A mad house transformed: the lives and work of Charles James Beverly FRS (1788–1868) and John Warburton MD FRS (1795–1847)

• Published in: Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London
• Main Author: Murphy, E.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: The Royal Society 2004
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2004.0064; https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsnr.2004.0064

Bethnal Green Asylum was the most notorious of the scandalous early nineteenth–century private madhouses exposed in two parliamentary Select Committees of 1815/16 and 1827. From being vilified as the worst asylum in the country, this huge and important institution was transformed over 15 years into one of the best by two determined men, both Fellows of The Royal Society, John Warburton MD, the proprietor, and Charles James Beverly, the medical superintendent, former naval surgeon, naturalist and Arctic explorer. This paper describes their hitherto unrecorded biographies.