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THE STORY OF 
 BETHLEHEM 
 HOSPITAL 
 
"'Why, not to put too fine a point upon it, this 
 is Bedlam, sir,' says Mr. Snagsby." 
 
 Charles Dickens, "Bleak House," ch. xlvii. 
 
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THE STORY OF 
 BETHLEHEM 
 HOSPITAL 
 
 FROM ITS FOUNDATION 
 
 IN 1247 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD GEOFFREY O'DONOGHUE 
 
 Chaplain to the Hospital 
 
 FORMERLY STAPELDON SCHOLAR OF 
 EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 WITH 140 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 681 FIFTH AVENUE 
 I915 
 
9Qi} 
 
 
 {All rights reserved) 
 
 BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 CHESTNUT HIIL MA 02167 
 
THIS BOOK 
 
 I DEDICATE TO THE SERVICE 
 
 OF 
 
 BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 / 
 
PREFACE 
 
 My preface shall serve not as an introduction to this book 
 but rather as a farewell to those friends who helped in 
 the making of it. Herbert Tingle, for example, read through 
 every chapter as it was written. To the touchstone of his 
 literary taste and judicial mind I submitted every line of 
 manuscript or proof In so far as I have succeeded in 
 making my narrative lucid or accurate, it is largely owing 
 to him and another collaborator, Aubrey Unthank. I must 
 also enter in my book of benefactors the names of Charles 
 Naish, Charge-Attendant A. J. Cantle, Miss F. Bartrum, 
 and James Arrow, who made drawings for my work or 
 hunted up references. The house of Cassell is responsible 
 for the making of most of my blocks, and I cannot pass out 
 of the straits of Belle Sauvage Yard without saying goodbye 
 to Mr. Martin of the "Pictorial Agency." Most of the 
 mediaeval documents were transcribed for me by Miss Martin, 
 Miss Salisbury, and the late Rev. G. L. Hennessy. My 
 old friend Hennessy was a scholar who gave more to the 
 Church of England in his edition of " Newcourt " than he 
 received from it. 
 
 The whole of the archives of the hospital from the reign 
 of Henry VHI to the year 1852 were placed at my disposal 
 by the treasurer on behalf of the governors. I was not 
 asked to write to order, and no conditions were imposed 
 on me. I am very grateful for such a mark of their con- 
 fidence, and I hope that my governors will consider what 
 I have written to be worthy of their kindness, and of some 
 value to the historic charity with which they are officially 
 associated. 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 For the last four years, less three months — from the 
 
 stocks to the launch — I have been building the good ship, 
 
 The Star of Bethlehem. They have been years of planning 
 
 and shaping, of hammering and riveting, week in and 
 
 week out. But I have not been without my holidays and 
 
 compensations. I found my recreation in the reading-room 
 
 of the British Museum, chasing some elusive reference 
 
 from covert to covert. And I had my festal days of oil 
 
 and wine among the muniments of Bridewell Hospital, 
 
 where I was always sure from my friend Mr. J. L. Worsfold 
 
 and his sympathetic staff of the warmest of fires and 
 
 welcomes. 
 
 GEOFFREY O'DONOGHUE. 
 
 July, 1914. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PREFACE . . . . 
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT . 
 LIST OF PLATES 
 
 CHRONOLOGY . . . . 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. THE BISHOP OF BETHLEHEM 
 
 II. THE BASILICA AND BROTHERS OF BETHLEHEM 
 
 III. THE FOUNDATION 
 
 IV. THE FOUNDER .... 
 
 V. A CENTURY OF SILENCE AND DISASTER 
 
 VI. THE CITIZENS . 
 
 VII. THE KING 
 
 VIII. "TRAFALGAR SQUARE" . 
 
 IX. PETER IN THE PILLORY 
 
 X. AN APPRECIATION OF PETER 
 
 XI. FOES AND FRIENDS 
 
 XII. THE CONFRATERNITY 
 
 XIII. RE-FOUNDED . . ■* 
 
 XIV. THE VINEYARD OF NABOTH AT CHARING CROSS 
 
 XV. OUR SISTER, BRIDEWELL 
 XVL " TOM O' BEDLAM " . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 vii 
 
 xi 
 
 xiv 
 
 xvii 
 
 I 
 
 6 
 
 i6 
 
 26 
 
 33 
 43 
 53 
 64 
 
 73 
 80 
 
 86 
 
 96 
 
 106 
 
 114 
 
 123 
 
 132 
 
X 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 XVII. CINDERELLA AND THE PRINCE 
 
 XVIII. VISITORS AND NEIGHBOURS . 
 
 XIX. DR. CROOKE . 
 
 XX. DR. CROOKE AND AFTER 
 
 XXI. THE LEAVEN OF PURITANISM 
 
 XXII. LAST YEARS IN THE OLD HOME 
 
 XXIII. THE PALACE BEAUTIFUL 
 
 XXIV. PRESIDENT, PEER, AND PATIENT 
 XXV. A DEVOTED PHYSICIAN 
 
 XXVI. VISITING DAYS 
 
 XXVII. HOGARTH ... 
 
 XXVIII. WHITEFIELD, WESLEY, AND AN EARTHQUAKE 
 
 XXIX. " THE BETSY PRIG SCHOOL OF NURSING " 
 
 XXX. WHEN GEORGE THE THIRD WAS KING 
 
 XXXI. ST. GEORGE'S FIELDS . 
 
 XXXII. THE PRESENT HOSPITAL 
 
 XXXIII. NIGHT 
 
 XXXIV. TOWARDS THE DAWN . 
 XXXV. THE CRIMINAL DEPARTMENT 
 
 XXXVI. TRANSFORMATION 
 
 XXXVII. CHAPEL AND CHAPLAIN 
 
 APPENDIXES . 
 NOTES 
 INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT 
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL . . . . 
 
 (Drawn by a •patient) 
 
 HENRY III CARRYING A PHIAL OF THE BLOOD OF CHRIST THROUGH 
 
 LONDON TEN DAYS BEFORE THE FOUNDATION 
 {After a inamiscript in C. C. C, Cambridge) 
 
 OFFERING UP A DEED OF FOUNDATION .... 
 
 THE FONT IN THE CHURCH OF THE NATIVITY, BETHLEHEM 
 
 {By -permission of the Byzantine Research Society) 
 
 A CONVEYANCE OF LAND IN SHOREDITCH TO THE FOUNDER 
 
 TALLY STICKS 
 
 BISHOPSGATE IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 
 {Drawn by a patient) 
 
 A CITY GATE . . . . . 
 
 {Block by Messrs. Cassell) 
 
 THE HABIT OF THE ORDER OF THE KNIGHTS OF THE STAR 
 
 SAMPLE PAGE FROM A BOOK OF BENEFACTORS . 
 
 THE CHOIR OF THE CHAPEL OF THE BISHOP OF BETHLEHEM, CLAMECY 
 FRANCE, NOW THE DINING-ROOM OF AN HOTEL 
 
 THE BUSINESS CARD OF THE HOTEL PROPRIETOR 
 
 A MESSENGER , . . . . 
 
 BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 A GAME OF CHESS ....... 
 
 {From " The Game and Play of the Chess," Wni. Caxton) 
 
 A MIRACLE PLAY . . . . 
 
 A PATIENT AT THE SHRINE OF ST. THOMAS AT CANTERBURY . 
 {"Insane he approaches the shrine: he retires in his right mind" 
 
 xi 
 
 PAGE 
 17 
 
 23 
 
 24 
 
 27 
 29 
 31 
 
 38 
 
 • 
 
 40 
 46 
 
 ' i 
 
 50 
 
 
 51 
 
 • 
 
 53 
 
 56, 
 
 57 
 
 • 
 
 59 
 
 . 
 
 62 
 
 70. 
 
 71 
 
xii ILL US TRA TIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 CHAPTER HOUSE, WESTMINSTER ABBEY . . . . -77 
 
 PETER, THE PORTER . . > . . , . -78 
 
 ST. GUTHLAC AS AN EXORCIST . . . , . .87 
 
 {Reproduced by Messrs. Cassell from Harley Roll Y, 6) 
 
 THE ATTACK ON BISHOP's GATE, I47O . . . . -93 
 
 THE COMMON SEAL OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL IN THE REIGN OF 
 
 HENRY VI, OR HENRY VII . . . . . -94 
 
 PHYSICIAN AND PUPIL ....... 98 
 
 ORDER OF ADMISSION INTO THE CONFRATERNITY OF ST. MARY OF 
 
 BETHLEHEM ........ lOO 
 
 {From a black-letter broadside in the British Museum) 
 
 THE PRE-REFORMATION ARMS OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL . . IO3 
 
 THE PRESENT ARMS OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL «... IO4 
 {Drawn by a patient) 
 
 JOHN SKELTON, THE POET ....... I08 
 
 {Reproduced by Messrs. Cassell from his " Garlande of Laurel," 1523) 
 
 A SURVEY OF THE CHARING CROSS ESTATE IN 1649 . . .1X6 
 
 {From a lease at Bridewell Hospital) 
 
 I 
 CHARING CROSS, I560 . . . . . . . I20 
 
 FROM A BRIEF ISSUED BY ELIZABETH ..... I24 
 
 {By permission of Messrs. A. & C. Black) 
 
 THE TITLE-PAGE TO THE FIRST EDITION (1549) OF THE BOOK OF 
 
 COMMON PRAYER ....... I27 
 
 A PAGE FROM THE MUNIMENT BOOK AT BRIDEWELL . . . I30 
 
 THE "COUNTERFEIT CRANKE " IN TWO CHARACTERS . . . I36 
 
 THE " COUNTERFEIT CRANKE " IN THE PILLORY . . . I38 
 
 {Both illustrations are reproduced from the original drawings) 
 
 *'THE KNAVE OF CLUBS' : A TITLE-PAGE 
 
 **THE BELMAN OF LONDON " : A TITLE-PAGE . ^ . 
 
 CARVINGS FROM A HOUSE IN BISHOPSGATE 
 
 BRIDEWELL HOSPITAL IN THE TUDOR AND STUART PERIODS 
 
 TITLE-PAGE OF "THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY" 
 
 TITLE-PAGE OF A PAMPHLET AGAINST FARNHAM 
 
 146 
 149 
 
 159 
 162 
 170 
 
 STRANGE AND WONDERFULL PROPHESIES BY THE LADY ELEANOR 
 
 AUDELEY " ....... 174, 175 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Xlll 
 
 A PLAN OF THE "GOAT TAVERN, CHARING CROSS 
 TAVERN TOKENS ..... 
 
 VIEW OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL IN 1667 . 
 
 PAGE 
 . 180 
 
 . 183 
 . 196' 
 
 PLAN SHOWING THE SITE OF THE FIRST HOSPITAL WITH ITS MODERN 
 
 SURROUNDINGS ....... I98 
 
 GROUND PLAN OF THE INSANE WARDS OF THE FIRST HOSPITAL 
 
 BETWEEN 1644 AND 1675 • • • • • 200, 20I 
 
 THE ARMS OF ENGLAND IN THE REIGN OF HENRY VIII . . ' . 207 
 
 "BETHLEHEM'S BEAUTY" ....... 2IO 
 
 {From a contemporary broadsheet) 
 
 FROM A PAGE OF SIR W. TURNER'S LEDGER .... 214 
 
 "an ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF SIR W. TURNER" . . . 215 
 
 A PAGE FROM A SATIRE ON THE DEATH OF THE SAME . . . 2l6 
 
 "bedlam broke loose": a TITLE-PAGE .... 2l8 
 
 " LUCIDA INTERVALLA": POEMS WRITTEN AT BETHLEM IN 1679 . 221 
 
 THE MONUMENT TO DR. TYSON . ..... 228 
 
 AN ENTRY IN THE STEWARD'S ACCOUNTS RELATING TO NATHANIEL LEE 23 1 
 " BETHLEM " : A POEM SOLD TO VISITORS 
 "a VISIT TO bedlam" . -. 
 
 THE THERMOMETER OF FANATICISM 
 
 DR. JOHN MONRO AND CHARLES J. FOX 
 
 THE CENTRE BLOCK OF THE SECOND HOSPITAL . 
 
 "low life": a TITLE-PAGE .... 
 
 A PAGE from THE " SONG TO DAVID " 
 
 "COOLING HIS brains": A CARICATURE 
 
 AN ENTRY IN THE ADMISSION BOOK RELATING TO HANNAH SNELL 
 
 THE TITLE-PAGE OF "THE FEMALE SOLDIER" 
 
 A CARD OF ADMISSION, I794 .... 
 
 "a peep INTO BETHLEHEM" .... 
 
 PLAN OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL AND ITS GROUNDS, 1815 
 
 PLAN OF THE GROUNDS AFTER 1839 
 
 
 • 237 
 
 
 • 239 
 
 
 • 256 
 
 
 • 257 
 
 
 . 260 
 
 
 . 262 
 
 
 . 270 
 
 
 • 273 
 
 lELL 
 
 . 279 
 
 
 . 280 
 
 
 . 282 
 
 
 . 284 
 
 
 - 293 
 
 
 • 295 
 
XIV 
 
 LIST OF PLATES 
 
 STONE SIGN OF THE "DOG AND DUCK TAVERN 
 
 THE INTERIOR OF THE "LONG ROOM" IN THE SAME TAVERN 
 
 GROUND PLAN OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL IN 1823 
 
 PROPOSED PLAN FOR THE THIRD HOSPITAL . - .' 
 
 WILLIAM TUKE ...... 
 
 SURVEY OF THE CHARING CROSS ESTATE, 183O . 
 {From a Bridewell document) 
 
 THE AWARD OF THE ARBITRATOR .... 
 
 THE FEMALE CRIMINAL BLOCK .... 
 
 A DOSE OF IRON — OLD STYLE : A DOSE OF IRON — NEW STYLE 
 (By permission of the family of the late G. H. Haydon) 
 
 A WINDOW-GUARD IN 1838 . 
 
 PLAN OF THE LIVERPOOL STREET ESTATE, 1865-1870 
 
 (From a conveyance at Bridewell) 
 
 PLAN OF WARD NO. 5 . . . . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 • 297 
 
 . 300 
 
 . 305 
 
 .311 
 
 • 323 
 
 .336 
 
 • 337 
 
 • 341 
 
 • 347 
 
 • ' • 355 
 
 360, 361 
 
 363 
 
 PLAN OF THE DEVONSHIRE HOUSE ESTATE IN THE EIGHTEENTH 
 
 CENTURY, BISHOPSGATE . . . . . . 369 
 
 LIST OF PLATES 
 
 BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL, THE SECOND, IN MOORFIELDS 
 BETHLEHEM (PALESTINE) : ITS BASILICA AND MONASTERIES 
 
 Fi'ontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 BASILICA OF THE CHURCH OF THE NATIVITY, BETHLEHEM : THE NAVE 
 (By permission of the Byzantine Research Fund) 
 
 A REQUIEM MASS . . . . . .' . -3^ 
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE HOUSE ESTATE OF THE HOSPITAL IN BISHOPSGATE . 36 
 
 THE TWO CONFRATERNITIES OF THE SKINNERS' COMPANY IN PRO- 
 CESSION ON CORPUS CHRISTI DAY . • between pp. 54 and 55 
 
 . 60 
 
 BANNER CARRIED BY THE CONFRATERNITY OF CORPUS CHRISTI 
 
 THE ROLL OF *' THE VISITATION OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL " . 
 
 THE OLD "white HART" TAVERN .... 
 
 (After a drawing by T. H. Shepherd, before it was pulled down in 1829) 
 
 84 
 84 
 
LIST OF PLATES 
 
 XV 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 THE SEAL OF THE WARDEN OF THE HOUSE OF THE BLESSED MARY 
 OF BETHLEM .... 
 
 BISHOP S GATE AS RESTORED IN I479 
 
 SIR MARTIN BOWES .... 
 
 CHARING CROSS IN THE REIGN OF EDWARD VI 
 
 LIEUT.-COL. A. J. COPELAND, F.S.A., TREASURER 
 
 DELUSIONAL INSANITY 
 
 TRADING ON INSANITY 
 
 (T/ie illustrations of pp. 132 and 134 were drawn by Charge-Attendant A. Cantle) 
 
 THE SIGN-BOARD OF THE "TOM IN BEDLAM," REDBOURNE 
 
 DR. CROOKE, KEEPER OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL . 
 
 DANIEL, Cromwell's porter .... 
 
 HOUSE of SIR PAUL PINDAR, BISHOPSGATE 
 
 SIR GEORGE WHITMORE ..... 
 
 {By permission of Major Whitmore, Orsett Hall, Essex) 
 
 ANOTHER PORTRAIT OF DANIEL .... 
 
 {After a unique print in the Guildhall Museum) 
 
 102 
 102 
 112 
 114 
 124 
 132 
 
 140 
 
 168 
 179 
 
 179 
 
 BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL, THE SECOND, IN MOORFIELDS between pp. 202 and 203 
 
 . 204 
 
 THE ENTRANCE ........ 
 
 (This plate, with which W. M. Craig illustrated one of the " Cries of London," is to 
 be found in " Modern London," Richard Phillips, 1804) 
 
 DEMENTIA AND ACUTE MANIA .... 
 
 (Drawn by T. Stothard and engraved by W. Sharp, 1783, to illustrate T. Bowen's 
 "Historical Account") 
 
 FIGURES WITH ALMS BOXES .... 
 
 porter's STAFF (see p. 206) . . . . 
 
 THE FUNERAL EFFIGY OF SIR W. TURNER 
 
 SOUTH-WEST CORNER OF THE SECOND HOSPITAL, 1814 . 
 
 The large window at the side belongs to the female incurable ward. The wall 
 below it is covered over with the remains of many posters of 1814. In the 
 original etching of J. T. Smith the words " Vauxhall," " Bible Society Jubilee," 
 and "Pagoda" may be discerned. To the left of these notices a bill-poster is 
 at work. He is standing on the site of Moor Gate, which was demolished in 1762. 
 
 NATHANIEL LEE, THE DRAMATIST 
 
 JACK SHEPPARD VISITS HIS MOTHER IN BEDLAM .... 
 
 "a rake's progress": PLATE VIII . . . . 
 
 (^After the original painting in the Soane Museum) 
 
 204 
 
 205 
 208 
 222 
 
 222 
 
 230 
 242 
 
XVI 
 
 LIST OF PLATES 
 
 THE SAME ....... 
 
 {After the engraving : first " state ") 
 
 THE SAME ....... 
 
 (After the engraving: second "state") 
 
 A PIRATICAL IMITATION OF THE ENGRAVING 
 
 "HOGARTH IN BEDLAM": A PARODY 
 
 THE porter's BADGE . . . . 
 
 "HARLEQUIN METHODIST" .... 
 
 "the MILITARY PROPHET " .... 
 
 THE BACK OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL, THE SECOND, l8l2 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 • 244 
 
 . 247 
 
 . 247 
 
 • 250 
 
 • 253 
 
 • 253 
 . 258 
 . 266 
 
 BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL, THE SECOND, WITH THE INCURABLE BLOCKS 
 
 {see p. 244) ..... between pp. 276 and 277 
 
 PHYSIC AND A STRAIT WAISCOAT FOR PITT : A CARICATURE 
 
 HANNAH SNELL, A PATIENT ..... 
 
 "A STUDY IN BETHLEM HOSPITAL" . . * . 
 
 THE "dog AND DUCK " TAVERN, 1646 .... 
 
 BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL, THE THIRD, IN SOUTHWARK, BETWEEN 181 
 AND 1838 . . . . . . 
 
 THE GENIUS OF CHARITY . . . . 
 
 (Adapted from a group fainted by T. S. Duche in 1792) 
 
 BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL, THE THIRD, WITH THE DOME OF 1846 
 
 THE INSANITY OF GEORGE III 
 
 JAMES NORRIS, A PATIENT . 
 
 PHILIPPE PINEL, THE DELIVERER 
 
 JOHN HASLAM, "APOTHECARY" 
 
 CHARING CROSS ABOUT 1825 
 
 A FEMALE WARD (f. 2) IN 1860 
 
 IN THE OLD BALL-ROOM, 1859 
 
 THE WORK-ROOM OF F. 2 . 
 
 (After a photograph taken by Dr. J. G. Porter Phillips) 
 
 278 
 278 
 288 
 296 
 
 302 
 308 
 
 308 
 316 
 320 
 
 324 
 326 
 
 334 
 351 
 354 
 368 
 
CHRONOLOGY 
 
 The year is computed throughout from the ist of January : 
 c stands for circa (about). 
 
 330. — Basilica of the Nativity (the mother-house of the hospital) built 
 
 in Bethlehem, Palestine, by the Emperor Constantine. 
 1216-1227. — Pope Honorius III grants an indulgence to the monastery 
 
 of St. Mary, Bethlehem, Palestine, and its daughter-houses. 
 1247 (Sept. 23). — Henry III grants a "protection without term" for 
 
 the brethren of the house of " Betlecm." 
 1247 (Oct. 23). — Foundation of the priory of St. Mary of Bethlehem 
 
 in Bishopsgate Without, London. 
 1257 (May 20). — Henry III grants "protection to the brethren of St. 
 
 Mary of New Bethleem, dwelling or to dwell in London, 
 
 without Bishopsgate." 
 1302.— The brothers of Bethlehem (Palestine) are said to be "roaming 
 
 up and down England, collecting alms and granting absolution, 
 
 where they ought not." 
 1329. — Edward III grants a protection to the Bishopsgate " hospital " 
 
 {i.e., hospice). 
 1346 (Oct. 15). — The house and order taken under the patronage 
 
 and protection of the mayor and aldermen of the city of 
 
 London. 
 1346 (Oct. 20). — Agreement made between Richard Lacer, the mayor, 
 
 and citizens of London and the master (Norton) and brethren 
 
 of the house, touching the maintenance and government of the 
 
 hospital. 
 1361. — The drapers of Cornhill enrol themselves in the confraternity of 
 
 St. Mary of Bethlehem, and annually meet on the Feast of the 
 
 Purification (Feb. 2) to hear mass in the hospital chapel. 
 1362. — Agreement between the hospital " de Bedelem " and the rector 
 
 of Bishopsgate about parochial dues. 
 1363. — Urban V grants an indulgence to all who help for ten years in 
 
 the restoration of the house. 
 
xviii CHRONOLOGY 
 
 1367. — The mayor and aldermen urge the bishop of " Bedlem," then 
 resident in France, not to farm out their London hospital. 
 Edward III orders the arrest of the master and proctor of the 
 hospital for obtaining money by forged indulgences. They 
 are to be taken before the archbishop of Canterbury. 
 
 1375. — The hospital seized as an alien priory by Edward III. 
 
 1375-1378 (?). — The patients of the " Stonehouse," Charing Cross, 
 removed to Bethlehem Hospital. 
 
 1377. — Earliest known date of the use of Bethlem as an asylum. 
 
 1380-1395 (c). — A brotherhood of Skinners meet in the church of St. 
 Mary, Bethlehem, on Corpus Christi Day. 
 
 1403 (March 2). — Henry IV issues a commission to two of the royal 
 chaplains to investigate charges made against the management 
 of the hospital. Their report mentions six insane patients, the 
 instruments of their restraint, and the hospital property at 
 Charing Cross. 
 
 1408. — John Gower, the poet, leaves a legacy to Bethlem. 
 
 1437. — Commission to the mayor and aldermen to inquire into abuses 
 at the hospital. 
 
 1454. — Hospital and its property farmed out by its master. 
 
 1457. — John Arundell, doctor of medicine and royal physician, appointed 
 master. 
 
 1519. — Date of a certificate of admission into the confraternity of St. 
 Mary of Bethlem. 
 
 1529. — George Boleyn, brother of Queen Anne Boleyn, appointed 
 master. 
 
 1^43. — The convocation of Canterbury denounces the "ungodly cele- 
 bration of marriages " in Bethlem Hospital. 
 
 1545. — Peter Mewtys, the master of Bethlem, grants a lease of the 
 "Stone House, Charing Cross, recently converted into three 
 tenements" [now Trafalgar Square]. 
 
 1546 (Dec. 27). — Deed of covenant between Henry VIII and the city, 
 
 by which the king agrees to grant St. Bartholomew's Hospital 
 to the city : " and the king further granted that the said mayor, 
 commonalty, and citizens, and their successors should be 
 masters, rulers, and governors of the hospital, or house, called 
 Bethlem." 
 
 1547 (Jan. 13). — Letters patent, ratifying the deed of covenant, granted 
 
 by Henry VIII, who dies seventeen days later. 
 1549 (May 7). — The court of aldermen order the chamberlain to repay 
 
 Sir Martin Bowes £\\'^ 6s. 8d., which he had expended for the 
 
 purchase of Bethlehem Hospital. 
 1550. — The liberty of Bethlem merged into the parish of St. Botolph, 
 
 Bishopsgate. 
 1553 (June 26). — Bridewell Hospital incorporated by letters patent. 
 
CHRONOLOGY xix 
 
 1556. — Two aldermen and the chamberlain are to "examine the 
 
 accounts of the hospital as kept by the keeper." 
 1557 (Sept. 27). — Bethlem placed under the same management as 
 
 Bridewell. 
 1563. — "Dickon of Bedlam," one of the earliest of English comedies, 
 
 composed. 
 1569. — Sir T. Roe, mayor, causes an acre of ground in Bethlem (now 
 
 part of Broad Street station) to be enclosed as a churchyard for 
 
 strangers. 
 1575. — Old church of monastery, after serving as a foundry, pulled 
 
 down, and a dozen houses erected in its place. 
 1604. — Dekker, the dramatist, lays many scenes of one of his plays in 
 
 the hospital. 
 1606. — The treasurer granted the revenues of eleven tenements in 
 
 Bethlem "in consideration of his devotion." 
 1609. — The keeper to be paid sevenpence instead of sixpence each 
 
 patient per week "on account of the dearness of the times." 
 1619. — Hilkiah Crooke, M.D., elected "keeper." 
 T620. — Yelverton, the attorney-general, sent to the Tower for corruptly 
 
 inserting in a city charter certain clauses granting the corpora- 
 tion the custody of Bethlehem Hospital. 
 1630. — Accounts of Bethlem first separated from those of Bridewell. 
 1632 and 1633. — Royal commissioners investigate scandals in the 
 
 hospital. 
 1638. — Charles I confirms the charter of the hospital. 
 1648. — Arbitration between hospital and its tenants in reference to 
 
 property at Charing Cross. 
 1656. — Daniel, Cromwell's porter, admitted as a patient. 
 1666. — The fire of London, which destroys Bridewell, spares Bethlem. 
 1674. — Suggested that hospital be removed to another site. Petition to 
 
 be presented to Charles II for his "approbation and allowance." 
 
 Lease of lands in Moorfields granted by the city corporation to 
 
 the governors for the erection of a new hospital. 
 1675. — Begun in April, 1675, the main buildings of the second, or 
 
 Moorfields, hospital were finished in July, 1676. 
 1684. — Nat Lee, the dramatist, a patient. 
 1693. — A nurse to be hired "as an experiment." 
 1699. — Report of Bethlem committee on the discreditable appearance 
 
 of the wards on public holidays. 
 1700. — An out-patient department instituted. The word "patient" 
 
 henceforth used to describe the inmates. 
 1714. — Dean Swift elected a governor. 
 
 1 725-1734. — Wards for male and female incurable patients constructed. 
 1732-1733. — Hogarth paints "Bedlam" — the eighth scene of the 
 
 " Rake's Progress." 
 
XX , CHRONOLOGY 
 
 1733. — Edward Barkham, of The Close, Lincoln, leaves part of his 
 Lincolnshire estates for the maintenance of incurable patients. 
 
 1766. — The doors of the hospital to be locked on public holidays 
 against all visitors. 
 
 1770. — Admission of visitors henceforth to be only by ticket, and 
 accredited visitors to be accompanied by an attendant. 
 
 1782. — An act of parliament ratifies the union of Bridewell and 
 Bethlem, and settles the dispute between the common council 
 and other governors. 
 
 1791. — Hannah Snell, the female marine, a patient. 
 
 1800. — Architect reports the hospital to be in an insecure condition. 
 
 1800-1809. — Negotiations about a new site. 
 
 1812-1815. — Building of present hospital (the third) in St. George's 
 Fields, Southwark. Patients transferred 24 Aug., 1815. 
 
 1815 and 1816. — Parliamentary inquiries into the treatment of patients. 
 
 18 16. — Criminal blocks completed and occupied. 
 
 1830. — Exchange of the " Trafalgar Square" estate with the Crown for 
 property in Piccadilly. 
 
 1837. — Visitation by Mr. F. O. Martin, a charity commissioner. 
 
 1838. — Front garden leased by city to hospital and road diverted. 
 Foundation stone of new buildings laid. Frontage extended 
 east and west, and southern wings lengthened. 
 
 1840. — Site of Barkham Terrace purchased. 
 
 1844. — First padded rooms constructed: workshops for patients com- 
 pleted. 
 
 1544-1846. — Chapel and dome built by S. Smirke. 
 
 1851 (June 28). — Visit of lunacy commissioners to inquire into allega- 
 tions against the treatment of certain patients by their nurses. 
 
 1853 (Nov. i). — Hospital registered for periodical inspection by the 
 lunacy commissioners. 
 
 1863 and 1864. — Criminal patients removed to Broadmoor. 
 
 1864. — On the recommendation of the charity commissioners governors 
 agree to select a site for a convalescent home and to appoint 
 resident clinicals. 
 
 1865-1870. — The Liverpool Street estates of the hospital purchased by 
 the Great Eastern and the Metropolitan Railway Companies. 
 
 1870. — First party of convalescent patients goes to Witley, Surrey. 
 
 1892. — Under the Dome (the hospital magazine) first issued. 
 
 1896. — Recreation hall opened. 
 
 1904. — Hospital closed from February to October for re-drainage and 
 repairs. 
 
 1907. — Fire causes some damage to recreation hall. 
 
 1912. — Pathologist and other specialists added to the medical staff. 
 
The Story of Bethlehem Hospital 
 from its Foundation in 1247 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE BISHOP OF BETHLEHEM 
 
 " Let us go even unto Bethlehem " — this is the journey 
 we must take in the first chapter of our history. For the 
 basilica which enshrines the cave of the Nativity is the 
 goal of our pilgrimage. Here was the home of our early 
 associations, and we return to it, after six centuries and a 
 half, to hear all that has happened since the daughter left 
 her mother's house. We are not, indeed, without guide- 
 books, for such scholars as Comte P. Riant, M. Delaville 
 Le Roulx and Father Meistermann have smelted gold even 
 from the dust of libraries. Itineraries of pilgrims, chronicles 
 of the crusades, the registers of the popes, and the archives 
 of monasteries have all been shaken well. I shall not, as 
 a rule, interrupt the narrative by a reference to a book 
 or manuscript, but the story I am now going to tell — no 
 one in London has told it before — is founded on the Papal 
 Registers of Innocent IV. 
 
 The villain of the drama was one John the Roman, who 
 appears to have been elected in 1239 bishop of Bethlehem 
 by the canons. In the ordinary way his election would 
 have been confirmed by the pope. But, meanwhile, he 
 proceeded, with the complicity of some of the canons, to 
 sell, pledge, or exchange, houses, castles, lands, relics and 
 indulgences — the property of the see. The church possessed 
 
2 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 certain precious relics, which fell to it as a share of the 
 spoils from the sack of Constantinople in 1204. These were 
 the hammer and a nail of the crucifixion, with the hand 
 of St. Thomas. Even these had gone into the sack with 
 the title deeds of the convent lands, and were pledged 
 with the Templars and other religious orders for a con- 
 siderable sum of money. It is not pleaded on behalf of 
 these sacrilegious rogues that they spent it on the ransom 
 of the church and the pilgrim : they just " dissipated it 
 themselves." 
 
 We may note here that in 1869 some old relics of the 
 church — a pair of chandeliers and two copper basins of 
 twelfth-century work — were dug up in an ancient cloister 
 which formed part of the Franciscan church of Bethlehem. 
 The base of each chandelier was inscribed : " Cursed be 
 he who removes me from the place of the Holy Nativity, 
 Bethlehem." Possibly this is an allusion to the depre- 
 dations of John the Roman, and they may have been 
 returned to the basilica by Godfrey, who helped to found 
 the priory of Bethlehem, London, for it was he who had 
 to restore a church very much injured by " men who know 
 not the way of the Lord," and to redeem as much of the 
 treasure and property of the basilica as was still in the 
 market. 
 
 The pope pronounced all contracts entered into by John 
 the Roman to be null and void. But John and his accom- 
 plices had spent the money, and the church, which had 
 fallen among bandits, lay by the roadside stripped of its 
 raiment. Moreover, in 1244, before any good Samaritan 
 could come to its aid, the Kharasmians — a wild horde of 
 Mohammedans from Central Asia — fell upon Bethlehem 
 and left its convent, if they spared its church, despoiled 
 and in ruins : it seemed as if religion, beaten and half dead, 
 must perish. 
 
 In this eclipse of their fortunes, the chapter urgently 
 appealed to Pope Innocent IV to come to their succour. In 
 his reply he called upon them to elect as their bishop his 
 chaplain, Godfrey de Vico, of the Prefetti family, the heredi- 
 
'* V * ' ' 
 
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 7'&J 
 
THE BISHOP OF BETHLEHEM 3 
 
 tary prefects of Rome, whose tombs may still be seen at 
 Viterbo. Furthermore, on 3rd February, 1245, the pope, 
 who was in exile at Lyons, gave Godfrey, bishop-elect of 
 Bethlehem, a special encyclical (or circular-letter), which 
 was destined to found an institution, known to half the 
 world as " Bedlam." The encyclical was addressed to 
 " archbishops and bishops, abbots, and priors, and to all 
 the faithful children of God," and it was to circulate in 
 Italy, England, and Scotland. It bespeaks for the brothers 
 of Bethlehem a cordial welcome and facilities for com- 
 mending their creed to the charitable : they represent a 
 monastery which "offers shelter to the poor, the stranger, 
 and the pilgrim, and affords succ 3ur to all Christians in any 
 other affliction." And it is all the more necessary to appeal 
 for alms, when the Church has " suffered so much loss of 
 property in the general disaster which has overtaken the land 
 of the East, at the hands of the enemies of the Christian 
 religion." Not a harsh word against John the Roman ! A 
 spiritual reward is to be the guerdon for alms bestowed upon 
 a place of such holy and tender associations. But the feet 
 of those who preach from place to place carry immediate 
 blessing where they tread. 
 
 "If perad venture the brethren shall come unto a castle, or 
 village, which has been lying under an interdict, the churches 
 shall be opened, and Divine services celebrated there on 
 that one day in the year at the glad sound of their coming." 
 
 There were already many daughter-houses of Bethlehem 
 in Italy, and perhaps Godfrey and his canons regular visited 
 each in turn. But on 20th April, 1245, he is at Clamecy, 
 not far from Nevers, France. Here in 1168, William IV, a 
 count of Nevers, had assigned to the church of Bethlehem 
 a hospice for sick and wounded crusaders. On 25th June, 
 1246, Godfrey de Prefetti left for England, where by a 
 dispensation of the pope he still held the living of Long 
 Itchington, near Rugby, and perhaps the benefice of Coleby, 
 Lincoln. 
 
 In the year of our foundation (1247) there was great 
 exasperation in England on account of the exactions of the 
 
4 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 pope : " the clergy " (writes Matthew Paris with much irri- 
 tation) " made their contributions unwilHngly, or, to speak 
 quite frankly, with maledictions." In the Papal Registers of 
 Innocent IV there is embedded an amusing illustration of 
 the national resentment, in an account of the reception of the 
 proctor of the bishop-elect of Bethlehem, when he called to 
 collect the greater part of the emoluments of Long Itching- 
 ton. They record that one Philip, the man in possession, 
 was so aggrieved that he gave the bishop's proctor a good 
 beating, broke two of his ribs, cut off his horse's tail, tying 
 his servant and the horse to a stall : he also imprisoned the 
 dean of Wells and the bishop's proctors until they promised 
 to take no further steps ! Even so, in the days of Charles 
 Lever, might a tenant in Ireland have greeted the return of 
 an absentee landlord. 
 
 Godfrey played a part — to complete his dossier — in 
 English history as a matrimonial agent, for in 1256 he 
 arranged a marriage between the son of Edward I and 
 the queen-dowager of Cyprus, as also between the king 
 of Cyprus and a daughter of Edward I. 
 
 This seems the last reference to him, as he was certainly 
 succeeded about this time by another in his bishopric. 
 Clermont-Ganneau discovered the fragment of a tombstone 
 at Jaffa, where, as a matter of history, the bishop was 
 sojourning in 1253. It represents a crusading bishop who 
 died there in 1258. An angel — a beautiful piece of incised 
 work — is censing a figure in episcopal robes. Possibly it is 
 our Godfrey. 
 
 " It is our will and pleasure," writes the pope, in the 
 encyclical already quoted, " that you permit the brothers 
 to address the people in your churches, and to ask alms 
 of them without let or hindrance. Furthermore, we, relying 
 upon the authority of Almighty God and of the blessed 
 apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, do relax forty days of any 
 penance enjoined in the case of anyone who shall succour 
 the brothers out of the wealth which God has given him, and 
 shall enrol himself in so holy a confraternity, contributing 
 annually to its funds." 
 
THE BISHOP OF BETHLEHEM 5 
 
 This circular letter of Innocent IV would have been read 
 in many of the churches of London, and among those who 
 listened with reverence to the words of the pope — either 
 at St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, or at St. John's, Walbrook — 
 would have been an alderman, Simon FitzMary. Twice 
 sheriff of the city of London, FitzMary was a man of wealth, 
 and of great influence in the streets of the city and in the 
 palace of the king. In the cartulary of the Holy Trinity, 
 Aldgate, he appears as an alderman in 1249 and 1250, and 
 seems to have been associated with the parish of St. John, 
 Walbrook, but at any rate he had an estate in Bishopsgate. 
 
 You may have noticed that he derives his name from his 
 mother, as does Martin FitzAlice, who was the alderman of 
 St. Michael's, Paternoster Royal, in 1281. Now it must be 
 admitted that, when a man derives his name from his mother, 
 it is generally because he is of illegitimate birth. It is 
 thought, therefore, that such names as Marryat, Mayson, 
 Moggs, and Moxon indicate the tainted origin of many of 
 our commonest names. On the other hand, Baring-Gould 
 has pointed out in his "Family Names and their History" 
 that the general rule admits of exceptions. For instance, 
 Sweyn, the king of Denmark, was called Estrithson after 
 his mother, because through her he obtained his right to the 
 throne. 
 
 Simon FitzMary may, indeed, have had an honourable 
 ancestry, but at least one historian of London (Loftie) takes 
 it for granted on the ground of his name that the founder of 
 Bethlehem Hospital was of obscure birth, and finds in his 
 illegitimacy a motive for his espousing the cause of the 
 craftsmen against the mercantile oligarchy. Be this as it 
 may, the memory of his mother seems to have been very 
 precious to him, and precious also the church in that far-off, 
 war-beaten land, where He was worshipped who was also 
 known as the Son of Mary. He seems to be lingering 
 lovingly on the tender associations which the name of Mary 
 had for him, when he writes in the deed-poll of his founda- 
 tion that he had an "especial and peculiar devotion to the 
 church of the glorious Virgin Mary of Bethlehem." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE BASILICA AND BROTHERS OF 
 BETHLEHEM 
 
 " We are come to worship." There are things that jar or 
 disgust — the Mohammedan on guard with his gun, the jealous 
 votaries of a common creed, the wall of division built across 
 the choir. But the spirit of the place takes human form in 
 each of us : a Russian pilgrim is weeping, and he is speaking 
 a lancruao^e we understand without the aid of words. 
 
 This is the ancient church, towards which in this hospital 
 we still turn on Founder's Day (23rd October) and on the 
 birthday of our Lord. Edward IV of England gave it the 
 lead for the roof, and on its floor knelt the English knights 
 of the cross, ere they delivered the grand assault on 
 Jerusalem. From its altars our priors and canons, our 
 confraternities and insane patients hoped to draw treasures of 
 grace and healing. There still cling to the walls with the 
 glamour of a romantic past patches of the glorious mosaics, 
 wherein, as in an illustrated book, the pilgrim from London 
 might once read the history of Christ, of his Church, and of 
 its great councils. 
 
 In 330, or thereabouts, Constantine, inspired by the faith 
 of his mother, Helena, built this stately temple, substantially 
 as it appears to-day. It was, however, in later centuries 
 restored by Justinian and decorated by the Byzantine 
 emperor Manuel, who sent painters and mosaists to work for 
 Latin king and Latin church. 
 
