Where The Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives and Museum is in a 1930s single-storey building in Beckenham, Kent, with a Portakabin attached.
What “We are the archives and museum service of the Bethlem Royal Hospital,” explains its head, Michael Phillips.
It is an independent trust run by the Bethlem Art and History Collections Trust; its parent body is the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Bethlem Hospital was the original Bedlam.
Opened 1972.
Collection “We have continuous archives for the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust and its predecessors, including the records of Bethlem, the Maudsley, and Warlingham Park Hospitals, and the joint records of Bridewell and Bethlem from 1559 to the present day,” Phillips says.
The museum has an eclectic collection of artefacts relating to mental health, ranging from two massive statues, weighing 750kgs each, of Melancholy and Raving Madness by Caius Cibber.
They originally stood outside the second Bethlem Hospital in Moorfields between 1676-1813.
There is also a collection of instruments of restraint which were used until 1857 and a large art collection with 968 pieces – all online – including works by Louis Wain and Richard Dadd. The institution continues to collect a wide range of psychiatric art.
Help at hand Five full-time staff, including Phillips. Prior to joining, he was a career army officer, leaving to run the Royal Artillery Museum and then Brooklands Museum.
Budget Phillips and his colleagues are NHS employees; the museum’s cash budget is provided by the NHS Trust Charitable Fund. Admission is free.
Visitors 2,400 to the Beckenham site in 2008, and 85,000 to the museum’s offsite shows.
Highlights “The two Cibber statues are two of the collection’s best pieces,” says Phillips. He also cites The Maze, a painting by William Kurelek, who painted it while in the Maudsley Hospital in 1953 to show his mental state to his doctors. “We use the painting non-stop for our education programme.”
Sticky moment “When I was appointed, no one told me that there was no budget to run the museum,” recalls Phillips.
“The NHS trust was disenchanted with us and we had to prove we added value to it. We resolved this in three months and we run at a profit.”
Survival tip “You have to be perceived to add value to your stakeholders,” stresses Phillips.
“We are here to drive forward the destigmatisation of mental illness. Our whole role is about education – we are not just another historical museum. And don’t lose sight of your core business – ours is supporting people under mental distress.”
It is important to make time for people, he believes. “Some 16 per cent of our visitors are current patients. We had one man who would come to see us each morning for a cup of coffee.
"What he really wanted was someone to listen to him, and I considered it part of my job to be there for him. Some museum curators spend their careers increasing visitor numbers or shuffling pots around.”
Current projects The museum is continuing to expand its website, but the big project is moving home, something that will happen in the next three years.
“We have simply run out of archive space and our present building is time-expired,” says Phillips. “We have already raised £1m of the £3m we need.”