Charles Hood was born at Lambeth, the son of a doctor, and sent to school at Brighton. He was admitted to Trinity College, Dublin, at the age of seventeen, but acquired his professional training at Guy’s Hospital, qualifying in 1845 and taking the St. Andrews degree in the year following. He held an early appointment as resident physician to a private asylum, Fiddington House, Devizes, but was soon made the first medical superintendent of Colney Hatch. In 1852 he obtained the same post at the Bethlem Hospital, where for ten years he worked indefatigably for the improvement of the patients’ conditions, and particularly for the segregation of the criminal insane. He resigned on appointment as a Lord Chancellor’s visitor in lunacy. He was elected treasurer of Bridewell and Bethlem Hospitals in 1868, the year of his knighthood. He died in the treasurer’s house at Bridewell.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1870; B.M.J., 1870; Al.Dubl., 409; E. G. O’Donoghue, The Story of Bethlehem Hospital, 1914, 416]