 In this church of the Nativity, on the Christmas Day 
 of iioi, Baldwin was crowned the first Latin king of 
 
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BASILICA AND BROTHERS OF BETHLEHEM 7 
 
 Jerusalem, and the priory of Bethlehem was, with the con- 
 sent of Pope Paschal II, converted into the cathedral of a 
 new see. In 11 87 the menacing shadow of Salah-ed-din 
 (Saladin) began to creep over the walls of the church, and 
 the sunshine to fade from its convent. At the decisive battle 
 of Tiberias the crusaders were vanquished, the Latin bishops, 
 canons, and priests being chased away — as a result of the 
 disaster — from the birthplace of Christianity. Later on, 
 however, Walter, bishop of Salisbury, obtained permission 
 from Salah-ed-din for two Latin and two indigenous priests 
 to remain and perform Divine service in the basilica. In 
 1 2 17 — two years before Damietta fell — not a single priest 
 dared to remain in Bethlehem, and in 1224 Regnier, its 
 bishop, decided to seek a sanctuary for himself and his 
 chapter in a hospital belonging to the see at Clamecy in 
 France. There is evidence that some of the brothers found 
 their way back to their cathedral and convent in 1229, and 
 re-established worship. Ten years later John the Roman, 
 as I have related, was engaged, with the connivance of 
 some of the canons, in stealing or pledging the property of 
 the see. In 1244 the cloud of Kharasmian locusts swept 
 through Judaea, leaving a barren wilderness behind them. 
 Once more the chapter fled for their lives to Europe, and it is 
 doubtful whether they ever returned. At any rate towards 
 the close of the thirteenth century (say 1292) the Franciscans 
 found Bethlehem abandoned, and straightway proceeded to 
 occupy the convent and basilica. 
 
 If the abandonment of the church by its official protectors 
 was really absolute, how comes it to pass (it may be asked) 
 that the basilica — no doubt in a state of dilapidation — had 
 even one stone left upon another? I can only answer that 
 for some reason, or reasons, the church of Constantine and 
 Justinian suffered less than other churches in the Holy Land 
 from the violence of the Saracens and Tartars. Khaliph 
 Omar was certainly gracious to it in 6'^'/. Tartar hordes 
 spared its venerable walls in 1065 and 1244. 
 
 We hear of miracles, of serpents and fire, but also of money 
 often paid by way of ransom. The soldiers of the Koran 
 
8 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 may, indeed, have shown mercy and compassion to church 
 and congregation by reason of their reverence for Mary, the 
 mother of our Lord. But it was not profitable to kill the 
 goose with the golden eggs, and I am inclined to suggest that 
 self-interest lay at the bottom of the well of Mohammedan 
 tolerance. No church — no pilgrims : no pilgrims — no back- 
 sheesh. Both in 637 and in 1065 the Christians were sub- 
 jected to fees, fines, and other exactions at the hands of 
 their persecutors. On the second occasion the church of the 
 Holy Sepulchre was only spared in order that a ransom 
 might be extorted from its guardians. 
 
 The Franciscans are still in Bethlehem, guardians of the 
 holy place. Worthy successors of the bishop and canons, 
 they still welcome the pilgrim and the stranger with 
 hospitality, and they educate at their school young men who 
 travel all over the Christian world with crosses, rosaries, and 
 other objects of devotion made in the town. 
 
 In 191 1, as soon as I had — thanks to the "Catholic 
 Encyclopedia " — got on the track of the researches of Riant, 
 I put myself into communication with the Anglican bishop of 
 Jerusalem, and his daughter was good enough to get me an 
 introduction to Father James Egan and Father Barnabe 
 Meistermann, one of the great authorities on the topography 
 and archaeology of the Holy Land. Some four months later 
 in the same year I had all the pleasure of an antiquary in 
 taking Father Egan, an envoy from the mother-house, on 
 Thursday, 13th July, 191 1, over the house of the daughter, 
 a daughter who has made a name for herself in the world. 
 I do not suppose that such an exchange of greetings has 
 taken place since the thirteenth century. 
 
 A lunch in an Italian cafe in Soho — quite an idyl of dainty 
 meats, of wine and fruits and flowers — helped Father Egan 
 and the chaplain of Bethlehem Hospital, as they chatted 
 over Turks, tourists, and the Greek Orthodox Church, to 
 imagine that they were celebrating Founder's Day in the old 
 refectory of mediaeval Bishopsgate. I hope that a copy of 
 this book may find its way into the library of the devoted 
 children of the gentle St. Francis. I should like the friars of 
 
BASILICA AND BROTHERS OF BETHLEHEM g 
 
 orders minor to have a record of such a historic meeting. 
 Perhaps also it may interest the tourists who flock to 
 Bethlehem to learn something henceforth from the fathers of 
 the association of the London hospital with the basilica and 
 convent of the Nativity. 
 
 I should love to gossip for a page or two over the red- 
 brown limestone pillars of the church, about the crests of the 
 crusaders on the walls, or about the door of entrance, dwarfed 
 to prevent Moslem horsemen from profaning the sanctuary. 
 But all that I should like to say may be found in Father 
 Meistermann's " New Guide to the Holy Land," or in the 
 sumptuous and exhaustive monograph — amply illustrated — 
 of the " Church of the Nativity," which the " Byzantine 
 Research Fund," under the editorship of Mr. R. W. Schultz, 
 issued in 1910. 
 
 I am, however, under a vow to myself to set forth on a far 
 more hazardous adventure. It is nothing less than to 
 discover the history of an obscure and forgotten order, which 
 administered and maintained Bethlehem Hospital in the 
 Middle Ages. For centuries it had passed out of the 
 memories and books of scholars, and what there was to learn 
 about it in books of reference was meagre and contradictory. 
 However — fortunately for the historian of this hospital — two 
 French archaeologists (Louis Lagenissiere, a barrister, and 
 Count Paul Riant) took a fancy to dig into the libraries of 
 Rome, Paris, Clamecy, and London, in hopes of disinterring 
 some evidence as to the history of the order. In consequence 
 of their underground labours at the close of the nineteenth 
 century rich lodes of ore have been brought to the surface. 
 Without these materials, which have naturally required much 
 patient sorting, I could not have constructed the foundations 
 of my work. 
 
 I shall try to marshal my facts as lucidly as possible, and I 
 will begin by noting that the brothers were dispersed over 
 Europe in the twelfth century. There were canons at 
 Bethlehem in Palestine, but there were also brothers who had 
 served the hospice and its pilgrims ; and these brothers 
 found their way to various parts of Italy, France, England 
 
10 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 and Scotland, where the see of Bethlehem possessed property 
 and exercised a jurisdiction which was independent of 
 everybody but the pope. 
 
 In these stations of their order they managed the estates 
 of the mother-house and administered their affairs, just 
 as the preceptors of St. John of Jerusalem were accustomed 
 to do. Another function of the brothers no doubt was 
 to make all arrangements for the pilgrims, to select a 
 ship at Venice or Genoa, to see them safely on board, 
 and to provide guides and an escort for them on their 
 arrival at Jaffa. 
 
 There was a chain of little colonies of Bethlehemites 
 throughout parts of Europe. There were Bethlehemite 
 hospitallers at Padua in 1186; there was a hospital of 
 St. Mary of Bethlehem at Pavia in 1 2 10. Seven years 
 later an order of Bethlehemites, of whom I shall have 
 more to say later, was introduced into Bohemia, and put 
 in charge of two hospitals. In 1227, according to a bull 
 of Pope Gregory IX, there were in Italy some eight hospitals 
 and some seventy churches served by Bethlehemites. 
 
 Twenty years later our founder, Simon FitzMary, handed 
 over land in Bishopsgate to the bishop of Bethlehem for 
 the establishment of a priory with a prior, canons, brothers, 
 and sisters. In the following year (perhaps) the same 
 bishop founded a similar hospital (St. Germains) in the 
 parish of Tranent, in East Lothian. In 1257, as Matthew 
 Paris tells us in his chronicles, Bethlehemite brothers settled 
 at Trumpington, near Cambridge. The chronicler, who 
 illustrated his text himself, describes them as wearing on 
 their breast a red star, five-rayed, of which he gives a 
 picture, with a dark blue centre. Nine or ten years later 
 a bull of Clement IV mentions " an oratory of New 
 Bethlehem in London." 
 
 The intricate problem, which now confronts us, is to 
 decide, or even to conjecture, whether these brothers were 
 monks dedicated to spiritual exercises, whether they were 
 mendicant friars, whether they were an order of chivalry, 
 or whether one order has been confused with another. 
 
BASILICA AND BROTHERS OF BETHLEHEM ii 
 
 It will, I fancy, help us to get as near a solution 
 of a problem, which has puzzled even Riant, as anybody 
 may at present hope to get, if I quote what the brothers 
 themselves said of the origin and character of their order 
 in a document which I was destined to discover in the 
 city Letter-books in the course of my multifarious 
 researches. 
 
 In a petition which the London brothers presented to 
 the mayor and aldermen of London in 1346, occur some 
 words which are, as it were, sighs over the past, and 
 prayers for the future ; — 
 
 " May this order, which was the first order of the Church 
 catholic, created next after the order of Christ and His 
 apostles, and descends, as originally created, directly from 
 that order, for ever flourish, by means of this house, among 
 all the orders of the Church catholic, and may it fulfil the 
 aims and objects for which it was at the first introduced 
 and instituted from such ancient times by so many holy 
 men and for such holy ends. Amen ! May it flourish, 
 for it was instituted by St. James the Less as an order 
 of contemplation, as a military order by Constantine, the 
 holy and renowned, and as an order of hospitallers by 
 St. Augustine, to the greater glory of God and of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 We need not take too seriously the genealogy of a 
 monastic or masonic order, but probably there is a thick 
 seam of fact under the flowery surfaces of these sentences. 
 In any case I shall allow myself to accept as more or 
 less historical the three divisions of the order which the 
 master and brethren indicate in their petition. For the 
 development of the order of the knights-hospitallers 
 of St. John of Jerusalem offers a parallel which may help 
 us antiquaries out of our perplexities. The institution of 
 the brothers of St. John of Jerusalem was due to the 
 efforts of some Italian merchants who had influence with 
 the sultan of Egypt. In the middle of the eleventh 
 century the Latin Christians not only suffered terrible 
 things at the sword of the Tartar, but they had also to 
 
12 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 face the hostility of the adherents of the Greek Church. 
 As a result of their endeavours a Latin church and convent, 
 served by Benedictines, was erected in Jerusalem. To the 
 convent two great hospices were attached — each with its 
 own chapel — one for men and the other for women. As 
 late as the year 1118 the brothers of St. John were simply 
 hospitallers, and had no military section : for they had 
 forsworn the use of arms. But in that year the new master 
 (Dupuy) pointed out to the confraternity the absolute 
 necessity of altering the constitution of the order immediately. 
 The Tartars were massacring Christians daily, and selling 
 into slavery their wives and daughters. The patriarch 
 of Jerusalem absolved the members of the order from 
 their vows and a threefold division of the brethren was 
 sanctioned. There were henceforth to be, as a first division, 
 knights of noble birth for service in the field against the 
 enemies of Christ. Secondly, the clergy were to act as 
 chaplains, to visit the poor and sick in the hospices, to 
 follow the knights to the field, or to undertake to minister 
 to the wounded. The serving brethren formed a third 
 class ; they acted as squires to the knights, or assisted in the 
 hospices. 
 
 It should be easier — with this explanation — to reconstruct 
 the history and developments of an order which would seem 
 to have included knights as well as hospitallers. 
 
 The petition, to which we must return, speaks of an order 
 of contemplation instituted by James the Less. It is, of 
 course, quite reasonable to suppose that knots of hermits and 
 pilgrims were grouped round the cave of the Nativity from 
 apostolic times. We may perceive their successors in the 
 canons who were responsible for the performance of Divine 
 service in the cathedral. They visited the sick in the hospices 
 and ministered to the wounded on the battlefield. The " New 
 Bethlehem " in London was in like manner to contain 
 canons according to the rule and order of the church of 
 Bethlehem, and they were to celebrate masses in the church 
 to be built for the souls of the founder and of his friends and 
 of all Christian dead. 
 
BASILICA AND BROTHERS OF BETHLEHEM 13 
 
 But the London priory was also (it is important to notice) 
 to contain " brothers and sisters " as well as a prior and 
 canons. There is little evidence of the existence of sisters at 
 Bishopsgate, but the brothers are clearly the " hospitallers " 
 of the petition quoted, "who follow the rule of St. 
 Augustine/' 
 
 In the words of Innocent IV, which I have printed in the 
 first chapter, the convent and its brothers were wont to offer 
 " shelter to the poor, the stranger, the pilgrim, and to 
 Christians in any other afflictions." 
 
 As early as the time of Jerome (384-420), who resided at 
 Bethlehem, St. Paula built a great hostelry for pilgrims close 
 to the basilica of Bethlehem, and throughout the Middle 
 Ages the order is associated, as was that of St. John of 
 Jerusalem, with the work of a hospital, ix.^ primarily a 
 hospice, in Italy, France and London. Our hospital is — to 
 be exact — first described as a hospital, or hospice, in a licence 
 of Edward III in 1329, but other documents in the Record 
 Office assert that our house was originally " founded for the 
 entertainment of the sick and poor." 
 
 But the brothers had not only to minister in the hospice 
 and its infirmary, but also to beg for money for the main- 
 tenance of both. As early as 1223 a brother was in England 
 collecting for the mother-house. In 1248 the offertory-box, 
 which had been rattled up and down the streets of the city, 
 threatened to stay in England, and the pope thundered. In 
 1302 the brothers of Bethlehem were "roaming about 
 England, collecting alms, granting absolution, where they 
 ought not, and deceiving people with falsehoods." The 
 bishop of Bethlehem, therefore — his name was Wulfran — felt 
 it his duty to write to the archbishop of York to say that he 
 had " cancelled all privilege^ formerly granted to them." So 
 far as the English priory was concerned, the poor and the 
 sick (whether in mind or body) were absolutely dependent 
 for food on the baskets carried by mendicant brothers to 
 receive broken meat from the tables of the London citizens. 
 What revenues we had in pre-Reformation times went to the 
 master, who was after 1375 some friend of the king, an 
 
14 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 absentee and a pluralist, and any money for the repair of 
 buildings or for the purposes of charity had to be obtained by 
 begging. Our hospital had its brothers, collectors, proctors, 
 and friars in London, the provinces, and at Calais. Licences to 
 beg, with protection from arrest, were granted to the London 
 house throughout the fourteenth century. 
 
 We have now reached the most difficult ground — marshes 
 and pitfalls succeeding each other — in the course of our 
 journey. Let some light from the order of St. John fall upon 
 our path. 
 
 According to the terms of the petition under review "it 
 was instituted as a military order by Constantine." It is 
 conceivable, of course^ that under the constitution of 
 Constantine, certain priests, or lay brothers, of the Greek 
 Church were charged with the duty of guiding and of pro- 
 tecting pilgrims — by force if necessary — on the road to the 
 goal of their pious wanderings. But with the creation of the 
 military section of the order of St. John in our mind we may 
 certainly venture to imagine that the brothers of Bethlehem 
 were driven by the massacre and outrages of their persecutors 
 to put arms into the hands of some of the brethren, or to 
 enrol some of the crusaders in their confraternity. 
 
 If anything like this did happen, not only was the phrase 
 in the petition justified, but also a claim which was made by 
 one "William Welles Esquire" in 1381, when he was a 
 candidate for the mastership on the part of the king. The 
 hospital ought, he urged, to be governed by knights, and no 
 otherwise ("doit estre gov'ne par chivalrie"). In proof of 
 his contention he appealed to the archives of the convent : — 
 " let them exhibit the bulls which they have received from 
 the time of Godfrey de Bouillon, for they testify the manner 
 of the foundation of the house." 
 
 There is good reason to believe that such bulls, which 
 would support my argument, were once to be found in our 
 muniment room. For instance between 1346 and 1356 the 
 documents which passed between Bishopsgate and the Guild- 
 hall invariably speak of " the master and brethren of the house 
 and order of the knights of St. Mary of Bethlehem." Again 
 
BASILICA AND BROTHERS OF BETHLEHEM 15 
 
 in the reign of Henry VIII under the year 1 5 19 John Cavalari, 
 the master or warden, associates the house with the " military 
 order of the stars " — mihtia stellarum. It is possible, it so 
 happens, to prove that such an order did exist in Bohemia, 
 France and Scotland, and that the red cross of the crusader 
 was coupled with the star worn by our own brothers on their 
 mantles from the beginning. For example, the Bethlehemites 
 who were introduced into Bohemia in 12 17 wore a red cross 
 over a red star. In 1410 and a quarter of a century later the 
 brothers of the Scottish hospital of St. Germains appear in 
 papal and other documents quoted by Mr. Egerton Beck as 
 " wearers of the red cross." Finally the bishop of Bethlehem 
 at Clamecy, France, describes himself in 1379 as the "general 
 of the order of Bethlehemites dispersed throughout the world." 
 I add a postscript to my " finally " with some hesitation, as 
 my suggestion is in conflict with the professional explanation 
 of my friend, Mr. Everard Green, Somerset Herald. How- 
 ever, may I be so bold as to urge that it may not be without 
 an allusion to the history of the order that the arms of the 
 hospital include a red cross, imprinted on the Host within the 
 blazing star of Bethlehem ? 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE FOUNDATION 
 
 It was 23rd October, 1247, the Wednesday after the Feast 
 of St. Luke the physician so beloved by his patient, St. 
 Paul, in hours of mental depression, and the " hermit in 
 Bishopsgate " had just promised his prayers to a wife who 
 yearned for a child, while he affected not to see her humble 
 offering. Just without the gate craftsmen in leather jerkins 
 were listening with eager faces to a hungry chantry-priest, 
 who was urging them to rally round Simon FitzMary, a man 
 of the people for the people. From the " dogges-house " 
 across the marshes of Moorfields was wafted the yelping 
 of the hounds, who were to draw a fox in Marylebone 
 that afternoon. 
 
 Some ten days earlier, on the Feast of the Translation 
 of Edward the Confessor, Henry III had passed in pro- 
 cession from St. Paul's to Westminster Abbey : he had 
 carried under a canopy a phial of the blood of Christ sent 
 by the Templars. He had been accompanied by the bishop- 
 elect of Bethlehem, Godfrey de Vico, private chaplain to his 
 holiness. Innocent IV. To-day Godfrey was himself the 
 central figure in the procession of ecclesiastics which issued 
 from St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate. Incense arose and holy 
 water fell as they traced out the boundaries of the land 
 donated by Simon FitzMary. An altar had been erected 
 where an oratory was to do duty in the days of poverty 
 for the priory church. A holy relic was enshrined in it : 
 it was anointed with holy oils, and censed with a cross of 
 smoke : prayer and antiphon, and holy water consecrated 
 
 it to the service of the Son of Mary. 
 
 16 
 
/ 
 
 THE FOUNDATION 
 
 17 
 
 Among those who bowed their heads, when the bell pro- 
 claimed the stupendous moment of transubstantiation, were 
 crusaders who had drunk of the well of Bethlehem, or had 
 seen its star in the east : they had been parched with the 
 thirst of battle, or had laid down, where they fought, under 
 the walls of Bethlehem. To-day the land, which Simon 
 offered on his knees at the altar to the " church of the 
 glorious Virgin Mary of Bethlehem," is approximately occu- 
 pied by Liverpool Street and its three stations. On the solemn 
 day of dedication it was a land of " orchards and gardens, of 
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL. 
 A Vision of 1247. 
 
 ditches and marshes" ; and reeds, which in 1298 were worth 
 a lawsuit — if anything really is — grew by the side of a 
 sluggish stream, which here broadened out to meet the 
 waters of the Walbrook. On the east of it was, as still, 
 the highway into Essex and the north ; to the south St. 
 Botolph's church, where it still stands in a Georgian dress ; 
 to the west was this stream of Depeditch — Blomfield Street 
 and a sewer imprison it to-day ; on the north of it was the 
 estate of Ralph Dunning — I remember a Dunning's Alley 
 opposite Union Street, now swallowed up by the G.E.R. 
 station. Underneath the site of the priory — for it was 
 
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THE FOUNDATION 19 
 
 outside the walls — lay a Roman cemetery : the excavations 
 for the railway station dragged away the tender shroud of 
 soil from cinerary urn, and cist, and statuette. This ceme- 
 tery lay outside and to the west of a Roman gate and fort. 
 In 685 Bishop Erkenwald built a gate, where the site of 
 the bishop's gate is still indicated, and each cartload of 
 wood passing through to the city had to pay a log as toll 
 to his successors. 
 
 The deed-poll of the founder has come down to us — we 
 gratefully condone the rascality which made it necessary 
 to indite a copy of the original. This was made in 1403, 
 when Henry IV ordered an inquisition into the scandals 
 which had grown up — many, rank, and poisonous — in Beth- 
 lehem Hospital. 
 
 The deed-poll of FitzMary is a little primer of our history 
 in itself, and I print it in full. The translation from the 
 original Latin is mine : — 
 
 ^0 all the children of our holy mother, the Church, to 
 whom this writing present shall come, SiMON FitzMary, a 
 citizen of London, wisheth salvation in the Lord. 
 
 JFOta^ntUCf) as those sublime designs of Heaven, which 
 have wrought such wonders in the world, ought to be 
 venerated amongst other objects of our worship, nay, above 
 all others, with all the greater devotion in those lands, 
 wherein the weakness of our mortal nature after the fall 
 of our first parent took the first steps towards its restora- 
 tion, 
 
 ^Cril^ it seems becoming that the place, in which the 
 Word Made Flesh issued from the womb of a Virgin, and 
 where was born the author and beginning of the redemption 
 of mankind, should be held in peculiar veneration and should 
 be dowered with effectual benefactions. 
 
 tIEl)i0 is the cause why I, the said SiMON, THE SON OF 
 Mary, who bear an especial and peculiar devotion towards 
 the church of the glorious Virgin Mary of Bethleem, 
 
 (lJQlj)0rt the same Virgin brought forth her first born son, 
 QUr Incarnate S4VIOUR, JESIJS Christ, and fed hini ^s he 
 
20 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 lay in the manger with her own milk, where also the mul- 
 titude of the heavenly host sung that new hymn '' Glory to 
 God in the Highest," and where, too, the author of our 
 salvation and the King of kings was pleased to be wor- 
 shipped by kings [the "wise men"], before whom went a 
 new star — 
 
 T£>^ ttajSfOn. of my reverence for my Lord Himself and 
 for the same His most pitiful mother, to the honour and 
 glory also of my LoRD HENRY the illustrious King OF 
 England (may the aforesaid Mother of God and her only 
 begotten Son take his wife and children under their care and 
 protection !), to the benefit in manifold ways of the city of 
 London, in which I was born, as well as for the salvation 
 of my own soul, and of the souls of my ancestors and 
 descendants, for the salvation of the souls of my parents 
 and of my friends, and specially for the souls of GuY OF 
 Marlow, John Durant, Ralph Aswy, of Matilda, 
 Margery, and Dionysia their wives — 
 
 ^abe gtbert antl grantrti (and by this present deed 
 have confirmed the gift) to GOD and the church of St. Mary 
 of Bethleem all that land of mine which I had in the parish 
 of St. Botolph without Bisshopesgate, London, — to wit, all 
 that I had or might have there, in houses, gardens, orchards, 
 fish-ponds, ditches, marshes, and all other things appertaining 
 thereto, as defined by their boundaries. These extend in 
 length from the king's highway on the east to that ditch on 
 the west which is called Depeditch, and in breadth to the 
 land which belonged to RALPH Dunning on the north and 
 to the land of St. Botolph's church on the south, 
 
 ^D be Jeltl antl retainetl as alms bestowed upon the 
 aforesaid church of Bethleem, free from all secular control, 
 tax, or service for ever, and especially for the foundation of a 
 priory there, and for the institution there of a prior, canons, 
 and brothers, and of sisters as well, so soon as ever the Lord 
 Jesus Christ shall have poured His grace upon it more 
 abundantly. These shall solemnly profess in the said place 
 the rule and order of the said church of Bethleem, and shall 
 in the same wear publicly upon their copes and mantles the 
 
THE FOUNDATION 21 
 
 badge of a star, ^ntl there shall be celebrated there Divine 
 services for the souls aforesaid, and for the souls of all the 
 faithful dead. 
 
 %\Xt in particular this priory shall be founded to receive 
 there the bishop of Bethleem, the canons, brothers, and 
 nuncios for all time, so often as they shall come thither. 
 
 jFurt^trmore, to the intent that a church or oratory may 
 be erected there, so soon as ever the Lord shall have poured 
 out His grace more abundantly upon it, under such conditions 
 that the ordination, the institution, and the dismissal of the 
 prior, canons, brothers, and sisters of the said place, together 
 with the rights of visitation, correction, and reformation, 
 shall for ever belong to the bishop of Bethleem and his 
 successors and to the chapter of his church and of his 
 nuncios, so often as they shall come thither, and shall be 
 willing, and shall see that it is expedient to do so, without 
 the contradiction and hindrance of anyone, save where there 
 are appertaining to the said land the services due to the 
 lords superior. 
 
 And for the greater security of this gift 3I \^t placetl 
 myself and mine outside the said property, and I have 
 solemnly put in actual possession of it, and have handed 
 over the possession of all things aforesaid to the lord 
 Godfrey of the family of the Prefetti [the hereditary 
 prefects] of the city of Rome, at this time bishop-elect 
 of Bethleem (as by our lord the pope confirmed) and at 
 this time actually in England, in his own name, and in that 
 of his successors, and in the name of the chapter of the 
 church of Bethleem. ^itU he has received possession of 
 the said property, and has entered upon it in the form pre- 
 scribed. 
 
 ^Oto in token of subjection and reverence the said place 
 in Bisshopesgate Without in London shall pay annually 
 in the said city one mark sterling on Easter Day to the 
 bishop of Bethleem, or his representative on behalf of its 
 property. 
 
 ^nti according as the property of the said place shall by 
 the gift of God the more increase, in like manner the said 
 
22 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 place shall pay more, in proportion to its income, on the 
 aforesaid date, to its mother church of Bethleem. 
 
 ^^i^ 2Dt^tl of (Biii and the confirmation of the present 
 deed I have on behalf of myself and of my heirs made 
 secure and binding, attaching my seal to it, in the year of 
 our Lord 1247 on the Wednesday after the Feast of St. 
 Luke the Evangelist. 
 
 W^zm teing: Wiiim^^t^ : PETER FITZ-ALAN, then 
 mayor of London ; NICHOLAS BAT, at this time sheriff, 
 who are aldermen of the city, and of the same ward ; 
 RALPH SPERLYNGES, alderman, GODFREY DE 
 CAMPES, SIMON THE CURRIER, SIMON THE 
 LORINER, ROBERT OF WODEFORD, THOMAS 
 OF WODEFORD, WALTER POYNTEL, WALTER 
 WODEFORD, JACOB FITZ-PETER, JOHN JUS- 
 CIOR (?), ALEXANDER OF SCHOREDYCH 
 THOMAS OF BERKSHIRE, and STEPHEN THE 
 FARRIER, his brother, who was then bedel of the ward ; 
 GREGORY the son of GREGORY, JOHN DURANT, 
 ROBERT the BAKER, ROGER OF EPPING, and 
 many others. 
 
 Simon FitzMary dreamed not of a hospital which should 
 minister to the " afflicted in mind, body, or estate," though 
 he may have anticipated the charitable work of hospitallers. 
 He had been taught that it would be for the salvation of his 
 soul to give land for a priory, and he designed that masses, 
 which would shorten his bath of cleansing fires, should be for 
 ever sung for his soul. 
 
 It is a very natural, a very human, prayer that Osiris in 
 the weighing of the soul in Amenti would place the good in 
 the scale over against the ill. " Remember me, O my God," 
 also pleads Nehemiah, the Jew, " concerning this, and wipe 
 not out my good deeds that I have done for the house of 
 my God." 
 
 The last of the masses for Simon's soul was sung many 
 centuries ago ; the obit is no longer celebrated : the founder's 
 tomb by the high altar did not survive the removal of the 
 
THE FOUNDATION 
 
 23 
 
 altar to St. Thomas's, Southwark. But the priory has turned 
 out, as he hoped, to be " to the benefit in manifold ways of 
 the city of London," in which he was born. 
 
 OFFERING UP A DEED OF FOUNDATION ON THE ALTAR. 
 (Drawn by Mr. Charles Naish, after a mediceval illustration.) 
 
 In the southernmost side aisle of the basilica of Bethlehem, 
 near to the west end of the church, there stands an ancient 
 font hewn out of an octagonal block of the same red-brown 
 
24 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 THE FONT IN THE BASILICA. 
 
 An iron lid with a brass central panel covers the internal 
 
 basin of the font. The brass panel is bossed into the 
 
 shape of a crucifix, occupying the centre of a Maltese 
 
 cross. 
 
 limestone as the columns. The dedication of it is in ancient 
 Greek letters, and it reads : — 
 
 " In memory of sinners, whose names are known to God. 
 May He grant their souls repose and forgiveness of sins." 
 
THE FOUNDATION 25 
 
 In the spirit of these words, I think, as I enter the hospital 
 which is their immortal memorial, of Simon FitzMary, John 
 of Croydon, Edward Tyson, Edward Barkham, John Parsons, 
 and other benefactors, whose names are no longer known to 
 the mouths of mortal men. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE FOUNDER 
 
 " The life of man," said the thane to the king, " is as the 
 
 passage of a bird : you are sitting with your aldermen by the 
 
 blazing fire, while without is the wind and the snow : then a 
 
 sparrow comes in and flies swiftly through the house, entering 
 
 at one door and passing out at the other. Even so the life 
 
 of man is visible for a time, but as to what follows or what 
 
 went before we know not at all." This simile illustrates the 
 
 passage of our founder, Simon FitzMary, through the house 
 
 of life. He appears for a while in the light and warmth of 
 
 history in the hall of aldermen. But he enters from the 
 
 darkness at one door and passes into the darkness by 
 
 another : we are ignorant of the earliest and the latest 
 
 events of his life. 
 
 We conjecture, indeed, from the form of his name that 
 
 he was of Norman lineage, and yet, possibly, with a bend 
 
 sinister across his escutcheon : we note that he makes no 
 
 mention of wife or kinsfolk when directing that masses 
 
 should be sung for his own soul and for the souls of his 
 
 three friends and their wives. It is obvious that he was a 
 
 man of great wealth and influence, for he is said to have 
 
 ' bribed the king," and he was able to give away one estate 
 
 and to purchase another in the course of a year. But our 
 
 authorities are few, and not very illuminating. There is the 
 
 deed-poll of the foundation, which indicates his devotional 
 
 temperament : there is also in the Public Record Office a 
 
 conveyance to him of some thirty-five acres of land in the 
 
 village of Shoreditch, which he purchased for ;£'20 : he must 
 
 26 
 
THE FOUNDER 
 
 27 
 
 have seen, and may have handled, this document, for it is 
 the counterpart kept by the court of his title to the property. 
 
 In the Guildhall will also be found extracts in manuscript 
 from the Pipe Rolls relating to the payment or non-payment 
 of his accounts as sheriff: — " Simon FitzMary fined ;^20 
 because he came not," "Simon FitzMary owes half a 
 mark for unjust detention," — " Simon FitzMary pays three 
 and a half marks of several debts," and similar entries. 
 
 The chronicles, however, have also left us some references 
 to his public life, and I shall venture to reconstruct some of 
 the scenes in it with the help of a little imagination and much 
 
 
 Two copies were made of this deed on the same piece of parchment. 
 In a blank space between the two copies the word CYROGRAPHUM 
 was written in large letters. Through this word a curving and 
 indented line was cut with a pair of scissors. If genuine, the deed 
 arid counterpart should dovetail into one another. 
 
 research. Let us then imagine — it will injure nobody — that 
 the alderman is standing in the archway of the courtyard of 
 his mansion : two gilded posts stand in front of it, as symbols 
 of his official rank. He is about to mount his horse, to ride 
 to the royal palace at Westminster, for he is in the confidence 
 of Henry HI, and consents to further his intrigues against 
 the city, for the sake of the popular cause. The streets are 
 unpaved, and a filthy gutter runs down the middle of them. 
 From unglazed windows garbage falls, and privileged pigs of 
 St. Anthony, who have been whining for food from the passer- 
 by, make a dash for it. On the appearance of FitzMary, the 
 champion of the people, the craftsmen throng around him. 
 
28 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 " You have felt," he might say to them in the words of an 
 earher leader of the commons, " the hard hand of those who 
 spare themselves and spoil the poor. I go to see your lord, 
 the king, who will be the saviour of poor men. Rejoice in 
 him, for your time of redemption draweth nigh." With 
 tumult and shouting the procession riots along between the 
 market stalls of Cheapside to the New Gate ; but Fitz 
 Thedmar, the haughty chronicler of the aristocratic party, 
 sits down at his desk with a snarl to jot down in his 
 annals : — " FitzMary bribed the king, who sent letters com- 
 manding the city to elect him as sheriff, howbeit he failed of 
 his evil counsel." 
 
 Leaving FitzMary to ride along by the strand of the river, 
 by bushes and rivulets, past palace of noble and inn of 
 bishop, let us try to estimate the political situation in the 
 city in the early years of our foundation. 
 
 There were two parties in the city in the thirteenth and 
 fourteenth centuries. These were the aristocratic burghers, 
 men of wealth and family, and the traders and artisans, who 
 suspected that they were paying more than their fair share of 
 the taxes. The ruling families had all the wealth and power. 
 Theoretically they were supposed to rule with the consent of 
 the populace, but the craftsmen complained that they had no 
 voice in the government. 
 
 The young king, who inflicted on the city such a terrible 
 half-century, was always in want of money for his favourites, 
 and for such buildings as Westminster Abbey ; and the 
 charters of the city, which had already been paid for in hard 
 coin, stood in the way of his insatiable demands. Now the 
 oligarchs or ruling families stood fast by the rights and 
 privileges of the city : even Simon FitzMary appears to have 
 sided with them, and to have voiced the popular sentiment in 
 refusing to pay over to the king some of the money demanded. 
 He was sheriff in 1235-6 and in 1246-7. In both his years- 
 of office he failed to pay into the Exchequer the whole of 
 the tax assessed. He was fined the first time and arrested 
 the second. 
 
 Henry HI was, therefore, anxious to humble the aristo- 
 
THE FOUNDER 
 
 29 
 
 cratic party, and to extort from a divided city all he could 
 squeeze out of it. It was his cue to play off one party 
 against the other, while he watched for an opportunity of 
 
 The account of FitzMary with the Exchequer would be kept 
 by the aid of these notched sticks. Each notcli represented 
 a sum of money according to its width. The notches were 
 cut on the same side of a wand of willow, and the notched 
 wand was then sliced down the middle. One side (the tally) 
 was given as a receipt for payment, and the other kept by 
 the Exchequer. 
 
 overthrowing the city's liberties altogether. In this trian- 
 gular duel he appears to have been assisted, as a rule, by 
 FitzMary. 
 
 Our founder may have been (as I suggest) the incor- 
 ruptible champion of the commons against the privileged 
 
30 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 oligarchs. His fellow-aldermen, however, had no doubt 
 about his being the tool and creature of the king. The 
 chronicler, who was a fierce partisan on the " Whig " side, 
 arraigns him as a traitor to the city, and notes with unctuous 
 complacency his disgrace. " He had bribed the king " ; he 
 had fomented an artificial law-suit, so that the king might 
 intervene as a Court of Appeal against the jurisdiction and 
 privileges of London. He had opposed the re-election of a 
 member of one of the ruling families as sheriff, shouting out 
 that he was a " perjurer." " And there were also many evil 
 and detestable actions, of which he had been secretly guilty 
 against the franchises of the city." Accordingly in 1248 
 the mayor, who was willing to make terms with the king on 
 condition that he might purge the town of a popular agitator, 
 deprived Simon FitzMary (not for the first time) of his alder- 
 manry ; and the men of the ward chose Alexander, of Shore- 
 ditch, the ironmonger, in his stead — apparently at Walbrook. 
 
 In suchwise FitzMary, after sitting at table with king and 
 aldermen and thanes — in the light and warmth of power — 
 passes swiftly out by the other door, and the light of history 
 ceases to shine upon him. 
 
 Perhaps, however, he was not the shifty, insincere, and 
 intriguing creature of the aristocratic tradition : possibly his 
 name ought rather to be entered on London's roll of fame. 
 There is at any rate just an incidental allusion to him in the 
 cartulary of the Holy Trinity Priory, Aldgate, which con- 
 ceivably makes for a more favourable interpretation of his 
 character and policy. 
 
 One Osbert, rector of St. Mary Bothaw (Cannon Street 
 Station will indicate the neighbourhood for us), gave certain 
 lands, according to the cartulary, to the abbey of Bermondsey, 
 and Simon FitzMary, evidently an intimate friend of his, 
 witnessed the donation with his signature in 1248. Now it 
 is not impossible that this Osbert was a member of a famous 
 family which belonged to the governing classes of the city, 
 and bestowed great benefactions on houses of religion. It 
 was William Fitz Osbert — he wore a long beard in scorn of 
 NoriDan fashiori — who die4 as a niartyr on behalf of public 
 
THE FOUNDER 
 
 31 
 
 rights in 1196, about fifty years before the date of the deed 
 I examined. He deserted his own class and gathered the 
 traders and artisans to his standard, saying that he would go 
 
 '-y-s- 
 
 
 
 '^. 
 
 }p^' 
 
 
 
 » A 
 
 
 ^i WD«<*«>«v<;i-« I 
 
 
 
 
 BISHOPSGATE AND SHOREDITCH AS IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 The site of the first hospital occupied the area between Dunning's land (N) and St. Botolph's 
 church (S) : on the east the highway (Bishopsgate Street) was the boundary, and on the west 
 Deepditch (Blomtield Street). The site of the second hospital is marked on the sketch by 
 Finsbury Circus. The site of "Staple Hall," opposite St. Botolph's, has belonged to Bethlem 
 
 since 1330 at least. 
 
 to the king (Richard I) and expose the selfishness and cor- 
 ruption of the aldermen. In the sight of the woman he loved 
 he was dragged out of sanctuary to his death and hanged 
 under the elms of Smithfield j but the people helcj him to b^ 
 
32 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 a saint, and women spent whole nights in prayer at the 
 scene of his execution. Miracles soon broke out — the arch- 
 bishop in vain prohibiting them — and the sick were healed 
 by contact with pieces of his chains and clothes. The 
 memories of his martyrdom and the tradition of his teaching 
 survived : possibly they inspired Simon FitzMary to follow 
 the example of a man whose career and convictions in so 
 many ways resembled his own : possibly they were the link 
 between him and the Osbert of the document. 
 
 It will be seen by reference to the sketch plan that the 
 " houses and gardens, marshes and orchards," donated in 
 1247 by Simon FitzMary, are approximately covered to-day 
 by Liverpool Street and the stations of the Great Eastern 
 Railway, of the North London Railway, and the Metropolitan 
 Railway. Between 1865 and 1870 all that was left of the 
 original donation — for much had been filched in the course of 
 centuries — was sold to the Great Eastern Railway and the 
 Metropolitan Railway Companies for a sum which ran into six 
 figures. This large sum of money went to swell the treasure 
 chest of our ancient charity, and we are therefore to-day 
 deriving benefit from the donation of Simon, the son of Mary, 
 while his name and beneficence remain without adequate 
 recognition. The founder of St. Bartholomew's Hospital — an 
 elder sister — has been commemorated in Rahere ward and a 
 Rahere street ; there is neither ward in our hospital nor tablet 
 in Bishopsgate to perpetuate the memory of FitzMary, twice 
 sheriff of the city of London and champion of the craftsmen. 
 Year by year I, at least, have returned to give thanks, and 
 have striven to teach others to show their gratitude, for the 
 kindness of the dead at a festal service held on Founder's Day. 
 Each year I have also, with the help of a lantern and slides, 
 sought to create a historic sense and a grateful conscience in 
 those who have reaped a harvest where they have never sown. 
 But perhaps this history of mine — with all its shortcomings 
 — may do more. I may be destined to be the Orpheus 
 who rescues Eurydice — who brings back out of darkness and 
 oblivion into the light of an unclouded day the true founder 
 of Bethlehem Hospital 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 A CENTURY OF SILENCE AND DISASTER 
 
 A HUNDRED years in the history of Bethlehem Hospital^ 
 Thrice between 1247 and 1346 had the Death Crier in his 
 gruesome livery chanted his solemn appeal before the gate of 
 the priory : " Good people, of your charity pray for the soul 
 of Henry (or Edward), your lord the king, who has departed 
 this mortal life." A hundred years, and yet the house only 
 emerges occasionally, when the light of chronicle or lease 
 falling upon it reveals existence rather than progress. 
 
