All the way from UCL's Special Galton Collection come...
Lantern slides of Photographs of Bethlem Inmates
How did it get here?
We aren't quite sure whether UCL received the lantern slides from Galton himself in his will, or if they were donated by his nephew Karl Pearson - such ambiguity!
Do you think it's right for someone to donate items that weren't originally theirs? Would you be happy if one day, your children gave away objects you had worked hard on? Click on the ETHICS tab to learn more about museum opinions on this subject.
How do you use it?
Lantern slides were used with a 17th century projector called a Magic Lantern (see video. The magic lantern is essentially the ancestor of today’s moving image projector. If you want to look at the slides without using a magic lantern, you can put them on a light box. The light box will help you see the negatives in more detail but if you try and take a picture, the light gets distorted and all these strange lines show up! Ask your physics teacher about why this happens if you want to learn more.
Did you know...
Francis Galton wrote more than 340 papers and books...and he even invented the weather map!
What's the story?
Francis Galton was a Victorian mathematician, psychologist and explorer. He was very interested in finding patterns in 'types' of people.
Galton experimented with combining lots of people's faces into one picture known as a 'composite image'. These lantern slides show photographs of mentally ill patients at Bethlem Asylum. Galton used the slides to try and find a mentally ill 'type'. He was wrong - it was not possible because anyone can suffer from a mental illness.
Courtesy of UCL Library Services, Special Collections
Technical limitations mean we were not able to digitise the slide images. Unfortunately it was not possible to photograph these slides in the way they would have been used in Galton's time either, because we did not have access to a magic lantern. We hope to update this image gallery with projections of the slides as soon as possible.
Collection: Special Collections - Galton Collection, not currently on display.
Full name: Lantern slides of photographs of inmates of the Bethlem asylum, used by Galton in his experiments with composite photographs
Abbreviation: Galton's slides
Code: GALT387
Date: 19th century
A photograph of some of the slides on a light box. [Photo credit: Ola Forman]
More Galton info from UCL
UCL has lots more information on Galton and his archive - CLICK HERE if you wanna know more!
[Photo credit: Museum Victoria]
Do you think it's right?
Bethlem is Europe's first hospital to specialise in mental illness. Due to the medical condition of the patients, it is unlikely that they agreed to have their photos taken, which says a lot about how unethical the treatment of mentally ill patients was in Victorian times.
Do you think it is ethical for Galton to have gone ahead with it? Do you think he would be allowed to today? Perhaps it is not even ethical for you to be looking at them right now?