‘Curiosity about the patients doesn’t erase stigma; it perpetuates stigma. Sneaking around asylums diminishes the lived experience of the patients who suffered in there. It’s not OK to lie in someone else’s coffin or wear someone else’s straitjacket’ (Yanni, 2010).

The Historical Madhouse and its Treatments

Meaning a ‘place of refuge’, the historical mental asylum is the ancestor of modern day psychiatric hospitals, and its institutional roots can be traced as far back as 1247, in London. Originally named the New Order of our Lady of Bethlehem, the hospital would undergo four regenerations before settling in its current location of Beckenhem, yet it will never shake its well known nickname: Bedlam, now a byword for mayhem or madness. Prior to the opening of such institutions, those with mental illness and learning disabilities would be cared for by their families, and when the families could not provide that care, they would end up most likely destitute, homeless and begging for food and shelter.

By the 18th century, private institutions started to emerge but as Bazar & Burman point out, the patients in these institutions were more than likely the powerless wives of bored and jealous aristocrats, who would be forced into institutions no better than human zoos (Bazar & Burman, 2014).

Yet despite the age of psychiatric inpatient treatment, prior to the 19th century there was no real set treatment for mental illness, and for centuries the preferred treatment would change alongside other trends of the day.

Some notable examples are trephination, bloodletting and of course, lobotomies. Each of these ‘treatments’ revolved around removing something from the body – either a part of the skull to release pressure on the brain, or blood, bile, and vomit to re-balance the humours, or removing the connection between parts of the brain – yet no move was made to change the environment in which the person lived, or to make changes to their lives. 

Thus enter, the ‘moral treatment’. For the first time, mental illness was seen as a curable disease, the depletion of one’s mental energies leading to insanity, and the cure was… almost simple, compared to past methods – it could be broken down into five things: rest, meaningful employment, appropriate amusements, hygienic conditions and, most importantly, kindness. 

If you had wanted to visit an asylum in the 19th century, you would need to purchase a guidebook such as Miller’s New York As It Is, or the Englishman’s Illustrated Guide to the United States and Canada, and you would have to physically travel to the institutions, and pay to walk through them, a costly endevour. Instead, a simple search on YouTube offers thousands of videos ranging from millions of views to barely a thousand that you can watch from the comfort of your own home.

The Tourist and the Asylum

As mentioned above, the Victorian tourist would require guidebooks for their visits to new cities and towns, and more often than not these guidebooks recommended asylums as a must-see destinaiton. For example, Miller’s New York recommended visiting twelve different asylums within the city, whilst the Englishman’s Illustrated Guide recommended at least twenty-one.

One asylum Miller recommends is the Bloomingdale Asylum for the Insane, as shown above, located in the Morningside Heights neighbourhood of Manhattan. Miller’s As It Is marks a move from interest in asylums for their patients, and interest in asylums for their architecture and landscaping – a move from the mentally ill, to manicured lawns.

Miller’s guide describes the approach to the asylum from the southern entrance as ‘highly pleasing’, and continues to say that ‘the sudden opening of the view, the extent of the grounds, the various avenues gracefully winding through so large a lawn. … The central building … is always open to visitors, and the view from the top of it being the most extensive and beautiful of any in the vicinity of the city, is well worthy of their attention’ (Miller, 1880, p. 46-47).

The shift in a more focused, set treatment also meant a shift in the way asylums are viewed – thus, every element of the institution was an integral part of treatment, both inside the building and out of it, and so visitors were encouraged to visit the gardens, and take in the beautiful buildings. No longer were people coming to view the patients, but instead to view the asylum – Jane Miron, author of ‘Prisons, Asylums and the Public’ argued that for asylum administrators, encouraging tourism became a way of gaining public support and confidence – it would also help to discourage the scepticism of treatment and the stigma surrouding mental illness (Miron, 2011).

But have we really left asylum tourism behind? Or has it simply changed formats?

A Move to Modern Voyeurism

Bazar & Burman write that the practice of asylum tourism may seem strange and uncomfortable to 21st century readers, but I would like to argue that we still hold fascination with asylum tourism, and that not only does it still exist, that it has simply changed forms and it some ways, become even more accessible than its predecessors, and even more voyeuristic.

Although it primarily holds sexual connotations, to be a voyeur and to be voyeuristic also extends to the interest and enjoyment of other peoples suffering and misery, and is that not the very basis of asylum tourism?

The use of photography in asylums and psychiatric hospitals is not a new one, its use can be traced back to the 1870s with clinicians Henri Dagonet and Jean-Martin Charcot as some of the first to make use of it as a diagnostic tool (Eghigian, 2010). Their diligent work in photographing patients experiencing hysteria allowed for the creation of diagnostic criteria for maladies of the mind.

While the image above is an example of photography to be used in aid of diagnostic criteria, it is still an example of the voyeuristic interest we hold with regards to asylums and their patients, in this case, we are still seeking some intrusive entertainment from another persons vulnerable moments in order to satisfy our own curiosity.

The relationship between asylums and photography continues even today, but now for new reasons – it is no longer used to document patients and their symptoms, but instead it is used to fulfil the voyeuristic curiosity that surrounds abandoned asylums and hospitals – a sentiment not dissimilar to the one held by our predecessors when presented with the opportunity to tour functioning asylums.

