The Liverpool Street station was one of the largest and busiest stations that I had seen on our trip so far. It had numerous places to eat and shop amongst all the modes of transportation that it provided. This station is home to the original location of Bedlam hospital. I tried to look for evidence or any traces of this hospital in the station’s architecture. I’m not sure which parts are still part of the original hospital, but from personal observation I believe the brick walls with the arched detailing and windows looks reminiscent of what could be an old hospital.
Besides that, the high glass ceilings did not give the impression that this station used to be a hospital. There was a plaque outside the building that stated to the public that it was the first site of the hospital. If we had not asked a guard where we could find it, I do not think we would have found it on our own. It was outside on the side of the building and it was not very obvious on the wall. It almost gave the impression that the architects did not really want the people to know that this building used to be a mental hospital. The plaque was less of a memorial and more of a lowkey sign of what the building used to be.
A memorial that I did see inside was one that remembered the children who used the Liverpool street station as a means of escaping Nazi persecution. It is an iron looking memorial with two children and their suitcases waiting for their train. The history and experiences that have happened in this station is so much and so heavy. The memorial for the children stood out to me amongst the modern cafes and shops that now align the station. It became obvious that the children have a memorial and not those who died at this hospital maybe because of the stigma behind mental illness. According to the Ackroyd reading, Bedlam was the only mental hospital in all of the UK at the time. The hospital “represented an intensification of the worst aspects of London life.” (Ackroyd 604) It seems that mental illness was something that people did not want to acknowledge or have to face.
I saw this to be true again at the Imperial War Museum. The Imperial War Museum holds another historical piece of the Bedlam hospital. There is another plaque that explains its history outside the gates of the museum. This museum was located in a beautiful park and was nicely laid out and detailed for a free museum! The first floor had many airplanes and tanks that replicated those that were used in the war. Another floor explained the history and importance of music during the time of the war. This was my favorite exhibit because of it’s interactions with the guests. We sat down at one of the benches in a dim room with few colorful lights and listened with headphones to some very inspiring music from the war. There was also a fun screen that would put up questions such as “if you knew a concert would be dangerous would you still go” and you would have to press agree or disagree. Afterward it would tell you how many other visitors agreed with you. I think the purpose of this exhibit was to show the power and influence of music to the culture of the people during a hard time for everybody. It also shows how much people needed music for the strength of their community. The Holocaust exhibit was not open when we went but I would like to go back during the times it is open.
According to the Richardson article, the dome on top of the museum is original from the Bedlam hospital. Keeping some of the original architecture is memoriam in itself, but I got the same feeling that it’s history as a hospital was not something that the architects wanted to be a main feature. It would have been interesting for this museum to have maybe a small section about the buildings history when it was Bedlam. Visiting Liverpool Street Station and the Imperial War Museum were surprising in that I was expecting more of an obvious representation of the past of Bedlam. They both had small plaques explaining what was there before, but no memorial in what happened in those sites. If I had not gone there knowing the history of these buildings, I would have never guessed their historical importance. To me this represents the stigma and underlying feelings about mental illness in the past and even today.
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