (36:29)
Let's go yeah, let's go throw
fruit at mentally unstable people.
Gina (36:35)
yeah, and bring the kids. Bring the kids. They need
Kathryn (36:37)
Yeah.
Gina (36:37)
to work on their aim. Yeah. And eventually it got to be such a popular destination that once again overcrowding became a very big problem. Even in this massive new facility. And so by 1770, the rules had changed a bit, and you actually needed a ticket in order to visit the hospital, which did decrease tourism significantly. Not entirely, but significantly.
And that was great because it let these poor people get some actual rest and peace and quiet and potentially recover. But it was also bad because now there were fewer people to see what was happening behind closed doors. And again came scandal after scandal after scandal. Every now and then they would get a physician in charge who wanted to improve things, but when I was reading about it, it kind of seemed like the one ring in The Lord of the Rings, where like
You want to do great things and then you suddenly get corrupted by all of this power that you have over vulnerable
Kathryn (37:33)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (37:34)
people. Like people genuinely seemed like they wanted to make a change. And then as soon as they were put in a position to do so, they would fold and just take the money and do
Kathryn (37:42)
Yeah.
Gina (37:42)
whatever they wanted. But there were a few things that eventually did lead to real actual change. One was the case of Hannah Hyson
I'm not sure how old Hannah was, but she's described as being like a young girl, and her parents are very involved in this case, so I imagine like maybe in her teens, maybe not even. And she was brought to Bedlam on April 4, 1851. And when she was discharged, just over a week later, her parents found that she had been severely mistreated. She was unable to stand. She was covered.
With cuts and scrapes, she was emaciated, and within weeks of her parents bringing her home, she died.
Kathryn (38:25)
my god.
Gina (38:26)
it's so sad.
Kathryn (38:28)
That's just so messed up that she was she said she was only there for a week
Gina (38:33)
Yeah.
Kathryn (38:33)
and she was emaciated, so they didn't feed
Gina (38:35)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn (38:35)
her at all.
That's so messed up. Like, my God. Sorry, I like can't get over that.
Gina (38:38)
I know. Yeah. It's horrifying.
And I tried to find what she was originally brought in for and I couldn't.
Kathryn (38:46)
I was gonna ask okay, okay.
Gina (38:48)
No, I couldn't find but I know that one of the issues they had was getting her to eat food. Allegedly they had issues with her getting to eat food. I don't know if that means they just simply weren't feeding her. But I don't know if it
Kathryn (38:56)
Mm-hmm. Right.
Gina (38:58)
was like a like she had an eating disorder or was unable to keep food down for some other reason or had anxiety about eat you know what I mean? Like I don't know if
Kathryn (39:06)
Yeah.
Gina (39:06)
The food thing was related, or just because she was at Bedlam, she wasn't fed. Don't know.
Kathryn (39:10)
Okay, yeah. God, that sucks.
Gina (39:13)
yeah, it's fucking awful. And we know about Hannah's case mainly because Hannah's father wrote a letter to the president of the hospital. And you can read this letter. It's it's available, you can find it. It's heartbreaking. and he basically spends the letter just begging to understand how the hell this could have happened to his little girl because she just needed help. Like she was not in a way before.
Kathryn (39:34)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (39:35)
They brought her in where she would have died. Like it's just how the hell could this have happened? There was also the case of Ann Morley, who, after over two months in Bedlam, was transferred to a different hospital. And when she was transferred, the other hospital found that she was basically just skin and bones. She was incontinent. She couldn't sit up because she was so weak. She was covered in wounds and flea bites.
