Haunting Photos Taken Inside Mental Asylums Of Decades Past

By John Kuroski | Edited By Savannah Cox
Published May 8, 2017
Updated January 31, 2020

These harrowing photos look inside mental asylums of the 19th and 20th centuries and reveal just how disturbing their conditions once were.

Mental Asylums Bench
Mental Asylums Chair Straps
Children Tied To Radiator
Bed On Floor
Dark Wall Mental Asylum
Boy Eating With Hands
Patient With Mouth Open
High Bars
Doctors Patient Lying Down
Knees To Chest
Man Being Tied Up
Female Patient Unusual Eyes
Wooden Bed
Wires Head
Crowd Freeman Lobotomy
Patient Wide Eyes
Mouth Held Open
Mental Asylum On Floor
Man In Foreground
Shadow Of Bars
Female Patient Long Hair
Mental Asylum Held Down
Doctor Lobotomy Patient Hospital
Lying Patient From Above
Beds Lined Up
Patients Lined Up
Prep For Lobotomy
Male Patient Prisoner
Old Patient In Bed
Lobotomy In Prison
Three In Chairs
Nurse At Controls
Doctor Freeman With Patient
Rotted Teeth
Amputee Man
Female Lobotomy Patient Face
Tied To Bed
In Rocking Chairs
Washing Patient
Two Young Patients
Female Patient Strapped Down
Policeman Bars
Debris Wreckage
Windows Dark Room

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A patient sits inside Ohio's Cleveland State Mental Hospital in 1946.Mary Delaney Cooke/Corbis via Getty Images
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A patient sits in a restraint chair at the West Riding Lunatic Asylum in Wakefield, England in 1869.Wellcome Library, London
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Child patients sit bound and tied to a radiator inside the psychiatric hospital at Deir el Qamar, Lebanon in 1982.José Nicolas/Corbis via Getty Images
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A patient sleeps on a thin mattress on the floor of an otherwise bare room in Ohio's Cleveland State Mental Hospital in 1946.Jerry Cooke/Pix Inc./The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
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A patient sits alone in a dark room inside Ohio's Cleveland State Mental Hospital on February 3, 1955. Jerry Cooke/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
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A hungry boy stands alone and eats with his hands as other boys sit together under a blanket on a bed beside a small wood-burning stove at a hospital for mentally-handicapped children in Kavaja, Albania in March 1992.Peter Turnley/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images
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A psychiatric patient poses for a photo at Paris' Salpêtrière Hospital circa 1876-1877.Wellcome Library, London
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A child patient sits inside Normansfield Hospital in Teddington, England on February 12, 1979.John Minihan/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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A patient at a mental hospital undergoes electroshock treatment in 1956.Thurston Hopkins/Picture Post/Getty Images
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Patients sit inside Ohio's Cleveland State Mental Hospital in 1946.Mary Delaney Cooke/Corbis via Getty Images
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Workers restrain a patient at a hospital in Moscow, Russia on February 19, 1992.Peter Turnley/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images
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A patient suffering from "general paralysis" poses for a photo at the West Riding Lunatic Asylum in Wakefield, England circa 1869.Wellcome Library, London
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On March 29, 1950, at Philadelphia's Bella Vista Sanitorium, a fire killed nine patients, five of whom had been chained to concrete slabs like the one pictured.Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images
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A nurse tests out electronic equipment designed to monitor various patient data at a psychiatric hospital in Toronto on March 12, 1964.Mario Geo/Toronto Star via Getty Images
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Pioneering and prolific lobotomist Dr. Walter Freeman performs a lobotomy with an instrument similar to an ice pick at Western State Hospital in Lakewood, Washington on July 11, 1949.Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images
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One of Walter Freeman’s lobotomy patients ten days after the procedure. 1942.Historical Medical Library of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia
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A young patient's rotted teeth, due to poor dentistry, are revealed at London's Friern Hospital (previously known as the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum) circa 1890-1910.Wellcome Library, London
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A patient lies on the floor of Ohio's Cleveland State Mental Hospital in 1946.Mary Delaney Cooke/Corbis via Getty Images
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Patients go about their day inside Ohio's Cleveland State Mental Hospital in 1946.Mary Delaney Cooke/Corbis via Getty Images
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A patient stands in a straightjacket inside Ohio's Cleveland State Mental Hospital in 1946.Mary Delaney Cooke/Corbis via Getty Images
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A psychiatric patient poses for a photo at Paris' Salpêtrière Hospital circa 1876-1877.Wellcome Library, London
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Nurses hold down a patient receiving electroshock treatment at a facility in England on November 23, 1946.Kurt Hutton/Picture Post/Getty Images
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A surgeon uses a brace and bit to drill into a patient's skull before performing a lobotomy at a mental hospital in England, November 1946.Kurt Hutton/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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Doctors test a new method of using radio waves to treat psychiatric patients at a hospital in Paris on May 13, 1938.Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images
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Two patients rest in the sleeping area of Ohio's Cleveland State Mental Hospital in 1946.Mary Delaney Cooke/Corbis via Getty Images
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Patients at the Riul Vadului Mental Asylum in Romania huddle together in an unheated room in the middle of winter. Date unspecified.ANDREW HOLBROOKE/Corbis via Getty Images
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Dr. James G. Shanklin administers electric shock and anesthesia in preparation for Dr. Walter Freeman to demonstrate his new transorbital lobotomy procedure at Western State hospital in Lakewood, Washington on July 11, 1949.Bettmann/Contributor/Western State Hospital
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A prisoner sits inside the West Riding Lunatic Asylum in Wakefield, England in 1869.Wellcome Library, London
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Patients lie on a bed inside a psychiatric hospital in Bucharest, Romania. Date unspecified.Bernard Bisson/Sygma via Getty Images
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A guard at Vacaville State Prison prepares a prisoner for a lobotomy in 1961. The warden of Vacaville at that time was Dr. William Keating, a psychiatrist who was convinced that "criminality" was lodged in certain areas of the brain, and so lobotomies at Vacaville became routine.© Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
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Child patients sit in their room at a mental hospital in Ursberg, Germany circa 1934-1936.Wolfgang Weber/ullstein bild via Getty Images
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A patient lies back in a Bergonic chair, an early electroshock treatment apparatus, circa World War I.Otis Historical Archives National Museum of Health and Medicine
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Dr. James Watts (left) and Dr. Walter Freeman examine a patient after lobotomy. Date unspecified.George Washington University
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A young patient's rotted teeth, due to poor dentistry, are revealed at London's Friern Hospital (previously known as the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum) circa 1890-1910.Wellcome Library, London
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An amputee psychiatric patient of London's Friern Hospital (previously known as the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum) poses for a photo circa 1890-1910.Wellcome Library, London
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A British patient identified only as "Mary C" poses for a photo following her lobotomy. October 28, 1960.M. Winn/Daily Express/Getty Images
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Ties bind a patient's feet to a bed at a mental hospital in Bucharest, Romania. Date unspecified.Bernard Bisson/Sygma via Getty Images
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Patients sit inside Ohio's Cleveland State Mental Hospital in 1946.Mary Delaney Cooke/Corbis via Getty Images
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Orderlies wash patients at the Long Grove Asylum in Epsom, England circa 1930.Wellcome Library, London
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Orphans share a feces-stained crib at the Riul Vadului Mental Asylum in Romania. Date unspecified.ANDREW HOLBROOKE/Corbis via Getty Images
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A patient diagnosed with "hysteria-induced narcolepsy" lies strapped down to a bed in Paris' Salpêtrière Hospital in 1889.Wellcome Library, London
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A policeman stands guard at the bars of the ward for psychiatric patients (possibly the "criminal insane," per original annotation) at New York's Bellevue Hospital circa 1885-1898.Wellcome Library, London
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Debris litters the floor at Maryland's Crownsville State Hospital psychiatric hospital (formerly Hospital for the Negro Insane of Maryland) during the aftermath of a riot in 1949.Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images
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A patient lies in bed at Ohio's Cleveland State Mental Hospital in 1946.Mary Delaney Cooke/Corbis via Getty Images
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Mental Asylums Bench
Mental Asylums Chair Straps
Children Tied To Radiator
Bed On Floor
Haunting Photos Taken Inside Mental Asylums Of Decades Past
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"The degree of civilization in a society," goes Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky's deathless phrase, "can be judged by entering its prisons." But perhaps that phrase also applies to another class of institutions meant to house those deemed unfit for society: mental asylums.

