3-070-814 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Fancy Dress Ball at the Brookwood Surrey Lunatic Asylum, 1881. 'A pleasant feature of life at the Asylum...is the Fancy-Dress Ball which Dr. Brushfield and his assistants get up, as well as theatrical and musical entertainments, to afford the patients an evening of social pleasure...Dr. Brushfield himself appeared as Master Walter, in the play of "The Hunchback;" his assistants, Dr. Barton and Dr. Moody, figured respectively as the Duke of Marlborough and a Japanese warrior...Most of the persons, whose fancy dresses are shown, are patients of the Asylum...The reader will observe such amusing devices as "The Queen of Hearts," an old lady covered with playing-cards; and the two newsvenders, plastered with announcements of the topics of their "special editions;" while "Captain Cuff," in Hanoverian officer's costume of the last century, with exaggerated wristbands and ruffles, the Duke of York, Flora Macdonald, Queen Elizabeth, Mother Goose, an Indian Chief called "Fine Feathers," a Clown, a N*gger Minstrel, and a personification of the Temple Bar Griffin will at once be recognised. The Medical Superintendent, in his costume of "The Hunchback," is introduced at the bottom of the page, as "The Ruling Spirit" of this lively and diverting company'. From Illustrated London News", 1881.