The new hospital treated her as best they could, which meant they kept her in clean clothes, they gave her painkillers, they made sure she was eating food. And after a month, she was back on her feet and she was completely cured, or at least close to completely cured. And so it was like, okay, if that's all it took, why the hell were you in such a bad way when you came here? Like what the fuck were they doing at Bedlam that all you needed was just some food and clean clothes and you would have been okay? And once she was recovered,
She spoke out about the reasons why and she was vocal about what happened to her in Bedlam. She said that the staff had beat her, forced her to sleep naked on a pile of straw in a cold basement. And also straw, it like just as a side note, it's very abrasive. Like if you've ever been on like
Kathryn (40:47)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (40:48)
a hayride or something, you know how it makes you so itchy and scratchy? That's what messed up her skin so bad. Like they wouldn't give them mattresses,
Kathryn (40:53)
Yeah.
Gina (40:54)
they would just have to sleep on raw straw.
And so all of this information was fed into a special commission, like it was kind of a newly-ish within the century founded commission, whose whole job it was to inspect hospitals and scrutinize their conditions and their level of patient care. And this specific commission, it was called the Lunacy Commission. It had been trying to get into Bedlam for a while to perform an inspection because everyone knew that Bedlam was fucking awful. It was a very poorly kept secret. Everyone knew about it.
But whenever they would try and get in to inspect things and see what the quality of care was like, Bedlam was like, mmm, no. No, you're not allowed. You can't come in. And so the commission was like, okay, then we are just gonna release a report with all the stories people have told us about what it's like getting treatment from you. And that was a very, very big deal because suddenly people were holding them accountable for their actions. And what f Imagine!
Kathryn (41:50)
no.
Gina (41:53)
And what followed was essentially a game of accountability hot potato, where the people in charge were all like, it's not my fault, it's not my fault. How was I supposed to know this was happening in the hospital I was in charge of, kind of thing. It was both humiliating and infuriating for people. And so once again, the hospital's governors were forced to make a change, leading them to replace Bedlam's principal physician at the time with a guy named William Hood.
And this kind of marks the start of the long road back for Bedlam. I am not saying it was all uphill from here. It definitely was not. But this was at least one meaningful turning point. William Hood was not a traditionalist when it came to mental health care. He believed that beating people and sticking leeches all over them didn't actually help anything. He was nothing like the people who had been charge of Bedlam before. Cause it was it had been
In the hands of the Monroe family, who was like a dynasty of people who looked over Bedlam who were like awful fucking people. Anyway, William wanted to appeal to the inherent good in his patients. It was an approach that he got from the Quakers. Love the Quakers. And it comes down
Kathryn (43:02)
Ha ha
Gina (43:03)
to believing that even if someone is struggling or trying to hurt you or trying to hurt someone else, an they are still an inherently good person.
And so, if you, as a physician, can sit down with someone and say, hey, I understand you're going through something hard right now. I'm here to help you. Why don't we sit down and talk about what's going on and what I can do? You're more likely to get a positive outcome. He also believed that patients should be kept warm and clean, they should be well fed, and when dinner time came, they should be given wine with a little bit of opium in
And he also believed that patients who had been institutionalized for committing crimes should be separated from the patients who hadn't committed any crimes. And suddenly there were real beds in patients' rooms. There was carpet on the floor, and there were pictures on the walls, there were flower beds outside, workshops for patients to pass their time in. They even launched an in-house magazine featuring stories from patients and staff. It was
Night and day compared to the Bedlam that we have known up until now.
William wound up staying on until 1862 and when he left everyone was very, very optimistic about the hospital's future. But like I said, it was not all uphill from there.
The hospital has a long and storied tradition of putting people in charge who absolutely should not be in charge. And so within a few years, things like solitary confinement and restraints were reintroduced at Bedlam. But slowly and steadily the hospital crawled its way into the twentieth century
In 1997, the Bethlehem and Maudley NHS Trust announced plans to celebrate the 750th anniversary of the hospital, which was met with
Kathryn (44:46)
Jesus.
Gina (44:48)
Yeah, man. And that sentiment was shared by a lot of people. People were like, What
Kathryn (44:52)
Yeah.