Not only do we embrace asylum tourism presented to us in accessible formats such as videos and photographs, we are still interested in touring the buildings themselves. Through companies such as Haunted Happenings, you can follow in your Victorian ancestors footsteps and book to tour asylums and hospitals for the price of £69 per person – with the added excitement of the paranormal, as its not enough to simply tour the buildings where people faced dehumanising and inhumane treatments, but we must be able to witness their continued suffering from beyond the grave! But its not just tours, its books which tell us the biographies of patients, and their illnesses and their subsequent fates – such as Voices from the Asylum: West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum by Mark Davis, and its podcasts such as Asylum Stories as available on Spotify which discusses hospitals, patient stories and treatments.

Closing Thoughts

As humans, we have always been interested in the macabre, the morbid and the unknown – we will always want to know whats behind the curtain, and asylums and mental hospitals only naturally fall into our path of curiosity – be it through physically touring the buildings, photography, videos, books or podcasts, we have a desire to know everything we can about taboo subjects.

Though original believe was that asylum tourism died out following the change from asylum to psychiatric hospital, I have aimed to show that not only is this not true, but our attitudes to psychiatric hospitals, psychiatry and the mentally ill are more voyeuristic than before.

References

Primary Sources

Englishman and Oxford University (1880). The Englishman’s illustrated guide book to the United States and Canada. (Centennial ed.). [online] Internet Archive. Available at: https://archive.org/details/englishmansillu00englgoog/mode/2up.

Miller, J. and The Library of Congress (1872). Miller’s New York as it is, or Stranger’s guide-book to the cities of New York, Brooklyn, and adjacent places .. [online] Internet Archive. New York, J. Miller. Available at: https://archive.org/details/millersnewyorkas00mill/page/42/mode/1up?view=theater.

Secondary Sources

Bazar, J.L. and Burman, J.T. (2014). Asylum Tourism. https://www.apa.org. [online] Feb. Available at: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/02/asylum-tourism.

Box, C. (2021). 19th-Century Tourists Visited Mental Asylums Like They Were Theme Parks. [online] Ranker. Available at: https://www.ranker.com/list/asylum-visitors-in-the-nineteenth-century/christy-box.

Chambers, P. (2020). Bethlem Royal Hospital: Why Did the Infamous Bedlam Asylum Have Such a Fearsome reputation?[online] HistoryExtra. Available at: https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/bethlem-royal-hospital-history-why-called-bedlam-lunatic-asylum/.

Coleborne, C. (2001). Exhibiting ‘Madness’: Material Culture and the Asylum. Health and History, 3(2), pp.104–117. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/40111408.

CSP Online. (2020). A History of Mental Illness Treatment. [online] Available at: https://online.csp.edu/resources/article/history-of-mental-illness-treatment/.

Eghigian, G. (2010). Who’s Haunting Whom? The New Fad in Asylum Tourism. [online] Psychiatric Times. Available at: https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/whos-haunting-whom-new-fad-asylum-tourism.

HauntedHappenings.co.uk. (n.d.). Haunted Asylums & Hospitals. [online] Available at: https://www.hauntedhappenings.co.uk/haunted-asylums-hospitals/.

Kahn, E.M. (2016). Chains, Whips and Misery: Studying and Preserving Old ‘Lunatic’ Asylums (Published 2016). The New York Times. [online] 29 Sep. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/arts/design/chains-whips-and-misery-studying-and-preserving-old-lunatic-asylums.html.

Miron, J. (2011). Prisons, asylums, and the public : institutional visiting in the nineteenth century. Toronto: University Of Toronto Press.

Narula, B. (2021). What It Meant to Be a Mental Patient in the 19th Century? [online] Lessons from History. Available at: https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/what-it-meant-to-be-a-mental-patient-in-the-19th-century-86340b93199b.

Ottin, T. (2022). What Was Life like in a Victorian Mental Asylum? [online] History Hit. Available at: https://www.historyhit.com/life-in-a-victorian-mental-asylum/.

Rondinone, T. (2021). Dark Places—Our History of Asylum Tourism | Psychology Today United Kingdom. [online] http://www.psychologytoday.com. Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-asylum/202103/dark-places-our-history-asylum-tourism.

Science Museum. (2018). A Victorian Mental Asylum. [online] Available at: https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/medicine/victorian-mental-asylum.

Yanni, C. (2010). Review – Forbidden Places: Online Photography Exhibit of the New Jersey State Hospital for the Insane. [online] h-madness. Available at: https://historypsychiatry.com/2010/08/09/review-forbidden-places-photograph-exhibit-of-the-new-jersey-state-hospital-for-the-insane/.

York, B. (2023). Inside The Haunting Past of 19th-Century Mental Hospitals. [online] History Defined. Available at: https://www.historydefined.net/the-history-of-19th-century-mental-hospitals/.

Images

Bloomingdale Insane Asylum in 1834. (n.d.). Available at: https://bloomingdalehistory.com/2016/01/10/the-bloomingdale-insane-asylum/.

Charcot, J.-M. (n.d.). Attaque Hystero-Epileptique. [Photography] Available at: https://hystoria.ca/2015/11/29/charcots-photography/.

Hogarth, W. (1734). A Rake’s Progress VIII: The Madhouse. [Oil on Canvas] Sir John Sloane’s Museum Collection Online. Available at: https://collections.soane.org/object-p47.

