Close-up portrait on printing plate of Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke, London, Ontario

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Item Type

Photographs

Description

A metal printing plate with the close-up portrait of Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke in iridescent violet and silver.

Notes

Richard Maurice Bucke was born in England in 1837 and came to Canada at the age of one with his parents and six other siblings to be raised on a 100 acre farm just three miles east of the village of London, Ontario. His early education was aided by his clergyman father's extensive library and would inspire a life-long dedication to literature. After leaving home at the age of sixteen, he spent some three years on an adventure that would take him south down the Mississippi River and then west by wagon train to the Sierra Nevadas where he prospected for gold. After a harrowing incident where he lost his one foot and part of the other due to frostbite, he returned east to continue his education and studied medicine at McGill University, graduating in 1862 as an M.D. Further studies followed in London, England and Paris, France. He began his medical practice in Sarnia, Ontario and later married Jessie Maria Gurd of Moore Township, Ontario in 1865. By 1876 he was the Medical Superintendent at the Asylum for the Insane at Hamilton, Ont. and in 1877 was transferred to the Insane Asylum in London, Ontario where he would spend the rest of his career. He was considered an authority in North America on mental diseases and was a co-founder and professor of psychiatry at the University of Western Ontario's Medical School. As a psychiatrist he advocated progressive methods of treating patients by removing restraints and incorporating physical outdoor work as part of treatment, as well as fostering entertainment events for their benefit put on by various amateur groups from the London community, such as the London Opera Company.
He wrote several books including: "Man's Moral Nature"; "Walt Whitman," a biography on the American poet who was his mentor and friend; and his most famous work: "Cosmic Consciousness: a Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind." This last work which he spent years in writing and published the year before his death, was inspired by an illuminating mystical experience which happened when he was thirty-five. He defined cosmic consciousness as "a higher form of consciousness than that possessed by the ordinary man" and he believed that the moral nature of man was evolving over time.
Dr. Bucke died on February 19, 1902 having returned with his wife from an evening out with friends. He collapsed on the verandah of his home on the Asylum grounds after stepping out into the cold air to admire the moon.
This portrait may have appeared in the London Free Press. This printing plate was part of a donation that was transferred to the London Public Library via Centennial Museum in 1971 and originally came from the Seaborn Estate. Dr. Edwin Seaborn (1872-1951) was a London, Ontario physician who married Dr. Bucke's daughter Ina and had a deep interest in local history.
The location on the accompanying map shows where the Medical Superintendent's house was located on the grounds of the London Insane Asylum.

Date of Original

ca. 1899 - 1902

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