 There are extant, perhaps, a dozen documents of one kind 
 and another, which have some bearing on the history of the 
 hospital in this century of silence and disaster, and it is sig- 
 nificant that the most important of them are dated towards 
 the close of the period. In the first place it will be interest- 
 ing to hear how far the estate given by Simon FitzMary in 
 1247 had been developed for purposes of building and revenue, 
 and I will therefore translate by way of evidence portions of 
 two leases dated 4th August, 1330: they are to be found 
 in the archives of the city of London in Letter-book E, 
 folio 207^. 
 
 "Be it known to all that brother William de Banham, 
 procurator-general of the order of the Bethleemites, has 
 leased and farmed out to Richard de Swanlond, citizen and 
 fishmonger of London, all that holding known as ' de Beth- 
 lehem,' with the houses and shops which have been already 
 erected upon it, with their gardens and ponds, together with 
 an annual revenue of twenty shillings payable by William de 
 Beauchamp, and with all other appurtenances, as Brother 
 
 4 i ^^ 
 
34 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 William holds them from the chamber of the Guildhall, 
 London. The aforesaid holding is situated without the 
 Bishop's Gate between the tenement of Adam de Burgoyne 
 and the garden of Roger Hubert on the north, and on the 
 south between the tenement of William le Rous and the 
 garden of Master Henry [de Colne], the rector of St. Botolph's, 
 Bishopsgate, and extends on the east from the king's highway 
 [Bishopsgate Street] and the tenement of Stephen of Abyndon 
 to the common moor on the west" [Moorfields], 
 
 This lease, which is to run for eleven years, contains a 
 covenant binding the lessee to pay forty shillings annually at 
 the Guildhall for all feudal dues and services, and continues as 
 follows : — 
 
 " Moreover the said brother, William, reserves for the use 
 of himself and his brethren one solar [an upper room] over 
 the Great Gate, which faces the king's highway, together 
 with the right of egress and ingress at will through the 
 shop near the gate, together with one private room in 
 the shop at the foot of the staircase to the solar aforesaid, 
 as well as a stable hard by the private room." 
 
 It is impossible to check the boundaries on the north 
 from the names in the lease, but in the light of later informa- 
 tion, it is probable that William de Banham and the brethren 
 had raised money by selling plots of land on the north, 
 and perhaps on the frontage of the street, for allusions to 
 alienation occur in a document sixteen years later. 
 
 The names in ancient documents are names to the general 
 reader, and nothing more. However, the index of the city 
 Letter-books, or a calendar of the Patent Rolls, will enable 
 me to infuse a little life even into dry bones. William de 
 Banham, the lessor, for example, must have played a 
 prominent part in the Civil War between Edward l\ and 
 Edward HI. In the reign of the first he was in prison at 
 Corfe Castle, from which he escaped ; he travelled in the 
 retinue of his successor. In 1321 Roger Hubert was 
 entrusted with the keys of Bishop's Gate : it was his duty 
 to close the main gates at sunset a;id to reopen them at 
 sunrise : the wicket gates were to be left open till the 
 
A CENTURY OF SILENCE AND DISASTER 35 
 
 curfew rang at St. Martin's le Grand, and not to be re- 
 opened till the first bell of Aeons (St. Thomas d'Acre) rang. 
 
 The site of the buildings mentioned in the first lease 
 passed out of the hands of the hospital in 1870, as I 
 have already mentioned. But the second lease, granted on 
 the same date, introduces a house and shop on the eastern 
 side of Bishopsgate, which is not included in the foundation 
 deed of 1247 : — 
 
 " Be it known to all that Brother William de Banham has 
 leased to Richard de Swanlond that house called * Le 
 Stapeledhall ' with the shop and grounds adjoining, as 
 it is situated between the tenement of John Geryn on the 
 north and the tenement of John Bird on the south and 
 the king's highway [Bishopsgate Street] on the west in 
 the parish of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate Without." 
 
 The term of this lease is to be twelve years, and the 
 lessee covenants to pay three shillings every quarter in 
 lieu of feudal dues to the nuns of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate. 
 
 Quite a little volume of history may be written round this 
 " Stapeled Hall " (now, in part, Devonshire House), the site 
 of which is still in our possession. Scholars are divided 
 as to the origin and meaning of the word " staple." I 
 imagine, however, that the Latin v^ord stabile must be 
 the parent of the staples, estapels, stapuls, etapes, and 
 other terms of commerce. The word stabile might have 
 meant a stand for goods, a market or place v^^here 
 goods stood, and possibly, later on, a standard. At 
 the date of the lease (1330) there were three Staple 
 Halls in London just outside the walls of the city. There 
 was the Staple Inn which still attracts the lover of the 
 picturesque at Holborn Bars ; a second, afterwards known 
 as the " Old Wool Quay," stood near the Custom House ; 
 the third v^as also on a trade route — the Ermyn street, 
 or Roman eastern road. These staple halls were custom- 
 houses where the dues payable on wool, skins, and leather 
 were taken, and presumably included warehouses for the 
 storage of these commodities with accommodation for 
 merchants, clerks, and others. These custom-houses were 
 
36 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 outside the city, which was governed by the mayor rather 
 than the king, inasmuch as the proceeds of the tolls from 
 these exports formed part of the king's private income. 
 The establishment of the Staple Halls appears to date 
 from 1 3 13, when Edward II ordered that these goods 
 (mostly wool) should be exported at fixed places, a company 
 of woolstaplers being organized with mayor and constables. 
 
 It remains to conjecture how this custom-house, wool- 
 warehouse, or wool merchants' residence, with its shops and 
 gardens came into the hands of the brothers of Bethlehem. 
 It is conceivable that Simon FitzMary, if, as it appears from 
 the deed of foundation, he had no kith or kin, might have 
 bequeathed his own house to them. He might have been 
 a woolstapler, and this might have been his warehouse and 
 mansion. I shall come back to the site of the " Stapeled 
 Hall " to see Queen Elizabeth, to dine with a lord, or to 
 attend, if soldiers and mob will permit me, some first day 
 meetings of the Society of Friends. 
 
 We may pass from lands and houses to the brothers to 
 whom they belonged. Whatever was the extent of their 
 activities, the revenues of the order were insufficient to main- 
 tain the work of a hospice for the poor and infirm, and they 
 had to travel about the country begging for funds. In the 
 early part of his reign Edward III issued half a dozen 
 licences to the brothers authorizing them to beg for their 
 needs. The language of each " Protection " is much the 
 same, but I will transcribe a licence for 1329 which was to hold 
 good for two years, because it is the first document in which 
 the word " hospital " (hospice) is applied to the priory. 
 
 " To the archbishops and bishops, to the abbots and priors 
 as well as to all bailiffs and to our faithful subjects in 
 England, Ireland, and Wales. You are hereby to under- 
 stand that we have received under our special protection the 
 master and brethren of the hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem 
 without Bishopsgate as well as their lands, revenues, and all 
 their possessions. We, therefore, beg of you to extend a 
 kindly welcome to any of them who come before you to 
 gather alms, and we desire that you will allow them to appeal 
 
A REQUIEM MASS. 
 
 (By permission of Messrs. Seeley & Co.) 
 (See p. 48.) 
 
 Devonshire House, Bishopsgate, occupies the sites of the earl of Devonshire's 
 mansion, Staple Hall, and the Dolphin inn. 
 
 To face p. 36. 
 
A CENTURY OF SILENCE AND DISASTER 37 
 
 to your people for alms without hindrance in your churches. 
 Moreover, we give commandment to our bailiffs and our 
 faithful subjects to defend the said master and brethren, or 
 their agents, and to suffer no injury to be done to them or to 
 their goods." 
 
 The language of this deed, in which the king is said to have 
 taken the lands and revenues of the brothers under his special 
 protection, rather suggests that he had already seized the 
 hospital as an alien priory. 
 
 No news is often bad news. The meagre information 
 which the documents of the fourteenth century afford to 
 us hardly breaks the silence of the thirteenth century. 
 But the silence, though we knew it not at the time, really 
 portended disaster. For many years I had passed by the 
 reference to the documents, in which the story of the tragedy 
 lay buried, without guessing what was covered by the innocent 
 phrases of the official calendar. But, as I translated the 
 whole of the original of folio 128, in the city Letter-book F, 
 I felt as if I was reading the diary of those who sat through 
 the long vigil of the night by the bedside of a sufferer, 
 stripped of everything, abandoned by nearly everybody, and, 
 as it seemed, at the point of death. 
 
 It is in part a petition presented in 1346 to the mayor and 
 aldermen by the " master. Brother John Matthew de Norton, 
 and brethren of the order of knighthood of the Blessed Mary 
 of Bethlehem." The petitioners, having considered their 
 miserable plight, earnestly plead that they may be received 
 under the protection and patronage of the city. In the 
 course of their story they recount how the present house had 
 been built further back than the memory of any man living 
 on a plot of vacant land out of the alms and legacies given 
 from ancient times by the faithful people of Christ in divers 
 parts of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. But master 
 and brethren had " gone the way of all flesh," before they had 
 been able to provide any permanent endowment, or secure 
 influential patronage. Their failure to make provision was 
 due to the disasters which from the first days of its infancy 
 had stunted the growth of the monastery. " They had 
 
38 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 suffered from losses, damage to property, acts of violence, 
 oppression, extortion, and danger of death ; from reviling, 
 scandal, and their own dissensions. Even from the very 
 beginning of its history the house had been utterly defence- 
 less, and in continual disrepute ; to-day it lay open to any 
 attack and misrepresentation — widowed, as it were, orphaned, 
 and altogether desolate." The result of all these misfortunes 
 
 A CITY GATE. 
 
 was that it had been unable to administer its own affairs, to 
 defend its own interests, or to maintain the brothers of an 
 order — "so worthy, so famous, and so canonical." 
 
 This, then, was our century of disaster, poverty and failure. 
 Every day in that hundred years a procession of poor and 
 sick and devout streamed through the stately gate of Bishop 
 Erkenwald. But it was a mortifying recognition of the 
 
A CENTURY OF SILENCE AND DISASTER 39 
 
 poverty and disrepute of the brethren that they hurried past 
 the gabled houses of " Betleem " on their way to the richer 
 and more popular convent of St. Mary Spital, which towered 
 in splendour and usefulness lower down on the right: Spital 
 Square, Norton Folgate, marks the site of our ancient rival. 
 
 But the priory had been built on land given by a citizen 
 and sheriff of London, and " princely benefactions " had, at 
 the first, ^' been given by citizens of London to those who 
 were serving God in this place for pious, pure, and charitable 
 uses." To the mayor and aldermen, therefore, they make 
 their supplication. 
 
 " Having considered the princely benefactions made and 
 the alms collected by the citizens in the past, and having 
 taken into account the honour and glory which would accrue 
 to the city, should it come to the relief of so famous an 
 order, they have thought good to make supplication to the 
 mayor and aldermen that they would receive the brethren 
 themselves as well as their house, with all the rights and 
 privileges appertaining to it, under their special and perpetual 
 patronage, maintenance, and protection, as a remedy neces- 
 sary for themselves and their successors, and for ever effectual 
 against such great tribulations." 
 
 This felicitous appeal to the memories of the past re- 
 echoed sympathetically within the walls of the council 
 chamber, and the mayor and aldermen proceeded to give 
 a very cordial reply to the petition of the master and 
 brethren. 
 
 " Because we find the petition to be full of religion, good- 
 will, and charity, because we desire to follow, as far as we 
 may, with the grace of God, in the pious, the kindly, and 
 charitable footsteps of our fathers and predecessors, and 
 because we desire to promote the glory of God, and the 
 exaltation of the same house and order, we have, therefore, 
 taken under our protection the master and brethren and all 
 their successors for ever." 
 
 Some five days later {i.e., on 20th October, 1346) this 
 expression of the goodwill of the city towards the hos- 
 pital was translated into a formal " agreement between 
 
40 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 Richard Lacer and Brother John Matthew de Norton," 
 touching the election, the duties, and the jurisdiction of the 
 mayor and two aldermen, or any two other citizens, to be 
 annually elected. 
 
 THE HABIT AXD STAR OF THE ORDER OF THE KNIGHTS OF THE BLESSED 
 MARY OF BETHLEHEM AS IN I257. 
 
 Thus was the garrison relieved and the enemy put to 
 flight — put to flight all their anxieties, all their unpopularity, 
 all their dissensions, and all the stagnation of their work — 
 just three days before the anniversary of the foundation. 
 
A CENTURY OF SILENCE AND DISASTER 41 
 
 We hope that the city, which had raised the siege, invited 
 the hungry " Knights of the Star " to eat, drink, and be 
 merry on the anniversary over the agreement. Mediaeval 
 aldermen began dining at twelve, and each course — with music 
 and dancing between — was often a dinner in itself. They 
 ransacked woods and marshes for all sorts and sizes of birds, 
 which were served with the sweetest of sauces. And the 
 cook would send up between each course a "subtlety," or 
 composition in sugar: perhaps on 23rd October, 1346, it was 
 the " Maydon Marie and Gabrielle," in honour of the hospital 
 of our Lady of Bethlehem. 
 
 Doubtless the conversation took some colour from the 
 woeful state of the Holy Land. The chapter of Bethlehem 
 had been driven out of it, it would seem, finally in 1291, and 
 the Franciscans were in charge of the " venerable church " of 
 the Nativity, as they are to-day. But Richard Lacer, the 
 mayor, was optimistic, and he took for a toast some sentences 
 out of the master's petition. 
 
 " May the order of the Blessed Mary of Bethlehem, which 
 was the first order of the Church catholic created next after 
 the order of Christ and His apostles, and descends, as origi- 
 nally created, directly from that order, for ever flourish by 
 means of this house among all the orders of the Church 
 catholic, and may it fulfil the aims and objects for which 
 it was at the first introduced and instituted from such ancient 
 times by so many holy men and for such holy ends ! " 
 
 And those who sat at the high table, or lower down at the 
 trestled tables in the rush-strewn hall, murmured a fervent 
 "Amen." 
 
 The choicest wine from the vale of Gloucester — for Eng- 
 land had its own vineyards once upon a time — seemed to-day 
 to exhale a magic power. And, as the loving-cup passed 
 round from mayor to master, and from monk to citizen, the 
 men who wore on their copes and mantles the red star of 
 Bethlehem, with its centre of azure blue, were vouchsafed 
 a vision of the days to be. It might have been a fleeting 
 glimpse of airy galleries seen through waving palms and 
 bright clusters of flowers, where men and women rested 
 
42 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 quietly, if sometimes sadly, among their books and pictures. 
 But as yet no one profanely dreamed that the gift of healing 
 lay in the hands of nature rather than with the Church, 
 and therefore, as in an ecstasy, they seemed to see amid 
 wreaths of smoke the censer rise and fall ; and they were 
 blessing multitudes of sick folk led forward to kneel before 
 a famous shrine of miracles and healing. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE CITIZENS 
 
 The vision of the brothers seemed but a foretaste of the 
 prosperity and popularity already awaiting the priory. The 
 mayor and aldermen decided, as we have seen, to save such 
 an ancient monument of civic charity : they believed that it 
 might "rise again and go on its way," if only it were "assisted 
 and strengthened by the pious alms of the citizens." How- 
 ever, they were men of business, and they drew up an 
 agreement, duly signed by both parties, which was evidently 
 intended to prevent the recurrence of former scandals. From 
 the documents already quoted, I gather that the house had 
 been indiscriminately plundered by its foreign visitor and his 
 representatives, by king and citizen, by disbanded soldier, by 
 dishonest collector, and verminous tramp. And there must 
 have been chaos, waste and peculation, where there should 
 have been discipline, supervision, economy, and a ledger. 
 
 To enter into more detail — the Agreement, which is en- 
 dorsed "Bedlem" in Letter-book F, folio 129, sets forth that 
 two aldermen are to be chosen each year on St. Matthew's 
 Qav in the chamber of the Guildhall directly after the 
 election of the sheriffs in its hall, the first by the mayor 
 and aldermen, and the second by the master and brethren 
 of the house. These two governors, as we may call them, 
 "are fo" serve for one year, and there is to be a simHar 
 "election each year, until all the four-and-twenty aldermen 
 have been elected on the administration of "Bedlem." The 
 four-and-twenty aldermen are finally by virtue of their elec- 
 tion to form a permanent court of governors, the mayor on 
 
 43 
 
44 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 every occasion acting as president. When every alderman 
 in succession has served his year of office, " other citizens — 
 good and faithful, able and devout " — are to be elected, year 
 by year, in the same manner, and with the same rights and 
 privileges, according to seniority. 
 
 So far as their duties and jurisdiction are concerned — " It 
 shall pertain to their office to give audience to all, to exercise 
 supervision over all, and to see that master, brethren, and 
 servants labour with diligence in matters temporal, and 
 devote themselves earnestly to everything that tends to the 
 usefulness and advancement of the house and order. In 
 the case of disobedience, let the offender be punished, if he 
 consents thereto, at the next chapter according to the rules 
 of the order and the statutes of the house. But, should he 
 refuse to submit, let him receive punishment on an appointed 
 day in the hall of the order at the hands of the master and 
 brethren in the presence of the aldermen acting as assessors." 
 
 The two governors were also, we learn, to insist on a 
 searching audit twice a year, at Easter and Michaelmas. 
 No further alienation of houses and lands was to be per- 
 mitted, no leases granted for a term of years, and no 
 admission of brothers and sisters or members of the con- 
 fraternity was to take place, without the knowledge and 
 consent of the two governors. 
 
 In return for such supervision, and for the assistance 
 promised, the master and brethren covenanted to allow the 
 mayor, aldermen, and other governors the right to sit on the 
 raised dais of honour, and to wear the habit of the order 
 along with the master. Finally, after their death, their obits, 
 or days of memorial, were to be kept on the Feast of the 
 Epiphany, and throughout the octave, for ever. 
 
 But the citizens are devout and charitable, as well as men 
 of business. They begin to take an interest in the comple- 
 tion of the new chapel ; they become members of confra- 
 ternities which kept lights burning before the altar in the 
 oratory ; and the hospital is remembered in their wills. For 
 example, John Nasing, brewer, whose will was signed in 
 1 361, orders that the "knives attached to his girdle "(they 
 
THE CITIZENS 45 
 
 were for ornament and not for use) should be sold, and half 
 the proceeds devoted to the " new work [or building] of the 
 church of St. Mary de Bedelem " : Matilda Balsham be- 
 queaths her " gardens within the cloister " for the same 
 object. Then there is that worthy old fellow, John of 
 Croydon, sheriff and fishmonger. In 1378 he sat down to 
 make his will. He had to decide a very serious point on 
 which he vacillated a long time, the destiny of his " Norfolk 
 bedstead," and of his bed " worked with dolphins in tapestry." 
 This at last achieved, he left money to the leper in the lazar- 
 house and to the prisoner in Newgate to pray for his soul — 
 the greater the sufferer, the greater the efficacy of his prayers. 
 Finally, he bequeathed something for the "work" of St. Mary 
 de Bedelem, stipulating that his name should be " entered in 
 its book to be had in remembrance." 
 
 This would be the Book of Obituaries, Book of Bene- 
 factors, or, as it was sometimes called, the Book of Life. 
 It would contain a martyrology and an illuminated calendar 
 of the year, together with notes on chronology and on the 
 unlucky days of the month. Interspersed throughout the 
 calendar would be entered at the proper dates the memorial 
 days of benefactors, " that by the perishable memorial of 
 written names they might be written in the pages of the 
 heavenly book." The benefactors of the hospital rejoiced 
 to think that on their anniversaries their names would be 
 recited at the early mass, laid upon the altar, and commended 
 to the mercy of God during the Holy Mysteries. John of 
 Croydon passed away in peace, for he heard the priest 
 murmuring in his ear — " Right dear in the sight of the Lord 
 is the death of His saints." 
 
 It would not be accurate to say that the Drapers' Com- 
 pany owes its existence to Bethlehem Hospital. But as 
 early as 1361 the drapers, who then clustered about Corn- 
 hill, enrolled themselves in the confraternity of St. Mary of 
 Bethlehem, and annually on the Feast of the Purification of 
 Our Lady (2nd February) met to hear mass in the chapel : — 
 
 " A brotherhood was begun by men of London for the 
 amendment of their lives, by assent of Brother William Tytte, 
 
46 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 brother of the said hospital of our Lady of Bethlehem, 
 London, which is a cell of the place of Bethleem, and by 
 
 3ttu(t'- 
 
 ^ rb Rl* ^*- luce euntjl*- fni if' j): • re . jc] i^Ql in 
 fico?ptctie • 
 
 ttni 
 
 jmw ^'•fiibeirtDftjem'^*. 
 
 
 SAMPLE PAGE FROM A BENEFACTORS' BOOK WITH IMAGINARY DETAILS. 
 
 other good people, drapers of Cornhill, and other good men 
 and women." 
 
THE CITIZENS 47 
 
 In some form or other, no doubt, the drapers, or certain 
 classes of the trade, acted as a body for trade purposes as 
 early as the reign of Henry I, but the fact remains that the 
 Drapers' Company did not receive their first regular charter 
 of incorporation till 1364, or three years later than the date 
 of the confraternity of drapers. 
 
 The members of this guild are to be people of good 
 character, or they will be ousted for ever : they are to wear 
 a livery, and to pay for it at once : dinner bills must be paid 
 on the next day : misfortune is to be helped out of the 
 common box : expulsion is to follow gambling, or failure to 
 pay the chaplain's salary : at death a member may be buried 
 in the churchyard at Bethlem, if he will, the brothers and 
 sisters being present at the funeral service in their livery. 
 The drapers were associated with us for religious and social, 
 rather than for commercial, purposes. Nevertheless, if any 
 of the said brotherhood shall be found " practising works of 
 deceit on the common people, and in slander of the said 
 brotherhood, he shall be expelled for ever." The convent 
 would be the richer for its association with the drapers, and 
 out of this confraternity may have grown another which was 
 at work for the benefit of the " distraught and frenzied " 
 in 1519. 
 
 The growing popularity of the order injured the rector 
 of their parish church, and he threatened retaliation. How- 
 ever, in the May of 1362 — in the previous year we were 
 watching the drapers at mass in the convent oratory one 
 rainy day in February — the master and brethren made their 
 peace with him. Master John de Bradeley of St. Botolph's, 
 Bishopsgate Without, had suffered as much from the intrusion 
 of these privileged regulars as the secular clergy usually 
 suffered when monks made a settlement in their parish. 
 
 I discovered the amusing story of the quarrel in the 
 library of St. Paul's Cathedral : it illustrates the legitimate 
 annoyance of the parochial clergy, when they found a 
 religious order coaxing away the members of their regular 
 congregation, and diverting fees and tithes from their proper 
 destiny. Such an order as that of the Star of Bethlehem 
 
48 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 acknowledged no episcopal jurisdiction, being responsible 
 to the pope alone. It was difficult, therefore, to prevent 
 the brothers from fishing in waters not their own. The 
 words " slander," " abuse," and " molestation," which fall 
 from the lips of the ruffled brethren, suggest that the rector 
 stigmatized the poaching of his rivals in vigorous language : 
 he also threatened a campaign in the courts of London and 
 Rome. Fortunately, at a critical moment, " mutual friends 
 intervened," convinced both the belligerents that litigation 
 was a ruinous remedy, and succeeded in getting the signatures 
 of both parties to a permanent agreement. 
 
 The master and brethren of the " house or oratory of the 
 Blessed Mary of Bedelem " gained something, and gave up 
 something, under the terms of the compromise. They were, 
 indeed, to be allowed to complete the chapel, for the building 
 of which they had already received (as we have noticed) 
 many gifts and legacies, and to hang bells for ringing in 
 its belfry. They were to have the right — "without John 
 de Bradeley to say to them nay " — to perform Divine 
 services and to celebrate the sacraments in their chapel, 
 and, as many of the devouter folk credited the monks and 
 their cemetery with superior sanctity, they were granted the 
 privilege of interring such in their consecrated ground. But, 
 on the other hand, all burial fees in such cases were to be 
 shared equally with the rector of St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate 
 Without, if he were the rector of the people buried. Further- 
 more the services in the convent church and the administration 
 of the sacraments were, as a rule, to be confined to the order 
 and its servants. Finally, in the plainest and most binding 
 phraseology of the law, the brothers were forbidden to touch 
 the tithes, oblations, obventions, or any other dues of the 
 rector of their parish, who was to be compensated by an 
 annual sum of thirteen shillings and fourpence for the 
 spiritual raids of the brothers of Bedelem. 
 
 Unfortunately, some passages in the manuscript call up 
 the picture of a tired copyist and some dropped lines. 
 Nevertheless certain of the sentences or expressions used 
 in the mediaeval strip of parchment enable me to reveal the 
 
THE CITIZENS 49 
 
 fresco beneath the whitewash. For example, the growth 
 of the stunted priory is indicated by its passage from an 
 "oratory" towards a "chapel," and it is, as in 1346, 
 "commonly reputed to be an order of knighthood." One 
 last point which is but a conjecture. A proper name in the 
 indenture, transcribed for me as Saudelee, refers, I fancy, to a 
 man of influence at the court of the king, one Sir James 
 Audley, or De Audley. In a later chapter one of my wit- 
 nesses explains that Edward III placed Monsieur James 
 de Audley in charge of the hospital as its warden. No date 
 is given for this exercise of royal patronage, but it would 
 appear to be after 1350 and before 1375. In our manuscript 
 under the date of 1362 this knight is spoken of as a " founder 
 of the house," and the new chapel appears to have been 
 erected as a memorial of his influence or generosity. 
 
 The sun was shining at last, but, alas ! fresh clouds were 
 already gathering on the horizon. 
 
 There are daughters who are doomed to repeat the 
 tragedies of their mothers' lives. In the Holy Land the 
 Saracen was ever in ambush, ready at any moment to hurl 
 fire and steel against the venerable basilica of Bethlehem, 
 and it has been the fate of Bethlehem Hospital to suffer 
 again and again from the invasion of various sorts of 
 Saracens. 
 
 In 1347, for example, the angel of death spread his wings 
 to the blast on some battlefield in China, and breathed as 
 he passed over England, in 1361, plague and famine and 
 disaster. The monk of Bedelem went out with hawk and 
 hounds to hunt in Lambeth marshes, and his hounds returned 
 alone. Benefactors were lighting a candle in honour of our 
 Lady of Bedelem, when the light of life was quenched for 
 ever. Indeed, so many of the benefactors of the monastery 
 perished in the Black Death that a cry of despair from its 
 impoverished monks reached the ears of Urban V. In reply 
 the pope out of his treasury, overflowing with the merits earned 
 for it by saint and martyr, graciously granted a spiritual con- 
 tribution, which rallied new friends around the house. 
 
 In the midst of death we are in life : the Black Death 
 
 5 
 
50 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 gave wages and liberty to the labourer : it deepened the 
 charity and religion of those who survived the pestilence, 
 and the hospice benefited from that devoutness and sympathy 
 which often follows bereavement or disaster. In 1367, for 
 
 THE CHOIR OF THE CHAPEL OF THE BISHOP OF BETHLEHEM, 
 CLAMECY, FRANCE. 
 
 It is now the dining-room of tlie Hotel de la Boule-d'Or. 
 
 instance, there was a rumour that the bishop of Bethlehem — 
 long settled in Clamecy, France, with his chapter — proposed 
 to hand over the hospital and its tenants for a sum of ready 
 money to the highest bidder. This system of farming-out had 
 already proved most disastrous to the welfare of the hospice 
 
777^ CITIZENS 51 
 
 and its poor. Accordingly the mayor wrote the following 
 letter of courteous remonstrance to the bishop, by the hands 
 of " his dear friend, Master Roger de Freton," presumably 
 the prior : — 
 
 " To the very reverend and honourable father in God, 
 the bishop of Bedlem, the mayor and aldermen of the city 
 of London, in England, who are at his service in all things, 
 offer homage and all reverence : — 
 
 " Certain good folk of the city of London, who are worthy 
 
 ^5tel de la Boule - d'o^. 
 
 A CLAMEGY (Nievre) 
 
 Omnibus d ions les Trains, — Voitares a volonii 
 
 La, Salle h Manger est le Chceur de I'Eglise dpiscopale dc Bethltl-em 
 Guillaume HI, comtc de Nevers, I'a fondee en 1147. 
 
 " SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI ! " 
 
 of credit by reason of their almsgiving and their perfect 
 charity, have shown to us, most reverend father, that the poor 
 and humble hospital of Bedelem without Bishopsgate, in the 
 suburb of the said city, which was founded by our ancestors 
 in honour of the glorious Virgin Mary, the mother of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, God Almighty, is about to be let to farm 
 by your advice. Now this would be very prejudicial and 
 injurious at all times to the said hospital, and opposed to 
 public sentiment. For the master and brethren of the said 
 hospital who are now dwelling in that house are people of 
 
52 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 good reputation and manner of life, and they have commenced 
 the great and worthy work of a chapel in the said hospital, 
 and this worthy work cannot be brought to a successful 
 conclusion without the alms of the mayor and aldermen and 
 other good folk. And at present many good people are daily 
 withdrawing their alms from the said hospital for the reason 
 aforesaid. Wherefore we pray your good lordship that the 
 said hospital may not be farmed out without the common 
 assent of the said city, for such a thing would turn to the 
 great dishonour of yourself, and to the injury of the hospital 
 for all time. May the Holy Spirit always have you in His 
 keeping, and may He grant you a long and happy life." 
 
 For eight years more the baker of the " longe house " 
 in the " northlond " baked his daily batch of loaves without 
 a misgiving : for eight years more Brother Thomas, the 
 pardoner, went out through the " forparadys " on his 
 begging-tour in Kent, glib of tongue and jolly of face : for 
 eight years more the withered prior, always apprehensive of 
 some ill, climbed up the stairs to his " chamber above the 
 Great Gate." And then the Saracens in another guise 
 appeared ; and he who knocked so loudly and so imperiously 
 demanded entrance in the king's name. 
 
 V 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE KING 
 
 
 X 
 
 
 A MESSENGER. 
 (After a mediceval drawing.) 
 
 This is the picture of the messenger who bade the porter 
 open the gate in the name of the king : he was paid three- 
 pence a day and had four shillings and eightpence a year to 
 buy shoes. 
 
 And this is the sort of letter — for it is modelled on an 
 extant example — which Edward III might have written, 
 when he seized the alien priory of Bethleem. 
 
 " Inasmuch as the king of France hath seized our inherit- 
 ance, plundering, burning and slaying ; and forasmuch as 
 
 53 
 
54 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 we have with the advice of our council ordained that all 
 lands, tenements, and goods within our realm belonging to 
 Frenchmen, whether secular or religious, shall be wrested from 
 the hands of the king of France : we have, therefore, assigned 
 to you, William, the charge of taking possession on our behalf 
 of all the goods of aliens, which belong to the priory, of which 
 we hereby appoint you vicar ; and you are to appear in 
 person before us and our council at Westminster seven days 
 hence to give an account of your revenues and disbursements. 
 Do all diligence that we suffer not by your neglect." 
 
 The hospital was the daughter-house of a foreign convent 
 in France, to which it still paid an annual " apport " of 
 thirteen shillings and fourpence. Such a house naturally 
 enough remained in intercourse and correspondence with the 
 headquarters of its order. However, when war broke out 
 with France, as happened in 1337 and 1369, the king at once 
 seized the revenues of all alien priories, and diverted them 
 from the French into the English exchequer. In time of war 
 alien monks in England were, of course, objects of suspicion ; 
 in 1346 it was proposed to banish them, or at least to intercept 
 all letters passing between English and French monasteries. 
 
 Alien priories were sequestrated by the crown notably in 
 1285, 1337, and 1369, and, indeed, documentary allusions 
 indicate that Bethlehem Hospital was seized more than 
 once. For example, on i6th December, 1367, Edward HI 
 ordered the arrest of William, the warden, and Ralph 
 Chircheman, the proctor, of the hospital. They were charged 
 with obtaining money all over England by means of forged 
 indulgences, and were handed over to the archbishop of 
 Canterbury for judgment. Eight years later Bethlem seems 
 once more to have felt the heavy hand of Edward HI. At 
 least this is how I interpret a mysterious entry in our muni- 
 ment book which appears to summarize an ancient document 
 once in the keeping of Bethlem or Bridewell. According to 
 this entry Edward HI issued a writ of certiorari against the 
 hospital in the forty-eighth year of his reign (?>., in 1375), 
 when the " vicar certified " that the hospital was of the 
 foundation of the city of London, that it was worth £/^ a 
 
/•■■ 
 
 '■■- fs^^mo 
 
 
 "■'^J 
 
 -/ 
 
 " ^ 
 
 
 '"•X 
 
 «^-2:te*~-^v-i, *'^' 
 
 ■^^:5- 
 
 
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 „ V— '*:.^'"^ V 
 
 
 
 ■<?^ 
 
 s , ^, 
 
 
 
 /I 
 
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 •-A 
 
THE KING 55 
 
 year, and that it paid thirteen and fourpence to the bishop of 
 Bethlehem as well as forty shillings to the city chamberlain. 
 To my mind the word " vicar " suggests a representative of 
 the king placed in charge of an alien priory during an 
 inquisition. In any case, however, such seizures must have 
 taken place in the course of the protracted controversy 
 between the king and the city over the question of patronage. 
 It may be desirable at this turn in the road to touch lightly 
 on the varying fortunes which attended the parties in the 
 dispute. Various allusions in mediaeval and later documents 
 may, indeed, be said to prove that the king appointed to the 
 mastership of the hospital now and again between 1247 and 
 1346. But, at any rate, in 1350 on the death of Brother 
 John Matthew de Norton, with whom the mayor and 
 corporation had made a solemn agreement in 1346, the city 
 at once "took the hospital into their own hands," dealt with a 
 lease of the convent property, and, presumably, elected the 
 new master. We cannot say for certain whether William 
 Tytte was elected on that occasion, but at any rate he is 
 mentioned some eleven years later as the brother under 
 whose auspices a confraternity of drapers met annually on 
 the Feast of the Purification (2nd February) in the chapel of 
 the hospice. He appears to have held office — with the 
 respect of all lovers of charity and discipline — until the 
 spring of the year 1 38 1, when on 21st April the mayor 
 (Walworth) and citizens found it necessary to elect in his 
 place one John Gardyner, described as the chaplain of the 
 priory. The election of Gardyner, " for the term of his life," 
 was the signal for Richard II to nominate — as his opening 
 in the game — one " William Welles, Esquire," for the same 
 place. Check to the city ! The mayor and citizens were 
 undoubtedly within their legal rights (for they were parties 
 to a legal covenant with #he hospital) in refusing to admit 
 Welles — which they did without further parley. Check to 
 the king ! Accordingly Welles took his grievance to the 
 House of Commons in a petition which I have translated out 
 of a Norman-French document in the third volume of the 
 Rolls of Parliament. 
 
^^*^ 
 
 .^t-,^$/ ym. 
 
 ^^ 
 
 _y 
 
58 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 " William Welles, Esquire, maketh supplication to his very 
 puissant lord, the king, and to the wisdom of his parliament. 
 Whereas the king gave him the wardenship of the hospital 
 of Bedelem without Bishopsgate, London, the said William is 
 kept out of his rights by the men of the city, and cannot obtain 
 admission to that hospital, notwithstanding that the king and 
 all his progenitors have always presented to the said hospital, 
 and that all the wardens have been knights [chivalers], 
 as Monsieur James de Audley. Also, Monsieur John 
 Beauchamp sent a man to the said hospital by command- 
 ment of the grandfather (Edward III) of the present king, 
 and Monsieur John D'Arcy appointed a man, on the part of 
 the said grandfather, and they held and occupied the hospital 
 all their lives without being disturbed by anybody. He, 
 therefore, makes petition that the right of patronage be 
 tried by law, as between the king and the said people of 
 the city." 
 
 Welles was dryly advised by parliament to seek a remedy 
 in the court of chancery. Whether he did appeal, I do not 
 know. He swims out of our ken to enjoy a charge on some 
 civic office, thrown to him, perhaps, as a sop by the mayor 
 and aldermen. 
 
 Richard H, however, had no intention of accepting check- 
 mate, and his next move was to advance an ecclesiastical 
 piece, Robert of Lincoln (one of his chaplains), to a square 
 already occupied, as the mayor protested, by Gardyner. 
 Thereupon, I am inclined to think, the king upset the 
 chess-board, and rose up from the game the winner — by 
 the divine right and ultimate sanction of force. In an 
 acute stage of the controversy the bewildered bursar of 
 ^Bedelem hesitated about paying the ground-rent of twenty 
 shillings to the city chamberlain. The city lost no time 
 in asserting their rights, and ordered their sergeant to dis- 
 train on the tenements of the hospital for rent and arrears. 
 However, the king had carried his main point, and it was 
 not till the reign of Henry VIII that a mayor sat down 
 again to play with a king for the possession of Bethlehem 
 Hospital. 
 
THE KING 
 
 59 
 
 In addition to the right of patronage the king claimed the 
 right of quartering friends or old servants on religious 
 houses, and I am inclined to see the hand of Richard II in a 
 grant made on 22nd August, 1391, to a royal tradesman and 
 his wife. Robert Baron and Avice, his wife, are granted two 
 brothers' corrodies, or allowances for maintenance. They 
 stipulate that they are to do no menial work, and to receive 
 food as good and well cooked as the brothers and sisters. 
 On their part they agree to be present at prayers, and to 
 procure their friends and kinsfolk to help the priory, and to 
 relieve its sick and poor. Two months later (16th October, 
 
 A GAME OF CHESS. 
 
 1 391) they were granted leave to build on a vacant plot of 
 land within the liberty of Bedelem. They were also per- 
 mitted to construct a palisading to keep the inquisitive pigs 
 of St. Anthony out of their gardens. 
 
 In this same year of 1391 the Skinners' Company was 
 still composed of two confraternities. One met for worship 
 at St. Mary's Spittle at the Shoreditch end of Bishops- 
 gate Without, and their banner, I take it, was emblazoned 
 with the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, their 
 patroness. 
 
 But the confraternity of Corpus Christi would more appro- 
 
6o THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 priately be associated with St. Mary, Bedelem, where it 
 "had a Hght burning" — perhaps to the close of this year. 
 Bethlehem signifies the house of bread, and up to the 
 Reformation our coat-of-arms carried — instead of a chalice 
 and a skull — a chalice with a Host issuing from it. These 
 emblems of Corpus Christi (the Body of Christ) appear 
 on some of the illuminated manuscripts of the Skinners' 
 Company, and I have asked my friend, the artist, to insert 
 them on the banner borne on Corpus Christi Day in 1391 
 into Bedelem church. 
 
 On this Thursday after Trinity Sunday there are fresh 
 flowers on all the altars ; every house in Bishopsgate 
 Without and within the precincts of the hospital is gay with 
 hangings of every hue ; and many a window and niche 
 enshrines a Madonna or an image of St. Botolph. Within 
 the church of the " Blessed Marie of Bedelem " this summer 
 afternoon the brothers and sisters of the guild in their 
 brightest liveries and hoods are marshalling for the proces- 
 sion. The solemn roll of the rhythmic antiphon is heard for 
 a moment under the vaulted roof — 
 
 " Now, my tongue, the mystery telling 
 Of the glorious Body sing." 
 
 And then the procession issues out of the porch. First 
 comes the thurifer swinging incense ; then between two 
 acolytes the bearer of the cross. Behind a crimson 
 banner, on which is painted a chalice with the Host 
 issuing from it, march the clergy two and two in alb and 
 cope and cassock, each with a lighted taper " richly 
 decorated " in his hands. 
 
 For a space, as they wend their way around the quadrangle, 
 priest and alderman, sister and citizen pause outside a long 
 low gallery in front of a group of the " possessed," some of 
 whom are heavily manacled. They kneel instinctively, or 
 are forced on their knees, as the tabernacle of the most Holy 
 Sacrament under its rich canopy is held up before wild or 
 languid eyes. Then in the solemn hush which has stilled 
 
^'A 
 
 <^f-: 
 
 ^" 
 
 Such a banner would have been carried on Corpus Chrisli Day by the Skinners, 
 who worshipped at Bethk-hem Hospital m i3(ji. 
 
 (Drawn by F. H.) 
 
 To face p. 60. 
 
THE KING 6i 
 
 hysterical laughter and unclean tongue, the stern voice of the 
 exorcist is heard, as he traces the cross with the monstrance : 
 — " Unclean spirits of evil, I adjure you by the Body of Him 
 Who hath burst the gates of hell, and hath taken away the 
 chains from its captives, that ye cease to torment these 
 servants of Christ." And once again a cry for help rises up 
 to heaven : — 
 
 "O Saving Victim, opening wide 
 
 The gate of heaven to man below, 
 Our foes press on from every side, 
 
 Thine aid supply. Thy strength bestow.' 
 
 And so through Bishopsgate and along the streets of 
 London to the Skinners' Hall, perhaps in Dowgate Hill, as 
 old Stow once watched them. 
 
