All the patient photographs in this exhibition were taken by two Bethlem medical assistants, Alfred Barker and Herbert Parker in 1887-1888. Not every patient in the Hospital was photographed. It’s possible that Baker and Parker selected only patients they knew well, or who were thought to have been of some medical interest. Patients who were only in the Hospital for a few months often do not have a photograph. Some patient photographs are pasted into the casebooks, and these are now showing a brown shade and some silver mirroring- the casebooks (and other archives) are in suitable archival accommodation now, but this has not always been the case. We also hold some glass plate negatives of photographs, some of which did not make it into the casebooks. The monochrome photographs in the portraits have been developed from these.
Ironically, no identifiable photographs of Barker or Parker survive to us. These photographs were taken of patients in the grounds from around the same time.