Beginning in London and ending most commonly in Kathmandu, the hippie trail, also known as the overland route, was a path through Europe and Asia that represented liberation “from the constraints of jobs, mortgages and social conventions” (Gemie, 2018, np). In other words, it was a way of leaving the Western world behind and moving across the land in search of transformation and self-discovery. However, the trail had its own social conventions and culture, which dictated a hierarchy among those who travelled the route. Some were considered inauthentic due to their means of travel and intentions on the road. Those who were more conventionally guided either via guidebooks, travel agents or tour buses were disdained as ‘tourists’, a label that was used in the pejorative, and intended to encapsulate the lack of ‘authenticity’ of those who held on to the supposed comforts of the West. This blog post will look at this debate and consider the supposed ‘authenticity’ of the traveller’s journeys, some of the differences between ‘tourist’ and ‘traveller’ and what performances distinguished them on the hippie trail, if there was any distinction between them at all.

SEARCHING FOR IDENTITY

The ability to travel along the overland route, somewhat safely, lasted for approximately a decade, between 1965 and 1978, and was popularised as part of the hippie counter-culture movement that developed during this period. The hippie movement was a ‘rejection’ of Western consumerism and led to elitism along the trail. Brian Ireland (2021) explains that traditional tourism, dictated by travel agents and tour guides, was “viewed as a symbol” of the culture they were trying to leave behind (Ireland, 2021, np). The people who moved along the routes declared themselves ‘travellers’ and as such distinguished themselves as separate from other Westerners in the East, who were disdained as ‘tourists’ due to their being “unthinking consumer[s] with no sense of discovery” (Gemie & Ireland, 2017, p.103). The reasons for following the route were varied, with some chasing dreams, others discovering themselves, and some simply pursuing something different “from the perceived monotony of middle-class life in Europe” (Sobocinska, 2014, np.) However, whatever their reasons, as Arne Walderhaug tells in his travelogue, one of the main cultural performances was to travel along the route as cheaply as possible to extend the journey (Walderhaug, nd, np). This included rejecting transportation methods traditionally used when travelling long distances such as airplanes or boats, unless strictly necessary. The methods of movement preferred were walking, hitchhiking, driving and buses, including tour buses.

TOUR BUS TRAVELLERS?

The hippie trail, for all its travellers’ scorn of the word ‘tourist’, generated an industry in the small tour bus companies that travelled along the overland route, offering inexpensive tours where other like-minded individuals would be able to travel together in relative safety. One such company was Swagman Tours (as the image above shows), which offered travel “from London to Kathmandu and back” and whose passengers looked and acted “like young Western tourists” but still considered themselves travellers (Gemie & Ireland, p. 101, 2016).  As this documentary, The Road to Kathmandu (1975), shows, those who travelled on the route were mostly white and, in their twenties. They travelled along the same route with the same predetermined stops at sites of cultural significance. To reject Western culture, and yet still utilise inherently Western services and comforts, such as those represented by the tour bus, would appear to be hypocritical and antithetical to the spirit of the trail. However, those who used the buses believed themselves to be travellers regardless of this distinction, and Gemie and Ireland (2016) thought that the division between what constituted a traveller, and a tourist on the hippie trail could have been as simple as the belief in being a traveller (Gemie & Ireland, 2016, p. 103).

The travellers of the trail were “united in their rejection of the label ‘tourist’”, which included the search for ‘authentic’ experiences “through a range of performances that signalled their ‘authenticity’” and it was this uniting ideology that defined them (Gemie & Ireland, 2016, p. 103; Sobocinska, 2014, np.). However, Dean MacCannell (1999) noted that ‘authentic experiences’ inside cultures not your own, were merely “staged authenticity” because it was not “so easy to penetrate the true inner workings” of other cultures as there was an element of the performative that was based on visitor expectations (MacCannell, 1999, pp. 94-95). These expectations were proliferated through media such as the documentary linked above, word of mouth, and even the iconography associated with the hippie movement. This suggests that the distinction between tourist and traveller is simply the difference between the experience of how movement was achieved and the destination once movement occurred. One, the tourist, sought places to visit, a guided tour, in relative comfort, around monuments of cultural significance. Whereas the other, the traveller, sought people and approached movement across the land as an anthropological journey. This would indicate that the traveller on the hippie trail was merely a tourist of people and culture, in the same way that the tourist was a traveller of monuments.

PROGENITORS OF THE MAINSTREAM

Historians such as Agnieszka Sobocinska (2014), propose that the European traveller in Asia was a benefactor of the old colonial infrastructure in places like India and, in fact, extended “the long genealogy of imperial travel” to the present day, which would not have been possible if they weren’t Western (Sobocinska, 2014, np.) While this blog does not have the space to completely explore this statement, what can be said is that the European travellers through Asia were complicit in the booming tourist industry in the Asian continent.  They were the sellers of fabrics, creators of tour guides like the Lonely Planet guidebooks, and advice pamphlets, and they were the progenitors of the ’mainstream’ backpacking tourist industry that had economic, cultural and environmental ramifications on the places they visited. The travellers were ‘developer tourists’ who utilized already existing infrastructure to provide or develop services for the next wave of travellers or ‘backpackers’ (Hampton & Hamzah, p.558, 2016). Rory Maclean gave an example of a patisserie in Istanbul that became the unofficial first meeting point of the trail (Maclean, np, nd). This shop, The Pudding Shop, was adopted by the trailgoers as the “information central” of the trail and was one of many instances of tourists appropriating an area for their own purposes. “Freak Street” in Nepal offered legally available drugs to travellers, and ashrams in Goa became a “hotbed of alternative culture” where people could meditate and “attempt to discover themselves” (Openskies, nd). By having these set destinations, printed in guidebooks and spread through notice boards and word of mouth, those who travelled the trail were acting in the capacity of the ‘tourist’ they so clearly disdained. They were not ‘discovering’ and not experiencing ‘authenticity’ in the way they claimed they were.

