On Thomas and his Bethlem experiences

shirogiku:

I don’t know what it is about Thomas that makes me go aww, I wish you were my OC, bb, so nb else would hurt you!!! lmao, I’m not usually like this, but anyway, I keep seeing that the prevalent opinion of his Bedlam experiences is that he was flogged bc flogging is the ultimate awful 18th century shit or smth. A book on 18th century pornography says that yes, the 18th century English were even more obsessed with flogging than an average fandom person (it was supposd to LOL cure impotency, among other things!), but:

and

The Physician in his exact time was a Dr. Tyson, but he is mentioned elsewhere also as not a famous flogger.

so while this (The History of Bedlam, Andrews) is just one source and I in no way have a time machine, I like to think that the place wasn’t Game of Thrones brutal, but realistically brutal:

and for me, realistic brutality is not that he was beaten or physically abused beyond the chains and the dark (YES OFC AWFUL AND HUMILIATING) – it was that he was finally treated as a literal madman, after decades of being too ahead of his time. It was more a mad wife in the attic situation than torture porn. Because the opposite, imho, feels like a disservice to his character. But I think the show did well not showing us anything after he is taken away.

Another argument against direct physical abuse is that his body doesn’t belong to him again – it belongs to his father. Alfred would’ve wanted him made obedient, but he wouldn’t have wanted his own flesh and blood abused by third parties. Flogging scars are like slave brands – and you bet Alfred didn’t actually want him marked up, bc why waste a heir before you try to “reform” him? also, servants would talk.

I’m absolutely not attacking anyone, I just felt the sudden and uncontrollable need to justify my own headcanons to myself 🙂

If we want to be historically accurate, there’s no need for flogging in order for Terrible Things to Happen ™.  Some of the favored “treatments” of the time included baths so cold the patient’s extremities would go numb, bleeding, purges of the intestinal tract, and physical isolation. Patients were definitely chained if and when they proved uncontrollable, and there was little in the way of sanitation (backed up sewers, flea-infested straw on the floors, lack of decent clothing/clean clothing). There was also a lack of decent food/enough food for those patients not being regularly supplied by family members/their local parish. Patients were, in fact, turned away if it was felt they couldn’t physically handle the treatment they would be undergoing and some did die of it, it was that severe. If you want historically accurate mistreatment, there’s plenty of material to be had without using flogging. Of course, even the source quoted above admits that what was recommended and what actually happened may have been two separate things, given the several times that staff were investigated for using excessive force and the couple of literary references we have that claim that beatings were in fact a thing, even if they were in no way condoned by the Governors or the head physician at the time. I also tend to side-eye the official court findings of the time, given the prevalent tendency (even today) to disregard the mentally ill when they tell someone they’re being abused.