Old photos reveal lives within Victorian asylum
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Paul Tobia, a former mental health nurse in Bristol, England, is studying photographs and patient records from the city’s former mental asylum, once known as Bristol Lunatic Asylum.
Tobia has collected around 1,000 photographs and built a database of 8,000 patients admitted up to 1913. He discovered the hospital staff began photographing patients around 1890, initially believing the images would aid in diagnosis, but Tobia finds they now serve as expressions of the patients’ humanity.
Tobia’s research indicates that approximately 46% of the patients treated at the asylum recovered and returned to their communities, leading to a reevaluation of the hospital’s history as a place of hope. Stella Man, consultant director at the Glenside Hospital Museum, noted the photographs offer historians a rare glimpse into the lives of impoverished people in Bristol, as photography at the time primarily captured the wealthy.
The Glenside Hospital Museum, located within the former chapel of the hospital, now part of the University of the West of England campus, is exhibiting the photographs. Tobia regularly shares his findings with the public, and often assists people who contact the museum seeking information about relatives who were patients. He recently identified actor Henry Greene among the asylum’s former patients.