CONCLUSION

Those who moved along the trail created a hierarchy of travellers, with tourists being at the bottom of the list. However, when looking at the behaviours of the travellers along the hippie trail, including how they travelled, and how they appropriated culture and places as their own, we can see there was little distinction between the two. The exception, as shown above, was simply in the belief that they were travellers and not tourists because to them to be a tourist represented all that was wrong with the Western world they had left behind. Nevertheless, just because they moved out of the theoretical “West” does not mean they did not take the ideologies with them. They generated industry both at home and in places they were visiting, they were consumers and sellers who were hypocritically part of a system that was developed because of and for them. The supposed ‘authenticity’ of their experiences was questionable because the experience they wanted was performative based on their already preconceived notions of what the authentic nature of a place was.

References:

Primary Sources

Exodus Adventure Travels (2015) The Road to Kathmandu- Documentary (1975). [Online Video}. Available from: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VzS0MQw1wU&gt; [Accessed: 12 April 2024].

Shaahy, S. (nd) Overland Guide to Nepal. [Online] Available from: <https://www.richardgregory.org.uk/history/last-whole-earth-guide-1971.jpg&gt; [Accessed 17 April 2024].

‘Swagman overland bus, Kabul, 1970’ (1970) Swagman overland bus, Kabul, 1970. [Online Image]. Available from: <https://www.messynessychic.com/2014/03/11/road-trip-to-afghanistan-snapshots-from-the-lost-hippie-trail/&gt; [Accessed 12 April 2024].

Rory Macclean (c1967) ‘The Pudding Shop’. [Online Image]. Available from:< https://rorymaclean.com/hippie-trail/relive-the-journey/&gt; [Accessed 17 April 2024].

Tomory, D. (ed) (1996) A Season in Heaven: True Tales from the Road to Kathmandu.

Travellers (nd) Five travellers on the Hippie Trail. [Online Image] Available from: <https://openskiesmagazine.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-hippie-trail/&gt; [Accessed 15 April 2024].

Map of The Hippie Trail (nd) Map of the Hippie Trail, 1957-1978. [Online Image] Available from: <https://1960sdaysofrage.wordpress.com/2018/09/07/hippie-trail/&gt; [Accessed 14 April 2024].

Walderhaug, A (nd). ‘Travelling the Hippier Trail’. [online] Available from: <https://www.walderhaug.org/travelogues/the-hippie-trail-ii&gt; [Accessed 12 April 2024].

Secondary Sources:

Butterfield, M. (2020) ‘Full of Eastern Promise Part 1: Afghans, Kaftans and the Hippie Trail’. C20 Vintage Fashion. [Online] Available from: <https://www.c20vintagefashion.co.uk/post/full-of-eastern-promise-part-1-afghans-kaftans-and-the-hippie-trail&gt; [Accessed 15 April 2024].

CNN (2022) The road trip that inspired the Lonely Planet guidebooks. [Online Video]. Available from: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnS6HuGi6VQ&t=54s&gt; [Accessed 12 April 2024].

Gemie, S. (2018) ‘The hippie trail and the question of nostalgia’. OUP blog. [Online] Available from: <https://blog.oup.com/2018/01/hippie-trail-question-nostalgia/&gt; [Accessed:  13 April 2024]

Gemie, S. & Ireland, B. (2017) The Hippie Trail: A History. Manchester University Press: Manchester.

Hampton, M.P. & Hamzah, A. (2016) ‘Change, Choice, and Commercialization: Backpacker Routes in Southeast Asia. Growth and Change, 47 94) December, pp. 556-571.

Ireland, B. (2021) ‘The hippie trail: a pan-Asian journey through history’.  History Extra [Online] Available from: <https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/what-is-hippy-trail-asia/&gt;

MacCannel, D. (1999) The Tourist. A New Theory of the Leisure Class. University of California Press, Ltd: London.

Sobocinska, A. (2014) ‘Following the “Hippie Sahibs”: Colonial Cultures of travel and the Hippie Trail’. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 15 (2) Summer. [Online] Available from: <https://muse-jhu-edu.leedsbeckett.idm.oclc.org/article/549514&gt; [Accessed 12 April 2024].

‘Stylistic Origin of Kashmiri Artistic Traditions’ (nd) UNESCO. [Online] Available from: <https://en.unesco.org/silkroad/content/cultural-selection-stylistic-origins-kashmiri-artistic-traditions&gt; [Accessed 15 April 2024].

‘The rise and fall of the Hippie Trail’ (nd.) Open Skies Magazine. [Online] Available from: <https://openskiesmagazine.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-hippie-trail/&gt; [Accessed 15 April 2024].

‘The TB sufferer was a dropout, a wanderer in endless search of the healthy place. TB became a new reason for exile, for a life that was mainly travelling’.

