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Closing the Asylums

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Past
  • Free
  • Discussion
Photograph of a woman wearing a blue shirt standing behind a trolley in an archive store. One the trolley are open books and archive boxes. On either side of her are a series of thin drawers. In the background on the wall is a painted mural depicting various figures.
Dr Louise Hide, Benjamin Gilbert. Source: Wellcome Collection. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).

What you’ll do

By the mid-1950s over 150,000 people were resident in psychiatric hospitals across England and Wales. Hear Dr Louise Hide explain why and how, by the end of the century, most of these vast Victorian institutions had closed.

There will be an opportunity for you to ask questions. 

Please be aware that this discussion contains content that some people might find distressing.

Dates

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Past

Need to know

Location

We’ll be in the Viewing Room. It’s next to the Library entrance on level 2, which you can reach by taking the lift or the stairs.

Place not guaranteed

Booking a ticket for a free event does not guarantee you a place. You should aim to arrive 15 minutes before the event is scheduled to start to claim your place. If you do not arrive on time, your place may be given to someone on the waiting list.

For more information, please visit our Accessibility page. If you have any queries about accessibility, please email us at access@wellcomecollection.org or call 0 2 0. 7 6 1 1. 2 2 2 2

Our event terms and conditions

About your speaker

Photographic black and white, head and shoulders portrait of Dr Louise Hide.

Dr Louise Hide

Dr Louise Hide is a social and cultural historian of psychiatry and its institutions at Birkbeck, University of London. She holds a Wellcome Trust Research Fellowship in Medical Humanities.