Quotes / Bedlam House

---

Film

"No-one leaves the Wishing Well, doctor's orders! Hahahaha!"

— Crazy Doctor, Ice Cream Man

"Have you ever seen the inside of a madhouse, Maurice? You wouldn't last a week."

— Gaston, Beauty and the Beast (2017)

Literature

But there are many people wrongfully sent to Bedlam, where the food is dirt, the doctors are as helpful as head-lice, the nurses are gaolers and the cesspit overflows. The howls, cries and demented laughter of the "unfortunates" never ceases, especially when they are prodded and poked and doused with water. Did you know that ordinary members of the public were allowed to enter Bedlam to poke and prod all they wanted? It was like a day at the circus for them, a fun family outing. The "unfortunates" were chained and behind bars. It wouldn't do to have a member of the public assailed by an old woman who thinks she's a teapot. The visitors were charged a penny for the privilege of leering and pointing at the lunatics. And if the lunatics refused to perform, they were struck. The public, having paid good money for their entertainment, wouldn't be cheated.

— Plenitude, The Life Of A Teenage Body Snatcher

Live-Action TV

Martha: This is what you call a hospital? Where the patients are whipped to entertain the gentry?! And you put your friend in here? ... But you're clever! Do you honestly think this place does any good?
William Shakespeare: I've been mad. I've lost my mind. Fear of this place set me right again. Serves its purpose.

— Doctor Who, on the real Bedlam House, "The Shakespeare Code"

Dr Oliver Thredson: In just the short time that I've been here, I have witnessed appalling things: abuse, malpractice... Candidly, I'm shocked.
Sister Jude: It's a madhouse, Doctor. What did you expect?
Dr Oliver Thredson: I expected some form of treatment! Therapy! Sister, your hospital still administers electroshock therapy to treat homosexuality - it's barbaric! Behavior modification is the current standard.
Sister Jude: To-may-to, to-mah-to...

— American Horror Story: Asylum

Music

(Sung to the tune of Away in a Manger)

Away in a madhouse, confined to my bed
From visions and nightmares that filled me with dread
The doctor has sweetly inserted a probe
To sever completely my pre-frontal lobe!
Electroshock therapy, mind-numbing pills
They change my behavior to cure all my ills
I love the asylum, My own padded cell
I'll stay here forever for outside is hell!

— "Away in a Madhouse", A Very Scary Solstice

Asylums with doors open wide
Where people had paid to see inside
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, "I still exist."

— Joy Division, "Atrocity Exhibition".

My sanity's back on the line again
Last year, I said I wouldn't rhyme again
But I'm back for punishment time again
If I should lose my good mind again
Tell my management not to waste good money
Sendin' me away to the farms of the funny
Them places only make me worse
They full of crooked doctors and kinky nurses
That poke you in the arse, and measure your schlong
Put that tape measure down, that practice is wrong
They thought I didn't know what was goin' on
But I knew the clue although the drugs was strong
Claw-polma-oxidisa-what?
Tell me doctor, why I got purple snot?
I'm feelin' happy when I know I'm sad
And now they wanna certify me mad

— Roots Manuva, "Awfully Deep"

Tabletop Games

The Bishopsgate Asylum facility is a structure as complex and as twisted as its long, dark history. Through the efforts of the hospital's illustrious lineage of corrupt, selfish and derelict directors, the various buildings that compose Bishopsgate form a broken world where wrathful madness boils behind a face of medical sterility. Though the current director, Dr Bridget McClusky, is making an effort to restore the hospital to its intended role as a place of healing, such a renovation of spirit is highly unlikely. Too much depravity and sheer malevolence have taken place to ever permit for such a drastic transformation of the asylum's essential nature.

— New World of Darkness: Asylum

The madhouse of Lembrooke was built by the Physician's Guild, not to grant succour to the insane, as the priestesses of Shallya do in their hospices, but as a home for the study of the deranged in a secluded location where only the beasts and trees would be able to hear the screams. Lembrooke was run by doctors Feder and Teer, who were at the forefront of their field, using such forward-thinking techniques as trepanation to let the troublesome Daemons out through holes in the skull, thyroid removal, heated brands, and mild poisoning.

— Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Night's Dark Masters - A Guide To Vampires

Video Games

"Another unfortunate casualty to tide of time: Insane Asylums. I lament their loss, not only as brokerage houses for the breadth and depth of human psychosis, but also I shall mourn the disappearance of the peculiar environment present only in an insane asylum: that palpable atmosphere of blistered brains and churning bowels, the odiferous deluge of freely flowing bodily humors, that gently rolling cacophony of distant sobs and screams, the muttered cursing of perceived enemies and the blissful gurgling of the lobotomized. Like a new born babe discovering the sky."

— Alistair Grout, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

"I'm used to the dark, but this feels like a house full of bad dreams."

— Garrett about the Shalebridge Cradle, Thief: Deadly Shadows

Welcome to the Carnate Institution for the Tragically Troubled, the Impossibly Insane, and the Diabolically Disturbed! Are you seeking asylum, Torque? Are you looking for the answers? Well, rest assured, you have come to the right place...

— Dr Killjoy, The Suffering

"Where better to drive a man crazy than in the madhouse?"

— Joker, Batman: Arkham Knight

Váli? Who's asking? Yeah, I know them. When Gran had me hospitalised. Institutionalised. Amity House smelled like dead fridges. Ozone. No plants, no windows, no mirrors. So many pills, all the colours of a fake rainbow. They told me they would make the voices stop, make my episodes stop. And they were right! I never heard Gaia's voice all the time I was in there. But it was all fun and games when the restraints came off: they would hook me up to a machine, tape my finger to a button. Show me photos, survey maps, symbols. I tried everything. Pressing it all the time, or not at all. When I was really doped up, I'd tap out the beat to love songs. One day they just threw me out into the greasy rain. Didn't care who I told, they knew no one would believe me. God, I couldn't believe it. Even the bad guys didn't want me. I was the wrong kind of freak!

— Callie James, The Secret World

Web Original

David: Arkham Asylum, which is apparently on top of a straight-up mesa with sheer cliff faces.
Chris: It looks so much like Castlevania that I expected to see a dude in a loincloth whipping Medusa Heads.
David: There, we see Freeze being brought in, and he’s actually in a locked fridge with his head through the freezer door. It even has the hinges the door used to be on.
Chris: Arkham Asylum in a nutshell. No wonder they can’t keep anyone locked up when this is the best specialized equipment that they can afford.

— Chris Sims and David Uzumeri on Batman & Robin

"I cannot recall a single comic in which Arkham Asylum was shown to improve someone's mental status. In fact, since Dr. Quinzel went insane while working there, I think Arkham's overall record is -1 people cured!"

— From a DC Universe Online forum discussion

I fear the prison is driving me mad. The doctor tells me it is only in my mind.

I must never allow myself to trust the doctor. I have seen his notebook. He does not care for me. I am not a patient. I am an experiment.

These holes in my memory- were they always there?

I think the pills give them to me. Even my clearest thoughts are like an old tapestry— faded and bare and eaten through by moths and mice. I find myself staring off into space, unable to recall names and dates or even what I was just thinking about.

There are ways. I track days scratching tally marks on the floor beneath my bed. I am running out of room, and I worry that one day, with the doctor’s help, I will not remember what they mean.

Tomorrow I will get out. better to escape while my mind is strong than languish in this place. I am going home.

— The Shortest Story, "The Prison of Forgetting" (everything but the bolded text fades in and out of view)

Western Animation

Homer Simpson: Be quiet or we'll put you in a home.
Abraham Simpson: You already put me in a home!
Homer Simpson: Then we'll put you in that crooked home we saw on Sixty Minutes.
Abraham Simpson: [Pathetically] I'll be good.

— The Simpsons

Real Life

"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."

— Friedrich Nietzsche ^note He was eventually thrown into one. Sure it's not a Bedlam House per se, but think about how low the knowledge of mental health was before.

---