(Sontag, 1978, p. 9)

Romantic descriptions of phthisis, or poet-killing disease, are imbued with a quasi-religious fervour and a frantic desire to sentimentalise what contemporaries now think of as a wholly unappealing disease. Victorian literature characterised the tubercular as a solitary sufferer, consumed with passion and feverishly scrambling to extend a fleeting existence. With this sentiment, the high altitude sanatoria was the most romantic place of respite. From the mid-nineteenth century, invalids flocked to the Alpine mountains to improve their physical and spiritual well-being in the radiant, crisp climate (Frank, 2012, p. 196).  

‘Being a mountaineer came to be seen as an important qualification for undertaking the poetic role’ (Bainbridge, 2020, p. 162).

Airs, Waters and Places

‘Whoever wishes to investigate medicine properly, should proceed thus… [consider] the winds’.

(Hippocrates, 1881, p. 1)

Before exploring how popular depictions of sickness and space impacted health tourism, it must be noted that a Hippocratic view of illness was commonplace (Bryder, 1996, p. 454). Even after Robert Koch discovered the Tuberculosis (TB) causing germ Mycobacterium tuberculosis in 1882, TB treatment remained grounded in miasma theory (Sakula, 1983, p. 128). 

It was thought that TB could be cured by clean air, nutritious food and a strong spirit. German physician Dr von Jaruntowsky (1877, p. 16) recommended that invalids lay in the open air and participate in ‘methodical hill-climbing’. In the preface to the English edition of the book, Jaruntowsky urges Britons ‘to deal with Consumption as a curable disease’ (Jaruntowsky, 1877, p. 3). This idea that all diseases were curable reinforced the air of mystery surrounding TB, as it eluded medical understanding and was, therefore, stylishly misunderstood.

Despite the practical application of climatological theory in TB healthcare, much of the appeal of altitude therapy came from the fusion of imaginative geography with the tubercular’s string of romantic literary depictions. When an 1881 medical textbook states ‘depressing emotions’ as a cause of TB, it seems inevitable that a pallid romantic should choose to spend their time in a picturesque Alpine resort (Dubos, 1952, p. 69). According to Susan Barton, the sanatoria’s popularity ‘emerged from a blending of the philosophies of romanticism and alternative medicine, later backed up by scientific investigation’ (Barton, 2008, p. 6). This is evident in much of the literature on mountaineering and consumption, which share overlapping themes of mystery, beauty, passion and spirituality.

Sontag (1978, p. 5) recognised that, unlike previous epidemic diseases such as the bubonic plague, which had tended to afflict entire communities, TB ‘was understood as a disease that isolates’ an individual. For example, sanatoria, which were clinics specifically designed for patients suffering from TB, functioned both as a hospital and a place of relaxation removed from the general population.

The Magic Mountain

As explored by Marjorie Hope Nicholson (1959) in her seminal work Mountain Gloom, Mountain Glory, the literary portrayal of the Alps evolved from a place of danger to a place of bliss throughout the eighteenth century. Propagated by improvements in transportation and commerce, the Alpine mountains became commercial hubs of health and spirituality (Frank, 2012, p. 197). English mountaineer Clinton Dent described the range as ‘a curious fascination for the solitary man’, providing him with the distance to meditate on his life (Dent, 1885, pp. 2-3). In Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, the main character undergoes a spiritual transformation after the mountain air allows him to meditate on the true meaning of his existence (Mann, 1924). 

Similarly, when Scottish poet Robert Louis Stevenson began his impassioned pilgrimage before he was consumed by illness, he demanded to be buried on Mount Vaea, with the following poem as his epitaph:

‘Under the wide and starry sky,

Dig the grave and let me lie’. 

All Consuming Phthisis

Known for prematurely killing poets, such as Anton Chekov, Franz Kafka and John Keats, to name a few, consumption was romanticised, gaining the similarly mysterious and attractive allure as the Alps. Death by consumption was beautiful, a burst of spiritual passion after months of wasting. Romantic poet Lord Byron recognised the disease’s charm, declaring: ‘I should like, I think, to die of consumption’ (Byron, n.d, cited in Clarke, 2019).

To die at the hands of the mountain was similarly appealing, as Clinton Dent was one of many mountaineers to write about the ‘impulse almost controllable to throw [himself] down’ the mountain after reaching the top (Dent, 1885, p. 216). These fantasies stem from the need to apply metaphoric thinking to the fearful concepts of death and danger, imbuing sickness and peril with romantic sentiment.

Mountaineering was seen as a rite of passage for the Romantic poet. In 1807, Lord Byron wrote that ‘the benefit of such pure air, or so elevated a residence, as might enable me to enter the lists with genuine bards’ (Byron, 1807). Here, he refers to the romantic bard, the wandering storyteller, who is spiritually impassioned to produce gifted poetry (Cusack and Norman, 2012, p. 404). 

Artist John Ruskin, famously infatuated with the Alps, noted that the mountains had made him ‘weaker, more lifeless, more effeminate, more liable to passion’ (Ruskin, 1863). Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley depicted a similar portrayal of beautiful suffering in his poem Queen Mab, written whilst suffering from consumption (Shelley, 1813). 

‘Yes! She will wake again, 
Although her glowing limbs are motionless, 
And silent those sweet lips, 
Once breathing eloquence, 
That might have soothed a tiger’s rage’.