Gina (44:52)
the hell is there to celebrate about the past of this hospital or the present of this hospital? Which inspired a campaign called Reclaim Bedlam.
Which was backed by hundreds of patients and former patients advocating for better treatment and rights surrounding mental health. And many say that that campaign fundamentally changed the British approach to mental health care. They protested the anniversary celebrations for Bedlam, but they also expanded their focus beyond just Bedlam, because it wasn't just Bedlam that was the issue. And so the campaign kind of evolved into a movement that's now known as Mad Pride.
I have a quote from their website here, because it's still a thing, that says, Mad Pride is a movement that celebrates madness as a cultural identity, challenges psychiatric oppression, and fosters community among those labeled as mentally ill. It's also very aligned with like the neurodiversity movement and things like that. But
Kathryn (45:49)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (45:49)
getting back to Bedlam the Hospital, these days traces of Bedlam can be seen all across London. The site that it was originally founded on is now where Liverpool Street Station is.
And just a few years ago, when they were working on building a new tube line, they found a Bedlam burial ground there with the bodies of 3,500 former patients. This was like 2017. Mm-hmm.
Kathryn (46:11)
3500. my god. That's wild.
Gina (46:14)
they originally thought that some of the bodies were plague victims. And then they were like,
Kathryn (46:18)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (46:18)
no, these were Bedlam patients, which is just in 2017 they're finding this. That just blows my mind.
Kathryn (46:25)
Yeah. That's I that
This is just weird. This is all weird. I like I can't I'm having that
Gina (46:31)
It is weird.
Kathryn (46:31)
sensation of like time is not making sense to me. You know what I'm saying? Like the
Gina (46:36)
Mm.
Kathryn (46:37)
whole we live, you know, Cleopatra lives closer to the iPhone than she did, you know, the
Gina (46:42)
yeah.
Kathryn (46:43)
whatever. I don't know. You know those things.
Gina (46:45)
Mm.
Kathryn (46:45)
That's kind of what I'm I'm having that sensation right now. Where I'm like, how could they
Gina (46:50)
Yeah.
Kathryn (46:50)
possibly have just found those bodies in 2017? But like I guess it makes sense because
Why
would you be looking for them necessarily, you know? I don't know. That's just wild.
Gina (47:00)
Mm-hmm.
And I also wonder, I wish if we have any archaeologists, iscreamyouscreampod@gmail.com I want to know how this stuff works.
Kathryn (47:07)
That'd so cool.
Gina (47:08)
Because did they know beforehand that there are there's like a mass grave there or something? Or is it something you discover? Because we have technology that can
Kathryn (47:17)
Yeah,
Gina (47:17)
like see into the earth, right? I'm assuming that if you, you know, scan something and press a button, it'll tell you, yeah, there's stuff buried here? I don't know.
Kathryn (47:26)
But I guess like to to that point, why would you be using it until you were like building something? Unless you knew to look for it, exactly. Like to your
Gina (47:34)
But that's what I mean, like yeah, yeah.
Kathryn (47:38)
but then it seems ridiculous that you wouldn't suspect something like that if you know of all
Gina (47:43)
Yeah.
Kathryn (47:43)
the abuse and all that kind of stuff. But I guess like
I don't know. You know when else you did this to me? Not specific to the time, but the I'm I've been thinking a lot about the the Eureka Springs, I think it was. Is that the one with the guy and the bodies
Gina (47:58)
yeah.
Kathryn (47:59)
in the jars or whatever it was? I'm
Gina (48:00)
Uh-huh, yeah.
Kathryn (48:01)
kind of having that same sensation where it's like,
we just happened upon this stuff. That feels so fake. But like I believe it. It just feels incorrect, you know?
Gina (48:12)
It freaks me out because it gets to what we were talking about earlier about how recent history can feel sometimes. Like I
Kathryn (48:18)
Yeah.
Gina (48:19)
I'm very comfortable in my history books and my reading of online materials and things like that, where to z I mean it's amazing that we're still uncovering things. I mean sad, you know, because history
Kathryn (48:31)
Yeah.
