Bedlam is a place of wild confusion and noise. The word comes from the word Bethlehem. The hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem was founded in the early 1400’s at Southwark, in London, as an asylum for the mentally ill. In the 1670’s, a new hospital was built, where patients were exhibited like animals in a zoo. The public visited the hospital and paid to watch the patients as an entertainment.
The hospital was moved to buildings in Lambeth, London, in 1815. It moved to Beckenham, in south London, in 1930, and became a modern mental hospital. The building at Lambeth became the site of the present Imperial War Museum in 1936.