 In the accounts of the Skinners' Company there are 
 allusions to their annual Corpus Christi pageant, and one of 
 the modern frescoes in their hall depicts the pageant 
 passing through Cheapside. Let us therefore take our 
 places in such a procession later in the same summer's 
 day of 1 39 1. 
 
 A blare of trumpets and the clash of cymbals, and we are 
 on our way to Skinners' Well, near Clerkenwell, to witness a 
 miracle play performed by the Parish Clerks' Company. 
 The "giant" (St. Christopher carrying the infant Jesus) is a 
 very terrible personage with his mask and club, but the 
 garlanded children, dancing along to the music of 
 mandolines, make a sweet and pretty picture. Then 
 follows an unwieldy "pageant" (a platform on wheels) 
 dragged along by the apprentices of the craft. It repre- 
 sents Herod in Saracen mail raving and raging against 
 the Holy Family, the stable of Bethlehem being a tumble- 
 down shed, very much in want of repair. 
 
 In a play which began with the creation and ended with 
 the day of doom, there was fare suited to all tastes and 
 appetites. Even that terror of the thirsty patients, the wife 
 of Peter the porter, might have wept at the tender lullaby 
 
62 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 A MIRACLE OR MYSTERY PLAY. 
 {After a picture by C. 0. Skilbeck.) 
 
 crooned by the mothers of " Bedelem " before the massacre 
 of the innocents : — 
 
 "O sisters too, how may we do, 
 For to preserve this day 
 This tiny thing, for whom we sing, 
 By-by, lully, lullay?" 
 
THE KING 63 
 
 But in these mystery plays the humorous and the gro- 
 tesque intruded into the company of the solemn and sublime, 
 and nobody was so fastidious as to be shocked or to see 
 anything incongruous. Noah's wife refuses to enter the ark, 
 and scornfully advises her husband to sail in search of 
 another woman ; the shepherds only cease tossing a sheep- 
 stealer in a blanket to allow the impatient angels to raise 
 their Gloria in excelsis. Solomon consoles himself, when 
 nagged at by his wives, with a pot of beer, frequently 
 replenished. 
 
 Patients, servants, and tenants from the hospital — all 
 were there — and these were the episodes they enjoyed late 
 into the night. Bonfires were blazing, and the citizens were 
 feasting with their neighbours, in all the streets, as they 
 went home. 
 
 Verily Corpus Christi was the day of days in Bethlehem 
 Hospital (the house of the heavenly bread), at least till 1392, 
 after which a united confraternity of Skinners appears to 
 have met elsewhere. 
 
 In the future may we find the Skinners' Company as 
 good friends to us as in the past ! 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 -TRAFALGAR SQUARE" 
 
 / One of the masters of the Bishopsgate house — we may call 
 him our first medical superintendent — was a doctor of 
 medicine; this was John Arundell, 1457. And, as I am 
 writing the history of an ancient hospital, I shall grant 
 myself a licence to gossip now and again about the 
 physicians and surgeons of the Middle Ages. Perhaps also 
 it is salutary for the doctors of to-day — I know there is a 
 little spice of malice in the remark — to reflect that their 
 predecessors were just as superstitious, selfish and ridiculous 
 as their contemporaries. The works of John of Gaddesden 
 and John of Arderne are still in our libraries, and here and 
 elsewhere my literary illustrations are drawn from their 
 treatises on medicine and medical etiquette. 
 
 John of Gaddesden was the court physician of Edward II 
 
 (c. 1320) who wrapped small-pox cases in red to prevent any 
 
 marks of it from remaining. He prescribed pounded beetles 
 
 for the stone, and the heads of seven fat bats for diseases of 
 
 the spleen ; he had a magic necklace for the epilepsy, and he 
 
 ordered brandy — surely an efficacious remedy — for palsy of 
 
 the tongue. He was what we should call a " ladies' doctor " ; 
 
 he had many ways of ingratiating himself with them — the 
 
 secret of a new perfume and hair wash, or a recipe for a new 
 
 dish from the kitchen. He is supposed to be the original of 
 
 I Chaucer's physician, who " lov'd gold in special " ; he made 
 
 '' large sums of money by selling costly prescriptions to 
 
 J the rich. 
 
 John Arderne, the famous surgeon, must have been in 
 
 64 
 
^' TRAFALGAR SQUARE'' 65 
 
 London during the year 1377, with which this chapter deals. 
 He also had his art of extracting gold from the richer veins 
 of quartz. He made it a habit to inform a patient that his 
 cure for fistula would take double the time he himself antici- 
 pated. When the patient became convalescent before 
 his time, and poured out his gratitude to the author of so 
 speedy a recovery, the great surgeon gravely insisted that it 
 was largely due to the patient's own courage or constitution. 
 Such delicate flattering often won him a fee of £40, a set of 
 robes, and a small annuity, for a single operation. Presum- 
 ably both of the Johns were priests ; Arderne measured all 
 his processes of compounding by the time taken in saying 
 so many psalms or paternosters. 
 
 The herbalist outside St. Botolph's Church ceased to vend 
 " nature's priceless remedies," for his customers had rushed 
 off to the gate to see what the shouting meant. 
 
 A clanking of chains, and the swish of a whip, volleys of 
 virulent abuse and appalling blasphemy, peals of ribald 
 laughter from a roystering mob, and the threats of the spear- 
 men to the mud-slingers — such perhaps may have been the 
 scene when the patients from the Stone House, Charing Cross, 
 passed into an institution for ever associated with the keeping 
 and healing of the diseased in brain or nerve. 
 
 I should like to think that among the few who felt pity or 
 indignation at the sight was William Langland, the author of 
 the " Vision concerning Piers the Plowman." In this year of 
 1377 "Long Wille" was in Cornhill, singing funeral masses, 
 copying out legal documents, and revising his immortal cantos. 
 Dreamer, preacher, and satirist: Bunyan, Wycliffe, and Dante. 
 Wandering half-starved in his " shabby, russet robe " along 
 the country roads with Toms of Bedlam and artful beggars ; 
 on his way to Shoreditch with his " wyfi^ Kytte " and little 
 " Kalotte," an anxious, hungry group by Bethlehem Cross. 
 And sometimes his " reason waxed and waned till he was a 
 fool," and in these moody fits of mental aberration he would 
 imprudently refuse to doff his cap to the black velvet and 
 silver pendant of great ecclesiastics. No wonder his wife 
 sometimes " wished he were in heaven." 
 
 6 
 
 "> 
 
66 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 How tenderly, if too fancifully, he has written of the 
 " lunatic lollers " (wandering lunatics) of his day. 
 
 " They care not for cold, and they reck not of heat ; they 
 carry no money, nor even bags to beg with ; and they salute 
 no man by the wa}/, reverencing not even a mayor more than 
 another. They are all more or less mad according to the age 
 of the moon. But surely they walk the roads in the spirit 
 and guise of the apostles and disciples of Christ. Does not 
 the Holy Book teach us that we ought to receive into our 
 houses the poor and the wanderer ? Ye rich are ready to 
 entertain fools and minstrels, and to put up with all they say. 
 Much more should ye welcome and help lunatic lollers, who 
 are God's minstrels and merry-mouthed jesters. Under His 
 secret seal their sins are covered." 
 
 Even so in Mohammedan lands mad folks are regarded 
 as inspired, or under the special protection of Allah. 
 
 There is definite proof — furnished by the proceedings of 
 the visitation ordered by Henry IV — that the hospital 
 possessed a" house at Charing Cross" before 1403. It is on 
 record that this house contributed twenty shillings to its 
 annual revenues, but, according to Peter the porter, the 
 master had " alienated " it. In this instance I understand by 
 the expression that he had farmed it out on a long lease for a 
 sum of ready money and a small ground-rent : this farming- 
 out system led to great abuses in our mediaeval history. 
 According to a document quoted below such a house with 
 gardens and grounds was described in an "ancient lease 
 made in the reign of Henry VII " as the "Stone House." 
 In some leases granted between 1536 and 1545 it emerges — 
 along with a Bishopsgate house of ours which I have called 
 " Staple Hall " — as the " Stone House with its appurtenances 
 recently converted into three tenements with their appur- 
 tenances." It follows from the terms of these leases and of 
 subsequent documents that to-day Trafalgar Square approxi- 
 mately covers the site of the " Stone House and its appur- 
 tenances." Finally this ancient and interesting estate of the 
 hospital, somewhat shorn of its fleece (it is true) by the 
 malice of tenants and the carelessness of its trustees, was 
 
" TRAFALGAR SQUARE" 67 
 
 exchanged in 1830 with the crown for a valuable estate in 
 Piccadilly. 
 
 There is strong presumption that this house had been a 
 house for insane people before 1403, and that it was the 
 asylum from which certain insane patients were transferred 
 to Bethlehem Hospital — as its first insane patients — by 
 the order of one of the kings of England, not positively 
 identified. 
 
 In support of the second part of my argument let me 
 summon John Stow, the chronicler, from his tailor's board. 
 In the second edition of his book — published in 1603 — he 
 gives a corrected account of the origin and earlier use of the 
 ancient Stone House : — 
 
 " And so on to a lane that turneth to the parish church of 
 St. Martin in the Fields. Then [i.e., at the corner of the lane 
 and the highroad] had ye an house wherein sometime were 
 distraught and lunatike people, of what antiquity founded, or 
 by whom, I have not read, neither of the suppression, but it 
 was said that sometime a king of England not liking such a 
 kind of people to remain so near his palace, caused them to 
 be removed further off to Bethlem without Bishopsgate, and 
 to that hospital the said house by Charing Cross doth yet 
 remain." 
 
 A house of stone, where other houses were built of oak 
 and rubble, would — in such a neighbourhood — have been the 
 home of a religious community. The cross erected by 
 Edward I to the memory of Queen Eleanor was but a few 
 yards west of it. The Stone House, therefore, may have 
 been originally founded by the king as a chantry chapel, 
 where masses might be said for his dear, dead wife. The 
 good brothers of the convent may have chosen to devote 
 themselves to the care of the insane, in the fields of St. 
 Martin's, because the downs of Charing Cross were com- 
 paratively remote and unoccupied by houses. Such con- 
 siderations, at any rate, seem to have pointed out the isolation 
 of the neighbourhood as especially suitable for the leper- 
 houses, which then stood on the sites covered to-day by St. 
 James's Palace and the church of St. Giles, Holborn. 
 
6S THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 The report of the commissioners in 1632 confirms the 
 story told by Stow : " There be also four other houses 
 situated near Charing Cross in the parish of St. Martin's in 
 the Fields, which have likewise time out of mind paid a small 
 rent of £'^ per annum to the hospital, but when, or by whom, 
 given we find no record. Only we find by an ancient lease 
 made in the reign of Henry VII that in the place where 
 these houses now stand was anciently an old house with 
 gardens and grounds thereunto belonging called the Stone 
 House, which Stone House we do likewise find, in a bill pre- 
 ferred to the Exchequer in December of 9 James I [161 2] by 
 the mayor, commonalty and citizens of London against one 
 Agnes Garland, that it was sometimes employed for the 
 harbouring of mad and distracted persons, before such time 
 as they were removed to the present hospital of Bethlehem, 
 without Bishopsgate." 
 
 We have now to inquire whether there is any evidence 
 bearing on the date of the transfer of the inmates of the Stone 
 House to Bethlehem Hospital. The imaginary scenes, into 
 which I have introduced contemporary characters, are 
 intended to harmonize with my conjecture that the king^ 
 who ordered the transfer of the mad folk, was Edward III or 
 Richard II, and that the date of the transfer was 1377, or 
 thereabouts. 
 
 I am quite willing to rest my case on the definite assertion 
 made by those who searched the muniment room at Bridewell 
 iii 1632 : — 
 
 " When the hospital was first employed to the use of dis- 
 tracted persons appeareth not. The first mention we find 
 of it to be employed so was in the beginning of the reign of 
 Richard II " (c. 1377). 
 
 Bethlehem Hospital appears to have been seized as an 
 alien priory once or twice in the last ten years of the reign of 
 Edward III, the predecessor of Richard II. Such a demon- 
 stration against a French house may well have inspired 
 Edward III, or Richard II, with a scheme for increasing its 
 usefulness, while at the same time he ministered to his own 
 convenience. 
 
''TRAFALGAR SQUARE'' 6g 
 
 Moreover the following chapter furnishes some evidence, 
 which makes for the date assigned in the quotation. For it 
 appears from a study of this chapter that in 1403 the priory 
 had in its keeping six men who had lost their reason ("sex 
 viri mente capti "), and that an inventory of an earlier date 
 (1398) included "four pair of manacles, eleven chains of iron, 
 six locks and keys, and two pair of stocks " — obviously the 
 outfit of an asylum. Lastly, we might also infer from the 
 evidence of one of the witnesses that the work of the hospital 
 among the poor and sick in 1403 was of the same character 
 twenty-four years previously, say in 1379, which is not far 
 off 1377. 
 
 However, with the help of worthy old Stow, I can accumu- 
 late some more testimony in support of a date which makes 
 Bethlem the oldest asylum in the world with a continuous 
 history. 
 
 Perchance he is ambling over the ground which he pro- 
 poses to describe with some disciple as poor as himself 
 He has passed the houses in which our tenants — Chris- 
 tiana Golightly and Thomas Wood — used to live, and now 
 they are peeping into the stables of her grace, Elizabeth : — 
 
 " Then [i.e., next to the Stone House] is the mews so called 
 of the king's falcons there kept by the king's falconer, which 
 of old time was an office of great account, as appeareth by a 
 record of Richard H in the first year of his reign [1377, when] 
 Sir Simon Burley was made master of the king's falcons." 
 We have already noted that there is official authority for 
 accepting the year 1377 as marking the beginning of our 
 historic ministry. There is evidence of considerable expen- 
 diture in the matter of stone and timber for the mews in the 
 wardrobe accounts of 1375, and I am inclined therefore to 
 suggest that Sir Simon Burley wanted the Stone House for 
 himself or for one of his officials, and that he found the noise 
 made by the raging inmates of the house rather disturbing to 
 his dignity, to his birds or falconers, in the "palace of the mews." 
 
 Another bone which may, or may not, have some meat 
 on it : — 
 
 In 1369 Robert Denton, chaplain, obtained a royal licence 
 
70 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 to found a hospital in honour of the Virgin Mary in the parish 
 of All Hallows Barking, near the Tower. This hospital was 
 intended to house " priests and others, men and women, who 
 
 "AMENS ACCEDIT. 
 
 The patient is brought to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury to be healed. A keeper 
 urges him on with a whip, but a monk helps him to kneel down at an altar, before which 
 
 stands the officiating priest. 
 
 {From a window of the twelfth century in Canterbury Cathedral.) 
 
 suddenly fell into a frenzy and lost their memories, until 
 such time as they should recover." Is it only a coincidence 
 that Denton " changed his mind " and diverted the endow- 
 ment to a chantry ? Was it intimated to him that Bethlehem 
 
''TRAFALGAR SQUARE'' 71 
 
 Hospital already answered such a purpose as he had originally 
 designed ? 
 
 The patients transferred from the Stone House to the con- 
 
 " SANUS RECEDIT." 
 
 The merits of the saint have healed the sufferer. He kneels— his senses restored— in humble 
 gratitude, while the priest gives him his blessing. The keeper, who has thrown his whips 
 away, holds up his hands in astonishment : the monk behind the patient reverently folds his 
 
 hands in prayer. 
 
 {From the same window in the Trinity Chapel as the companion picture.) 
 
 vent at Bishopsgate about the year 1377 would be suffering, 
 for the most part, from acute mania, and their treatment 
 would be drastic. Some of them, however, would be termed, 
 in the scientific language of the modern text-book, cases of 
 
72 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 hallucination, whether of sight or hearing. They would be 
 diagnosed as examples of demoniac possession by the eccle- 
 siastics in charge, and a service of exorcism prescribed. The 
 monastic annals furnish us with many illustrations of these 
 and other forms of insanity. For example, you may read 
 two stories of acute mania in the " Life and Miracles of St. 
 Thomas of Canterbury," which has been edited by Dr. E. A. 
 Abbot, or you may see the scenes described on the painted 
 glass of the Trinity chapel of Canterbury cathedral. I have 
 introduced some illustrations taken from these windows. 
 
 " About the same time," so writes the chronicler, " the mad 
 Henry of Fordwich was dragged by his friends to the tomb 
 with his hands tied behind him, struggling and shouting, and 
 there remained all day, but began to recover as the sun went 
 down, and after a night spent in the church returned home, 
 perfectly well in his mind." 
 
 Matilda of Cologne would find her place in a refractory 
 ward to-day. Her language was foul, she tore her clothes to 
 pieces, and struck at everyone who tried to remove her. She 
 also was tightly trussed, and thus bound she raved on for four 
 or five hours, but by degrees she came to herself, when she 
 said that she had seen in a dream the " martyr clothed in 
 pontifical vestments with the blood streak across his face." 
 
 The treatment of patients in the Middle Ages was not 
 quite as absurd or inhuman as it may appear at first sight. 
 The ducking of maniacs, their confinement in a church all 
 night, and the use of ligatures and whips were calculated to 
 exliaust their fury, and to instil into them that sense of terror 
 which tames a wild beast. In such a condition of mind they 
 were, I take it, more sensitive to the associations of a miracle- 
 working shrine, and more ready to profit by the healing 
 ministrations of time and nature. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 PETER IN THE PILLORY 
 
 The setting of my story is laid in the Middle Ages for two 
 hundred and fifty years. I have therefore felt justified in 
 spraying the air with something that may give the reader the 
 sensation of breathing the atmosphere of the place and 
 period. Let it be understood, however, that in manufac- 
 turing the magic spray I have thrown into the still only those 
 ingredients which flowered in the soil of the period. My 
 scenes are played by characters from contemporary history 
 and poetry, and the play has generally some bearing on 
 the history of Bethlehem Hospital. 
 
 By way ofexample let me summon from the " Canterbury 
 Tales " a character upon whom the hospital has to rely for 
 a large part of its working revenue, the authorized pardoner 
 or limitour. A wandering friar he is, who has a licence to 
 beg for his charity within certain definite limits, such as a 
 diocese or archdeaconry. He is a jolly fellow, with " merry 
 twinkling eyes," a hail-fellow-well-met kind of man on the 
 best of terms with everybody — except the beggars, lepers, and 
 " false hermits," who are his rivals on the road. There is no 
 better beggar than he : he has been known to charm out of 
 the widow her '' last pair of shoes " ; he is welcome in every 
 kind of place and company. For the faithful he has his 
 wallet of pardons and relics — the irreverent declare that some 
 rays from the star of Bethlehem are amongst them. In the 
 tavern his fiddle and his ballads make him free of all that he 
 wants in the way of bed or board. His hood is stuffed with 
 pretty trinkets for the farmer's wife, and with quack medicines 
 
 73 
 
74 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 for her husband and his men. He is "travelling" for a 
 hospital which cares for the " possessed," and his reputation 
 is in jeopardy if he fails to anticipate the " sorceress," 
 
 " That uses exorcisations, 
 And eke these fumigations." 
 
 She had her charms against the devil just as potent (she 
 insists) as those of the friar and physician, but it was also her 
 practice to purge the system of its black bile by natural 
 means. Accordingly the " possessed " is held over pans of 
 smoking brimstone until he has vomited up the " evil spirit " 
 — or the bile. There are allusions to these fumigations in 
 Shakespeare and other Jacobean literature. Even as late as 
 1688 Bunyan witnessed such a method of " casting out the 
 devil " ; in this case the man died of it, or after it. 
 
 One way or another the friar makes a good profit in excess 
 of the fixed sum which he is bound to pay over annually to 
 the hospital. There are still extant in the Record Office and 
 in the episcopal registers copies of these licences granted by 
 Henry HI and Edward HI, by the archbishop of Canter- 
 bury (1372), and by the bishops of Salisbury (c. 1395) and 
 Chichester (1399). I give an example in the following trans- 
 lation : — 
 
 " Greeting, grace, and blessing from Richard [bishop of 
 Salisbury] to his beloved sons, to the abbots, to the proctors, 
 to the rectors, to the vicars, to the chaplains, and to all other 
 parish priests who are wont to celebrate Divine service in our 
 diocese and in its towns. Certain men will come to you or 
 your parishes ; they are the rectors or proctors of the house 
 or hospital of the Blessed Mary of Bethleme, Bisshopesgate 
 Without, London, to ask alms of Christ's faithful people, and 
 to collect contributions for the support of themselves and of 
 their house, or hospital. You are to receive them with all 
 kindness and to give them a favourable hearing for their 
 peaceable errand, and it is our will and pleasure that their 
 aims, as set forth in their own and our official letters, should 
 be furthered, and that no impediment should be placed in 
 
PETER IN THE PILLORY 75 
 
 their way, and also that whatever is collected for them in this 
 diocese should be handed over to them, with or without some 
 deduction. Accordingly we hereby grant an indulgence of 
 forty days to all who collect, bequeath, or in any way appor- 
 tion money out of their property in charitable contributions 
 towards the support of the aforesaid proctors and brothers, 
 and of the poor and sick dwelling in the aforesaid hospital." 
 
 The " limitour," " qusestor," or " proctor " who received 
 them was protected from arrest as a rogue by the king's 
 bailiff, and was permitted access to the parish church and 
 its congregations — much to the annoyance of the parish 
 priest. It was useless for him to refuse absolution or to 
 try to enforce discipline when a brother of Bethlehem, who 
 displayed formidable seals and alleged papal privileges, 
 would remove an excommunication for a "ring or a 
 spoon." 
 
 These collectors, whose payments kept up the fabric of 
 the hospice, and largely provided for the maintenance of the 
 poor and insane, were obliged to hand in the amounts due 
 from them to the master or his representative at Bishopsgate 
 periodically. 
 
 Between 1388 and 1403 Peter Taverner, the janitor, was in 
 fact the treasurer of the hospital, and it was proved before 
 a royal commission that he kept in his own pockets all that 
 was paid over to him for its benefit. 
 
 The master was a royal chaplain — a pluralist and an 
 absentee — and he had assigned to Peter in legal form his 
 office for life, his office including the " safe keeping of the 
 poor and sick as well as the custody of the alms." I propose 
 to put this fraudulent treasurer into the pillory, and, in 
 mediaeval fashion, I shall hang the evidence of his rascality 
 around his neck. 
 
 The scandals associated with the name of Peter, the porter, 
 had been notorious for years, until after a time they had 
 grown intolerable. Possibly in answer to an appeal from the 
 city in 1403, Henry IV appointed two of his royal chaplains 
 to make an inquisition into the " neglect of the masters or 
 wardens," the " defects in the books, vestments, and other 
 
76 THE STORY OP BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 ornaments of the chapel, and the diminishing of Divine 
 services, hospitalities, and other works of piety." 
 
 The commissioners took evidence during the months of 
 March and May, 1403. Two of the sittings were held in the 
 " chapel of the Blessed Mary of Bethleem," and a third in 
 the chapter-house of Westminster Abbey. 
 
 In this beautiful hall all the affairs of the abbey were once 
 transacted, and by the central pillar the scourge of discipline 
 fell on the back of the monk ; it was the scene of the 
 earliest parliament of England, but it was degraded during 
 part of the nineteenth century into a depository for boxes 
 of manuscripts. 
 
 There were thirty-five articles of indictment laid against 
 Peter by the master, which were generally corroborated — and 
 readily — by the depositions of witnesses numbering eighteen. 
 The gist of the charge was that the janitor had violated the 
 terms of his contract, and had committed perjury, having 
 broken the oath which he had " taken with his hand on the 
 Holy Gospels of God " that he would be faithful to the master 
 and also to the hospital, and that he would faithfully guard it 
 and the sick people lying therein by day and by night under 
 pain of the loss of his place. 
 
 In support of this charge it was proved that he had seized 
 for his own use alms, legacies, and money in any form ; he 
 had injured the hospital by removing goods and chattels 
 from it ; he had admitted improper characters into it, who 
 injured the buildings and stole everything upon which they 
 could lay hold ; he had brought scandal and disgrace upon 
 the house by his gambling and immorality, and by the 
 behaviour of the tramps and beggars he admitted at nights. 
 As for the poor and the sick in niind and body — he had not 
 gratuitously distributed amongst them (as he ought to have 
 done) the food sent in daily by so many charitable citizens 
 for their benefit ; each inmate had to pay Peter for what had 
 cost him nothing. Money was dropped into the boxes which 
 were rattled up and down in the streets of the city, so that 
 the poor and the sick might have wood and charcoal in the 
 winter, but the janitor used to buy in a store of fuel in 
 
PETER IN THE PILLORY 
 
 77 
 
 summer at wholesale prices, and to retail it to the inmates 
 in the winter at extortionate rates. 
 
 Indeed, so far from the insane being supported out of 
 charitable contributions, they or their friends had to pay 
 from a shilling a week to Peter or his wife for maintenance 
 — nothing is said about treatment. 
 
 
 '% .., it^;iL 
 
 CHAPTER HOUSE, WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 
 
 At every turn the patients ran up against Peter to their 
 hurt. If they wanted beer, they had to buy it at the porter's 
 price ; for they dared not go outside for it " on account of 
 the threats of the wife of the aforesaid "—a termagant who 
 deserved the scold's bridle or the ducking stool ! If the 
 patients wanted sleep — and the sleep of mental sufferers is 
 
78 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 of the lightest and most broken — it was " impossible for them 
 to get sleep or rest by reason of the swearing and loud 
 gossip " which went on late into the night at the gate of 
 the hospital where Peter's wife was selling beer. 
 
 So far the charges made against Peter Taverner hinge on 
 the duty he owed in view of his oath to the master of the 
 hospital. But two of the articles of the prosecution may be 
 noticed here, because they serve to emphasize the privileges 
 of a royal hospital, which was often exempted from the juris- 
 
 PETER, THE PORTER, PILLAGES THE HOSPITAL. 
 
 {Drawn by Charge-Attendant A. Cantte.) 
 
 diction of the mayor or diocesan. The master was indignant 
 that certain wills should have been proved in the presence of 
 the commissioners of the bishop of London "contrary to the 
 liberties and privileges of the hospital and of the law of the 
 realm." And he urged the commissioners to revoke probate 
 and to grant it anew on behalf of the king. There is some 
 reason to believe that the privileged precincts, if they did not 
 confer the right of sanctuary, allowed special facilities for 
 marriages in which haste or privacy was desirable. Dekker 
 makes " Bethlehem monastery " the scene of a runaway 
 
PETER IN THE PILLORY 79 
 
 marriage, and there were grave complaints made by con- 
 vocation in 1543 against the "ungodly solemnization of 
 marriages frequently used in the hospital of Bethlehem." 
 
 Peter, the porter, has yet to suffer another hour in the 
 pillory and another interview with the historian. Possibly 
 a transcript of all the articles stolen may whet the curiosity 
 of the reader, and may persuade him to attend the final 
 sitting of the court in the next chapter. 
 
 Peter Taverner was charged with stealing — 33 coverlets 
 (red and blue worsted), 34 blankets, 25 sheets, 6 mattresses, 
 5 brass pans, i axe, i spade, 3 shovels, i pair of tongs, 8 platters, 
 8 wooden dishes, 2 trivets, 4 tubs, 2 keys to a garden gate, 
 I bier, i bucket, i barrow, I mortar, 3 tankards [for drawing 
 water], i iron skimmer, i pillow of serge, i table cloth, 
 I towel, 
 
 and 
 2 pairs of stocks 
 
 4 pairs of iron manacles 
 
 5 other chains of iron 
 
 6 chains of iron with 6 locks 
 
 These chains will clank and clank and clank through the 
 history of Bethlehem Hospital for another four hundred 
 years. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 AN APPRECIATION OF PETER 
 
 Some eighteen witnesses were called in support of the 
 charges launched against Peter Taverner. They included 
 the bursar, a chaplain, the master's sister, a Devonshire 
 rector, some of the poor of the hospice, and a few patients 
 who had been treated for paralysis or insanity. Some of the 
 witnesses had been there two or three years, and the memory 
 of one carried him back " twenty-four years or thereabouts," 
 that is to 1379. " In those days," he snapped out with par- 
 donable sarcasm, " we were not accustomed to be governed 
 by the porter, but we had a master, Brother Tytte, who so 
 supervised everything that the poor should be properly and 
 suitably maintained." 
 
 Brother Tytte, however, I may remark parenthetically, 
 seems to have had a Peter of his own, for I note that in 1380 
 one " Gervase Worthy was outlawed for failing to render his 
 account as received to William Tytte." 
 
 Another witness was a woman who had been put into the 
 house a year and a half before by her neighbours to " recover 
 her reason." Her parents and other people had made a col- 
 lection on her behalf, but Peter and his wife took charge of 
 the collection, and " still had goods belonging to her to the 
 value of five shillings." 
 
 Taverner is already a dethroned god who no longer inspires 
 fear and silence, and the witnesses do not hesitate to speak 
 their minds freely and fully ; past privations and injuries rise 
 to the surface as the waters are dragged. 
 
 With materials so ample and so significant it will not be 
 
 difficult to indite an appreciation of Peter, the porter. 
 
 80 
 
AN APPRECIATION OF PETER 8i 
 
 In the first place Peter was a fisherman who was ever 
 ready to drop his net into all waters for a catch, while the 
 meshes were so fine as to prevent the escape of even the 
 smallest fish. His depredations absorbed all the items of a 
 long inventory, and all the alms received from the " whole 
 realm of England," but he did not disdain even the contents 
 of the " poor boxes at the gate, in the chapels, and in the 
 infirmary." Charitable people often came to visit the insane 
 in the infirmary with little comforts or with some charms 
 against frenzy and melancholy. Sometimes they wished to 
 slip a little gift into the " box attached to the post." When 
 that happened Peter deferentially insinuated that it might be 
 wiser to hand the silver penny over to him for the garnishing 
 of the altar at the Feast of the Purification, when the con- 
 fraternity of the drapers would be present in their new 
 liveries. The master (he purred) was a greedy fellow, who 
 took all the rents of the convent property — some eight 
 guineas a year (say £\6o), and there were missing from the 
 church a " silver censer and two silver phials " ; they were 
 
 supposed to be still in the " keeping of the master," but . 
 
 The good simple people thanked Mr. Taverner for the hint, 
 and " handed over their offerings " to him, as the sister of the 
 master acidly deposed. 
 
 No mention is made of them at the inquisition, but there 
 were two bequests of historic interest, which might have 
 assisted Peter to " play backgammon and to gamble with 
 dice" by night and by day, and might have decked out 
 a certain " Alice, the wife of John Sampson," whom he 
 visited publicly and privately — not for the best of motives. 
 
 In 1383 the famous Walworth left "twenty shillings to 
 every hospital in London," so that the inmates might pray 
 for his soul. And in 1389 Ralph, Lord Basset of Drayton, 
 left ;^ioo to found two chantries in the church of the hospital. 
 Precedent hardly justifies us in hoping too much of the 
 itching fingers which held the bag. 
 
 At any rate, Peter had a knack of snapping up all legacies, 
 and, when a man died intestate, he administered the estate for 
 his own benefit without bothering about probate at all. 
 
82 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 It is significant that the surname of the porter was 
 Taverner. Presumably such was his original occupation, in 
 which his wife assisted him. At Bethlem he had a certain 
 " low chamber on the west side of the entrance, tosfether 
 with a parlour and buttery," and here in spite of official 
 admonitions he and his wife sold ale " late into the night," 
 and to the " poorest sort of people." 
 
 As early as 1480 there appears to have been a White Hart 
 inn, which yet survives, as a tavern, under the disguise of 
 " 121, Bishopsgate," next to the church of St. Botolph, and the 
 sign naturally carries the history of it back to the reign of 
 Richard II, whose armorial cognizance was a white hart. 
 This house, which stood just within or just without the 
 precincts, may originally have been the guest-house of the 
 monastery. In that case it would be a hall with bedrooms 
 opening out of it to left and right. Peter appears to have 
 filled this guest-house (and possibly the chapel as well) with 
 verminous tramps and disorderly labourers, and much of 
 the beer which Peter Taverner sold went to quench their 
 thirst. 
 
 The biography of Peter would not be complete without 
 some tribute to the generous and philanthropic elements in 
 his versatile character. No admirer of the man or of his wife 
 can blink the fact that they " selected the larger and better 
 portion " for themselves of the " bread, ale, meat, fish, 
 candles, and divers other things," sent in daily by mayor, 
 aldermen, and other charitable citizens. But in justice to the 
 worthy pair we must, before we strike, listen to another count 
 of the indictment : — " The said Peter has divers children in 
 his house whom he boards and lodges at the expense of the 
 hospital." Have we not here a suggestion of philanthropy — 
 an " orphanage supported by voluntary contributions " : 
 " Honorary Director, the keeper of Bethlehem Hospital " ? 
 
 However the master is unreasonable and refuses to recog- 
 nize any redeeming points in the character of his deputy : — 
 " And when poor or sick people came to the hospital to 
 obtain rest as they are accustomed to do, they are shut out 
 by the presence of these children, and this seems to be an 
 
AN APPRECIATION OF PETER 83 
 
 extraordinary state of affairs, unless such children should be 
 sick, or sent there from charitable motives." 
 
 We must all sympathize with' the bewilderment of the 
 master who had never personally taken the trouble to see 
 that the house was administered, " according to its constitu- 
 tion, for the entertainment of the poor and the sick." Frankly 
 speaking, this " home " or " orphanage " invites suspicion. 
 Was it a sort of Dotheboys Hall under the threatening finger 
 of a mediaeval Mrs. Squeers ? Or was it a baby farm 
 " under the patronage and supervision of the clergy " ? As 
 a man of business even the " children's friend " might have 
 been tempted to charge the putative fathers so much a week, 
 while he maintained these " unwanted children " at the 
 expense — not of himself, but of the hospital. 
 
 The commissioners of course brought in a verdict of guilty, 
 and the keeper was ordered to replace all that was missing 
 or stolen within three days, or to consider himself fined £100. 
 Even such a sum, equivalent perhaps to £2<C)00 in the money 
 of to-day, was not a very heavy fine for the rogue, since he 
 had robbed the institution of at least ^300 (;^6,ooo). 
 
 It does not appear that ours was a repentant Peter, for on 
 9th May, 1403, as he had not made restitution of the stolen 
 goods, sentence was passed upon him in the following 
 terms : — 
 
 " Forasmuch as we have found that Peter Taverner has 
 been guilty of taking away the goods of the hospital, of 
 receiving and detaining divers sums of money belonging 
 to the said poor people, and of the dishonest administrations 
 of their goods : and forasmuch as we find that the poor have 
 been defrauded for many years of the alms collected for them 
 by the faithful in Christ, we, therefore, having God alone 
 before our eyes, do by the authority of the king committed 
 to us in this case deprive Peter of the office of janitor, and 
 from the custody of the alms of the poor people, and we 
 do remove the selfsame man for ever." 
 
 Probably Peter did remove himself; London would have 
 been too hot to hold him. But doubtless outside the eates 
 of another city there was a tavern which was also a common 
 
84 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 lodging house, the " property of a taverner in London." It 
 had been furnished (so the neighbours noticed) by degrees, 
 but there peradventure you might have found all that was 
 missing from the inventory I have quoted. Here till even- 
 song rang the " hermit roasted his feet at the hot coals," 
 and the hangman told his gruesome tales to the cut-purses 
 and the "bald-headed drawers of teeth." Clarice and other 
 daughters of pleasure were there, " Hugh, the needle seller," 
 and all the vagabonds of Langland's tavern. 
 
 And perhaps in some cellar or stables the " iron chains 
 with locks and keys " still manacled human flesh and blood. 
 
 This " Visitation of Bethlehem Hospital," as the pro- 
 ceedings of the Royal Commission were entitled, was long 
 preserved in the Tower — and it is now in the Record Office 
 — so many sheets of darkening parchments stitched together, 
 so many lines of Latin abbreviated in the official shorthand 
 of a weary scrivener. I have translated out of it the diverting 
 history of the most amazing in our long — very long — gallery 
 of rogues, but it yields to the patient and well-equipped 
 miner other metal besides. It deals with the people amongst 
 whom Wycliffe, Chaucer, and Langland moved, thoughtful, 
 laughing, or indignant. We are on the road with the run- 
 away servants, with the poachers who raided park and 
 preserve, with the acrobats and beggars who crippled their 
 children, with the disbanded soldiers, and all the deathless 
 army of tramps. They are the " brewsters, bakers, way- 
 farers, labourers, thieves and robbers " who damage the 
 buildings, and bring scandal upon the house. 
 
 It is an indication of the growing decay of all authority 
 and discipline that Divine service is intermittent at the 
 hospital, and that the service books are hardly sufficient. 
 The master no longer wears the habit and star of the order, 
 and there are no longer any brothers and sisters, though 
 the sister of the master was quartered on the house on 
 this pretence. 
 
 Thirty years later the nuns of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 
 were " looking through their windows " a little too earnestly 
 at the world : there was too much " coming and going 
 

 '^'■^. iA***»»A 
 
 
 The'author is liolding the roll of the "Visitation of Bethlehem 
 Hospital" in the Museum of the Record Office. 
 
 THE OLD "WHITE HART " TAVERN, BISHOPSGATE WITHOUT. 
 
 The horseman is riding through what was once known as " Old Bedlam Gate." Bethlem 
 Street was much widened in 1829, and is the Liverpool Street of to-day. 
 
 (Sec p. 82.) 
 
 To face p. 84. 
 
AN APPRECIATION OF PETER 85 
 
 through the wicket gate " ; and it was too easy to procure 
 the keys. And so there was a visitation there also. As 
 a result of it the prioress was ordered to " sleep in her own 
 bedroom," and no visitors were to be admitted to roam about 
 the cloisters. Suspicion and slanders were in the air, and 
 an iron railing was ordered to be "■ set up in front of the 
 kitchen." 
 
 Towards the conclusion of the inquiry the commissioners 
 called for the deed of foundation, as translated in Chapter III, 
 and proposed to ascertain whether Bethleem still possessed 
 the whole of the land originally donated to it by FitzMary 
 in 1247. 
 
 The commissioners had been informed that certain tene- 
 ments and buildings within the ancient limits had been 
 disposed of and alienated. They were proceeding to make 
 inquiry, when several citizens appeared before them and 
 successfully pleaded the privileges of the city, which allowed 
 them to refuse to appear before the officials of the king, 
 except at certain places. Presumably these champions of 
 civic liberty had bought, leased, or encroached on the 
 property of the hospital. Two hundred and thirty years 
 later it was discovered by another Royal Commission that 
 the hospital had irretrievably lost whole blocks of its property 
 in Bishopsgate. 
 
 Many old abbeys and castles might still be something 
 better than a heap of ruins, if they had not been treated 
 as inexhaustible quarries by successive generations. So 
 many people — collectors, kings, doctors, governors, stewards 
 and tenants — have carried away stone after stone year by 
 year that it is something of a miracle that to-day Bethlehem 
 Hospital is anything more than a name or a memory. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 FOES AND FRIENDS 
 
 The illustration which I have inserted in the text is taken 
 from a manuscript life of St. Guthlac of Croyland Abbey, 
 near Peterborough. You are taken into the chapel, where 
 you catch a glimpse of the altar. The nimbed Guthlac 
 stoops down and gazes fixedly and steadily into the face 
 of the demented Egga, who has been brought by his friends 
 in order that the evil spirit may be exorcised. Guthlac takes 
 the girdle that has encircled his saintly body, and binds it 
 round the sufferer's waist. Straightway the foul fiend, 
 flecked and spotted, horned and winged, issues from Egga's 
 mouth to the manifest astonishment of his companions. 
 
 In the pageant of Bethlehem Hospital the exorcist must 
 have his place as well as the limitour, the physician, and the 
 porter. 
 
 He was trained by the Church to distinguish between true 
 " possession " and what was merely " black bile." In posses- 
 sion, for example, the " patient speaks volubly in a tongue 
 unknown to anybody else " ; or he professes to disclose the 
 most inscrutable of mysteries ; or he exhibits strength and 
 powers far beyond his normal capacities. 
 
 The demons (he is reminded) are very artful, and he must 
 always be on his guard. They may assume the voice of 
 saint or angel, or they may persuade the patient by a vision 
 that he has recovered his senses. Sometimes — just to em- 
 barrass the holy priest — the demon will even send his victim 
 to sleep. 
 
 The old world of the East detected supernatural agency 
 
 86 
 
FOES AND FRIENDS 
 
 87 
 
 behind the phenomena of mental disease : the ahenist of 
 to-day bases them on the natural disorders of the body. 
 
 The service of exorcism might last for hours (no wonder 
 the exhausted patient sometimes went to sleep !), and con- 
 sisted of menacing adjurations, a long series of psalms, and 
 much fervent supplication. In the actual ceremony the 
 exorcist just touched the heart or head of the possessed 
 
 ST. GUTHLAC OF CROYLAND AS AN EXORCIST. 
 
 with the holy relics, signed the forehead with the sign of 
 the cross, and laid one end of the stole around the neck. 
 The sufferer, if well enough, had already been fortified for 
 the conflict with the powers of darkness by prayer and 
 fasting, by confession made, and by the Blessed Sacrament 
 received. 
 
