![]() ![]() Elizabeth was plagued by dementia and perpetually bedridden at some point Amadeus told others that Elizabeth had slashed her own throat, but in reality he'd done so when she became too much for him to handle on his own, then repressed memories of the murder. The House of Madness and Ill Humors was closed down, and the land itself sold to the Arkhams.Īfter the death of Elizabeth Arkham's unnamed husband, she was cared for by their son, Amadeus. Blood later sealed up the basement to keep the spirits imprisoned. Blood kept his charges starved and confined to suspended cages, even murdering some in an attempt to obliterate their evil spirits. His patients hailed predominantly from Gotham's poor and superstitious townships, where psychiatric disorders were regarded as synonymous with demonic possession. The grounds were owned by an occult expert named Jason Blood, who carried out exorcisms on the mentally ill. Arkham Asylum: Living Hell elaborates on this information, disclosing that the actual structure was built long before the early 1900s as the "Gotham House of Madness and Ill Humors". The first Arkham Asylum, built into the ancestral home of Amadeus Arkham.Īccording to Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, the crumbling Victorian mansion at the heart of the original Arkham Asylum was a single-family home, occupied at the beginning of the twentieth century by the Arkham family. ![]() Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth has since been followed by a number of similar storylines which focused exclusively on the facility and its fictional dynamics, including Arkham Asylum: Living Hell and Arkham Asylum: Madness. Īrkham's rather simplistic portrayal was first challenged by Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, in which Grant Morrison introduced the concept of using the Arkham setting to explore the psychology behind Batman and members of the Rogues Gallery. ![]() Occasional breakouts from Arkham were often referenced by supporting characters such as James Gordon, whose exasperation at the asylum's obvious security maw finally led him to criticize it as a "revolving door" for its denizens. For several years thereafter it existed as little more than a storytelling device used by writers as a temporary confinement for Batman's deranged Rogues Gallery, making only brief cameo appearances when supervillains were incarcerated or re-incarcerated there. Arkham's fictional history was not established until 1985, during an issue of "Who's Who in the DC Universe", also penned by Wein. Nevertheless, in Batman #326 writer Len Wein described the asylum as being "deep in the suburbs of Gotham City". At this point it was simply described as "Arkham Hospital" and implied to be somewhere upstate, in a rural setting. Īrkham Asylum first appeared in October 1974 in Batman #258, written by Dennis O'Neil and pencilled by Irv Novick. As a result, DC's Arkham was supposed to mirror Lovecraft's dark and brooding literary characteristics while providing an essential intertextual supplement to the background atmosphere of equally dismal Gotham City. According to Batman Unauthorized: Vigilantes, Jokers, and Heroes in Gotham City, a compilation of contemporary analyses edited by Dennis O'Neil, the asylum was named for a somewhat similar facility known as "Arkham Sanitarium" mentioned in the horror fiction of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Within the Batman mythos, Arkham Asylum was named for the mother of Amadeus Arkham, a Gotham psychiatrist who founded the institution after his mother's mental illness led to her untimely death in reality, Amadeus had euthanized her, although he repressed that memory.
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