Lambeth Asylum

The Lambeth Asylum was a hospital situated in the borough of Lambeth, London during the Victorian era.

History[edit | edit source]

Lambeth Asylum was designed by the architect Arthur Hayes, his first and only project, in 1850. Unlike other hospitals, the asylum was largely undocumented, with its records of treatment administered there vague. A year later, Arthur was murdered by his son, Arthur Hayes Jr., who believed his father to be the Antichrist. The son was then committed to the asylum for his crime.^[1]

By 1868, the Templars began to financially support the hospital. With the assistance of Charles Darwin, the Assassin Jacob Frye discovered that one of the institution's doctors, John Elliotson, was a Templar and was distributing the drug Starrick's Soothing Syrup to the asylum's patients. Jacob subsequently infiltrated the hospital to assassinate Elliotson and end the distribution of the syrup.^[2]

Not much later, Jacob's twin sister Evie Frye and their young accomplice Clara O'Dea visited the asylum to find a cure for Babylon Alley's children. Clara herself had contracted the disease and, with the assistance of Florence Nightingale, Evie managed to find the cure.^[3]

Following the assassination of Crawford Starrick, the institution's sole benefactor, the asylum closed its doors in January 1869.^[1] Jacob Frye recruited at least one of the asylum's inmates into the Assassin Brotherhood, a young boy named Jack,^[4] who had been committed there due to the trauma of witnessing his mother's murder.^[5]

A few years later, the asylum was reopened and partially rehabilitated to receive a growing number of violent criminals, most of whom were from the borough of Whitechapel.^[6]

In 1888, a now-adult Jack committed several gruesome murders in Whitechapel and became widely feared as "Jack the Ripper". When he found his Reign of Terror challenged by Evie Frye, who had recently returned from India, Jack traveled to the asylum to assassinate his former doctor Archer, Nurse Whitney, as well as Director Bradford, destroying all records of his existence.^[7]

He then freed the inmates of the G Wing, who were all notoriously violent criminals, as part of his plan to ambush Evie.^[7] Eventually, the two confronted each other in the asylum's basement, where Jack had previously locked up a kidnapped Jacob. Evie managed to defeat and kill Jack, then freed Jacob. With the help of Inspector Frederick Abberline, they ensured no one ever learned of what had transpired or knew Jack's true identity, a cover-up that persisted into the modern day.^[8]

Behind the scenes[edit | edit source]

Lambeth Asylum is a fictional asylum which appears in the 2015 video game Assassin's Creed: Syndicate. It seems to be an amalgamation of several real life institutions, as its location and the experimentation with patients appear to be based^[9] on the Bethlem Royal Hospital while the central tower is based on the tower of the real-life St. Pancras station, which ironically has its appearance fictionalized in-game.^[10] The two smaller towers are based on the Royal Albert Hospital.

In its original database entry, the asylum is noted to have been demolished in 1869. This fact is removed from its updated entry in Syndicate's downloadable expansion Jack the Ripper set in 1888, so as to not conflict with the location being reused. However, the original entry was not changed to reflect the retcon.

There are light bulbs inside the asylum, though this is anachronistic as electric light was first used in Holborn in 1883.^[11]