 There were, however, some evil influences in the hospital 
 at the beginning of the fifteenth century, which no service of 
 
88 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 exorcism served to banish. Peter, the porter, had been ex- 
 pelled, but his spirit still haunted the place. 
 
 In 1406 there were "defects to correct," and — only three 
 years after a most searching visitation — it " may be necessary 
 to remove master and servants." Unfortunately the chan- 
 cellor, to whom the visitation of the king's hospitals pertained, 
 was too busy to attend to his duty. 
 
 There seems, indeed, to have been at this time in many of 
 the religious houses too great a love of luxury, and too 
 frequently a spirit of indifference ; there were even suspicions 
 of immorality. Accordingly, in 1410, parliament, which no 
 doubt reflected the indignation or misgivings of the laity, 
 urged Henry IV to partition out all church lands between the 
 king, his lords, and disinterested commons. The kir^ vaguely 
 promised to submit the proposal to his council, but parliament 
 felt constrained to return to the subject in the following year, 
 when it presented a petition for the reformation of hospitals. 
 " Many hospitals," it was urged, " be for the most part 
 decayed, and the goods and profits of the same be with- 
 drawn, and spent in the use of others. " 
 
 There seems a special and personal reference to the 
 scandals which still discredited the royal administration of 
 Bethlehem Hospital, in the preamble of the petition that 
 these hospitals exist partly to " maintain those who have lost 
 their wits and memory." 
 
 The battle of Agincourt smothered the movement for 
 reform, and the hospital appears to have gone from bad to 
 worse : no doubt the master was an absentee. 
 
 However, in some form and measure at any rate, the work 
 among the insane went on, and attendants were exempted in 
 the fifteenth as well as in the twentieth century from service 
 on a jury, because they could not safely leave their patients. 
 In the city Letter-book K, fol. 1526 (1436), one William- 
 Mawere, citizen and tailor, was exempted from service on the 
 jury or in the watch, " because his duty requires him to be 
 daily and without intermission in attendance on the poor 
 frenzied and demented creatures who are housed in the hos- 
 pital of the Blessed Mary of Bedlam, Bishopsgate Without." 
 
FOES AND FRIENDS 89 
 
 In the following year (1437) Edward Atherton was granted 
 the " custody of the hospital with all the profits and emolu- 
 ments thereof" : he had succeeded Robert Dale just deceased, 
 who seems to have been appointed to the mastership in 1423. 
 He at once petitioned the council of Henry VI (then a boy of 
 fourteen) to order an inquiry into " various scandals and abuses 
 at the hospital of St. Mary of Beddeleem ' due to the neglect 
 of former masters." In response the mayor and aldermen 
 and sheriffs were authorized to ascertain how far " the chapel, 
 graveyard, houses, lands, and revenues " had been affected by 
 the " dilapidations, pillagings, trespasses, and wastings " 
 alleged, and were ordered to present a full report to the king 
 in chancery as speedily as possible. 
 
 " We have assigned to you the duty of ascertaining what 
 removals there have been, what sales, what robberies, of 
 books, jewels, muniments, and other goods, by whom these 
 crimes have been committed, in what years, and to what 
 amounts." 
 
 It would appear from the language of this order as if price- 
 less charters, chronicles, and other documents of historical 
 value had disappeared from the muniment chest : doubtless 
 they had been sold to the cookshops to wrap up hot pies, or 
 to the quack doctor for his parchment charms. 
 
 And some of the technical words employed leave us in no 
 doubt but that portions of the quadrangle were in ruins ; the 
 tenements — let on long leases — needed repairs, for which 
 there was no money available ; the gardens and orchards 
 had been stripped of their fruit ; bakehouse and stable had 
 probably invaded the cemetery. 
 
 It was further stated that " Divine service was almost at an 
 end " : from a word or two used we gather that the chapel 
 had been despoiled of its metal work and precious stones : 
 perhaps it was once more profaned as a shelter for the 
 vagrants, thieves, and cripples of the road. 
 
 The concluding sentences addressed to the civic commis- 
 missioners give us contemporary evidence of the traditional 
 work of the hospital. " It is alleged that almsgiving and 
 Other accustomed works of piety, such as the succour of dis- 
 
90 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 traught lunatics and of other poor and sickly persons, who 
 flock to the hospital daily and there reside, are like to be 
 abolished, unless a remedy is speedily applied." 
 
 Only a spark of the charity, it is obvious, still glowed, but 
 the good folk of London did not allow the fire to be ex- 
 tinguished. It was indeed difficult for the aldermen to 
 improve the revenues of the foundation, or to infuse energy 
 and conscientiousness into its administration, so long as the 
 master was a nominee of the crown, and was a pluralist as 
 well as an absentee. 
 
 But the hospital had good friends as well as foes. In 
 1412 it was worth the while of a fraudulent rogue (one Der- 
 man, a labourer) to pretend to be a servant of Bedlem, and a 
 collector for its charities in the streets of London. He had 
 indeed collected "many alms," when he was arrested and put 
 in the pillory for an hour with an iron-bound box for alms 
 about his neck. And throughout the whole of the fifteenth 
 century legacies were trickling through our gate : indeed, our 
 sick had always some benefactors to remember in their 
 prayers, as they told their beads. 
 
 In 1408, for example, John Gower, the famous poet and 
 friend of Chaucer, as he lay dying in the cloister of St. Mary's 
 Priory, Southwark, left eightpence to each of the patients of 
 Bedlam. 
 
 John Carpenter by a will dated 1441 left forty shillings for 
 our " poor inmates." He was the famous town clerk of 
 London who founded the City of London School, and as one 
 of the executors of Dick Whittington he may have allotted us 
 a share in the money he was commissioned to distribute 
 among the poor. 
 
 Then there was that most charitable and responsive of 
 men — whether money was wanted for a sermon or a gate. 
 Stephen Forster (formerly mayor) directed in his will of 1458 
 that £10 should be laid out for "victuals, linen, and woollen 
 clothing for the benefit of the poor infirm detained within the 
 house." The word " detained " is eloquent, and eloquent is 
 the provision of warm clothing : if the patient had torn up 
 his clothes, or they were worn out in his wanderings, all he 
 
FOES AND FRIENDS . 91 
 
 could do was to creep deeper into the straw, away from the 
 draught of an unglazed window. 
 
 In the middle of the fifteenth century I think that I 
 discern the good work of the confraternity of St. Mary of 
 Bethleem. This guild crystallized into personal and practical 
 service the natural piety of the citizens. I have no doubt 
 that it inspired the legacies of the benevolent, and stimu- 
 lated the devotion, sympathy, and temper so essential in an 
 attendant on the sick in brain or nerve. 
 
 This is what William Gregory wrote down in his common- 
 place book about 1 451, the year of his mayoralty, and his 
 testimony suggests that the commission of 1437 had resulted 
 in reform and renewed the usefulness of the hospital. 
 
 " A church of Our Lady that is named Bedlem. And in 
 that place are found many men that have fallen out of their 
 wits. Right well are they cared for in that place, and some 
 are restored to health again, but some are there for ever, for 
 they are incurable. And unto that place many indulgences 
 have been granted, more than they of the place know." He 
 is referring to the indulgences granted by the popes to 
 Bethlehem and its daughter-houses. 
 
 " Right well are they cared for." There is similar testi- 
 mony to the " unceasing care of the physicians "in 15 19, but 
 after the Reformation more than a century passed before the 
 care and comfort of the sick in mind formed the chief concern 
 of their legal guardians. 
 
 Some fourteen years later Gregory had found no reason to 
 withdraw his words of appreciation, for in 1465 he left our 
 " pouere sicke people " a legacy of forty shillings. 
 
 Perhaps John Arundell, master of Bethlehem Hospital in 
 1457 and 1458, may himself have taken Forster and Gregory 
 through the infirmary. He was the chaplain and confessor of 
 Henry VI, but he was also a doctor of medicine and the 
 king's " first physician." Now in August, 1453, Henry VI 
 lost his reason and memory, his powers of speech and move- 
 ment, and this attack of insanity — which recurred till his 
 death — lasted till Christmas, 1454. In the following March the 
 Privy Council authorized John Arundell and other physicians 
 
92 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 and surgeons to administer to the king " head-purges," to 
 shave his head, to give him baths, or to treat him " according 
 to the precepts of those who have written on the disease." 
 Presumably during this illness of the king, Arundell often 
 came to the hospital to watch the methods of its physicians, 
 and certainly he was appointed master of it because of the 
 skill and sympathy which he had exhibited in the case of 
 Henry VI. In his case Bethlem was the stepping-stone to a 
 bishopric — that of Chichester, where his tomb may still be 
 seen on the south side of the cathedral. Unfortunately the 
 brasses were wrenched out of it by Waller's troopers, or I 
 might have illustrated the text with a portrait of our first 
 medical superintendent. However, in the course of his 
 episcopate he erected a screen, upon which the organ 
 formerly rested. This screen, which was removed from its 
 original site in 1862, was re-erected quite recently in the 
 lower chamber of the campanile outside the cathedral. 
 
 Henry VI seems to have been of defective intellect and 
 to have suffered from dementia from 1464 to 1470, when he 
 lay in the Tower " dirty, ill-dressed, and neglected." He is 
 said to have had religious visions and to have prophesied, 
 and we may conclude that he suffered from hallucinations 
 of hearing and seeing. 
 
 Roses, white and red, grew in our gardens ; roses, red and 
 white, adorned our altars ; but a time came when it was 
 dangerous to wear a red rose, for that was the badge of the 
 House of Lancaster, and the city stood for the white rose 
 of York. In the Wars of the Roses the tide of battle 
 actually washed our walls one day in the May of 1470, when 
 Faulconbridge launched his Kentish sailors under the red 
 rose of Henry VI against Bishop's Gate. He burnt many 
 " fair houses," and endeavoured to destroy the gate with gun- 
 powder, straw, and fire. Behind barricades our cloister and 
 quadrangle were full of anxious refugees, and a canopy of 
 smoke — heavy and acrid — hung over all the hospital. What 
 terror and despair must have racked some of those chained 
 down behind their doors and barred windows, as steel 
 clashed and fire crackled so close at hand ! 
 
j».V>. ^^^^ 'V. 
 
 -^^Mi^'-7t'M 
 
 
94 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 Among the citizens who so bravely hurled back Faulcon- 
 bridge was our neighbour and benefactor, Alderman Sir John 
 Crosby, of Crosby Hall. He left ;^ioo to rebuild Bishop's 
 Gate, which had grievously suffered in the assault upon it, 
 and he also left twenty shillings to be given among the 
 
 ' THE COMMON SEAL OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL. 
 
 The subject of the seal is the Assumption of the Virgin : the date of it is Henry VI or 
 
 Henry VII. 
 
 {Photographed from an engraved copper plate preserved at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.) 
 
 '* distract people being then within the hospital of Bedlam 
 in ready money or good wholesome food," " be it at one time, 
 or at several times." 
 
 Sir John anticipated the principles and practice which 
 entered with the twentieth century. " Good, wholesome food " 
 will help the body to cure the mind : without some " ready 
 
FOES AND FRIENDS 95 
 
 money " for immediate needs many a mental convalescent 
 may relapse. 
 
 Perhaps hereafter a new confraternity may arise in 
 Bethlem. It will undertake to find money and to spend 
 it judiciously in suitable cases of recovery. It will seek — 
 with personal sympathy and supervision — to guide the 
 faltering footsteps of those who have to face the world 
 again. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 THE CONFRATERNITY 
 
 There are chasms, now and again, in our chronology. 
 Patent rolls and letter-books, at present uncalendared, may 
 yet serve to lessen their number and width. But between 
 1459 and 1 5 19 history only opens her lips to proclaim for 
 our information the appointment by the king of one of his 
 chaplains as master, or warden, of the hospital of Our Lady 
 of Bethlem. Thomas Hervy, doctor of theology, was warden 
 for one month only — the last of his life — in 1459 : he was 
 an Augustinian friar, and his advice was asked about some 
 scheme (was it alchemy?) for paying Henry VI's debts in 
 " good gold and silver." Hervy was succeeded by John 
 Brown, who appears to have died in 1470. I have found an 
 ancient deed, in which one John Myre calls the world to 
 witness that he owes Master John Brown, clerk, the master 
 of the hospital of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Bethlehem, 
 some £4. sterling, which he proposes to pay some six months 
 after the date of his I O U, that is to say, on 15th December^ 
 1464. Brown was followed by John Smeethe(or Sneethe) on 
 1 8th December, 1470. I have not found the warrant for the 
 appointment of John Davyson, who followed Smeethe, but I 
 note that he was dismissed in 1479 : he had worn the wrong 
 rose, I think, in 1471. Davyson, who was an official in chan- 
 cery, and held clerical preferment in England and France, was 
 succeeded by Walter Bate and William Hobbs, 4th Novem- 
 ber, 1479, as joint masters. Apparently one of the two 
 priests was in a moribund condition, for the grant was to pass 
 
 to the survivor of the two. The next name on my list of 
 
 96 
 
THE CONPRATERNITV 9; 
 
 wardens is Thomas Maudesley, appointed 20th September, 
 1485. There is a curious allusion to him in the Rolls of Par- 
 liament. " Provided always that the said Act of Resumption 
 be not prejudicial to Thomas Maudesley, master of Our Lady 
 of Bedlam, by whatsoever name he is called." However, what- 
 ever his alias, he must have been a well-known figure in the 
 household of the mother of Henry VH, acting apparently as 
 her chaplain and almoner. He resigned the mastership of 
 Bethlehem on 27th June, 1494, to enable Henry VH to reward 
 his devoted physician, Thomas Deynman, who would seem 
 also to have been a doctor of divinity. Deynman also served 
 in the court of the Lady Margaret, so renowned for her 
 love of religion and learning. Henry VH cannot — even in 
 the dry official grant — speak too warmly of his medical care 
 and devotion : — " day by day, without intermission and in 
 manifold ways, he renders to us and our dearest mother good 
 and laudable service." Instinctively I feel that this beloved 
 physician was one of our unknown benefactors. The confra- 
 ternity, which charged itself with the maintenance of the 
 hospital, had reason, as will be seen a little further on in this 
 chapter, to praise the " unceasing solicitude " with which the 
 physicians treated the " insane and the frenzied." Did the 
 life and labours of Thomas Deynman (? 1494-15 12) inspire 
 the phrase " unceasing solicitude " ? By the by, one of Deyn- 
 man's patients was " Raynesford that is mad." It appears 
 from some items in his privy purse accounts that Henry VH 
 paid one shilling and eightpence for " bringing of Raynes- 
 ford to Bedlam," and six shillings and eightpence for his 
 maintenance there. 
 
 During all these years our ancient house, destined to sur- 
 vive so many institutions and sentiments, sat and watched 
 act after act as it was played out in the theatre of national 
 history. 
 
 She sat and watched — one day in 1485, after the battle 
 of Bosworth — the mayor and aldermen ride on their way to 
 Shoreditch : she watched Plenry VH, escorted by an armed 
 host, pass in front of her walls with standards and other 
 trophies on his way to hear a Te Deum at St. Paul's. She 
 
 8 
 
98 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 was in her place on " Evil May Day " in 1 518, when the 
 craftsmen pillaged the houses of the Flemings. The sermon 
 which inflamed public indignation against the cheap labour 
 of the aliens was preached almost within her hearing, and 
 she shuddered at the gibbets set up for the rioters outside 
 her gate. 
 
 But the work went on with the blessing of Innocent VIII, 
 and the physician went his rounds week by week, whether 
 the play was a farce or a tragedy. In a page or two you will 
 read that the physician devoted himself to his patients with 
 "unceasing solicitude." I am sure that he did his best 
 
 i/ 
 
 
 
 3 I" 
 
 "-^^ 
 
 i;;?^'^^^3J, 
 
 -■'' \ 
 
 PHYSICIAN AND PUPIL. 
 
 according to his light and the traditions of his craft. He did 
 not dream of leaving to Nature»the cure of her handiwork : 
 he was steeped in superstition and astrology. He considered 
 that the pillory was the proper punishment for the crazy 
 creature who said that she had "trafficked with an evil 
 spirit " : he concocted medicine for the brain out of certain 
 plants, because they bore some sort of resemblance to the 
 shape of brain or head. But he had his virtues. He 
 prescribed cheerful surroundings for all cases of mental 
 illness, and he ordered a light or heavy diet with due regard 
 to the acuteness or mildness of the attack. He had his 
 
THE CONFRATERNITY 99 
 
 methods also for grappling with the invisible idea, and for 
 overcoming an obsession. If a patient suffered from exalta- 
 tion of spirit, he arranged that bad and unpleasant news 
 should be frequently communicated to him. If the sight of 
 a person in black provoked an agony of terror, he sur- 
 rounded his patient for days with servants in black, and 
 instructed visitors to assume sombre apparel. 
 
 Our physician has his little arts, or else he would not be so 
 rich. He has scriptural quotations for the bedsides of the 
 devout, but he has also a story of " merry tales out of the 
 Bible or other tragedies " : for the physician may assist a 
 cure and line his pocket by provoking a laugh from his 
 patients. 
 
 He is a great stickler for medical etiquette, and has no 
 mind to be classed with the surgeons, who still associate with 
 low-born barbers. They are quite capable of any breach of 
 etiquette. The physician must not make himself too cheap, 
 and he must not risk his position by levity or indiscretion. 
 He is never tired of quoting to his pupils an injunction of his 
 favourite author : " Consider he not over openly the lady or 
 the daughter or other fair woman in great men's houses, nor 
 offer to kiss them, that he come not to the indignation of 
 his lord." 
 
 A little gossip about past happenings, and some literary 
 flights of fancy, have beguiled us — not unpleasantly, I hope, 
 along the road, and we have reached a milestone which is 
 lettered A.D. 15 19. 
 
 Before we continue our journey, let us rest here awhile 
 to read of the letters, in which six of the popes threw open 
 the gates of forgiveness to all who did for the "least of His 
 brethren " what they would have done for Christ " sick and 
 in prison." 
 
 In the British Museum there is still preserved a certifi- 
 cate of admission into the confraternity of St. Mary of 
 Bethlehem, Bishopsgate. It was given to any one who was 
 willing to perform certain religious exercises, and to con- 
 tribute towards the funds of the hospital. Those who joined 
 the guild were assured certain spiritual benefits and privileges 
 
100 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 both in this life and in the life to come. This certificate is of 
 great value as evidence of the antiquity and continuity of 
 our present work. I shall therefore quote much of it word 
 for word. 
 
 " To our beloved in Christ [A or B] greeting from John 
 Cavalari, warden or master, and the brethren of the house 
 or hospital of the Blessed Mary of Bethlehem without 
 Bishop's Gate, of the city of London, a branch or daughter- 
 house of the same monastery of the Blessed Virgin, in 
 immediate dependence on the court of Rome, of the order of 
 the knighthood of the star, and of the rule of St. Augustine, 
 and of the province of Syria. 
 ~~ " Now whereas several of the supreme pontiffs have endowed 
 
 ^ntfsrtaRBfi U -fie loaslKiiute J 6a«rrfir«t: ili.ttis« porigcatf £»<5t>{iift^c6 cti^Bfa'&sifS u^i&fmmimmmuxm^ j 
 
 
 the aforesaid monastery of Bethlehem, as well as all and each 
 of its branches or daughter-houses, in whatsoever places 
 existing, with many privileges and special graces, 
 
 " And whereas, in order that the minds of Christ's faithful 
 people might be the more readily persuaded to works of 
 charity and piety, they have graciously vouchsafed a share 
 in certain indulgences and remissions of sins to those who 
 hold out helping hands towards the keeping up of the church 
 and of all the places aforesaid as well as towards the support 
 of the mentally afflicted, the insane, the frenzied, and others 
 residing in the same places, who are there lodged and cared 
 for with great diligence and attention, and are treated by the 
 physicians with unceasing solicitude. 
 
 "Amongst those who hold out such helping hands are 
 
THE CONFRATERNITY loi 
 
 especially such as cause themselves to be inscribed upon the 
 confraternity of the said monastery or of any of its branches 
 or daughter-houses, by contributing annually to it, as is more 
 fully set forth in the apostolic letters to that end indited, 
 which still remain in the care of the said hospital of Bethlehem 
 in the city of London. 
 
 "We therefore, the master or warden and the brothers in 
 community, admit you [A or B] on account of the sincere 
 devotion, benevolence and liberality which you show, or 
 intend hereafter to show, towards us and the hospital afore- 
 said, into our confraternity, and we have made you to become 
 one of our brotherhood, and by this certificate to participate 
 in all the privileges, intercessions, and other benefits granted, 
 or to be granted to us and our hospital. 
 
 " In token whereof we have caused this letter to be 
 written, and we have sealed it with the seal of our 
 fraternity. 
 
 " Given in the year of our Lord, 15 19." 
 
 In this certificate details are given of indulgences granted 
 by six of the popes. They are Honorius III (1216-1227), 
 Boniface VIII (i 295-1 303), John XXII (13 16-1334), 
 Clement VI (1341-1352), Calixtus III (1455-1458), and 
 Innocent VIII (1484-1492). 
 
 The apostolic letters no longer remain in the care of 
 Bethlehem Hospital. The muniment room was plundered in 
 1437, and no doubt the rest of its contents disappeared at the 
 Reformation — and the historian is sorely tempted to build in 
 the air. We owe it to the national archives that anything has 
 survived to us out of the pre-Reformation foundation. Our 
 original coat-of-arms is to be seen in a Tudor manuscript of 
 the Heralds' College, and I have found in the British Museum, 
 after years of searching, a seal of the hospital — rather a crude 
 production — which is ascribed by one of the Museum experts 
 to a date after 1 500. 
 
 I found it in a catalogue of " detached seals," LXXVIII 3 
 (E drawer, 4). It appears to have been catalogued with 
 several odd impressions in 1888, but the Museum authorities 
 seem to have kept no record of the original matrix. An 
 
I02 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 impression of this seal is at present in my possession, but 
 I will hand it over to Bridewell or Bethlem. 
 
 The superscription reads : SiGILLU [m] WardoneS BEATI 
 Marie [m\ de Bethlem — the seal of the warden of the 
 Blessed Mary of Bethlem. Apparently wardones is a mis- 
 take for wardonis, if there is such a word in late Latin : or 
 the original may have been War.Domus (Warden of the 
 House) ; and beati (masc.) is made to agree with a feminine 
 word. In the oval — above — is a six-rayed star of Bethlehem 
 with the cross in the centre of it. Underneath a canopy sits 
 the Virgin Mary with the child Jesus, whom " the wise men 
 from the east" are worshipping. Two of the kings stand 
 with crowns on their heads and offerings in their hands, the 
 third kneels to make his offering, and has removed his crown. 
 Above them is another star. Below are the rounded arches 
 of the caravanserai, with a manger beneath them. Looking 
 up at the Holy Child are a horned ox and an ass with long 
 ears : their heads can best be seen by reversing the seal. 
 The dots under the rounded arch are ornamental, and of no 
 significance. 
 
 Possibly the matrix from which the seal was taken in 
 1888 was a spoilt and discarded die. Before I forget it, 
 let me put on record the fact that there is a drawing of a seal 
 of Bethlehem Hospital, said to be from a document in the 
 "Augmentation Office," in the Guildhall Library. It may 
 be found in a volume entitled " Monastic Seals," and I 
 have reproduced it as a lantern-slide in the collection of 
 slides which I have prepared for the hospital. 
 
 Thus much for the seals ; let me now invite the reader 
 to see how a beautiful coat of arms was spoilt by Sir 
 W. Dugdale, Garter King of Arms, in 1676. I have again 
 to thank Mr. Everard Green, Somerset Herald, for taking 
 me back to our original coat of arms. For all that follows 
 I am indebted to his never-failing kindness. 
 
 The two examples of our original arms in the Heralds' 
 College are in an early Tudor MS. marked L 10, 
 where, on folio 6'jb, the arms are very clearly and well 
 painted, and in Augustine Vincent, Windsor Heraldic MS. 
 
THE SEAL OF THE WARDEN OF THE HOUSE 
 OF THE BLESSED MARY OF BETHLEM. 
 
 BISHOP'S GATE AS RESTORED IN I479. 
 {Sec p. 94) 
 
 To face p. 102. 
 
THE CONFRATERNITY 
 
 103 
 
 No. 187, where there is a pen-and-ink drawing of the 
 same. 
 
 Mr. Green's technical blazon is as follows : — 
 
 " Argent, two bars sable, in chief a label of five points 
 
 gules, surmounted by a chief azure charged with a star of 
 
 fifteen rays or, thereon a Host marked with a cross of 
 
 the third, between, on the dexter, a golden chalice and 
 
 THE PRE-REFORMATION ARMS OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL. 
 
 issuant therefrom a Host ; and, on the sinister, a golden 
 basket containing manna, all proper." 
 
 To translate the heraldic allusions into less technical 
 language : the lower part of the shield is thought to carry 
 the arms of the founder, Simon FitzMary. Above the 
 arms is a red label of five points. The label is usually 
 the sign of an eldest son, and Mr. Green sees a reference 
 to our Lord as the first-born of all creatures, the five red 
 points of the label recalling the five wounds of Christ. 
 The rest of the arms allude to the history or significance 
 
104 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 of Bethlehem— the "house of bread"; on the right (of 
 the reader) is a basket of manna or bread, an allusion to 
 the " Bread which came down from heaven " : to the left 
 
 THE PRESENT ARMS OF BETHLEM. 
 
 is the chalice and Host — the body and blood of Christ. 
 Between chalice and basket is the blazing star of Bethlehem 
 (Matthew Paris calls it " crinita ") with tresses of fire like 
 
THE CONFRATERNITY 105 
 
 a comet. In the centre of the star which shines in the 
 blue vault of heaven is a Host marked with a red cross. 
 Mr. Green notwithstanding, I cannot help conjecturing, as 
 I have already suggested in my second chapter, that the 
 red cross is an allusion to the knights hospitallers of the 
 order of the Bethlemite brothers. 
 
 One of my lady patients has very kindly drawn for me 
 the present arms of Bethlem, in which a hideous skull has 
 replaced the Host. The skull appears to be an allusion 
 to the massacre of the children at Bethlehem. 
 
 For more than six centuries and a half Bethlehem 
 Hospital has been watching, as a spectator, the drama of 
 history. But she has also played her part in it, and each 
 of the three theatres in which she has acted as priest, 
 physician, beggar, gaoler, benefactor, entertainer, or villain, 
 has its antiquities, its romance, and other associations. 
 Quite a collection of portraits, caricatures, prints, and other 
 pictures relating to Bishopsgate, Moorfields, or Southwark, 
 is only waiting for a museum. Such a museum ought 
 to be accessible to visitors as well as to patients. Perhaps 
 the recreation hall might also serve as our hall of history. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 RE-FOUNDED 
 
 The accession of Henry VIII introduced into England 
 from Italy the renaissance of learning. Books and manu- 
 scripts were imported from Italy : Italian ecclesiastics who 
 could unlock the treasure-house of the ancient classics were 
 granted pensions and sinecures by a learned king. Such 
 an ecclesiastic may have been John Cavalari, who was 
 appointed warden of the hospital in 15 12. He appears 
 to have been one of the Cavalaris of Lucca. They im- 
 ported rich cloths in exchange for English wools, and 
 made the king large loans on the security of the customs. 
 One of the Cavalaris was, I imagine, the Italian artist 
 who was commissioned by Wolsey to build his mausoleum. 
 It was at a parliament held in Bridewell Palace that a 
 demand was made in 1522 upon this " Prior of Our Lady 
 of Bedlam " to contribute ^100 (more than two years' salary) 
 towards the expenses of the French War. At the time 
 the hospital was rated at ;^5o per annum, and paid a 
 procuration fee to Wolsey of forty shillings. 
 
 Among the foremost to take deep draughts from the 
 re-discovered wells of learning was Sir Thomas More. The 
 author of '' Utopia " lived at Crosby Place (or Hall), 
 Bishopsgate (c. 15 16-1523), and must have often sauntered 
 across the street — just lately paved with cobble stones — 
 to Bedlam Gate. More has introduced into his writings 
 many reminiscences of these visits. P'or example, in the 
 pages of the ''Four Last Things" (c. 1522), there is an 
 allusion to a whimsical incident of which he was an eye- 
 
 io6 
 
RE-FOUNDED 107 
 
 witness. He is in his mediaeval mood, and preaches a 
 sermon on the madness of sin. 
 
 " Think not," he says, " that everything is pleasant that 
 men for madness laugh at. For thou shalt in Bedlam see 
 one laughing at the knocking of his head against a post, 
 and yet there is little pleasure therein. But what will ye 
 say if ye see the sage fool laugh, when he hath done 
 his neighbour wrong, for which he shall weep for ever 
 hereafter ? " 
 
 The " scourge," " wire," or whip was no doubt in daily 
 use in Bethlem. I imagine, however, that it was principally 
 used, as the tamer uses it, to protect the keepers by in- 
 ducing a sense of fear in their charges. However, as 
 whipping was the universal punishment and panacea for 
 mischievous conduct or for offensive speeches, no doubt 
 More had often seen chastisement administered as a sort of 
 medicine — the " dose to be repeated as often as necessary." 
 
 In his "Apology " (1533), for instance, he tells us of a man 
 who had been " put into Bedlam, and afterwards by beating 
 and correction gathered his remembrances to come again to 
 himself But, being thereupon set at liberty and walking 
 about abroad, his old fancies began again to fall in his 
 head." 
 
 It appears that this man was habitually guilty of very 
 disgusting behaviour in various churches. Complaint was 
 made to the chancellor, and he determined to cure him — 
 after the prescriptions of Bishopsgate. 
 
 " I caused him to be bound to a tree in the street before the 
 whole town, and constables striped him with rods till they 
 waxed weary." The treatment was justified by its success, 
 for More remarks : " Verily, God be thanked, I hear no harm 
 of him now." Perhaps there is more virtue in the medicine 
 of the " cat " than we imagine. 
 
 The word " Bedlam," which is only one of a dozen variants 
 of Bethlehem, our mother-city, no doubt had long been a 
 term of abuse or derision. In the literature of the Renais- 
 sance it is found in the mouths of literary and theological 
 controversialists, who helped themselves liberally to stones 
 
 > 
 
io8 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 from our walls. The first to use it as a missile to sling at an 
 opponent appears to have been the Rev. John Skelton : he 
 was the rector of Diss, in Norfolk, where Atherton, one of our 
 masters, is buried. Formerly the tutor of Henry VIII, he 
 developed later on into a poet of great vigour and originality. 
 
 L.. 
 
 ' F.temo maniuM4ie dumiidcra fulgent 
 iBquoraduraqitomenrheclaiirea Koftra vsrcBit.^^ 
 i' ^Hincnoftrumceteb«'ecni«mereferettit3!5a?lr.aiT. 
 
 A 5 Vndfq;Skeltonismemo?aibi>H?2Ueradortis A 
 
 Always a clerical Bohemian, he was credited with many out- 
 rages on good taste and decency, and Wolsey could hardly be 
 expected to push his fortunes in the Church, as he desired. 
 In revenge Skelton penned a virulent and venomous satire 
 against the " butcher's dog " — the cardinal. Just when you 
 think that he has exhausted his vocabulary of libel and 
 
RE^FOUNDED . 109 
 
 innuendo, suddenly it occurs to him to shout out that Wolsey 
 (no longer a favourite) is 
 
 " Such a mad bedleme 
 For to rule this realm." 
 
 Another quotation may be given from one of the rarest 
 of books, "The Hyeway to the Spyttel House" (1536), by 
 R. Copland. 
 
 The only thing which stands between men with nagging 
 wives and an attack of madness is the chance of getting a 
 bed at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. 
 
 " We have chambers purposely for them, 
 Or else they should be lodged in Bedlem." 
 
 Sir Thomas More, the apostle of toleration, and Tyndale, 
 the translator of the Bible, used the word " Bedlam " as a 
 noun or adjective in their theological battles with a fury 
 worthy of the origin of the epithet. 
 
 From 1529 to 1536 George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford, 
 was the governor, keeper, or master of the " house of Our Lady 
 of Bethlem," to which his great-grandfather (mayor, 1457) 
 had probably been a benefactor. The beautiful dark eyes of 
 his wanton sister procured him the mastership, and much 
 else besides in gold and honours. What a price he paid, as 
 he lamented on the scaffold, for preferring the " vanities of 
 the world " to the spirit of the gospel, of which he had been 
 so strenuous a champion ! 
 
 Did Anne Boleyn, I wonder, visit Bethlem to witness the 
 investiture of her brother in the merry, madcap days before 
 her marriage, when the king was still infatuated, and his 
 courtiers staked high for her smile ? Perhaps she was intro- 
 duced to some of the subjects of her brother's kingdom, and 
 sent her frolicsome suite into shrieks of laughter, as she parried 
 some uncomplimentary allusion with Tudor coarseness. 
 
 And what did they think or say in Bethlem that morning 
 in June, 1536, when the news came that the master had been 
 beheaded in the Tower on the most revolting of charges ? 
 
no THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 Perhaps they whispered that it might be the turn of the 
 hospital next to forfeit the royal favour. 
 
 The master and his sister, Queen Anne, were shovelled into 
 their graves of shame beneath the chancel of St. Peter's 
 church, while her " gentle and amiable prince " was solacing 
 himself with music and the ladies of the court. Within the 
 Tower walls our master still lies — in that saddest of churches 
 — in front of the altar. The bones of the queen and of her 
 " sweet brother " were exhumed and examined by permission 
 of Queen Victoria. 
 
 Dr. Barnes — friar, Protestant reformer, and royal agent — 
 was anxious to succeed George Boleyn, and was ready to 
 reside in the hospital, so that he might be under the benefi- 
 cent eye of Thomas Cromwell : the mastership was worth 
 £\0^ and he " would sooner have it than a bishopric." It was 
 the same Dr. Barnes who later on demanded a " scorge to 
 tame those bedlames with," but Bishop Bonner, who was 
 one of them, packed off to heaven in a chariot of fire his 
 Protestant adversary. 
 
 However, after an interval of three months, Sir Peter 
 Mewtys was appointed master : a muniment book in Bride- 
 well contains the copy of a lease granted by him to a tenant 
 of the hospital. Mewtys or Mutas was the son of a French 
 merchant, the French secretary of Henry VHI, and was him- 
 self a confidential agent of the king. We find him trying to 
 negotiate a French marriage for Henry VHI, and assisting 
 at the reception of Anne of Cleves. He fought at Calais and 
 Edinburgh, and was knighted for his services in 1544. In 
 1537 he married Mistress Ashley, sister of a London mercer, 
 and had a house near the Tower. 
 
 Two years after the appointment of Mewtys as master, 
 the citizens set themselves to try and save from the greed and 
 callousness of the king some of the London hospitals, of which 
 Bethlem was one. 
 
 When you are negotiating with brigands, you are anxious 
 to treat for a ransom on economical terms, and you use the 
 language of diplomacy in attempting to bargain. 
 
 In 1538 Sir R. Gresham petitioned Henry VIII for four 
 
RE-FOUNDED in 
 
 religious houses, which had been " founded only for the relief 
 and comfort of poor and impotent people unable to help 
 themselves." These were the priory or hospital of St. Mary, 
 Bishopsgate (a hospice for sick people often confounded 
 with Bethlehem Hospital), St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 
 St. Thomas's Hospital, and the New Abbey on Tower Hill : 
 Bethlem is not mentioned in this list, perhaps because it was 
 held to be the personal property of the sovereign. 
 
 Gresham was dealing with a king who professed to be 
 pillaging from the highest of motives : he was therefore 
 diplomatic, and yet persistent. " They were not founded for 
 the maintenance of canons, priests, and monks to live in 
 pleasure, nothing regarding the miserable people lying in 
 every street, offending every clean person passing by with 
 their filthy and nasty savours." 
 
 A year passed, and once more the city, without insinuating 
 an offer of compensation, ingenuously petitioned that the 
 "late dissolved houses be made over to them with their rents 
 and revenues." This petition was refused or ignored, for the 
 king was holding out for better terms. But on ist August, 
 1540, the court of common council, perceiving that they must 
 be the first to move, authorized the mayor and aldermen 
 to make an offer of £'joo for houses, churches, cloisters 
 — " if they can be gotten no cheaper " : they had a " frugal 
 mind." 
 
 In reply Henry upbraided the citizens with being " pynche- 
 pence " (stingy), and let the matter stand over for four years 
 in hope that delay would produce a higher bid. 
 
 It would be tedious, and it is unnecessary, to trace the 
 details of the negotiations. There was proposal and feigned 
 withdrawal, there was counter-proposal and debate : but at 
 last the bargain was struck. 
 
 " As it hath pleased the king of his most virtuous and 
 godly disposition not only to freely grant to the city certain 
 places for the relief of the poor," but also to restore part of 
 their endowment, the city agrees to be responsible for any 
 deficiency caused by circumstances. 
 
 Finally, on 27th December, 1546, there was presented to 
 
112 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 the city for signature a preliminary deed of covenant, by 
 which, in all the obscurity of legal jargon, Henry VIII 
 agreed to grant St. Bartholomew's Hospital to the mayor 
 and corporation. And to this covenant is tacked on, as 
 if by an afterthought about so trivial a matter, a grant of 
 Bethlem : — 
 
 " And the king further granted that the said mayor, com- 
 monalty, and citizens and their successors should be masters 
 and governors of the house or hospital called Bethlem, and 
 should have the order, rule, and government of the hospital 
 and of the people there, and should have full authority to 
 cause the revenues of the lands and possessions of the 
 hospital to be employed for the benefit of the poor people 
 there, according to the true meaning of the foundation, or 
 otherwise, as it should please the king." 
 
 It is certain from the action of succeeding monarchs that 
 this document was interpreted as reserving to the king the 
 freehold of the hospital and the rights of visitation and 
 reform. 
 
 Some seventeen days before he died, that is on 13th 
 January, 1547, Henry VIII signed the letter patent which 
 ratified the deed of covenant : this is the charter of the second 
 foundation. 
 
 Two or three years afterwards Sir Martin Bowes (mayor, 
 1545) was paid ^113 6s. 8d. (about £1,700 at the present 
 value of money) for the purchase of the patronage of Bethlem 
 with all the lands and tenements thereto belonging. Pre- 
 sumably, this was by way of reimbursement, and the 
 purchase-money may have been raised out of the hospital 
 revenues. However, according to Stow, Stephen Jennings 
 (mayor, 1508) left £^0 in his will of 1523 towards the 
 " purchase of the patronage " of Bethlem from the king. 
 Sir Martin, the goldsmith, was a great dealer in church 
 property. What was his charge in this deal for brokerage ? 
 I rather suspect him of taking away from our cloister a 
 " brass laver, eighteen feet in length," into which leaden pipes 
 poured water. 
 
 One hundred and thirteen pounds six shillings and eight- 
 
SIR MARTIN BOWES. 
 
 (By pcniiission of flic Goldsmiths' Company.) 
 
 To face p. 112. 
 
RE-FOUNDED 
 
 113 
 
 pence then was our ransom, and it was paid to a brigand — ■ 
 whether he was king or courtier. 
 
 In 1547 — to be frank — the city bought back the "custody 
 and patronage" of the hospital which she had already 
 acquired in 1346 in legal form and on equitable terms. 
 
 It is the generosity of a brigand to permit his victim to 
 buy back his own property. 
 
 / 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE VINEYARD OF NABOTH AT CHARING 
 
 CROSS 
 
 Two years before the death of Henry VHI and the grant 
 of the royal charter, the master of Bethlehem Hospital signed 
 his name to a piece of parchment, which is still in the 
 keeping of Mr. Worsfold at Bridewell. It is a document of 
 great importance, for it is the original lease of 7th February, 
 1545, by which Sir Peter Mewtys demised the " Stone House 
 and its appurtenances, recently converted into three tene- 
 ments " to Thomas Wood, yeoman, and Joan, his wife, for 
 a term of ninety-nine years at a rental of ^3 per annum. 
 This Stone House and its appurtenances — if the argument of 
 the eighth chapter stands unchallenged — comprised the whole 
 of what w^e call Trafalgar Square to-day, and had been " parcel 
 of the possessions of the hospital " since a date ranging between 
 1377 and 1403. It is worthy of remark that the lease of 
 Mewtys recites the terms of an earlier grant to the same 
 parties on ist January, 1536, by the previous master, George 
 Boleyn, Viscount Rochford, for it therefore follows 
 that the words " recently converted into three tenements " 
 apply to a date previous to 1536. Now in 1534 Henry VIII 
 converted the mews at Charing Cross, where in earlier 
 reigns the king's falcons used to moult their feathers, into 
 royal stables. Henry VIII, no doubt, was the real 
 master of Bethlehem Hospital and of all its lands and 
 houses, whether there had been any technical surrender or 
 not. But there is no reason — according to the statements 
 
 made by counsel in 164S — to believe that the Stone House 
 
 114 
 

 THE PROCESSION OF EDWARD VI PASSING CHARING CROSS 
 
 ON ITS WAY TO WESTMINSTER HALL, ON THE DAY BEFORE 
 
 HIS CORONATION, IN 1547- 
 
 To face p. 114. 
 
