"But I don’t want to go among mad people."
Nov. 5th, 2016 05:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
steepholmThe Museum of the Mind in Fishponds, on the site of the old Glenside Lunatic Asylum, is only open on Wednesday and Saturday mornings. I've been meaning to go for a while, but today I finally got my act together.
It turns out to be quite a small affair, but packed with interesting objects, many of them modelled by mannequins that have themselves evidently sought asylum, perhaps from British Home Stores.
There's nothing quite as creepy as a mannequin that looks as if its mind is elsewhere...
(NB: One of these figures is not a mannequin.)
It was also possible to go into a padded cell (albeit open on one side), and to examine medical and mortuary instruments of yore. Some of the tableaux had an unsettling randomness. Why, for instance, would you put a boardroom table, phrenological head, video display about medical mattresses and a stuffed badger in such close proximity in your deconsecrated church?
Would the Science Museum in that there West Kensington ever dare assemble a collection of medical and anatomical knick-knacks in such pleasing disorder?
No chance of getting this enema syringe and nose and throat spray mixed up - no sirree...
But my favourite is perhaps this mortician's "coronet" - used, apparently, for getting the tops off skulls (you know how awkward they can be), much as you might the top off an egg ready for dipping your toast.
Altogether a fun museum - and well worth the free admission!
It turns out to be quite a small affair, but packed with interesting objects, many of them modelled by mannequins that have themselves evidently sought asylum, perhaps from British Home Stores.
There's nothing quite as creepy as a mannequin that looks as if its mind is elsewhere...
(NB: One of these figures is not a mannequin.)
It was also possible to go into a padded cell (albeit open on one side), and to examine medical and mortuary instruments of yore. Some of the tableaux had an unsettling randomness. Why, for instance, would you put a boardroom table, phrenological head, video display about medical mattresses and a stuffed badger in such close proximity in your deconsecrated church?
Would the Science Museum in that there West Kensington ever dare assemble a collection of medical and anatomical knick-knacks in such pleasing disorder?
No chance of getting this enema syringe and nose and throat spray mixed up - no sirree...
But my favourite is perhaps this mortician's "coronet" - used, apparently, for getting the tops off skulls (you know how awkward they can be), much as you might the top off an egg ready for dipping your toast.
Altogether a fun museum - and well worth the free admission!
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(no subject)
Date: 2016-11-05 05:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-11-07 07:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-11-06 10:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-11-07 07:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-11-06 10:21 am (UTC)Why, for instance, would you put a boardroom table, phrenological head, video display about medical mattresses and a stuffed badger in such close proximity in your deconsecrated church?
It sounds a little bit Tales of the Unexpected. Very Dahl.
But my favourite is perhaps this mortician's "coronet" - used, apparently, for getting the tops off skulls (you know how awkward they can be), much as you might the top off an egg ready for dipping your toast.
Micky Flanagan's got a whole routine about this... Minus the coronet.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-11-07 07:39 am (UTC)I'm intrigued...
(no subject)
Date: 2016-11-07 03:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-11-06 12:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-11-07 07:39 am (UTC)