Following the historical narrative structure of her acclaimed Necropolis, BEDLAM examines the capital's treatment of the insane over the centuries, from the founding of Bethlehem Hospital in 1247 through the heyday of the great Victorian asylums to the more enlightened attitudes that prevail today. The hospital was relocated to the suburbs of Kent in 1930, and Sydney Smirke's impressive Victorian building in Southwark took on a new role as the Imperial War Museum.

Read more of the popular imagination is long gone. That this is still the most powerful image of Bedlam, over two centuries later, says much about our attitude to mental illness, although the Bedlam.

We owe this image of madness to William Hogarth, who, in plate eight of his 1735 Rake's Progress series, depicts the anti-hero in Bedlam, the latest addition to a freak show providing entertainment for Londoners between trips to the Tower Zoo, puppet shows and public executions. 'Bedlam!' The very name conjures up graphic images of naked patients chained among filthy straw, or parading untended wards deluded that they are Napoleon or Jesus Christ. An informative and entertaining study of London's lunatic fringe, and how we have dealt with the mad among us from pre-history to the present day. Both anecdotal history and cultural commentary, Necropolis will take its place alongside classics of the city such as Peter Ackroyd's LONDON.Description for Bedlam Paperback. Ghoulishly entertaining and full of fascinating nuggets of information, Necropolis leaves no headstone unturned in its exploration of our changing attitudes to the deceased among us. This fascinating blend of archaeology, architecture and anecdote includes such phenomena as the rise of the undertaking trade and the pageantry of state funerals public executions and bodysnatching. /rebates/2fbook2f2244030892fNecropolis-London-and-Its-Dead&. As layer upon layer of London soil reveals burials from pre-historic and medieval times, the city is revealed as one giant grave, filled with the remains of previous eras - pagan, Roman, medieval, Victorian. Necropolis by Arnold (80 results) You searched for: Author: arnold, Title: necropolis. From Roman burial rites to the horrors of the plague, from the founding of the great Victorian cemeteries to the development of cremation and the current approach of metropolitan society towards death and bereavement - including more recent trends to displays of collective grief and the cult of mourning, such as that surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales - NECROPOLIS: LONDON AND ITS DEAD offers a vivid historical narrative of this great city's attitude to going the way of all flesh. Necropolis: London and Its Dead by Arnold, Catharine and a great selection of related books.

Necropolis by Catharine Arnold