THE VINEYARD OF NABOTH ii^ 
 
 estate was ever part of the royal mews, or that any sovereign 
 had any legal right to give away the property of the 
 hospital. It is not unlikely, however, that the rebuilding of 
 the mews in 1534 suggested the development of the Stone 
 House estate. The houses built served as residences for 
 royal servants, and Mewtys no doubt exacted the fine, 
 which belonged to him as master. 
 
 With the reversion of the hospital to the city of London, 
 the Stone House estate passed from the long purse of 
 Mewtys into the lean coffers of the charity. Unfortunately 
 Bethlem had been a religious foundation, and the Pro- 
 testant brigands in the court of Edward VI began to look 
 upon it as Ahab and Jezebel looked upon the vineyard of 
 Naboth. In the general scramble for chantry bequests and 
 monastic lands one of the under-tenants at Charing Cross 
 (John Golightly, serjeant farrier to Henry VIII), secured from 
 Edward VI on 26th June, 1551, a lease of a " piece of land 
 containing in length from north to south one hundred and 
 forty-six feet, and in breadth from east to west one hundred 
 and twenty-two feet." Now, if we turn to a survey of the 
 Charing Cross estate (p. 116), attached to a lease granted 
 by Bethlem in 1649, we shall find on measuring it that these 
 figures give us, approximately, what I may call the 
 " Chequer " inn block on the east, and part of the hatched 
 area westward together with the hinterland. Golightly's 
 house was in the shaded area, and he held a lease of it under 
 Wood, our lessee. But he also managed (it would appear) 
 to get a lease of the " Chequer " block on the pretext that 
 it had been "purchased by Henry VIII," and was part of 
 his stables. This block must, I think, have been one of the 
 three tenements into which the " Stone House " had been 
 converted. We shall find a little later on that one of the 
 three has unaccountably disappeared. I have no doubt that 
 the hospital lost it, not because it was purchased by 
 Henry VIII, but because the policy of Edward VI and his 
 ministers encouraged raids on conventual endowments. 
 However, Golightly had to share his spoils with others, for 
 six years later, on 29th May, 155^ — when the see-saw had 
 
THE VINEYARD OF NABOTH it; 
 
 displaced Geneva in favour of Rome — two speculators in 
 Church property purchased the reversion of the ground 
 leased to Golightly. The grant of Philip and Mary, by the 
 by, speaks of a " messuage newly built upon it." Golightly's 
 house had certainly been his residence since 1554, and I am 
 inclined, therefore, to argue that the " messuage newly built " 
 was the "Chequer" inn. In any case the "Chequer" was 
 in existence in the days of Edward VI or Mary, accord- 
 ing to the tenor of the evidence given by Golightly's 
 daughter in a lawsuit of 1601. Golightly evidently came 
 to terms about his own house with the intruders, but the 
 "Chequer" block seems to have stuck to the fingers of 
 Reeve and Rotsey, or others, with, or without, the consent 
 of the hospital and its lessee. 
 
 It is evident, at any rate, that the three tenements in- 
 cluded in the lease to Wood had shrunk to two by the 
 November of 1554, when Wood made his will : — 
 
 " I give and bequeath to my wife all that my lease of 
 two tenements in the parish of St. Martin, Charing Cross : 
 the one in the tenure and occupation of John Golightly, as also 
 the other, in which I now dwell, which tenements I have 
 of the lease made unto me by the late master of the hospital 
 of Our Blessed Lady of Bethlem without Bishopsgate, 
 London." 
 
 In the November of 1557, the year in which the specu- 
 lators purchased their reversion, the maker of this will said 
 goodbye to his " Hvery coat," and handed over to his base- 
 born son a " debenture " of £10 signed by Queen Mary for 
 salary unpaid. The ground was " broken " for the old 
 churchwarden — so we read in the accounts of the wardens 
 — in the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. His knell was 
 rung, and the wax of his funeral tapers guttered in the 
 wind. But before he died he leased to Golightly his house 
 and stables, also making him trustee of the Stone House 
 estate for the benefit of his son, during his minority. 
 
 Darken the stage: burn a little lurid fire : and let the music 
 wail and rumble : for John Golightly faces the footlights, 
 the arch-villain of the play. In the following year — the last 
 
ii8 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 of his life — he proceeded to encroach upon the " possessions 
 of the hospital," pulling down palings and other boundaries 
 — alas ! without any interference on the part of the 
 governors. His example was the signal for a successful 
 campaign of misrepresentation and brigandage, which was 
 engineered against Naboth and his vineyard by informers, 
 unscrupulous squatters, and other " men of Belial." The 
 campaign was heralded by a cry of " concealed lands." Now 
 concealed lands were monastic or chantry lands, which 
 should have been, but were not, surrendered to Henry VHI 
 or Edward VI. It was a favourite device of speculative 
 attorneys and other professional informers in the reign of 
 Elizabeth and James I to hunt up such lands and to buy 
 them from the crown. Believe me, the informer emerged 
 from these transactions not unprofitably. 
 
 I have found in the Record Office the royal grants 
 upon which Ahab, and Jezebel, and the false witnesses who 
 rose up against us, relied for proof of their title. The 
 first is a grant by EHzabeth, dated 7th August, 1568, to 
 Hugh Councell and Robert Pistor of two strips of land at 
 Charing Cross, on the pretext that they were concealed 
 lands and belonged to the queen. These two speculators, 
 who, by the by, were operating all over England, sold their 
 grants to the widow of Golightly. The second is a grant 
 made to Thomas and Elizabeth Garland by James I on 
 22nd December, 1608, and it certainly closes every legal 
 loophole against any one who set out to impugn its justice or 
 validity. However, amid vast oceans of legal jargon — for 
 which Thomas and Elizabeth had, I hope, to pay hand- 
 somely — islands occasionally emerge in the shape of boun- 
 daries and measurements. They serve to identify two vacant 
 strips of ground in " Trafalgar Square," which I have marked 
 as A and B in the survey. The road in front of the National 
 Gallery may be accepted as representing the former strip, 
 which at one point touched an " orchard." The other piece 
 of debateable land bordered the western side of the Square, 
 where the Union Club and the College of Physicians now 
 frigidly turn their backs on one another. 
 
THE VINEYARD OF NABOTH 119 
 
 In 1644 the original lease of the Stone House and its 
 appurtenances expired, and the governors found — apparently 
 to their profound astonishment — that every one of their 
 tenants questioned the title of the hospital. They were, 
 therefore, obliged to institute a suit in chancery, which was 
 afterwards abandoned in favour of arbitration. In the 
 archives of Bridewell I found the case of the governors, as 
 it was prepared for counsel employed in this suit. It 
 appears therefrom that they only had — as we still have — 
 the original lease and the will of yeoman Wood, while the 
 defendants were fortified with grants from Edward VI, 
 Mary, Elizabeth, and James I, and also professed to possess 
 decisive surveys of the estate as held by Wood in 1545. No 
 doubt, as the governors justly contended, these royal grants 
 were procured by fraud and misrepresentation, and ought, 
 therefore, to be set aside by the court. It is very difficult, 
 however, to evict even trespassers, if they have occupied 
 their holdings without interference for fifty years, and 
 perhaps the hospital was lucky to save more than half of 
 its Naboth's vineyard at Charing Cross. A glance at the 
 plan of 1649 will show what we kept and what we lost in 
 the seventeenth century, but I can illustrate the success of the 
 speculators and informers in figures of hard cash. In 1830 
 our holding in " Trafalgar Square " was valued by the 
 government at ^^38,000. If we had not lost the site of the 
 "Chequer" inn and the areas indicated in the survey by 
 the letters A and B, we should have started with another 
 ;^30,ooo in our pockets — as compensation for disturbance — 
 to buy a still larger estate in Piccadilly. 
 
 A literary necromancer, I have managed to raise the dead 
 even in the Augmentation Office, and to give the breath of 
 life to the bleaching bones in the valley of Bridewell. In the 
 exercise of my powers I am now going to show my readers 
 the " Chequer " inn, from which, in the days of Charles I, the 
 carrier started for Blandford, and the houses in which the 
 conspiracy was hatched against the " mayor, commonalty, 
 and citizens of London," who slept while the enemy sowed 
 tares. 
 
I20 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 Here is a picture of Charing Cross very much as it looked 
 to Christiana Golightly, Robert Pistor, the informer, Anthony 
 Reeve, the speculator in real estate, and others of my puppets. 
 It was drawn by Ralph Agas about the year 1560, when 
 Elizabeth had been reigning two years. 
 
 At the corner of St. Martin's Lane and Charing Cross — 
 to-day Havelock stands on the site to plead for generosity 
 to the soldier — stands a large, roomy house. This, reader, is 
 
 CHARING CROSS IN THE YEAR I560. 
 
 the "Chequer" inn, but you must think of it as well in front 
 of the statue, and as facing the gateway of Northumberland 
 House on the ground now covered by Northumberland 
 Avenue. 
 
 Now we may steer our way across the Square to Nelson's 
 Column and its guardian lions. To the left of the " Chequer" 
 inn, just behind the Cross, you will notice a passage some 
 five feet wide ; this passage, which was known as " Checker 
 Yard," even after the " Chequer " had turned into the " Coach 
 
THE VINEYARD OF NABOTH 121 
 
 and Horses," escaped the greed of the raiders. Further 
 west is the house of John Golightly, arch-conspirator against 
 the hospital : let the lion at the south-east corner of the 
 pedestal commemorate his monumental iniquity. The next 
 building in the illustration — as I gather from the brief for 
 counsel — is not a house, but a wall with a door opening into 
 the background of the next tenement, occupied in the time 
 of Agas by the widow and son of Thomas Wood. The 
 lion at the south-west corner may be said to indicate with 
 his paw the site of the house of Wood, yeoman of the 
 royal stables, with its " garnish " of pewter plates, its cruises, 
 and apostle-spoons. Beyond this tenement of Wood was 
 a brick wall linking it to the royal barn. Through a door 
 in this wall Wood used to drive his horses into a yard. 
 After 1702, but not before 1702 — so far as I can judge 
 by our leases and Hatton's " New View of London " — a 
 famous coaching inn, the " Golden Cross," arose on the site 
 of this yard and stables. 
 
 So much for the frontage in the plan of Agas, which, I 
 think, must have been in advance of the pavement of 
 Trafalgar Square. Let us now explore the territory in the 
 background of the survey. In it we have the "appurte- 
 nances" of the Stone House, or its three tenements men- 
 tioned in the original lease. These appurtenances include — 
 happily the statues of heroes cannot shiver, or sniff — stables, 
 cow-houses, a coal-room, or other offices : they form (you 
 will observe) a right angle to a " mud wall " in the map. 
 Disregard the word " mews " unless you are a champion 
 of Golightly and Garland, for the mews were on the 
 other side of the northern wall (the " king's granary ") 
 and of the western wall (the " king's barn "). Con- 
 centrate your attention on the many-angled little build- 
 ing, hooded with a kind of cupola : it lies full between 
 the word "mewes" and what looks like a drinking-trough 
 for horses. In the leases, grants, and brief it is described 
 as the " conduit-head " from which water was carried in 
 pipes " to Whitehall palace and elsewhere." I have no 
 doubt that this was part of the " conduit " which, accord- 
 
122 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 ing to Stow, brought water from Paddington to Corn- 
 hill via the " mewsgate " after 1236: even in 1613 it is 
 described as the " city's great pipe." This " conduit-head " 
 comprised a red-brick chamber with mediaeval groining, 
 which served as a reservoir for the water. It was destroyed 
 in 1 83 1 in the laying out of Trafalgar Square: even anti- 
 quaries only know it under the name of " Queen Elizabeth's 
 bath." North of this is a garden with a solitary bay-tree : 
 laurelled heroes have long since stripped it of its leaves. 
 
 Places as well as patients may be the victims of heredity. 
 " Trafalgar Square," when it was ours, was the scene of a 
 great protest against encroachments. And ever since it 
 passed out of our hands, reformers and agitators have been 
 protesting against encroachments on liberty and justice. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 OUR SISTER, BRIDEWELL 
 
 At the Reformation everything was thrown into the melting- 
 pot, and all the old moulds were broken up. In common 
 with the rest of England, London had to remould her 
 ancient institutions. To the task of reconstructing the 
 " royal hospitals " she devoted herself during the latter half 
 of the sixteenth century. 
 
 I do not propose to trace the evolution — it was a gradual 
 and complicated process — of the present form of their govern- 
 ment. I will, however, indicate some of the early moulds 
 into which Bethlem, still fluid, was poured. 
 
 From 1547 to 1556 the court of aldermen appear to have 
 administered the hospital directly through the " keeper " of 
 the house, who was ordered to submit his accounts to the 
 chamberlain of the city. But during 1556 and part of 1557 
 Bethlem was transferred to the governors of Christ's Hospital, 
 who were, of course, also aldermen and commoners of the 
 corporation. No doubt these governors — with so many 
 children to maintain and educate — found it impossible to 
 spare sufficient time and attention to a hospital of so dif- 
 ferent a character. At any rate on 27th September, 1557, 
 another mould was found for Bethlem, and it was finally 
 placed under the management of Bridewell. The court of 
 Bridewell Hospital appointed three " surveyors of Bethlem " 
 to act as a sort of house-committee, but the same court and 
 counting-house served for both hospitals. Our younger sister 
 is a managing woman, and still manages for us. 
 
 The future maintenance of the royal hospitals was a more 
 
 123 
 
124 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 difficult problem than their government. Four of them had 
 been plundered and held to ransom by king and courtier: 
 the houses which contributed to the revenues of all had been 
 allowed to fall into decay : the soul of charity had been torn 
 from the body which it had animated so long. But the city 
 had pledged herself to nurse their estates into prosperity, and 
 meanwhile to raise money for immediate needs. 
 
 Accordingly in 1557 a sort of poor-rate was levied on each 
 citizen : next year the city companies were assessed, and the 
 pulpit was enlisted in the campaign. 
 
 In the case of Bethlem a proctor was despatched — as in 
 mediaeval days — on a begging errand to Cambridge, Ely, and 
 Lincoln, and collections w^ere made by royal authority in all 
 the churches of England and Wales. A specimen of a "brief" 
 
 , e aftnotonebngoaa S)euoitfeanD fa?ttjfm people tDat 
 tijere tjatt) b?ne anDis tctctefte fonre J^oflTpitala: InanD 
 auoute m cpti e of Hontion, xw is to itit ti)c one (s fbz t^e 
 poozc people tt)at be ftcpkeac Dp f l)e ^anOe of <0OD famt be 
 ftraugfttfrom tDecetnpttes tt)uCc be fee ptc $ m aj>nteno m 
 t^e i^ofpitaiof ont 2.abpe of 26tDDeleinbmple 000 caule 
 t^rm to Dismanpoj tottjcncpttesagapne. 
 
 {From a brief issued by Elizabeth in behalf of Bethlehem Hospital and other objects of charity.) 
 
 conferring the royal authority on the proctor may still be 
 inspected at the British Museum : half a dozen lines are 
 appended in the form of an illustration. 
 
 " Be it known to all devout and faithful people that there 
 have been erected in the city of London four hospitals for 
 the poor people that be stricken by the hand of God. Some 
 be distraught from their wits : these be kept and maintained 
 in the Hospital of Our Lady of Beddelem, until God call 
 them to His mercy, or to their wits again." 
 
 " Our Lady of Beddelem " was, it is true, supposed to 
 share the purse of Bridewell, but unfortunately St. Thomas's 
 Hospital had been enriched at the expense of Bridewell, 
 which was reduced to great straits during the close of the 
 sixteenth century. The work of our house suffered pro- 
 

 
 
 LIEUT.-COL. A. J. COPELAND, F.S.A. 
 
 Treasurer, and author of " Bridewell Royal Hospital, Past and Present," li 
 
 To face p. 124. 
 
OUR SISTER, BRIDEWELL 125 
 
 portionately, and was indeed conducted on a very meagre 
 scale throughout the reign of Elizabeth. 
 
 The earliest court books of Bridewell Hospital cover in 
 part the period of this chapter, and I shall draw upon them 
 for information and illustration. They begin in 1559 (six 
 years after the foundation of Bridewell), but unfortunately 
 the volumes are missing between 1562 and 1574, between 
 1579 and 1597, and between 1610 and 1617. Probably they 
 disappeared in the confusion attending their removal to 
 Hammersmith at the time when the Great Fire swept 
 through the old palace of Bridewell. 
 
 The court books were intelligently studied and thoroughly 
 digested by Mr. F. O. Martin for the Report which he wrote 
 for the Charity Commissioners of 1837. He was the first to 
 investigate along with our archives such original authorities 
 as were then available, and his conclusions, so far as they 
 relate to Bethlem, are on the whole as accurate as they are 
 exhaustive. It was left, however, for Lt.-Col. A. J. Cope- 
 land, F.S.A., treasurer of the two hospitals, to make a 
 precis in chronological order of all that seemed to him of 
 value or interest in the minutes of the court from the 
 sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Without these tran- 
 scripts I should never, I fear, have mastered the handwriting 
 of the Elizabethan clerk, in which the early minutes are 
 written. 
 
 The treasurer has printed various studies of his in the 
 history of Bridewell and Bethlem ; and indeed it was after 
 reading two papers of his in our magazine — twenty years ago 
 — that I began to collect materials for a literary monument 
 to our house and its work. 
 
 The future historian of Bridewell must put on his sewer- 
 boots before he wades through the filth of its police records, 
 but he will find many things worth picking up and washing. 
 
 For instance, the first volume appears to be in the hand- 
 writing or to have been written under the direction of 
 Richard Grafton, who was one of the " masters " of Bride- 
 well, and certainly superintended the daily whippings of that 
 court of morality. He was one of the wealthy merchants 
 
126 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 who turned the day in favour of Protestantism, for he printed 
 in the English language the " Great Bible " of Cranmer and 
 the first Prayer Book of Edward VI, of which I reproduce 
 the title-page. He was also a compiler of the chronicles 
 of England, but it was dangerous to mention his name or his 
 work in the hearing of worthy old Stow, also a chronicler. 
 
 The missing volumes of the minutes probably contained 
 references to the tortures undoubtedly inflicted in Bridewell 
 on political and religious offenders. And I mention here the 
 curious fact that the first congregational church in England 
 grew out of the rigorous treatment — fatal to four of its 
 founders — of some conscientious dissenters in the Bridewell 
 of 1567. 
 
 Such court books as survive — they only relate to eleven 
 years — will help some student hereafter to add to his direc- 
 tory of London in the sixteenth century. Numbers of streets 
 and courts and taverns are mentioned by name, and some of 
 the signs of the taverns explain the origin of present-day 
 names of courts. In the reign of Elizabeth there was the 
 " Hanging Sword " and the " Popingay." To-day the thirsty 
 journalist of Fleet Street searches Hanging Sword Alley in 
 vain, but " Poppins Court," if it has lost a " Popingay," still 
 possesses a " Red Lion." 
 
 But there are all sorts of allusions to the manners and 
 customs of the age. The prodigal apprentice dices and 
 dances half the night; and takes his pleasure in the day 
 at his master's expense by riding to Beddington, or Stour- 
 bridge Fair, near Cambridge. The counterfeit cripple stands 
 in front of the preacher at Paul's Cross with his crutch, and 
 the bigamist does penance in the church in a white sheet. A 
 pair of gloves or a venison pasty are gifts proper to Valen- 
 tine's Day, and the summer-houses, which citizens are building 
 in Moorfields, too often shelter lovers. 
 
 The Puritanism of the city is very marked in the court 
 books. Private houses as well as streets and taverns are 
 searched and offenders against morality arrested, by constable 
 and watch — often on the information of a neighbour. The 
 " night walker " is carted round the town — after whipping — 
 

 
 •Z;^ 
 
 TITLE-PAGE OF PRAYER BOOK PRINTED BY RICHARD GRAFTON. 
 
 Notice below the rebus on Grafton's name — a graft and a ton. 
 
 127 
 
128 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 to the music of basins : the gentleman has to repair thirty 
 feet of Bridewell wharf, or to give so much cloth out of his 
 " benevolence " for the use of the poor. 
 
 Bethlem has always been the Cinderella among her dis- 
 dainful sister hospitals, and the court books of this date do 
 not condescend to pay much attention to her house or her 
 people. I have, however, after peeping into every page of the 
 records, found here and there some fragments of her history. 
 
 In 1574 a man was charged at Bridewell with sending his 
 wife to Bethlem without cause. She complained that for six 
 weeks previous to her committal she had been tied down in 
 bed by her husband and another woman till she was " well 
 nigh famished." In another entry the wisdom of Solomon is 
 eclipsed. The court of Bridewell was troubled with a woman 
 who " seemed to be mad " and yet was a rogue, and so she 
 was first whipped, and then sent to Bedlem ! 
 
 In a succeeding chapter I shall deal with the rogues of 
 both sexes (the Toms and Besses of Bedlam) who feigned 
 ^ insanity to escape whipping and the mill at Bridewell^ or to 
 prey on the charitable. One of the court books tells us of a 
 clever rascal who was to be found at the " Griffin," Waltham 
 Cross. For half a crown he would forge you a licence to beg, 
 duly signed by the treasurer or keeper of Bethlem : it would 
 set forth that you had been for the last two years caged up 
 in Bedlam, and that you were authorized to beg for the 
 arrears of your maintenance. The governors do not seem to 
 have ever issued any such licences. 
 
 In the year 1576 we are introduced to one John Mell, as 
 keeper of Bedlem. He had been appointed by the lord 
 mayor and court of aldermen, but was immediately respon- 
 sible to the three " surveyors of Bedlem." I am afraid that 
 he must stand in the dock with Peter, the porter, Dr. Crooke, 
 / the keeper, Richard Langley, the steward, and many other 
 officials of the hospital. For he refused to give any account 
 of legacies (^14) received, even discouraged the benevolent 
 from giving at all, and grossly insulted the surveyors. He 
 was dismissed, defiant to the last, but it appears from the 
 burial register of St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, that a few days 
 
OUR SISTER, BRIDEWELL 129 
 
 before ist December, 1579, death dismissed his appeal to the 
 court of aldermen. During his keepership the east gate, 
 which opened into the street, was to be closed at 9 p.m. or 
 10 p.m., according to the season, the west gate, which led into 
 Moorfields, an hour or two earlier. 
 
 Another story of the court books (1579) helps us to under- 
 stand why the hospital has lost so much of its property by 
 the negligence or ignorance of its governors. One Wright, a 
 carpenter (or builder), had managed through the good offices 
 of his father-in-law, the city chamberlain, to secure a garden 
 which belonged to Bethlem, and had built a "fair house" 
 upon it. Our sleepy sister — Bridewell — had, of course, 
 noticed nothing. Fortunately, however, one Dr. Martin had 
 reason to believe that his lease included this ground, and he 
 at once appealed to the court at Bridewell not to let their 
 " inheritance " slip through their fingers. He proposed — 
 quite with the approval of the court — to go to law at his own 
 expense to preserve his title and their property ; and the 
 court was good enough to promise to have a " talk wjth 
 Wright " at the next " view " of their houses. 
 
 I had hoped to associate Dr. Martin, or some other 
 doctor, with the care of our patients, but I find that an old 
 woman was in charge of the dispensary. It has been quite a 
 joy to transcribe an entry so charged with unconscious humour 
 as the following, which is dated 21st June, 1578. 
 
 "It is granted that the old woman, the wife of Davie 
 Thomson, who hath given medicine to the poor at Bedlem, 
 shall have eight pence a week to keep two frantic persons in 
 rooms there provided : she to find them their diet and 
 medicine. She reported she had cured one Wm. Home, a 
 rich man from North Cray, and also many others." 
 
 Dear old soul ! Probably your remedies owed more to 
 the herbs of the field than to the astrology of the orthodox 
 physician ; but you were the only creature who really cared 
 whether or not your forlorn prisoners recovered, I hope that 
 the rich man provided handsomely for you and Davie. 
 
 Let me conclude by announcing a literary discovery 
 which I made by collating items out of the court books, the 
 
 10 
 
I30 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 muniment book, old leases at Bridewell, and the registers of 
 St. Botolph, Bishopsgate. 
 
 In a Bethlem rental of 1555, one William Allen appears as 
 
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 A PAGE FROM THE MUNIMENT BOOK AT BRIDEWELL. 
 
 It shows the rental of Bethlem for 1555. 
 
 one of our tenants, and one Edward Allen, also a tenant, as 
 " keeper of Bethlem." I suspected that Edward Allen was 
 the father of the famous actor, and two of the old leases 
 
OUR SISTER, BRIDEWELL 131 
 
 enabled me to prove it. On ist February, 1559, the hospital 
 granted a lease of a tenement to " Edward Allen, citizen and 
 innholder, and Margaret his wife." These words identify 
 them as the parents of Edward Alleyne, actor, theatrical 
 speculator, and founder of Dulwich College ; and William, in 
 that case, would be his actor-brother, or uncle. This house 
 was large enough to be afterwards divided into three tene- 
 ments, and may well have been the residence of Edward 
 Allen, who had a good deal of property in Bishopsgate. It 
 is impossible to say whether the great actor was born in one 
 of our houses in 1 566. He is said by Fuller in his " Worthies " 
 to have been " born near Devonshire Square, where is now the 
 sign of the pie." Now, curiously enough, an Elizabethan or 
 Jacobean hand has noted in the muniment book of a tene- 
 ment adjoining his that it is " Pye's house." The Pyes were 
 a large Bishopsgate family, and Michael Pye was a tenant of 
 ours in 1600. His large house, which faced what is now 
 Devonshire Square, may well have borne the sign of the pie, or 
 magpie. Allen, the father, and keeper of Bethlem, died in 
 1570, and I find that in his will he nominated Hugh Walker, 
 brasier, his " fellow and neighbour," as the " overseer " of his 
 estate. Now this " Walker, founder," appears from one of 
 our court books to have had a lease of the chapel before 
 1574. Evidently he desecrated the chapel by using it as a 
 foundry. I cannot spare such a sacrilegious and illiterate 
 knave — he could not even write his own name, and had to 
 attest his friend's will with his mark ! 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 *'TOM O' BEDLAM" 
 
 The king's highway has always had its devoted worshippers, 
 who clung to it for its freedom, its cheapness, and its changing 
 horizons. But among them, until a century ago, were always 
 those who wandered, not because they loved the road or the 
 vagrant, but because they were driven along it by forces, 
 invisible yet irresistible. These wanderers were mysteries to 
 their fellows on the road ; their minds worked in a strange, 
 fantastic fashion : the thumb of the potter seemed to have 
 given, as if in sport, an ironic or humorous twist to the clay. 
 
 In the sixteenth century Shakespeare walked awhile in 
 their company, studied their moods, and discovered the 
 secret springs of their actions. His language is that of the 
 poet, but he has accurately diagnosed several types of mental 
 disease, as if such a physician as Dr. Timothy Bright, 
 physician of St. Bartholomew's, and author of a book on 
 "Melancholy" in 1586, had taught him — conceivably at 
 Bethlehem Hospital — to classify them. I shall be able to 
 demonstrate the force of my theory to some of my readers by 
 some quotations from " King Lear." 
 
 There is the poor wretch " bound upon a wheel of fire": to 
 the alienist he is tormented by a sense of inexpiable guilt — for 
 he is suffering from religious mania. Another is " led by the 
 foul fiend through fire and flame, over bog and quagmire " ; 
 and " Flibbertigibbet mops and mows at him": we who know 
 hear voices taunting, luring, and tempting : haunting visions 
 scourge him forward on the road. He has delusions of per- 
 secution, and every man seems his enemy. Shakespeare has 
 
 132 
 
DELUSIONAL INSANITY. 
 
 He wanders along the road, driven by forces invisible, yet irresistible. The powers of 
 
 ■darkness (moon, bat and toad) seem leagued in hostility against him, and man " whips 
 
 poor Tom from tithing to tithing." 
 
 To face p. 132. 
 
' " TOM a BEDLAM'' 133 
 
 also scientifically isolated in a group those who have lost all 
 the sensibilities of humanity. They " eat the swimming frog, 
 the tadpole, mice and rats " — not to mention more loathsome 
 carrion — and they " drink the green mantle of the standing 
 pool " ; and — this also is true to life — so dead are such to 
 pain that they have stuck pins, thorns, and sprigs into 
 their " mortified, bare arms." They are the demented. 
 
 In the centuries past such have been some of the wayfarers 
 on the king's highway — the victims of heredity, of sin, and 
 of circumstances. But, though they were what they were, 
 martyrdom was their portion on the road, until mental 
 hospitals were multiplied and reformed. 
 
 Our Saxon forefathers found on the Roman ridgeway a 
 half-naked creature — a clovewort attached by a red thread to 
 his neck — and they gave the "moon-sick" a good "swingeing 
 with a whip of porpoise hide." 
 
 ^ In 1 561 one of the Egertons of Cheshire was wandering 
 about the country with beggars and drunkards, and was 
 probably " whipped from tithing to tithing " : but he pre- 
 ferred the open road to the chain and the iron collar in castle 
 and court-house. 
 
 In Cornwall, even at a later date, the pariah of the road or 
 village was made to stand with his back to a river, knocked 
 backwards into it, and ducked, until exhaustion had taken all 
 the fighting and violence out of him. 
 
 In Scotland (as late as 1793) he was immersed in the heal- 
 ing waters of St. Fillan's pool, of which Sir Walter Scott has 
 sung in " Marmion " : — 
 
 '^"Then to St. Fillan's blessed well, 
 
 Whose spring can frenzied dreams dispel, 
 And the craz'd brain restore." 
 
 Afterwards he was bound hand and foot, and left for a night 
 in the chapel. If he was found loose in the morning — and 
 still alive — there was good hope of his full recovery. 
 / The allusions to chapels, crosses, and religious processions 
 in the treatment of the insane after the Reformation indicate 
 
 > 
 
v/ 
 
 134 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 that these methods of treatment were as ancient as Christianity 
 in England. 
 
 Sometimes the martyrs of the highway drifted into Bedlam, 
 and on recovery were returned by carrier to their parish and 
 settlement with clothes and a shilling or two. But, generally 
 speaking, the road or the prison was the only hospital for 
 mental illness. 
 
 The martyrdom of the wanderer did not cease till well 
 into the nineteenth century. Sir G. O. Peele wrote to the 
 Home Secretary in 1807 of the scenes which he had actually 
 witnessed : — 
 
 "There is hardly a parish in which may not be found some 
 / unfortunate creature, chained in the cellar or garret of a 
 workhouse, fastened to the leg of a table, tied to the post in 
 an outhouse, or perhaps shut up in an uninhabited ruin ; or 
 sometimes he would be left to ramble half-naked or starved 
 through the streets or highways, teased by the scoff and jest 
 of all that is vulgar, ignorant, and unfeeling." 
 
 This is the tragedy which clings to our history (for Beth- 
 lehem Hospital reflected too faithfully the sentiments and 
 methods of the world outside) : now for the comedy. 
 V " Tom o' Bedlam " was a rank impostor who had never 
 
 known the inside of Bedlam, although he traded under its 
 name, and imitated the behaviour of its patients. 
 
 " I am a lusty beggar, 
 And I live by others giving, 
 
 I scorn to work, 
 
 By the highway lurk, 
 And beg to get my Hving." 
 
 His note varied according to circumstances. Grimed with 
 filth, a blanket about his loins, and his hair in elfin knots, he 
 would present himself at a lonely farmhouse with a fierce and 
 distressed look, as just escaped from a " sad and darksome 
 cell." " Poor Tom's a-cold," he would hoarsely mutter with a 
 glance at the kitchen fire. But in the absence of her men the 
 farmer's wife was glad to get rid of such a suspicious customer 
 at the price of a piece of cheese or bacon. 
 

 
 "#»(^i 
 
 •j*r- 
 
 
 A.7C. 
 
 TRADING ON INSANITY. 
 
 Tom o' Bedlam, a bet,'gar who pretends that he has been in Bethlehem Hospital. In this 
 character he made a good deal of hay while the sun shone for him, in the si.xteenth and 
 
 seventeenth centui^v. 
 
 To face p. 134. 
 
''TOM a BEDLAM'' 135 
 
 At a wake, fair, or market you encountered quite a dif- 
 ferent Tom o' Bedlam — also an imitation of an original. Here 
 he was the merriest of madcaps, whooping, leaping, gam- 
 bolling, decorated with ribbons and patches, " crowned with 
 weeds and flowers." He had a horn which proclaimed his 
 arrival, and served to hold his beer : the long staff on which 
 he leant occasionally reinforced his appeals for charity. 
 Imagine him — to give the last touch to the picture — carolling 
 with a calculated disregard of simple arithmetic : — 
 
 " Of thirty years have I twice twenty been engaged, 
 And of forty thrice fifteen been caged. 
 Oh ! the lordly lofts of Bedlam with stubble soft and dainty : 
 
 Brave bracelets strong, 
 
 And whips ding-dong, 
 And wholesome hunger plenty. 
 Yet do I sing — any food, any feeding, drink or clothing. 
 
 Come, dame or maid. 
 
 Be not afraid ! 
 Poor Tom will injure nothing." 
 
 In 1566 Tom o' Bedlam, the "dissembling knave," found 
 his biographer, Thomas Harman, a country gentleman and 
 magistrate who lived near Crayford, Kent. All the gipsies, 
 tramps, and other wayfarers came to beg or steal of him, 
 as they drifted by in endless procession, and somehow or 
 another he succeeded in worming out of them their stories, 
 their tricks, and the laws or customs of their fraternity. 
 
 Harman happened to be lodging in Whitefriars one 
 November day of 1566, when he came across the "Counterfeit 
 Cranke" — a man who pretended that he had been treated 
 in Bethlehem for epilepsy. The man's story was that he 
 had fallen down in a fit in the " foul lane by the water 
 side " [say, Carmelite Street], and had " bled nearly all 
 the blood out of his body." He refused, however, the offer 
 of a basin of water to cleanse his face and clothes, and 
 this made the magistrate suspicious. 
 
 " Then I asked him what his name was, how long he 
 had this disease, and what time he had been about 
 London. 
 
136 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 "'Sir,' said he, 'my name is Nicholas Jennings, and I 
 have had the falling sickness eight years, and I have been 
 these two years here about London, and a year and a half in 
 Bethlehem.' 
 
 " ' Why, wast thou out of thy wits ? ' quoth I. 
 
 " ' Yes, sir, that I was.' 
 " What is the name of the keeper of the house ? ' 
 
 
 THE "COUNTERFEIT CRANKE " IN TWO CHARACTERS AND 
 DISGUISES, AS ORIGINALLY SKETCHED AT BRIDEWELL. 
 
 " ' His name,' quoth he, ' is John Smith.' 
 " ' Then,' quoth I, ' he must understand thy disease ! ' 
 " ' Yes : not only he, but all the house beside : for I came 
 thence but within this fortnight.'" 
 
 Harman, who might have founded the Charity Organiza- 
 tion Society, at once sent his servant to " Bethlehem," to 
 verify the statements of Nicholas Jennings. 
 
" TOM a BEDLAM'' 13; 
 
 " My servant returning to my lodgings did assure me 
 that neither was there ever any such man, neither yet any 
 keeper of any such name ; but he that was their keeper, he 
 sent me his name in writing, affirmeth that he letteth no 
 man depart from him, unless he be fetched away by his 
 friends, and that none that came from him beggeth about 
 the city." 
 
 The Counterfeit Crank put in the rest of the day begging 
 about the Temple with such success that he relieved the 
 charitable of thirteen shillings. He had a bladder of blood "^ 
 with him, and in the middle of the day retired to the 
 " dirty lane at the back of Clement's Inn," where he daubed 
 his face with fresh blood, and his jerkin and breeches 
 with mud. 
 
 This rascal had a " pretty house in Southwark well stuffed ^- 
 with a fair table, and a fair cupboard garnished with pewter," 
 but two months later he was begging again in Whitefriars 
 for money to get a night's lodging ! This time he had 
 adopted the disguise of a hatter out of work. 
 
 " He had on a good black frieze coat, a new pair of 
 white breeches, a fine felt hat on his head, and a shirt of 
 Flanders work worth six shillings." 
 
 He was arrested and removed to Bridewell, where he was 
 "stripped stark naked, and his ugly attire put upon him 
 before the masters thereof, who wondered greatly at his dis- /^ 
 simulation : for which offence he stood in the pillory in 
 Cheapside, both in his ugly and in his handsome attire. And 
 after that he went in the mill, while his ugly face and attire 
 was a drawing ; and then he was whipped at a cart's tail 
 through London, and his displayed banner [with his name 
 and offence written upon it] was carried before him unto his 
 own door, and so back to Bridewell ; and at length he was 
 set at liberty on condition that he would labour truly to get 
 his living ; and his picture remaineth in Bridewell for a 
 monument." 
 
 These " Toms of Bedlam " hit upon a very ingenious device 
 for securing credit for their tales and a ready response to 
 their appeals for charity. They put a brass plate round <^ 
 
138 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 their arms with an inscription, or in some cases even 
 branded their arms with a mark, signifying that they were 
 licensed to beg by the governors of Bethlehem Hospital. 
 To protect the public from these impostors, the governors 
 gave notice in 1675 and 1676 that they never sent discharged 
 patients out to beg, and that no brass plates, or other marks 
 of any kind, were ever attached to patients during their 
 residence, or on their discharge. 
 
 THE "COUNTERFEIT CRANKE " IN THE PILLORY. 
 
 N 
 
 No song was once more popular than " Tom of Bedlam." 
 " Your best song 's ' Thom o' Betlem,' says one of Ben 
 Jonson's characters in " The Devil is an Ass." 
 
 There are, according to W. Chappell, in his " Old English 
 Popular Music," two tunes and at least fifteen versions or 
 parodies of the song. 
 
 The earliest form of the words of the song appear in a 
 manuscript of 1626 (Giles Earle's Song Book), and they 
 were printed with other verses and parodies in " Le Prince 
 
^' TOM a BEDLAM'' 139 
 
 d'Amour," 1660. A specimen or two of the "ingenious songs 
 by the wits of the age " may not prove unpalatable : — 
 
 " From the hag and hungry goblin that into rags would rend you, 
 And the spirits that stand by the naked man in the book of moons 
 
 defend you : 
 That of your five sound senses you never be forsaken, 
 Nor wander from yourselves with Tom to beg your bacon. 
 While I do sing — any food, any feeding, feeding, drink, and 
 
 clothing. 
 Come, dame or maid, be not afraid : poor Tom will injure nothing." 
 
 The second version will be more familiar to my readers, 
 associated, as it is, with the deepest of basses and with music 
 ascribed to Purcell. 
 
 " From forth my sad and darksome cell. 
 And from the deep abyss of hell 
 Poor Tom is come to view the world again, 
 To see if he can ease distempered brain. 
 Fear and despair possess his soul. 
 Hark how the angry furies howl ! " 
 
 Tom is accompanied by his Bess or Maudlin. 
 
 "To find my Tom of Bedlam ten thousand years I'll travel. 
 Mad Maudlin goes with dirty toes to save her shoes from gravel. 
 Yet will I sing. Bonny boys, bonny mad boys, Bedlam boys are 
 
 bonny. 
 They still go bare and live by the air, and want no drink or 
 
 money." 
 
 The song was often parodied by cavaliers and Bohemian 
 spirits. I offer you a verse from " The Distracted Puritan " : — 
 
 " They have bound me like a bedlam : they have lash'd my four 
 
 poor quarters. 
 While this I endure, faith makes me sure to be one of Foxe's 
 
 martyrs. 
 Boldly I preach, hate a cross, hate a surplice, mitres, copes, and 
 
 rochets. 
 Come hear me pray, nine times a day, and fill your heads with 
 
 crotchets." 
 
t40 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 The first tune is to be found, according to Chappell, in a 
 manuscript of virginal music, at the time in possession of 
 Dr. Rimbault, the date of which is 1666. The tune also 
 went by the names of " Fly Brass " and the " Jovial Tinker." 
 
 The second tune has been ascribed to tienry Purcell, who 
 was born in 1658. It appeared, however, eight years earlier 
 in " The Dancing Master," by Playford, and in his " Anti- 
 dotes" (1669). Indeed, its origin may be still earlier. It 
 appears that it was used to accompany a masque at Gray's 
 Inn, and one of the ballads in the masque is directed to be 
 " sung to the tune of ' Mad Tom,' as it was lately sung at the 
 'Curtain' theatre, Holywell." Now this theatre seems to 
 have been in disuse by 1625. 
 