The typical image of the consumptive was someone tragically young and strikingly beautiful. They were connected with ideas of passion and sexuality, noted by Sontag (1978, p. 2) as having a ‘liveliness that comes from enervation’ in the last stages of life. In her study of tuberculosis in Victorian literary imagery, Katherine Byrne (2011, p. 93) describes the consumptive as ‘dramatically pale and ethereally thin with the red cheeks and bright eyes of fever’. This was echoed by John Keats in 1819, who described death by consumption as ‘where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies’ (Keats, 1819). TB was a metamorphosis, where the childlike innocence disintegrates, leaving behind a sensual febrility.

Victorian literature not only linked consumption to images of eroticism and beauty but also depicted it as an aphrodisiac. This passion was prevalent at the high-altitude sanatoria, as in 1862 Conrad-Ahrens noted Davos’ ‘increase in the luxury of the female sex’ (Frank, 2012, p. 193). The very nature of consumption made the invalid aware of their desires.

The Great White Plague

Tuberculosis was a disease that ‘consumed’ its victims, associated with severe weight loss and malnutrition. Depictions of the consumptive’s youth and beauty were often coupled with depictions of their hunger and desire (Jones, 2016, p. 17). English writer and politician Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote fondly of his experiences eating and drinking whilst undergoing solitary water treatment for his succession of feverish illnesses (Bulwer-Lytton, 1851, p. 16). Understandably, one of the earliest mountain sanatoriums in Silesia, established in 1859, contained two extravagant dining halls (Bryder, 1996, p. 454). This was favourable for those who could afford it, as noted in 1907 by author Joseph Conrad, who described the Davos-Platz resort as ‘where the modern dance of death goes on in expensive hotels’ (Conrad, 1988, p. 420).

As Romantics criticised urban cities as being blighted and deprived, it seemed natural to flee to a more comfortable landscape. Consumptives needn’t be confined to small, hot rooms, too sick to eat, languidly spreading the disease to their loved ones (Frank, 2012, p. 189).

Although many Victorian tourists travelled for health rather than pleasure, caring for the mind was often as important as caring for the body. Furthermore, as Romantics wrote fondly of the countryside and the spiritual benefits of stepping away from the growing urban industry, mental and physical health connections grew stronger (Frank, 2012, p. 197). This was noted in William Coxe’s 1801 travel writings, which explored mountaineering as a sublimation of spiritual transcendence:

‘Lifted up above the dwellings of man, we discard all grovelling and earthly passions… and as the body approaches nearer to the ethereal regions, the soul imbues a portion of their unalterable purity’ (Coxe, 1801, p. 196).

This sort of psychic crusade is indicative of the romantic ideas around travel.

When considering the painful reality of TB, it is understandable why one may wish to distort it, to see beauty in the suffering and provide death with meaning. It explains why the sufferer may be drawn towards the cool mountain summit, depicted as a place of reckless extremes where the mind and body can be fused.

Bibliography

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Conrad, J. and Karl, F, R. and Davies, L. eds. (1988) The Letters of Joseph Conrad: Volume 3, 1903-1907. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Cooper, R, T. (1912) A sickly young woman sits covered up on a balcony; death (a ghostly skeleton clutching a scythe and an hourglass) is standing next to her; representing tuberculosis. [Watercolour] Held at Wellcome Trust.

Coxe, W. (1801) A Historical Tour in Monmouthshire. London: T. Cadell and W. Davies. 

Dent, C, T. (1885) Above the Snow Line: Mountaineering Sketches Between 1870 and 1880. London: Longmans Green and Co. 

Giles, R, H. (1820) A girl reads to a convalescent while a nurse brings in the patient’s medicine. [Watercolour]. Available from: Wellcome Collection. 

Keats, J. (1819) Ode to a Nightingale. [Online]. Available from: <https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44479/ode-to-a-nightingale> [Accessed 8 March 2024]

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Munch, E. (1907) The Sick Child. [Oil Painting]. Held at The Tate.  

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Wellcome Collection (1831) A young woman of Vienna who died of cholera, depicted when healthy and four hours before death. Coloured stipple engraving. Available from: <https://wellcomecollection.org/works/vt5g3jxf> 

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Bainbridge, S. (2020) Mountaineering and British Romanticism: the literary cultures of climbing, 1770-1836. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Barton, S. (2008) Healthy living in the Alps: The origins of winter tourism in Switzerland, 1860-1914. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Bryder, L. (1996) “A Health Resort for Consumptives”: Tuberculosis and Immigration to New Zealand, 1880-1914. Medical History, 40 (4) October, pp. 453-471.

Byrne, K. (2011) Tuberculosis and the Victorian Literary Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Clarke, I. (2019) Tuberculosis: A Fashionable Disease? [Online]. London: Science Museum. Available from: <https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/tuberculosis-a-fashionable-disease/#:~:text=Romantic poet Lord Byron wished,’”> [Accessed 24 February]

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The First World War brought with destruction and carnage, but this conflict is the one that was to turn killing machines into ones of pleasure. The Golden Age of Aviation (Pattillo, 1998, p. 11) was a period of progressive change between World War One and World War Two in which aircraft which were once dual winged wooden and slow biplanes which during the 1920s to 1030s were developed (Norton, 1921, p.3), to metal, fixed wing monoplanes, which were much faster than their predecessors. This advancement changed the direction of both military and commercial aviation. 

It was during this period that Civil air travel boomed, many aircraft were developed to fly for much longer stints and to perform agile manoeuvres such as barnstorming displays. This was a result of the now useless aircraft and aviators that now had nothing to pursue due to the end of the war, the abundancy of such recourses led to aviators pushing boundaries, stunt planes became popular in the 1920s and the emergency of the transatlantic challenge seemed to captivate aviators. In this post we will discuss the ways in which aviation changed and developed in light of the First World War. 

