Auction: Twenty-two photographs of psychiatric patients at the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum [1850s]
DIAMOND, Dr Hugh Welch (1808–1886)
Twenty-two photographs of psychiatric patients at the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum [1850s]
Estimate - GBP 100,000 – GBP 200,000
Christie's London - December 10th 2025
 |
| Asylum patient by Hugh Welch Diamond, c1850-58 Hugh Welch Diamond (English, 1808-1886) Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons |
'The women Iook out at us across 170 years of history with a variety of expressions - bold and shy, serene and distressed. Yet all of them were regarded at the time as "lunatics". These faces were the subjects of a pioneering project by the 19th-century psychiatrist Hugh Welch Diamond, superintendent of the female division of an asylum in London and the world's first photographer to take pictures of patients for the purpose of diagnosis and therapy.Twenty-two of Diamond's asylum portraits - the largest surviving group - will be put up for auction on December 10 at Christie's in London, as part of a sale of books, manuscripts and photographs from the library of The Royal Society of Medicine. If they achieve their estimated prices, RSM, a membership charity, will raise more than £2mn to invest in physical and digital infrastructure.' ...
'Diamond was working at a time when society's views of people suffering from mental illness were changing. The earlier practice of shutting patients away in secure "madhouses" was giving way to more humane treatment. Diamond seems to have believed that photography would help doctors both to diagnose and to treat patients. His diagnoses were based partly on the idea, popular in Victorian medical circles, that an individual's physiognomy - their physical features, particularly the face - could reveal their mental state.
"He wanted to make people better and put them back into the world," says Sharrona Pearl, a medical historian at Texas Christian University who has studied Diamond's work. "He also enjoyed experimenting and liked the idea of bridging his expertise in medicine and photography.' p.32.
individual
|
INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES
humanistic ------------------------------------------- mechanistic
SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL
|
group-population
Mental Illness PERSON - SUBJECT Patient's names not recorded Portrait - Consent? | Diagnosis and Treatment person - DATA - SUBJECT Photography as records Eagerness to classify - label |
Social history Change in social attitudes Stigma and fear of mental illness Current relatives? | Confidentiality Institutional change Power imbalance Shift from 'custodial' to health care |
My source:
Clive Cookson, Mind Hunter, FT Magazine, November 15, 2025, 1151, pp.30-34.
I have noticed Prof. Brendan Kelly is a regular FT respondent, as with this article:
'These photographs were likely to have been taken without meaningful consent and in the context of power imbalance. Yet publication can reclaim their individuality, address historical injustice and underscore our common humanity. Compassion, respect and humility should guide decisions.Proceeds should support medical, educational, or justice-oriented programmes. Most importantly honouring forgotten patients of the past demands better care for people with mental illness today, who often languish, neglected, in homeless hostels or prisons. We can do better.'
orcid.org/0000-0002-0192-8965