 So familiar and fantastic a figure on the road as Tom o' 
 Bedlam naturally found its way into the sign-boards of way- 
 side inns. There still exists an example of such a sign in 
 the village of Redbourne, Herts. On one side of a copper 
 plate you may see " Tom in Bedlam " : he is in a barred cell 
 with fetters round his legs. On the reverse side is "Tom at 
 liberty " : he is attired in a gorgeous red coat, blue knee 
 breeches, and white stockings. With a turban on his head 
 this gay impostor struts along the road blowing his horn — 
 with an oration and a collection at intervals. 
 
 " Good worships, bestow your reward on poor Tom, who 
 hath been in Bedlam three years, four months, and nine days. 
 Well and wisely bestow one piece of small silver towards the 
 fees of which he is indebted ;^3 13s. 7jd., and hath not where^ 
 with to pay the same, save by the help of worshipful and 
 well-disposed people. God save the king and the governors 
 of Bethlehem Hospital." 
 
 The hospital is still waiting for his arrears ! 
 
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CHAPTER XVII 
 CINDERELLA AND THE PRINCE 
 
 I CANNOT leave the mediaeval hospital without casting some 
 "lingering looks behind." Some relics of the past — the old 
 leases and court books make this clear — survived even at the 
 close of the sixteenth century. The refectory of the monks 
 seems to have been converted long before into tenements : 
 but the gateways — east and west — were still standing ; and 
 perhaps the " great house " which included rooms over the 
 east gate might originally have been the houses of the 
 master and of the secular clergy. The " great old church," 
 which had been offered in 1552 to the Parish Clerks' Com- 
 pany — victims of the Edwardian pillage — for their meetings, 
 was pulled down in 1575, after serving as a foundry. In 
 a lease of that year a carpenter and a bricklayer contracted 
 to erect in its place a dozen houses (two storeys high with a 
 garret above), the old stone, timber and metal to be used 
 up in the new buildings. It was not till 1846 that the 
 church of 1375 was replaced by a chapel in the dome of 
 the building in Lambeth. 
 
 Another lease, granted to the father of Edward Alleyne, 
 the actor, describes " two gardens with a chapel enclosed by 
 a brick wall " as the " old churchyard." This had been the 
 cemetery of the monks, patients, and tenants from the 
 foundation of Bethlem in 1247 to the dissolution of the mon- 
 asteries. In 1569 Sir Thomas Roe, mayor, caused an acre 
 of ground (the whole or part of this land) to be enclosed as a 
 burial-place in the city for non-parishioners. Robert Greene, 
 
 the repentant author, was buried here, and also Muggleton, 
 
 ,141 
 
142 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 the founder of the Muggletonians. Another tenant in this 
 " God's acre " was John Lilburne, who was inevitably " agin 
 the government," whether Charles I or Cromwell was the 
 head of it. Irreverent wits suggested that even in the grave 
 John Lilburne might disturb the peace of Roman soldier and 
 mediaeval friar by a quarrel with some part of himself. 
 
 " Is John departed, and is Lilburne gone ? 
 Farewell to Lilburne, and farewell to John ; 
 But lay John here, lay Lilburne thereabout, 
 For if they ever meet, they must fall out." 
 
 In 1863 the North London Railway threw down the brick 
 wall, which many still remember, and invaded the " pleasant 
 gardens " which were enclosed within it, to build Broad 
 Street Station. Immense heaps of bones were carted away 
 in the course of these excavations, but as late as 191 1 the 
 engineers of the Tube on their way to Liverpool Street 
 Station bored into layers and layers of skulls closely packed : 
 probably the victims of the sweating sickness or of other 
 plagues were interred here. 
 
 Another relic of the original monastery was the " old 
 house, where the poor distracted people lie." There is some 
 reason for thinking that it may have been known as the 
 " Abraham Ward," the " bosom " in which every Lazarus — 
 no longer " full of sores " — might find rest. At any rate, men 
 who had pretended to have come out of Bedlam were termed 
 "Abraham men," as well as "Toms o' Bedlam." This old 
 infirmary of the monks (for such it was, I imagine) was a 
 long gallery with cells for twenty patients leading out of it. 
 Above stairs was a long dormitory — possibly used by the 
 monks as a hospice for wayfarers. Here the servants slept, 
 but afterwards the unfurnished part of it was adapted by the 
 governors, who sanctioned such extravagance with some mis- 
 giving, for the accommodation of eight additional patients. 
 
 The transfer of the hospital from the Church and the 
 king to the corporation of London should have stimulated 
 the citizens to rebuild their ancient hospital, and to enlarge 
 
CINDERELLA AND THE PRINCE 143 
 
 its sphere of activities. But they lacked that personal devo- 
 tion to the sick which the conventual idea fostered, and were 
 quite content (penny wise and pound foolish) to farm it out 
 to a keeper in part as a private asylum. However, some 
 control was exercised over him by three " surveyors " and the 
 court of aldermen. 
 
 Between 1555 and 1619 he was allowed the use of the 
 keeper's house, and was permitted to take private patients on 
 condition that he received, at first gratuitously, but later at 
 a weekly charge of sixpence or sevenpence a head, any 
 patients sent in by Bridewell ; these were such as had no 
 friends or means. 
 
 In these Spartan days half a dozen governors would meet 
 at Gresham's Exchange at eight o'clock even on a December 
 morning for a " view," or inspection, of the hospital and its 
 property. In the "View of Bethlehem," dated 4th December, 
 1598, there is a list of the twenty patients in residence, the 
 amount charged in each case, and the name of the parish or 
 person responsible for the payment of the weekly fees. Two 
 men and four women, I find on analysis of the "view," had been 
 sent in by Bridewell and at the expense of the charity, and 
 fourteen were private patients whose friends paid the keeper 
 from one shilling and fourpence to five shillings a week for 
 them. A Dutchman had been in confinement four months, 
 a Spaniard for three years, and " one of the queen's chapel " 
 for two months, but Minnie Barber had been diverting the 
 daily visitors, or robbing her neighbours of their sleep, for 
 twenty-five long years. Twenty-five years of the reign of 
 Elizabeth, so crowded with life and news ! Amongst those 
 who signed bonds for payment to the farmer-out of the 
 prisoners were benchers of Gray's Inn, an official of St. 
 Bartholomew's Hospital, the Lord Admiral, and the repre- 
 sentatives of city companies. 
 
 In this refractory ward for cases of acute mania paupers 
 were huddled up together with the well-to-do, and eleven 
 of the twenty cells on the one floor — the ground floor — in 
 use for patients, were occupied by women. The registers 
 of St. Botolph's Church, Bishopsgate, record the birth of 
 
144 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 children in these cells, but the only woman in attendance 
 at such times was the porter's wife. Under ordinary circum- 
 stances — until a later date — the only attendants upon these 
 women, violent viragoes no doubt, were male keepers. 
 During the day those men and women who were allowed 
 to get up shared the same exercise-yard and corridor, 
 and warmed themselves at the kitchen fire — the only one 
 in the house. 
 
 The report, which was signed by the treasurer and six 
 of the governors, sums up the condition of the insane ward 
 in pretty plain language : — 
 
 " We do find other defaults in the said house in such sort 
 that it is not fit for any man to dwell in, in which it was left 
 by the keeper, for that it was so loathsomely and filthily kept 
 that it was not fit for any man to come into the said house." 
 
 In the inspection of 1607 the names of the patients sent in 
 by Bridewell warrants alone are mentioned, and mostly by 
 their nicknames. You seem to hear the porter — the show- 
 man of the menagerie — giving the generous visitor little 
 character-sketches of " Welsh Harry," " Black Will," " Joane 
 of the hospital," and "Old Madam." At these official 
 " views " the poor-boxes were opened, and some shillings 
 spent personally on the "prisoners"; in 1607 a shirt or 
 a smock was added. 
 
 The prison-house of " Bethalem " lay between two open 
 sewers, and, as one of them was usually choked up with filth 
 and stagnant water, the inmates inhaled the stench and 
 poison of drains day and night. In addition the gallery and 
 cells became so filthy under private management that in 1598 
 the governors of Bridewell were forced to admit, as I have 
 just related, that the hospital was "not fit for anybody to 
 enter." 
 
 In this noisome kitchen the Cinderella of the hospitals 
 strove to fan the dying embers of humanity. But a fairy 
 prince, whose name was Literature, was already knocking at 
 her door in these last years of Elizabeth's reign. It was not, 
 indeed, until 1676 that she left her kitchen for a palace, but 
 meanwhile her prince gave her a part to play in the theatre, 
 
CINDERELLA AND THE PRINCE 145 
 
 and introduced her to all the wits, actors, and authors of 
 a brilliant age. 
 
 Shakespeare, who had been associated with Bishopsgate 
 by residence and friendships, distilled the noxious philtres, 
 which he administered to Ophelia and Hamlet, from the herbs 
 of Bethlem's garden. 
 
 John Davies (16 12), after a visit to our house, comforted 
 himself with the reflection that the world was too demented 
 to appreciate true — his own— genius. 
 
 " Praise or dispraise, mad world : all's one to me, 
 For bad's the best from them which Bedlam be." 
 
 Thomas Dekker (i 577-1638) has laid whole scenes in the 
 hospital (as in Bridewell), and must have haunted the place, 
 while he was studying his plot. You may find him at his own 
 bookseller's ("Joseph Hunt's in Bedlem "), but more likely 
 he is at the "White Hart" with Ben Jonson, Webster, and 
 Middleton, who have lavishly repaid Cinderella's hospitality 
 in literary coin. The landlord, no doubt, was in high feather 
 about the money he was going to make out of the stable, 
 which he had converted into six shops and dwelling-houses. 
 But I hope that one of our tenants reminded him that he had 
 thereby encroached upon the hospital wall — the south side of 
 Liverpool Street in the language of to-day. They are all 
 going to pay a visit to her house to-day, but, as a prelimi- 
 nary, they are swilling down pickled herrings with Rhenish 
 wine. Perhaps we should add to the group Harry Chettle, 
 the author of " Kind-heart's Dream " — a very rare book. If 
 so, he is very indignant that the theatres should be closed, 
 and that gambling-places, like a notorious bowling-alley, 
 held by one of our tenants in Bethlem's precincts, should 
 be open — and crowded. 
 
 *' Bedlem's bowling-alley " — let me say by way of paren- 
 thesis — was the favourite haunt of a bully of the Whitefriars- 
 Alsatia type. On a memorable occasion he replenished an 
 empty purse by swaggering off with the stakes — his hand 
 significantly toying with his sword — before the discomfited 
 
 II 
 
146 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 players had finished their game. The story is told by 
 S. Rowlands in a very scarce satire which he published in 
 1609 under the title of " The Knave of Clubs." 
 
 Their saucy companion is " Tafifety Meg," who has set the 
 table in a roar with her recent experiences at Bridewell, 
 where she has usually been welcomed with a whipping. In 
 the year 1602 the governors had handed over their trust to 
 an "undertaker," or contractor, who was in the habit of 
 arranging very delightful suppers for his more attractive 
 prisoners. These favoured ladies — the court books tell the 
 story in the blackest of inks and the most rigid of letters 
 — " wore glorious apparel," and the suppers included " crabs 
 
 THE KNAVE OF CLUBS. 
 
 lobsters, and artichoke pies " in the gayest of company 
 with " gallons of wine." 
 
 The austere and thoughtful puritan, as he watched play- 
 wright and satirist, actor and poet lurch into Bedlam for an 
 hour's diversion, longed to turn the key upon them for the 
 term of their lives as " dangerous to themselves and others." 
 
 But there was, I think, one man of letters who visited 
 Bethlem rather to " minister to minds diseased " than to 
 provide himself with popular " copy " : this was Nicholas 
 Breton (1545-1626). He was a "figure in the fields easily 
 deciphered " (for " melancholy had marked him for her 
 own"), and was "as near Bedlam" (he tells us in his pro- 
 verbial style) " as Moorfields " was to the hospital. Often 
 
CINDERELLA AND THE PRINCE 147 
 
 on the verge of the abyss, he was withal of a humble 
 religious, and sympathetic nature, and I like to think of him 
 as trying to impart some of his own resignation and hopeful- 
 ness to those whose depression and temptations he understood 
 all too well. There are traces of many a visit to " Bethalem " 
 in his "Forte of Fancie " (1584). In this poem he describes 
 just such a " foul hole " and " loathsome den " as the 
 minutes of 1598 describe, and in it we hear the raging and 
 the stamping, the fretting and the groaning, to which con- 
 temporary writers testify. His "anatomy of melancholy" 
 was not written out of ancient tomes, after the manner of 
 Burton. 
 
 With idealizing hand he sketches a house which is 
 unroofed, windowless, and open to wind and rain. And 
 within this house in ruins there is a crazy, dilapidated old 
 bedstead, carved all over with the faces of nightmare and 
 delirium. And on that bed confused, self-tormented, and 
 goaded by all the furies, madness tosses and tumbles with 
 haggard, sleepless eyes. By the bedside are many instru- 
 ments of music, but of one the strings are broken, the keys 
 of another are lost, of the trumpet the metal is cracked, and 
 in the lute there is a rift. Hushed in such a house is all the 
 music and melody of life for a while, or it may be for ever. 
 
 " Above them all, upon the top of this same hill, 
 Dwells madness, master of them all, and witless will. 
 He fears no hurt, nor cold, for if with heat he glow, 
 The waves of woe will cool him straight, which there by tides do 
 
 flow. 
 For through this forest runs the sea of sorrow sore. 
 Whose waves do beat against this fort, that bordereth on the shore ; 
 In raging, frantic fires he passeth forth the day, 
 In strange perplexities, himself tormenting many a way. 
 Ready to kill himself and with his hair upright, 
 He cried, he would rather die than bide such deep despite." 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 VISITORS AND NEIGHBOURS 
 
 The historian of the hospital, it has already been hinted, lies 
 under many obligations to Thomas Dekker, the versatile 
 author of every kind of literature. He is, indeed, for him the 
 " Belman of London," who throws light on obscure allusions 
 to Bethlem, and with bell and voice indicates their importance, 
 perhaps also adding to his hoard of information. 
 
 Dekker has not the subtle art and the delicate touch of 
 Shakespeare in delineating the incubation and development 
 of nervous maladies. But his scenes in Bishopsgate are 
 painted from living models, and his realism is based on 
 accurate observation : his " interior " of Bethlem has all the 
 homely truth and minute detail of a picture by an old Dutch 
 master. 
 
 In the "Honest Whore" (1604), although "Bethlehem 
 Monastery" is by a stage fiction set down in Milan, you 
 hear the patients of an institution known to every Londoner 
 abusing their inquisitive visitors, or quarrelling — not without 
 violence — among themselves. And Dekker has allowed us to 
 watch with his registering eye one of the inmates lashing 
 himself into the fury which identifies his questioners — this 
 is the touch of an expert — with the Turks, who wrecked his 
 ships and his fortunes. 
 
 It is part of the plot of the play that some of its characters 
 should assemble for a marriage at the church of the monastery 
 — " upon the west end of the abbey wall " — and that a visit 
 should be paid to the patients of Father Anselmo, its master. 
 
 At the hospital they encounter a sweeper of a humorous 
 
 148 
 
/ 
 
 VISITORS AND NEIGHBOURS 
 
 THE B ELM AN 
 
 OF LONDON. 
 
 Bringing to light the mofl: notorious 
 
 villanies that are now pradifed 
 in the K i ng d om e. 
 
 Profiublefor Gentlemen, Lawyers,Merchants,Citizens Jarir.cr? 
 Madenoi Houl]iol<ls,and all fortes oi fcruints^to maike, 
 aa<J delightf ull for all men to Rcade, 
 
 Lege^ PerUge^ RtUge, 
 
 149 
 
 I'n/i'C'l.lf r«Ml(l(>l!jorN ATllANIbL r.V I I »K. \ i*»' 
 
 FACSIMILE OF A TITLE-PAGE OF A BOOK BY THOMAS DEKKER, THE 
 
 AUTHOR OF PLAYS AND OTHER WORKS TREATING OF THE 
 
 HOSPITAL AND ITS PATIENTS. 
 
 type, who entertains the party with " tales out of school," till 
 the arrival of Father Anselmo. 
 
 Fluello : Now, honest fellow, dost thou belong to the house ? 
 
 Sweeper : Yes, forsooth. I am one of the implements. I sweep 
 the patients' rooms, and fetch straw for 'em, and buy chains 
 and rods for 'em. I was once here myself, but I thank Father 
 Anselmo, he lashed me into a better mind, 
 
150 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 Duke : Few gentlemen or courtiers, here, eh ? 
 
 Sweeper : O yes, abundance, abundance ! Lands no sooner fall into 
 their hands, but straight they run out a' their wits. Farmers' 
 sons come hither like geese, in flocks, and when they ha' sold all 
 their cornfields, here they sit and pick the straws. 
 
 SiNEZi : Methinks you should have women here as well as men. 
 
 Sweeper : Oh, ay, a plague on 'em. 
 
 The puritans of the period were virulently assailing the 
 theatre with the pen and from the pulpit ; and the " steeple- 
 houses," or churches of the Church of England, also fell 
 under their lash. We can, therefore, imagine the roar of 
 laughter and applause which broke out at the end of the 
 sweeper's remarks: he had not the "Nonconformist con- 
 science." 
 / " As for a puritan, there's no hope of getting the moon 
 out of him, unless he may pull down the steeple, and hang 
 himself with the bell rope." 
 
 Father Anselmo on his arrival explains to the duke, 
 Castruchio, Piorato and Fluello that there are different 
 forms of insanity — one of the first lessons a layman has 
 to learn. 
 
 " There are of madmen, as there are of tame. 
 All humoured not aUke : we have here some. 
 So apish and fantastic, play with a feather. 
 And, though 'twould grieve a soul to see God's image 
 So blemish'd and defac'd, yet do they act 
 Such antics and such pretty lunacies. 
 That spite of sorrow they will make you smile. 
 Others again we have like hungry lions, 
 Fierce as wild bulls, untameable as flies. 
 And these have oftentimes from strangers' sides 
 Snatch'd rapiers suddenly, and done much harm. 
 Whom, if you'll see, you must be weaponless." 
 
 Many pages of the play I could not quote without 
 running them through the laundry and the mangle. But the 
 concluding lines are very beautiful : in them the poet repre- 
 sents a patient husband as reconciled to his unjust detention 
 in Bethlem by the example of Christ in His sufferings. 
 
VISITORS AND NEIGHBOURS 151 
 
 Duke : What comfort do you find in being so calm ? 
 \ Candido : The best of men 
 
 That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer, 
 A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit, 
 The first true gentleman that ever breathed. 
 
 Nearly opposite the gate of the hospital — from 1536, at 
 any rate — stood an old inn called the " Dolphin. " Now 
 the " Dolphin " was an inn with an inheritance of very 
 romantic associations. It is said by the author of 
 " Vestiges of London " that the " Dolphin " was once adorned 
 with fleur de lys and dolphins, and it has been argued from 
 these and other facts that on the site of the inn stood (say, in 
 1 216) a house, which was occupied by Louis, the dauphin of 
 France, when he came to prosecute the claims of his father to 
 the throne of England. In 1330, as we have seen, it was in 
 the possession of one John Bird, a poulterer, our freehold 
 property (" Staple Hall ") standing to the north of it. It 
 is actually mentioned as the " Dolphin " inn in a lease 
 of " Staple Hall " granted by Peter Mewtys, master of 
 Bethlem (1536-1546), to our tenant, John Stryngfellow. In 
 the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries it was 
 the port of arrival and departure for many coaches, and 
 among its visitors were the men who founded the East India 
 Company. In 1792 the Society of Friends bought the site, 
 and erected on it two large meeting-houses, which are still 
 in use. In the comedy of "Northward Ho!" (Dekker and 
 Webster, 1607) some young bloods stable their horses at 
 this old coaching house, and saunter across the street to 
 see the " show " at Bethlem. 
 
 In the course of a tour round the ward it strikes 
 Greenshields as a happy thought to play a practical 
 joke on Bellmont. Accordingly, while Bellmont is talk- 
 ing to a " pretty, well-favoured woman," who protests 
 that she has never, never been in Bridewell, the rest 
 of the party inform Fullmoon, the head attendant, that 
 they have made the pretence of a visit to entrap a 
 very dangerous character into the asylum "without gaping 
 of people." 
 
152 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 / Greenshields : Here's a crown to provide for his supper : to- 
 morrow morning bedding and a gown shall be sent in : let his 
 straw be fresh and sweet. You shall be well paid if you convert 
 him. Get a couple of your sturdiest fellows and bind him, while 
 we slip out of sight. 
 
 Enter Fullmoon and two Keepers. 
 
 Bell : How now ! What do you mean ? Are you mad ? Let go, 
 you dogs ! 
 
 Full : Bind him, hold him fast. 
 
 Bell : I hold my life my comrades have put this fool's-cap upon my 
 head. 
 
 In the end, of course, the joke is explained to Full- 
 " moon, and is taken in good part by the victim of it, 
 who is adjudged to treat his persecutors to a dinner at 
 Ware. 
 
 Everybody, whoJived_in London or ever came to London 
 visfte3 Bethlem as a matter of course. It would be safe on 
 this ground alone to argue that Reginald Scot was familiar 
 with one of the sights of London. But I go so far as to 
 suggest that the hospital inspired him to protest against the 
 burning and drowning of witches on theological grounds. 
 In the year 1584 he published his memorable work "The 
 Discovery of Witchcraft," attacked with such rancour and 
 bigotry by James I in his " Demonologie." In it he was the 
 first in England to diagnose the element of insanity in the 
 witch and the bewitched. He saw, for instance, that many 
 of the " bewitched " were suffering not from enchantment, 
 but from a disordered brain. They were "conscious of 
 unaccustomed sensations " : they heard voices taunting 
 them ; or a sense of persecution by their neighbours haunted 
 and harassed them : they could only conclude that they 
 were bewitched. Such delusions and obsessions sent hun- 
 dreds of innocent people, between 1541 and 1736, to prison 
 or death. To-day hallucinations of seeing and hearing, or 
 delusions of persecution justify a doctor or a magistrate in 
 ' signing a certificate of insanity. 
 
 Some two hundred folios went to the making of his 
 treatise, but it is reasonable to suppose that it was in the 
 medical school of Bedlam, as well as in the villages of Kent, 
 
VISITORS AND NEIGHBOURS ^ 153 
 
 that Scot acquired such a personal and practical knowledge 
 of the symptoms indicative of mental disorder. 
 
 One of our neighbours was also one of our tenants. Next 
 door to the " Dolphin " — according to Stow in 1602 — was the 
 " fcilr house built by Lord John Paulet." This house (the 
 Staple Hall of 1330) was valued in the official inspection of 
 1642 at £'^0 p.a., and included a court-yard, turrets, and 
 garden. Behind posts and railings an entry led to a house 
 three storeys high which presented to the street a " handsome 
 front of brick and timber." Some outbuildings of this 
 house impinged on the " Dolphin " property of the Campions, 
 and led to litigation which went against the governors. In 
 the leases and court books which have escaped theft and fire 
 there is no mention of the Paulets, but presumably they were 
 tenants for a time of the " Campions," who held a 99 years' 
 lease from the hospital : at any rate four Paulet children 
 were christened in St. Botolph's Church between 1561 and 
 1564. In 1854 the Rev. T. Hugo inspected a house in 
 Bishopsgate which he thought might have been part of this 
 house, or of Devonshire House. In several of the rooms he 
 found a cornice of fruit and flowers, and in a room on the 
 second floor over the fireplace the arms, supporters, and 
 motto of Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, who was 
 the patron and friend of Shakespeare. 
 
 The mention of Shakespeare reminds me of a curious 
 story about another neighbour of ours : I unearthed it under 
 1st April in the court book of 1598. 
 
 One Elizabeth Evans, who had been lodging at a " brown- 
 baker's " within hail of the hospital, was charged at Bridewell 
 with leading an immoral life. She would have been whipped, 
 had not Sir W. Hayward begged her off on the ground that 
 she was a kinswoman of his and of the Lord High Admiral. 
 George Pinder and Mistress Joyce Cowden (her school- 
 fellow), who were both of them natives of Stratford-on-Avon, 
 gave evidence that Elizabeth was also born at Stratford-on- 
 " Haven." It appeared, further, that she was a " gentlewoman 
 of a good parentage," and that she " had a good portion of 
 her own " : her father — " Robert or Thomas Evans " — had 
 
154 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 been a cutler in Stratford and had met with an " ignominious 
 death." If the signature in the court book is original, " Eliz. 
 evens" signed her tearful promise of amendment without a 
 tremor in a very neat, well-formed hand. 
 
 The tragedy of her father's death may have placed his 
 daughter at the mercy of the unscrupulous. And henceforth, 
 perhaps — to the piping of passion — she danced along the 
 descending road to the foot of the hill. 
 
 
 CARVING FROM A HOUSE IN BISHOPSGATE. 
 
 Did Shakespeare, the artist, find in her story some of the 
 colours which he mixed on his palette ? 
 
 Next door to Lady Campion's was a lordly mansion with 
 large gardens and bowling-alleys. " Fisher's Folly " — to use 
 the popular nickname — ruined or embarrassed its builder, 
 a warden of the Goldsmiths' Company in 1567, but it was 
 successively inherited by people of noble lineage and of 
 historic importance : to-day Devonshire Square occupies the 
 site of it and recalls its later name. In 1588, Vere, Earl 
 of Oxford — eccentric, unbalanced, versatile — presented 
 
VISITORS AND NEIGHBOURS 155 
 
 Elizabeth in this palace with gloves, perfumes, and washes 
 from Italy. In 1660 Lady Monck paid a visit to its owner 
 and our benefactor, the wise and charming Countess of 
 Devonshire, to whom, according to tradition, she gave the 
 preconcerted signal that her husband would restore the king. 
 On this occasion she visited Bethlem, when a royalist address 
 was read to her (by one of the patients) as the "sweet 
 delight of him who will restore our right." 
 
 Three hundred and thirty-three years hence Bethlem should 
 be celebrating her thousandth birthday with a pageant of her 
 centuries. I have already indicated in this chapter some of 
 the more picturesque characters who might be allowed to 
 stand for the reigns of two queens, who threatened our 
 ancient domain at Charing Cross. And yet I have not 
 mentioned such benefactors as Lord Hastings, who led 
 Queen Mary's horse at her coronation, or Sir Thomas 
 Gresham, whose Exchange was opened by Queen 
 Elizabeth. 
 
 And perhaps John Moore should not lack a place in the 
 procession I have marshalled. He gave out — and he made 
 one disciple who suffered along with him — that he was 
 "divine," and in 1561 he was whipped from the Marshalsea 
 near our present hospital to "' Bedlim Gate," till he " con- 
 fessed himself a sinful man " : no doubt his religious 
 exaltation admitted him within " Bedlim." 
 
 "The Belman " of Bethlem I ring out Queen Elizabeth as 
 she rides past the hospital, escorted by a thousand men in 
 armour, from the sermon at the Spital Cross. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 DR. CROOKE 
 
 One Thomas Jenner was the keeper of Bethlehem Hospital 
 in 1618, when an inquiry was held at the Guildhall into his 
 conduct. Unfortunately the court books, which would have 
 yielded materials for his biography, are missing between 
 1610 and 1617. We can, however, conjecture the nature of 
 the charges levelled at his management from some of the 
 terms used in the course of this investigation, which was 
 ordered by James I. It was alleged, for instance, that he 
 was " unskilful in the practice of medicine," and therefore 
 " unfit for the duties of his position." It was also insinuated 
 that he had been guilty of harshness and neglect towards his 
 patients. For the king reminds the commissioners that those 
 who suffer from mental affliction ought to be " treated with 
 all the care necessary to their state by the rules of medicine." 
 The commissioners were, he adds, to " dislodge any person 
 who lacks the necessary skill, and to raise Bethlehem to the 
 level of St. Bartholomew's and St. Thomas's." 
 
 It is stated in the preamble of the commission that it 
 had been urged on the king in the " humble petition of our 
 beloved servant, Hilkiah Crooke, doctor of medicine and 
 regius professor," and in conclusion he is recommended as 
 a " faithful and skilful man to set over the house of 
 Bethlem." 
 
 I propose to tell the story of Dr. Crooke, the last of the 
 keepers of Bethlehem Hospital, who may at the same time 
 be styled the third of its medical superintendents. He 
 
 rode gallantly into the lists as the chivalrous champion of 
 
 156 
 
DR. HILKIAH CROOKE, KEEPER OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL, DELIVERING A LECTURE 
 ON ANATOMY AT THE COLLEGE OF BARBER SURGEONS. 
 
 This picture contains the earhest portrait of a hospital official : the foot of Dr. Crooke touches the 
 
 words " Printed by T. Cotes." 
 
 DANIEL, CROMWELL'S PORTER, IN THE DRESS OF A PATIENT OF THE HOSPITAL. 
 
 He is expounding from his Bible. His great height is, or was, marked on the terrace at 
 Windsor Castle by the letter O. 
 
 (Sec p. 186.) 
 
 To face p. 157 
 
DR. CROOKE 157 
 
 the oppressed, but at the last he was hooted out of the arena 
 by king and people as false to his knightly vow. 
 
 Hilkiah Crooke was a Suffolk man of parts and learning, 
 and, after studying at Cambridge and Leyden, was appointed 
 in 1604 physician to James I. In the next year he wrote a 
 book on anatomy (" Mikrokosmographia "), which he dedi- 
 cated to his royal patron. In his dedication he purred into 
 his master's ears how much " foreign nations loved and 
 admired the encyclopaedic learning of the most literary of 
 kings." A second edition of this treatise on physiology — a 
 compilation rather than an original work — was published in 
 1 63 1, and a dedication to Charles I prefaced the text. 
 Although the circulation of the blood is not directly men- 
 tioned, yet Dr. Crooke pays a handsome tribute to the 
 researches of Harvey, its discoverer. 
 
 The frontispiece of the volume is partly personal and 
 partly mystical ; it is the work of Droeshout, who engraved a 
 well-known portrait of Shakespeare. In the upper part of 
 the page the Divine eye looks down upon life and death 
 from the centre of such a living rose as Dante saw in his 
 visions of heaven, the cloudy petals of which bear cherubs 
 angels, stars, and devils in serried circles. 
 
 At the foot of the page Dr. Crooke, a grave figure with a 
 long face and pointed beard, is delivering a lecture on the 
 /brain before a company of professors and students in the 
 theatre of the College of Barber-Surgeons. A copy of this 
 book, presented by the author to the College of Physicians, 
 of which he was a fellow and reader in anatomy, escaped the 
 Fire of London, and is preserved in the College library. 
 
 Some complimentary verses in Greek, Latin, and English, 
 by admiring disciples, introduce the medical student to what 
 must have been the standard text-book of the day. The gist 
 of them is that henceforth such a genius as the reader in 
 anatomy may be considered above the reach of all envy and 
 disparagement. 
 
 In the Dictionary of National Biography Dr. Crooke 
 still occupies these heights sublime : I am going — with 
 profane hands — to take the statue down from the pedestal. 
 
158 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 On the 13th April, 1619 — once more to launch out into 
 the current of my story — Hilkiah Crooke was elected keeper 
 of the hospital, king and courtiers besieging Bridewell on 
 his behalf. 
 
 In this year or the next Middleton must have been writing 
 the greatest of his plays, " The Changeling." In it we hear 
 " the chimes of Bedlam go " : a comic scene is transferred 
 from such a ward as ours ; and one of the characters is the 
 keeper of the house — possibly Dr. Crooke. 
 
 It is to be hoped, however, that Dr. Crooke had never been 
 reduced to the predicament of Alibius, the keeper of the 
 play. He was an elderly man with a young wife whom he 
 did not altogether trust. Accordingly he shut her up in 
 charge of his patients, the head attendant (Lollio) promising 
 to keep an eye upon her conduct. Of course two young 
 gallants promptly manage to find their way to her feet — 
 under the novel disguise of patients just admitted on urgency 
 orders ! 
 
 Dr. Crooke knew everybody worth knowing at the court 
 or in the city. He was quite strong enough — with such 
 influences behind him — to have secured for Bethlem inde- 
 pendence and prosperity ; and I see no reason to doubt the 
 sincerity of his demand for sweeping reforms — in the flush of 
 his enthusiasm. 
 
 Indeed, without delay he initiated a campaign against 
 Bridewell in a petition to James I : this appears to be the 
 " scandalous petition " of the court books which fluttered the 
 dovecotes on the banks of the unfragrant Fleet. In it he 
 urged that Bethlem should be at once emancipated from the 
 control of Bridewell, alleging — with absolute accuracy — that 
 it had not thriven since the union of the two hospitals 
 in 1557. 
 
 About this time, however, James scented an intrigue on 
 the part of the city against the jurisdiction which he claimed 
 over Bethlem, and Reform was obliged to creep back dis- 
 appointed into the dark kitchen with the barred windows, to 
 which Cinderella was still condemned. 
 
 Meanwhile the keeper found virtue — no longer in royal 
 
BRIDEWELL HOSPITAL IN THE TUDOR 
 AND STUART PERIODS. 
 
 {By permission of Messrs. Chatto & Windits.) 
 
 TTe. Thames trantr. 
 
/^ 
 
 160 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 apparel — unattractive and impoverishing — and he seems to 
 have ceased to exercise any personal supervision over his 
 servants and their behaviour ; inevitably serious abuses 
 resulted. 
 
 In 1620 there was licensed at Stationers' Hall a pamphlet 
 or broad-sheet, of which no copy is now known to exist : it 
 was entitled " The Petition of the Poor Distracted People in 
 the House of Bedlem." The court books of the period 
 partly supply the loss of it. For in the same year we read 
 in them of a father complaining to the governors that for 
 want of proper attention his daughter's foot was rotting 
 away. And in 1622 there were charges made against the 
 servants of showing unnecessary harshness towards a patient, 
 one Sir W. Clifton. 
 
 At the end of 1625 the governors resolved to investigate 
 the misdemeanours of Dr. Crooke, who only appeared at the 
 hospital on quarter days, and refused — with warmth of speech 
 — to give any account of legacies received. 
 
 Between 1629 and 1632 there flourished a school of literary 
 miniaturists — Meissoniers of the pen. Here is an etching by 
 Lupton of a scene in the hospital during the keepership of a 
 physician and reformer. "It seems strange that any one 
 should recover here : the cryings, screechings, roarings, bowl- 
 ings, shaking of chains, swearing, fretting, and chafing are so 
 many, and so hideous." 
 
 Such was the pandemonium which has barbed the language 
 of controversy with such phrases as " Bedlam broke loose." 
 
 Perhaps it will be something of a relief to my weary 
 readers if I leave Dr. Crooke for a space standing in the 
 foreground of my picture, while I paint in its historical 
 background. 
 
 In 1620 Yelverton, the attorney-general, was sent to the 
 Tower and fined ;^ 1,000 for that he had "corruptly and 
 without warrant inserted in the new charter for the city of 
 London certain clauses granting it the custody of Bethlehem 
 Hospital and of houses intended for the poor." 
 
 James I was always in want of money, and not over nice 
 in his methods of raising it. Yelverton had already paid 
 
DR. CROOKE i6i 
 
 him ^14,000 for his place : consequently it was his interest 
 to play jackal to the king. But his common sense — if not 
 his sense of justice — revolted against some of the illegal 
 schemes which he was expected to uphold in the courts of 
 law. Accordingly James I determined to ruin him, and 
 the chancellor (Bacon, the philosopher) suggested the safest 
 way of doing it. The terms of the indictment distinctly 
 allege that Yelverton allowed himself to receive or antici- 
 pate a sum of money from the corporation for wording the 
 charter in such terms as would secure to it the ownership, 
 which the king claimed, as well as the government of the 
 hospital — the subject of the ancient controversy between 
 king and city. 
 
 Before saying farewell to James I, who punished the city 
 by postponing its charter during his reign, let me mention 
 that the king was glad to make use of Bethlem for a trouble- 
 some visitor. 
 
 One day in the May of 1619 he was sauntering in 
 Theobald's Park, Essex, when he heard himself denounced ''' 
 in the language of an Elijah or a Jeremiah : — " Stand, O 
 king ; I have a message to deliver thee from God. ' I 
 brought thee out of a land of famine and hunger into a 
 land of abundance. /-^Oughtest thou not, therefore, to have 
 judged My people with a righteous judgment ? ' But thou 
 hast perverted/ justice, and therefore God hath rent the 
 kingdom frpm thee." 
 
 Many Londoners wished that James I had never left the 
 " land of famine " with a horde of hungry Scots, but the 
 frankness of the speaker (an old officer) was in his case a 
 sign of disease, and he was confined in Bethlem. He 
 remained there — no doubt to the intense relief of the king 
 — for three years, and the entries in the minute books show 
 that the governors treated him generously in the matter of 
 diet and clothes. 
 
 Gaze into the crystal, and think intently of Robert 
 Burton, the author of " The Anatomy of Melancholy " 
 (162 1). You may see him at Christ Church, Oxford, the 
 sprightliest and most literary of conversationalists at the 
 
 12 
 
1 62 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 dinner table. Or he may be on the bridge, roaring with 
 laughter at the bargees and their language — one of his cures 
 for depression. His famous book, in which the hospital is 
 
 mentioned three or four times, is an epitome which gossips — 
 in delightful, discursive fashion — of everything that has ever 
 been written about mental disease. He insists that he 
 gathered together materials for his folio to beguile a 
 
DR. CROOKE 163 
 
 chronic melancholy, but he does not write as a man who 
 had crossed the distinct line which separates melancholy 
 from melancholia. 
 
 I am sure that the " Anatomy of Melancholy " must have 
 been on the shelves of such physicians of ours as Meverall, 
 Nurse, Tyson, and the Monros. And I often wonder why 
 they did not experiment with some of the pleasanter 
 'medicines which Burton has preserved in the amber of his 
 book. They come from the saner school of pagan medicine 
 but to-day Dr. Merryman is on our staff as well as Drs. Diet 
 and Quiet. 
 
 "Music, mirth, and merry company," says Burton, "are 
 sovereign remedies against melancholy." He quotes with 
 approval those physicians who would surround their patients 
 with all that is beautiful, delightsome, interesting, and 
 engrossing — singing, dancing, sports, pictures, and flowers. 
 But he is a little doubtful — and a little scandalized perhaps — 
 about some of the methods by which Epicurus sought to 
 thaw the sullen ice. 
 
 " When a sick and sad patient was brought to him to be 
 cured, he laid him on a bed of down in a beautiful room, 
 crowned him with a garland of fragrant flowers, and adminis- 
 tered to him a flagon of wine, while a fair maiden sang and 
 danced to the sound of her lute." 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 DR. CROOKE-AND AFTER 
 
 Reference has already been made to Dr. Timothy Bright, 
 physician, clergyman, and inventor of shorthand. In his 
 treatise on " Melancholie " he sets himself to comfort " such 
 as faint under the burden of religious despair." Many of 
 his suo"o:estions are full of common sense — such as the in- 
 fluence of a well-lighted and cheerful house, bright within 
 with pictures, and without with flowers. But in the same 
 breath he explains that " fantastic and melancholy visions " 
 may be chased away by such stones as chalcedony, and these 
 (he says) should be constantly worn in rings and brooches. 
 I refer again to Dr. Bright, because, while he was writing 
 his book, he was neglecting his patients at St. Bartholomew's, 
 from which he was practically dismissed in 1586. 
 
 Is Dr. Crooke another example of the physician who 
 sacrifices the responsibilities of his office and salary to more 
 congenial pursuits and society? In his "study in Coleman 
 Street" the famous professor of anatomy must have devoted 
 years to the revision of his " Mikrokosmographia," and to 
 other literary work of a professional type. He must, more- 
 over — for he was a familiar figure in the city and at court — 
 have had a large practice and many interests outside the 
 dim, sad under-world which he was paid to govern "in 
 person," and not by deputy. 
 
 In consequence of his neglect and exactions his hospital 
 became the scene of such scandals, that Charles I was con- 
 strained to have them investigated by two commissions. 
 
 These commissions, whose findings were signed by the 
 
 164 
 
DR. CROOKE—AND AFTER 165 
 
 president and treasurer of Bethlem and Bridewell, issued 
 on loth October, 1632, a report on the hospital, and on 
 1st April, 1633, a report on its lettered keeper. 
 
 The report of 1632 is as valuable historically as that of 
 1403 : indeed, I have pieced out much of the early history 
 of Bethlem by taking patches from both. 
 
 Let me transcribe what Laurence Whittaker and John 
 Withers have to say about the shrinking of the hospital 
 property on three sides out of four. 
 