The World areas covered by Commercial Air Routes 1925

From embryonic beginnings, crude and unadvanced planes designed by the likes of Romanian engineer Traian Vuia and Brazilian aeronaut Santos-Dumont, were shunned by the huge technological and engineering advances World War One brought about. Leading to planes much more adaptable to passenger transportation. 

British Transatlantic Flights

In 1919 British Aviators, John Alcock and Arthur Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight in a modified First World War aircraft, the Vickers Vimy. This flight took place from Newfoundland, in eastern North America, to County Galway in Ireland. To further add to the list of new achievements, mail was also carried on this flight which also made it the first transatlantic mail flight, although it was only a small amount of mail. Winston Churchill, the then Secretary of state for Air awarded the two men with the Daily Mail Prize for the first transatlantic crossing by Air in “less than 72 consecutive hours” (The New Daily Mail Prize).

Alcock and Brown taking on mail 

Civil Aviation in Britain 

1919 saw the birth of civil aviation, the first international passenger plane in Britain took off on 25 August 1919 by company Aircraft Transport & travel, the route being between London and Paris (Lyth, 2000, p.866). This flight was followed by the Handley Page Transport Ltd, founded in 1919 by Frederick Handley Page, known to be a pioneer of the aviation industry (The New York Times). 

Aircraft Transport & Travels (A&T) London to Paris flights cost only £15 (today) for a fare, although the priority for goods transportation at this time was not on the passengers, George Holt Thomas, the company’s founder is quoted saying; “it is our intention in the enterprise I control to concentrate almost entirely upon the carrying of mails rather than passengers” (Thomas, 1919, p. 187). During this first year, there were many new airlines established, this was made easy with the surplus of aircraft, pilots, and engineers due to the end of the war. It wasn’t until 1920 that demand, and business seemed to boom, but a trend, that is still seen today, rooted itself in the Civil Aviation industry. Many travellers sought destinations in the summer to escape Britain. In 1920, 3,000 passengers were carried to Europe from Briton between just July and September, but the entire year only saw the travel of around 6,700 passengers total, businesses suffered during the winter months the most (Civil Aviation Department). There was not enough demand and passengers to keep businesses alive, and slowly each one began to close down. Up until this point, civil aviation had had very little government backing, with Winston Churchill quoted saying “if commercial air transport was to fly, it must fly by itself”. But with the looming idea that if all Britain’s commercial air fleet was grounded, British travellers would have to rely on foreign airline operators for transport, as well as this Britain was the largest air power militarily wise and to have no air connections in the civil aviation sphere would be embarrassing. A grant was created by the Cross-Channel Subsidies Committee to grant Hanley and Instone a subsidy that. Today would be worth around £120,000, which would later be extended to a further company. But this subsidy only covered the London-Paris link, which was recognised as a mistake later. The grant was revised to cover multiple European link routes (Higham, 1959, p. 3). Over the next decade the civil aviation industry grew but was still rocky. Facing competition from the recovering railway and suffering from losses due to the unreliable and inefficient aircraft they were using, many companies struggled to even make a profit (Birkhead, 1960, p. 133). With no vision of the British air industry becoming unsubsidized, Sir Herbert Hambling was appointed to investigate British civil Aviation by the government. The committee recommended the merging of the four British Airlines. As a result of this committee report, competition was ended, and monopoly was brought into the industry and the companies merged into ‘Imperial Airways’ in 1924.

Glamour in Civil Aviation

RAF Hendon Airport, London, 1937. Royalty arrives: King George VI, centre, and Queen Elizabeth on aircraft’s steps. 

The glamour of air travel was heightened during the 1930s, the period was marked by class and prestige. The glamour of air travel was cemented during this time period with the event of King George V flying with the British airline, Imperial Airways. As discussed previously, Imperial Airways was the dominant airline at the time, it ran both passenger and mail carrying routes throughout the empire, these routes were established in the mid 1930s outlined in a speech given by Sir Eric Geddes at the annual meeting of Imperial Airways. (see below). 

In 1936, King George V, along with the Queen Consort flew from London to Scotland aboard an Imperial Airways aircraft, marking a significant change from the usual Rail transportation favoured by the prestige, including the Royal family, for long distance travel. King George V’s choice to fly with Imperial Airways added elegance and glamour to the reputation of aviation. As well as this, the Kings choice of air travel also highlighted the “safety” of the form of transportation, which in turn increased its reputation to the public. Furthermore, given the large price tag attached to air travel at this time, it war primarily associated with officials, business individuals, the upper class and notably, Royalty (Giant British Airliner). 

Although the glamour of aviation was not without its risks. Accidents occurred within the industry such as an accident in which two members of crew lost their lives in Mozambique Harbour 1939 (British Official Accident Report). Or the Cavalier accident of 22 January 1939 in which a storm resulted in the failure of the four engines of the Cavalier as a heavy storm iced over the carburettors. At 1:12PM Captain Alderson was forced to bring the plane crashing down into the Atlantic, the impact caused the joints of the plane to crack and it began sinking, with not a single life raft aboard, three cabin crew had life jackets and the plane was not fitted out with enough life belts for all of the passengers, it was a catastrophe that caused the loss of three lives (The Bermudian).