Gina (48:32)
sucks a lot of the time. It's cool that people are still making historical discoveries, but I am so like, what? We haven't found all of it?
Like we've had so much time, surely we've found everything.
Kathryn (48:41)
Yeah.
I feel that way with everything, not even just history. Like, did you see they just recently discovered a new cat in like the rainforest or something? Have you seen that thing? Yeah, there's like
Gina (48:50)
What? No.
Kathryn (48:52)
a new species of cat. It's very funny looking. He looks very upset that he was found. No,
Gina (48:57)
Do you remember what it's remember what it's called?
Kathryn (49:00)
are you looking it up?
Gina (49:01)
yes I am.
Kathryn (49:03)
YouTube. Did you find him? Or her, I don't know.
Gina (49:04)
Goodness Yeah a s
a spotted wildcat from the Bolivian Oblivion Forest
Kathryn (49:11)
Yes.
Gina (49:12)
Leopardus Tilcao
Kathryn (49:15)
Doesn't he look so upset that he was found? He was like, Leave leave
Gina (49:17)
he looks furious.
Kathryn (49:19)
me out of your nonsense. Leave me alone. But it's kind of like
Gina (49:22)
Mm.
Kathryn (49:23)
that. It's like I understand the discovery of new like bugs and microscopic things, but like we're still finding cats. That's wild. Like they're so big.
Gina (49:32)
Well
Kathryn (49:35)
I I like don't believe it. You know what I mean?
Gina (49:36)
It's just wild.
Yeah, yeah. It's it blows my mind too. So yeah, now we have to go
Kathryn (49:42)
Yeah.
Gina (49:43)
to Liverpool Street Station the next time you're here and we can continue our tour of plague pits and mass graves on the London Underground.
Kathryn (49:47)
for sure. I have my list. I have my list.
Gina (49:51)
Yeah. And actually, so I thought just while we're on Liverpool Street Station, I did think that this episode was gonna be much more focused on ghosts and hauntings. I I could find surprisingly f few, like very little few and far between stories about hauntings at Bedlam. I
Kathryn (50:04)
That's astonishing. Yeah.
Gina (50:06)
know. So actually, if anyone out there knows Bedlam-related ghost stories, please send them to us because I would love to read them. But one that I did find that came up a lot, actually both of them, came from Liverpool Street Station.
One of them is called the Guinea Ghost, who is a woman who, depending on who you ask, she was institutionalized at Bedlam in the 17 or 1800s after a man she was like a servant in a household became obsessed with one of the men who was visiting her master. And I don't know if they were supposed to have like had a sexual affair or something like that, no idea. But when this guy left the house, he gave her a guinea, which was a like coin at the time, and she clutched onto it and wouldn't let it go.
chased after his carriage, like, you know, quote, going crazy for him to come back. People were like, she's a mad woman, grabbed her, brought her to Bedlam. She was kept there for the rest of her life, died with the guinea still in her hand, and before she was buried, one
Kathryn (51:02)
my god.
Gina (51:03)
of the workers took that guinea away. And so she continues to haunt where she was institutionalized, searching for the missing guinea.
Kathryn (51:14)
that's
Gina (51:13)
Yes. Yep.
Kathryn (51:14)
sad
Gina (51:15)
Yeah. It that one is really sad. So that one is very definitely tied to Bedlam. The other one that I heard
Kathryn (51:20)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (51:20)
is that there's a man in white overalls who hangs out at Liverpool Street Station. But we don't know. People just say that he's tied to Bedlam. I don't know that he actually is. He's just a guy that
Kathryn (51:32)
Okay.
Gina (51:32)
wears white overalls that people see on the platform, so I don't know.
Kathryn (51:37)
That might be a, you know, because this used to be something like and he's here, we're just gonna assume, I guess, yeah. But there's no story with him or anything, it's just okay.
