Laura Sellers

Firstly, I love the Wellcome Photo Archive, if you haven’t used it you definitely should have a look. There are thousands of amazing pictures.

But some times you need to check the details; there are a series of photo’s attribute to Henry Clarke showing inmates at the West Riding Lunatic Asylum, Wakefield and the Wakefield Convict Prison. According to the Wellcome’s website these photo’s attributed to Henry Clarke in 1869. Either the person or the date has to be wrong.

“I am a total stranger to Wakefield I should be obliged if you could send me on a post-card the name of a hotel where I might be put up for the two days” wrote Henry Clarke before his interview for the position of Prison Medical Officer for Wakefield Convict Prison and Gaol in 1875. Following a typhoid epidemic in 1874-75 Wakefield needed a new doctor. The previous surgeon, Dr Wood, had retired after seventeen years in the post. He was unofficially held responsible for the poor hygiene and faulty drainage and sewerage in Wakefield Prison that had caused the epidemic. It had taken several local committees, Leeds sanitary inspectors and prison staff four months to find the source and improve the situation. The appointment of a medical officer was usually a lengthy and involved process but due to necessity, in this case the appointment was made relatively quickly.

He joined the West Riding House of Correction in Wakefield as chief medical officer and surgeon in 1876, a post he held until 1908. Clarke was a scientifically minded Prison Medical Officer who contributed to the studies of prison health, diet, hereditary studies, craniology, criminal pathology, forensic medicine, histology and psychiatry but has been neglected from the historiography.

Clarke was appointed as chief Prison Medical Officer at the age of 28, not long out of medical school. Whilst at Wakefield he set about trying to improve the health of the prison but also to understand the inmates in his charge. Along with staff at the West Riding Lunatic asylum he compared convicts, asylum patients and people from the local community asking questions about if there was something unique about criminality. He undertook statistical studies, observations, postmortems, and most likely made use of the photographic studio at the asylum either by taking pictures or using their photographic archive.

The Wellcome has 17 images attributed to Clarke which were purchased by the Wellcome at auction in 1987 and were reportedly sold by Clarke’s descendants.

There are 17 photographs which were acquired by the Wellcome Library at Sotheby’s in 1987. This includes 4 photographs of men apparently in prison uniform, with prisoner numbers and without diagnoses:
http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/search/a?searchtype=Y&searcharg=wakefield+prison&searchscope=5&SORT=D

and 13 photographs are of of people in civilian dress and with diagnoses of mental illness:
http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/search/a?searchtype=Y&searcharg=wakefield+asylum&searchscope=5&SORT=D

At the Sotheby’s sale, they were all attributed to Dr Henry Clarke, who was stated to be Medical Superintendant at the West Riding Asylum, Wakefield.  The link to Clarke is plausible, although his job title is definitely incorrect.

These photographs (and the related photographs in the Charles Darwin archive in Cambridge University Library) are discussed by Sander Gilman in his book Seeing the insane, chapter 15.  The Darwin photographs were sent to him by James Crichton Browne, who called them “a packet of photographs … out of my album”.  Browne was Medical Superintendant of the West Riding Asylum.  It seems that Browne was responsible for the photographs, whether or not he actually operated the camera himself.

 

 

 

[1] WYAS.QD1/368–9. Letters concerning the advertised job. 1875.

[2] See WYAS.QD1/379, 380, 382, 383 and 384.