Rules for hospital visitors and regulations for patients sending and receiving letters are detailed on this ward notice. It was displayed at St Audry’s Hospital in Suffolk. It states all patient parcels were checked, but not letters. Presumably this was to stop banned substances or objects such as knives entering the hospital. A patient’s relatives and friends were allowed to visit once a fortnight, but not on Sundays. However, in the case of serious illness they could visit any time of night or day. This notice symbolises the extensive rules and regulations that characterised much psychiatric care. It also indicates the growing contact between psychiatric patients and the wider world during the 20th century.

Letter boxes in asylum wards allowed patients to communicate with the outside world. The number of people confined to asylums grew rapidly after the 1890 Lunacy Act. This gave local officials the power to order internment. Some patients spent their lives in such institutions. The institutions were often self-sufficient, with little contact with the outside. This example was collected from the Asylum Museum at St Audry's Hospital in Suffolk, England, when the hospital and the museum closed in the late 1980s.

These tokens were reward payments to patients for work done, probably in the asylum workshops or gardens at St Audry's Hospital, a psychiatric institution in Melton, Suffolk, England, 1925-1952.. This work was a type of occupational therapy. Coloured tokens were exchanged for items in the hospital's canteen. They encouraged positive behaviour and were crucial in upholding asylums’ elaborate systems of privileges.

St Audry’s Hospital opened in 1765 as a workhouse for the poor. It became the Suffolk County Lunatic Asylum in 1827. The hospital was also known as St Audry’s Hospital for Mental Diseases from 1917.

These tokens were reward payments to patients for work done in asylum workshops or gardens. This work was a type of occupational therapy. Coloured tokens were exchanged for items such as cigarettes and cakes. They encouraged positive behaviour and were crucial in upholding asylums’ elaborate systems of privileges.

St Audry’s Hospital opened in 1765 as a workhouse for the poor. It became the Suffolk County Lunatic Asylum in 1827. The hospital was also known as St Audry’s Hospital for Mental Diseases from 1917. The hospital and the associated Asylum Museum shut down in the late 1980s. This object was once displayed at the museum.

St. Audry’s Hospital, Suffolk recorded payments made to patients in this book. This was part of an incentive scheme for occupational therapy. The hospital opened in 1829, originally as the Suffolk County Asylum for Pauper Lunatics. Early on, it had used manual labour such as gardening or laundry work as therapy. In the 1900s, it began using more expressive therapies such as arts and crafts as rehabilitation. It introduced occupational therapy for men in 1934 and for women in 1947. This empty payments book indicates patients could only work in three-hour blocks. All monies were signed for by patient and nursing staff.

St Audry’s Hospital opened in 1765 as a workhouse for the poor. It became the Suffolk County Lunatic Asylum in 1827. The hospital was also known as St Audry’s Hospital for Mental Diseases from 1917. The hospital and the associated Asylum Museum shut down in the late 1980s. This object was once used at St Audry's and later displayed at the museum.

St Audry’s Hospital opened in 1765 as a workhouse for the poor. It became the Suffolk County Lunatic Asylum in 1827. The hospital was also known as St Audry’s Hospital for Mental Diseases from 1917. The hospital and the associated Asylum Museum shut down in the late 1980s. This object was once used on the wards at St Audry's and later formed part of the Asylum Museum's collection.

Dominating the canvas of this painting is a large house with an extensive garden and a greenhouse. A man in the foreground tends to flowers and waters the fruit and vegetables. It is not your typical image of a psychiatric hospital. The painting was made by a patient at St Audry’s Hospital in Suffolk, England. The ‘house’ in the painting resembles the hospital building at St. Audry’s. In many respects, the artist faithfully captured the ideals of ‘moral treatment’. These included manual labour and a calming, home-like environment. Moral treatment dominated psychiatry when St. Audry’s was founded in 1829. These ideals remained influential into the 1900s. The hospital had extensive and productive gardens. Patients tended them as part of their rehabilitation. The painting may have been painted for personal pleasure or as part of an art therapy programme. Psychoanalysis became prominent in the early 1900s. Psychiatrists saw therapeutic value in self-expression such as painting or poetry as well as manual labour. St Audry’s introduced occupational therapy for men in 1934 and for women in 1947. Paintings also allowed patients to indirectly comment on their feelings about life in a mental hospital. Look closely at the windows of the house. You can see a psychiatrist in a white coat observing the scene. A woman, perhaps the artist, looks out from another window. Is she trapped or is she painting?

Patients in the laundry department of St Audry’s Hospital in Suffolk used this iron. The hospital opened in 1829. During the 20th century, it used manual labour such as gardening or laundry work as therapy. This stimulation was thought healthy for mind and body. The iron may have been part of this work therapy. It was only used by a patient considered stable enough.