Gina (51:45)
That's kind of what I think it is. So there is a bit of a story with him. Not tied
to Bedlam specifically, but the story goes that one night a tube operator, like the guy picture the guy at the desk with all the monitors in front of him. He's like watching the monitors, making sure that like people are safe on the platforms or whatever. It's like two in the morning, and he sees a guy in white overalls standing on a platform that he shouldn't be standing on.
Like that station or that platform is closed or whatever. No civilians should be there. So his manager goes to check it out, get this guy out, and the guy sitting at the desk sees his manager, you know, on the screen, sees his manager walk onto the platform, look around, sees the guy in the overalls right next to him. Supervisor picks up the platform phone, calls the guy at the desk, and is like, I don't see anybody.
Kathryn (52:33)
my god.
Gina (52:34)
And monitor guy is like, he's right next to you. What are you talking about? And I think this happened,
Kathryn (52:39)
my god.
Gina (52:40)
this happened.
twice for the supervisor came back, saw the guy again on the monitor, went back to the platform, still couldn't see him. but then when he turned around to leave for the second time, he saw on a bench a pair of white overalls
Kathryn (52:52)
My God. Is there
footage of this? Do you know?
Gina (52:56)
Not that I was able to find, Be very creepy.
Kathryn (52:58)
That'd be so cool. That would be so cool if that existed.
Gina (53:01)
Yeah. but yeah, those are the only two that I could find. The I do think there's probably more hauntings at the Imperial War Museum, which is a thing. so the Im
Kathryn (53:10)
That makes sense, I would say.
Gina (53:13)
Well, the Imperial War Museum is that's where Bedlam's second location was. and then after it moved again, then the Imperial War Museum kind of took over that area.
But according to some of the people who work there, there are like very ghosty things, like paranormal y things
Kathryn (53:27)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (53:28)
that happen, like cold spots, you know, the feelings of deep unease. Some people say there's a gray lady at the Imperial War Museum, but that could just be because of an association with war, because gray ladies are associated with war a lot of the time. not
Kathryn (53:41)
Mm.
Gina (53:41)
necessarily a Bethlehem thing. But you can go to the actual hospital itself. Bethlehem Royal Hospital in Kent is still a thing. It doesn't go by Bedlam.
and inside anyone can go and you can see a museum about its history that's in the hospital. And it's hard to find a way to end this episode about Bedlam because this is not a story that has ended. It is still on ongoing and it probably will be throughout the course of our lifetime. But I'm gonna end by reading a quote from the book Bedlam, London, and it's mad by Catherine Arnold to close us out. And this is talking about the modern Bedlam, the modern Bedlam.
Hospital. As hospitals go, it is a paradise. But lest we forget, the museum, which is open to the public, recalls Bedlam in all its infamy. So it does seem like the hospital
Kathryn (54:33)
Yeah.
Gina (54:34)
kind of it doesn't try and hide the fact that it had
Kathryn (54:37)
Okay.
Gina (54:37)
a horrible reputation, which is good.
Kathryn (54:40)
I was gonna ask that because as soon as you said they had a museum on themselves, I was like, Mmm, do they know?
Gina (54:47)
Hmm. Yeah, you can
you can see artwork and I believe letters and things like that from former
Kathryn (54:53)
Mm.
Gina (54:54)
patients and maybe even existing patients, I don't know. But they also have something online, where
Kathryn (54:59)
Hmm.
Gina (55:00)
you can see old patient records. The ones that I saw were from like the 1800s. And it'll have like the a picture of the person who was brought to the facility, why they were brought in.
the different symptoms they were showing, things like that. And it it's worded in a in a very old timey way. And so it's interesting to see. All the records I saw were like of women. So I don't know if by that point it was mostly women. But it's interesting to see the way that they talk about not just mental health care, but also specifically women's mental health care. Because some of them would be like postpartum and I would say suffering from postpartum depression
Kathryn (55:30)
Mm.
