Figure 1 – Patient, Surrey County Lunatic Asylum by Hugh Welch Diamond, 1850 – 1858, Albumen silver print from glass negative 19.1 × 14 cm (7.5 × 5.5 in). From the En Wikimepedia and in the public domain because of its age.
A curious recurring photographic theme is “The face of madness,” which tend to be a series of portraits of inmates at asylums, hospitals, and half-way houses. I have seen several of these. But they all have their roots in the 19th century and began with the, then, ground breaking, work of Dr. Hugh Welch Diamond (1809 – 1886). He was an early specialist in the new science of psychiatry and was appointed to Brookwood Hospital, the second Surrey County Asylum. Diamond was also a founding member of the Photographic Society, ultimately becoming its Secretary and editor of the Photographic Journal. For a series of his images see.
It was common belief at the time that “madness” could be read in the faces of a person, which was, of course, an offshoot of the field of phrenology. Perhaps, this is an early form of “profiling,” now so common in world airports. Our faces are to be read and assessed by digital cameras and computers. We have to ask who is mad now?
In terms of photographic opus the results of Diamond’s efforts form a revealing and not unsympathetic step backwards into the world of the poor souls condemned to these places. This is the world of “Blackwell’s Island” and “Bedlam,” of 19th century “it runs in the family.” We have spoken of the way in which we seem to communicate mutely with the subjects of old photographs and here it is even more profound, because you wonder exactly what was in the minds of these people. An image such as that of Figure 1 demands the question whether the smiling face is that of Bertha Mason, Rochester’s wife imprisoned in the attic in the novel Jane Eyre.