Cabin Glamour 

Cabins upon the Imperial Airways airliners, HP. 42, were designed with elegance to mirror that of the luxurious designs of Pullman train carriages (Jackson, 1973, p. 238). 

There were also two passenger cabins, with a capacity for six in the forward cabin and twelve in the rear cabin. The aircraft offered ample luggage storage as well as large windows for viewing, after all, many saw the journey itself as a tourist pleasure, they further offered spaciousness and attentive cabin staff (Marsh, 2014).

Cabin of a Handley Page HP-42 1931. British Imperial Airways

This luxury is in drast comparison to what we see today, with the introduction of budget airlines in the late 1960s to 1970s. It was a low cost “no frills” which sacrificed traditional airline luxuries for low-cost fares. It operated a low-cost route between Gatwick Airport and New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport (The History Press). 

Laker Airways, 1966-1982

We can see the stark difference in spaciousness and luxury between the original Imperial Airways cabin and the low-cost no-frills cabin of Laker Airways. 

Take a look at the video below to see how this compares to the low budget airlines of today: 

Conclude

It is clear to see that the First World War, in combination with Britain’s imperial endeavours and need for attempted air domination fuelled the development of Civil Aviation. Had it not been for the surplus aircraft and trained pilots left in limbo after the First World War, it is unlikely we would have seen developments at the fast speed they happened. Although the industry was hit with its financial and safety drawbacks, it has developed in to a profitable, popular and advanced mode of transport in the modern day, making itself available to not only those who are wealthy, but to the average citizen too. 

Bibliography

Birkhead, E. (1960). The financial failure of British air transport companies 1919-1924. Journal of Transport History.

Higham, R. (1959). Britain’s Overseas Airlines, 1918-1939. Shell Aviation News. 

Lyth, P. (2000). The Empire’s Airway: British Civil Aviation from 1919 to 1939. London School of Economics. 

Pattillo, D. (1998). A History in the Making: 80 Turbulent Years in the American General Aviation History. McGraw-Hill

Jackson, A. (1973). British Civil Aircraft, 1919-1972, Volume 2. London Putnam.

Thomas, G. (1919). The Aeroplane in Industrial Development, a lecture to the Industrial Council, London. 

Woodley, C. (2014). Gatwick Airport: The first 50 Years. The History Press. 

Air Ministry, Civil Aviation Department. (1920-21). Civil Aviation Statistics, 1919. Annual Report of the Progress of Civil Aviation.

F. H. Norton. (1921). The Effect of Staggering a Biplane. National Advisory Committee For Aeronautics. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19930080864/downloads/19930080864.pdf

Radio transmitter, from Alcock and Brown’s Vimy biplane, 1919. https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8636641/radio-transmitter-from-alcock-and-browns-vickers-vimy-biplane-1919-radio-transmitter

Daily Mail Aviation Prizes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Mail_aviation_prizes

M. Santos Durmont Rounds Eiffel Tower. New York Times. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1901/10/20/106920457.pdf

Sir Frederick Handley Page, Aviation Pioneer, Is Dead at 76; Invented Slotted Wing in 1921 –Built 60,000 Halifax Bombers in World War II Developed Hastings-Hermes 2 Recent Additions https://www.nytimes.com/1962/04/22/archives/sir-frederick-handley-page-aviation-pioneer-is-dead-at-76-invented.html

House of Commons Debates, 5. Series, Vol.126, 11 March 1920.https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1920-03-11/debates/16ee5039-8636-44dc-9f47-2b5826f95645/CommonsChamber

The Bermudan. (2015). The Fateful Flight of The Cavalier. Retrieved 20 March 2024. https://www.thebermudian.com/heritage/heritage-heritage/the-fateful-flight-of-the-cavalier/

(1939), “British Official Accident — Report: Result of the Investigation into the Loss of the “Challenger” at Mozambique”, Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 11 No. 9, pp. 350-350. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb030541

Handley Page HP. 42. “Giant British Airliner”. Retrieved 20 March 2024. https://planehistoria.com/handley-page-hp-42-giant-british-airliner/

Marsh, A. Huge Biplane Airliner May Fly Again. Retrieved 20 March 2024. https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2014/october/31/huge-biplane-airliner-to-fly-again

Images

The World Areas Covered by Commercial Air Routes 1925. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_World_areas_covered_by_Commercial_Air_Routes.jpg

Cabin of a Handley Page HP-42 1931. British Imperial Airways. https://www.dalrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Imperial-Airways-circa-1931.pdf

Laker Airways Cabin. https://uk.style.yahoo.com/many-forgotten-airlines-remember-153500440.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAIGwgernQItP9sJxPpzke5UpeFgQhQBctTxoHWQh0bl2MjPwIVc1p1IEWrt-_QZA2wc5kdMRS9J-cn3hzsPUaCmJiFikdmZPnv2VVnqx-BFAToI3lgW0YXKb8xI2DrbEf0Y7RA7hV4zAEoSE-9t3r4cra0kCFZtTvpmEt8gQ77m7

Alcock and Brown taking on mail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_flight_of_Alcock_and_Brown#/media/File:Alcockandbrown_mail.jpg

Videos

British Movietone. (2016). The Cavalier Wrecked. Retrieved 20 March 2024.

FlyWithPetr. (2017). Ryanair Cabin. Sky Interior Walk. Retrieved 20 March 2024.