Gina (55:32)
or something. But the way they talked about it in the 18, you know, seventies or whatever is very different. And so it's there's lots of resources to learn about.
The history of Bedlam. I do recommend. Dark and fascinating.
Kathryn (55:44)
I didn't realize they were still around like in any
Gina (55:47)
Me neither replied.
Kathryn (55:48)
capacity. L I feel like
I don't know. 'Cause what what's the name that they operate under now?
Do people still call them Bedlam? Like behind their backs?
Gina (55:57)
guess not because I think it might get confusing.
Kathryn (56:00)
So that's why I asked because I am a little confused because it's like, do they still exist or do they not still exist? Is this just like a we're trying to you know, it's like when I turned 18 and decided I'm not Katie anymore, I'm Kathryn. Like
Gina (56:15)
Mm.
Kathryn (56:15)
I still exist. We're just going by my government name now. Is that what we're doing? Is that it?
Gina (56:20)
okay. So its government
name was always either Bethlehem or Bethlehem Royal Hospital. Its government name has never been Bedlam. That's always just been a slang term
Kathryn (56:29)
Right. Okay.
Gina (56:30)
that people have used that eventually turned into like a noun that we use to describe just utter chaos or something like that.
Kathryn (56:36)
Yeah.
Gina (56:37)
But it is a modern hospital. I mean it has a whopping two point nine stars on Google, so I don't know how good it is, but I also don't know how many stars normal hospitals get, so
Kathryn (56:45)
If you've
Gina (56:45)
Yeah, I don't know.
Kathryn (56:46)
if you've been there, let us know. How was your say? How many stars would you give it?
Wow. That's
Gina (56:53)
So yeah, that was a very quick tour
of many, many centuries. Do you have something for me?
Kathryn (56:58)
Yeah. Shit's
wild. I do, totally unrelated. I I've been trying to do either themed or, you know, like last month I wanted to do something funny to lighten the mood, ended up not doing that at all. so I was gonna try to do that for this scary on top, and still didn't do it at all. So
This has nothing to do with anything. It's it's a ghost story that I found when we were preparing for our last episode for the, you know, fictional, spooky whatever stories. this one is not fictional to my knowledge to my understanding, it's not fictional. I found it in the same thread that I found the ones that I read last week, but I saved to this one for the scary on top.
also I don't know who posted this one. I'm so sorry. I don't know if they deleted their account or if I just forgot to write it down, but it's in the same thread as the one I found last time. So the ask Reddit subreddit. Okay, it says it's pretty simple and I will not drag it out. So here it goes. One day my neighbor walked over into my backyard while I was in my garden. He looked disheveled and was wearing pajamas.
When I stood up, I noticed his eyes were sunken in and it looked as if he had lost a lot of weight. I tried to crack a joke about how this would be a great day to go down to the beach if it were not for the weather being so cold. But the joke fell flat. A week later, I bumped into his wife at the post office. She was in line in front of me, mailing about a dozen packages. I asked if her husband was feeling better because he looked a little bit under the weather last week when he was in my backyard.
She tells me I must have been mistaken because he passed away over a month ago from cancer. What? sorry. I was like, my God, what happened?
Gina (58:52)
no, I just like these ty yeah, this is just a good story.
Kathryn (58:58)
Sorry.
my god. I was like living separate lives just now. Okay, a life just now. Yes. So this guy's back from the dead, sorry. Asked if her husband was feeling better, blah blah blah blah. The packages she was mailing were his action figure toy collection that she decided to s sell online.
I was speechless. Was I crazy? Maybe I did misjudge the weekend and I thought I saw him earlier or something. Then I really thought hard. I did not remember him saying anything to me at all. I did remember telling him the joke and it falling flat, him not reacting at all. I just assumed I wasn't funny, and that's why he didn't laugh or acknowledge me in any way. Or maybe he couldn't, because it may have just been his spirit.