In the 20th century, many institutions began using more expressive therapies such as arts and crafts as rehabilitation. Suffolk County Asylum was renamed St Audry’s Hospital in 1919. It introduced occupational therapy for men in 1934 and for women in 1947.

Patients in the laundry department of St Audry's Hospital used this basket. Opened in 1765, the hospital was originally a workhouse for the poor until it became the Suffolk County Lunatic Asylum in 1827. From 1917, the hospital was also known as St Audry's Hospital for Mental Diseases.

St Audry’s Hospital opened in 1765 as a workhouse for the poor. It became the Suffolk County Lunatic Asylum in 1827. The hospital was also known as St Audry’s Hospital for Mental Diseases from 1917. The hospital and the associated Asylum Museum shut down in the late 1980s. This object was once displayed at the museum.

Workers on the St Audry's Hospital farm used this spade. Opened in 1765, the hospital was originally a workhouse for the poor until it became the Suffolk County Lunatic Asylum in 1827. From 1917, the hospital was also known as St Audry's Hospital for Mental Diseases.

Patients in St Audry's Hospital were encouraged to keep busy and this cobbler's foot was used by a patient for making shoes. Opened in 1765, the hospital was originally a workhouse for the poor until it became the Suffolk County Lunatic Asylum in 1827. From 1917, the hospital was also known as St Audry's Hospital for Mental Diseases.

This ‘suicide tag’ was used at Suffolk District Asylum between 1900 and 1935 and it gave an individual nurse responsibility for a suicidal patient. Such tags were handed over at the end of every shift to the next nurse on duty to ensure continuous observation of the patient. The tag is made of brass and embossed with the name of the institution and the words, ‘This patient is not to be left’ and ‘No.41’. The number could mean 40 similar labels existed. This would indicate a significant number of vulnerable patients at risk within the Hospital.

Rules, regulations and behaviour expected of patients when they were allowed to visit the local town were outlined on this town pass, issued in 1953 by St Audry’s Hospital in Suffolk. Such passes are indicative of the increasing level of freedom allowed to some patients during the 1950s. But institutions still closely controlled their behaviour and how they were perceived by the local community. Patients were not allowed to visit pubs, drink alcohol or post letters for other patients. They had to dress tidily at all times and return to the hospital by 7pm. Passes such as this indicate the progress towards greater integration within the wider community, more characteristic of today’s psychiatric care.

Psychiatric hospital staff recorded which patients had been physically restrained or kept in seclusion, and for what reasons. Details noted included the means and duration of restraint, the name and sex of the patient, and whether they were a temporary or certified patient. The origins of such registers lie with the Lunacy Act of 1830 which introduced government oversight of private asylums to prevent some of the worst abuses. Regular amendments were issued throughout the first half of the 1900s, reminding hospital staff how far psychiatric institutions had improved since the early 1800s. They reinforced the fact excessive unjustified use of restraints and extended periods of seclusion were illegal. The first significant drug treatments appeared in mental hospitals in the mid-1950s. Restraint and seclusion were lessened, but never eliminated.

Mounted on a door at the Suffolk County Asylum a century ago, this brass peephole allowed doctors and warders to check on a patient locked in solitary confinement. Perhaps few objects communicate the stigma and the loneliness of living with mental illness as well as this one. An eye peering occasionally through the peephole may have been the only human contact the inmate received for days. It was carefully engineered to protect both patients and staff. It had no window glass, since broken glass could become a weapon for those intent on committing suicide or wounding their keepers. For the same reason, the room itself would probably have had no windows, or at least no glazed ones. Welded pegs also prevented the peephole’s cover from being broken off or twisted open from inside the cell. The Suffolk County Asylum for Pauper Lunatics (later renamed St. Audry's Hospital) was founded in 1829. Around the same time, a small number of English asylums for mentally ill patients, inspired by the ideals of moral therapy, were renouncing the use of physical restraint. However, large government-funded institutions like Suffolk, with patients whose families could not afford to pay for exceptional care, continued to rely on straitjackets and solitary confinement to subdue patients whom doctors judged likely to harm themselves or others. Frequently, suicidal patients would be put in the cell naked, to prevent them from tying clothing around their necks or swallowing strips of fabric. While potentially life-saving, it stripped patients of their dignity. New laws in the 1800s required asylums to carefully record every time they confined or secluded a patient, and to state why. This curbed some of the abuses associated with earlier asylums where some patients could be kept in chains or solitary confinement for years. To a scared, unclothed, suicidal patient behind this peephole, however, such slow legislative changes must have felt worlds away.

This improvised knife was made by a psychiatric patient at St Audry’s Hospital in Suffolk. Details of the patient are unknown, but he or she clearly took considerable time creating this makeshift artefact. It is also unknown whether the knife was for domestic use, an escape attempt or something more sinister.