Disability group recreates Victorian hospital images

Alice Scott featured in a modern photograph replicating an original of Rose Harris

A disability theatre group in Surrey is recreating portrait techniques used in medical casebooks in the 1800s.

Members of the Freewheelers group in Leatherhead were photographed using the Victorian tintype technique, which creates an image on glass or metal.

The same process was used in various mental health hospitals in the county, including at Manor Hospital where, in 1990, the Surrey History Centre found containers full of glass plate negatives of patients.

After a successful project in 2023, Freewheelers is now working with the history centre in Woking and King's College London to recreate 35 more images of the same kind.

Pete Messer recreating an image of Frederick Tarrant

Surrey was home to more mental hospitals than most other areas of England.

Alana Harris, a historian who teachers at King's College London, said: "A hundred years ago, these photographs were taken without consent, for purposes of classification and diagnosis and indeed, oftentimes, stigmatisation."

As part of the Us and Them project, Freewheelers member Alice Scott paired herself with Rose Harris, who was confined to Manor Hospital, in Epsom, in 1910 and was buried in a pauper burial plot in 1917.

Meanwhile, Pete Messer chose to recreate an image of workhouse survivor Frederick Tarrant, who spent 15 years in various asylums.

The modern photographs, which take eight seconds each to shoot, were taken by Emma Brown, who said: "The magic bit is where the excess silver clears off the plate, it still gets me excited after years of doing this process."

The new portraits are paired with the original Victorian photographs to provoke public conversations about discrimination and how disability is understood, especially through visual representations.

The creative sessions run during the first two weeks of December and link to a high-profile Christie's auction featuring similar historical images.