And for centuries — right up until the present day, in some places — the quality of most mental asylums, at least those in the European tradition, revealed little degree of civilization at all.

It wasn't until the very end of the 18th century that just a few doctors in France and England, including Philippe Pinel and William Tuke, first brought forth the then-revolutionary notion of doing away with chains and corporal punishment.

It wasn't until England's Lunacy Act of 1845 that a government first officially designated the mentally ill as actual patients in need of treatment.

And it wasn't until the middle of the 19th century that France, England, and the United States first established public, state-run asylums with government oversight and committees in place to investigate abuses — the full extent of which will never be truly known.

Of course, abuse, neglect, and mistreatment inside mental asylums hardly ended in the middle of the 19th century — on the contrary. While facilities for the mentally ill had now become institutionalized, the late 19th and 20th centuries brought many new problems.

For one, the growth of psychiatry as a discipline meant more diagnoses and thus patients to fit into facilities that were growing ever more overcrowded. Likewise, the growth of psychiatry meant more doctors developing more procedures that seemed increasingly radical throughout the early and mid-20th century, which gave us electroshock therapy and the lobotomy, among others.

At the same time, the rise of fascism and totalitarianism in Europe gave rise to a wave of politically-motivated abuses in mental asylums, with powerful regimes including those in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Bloc, and apartheid-era South Africa summarily institutionalizing suspected enemies of the state and/or creating eugenics programs to weed out those who truly were mentally ill.

But even in cases not nearly so extreme, even in the garden-variety mental asylums (a term itself that has now fallen out of favor) of 20th century Europe and America, the institutional conditions were often startling by today's standards: lobotomies performed with repurposed ice picks, patients chained to concrete slabs, children in straight jackets tied to radiators, and worse.

Let the harrowing photos above return you to a comparatively benighted era in psychiatric care — one that wasn't actually all that long ago.

Next, see 37 haunting portraits of life inside Victorian mental asylums. Then, step inside one of the most infamous mental asylums of all time with this look at Bethlem Royal Hospital, more commonly known as "Bedlam."

John Kuroski
John Kuroski
John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society of history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.
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