A cabinet of curiosities

By Dr Claire Hilton, Honorary Archivist at the RCPsych.

The idea of a “cabinet of curiosities” may conjure up images of thrillers and horror films, or of old-fashioned museums lined with every imaginable form of (wo)man-made and natural objects, tending towards the rare and esoteric. Such collections became popular during the Renaissance. They were also known as wunderkammer, cabinets of wonder, or wonder-rooms.

The RCPsych now has its own, miniature, cabinet of curiosities. We are not looking to display the more traditional items as in past centuries, but instead, objects associated with psychiatry, and mental healthcare more broadly, from years gone by. It will also be unlike the spectacle of past collections in that it will be just a single item on display for about a month, on a shelf in the cabinet in the foyer of the RCPsych in Prescot Street (currently located to the left of the door as you enter the building).

The College's Librarian and and Chief Executive with the College's Cabinet of Curiosity. Photograph courtesy of Claire Hilton.

The cabinets of the past stimulated people’s curiosity and wonder and told stories about the world. The objects we will display will do likewise, but specifically about the history of psychiatry and mental healthcare. They also aim to stimulate thought about the present and future.

Richard Greene's Museum at Lichfield, the "Lichfield clock" standing among cabinets of curiosities. Engraving by Cook. Source: Wellcome Collection. Licence: Public Domain

The RCPsych cabinet of curiosities: our first exhibit

Our first exhibit, on display January to February 2025, is a door plate once belonging to psychiatrist Edwin Howard Kitching (1911-68), hand painted in oil paint on plastic.

Photograph courtesy of Claire Hilton.

In 1939, Dr Kitching was the first psychiatrist appointed at Manchester Royal Infirmary (MRI). He was responsible for all psychiatric clinical services and teaching. At the time, psychiatric out-patient clinics were increasingly common in general and teaching hospitals, but those institutions frequently lacked accompanying psychiatric in-patient beds. Instead, if needed, a patient would be admitted to one of the large mental hospitals.

Dr Kitching had no psychiatric beds at MRI, but after World War Two, he was granted a few in a general ward at Withington Hospital, formerly the Chorlton Union Workhouse, in South Manchester. Dr Kitching went on to influence the design of the pioneering psychiatric unit at Withington, comprising in-patient, day-patient, out-patient and teaching facilities. Sadly, he died in 1968, shortly before the unit opened. His name plate, however, somehow found its way into the new unit, and was salvaged from an office waste-paper bin by a trainee psychiatrist at Withington Hospital, around 1990. It was donated to the RCPsych in 2024.

There are no screw holes on this name plate, which raises questions about how and where it may have been used. It may have been permanently fixed on his office door, held in place by a frame, or perhaps he took it with him to the out-patient department and slotted it into a name plate holder on the door. It was clearly created by hand rather than mass produced. I wonder if a patient made it for him during occupational therapy sessions, and perhaps it was never used. Like much in history, we can ask many questions, but we should be wary of drawing definite conclusions if we have insufficient evidence. Asking questions though, about the past, may also prompt us to reflect on related issues in the present.

If you want to know more about Dr Kitching, you can find him on the Royal College of Physicians’ 'Inspiring Physicians' page. If you have additional information (or corrections!) relating to the exhibit then please email Claire Hilton, RCPsych honorary archivist, claire.hilton6@gmail.com.

We are inviting you to participate

Some items in our cabinet of curiosities will be from the RCPsych archives and library, but we would also like you to help us. You may have an item from your own career, or from a friend or relative, perhaps from the more distant past. It may be something given to you or you may have purchased it, or perhaps you found it, or it was being thrown out and you “rescued” it. There may be an object in your filing cabinet or loft, which surprised, intrigued or inspired you, or which you never felt comfortable to throw away, even though other people may have considered it as junk. For our cabinet, it should be something “vintage” or “retro”, in the sense of no longer being found in mental healthcare practice. If the item is so obscure that you do not know what it is, that is also fine (we have some mystery objects in the archives too). Perhaps putting it on display may be a way of finding out about it.

We do not want objects which have monetary value, and we are only asking to have them on loan for a month. We would like to photograph each object so that we have a digital record, rather than keeping it (unless, of course, you want to donate it to the College). We will label each item based on the information you provide, including: what it is; its date and place of origin; its significance; and its provenance, meaning its record of ownership as far as can be ascertained, used as a guide to authenticity.

Please contact Claire Hilton claire.hilton6@gmail.com or Fiona Watson, RCPsych librarian, infoservices@rcpsych.ac.uk if you can support this project. Do give us feedback too, whether on the objects, or what was good, or what we might do better.