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William Charles Hood

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Sir William Charles Hood (1824–4 January 1870) was a British medical doctor of the Victorian era who pioneered the humane treatment of lunatics. As Superintendent at Bethlem Royal Hospital in London he reformed and civilised the hospital's regime.[1]

Hood was born at Lambeth in London, the son of Ann née Brown and William Chamberlain Hood, a medical doctor. He attended school in Brighton in Sussex before being admitted to Trinity College Dublin in 1841 aged 17. He obtained his professional training in medicine at Guy's Hospital, qualifying in 1845 before taking his M.D. at the University of St Andrews in 1846.[2] He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (F.R.C.P. Edin.) in 1849, and a Member of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons (M.R.C.S. Eng.) in 1845. He was appointed Physician and Superintendent at Finnington House, a private lunatic asylum in Devizes. From 1852 for ten years[1][3] Hood was the resident Physician and Superintendent of Bethlem Royal Hospital, living here with his wife and family[4] and where he "worked indefatigably for the improvement of the patients' conditions, and particularly for the segregation of the criminal insane".[2]

Richard Dadd working on Contradiction: Oberon and Titania (1854/1858).

At Bethlem Hood "carried out many excellent and necessary reforms",[5] including removing the bars from the windows, carpeting bedroom floors, replacing wooden benches and tables with armchairs candles sofas, putting paintings on the walls and statues and busts in the wards,[6] abolishing forcibly restraining the patients and allowing some to go on supervised day visits to Kew Gardens[7] and the Crystal Palace.[4] Among his patients at Bethlem was the artist Richard Dadd, noted for his depictions of fairies and other supernatural subjects, Orientalist scenes, and enigmatic genre scenes, rendered with obsessively minuscule detail.[8] In 1857 Hood had Dadd and about twenty other 'gentlemen criminal lunatics' moved from their overcrowded cells and barred cages in the wing for the criminally insane to a light and roomy ward in the main hospital. This change in conditions resulted in Dadd producing some of his best work.[4] Hood owned a number of Dadd's watercolours.[1]

An article by Henry Morley in Charles Dickens’s Household Words describes some of the changes made by Hood at Bethlem:

Within the entrance gates, as we went round the lawn towards the building, glancing aside, we saw several groups of patients quietly sunning themselves in the garden, some playing on a grass-plot with two or three happy little children. We found afterwards that these were the children of the Resident Physician and Superintendent, Dr Hood. They are trusted freely among the patients, and the patients take great pleasure in their presence among them. The sufferers feel that surely they are not cut off from fellowship with man, not objects of a harsh distrust, when even little children come to play with them, and prattle confidently in their ears. There are no chains nor strait waistcoats now in Bethlehem; yet, upon the staircase of a ward occupied by men the greater number of whom would, in the old time, have been beheld by strong-nerved adults with a shudder, there stood a noble little boy, another fragment of the Resident Physician's family, with a bright smile upon his face, who looked like an embodiment of the good spirit that had found its way into the hospital, and chased out all the gloom.[4][9]

Hood was Physician and the first Medical Superintendent at Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum.[2][10][11]

Hood was a Fellow of the Medical and Chirurgical Society of London; a Fellow of the Pathological Society; and a Member of the Hunterian Society.[10] In 1846 he married Jane née Willett (1822-1866)[12] with whom he had nine children: Donald William Charles Hood; Annette Louisa Jane Hood (1848-1925); Willett Charles Hood (1850-1857); Gerald Charles Hood (1852-1891); Frances Edward Charles Hood (1854-1882); Godfrey Charles Hood (1857-1903); Colin Charles Hood (1857-1915); Florence Mary Hood Ricardo (1858-1905); Basil Willett Charles Hood (1864-1917), a playwright and author.

In 1862 Hood resigned from his position at Bethlem Royal Hospital on his appointment as a Lord Chancellor's Visitor of Chancery Lunatics.[5][13] He was elected treasurer of Bridewell and Bethlehem Hospitals in 1868, receiving his knighthood for services to medicine at Windsor Castle[14] in the same year.[2]

Sir William Charles Hood died of pleurisy in the Treasurer's House at Bridewell Hospital in 1870 aged 45.

Author

_ Future Provision of Criminal Lunatics," First Med. Rep. of Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum; Reports of Bethlehem Roy. Hosp.

Contrib. " Reports of Cases of Insanity," in Med. Times and Gazette

References

  1. ^ a b c Dr Charles Hood, British Museum website
  2. ^ a b c d Sir William Charles Hood, Royal College of Physicians database
  3. ^ E. G. O’Donoghue, The Story of Bethlehem Hospital, 1914, p, 416
  4. ^ a b c d Miranda Miller on Richard Dadd, Bedlam and Dr William Charles Hood, Peter Owen Publishers
  5. ^ a b OBITUARY. SIR WILLIAM CHARLES HOOD, M.D., KNIGHT., British Medical Journal, 15 January 1870, p. 72
  6. ^ O’Donoghue, p. 354
  7. ^ O’Donoghue, p. 359
  8. ^ Chaney, Edward (2006). 'Egypt in England and America: The Cultural Memorials of Religion, Royalty and Religion', Sites of Exchange: European Crossroads and Faultlines, eds. M. Ascari and A. Corrado. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi.
  9. ^ Morley, Henry. 'The Star of Bethlehem', Household Words (1857)
  10. ^ a b THE LONDON & PROVINCIAL MEDICAL DIRECTORY, INCLUSIVE OF THE MEDICAL DIRECTORY FOR SCOTLAND, AND THE MEDICAL DIRECTORY FOR IRELAND. AND General Medical Register (1865), John Churchill and Sons, London, pg 232
  11. ^ "Index of Lunatic Asylums and Mental Hospitals". mdx.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 27 May 2009. Retrieved 9 December 2008.
  12. ^ Smith, J. Donald. "Who Was Basil Hood? – Part I", Sir Arthur Sullivan Society Magazine, No. 84, Spring 2014, pp. 26–35
  13. ^ The Daily News, 13 July 1868, p. 5; and "The Dundee Courier", 18 July 1868, p. 3
  14. ^ O’Donoghue, p. 416
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