When I returned home from the post office, I immediately start telling my wife about our neighbor. Before I could get out that he had passed away from cancer, she says, yeah, I saw you guys talking last weekend. And then I had to tell her about seeing his wife at the post office and being told about his passing. So we go to our security camera and play back the video from the week before. It's very clear in the video that I do stand up, and it's obvious that
that I am acknowledging someone and I have a brief conversation and then I go back to tending my garden. But on the video, the entire time, I was the only person in my backyard.
And that's it.
Gina (1:00:36)
You know what vibes that gives me? That reminds me of like
Kathryn (1:00:39)
Yeah.
Gina (1:00:40)
when you're watching a scary movie and like the killer's in the house, but the main character doesn't know the killer is in the house. They're just going about their business. Like the scary things that happen at
Kathryn (1:00:48)
Yeah.
Gina (1:00:49)
innocuous, innocent little moments where you wouldn't like you're just saying hi to your neighbor. Like how is that clocking, you know, like you're not looking for anything creepy that's
Kathryn (1:00:58)
Yes.
Gina (1:00:58)
happening. And then you go back and you're like, my God. Like that happened while I was
Kathryn (1:01:02)
Like that was
Gina (1:01:04)
Just living my life. I didn't even know this. Like,
Kathryn (1:01:05)
Yeah.
Gina (1:01:06)
that's terrifying.
Kathryn (1:01:07)
And it was actually so alarming. I had no idea
Gina (1:01:09)
Yeah.
Kathryn (1:01:09)
how alarming it was. Yeah, I wonder about that all the time. Cause you know when you're home alone and you just get that feeling of like, God, I'm safe, right? It's in those
Gina (1:01:19)
Yeah.
Kathryn (1:01:19)
moments that I imagine, what if there's something here that I am like not seeing? That's when I start looking.
in all the corners and I'm like expecting to see someone hiding. You know that little kitty door we have going down to our basement?
Gina (1:01:33)
Mm.
Kathryn (1:01:33)
I avoid looking in that direction at night all the time because I'm convinced one of these days I'm just gonna see a face.
Yeah. It's like that where 'cause
Gina (1:01:41)
The thought of that is so scary.
Kathryn (1:01:43)
what if there actually is someone there and I'm just minding my business, getting my, you know, like tea and cookies or whatever, and then really there's someone in my cat door watching me?
Gina (1:01:52)
Hmm.
Kathryn (1:01:53)
Yikes.
Gina (1:01:54)
The visual that pops into my head that freaks me out the most is when I'm laying in bed, I sleep closest to the door because if someone comes in, Tom wants me to die first. I'm just kidding. No, it's it's just my side.
Kathryn (1:02:01)
my God, you're so brave. Literally, I do
I do have to land on that because every Phil always thought that my side was the left side until we moved into this house and I like get all hunkered down on the right side. He was like, What are you doing? You sleep on the left side. And I said, No, I don't. I sleep on the side farthest from the door. This is just the first
Gina (1:02:22)
Yeah, that's fair.
Kathryn (1:02:23)
home that we've had that has it's on the door is on the left side. Yeah.
Which I never realized either. I just that was just the way it was. Anyway, sorry, you're so brave. Please
Gina (1:02:34)
Yeah, I
Kathryn (1:02:34)
continue.
Gina (1:02:37)
Picked the left side
and then I just am too stubborn to give up the left side. And now the configuration is
Kathryn (1:02:41)
Mm.
Gina (1:02:41)
just left side is closest to the door. And when it
Kathryn (1:02:44)
Yeah.
Gina (1:02:44)
gets very late at night and I'm about to fall asleep, and it's been dark long enough that I can make out the outline of the door. And we keep the door a little open in case Roux wants to come in and out. And just the visual of someone's fingers wrapping around the wrapping around the door.
Kathryn (1:02:52)
Same. Yep. Mm-mm. Mm-mm-mm. No,
no. Don't say that. I'm so scared. Feet off the ground. Feet off the ground.
Gina (1:03:04)
I will like yeah. I
will hide under my blankets when I pick I hate
Kathryn (1:03:09)
my god.
Gina (1:03:10)
it. It's so scary.
Kathryn (1:03:11)
You know what was the biggest struggle? switching my side of the bed and
Sorry to all like the chiropractors out there. I am a stomach and side sleeper. But I cannot stand having my back to the door. But where I am now,
if I'm on my right side, I have to have my back to the door. so that's why Phil needs to be over there because I can't have just, well, I can't just be vulnerable like that. it's kind of one of those.
Like I've tried to train myself to sleep on the other side so that I could protect myself. But then I'm scared because what if I see that? You know, like what you just described, experiencing. It's like, well, either I don't see it and I die, or I do see it before I die, which is worse. I don't know.
Gina (1:03:55)
I don't know. The phrase if I die I die has gotten me through a lot in life.
Kathryn (1:04:00)
Girl, me too. I've said that so it's like becoming more common that I say that. I'm sorry I get a little worried about like everything
Gina (1:04:05)
Ha ha
Kathryn (1:04:06)
that's going on that I've been saying that so much. But man, I've been saying that at work a lot, which is weird. I should unpack that. But yeah, I'm like a big fan
Gina (1:04:14)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn (1:04:15)
of the if it's my time, it's my time. Like that's just just how I get through
Gina (1:04:17)
It's my time, there's nothing can do.
Kathryn (1:04:20)
My thing is not the fingers on the door. Mine is
a croucher. Like so do you know what mean? Like, yeah,
Gina (1:04:26)
I'd never thought about that. Yeah.
Kathryn (1:04:28)
I I hate a crouch. I hate it. Well, because
Gina (1:04:29)
I hate a crouch? Did I hate a squat, a disgusting squat.
Kathryn (1:04:36)
okay, have I showed you did I ever show you the little crawl space in our closet? I showed it to you, right?
Gina (1:04:40)
Yeah. Yeah, that's fucking scary.
Kathryn (1:04:42)
I feel like such a gross hoarder because I won't keep things in that closet. We need to get a lock for that little crawl space because it's the type of thing where we have such an old home and the air gets distributed weirdly. So it's like if I open that closet door, the crawl space door also opens because of the air pressure. But like tell my fight or flight that because all I see is my crawl space door swinging open, you know, so I don't keep anything in that closet.
And it's it's good sized closet. Like I should be using it, but I can't because I won't go in there. I'm always so scared there's gonna be someone crouching in there. Always.
Gina (1:05:16)
Terrifying. Crawl
spaces and attics are my least favorite things
Kathryn (1:05:19)
Mm.
Gina (1:05:20)
in the world. They terrify me.
Kathryn (1:05:22)
Yeah. Well, this has been an enlightening episode. I don't know where we are right now.
Gina (1:05:26)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn (1:05:28)
I don't know how we got here. but yes, happy October, everyone. Happy birthday to us.
Gina (1:05:33)
Hmm.
Kathryn (1:05:33)
Happy Patreon launch month. Please, please, please don't forget to go over and join us on our brand new tier. huge, huge shout out for Clobear Money Coach for sponsoring this episode. If you have a story that you want to send us that you wanna
You want to hear us read at the end of each episode, please feel free. Might send us on a tangent. Who knows? Love when that
Gina (1:05:55)
Mm.
Kathryn (1:05:56)
happens. And rate and review us wherever you listen. That really, really, really helps us out. So we love to hear from you guys, hear how you're liking the podcast. yeah, looking forward to hospital month. Already a wild ride. Until
Gina (1:06:09)
Yeah, truly.
Kathryn (1:06:10)
until next time, Lil Spoons, keep it cool.
Gina (1:06:13)
Keep it creepy.