 " Within the limits and bounds mentioned in the first 
 donation we find now divers dwellings and houses to the 
 number of fifty-eight with some gardens and back yards 
 to them, all which do pay rent to the hospital, and ever have 
 done since the first donation, and their building. Of which 
 bounds some are yet visible, viz. : that towards the street 
 eastwards [Bishopsgate], whereof three of these houses, 
 belonging to the hospital, do yet stand, and also that 
 towards the church land southwards [St. Botolph's church- 
 yard], upon part of which church land (as we conceive it 
 was at the first limited) did stand many houses now pos- 
 sessed by one Valence, who maketh a great profit of them 
 and hath built a very high brick wall against divers of the 
 tenements now belonging to the hospital to the great 
 annoyance and stopping up of their lights ; — which houses 
 of the said Valence we conceive it very probable to have 
 been within the bounds of the first donation, and now lost 
 from the hospital. As for the Deep Ditch westwards [Blom- 
 field Street] we find nothing that we can certainly affirm 
 to be it : only near the place we may conceive it was we 
 find a common sewer. But we do not find that the posses- 
 sions, now enjoyed by the hospital, do fully reach up to 
 it, so as the said hospital may have lost somewhat there 
 likewise. And for the land of Ralph Dunning north- 
 wards [say Liverpool Street Station, platform No. 18] we 
 find no mention at all now remaining of it, so as what 
 may be lost from the hospital on that side appeareth not 
 unto us. But we find the bounds much straitened that way. 
 We find also one fair tenement with a garden to it situated 
 
1 66 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 on the other side of the street over against this place 
 [" Staple Hall," or Devonshire House] so given as before 
 said, which hath time out of mind paid rent to the hospital, 
 but when, or by whom, given we can find no record." 
 
 The counting house at Bridewell had already (I learn from 
 State papers) encountered criticism. The accounts of the 
 two hospitals had — perhaps as a result of Dr. Crooke's cam- 
 paign — been separated in 1630, but two years later Charles I 
 had to complain that the balance sheet — drawn up at 
 Bridewell- — was not as clear and simple as it should be. 
 
 However, in the course of the same year the president and 
 treasurer produced a lucid statement. It appears from it 
 that the revenues of Bethlem amounted in 1555 to i^43, and 
 should have increased proportionably in practical and sym- 
 pathetic hands. But the governors had granted long leases 
 on low rents with building covenants, and for fifty years the 
 rate of increase had been little more than five shillings a 
 year. In the year of the valuation (1632) the revenue from 
 all sources was computed to be £2']'], and the houses, or 
 tenements in houses, had multiplied fourfold from 16 in 
 1555 to 64 in this year. 
 
 The revenues had hitherto been inelastic, but so had the 
 expenditure, until Dr. Crooke had raised the battle cry of 
 "Justice for the helpless." The place had been managed 
 on £60 a year or less under the system which allowed the 
 keeper to make his own profits out of private patients, but 
 in 1632 the keeper's bills had risen as high as ;^232 for 
 the year, although the food and drink sent in from the tables 
 of the charitable largely defrayed the cost of maintenance. 
 
 Some measure of the medical superintendent's expenditure 
 may have been legitimate and even admirable. He may 
 have insisted on the employment of a surgeon : at any rate 
 I find for the first time in the court books of 1628 definite 
 allusions to surgeons for Bethlem. John Quince (1628) and 
 Edward Sey (1633) have "done several cures," and their 
 " wages " were to be forty shillings a year with occasional 
 gratuities and vigilant scrutiny — the method adopted by the 
 governors in the payment of their servants. 
 
DR. CROOKE—AND AFTER 167 
 
 But it was notorious that the doctor had already violated 
 the conditions to which he had subscribed on his election. 
 For example, he was to *' serve in person " : after a few years ^ 
 he only appeared on quarter days. The keeper was to " have 
 no interest in the lands or revenues of the hospital " : it was 
 proved by the commissioners of 1632 and 1633 — it will be 
 more convenient for the rest of the chapter to treat their two 
 reports as one — that legacies, fees from patients' friends, and 
 other moneys went without reference to the steward's bills 
 into the bulging pockets of Dr. Crooke. 
 
 An auditor from the Board of Trade was let loose on the 
 keeper, but that elusive fox doubled and took to earth when- 
 ever he was hard pressed. He asked for more time and gave 
 evasive replies as long as he dared. He was not dismayed by 
 any array of figures, readily producing a " conjectural balance 
 sheet." According to this ingenious statement the hospital 
 was still indebted to him for eggs and butter supplied to the 
 patients from his farm in Essex. The commissioners were 
 willing to make him some allowance on this score, but they 
 permitted themselves some ironical comments, when he urged 
 that he was a thousand pounds the poorer for his keepership 
 of thirteen years. According to their reckoning he made 
 at least £100 a year out of. the hospital by methods quite 
 unjustifiable. I dare say, however, that Dr. Crooke rather 
 plumed himself on his own moderation, for it appears that 
 he was " paid his accounts at Bridewell without control, 
 voucher, or examination." 
 
 In the end Hilkiah Crooke was dismissed in spite of pro- ^ 
 tests and appeals. He escaped the prosecution threatened 
 by the council of Charles I, but — as a consequence of his 
 disgraceful behaviour — he seems to have been called on by 
 ' the College of Physicians to resign his fellowship. The 
 Dictionary of National Biography notwithstanding, he was 
 still alive in 1642, vigorously demanding reinstatement and 
 compensation. 
 
 The lambs fared ill with two wolves in their pasture. For, 
 if the keeper kept the steward without money, the steward 
 and his wife had to live upon the patients. 
 
1 68 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 Condemned meat — if a " benevolence " had been judiciously 
 bestowed — came in from the markets : the mayor and sheriffs, 
 as from time immemorial, placed a regular supply of food 
 and drink at the disposal of the hospital ; and the " basket- 
 men," the successors of the monastic servants who roamed 
 the streets with box and basket, had only to call next door 
 at the lordly mansion of Sir Paul Pindar for anything in 
 the way of leavings. 
 
 A generous benefactor in life, this wealthy merchant would 
 have benefited us after his death but for the Civil War. 
 
 All this food and drink was of course meant to be a free 
 gift to the patients. But the steward and his wife — left with 
 little but the bones by Dr. Crooke — proceeded to take the 
 choicest bits for themselves and to sell the remainder, which 
 had cost them nothing, to their helpless prisoners at six 
 times its value. Peter, the porter, and his wife (you 
 remember these worthies of 1403) would have embraced 
 such disciples effusively, and blessed them with unction. 
 
 But sometimes it chanced that no food came in or it was 
 intercepted, and then the sick and the hungry suffered. 
 
 In 163 1, for instance, two of the governors paid a surprise 
 visit to Bethlem, and it is noted in the court books that they 
 found the patients " like to starve," for they had had 
 *' nothing to eat for days together but some small scraps." It 
 is added that on a previous Sunday there was " nothing but 
 four pounds of cheese" to divide among thirty inmates : even 
 the fire was monopolized by the steward's wife, who " would 
 not let them come near " it. 
 
 Poor outcasts, in whose behalf no Tuke or Shaftesbury 
 had yet arisen ! 
 
 The sequel to these commissions was the charter granted 
 to the city in 1638. In it Charles I confirmed to the city the 
 government of the hospital as well as the possession of its 
 estates, while he indirectly reasserted the rights of the crown 
 to its "soil and house." The city was reminded of its obliga- 
 tions to the poor, for whose benefit land or money had been 
 given, and was forbidden to grant long leases at small rents. 
 
 Charles I was the champion of charity against fraud, but 
 
The house of Sir Paul Pindar, in Bishopsgate Without, was, within my recollection, 
 
 a tavern ; the oak front of it may now be seen in the South Kensington Museum, 
 
 to which it was removed in 1890. 
 
 To face p. if 
 
DR. CROOKE—AND AFTER 169 
 
 the actual grant of the charter was extorted or hastened by 
 the necessities of the king. He wanted money for a war 
 with Scotland, and the city was in no mood to raise a loan 
 until its grievances had been redressed. Accordingly he 
 deemed it politic — for a consideration of ;^i 2,000 — to renew 
 to the city its ancient privileges and franchises. 
 
 The play, perhaps, has been a little heavy. Let me present 
 the reader with something more entertaining, before I lower 
 the curtain. 
 
 In 1637 one Richard Farnham, a Colchester weaver, 
 enjoyed our hospitality. He was one of those prophets who 
 identify themselves with characters in the Bible, and are 
 unable (for they are the victims either of mental delusion or 
 of crude literalism) to distinguish between the actual and the 
 figurative. Farnham, with whom was associated one John 
 Bull, announced that he was one of the " anointed witnesses " 
 of the book of Revelation : that he should be slain in the 
 streets of Jerusalem, where he was to receive the " gift of the 
 holy tongue " to make himself understood : that he should 
 rise again on the third day as priest and king. 
 
 These delusions were inspired by the mystic visions of 
 John the Divine : he proceeded — with the sanction of Hosea, 
 as he supposed — to tempt a wife away from her husband. 
 Hosea — if we interpret the book with Western eyes — was 
 commanded by God to marry an unfaithful woman, or to 
 retain a wife who had become unfaithful, as a sign to apostate 
 Israel. The woman's husband — not a mystic student of 
 prophecy but a plain, blunt sailor — indicted his wife for 
 bigamy. As a result of the trial Farnham was committed to 
 Newgate and afterwards to Bethlem. I have hunted out two 
 entries in the court books of 1638, from which it appears that 
 in March the governors were unwilling to part from him, 
 whereas in June they implored Archbishop Laud to remove 
 him. Dr. Meverall, physician of the hospital (c. 1634-1648), 
 asked by the lords of the council for a report on the case, 
 recommended that he should be discharged on probation. 
 
 Farnham — so impregnable was his faith or so deep seated 
 his delusion — confidently prophesied that the plague should 
 
170 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 have no power to hurt him : he interpreted quite hterally and 
 in his own favour the text : — " The plague shall not come 
 nigh thy dwelling." Nevertheless towards the close of 164 1 
 he sickened (hard facts give the mystic many a knock-down 
 blow !), and died at a disciple's house in the beginning of the 
 following year, John Bull dying ten days after. His followers 
 refused to admit that he was dead, and some of the women- 
 
 A ' i'nie DilcoiHie of the Two in- 
 
 hunous itptliH'i Prophets, Richard Farrihj'H 
 
 THE TITLE-PAGE OF A PAMPHLET AGAINST FARNHAM, 
 THE FIGURE ON THE LEFT. 
 
 folk, hysterical or mendacious, actually testified to a resurrec- 
 tion of Farnham on 8th January, 1642. Indeed, the sectaries 
 used to drink to both their dead friends, saying that they 
 were still alive, and had gone in " vessels of bulrushes " 
 (Revised version — papyrus) to convert the lost tribes of 
 Israel. 
 
 Unfortunately in the years which followed there were left 
 at large men like Farnham who should have been shut up in 
 
DR. CROOKE—AND AFTER 171 
 
 Bethlem till their dangerous period was past. Such a man 
 was Robins, the ranter, who claimed to be God and to raise 
 the dead : such were the pioneers of quakerism, who ran 
 about naked as a " sign " against insincerity ; such was 
 Tannye, the " Lord's High Priest," who began to organize an 
 expedition to Jerusalem for the rebuilding of the Temple ! 
 Instead of reaching the holy city, this would-be crusader did 
 not get further than Bethlehem — not in the Holy Land — 
 where he died in 1677. 
 
 Another extraordinary character, whose mystical prophecies 
 — or nonsensical ravings — no doubt helped to inflame the 
 puritans against Laud and Charles I, v/as also a patient of ours. 
 This was Lady Eleanor Touchet, alias Audeley, alias Davies, 
 alias Douglas. In our own court books she appears as Lady 
 Eleanor Davies, although she was at the time the wife of 
 Sir Archibald Douglas. On i6th August, 1637, Langley, 
 the dishonest steward, complained that Lady Davies had 
 been billeted on his house, from which she had already tried 
 to escape, instead of being lodged in the common ward. 
 Sir G. Whitmore, the president, replied that the governors 
 had expressly reserved certain rooms in the official residence 
 of the steward for the use of the Bethlem committee, and for 
 the accommodation of private cases : at the same time he 
 admonished him for "giving Lady Davies ill words." On 
 3rd January, 1638, it was agreed that Lady Davies should 
 only have "twenty shillings allowed her weekly for diet and 
 necessaries, until the Lords shall further order." 
 
 It took me several years to dig up the story of " Lady E." 
 in the British Museum catalogue under Touchet, her family 
 name, and under Douglas, the name of her second husband. 
 Eleanor Touchet, I discovered, by following up one clue after 
 another, was the fifth daughter of George Touchet, Lord 
 Audeley and earl of Castlehaven by Lucy, daughter of 
 Sir Jas. Mervyn. Her brother was the notorious Mervyn 
 Touchet, who was beheaded on Tower Hill 14th May, 1631, 
 for revolting crimes. Eleanor is said to have had a learned 
 education, and in her saner youth to have excited the 
 admiration of her contemporaries by her intellectual gifts. 
 
172 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 In 1608-9 she married Sir John Davies, the attorney- 
 general for Ireland. In spite of his corpulence Davies was 
 also a poet of something more than minor orders — a 
 consideration which moved James I to embrace him as a 
 fellow-author of genius. By Davies Lady Eleanor had 
 two children, one an idiot, who was drowned in Ireland, 
 and a daughter, Lucy, who married Ferdinando, sixth earl 
 of Huntingdon. In 1623 her sorely-tried husband burnt 
 one of her prophecies, and she was moved to remark that 
 "John Davies" anagrammed (anagramming was the 
 fashionable craze of the period) would read "Jove's hand," 
 and that within three years the " hand of God would give 
 him his mortal blow." By way of anticipating the fulfil- 
 ment of her prophecy she forthwith donned widow's weeds, 
 Sir John testily ejaculating, " I pray you weep not while 
 I am alive, and I will give you leave to laugh when I am 
 dead." However, she was such a true prophetess that 
 three days before he died (8th December, 1626), she had 
 no hesitation in " giving him pass to take his long sleep. 
 
 Some fragments of her autobiography may be encoun- 
 tered in " Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain," 
 George Ballard, 1752. According to this book it was in 
 1625 that the spirit of prophecy fell upon her, and that 
 she took to the study of Daniel, to the neglect of her 
 household duties. She associates what an alienist would 
 describe as the incubation of her religious delusions with 
 her introduction to a deaf and dumb boy from Scotland, 
 one George Carr. He was what would be called to-day 
 a thought-reader, and was ready to signify the contents of 
 a closed page, or the whereabouts of a hidden object. 
 
 Between 1625 and 1633 the "handmaid of the Most 
 High God " appears to have allowed her disordered fancy 
 — like so many before and since, without as well as 
 within asylums — to wander over the book of Daniel, and 
 like so many insane prophets and ignorant fanatics, she 
 saw meanings such as no one else saw in the Bible, and 
 set herself to divine the will of God by constructing 
 anagrams, not always without violence to the rules of that 
 
DR. CROOKE—AND AFTER i73 
 
 art. For example, she rested one of her claims to inspira- 
 tion on the fact that some juggling with the letters of her 
 name, Eleanor Davies, would produce the anagram 
 "Reveal, O Daniel." 
 
 She had some reputation at the court of Charles I as 
 having prophesied the fate of Buckingham and his expedi- 
 tion, but her mystical commentaries on Daniel and her 
 explosive anagrams — launched against archbishop, judges, 
 and king — recoiled on herself. On 8th October, 1633, she 
 was tried at Whitehall before the archbishop and other com- 
 missioners for causes ecclesiastical on account of the petition 
 she had presented to the king, and because she had printed 
 one of her prophecies at a foreign press. Among the 
 exhibits were her exposition of Daniel and her anagrams on 
 ecclesiastical personages, judges, and others. Two of her 
 judges divined that she was insane. " Send her to Bedlam," 
 was the advice of the bishop of Rochester. But according 
 to Heylin, Laud's chaplain, " Lamb, dean of Arches, shot her 
 through and through with an arrow borrowed from her own 
 quiver." Lady Eleanor Davies had found Daniel in her 
 name : with his pen he deduced from Dame Eleanor Davies, 
 " Never so mad a ladie ! " This anagram is said to have 
 " brought the grave court into great laughter," and to have 
 visibly disconcerted the solemn Sibyl. The majority of the 
 commissioners, having heard the opinions of all, decided to 
 fine her ;^3,ooo, and to imprison her — without pen, ink, or 
 paper — in the Gate-house, Westminster, until the fine was 
 paid. For some two years or so Lady Douglas — for she 
 married her second husband in 1626, three months after the 
 death of the first — was closely confined in the Gate-house, 
 but was then removed to Bethlehem Hospital, where she 
 spent the next seven years of her life — possibly with pen, 
 ink, and paper. 
 
 In her petition to the House of Lords 22nd September, 
 1647, she describes the transfer as an "exchange of the grave 
 for hell — such were the blasphemies and the noisome scenes." 
 She adds that when she was discharged from the hospital, 
 she found herself stripped of every possession and though not 
 
Strange and V Vonderfuli 
 
 PROPHESIES 
 
 BY 
 
 The Lady Eleanor Au de le y^. who 
 
 is yet alive^and lodgeth in White-Hall. 
 
 Which Shee Prophefied fixteen yeeres agoe, and 
 
 had them Printed in Holland, and there prefented 
 the faid Prophefies to the Prince Eledor^ For which Ihe 
 was imprifoned feven yeers here in England^ by the late 
 King and hisMajeflies Counceli : Firft^fhe was put into 
 the Gate-houfe then into Bedlam^ and afterwards into 
 the Tower of LONDON. 
 
 With Notes upon the faid Prophefies, how farre 
 
 they are fulfilled^ and what part remains yet unfulfilled, 
 concerning the late King, and Kingly Government, and 
 ■the Armies and people of ENGL AND. • And particu- 
 larly White-Hall^and other wonderfull Predidions. 
 
 ^A^^^^s'^^s^^^^^■^■^r^ 
 
 Imprimatur Theodore Jennings Auguft 25 .1649. 
 
 London Printed for Robert Ibbitfon in Smithficld near the 
 Queens head Tavern, 1649. 
 
Strange and Wonder full 
 
 PROPHESIES 
 
 BY 
 
 l^he Lady Eleanor Audeley, vpho is yet 
 alive, and lodgeth in White^Hall. 
 
 TO ^^iVnmoflbeiov'dlfing 
 b of BabilonsiSong^ 
 Concerns you more full well I wot 
 
 thcnyedothinke upon. 
 c Bellhazzer^lo^hchold the King 
 feaflins: his thoufand Lords-, 
 
 ^Thofe that belecve this pro- 
 phecy. 
 
 b So (he frequently called the 
 Bifhops and Courtiers o^ En- 
 gland. 
 
 (The late King Charles whom 
 in alher books fhe oildBelf^M^i- 
 ^er,hec3iuCe the wal of cheBan- 
 
 Tbebus and Mars prais d on each Itring, quetting houfe atPVhlte-Haf, 
 every day records. where he {called, (hould be 
 
 terrible to hinijas a writing on 
 the wall v^as to Beljhix::i;^^cr^ 
 which proved true, for there 
 he was beheaded. 
 d Here fhe prophecied o^ his 
 pawning and felling of his 
 
 The Temple VefTels of Gods Houfe^ 
 
 boldly in dmnk about : 
 His (f own (tis like j were made away, 
 
 bids holy things bring out , 
 
 ».».w-y >.....g»,« .^*...j^ -J, . <_, - ij> 
 
 ^ Praifing of Gold and Braffca the gods, P'^,^^* „. , 
 
 ^f Tr^n Wr.n^ .n^ i^tnn^. ^e pulhng down of pidures 
 
 of Iron, Wood and Stone5 
 /See^hear^nor know,but now alaSj 
 praifed in Court alone. 
 
 A^hand appears^ lo in his fight, 
 
 as he did drinke the wine. 
 Upon the wall againll.the light 
 
 it wrote about a line 
 In prefence of his numerous Peers, 
 
 notfetan hour full. 
 In loyns nor knees had he no might, 
 
 chang'dasagailly skull, 
 been fcarce an houre upon the Scaffold, he fell downe on his knees, and (o laid 
 his neck on the blocks with a pale gaftly countenance,without any oppofition. 
 
 A Z Who 
 
 and Organs in Churches. 
 /All did rife againfl him but 
 the Court fadion. 
 g Here iliee prophecied of the 
 Kings deathj, which fell out 
 true For the heads-man took 
 the hatchet in his hand wher- 
 with hewasbe-headedjonthe 
 wal of theBanquating-houfe, 
 after the King had drank a 
 glaireofwine5atone blow or 
 line of blood, in prefence of 
 h '\s then Equalls, tor he dyed 
 as Charles Stuart. Mu^[\e had 
 
176 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 a mile distant from her husband, Sir Archibald Douglas, at 
 the time of his death, she was not suffered to know even 
 where he was buried. 
 
 The " Blessed Ladie," as she sometimes rather presump- 
 tuously styled herself, after her release from Bedlam in 1643, 
 or thereabouts, published a dozen or more incoherent treatises 
 which prove that her malady was incurable. In 1644 she 
 managed after the fashion of Jeremiah to get a " testimony " 
 conveyed to Charles I, but he, like another Jehoiakim, pro- 
 ceeded to burn it in the presence of his courtiers. She also 
 presented Cromwell some four years later with a tract, " The 
 armed commissioner," based on the text " Behold He cometh 
 with ten thousand of His saints," on which Oliver remarked 
 with a spice of dry humour, " I'm afraid we are not all 
 saints." / 
 
 I have inserted in the text as illustrations the title-page 
 and the first page of Lady Eleanor Audeley's " Strange and 
 Wonderful Prophecies." The original edition was printed in 
 Amsterdam in 1633, and was presented to Prince Charles of the 
 Rhine (a brother of Prince Rupert). The theme of the poem 
 is Belshazzar's feast and the stanzas are quite worthy to 
 rank with Byron's " The King was on his throne." The 
 reprint of 1649 sets out to prove that Lady Eleanor foretold 
 everything that happened to Charles I. Accordingly the 
 most harmless and the simplest lines of her poem (as you 
 will observe in the illustration) are twisted and distorted into 
 unnatural shapes. " Belchaser," for example, is anagrammed 
 into " Be Charles." The " Medes " are the Medici, the use 
 of the Temple vessels was a prophecy that Charles should 
 have to pawn his own plate, the " Caldeans " are the 
 Caledonians ! 
 
 Lady Douglas died in 1652, and was buried beside her first 
 husband, Sir John Davies, 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE LEAVEN OF PURITANISM 
 
 With the dismissal of Dr. Crooke in 1634, the office of keeper 
 became obsolete, and a dynasty of stewards succeeded ; 
 unlike the mediaeval masters they resided, while they reigned, 
 in the hospital, until the appointment of a resident apothecary 
 in 1816. 
 
 The first and the worst of these stewards (one Richard 
 Langley) imitated only too faithfully the spirit and methods 
 of the dishonest steward in the parable. It was charged 
 against him that he falsified his accounts, and — in the absence 
 of scales — purloined from the provisions. In reply, Langley 
 admitted that he occasionally helped himself to a marrow- 
 bone or a piece of beef, but he endeavoured to discredit the 
 incriminating evidence of Withers, the porter, by alleging — 
 a recurring charge against all our porters — that he took his 
 toll of the visitors' fees. The court, conniving at an occa- 
 sional glass of beer out of the day's takings, presented the 
 porter with ^10 and their confidence, but suspended the 
 steward. And no doubt with justice: for the neighbours 
 gave both the Langleys a bad name as " unquiet, uncivil, and 
 ungoverned people," adding that it was often midnight before 
 they came home, " both far gone in drink." 
 
 This battle (for the truculent steward dealt out blows as 
 well as insults) decided against her husband. Mistress 
 Langley carried on the war through the backyards. In the 
 end the governors found it necessary to provide two sets of 
 locks and keys to prevent the door of communication (by 
 which, it appears, " persons of note and quality " entered) 
 
 13 177 
 
 > 
 
178 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 being opened, except by the consent both of the porter and 
 the steward. 
 
 In arrears with his accounts to the last, Langley died in 
 1644, leaving his wife in a destitute condition. 
 
 The steward of this century was generally in arrears, 
 and once at least in prison. Sometimes, moreover, the 
 governors were perturbed by the inordinate quantity of 
 soap supplied to the patients, or had grave suspicions 
 about the dozens of wooden platters supposed to be lost 
 or destroyed. 
 
 And really it was very exasperating that Meredith, the 
 surgeon, would cure wounds, before Meverall, the physician, 
 and Yardley, the apothecary, had examined them, and " made 
 a bargain " with him 1 
 
 The governors, therefore, had their harassing hours : no 
 doubt it was in a spasm of irritation that they instructed the 
 steward to dump down Joane, a patient, at the door of her 
 friends, unless they paid up her arrears of half a crown a 
 week there and then. I imagine the threat was sufficient! 
 And often the very existence of such a hospital seemed in 
 jeopardy in the years when the city was divided against 
 itself, and was being drained of its resources alike by king 
 and parliament. 
 
 But you must not imagine that even in these "dismal 
 times " there were no little compensations. The Election 
 Dinner (generally in August) attracted a company of sixty 
 or seventy — not merely to hear a " sermon by Calamy " or 
 other puritan divine. And there were pleasant little 
 " bienvenus " — dinners given by new governors to the court — 
 when a buck from Richmond or Windsor graced the board. 
 And occasionally — if it were not in 1639 I would drop a tear 
 and blot out the record of it for ever — some of the city 
 worthies encountered the misdemeanours of " basketmen " 
 and the lavishness of apothecaries, when they were " intem- 
 perate and overtaken in drink." When a member of the 
 court failed to receive his usual " ticket," or notice, he knew 
 that at the last committee he had been in too hilarious a 
 mood : perhaps he had slapped a beadle familiarly on the 
 
PORTRAIT OF SIR GEORGE WHITMORE. 
 
 (After Janssen.) 
 
 Sir G. Whitmore (lord mayor, 1631-2) was president of Bridewell and Bethlem 
 and chairman of the commissions of 1632 and 1633. 
 
 DANIEL — ANOTHER PORTRAIT. 
 
 Notice the wig arranged as a background for a very long head. 
 {See p. 186) 
 
 To face p.2i79. 
 
THE LEA VEN OF PURITANISM 179 
 
 back, or had promised a fairing to one of the ladies at the 
 hemp-block in Bridewell ! 
 
 However, the lightest of pens must not fail to do justice to 
 the citizens — whatever the ribbons they wore in their hats — 
 who found money to balance the yearly deficit, and managed 
 to improve the condition of the patients, even during the 
 Puritan Revolution. 
 
 For the clouds, which began to gather round the city in 
 1640, soon began to darken Bishopsgate. 
 
 In 1641 Charles I on his return from Scotland had been 
 greeted by an escort of devoted cavaliers at the house of our 
 president (Sir George Whitmore) at Hoxton. In their com- 
 pany he and his queen had ridden past Bethlehem Hospital 
 on their way to the Guildhall. But within a year Sir George 
 Whitmore lay in a Bishopsgate prison as a royalist 
 " malignant," the portcullis had been lowered at Bishopsgate, 
 and the road over against the hospital was fortified with 
 chains and posts. 
 
 In the presence of civil war all credit and securities began 
 to topple. The treasurer of the two hospitals (Rawlins), find- 
 ing himself unable to " foot his accounts," was forced to hand 
 over to the governors the title deeds of his mansion and 
 grounds at "Fulham"; he was indebted to Bethlem, and 
 Bethlem still enjoys the revenues of the estate at Shepherd's 
 Bush, as we call it to-day. 
 
 As act after act in the national tragedy was played to a 
 close, the governors experienced more and more difficulty in 
 collecting the rents of their houses. For example, the 
 royalist tenant of the house (the " Staple Hall " of the Middle 
 Ages) next the " Dolphin " was in the hands of the seques- 
 trator, and in this case the rent of two years was irretrievably 
 lost. Again, some of the tenements in the precincts of 
 Bethlem (for which neither tenants nor money were forth- 
 coming) were so ruinous that they only served to " harbour 
 lewd and dangerous characters." And amid the sympathetic 
 assent of the court one of our leaseholders at Charing Cross 
 successfully pleaded as a reason fof the " mitigation of his 
 covenants " that all houses in his neighbourhood had fallen 
 
i8o THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 at least one-half in value, '' since the king went from 
 Whitehall." The speaker, who was the landlord of the 
 " Goat " tavern, added, with a spice of professional bitterness, 
 
 
 % '^/^' 
 
 A PLAN OF THE "GOAT TAVERN, 
 CHARING CROSS. 
 
 The front of the house lay behind the statue of Charles I, 
 but a little nearer to St. Martin's Lane ; the stables and 
 yard at the north end ran back towards the National 
 Gallery. Some friends of Pepys took rooms at the "Goat" 
 to see the coronation of Charles IL 
 
 (From the countermart of an eighteenth-century lease at 
 Bridewell.) 
 
 that building (and customers) had been diverted to the 
 Covent Garden district. 
 
 It has been stated that some of the royalist prisoners 
 were confined in Bethlem after the battle of Naseby (June, 
 
THE LEAVEN OF PURITANISM i8i 
 
 1645). It is, indeed, true that in 1644 parliament exempted 
 the royal hospitals from certain taxes — an exemption suc- 
 cessfully pleaded by our tenants in 1649 — on condition that 
 they received sick and wounded soldiers. But I can find 
 no confirmation of this statement in the court books, although 
 they are eloquent about the damage done, or threatened, 
 to Bridewell by disbanded soldiers and prisoners of war. 
 These wretches would insist on " burning tobacco " as they 
 lay on straw in a fireless basement, and the Great Hall had 
 already suffered from their number and habits. 
 
 Incidental references to the years of puritanism and 
 revolution crop up in the court books now and again in some 
 significant entry ; the king's arms (we read) have been 
 removed, somebody's conscience won't allow him to extirpate 
 episcopacy, or a ballad-singer has had his cavalier-locks cut 
 short. And some of the names of those who check the 
 bills at the side table in a Court at 8 a.m., or distribute 
 a hundred Bibles among the apprentices, are the names 
 of citizens who assented to the death of " Charles Stuart," 
 or were deposed from their aldermanry as " enemies of the 
 Commonwealth," such as " Lord " Packe, Sir R. Browne, 
 and Alderman Fowke. 
 
 But I can also, I think, discern the leaven of puritanism 
 at work for good and for evil, as I turn over my notes for the 
 period under review. 
 
 The highest ideals of puritanism were based on a sense 
 of responsibility to God and His word, and I trace the 
 influence of such ideals in the governors who did so much 
 to infuse humanity, decency, and discipline into Bethlem 
 between 1644 and 1677. Our chronology seems to illustrate 
 my argument. 
 
 In 1643 (June) the court ordered that the hospital be 
 " enlarged with as much speed as may be ; the governors 
 to meet and consider plans, to confer and contract with 
 workmen and to oversee the works regularly." In the 
 course of the following year accommodation was provided 
 for twenty additional patients. In 1652 ;^5 a year was 
 assigned, as the wisest way of spending a gift of £^0, 
 
1 82 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 for clothing in cases of destitution, and out of this beginning 
 there grew in after years a wardrobe fund, which proved an 
 admirable form of after-care charity. 
 
 I pass by the gift of ;^ioo presented by the city to the 
 hospital out of the coal dues in 1652, and come to the year 
 (1657) in which Evelyn strolled into the ward, v/here he saw 
 " prisoners in chains," after dining with a noble friend. In 
 this year very many of the younger generation, whose 
 puritanism had not been burnt into it, used to amuse 
 themselves on " Sabbath mornings " — till the authorities 
 scented the game — with an hour in Bethlem, spent in 
 provoking the more voluble patients, and in plying them 
 with drink. And, as the sands of the Commonwealth 
 began to run out, and the taverns began to recover lost ground 
 and customers, it became quite usual for the keepers of 
 Bethlem to adjourn — with tit-bits from the patients' dinners — 
 to such taverns as the "White Hart" or the " Sun" for the 
 rest of the day. 
 
 Perpetual vigilance and personal supervision are the best 
 safeguards against the abuses which develop in public 
 institutions, and the governors set themselves to protect 
 the patients from blows and insults, and their good name 
 from discredit, by a system of surprise visits. 
 
 Let these two entries, which I have transcribed from the 
 court books, testify to the spirit which animated the 
 governors in their work, as well as to the practical wisdom 
 with which they encountered abuses : 
 
 '^ Ordered that no officer or servant shall give any 
 blows or ill-language to any of the mad folks on pain of 
 losing his place" (C.b., 1646, July 18). 
 
 " Such governors as can, or live near, are entreated to 
 go as often as possible to see how the lunatics are used, 
 and how officers and servants behave themselves" (C.b. 
 1655, May 16). 
 
 Two years later than the last entry I find under 12th June, 
 1657:— 
 
 " Ordered that the porter keep the doors locked every 
 Lord's Day and days of public fasting or thanksgiving ; no 
 
THE LEA VEN OF PURITANISM 
 
 183 
 
 body to enter on any pretence, except to call in personal 
 assistance [often the flax dressers of the neighbourhood], and 
 no strong drink to be brought in except on the orders of the 
 doctor ; and no man to walk about, and the men and women 
 to be kept asunder, and the governors to consider how best 
 the men and women may be lodged and kept asunder." 
 
 It appears, then, that the ungodly still found their way 
 into the wards for an hour's sport. Very memorable, how- 
 
 TAVERN TOKENS. 
 
 Between 1658 and 1668 many of the taverns in our precincts issued 
 tokens which served as small change for their own customers, but 
 were of no value elsewhere. There are many allusions to the 
 " White Hart " in our court books, which also contain the name 
 of Ephraim Clithero, the landlord of "The Sunne." 
 
 ever, are the final sentences of the entry, for they first moot 
 the suggestion of segregating under female supervision the 
 female patients. 
 
 On the other hand, the leaven of puritanism worked for 
 evil, and unbalanced many minds. During the Protectorate 
 the Bible was sometimes expounded by preachers or prophets, 
 who were, or had been, insane. Or, if they were sane, they 
 churned up in the minds of their disciples those yeasty 
 
1 84 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 surges, in which the reason or common sense may suffer 
 shipwreck. 
 
 In religious and political revivals forces are released, which 
 should be kept imprisoned in the mysterious abysses of human 
 personality. 
 / For example, George Fox, the founder of quakerism, was 
 in the "travail" of the insanity of adolescence, when he ran up 
 and down the streets of Lichfield barefooted crying out — for 
 the frozen streets seemed to run blood — " Woe to the bloody 
 city." In the same year of 165 1 (and for more than that 
 year) the author of " Pilgrim's Progress " was possessed by 
 religious insanity and its hallucinations. 
 
 So far as I can ascertain, nobody has hitherto realized that 
 Bunyan was insane — in the technical and medical sense of 
 the word — for three or four years of his life, say between 1650 
 and 1653. His book "Grace Abounding" contains particulars 
 A^' sufficient to fill up the certificate and case-book of the mental 
 specialist. It appears as if Bunyan had some hereditary pre- 
 disposition to insanity. " When I was but a child, about 
 nine or ten years old (c. 1638), after I had spent this or the 
 other day in sin, I have in my bed been greatly afflicted, 
 while asleep, with the apprehension of devils and wicked 
 spirits, who still, as I then thought, laboured to draw me away 
 with them." 
 
 He relates that until his marriage (1649) he indulged in all 
 '^ manner of " vice and ungodliness " with youths of the village, 
 " cursing, swearing, and playing the madman." His marriage 
 brought better elements into his life, and it seemed to his 
 neighbours just as if " Tom of Bethlem " had become a sober 
 man. Premonitory symptoms, however, of the latent disease, 
 manifested themselves from time to time, and in 165 1 the 
 "great storm came stealing" upon him, and "floods of blas- 
 phemies" — unprovoked and unexpected — overwhelmed his 
 mind. The " unpardonable sin " began to have a horrible 
 fascination for him. He " desired to commit it," and soon 
 came to believe that he had committed it. Sometimes he 
 "felt the tempter pull his clothes": sometimes the devil 
 seemed to " take the form of a bull, bush, or besom," inviting 
 
THE LEA VEN OF PURITANISM 185 
 
 him to fall down and worship him. Then for a whole year 
 one sentence iterated and reiterated itself on the anvil of his 
 diseased brain — " sell Christ," " sell Christ," " sell Christ." 
 
 " I could neither eat my food, stoop for a pin, chop a stick, 
 or cast my eyes upon this or that, but still the temptation 
 would come, ' sell Christ,' ' sell Christ' " The agitation of his 
 mind was reflected in his restlessness : he could not sit still 
 for a moment, nor occupy himself in any way. At last — in a 
 paroxysm of exhaustion — he seemed to himself to let the fatal 
 words of surrender escape from his lips — " Let Him go, if He 
 will." 
 
 For two whole years at least — as I understand the narrative 
 — the " masterless hounds of hell ran over his soul, roaring 
 and bellowing." He had — at last — committed the unpardon- 
 able sin : he was now racked day and night with the anticipa- 
 tion of descending before another day had passed into eternal 
 torment. Like other victims of religipus melancholia he 
 added to his physical agitation and mental agony by ransack- 
 ing the Scriptures to justify the appalling sentence of ever- 
 lasting damnation pronounced against his soul ! 
 
 Unfortunately another book in his starved library did him 
 infinite mischief. Francesco Spira, a lawyer of Cittadella, 
 near Padua, became a Lutheran, but in an access of terror in 
 1548 was persuaded to make a public recantation before the 
 Papal Legate at Venice. He felt that he was an apostate 
 from the truth, and he soon believed himself to have, on that 
 account, forfeited for ever the mercy of God. Religious melan- 
 cholia followed with suicidal impulses, which baffled both the 
 theologians and the physicians of Padua. The story of 
 Spira was written in Italian to prove the judgment of God 
 against protestantism, and was translated into English by 
 Nathaniel Bacon, as a proof of the falsehood of popery ! 
 Neither the man who translated it, nor Bunyan who read into 
 it an irrefragable assurance of his own damnation, had the 
 least idea that the story of Francesco Spira illustrated a 
 case of religious mania. 
 
 Such was the fiery trial which made John Bunyan what he 
 came to be. Out of it came the iron, dug in darkness, heated 
 
i86 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 red hot in the furnace of his afflictions, tempered in the bath 
 of his own tears — which went to the building up of his 
 greatest work, the " Pilgrim's Progress." 
 
 The armour of Christian is dinted with the marks of his 
 terrible conflict with Apollyon. But it was John Bunyan 
 himself who could find no firm ground under his feet in the 
 slough of religious despondency. It was he who had been in 
 the iron cage, when he thought that he had " sold Christ," and 
 " committed the sin against the Holy Ghost." John Bunyan 
 — and none but he — had been through the valley of the 
 shadow of death, before he wrote about it : in it he had 
 uttered the grievous blasphemies which the fiend seemed to 
 have put into his mouth : on his pilgrimage through it 
 " clouds of confusion " had sometimes settled on his head, 
 sometimes "doleful voices" moaned in his ear or he heard a 
 " company of fiends rushing and yelling " around him. 
 
 Christian was not the only pilgrim who heard " Bedlam " 
 shouted after him in Vanity Fair. 
 
 The " inner light " led George Fox into paths of righteous- 
 ness and sobriety : with the help of the Bible and his theory 
 of the atonement Bunyan climbed up out of the mire, and the 
 burden fell from off his back at the foot of the cross. 
 
 But the poisonous fumes, exhaled by the mystical treatises 
 of Ranters, Muggletonians, and Fifth Monarchy Men, ate 
 away the sanity of such men as Daniel, Cromwell's porter, 
 who was admitted into Bethlehem Hospital in 1656. I notice 
 in the court books of that year that Dr. Nurse (1648-1667) 
 was asked to say whether " Daniel Curtis was really mad," 
 and possibly Curtis was Daniel's surname. I can, however, 
 find no such name in the archives. 
 
 In the course of his studies in mystical divinity Daniel had 
 collected quite a large library of books and pamphlets, which 
 he was allowed to keep in his cell, when his malady was 
 recognized as incurable. Conspicuous amongst these was a 
 large Bible (it is curious how prone people are to give away 
 things, for which they have no further use !) presented to him 
 by Nell Gwyn. 
 
 The Rev. C. Leslie, in his " Snake in the Grass " (1696), 
 
THE LEAVEN OF PURITANISM 187 
 
 describes a visit paid to Daniel, who is mentioned in 
 " Hudibras " as having " filled Bedlam with predestination." 
 
 " He could quote Scripture " (says Leslie) " as fast and as 
 little to the purpose as either Fox or Muggleton, nor did he 
 want his disciples. I was one day making a visit to him, 
 when upon a grass-plot before his window at the east end of 
 the building I saw some women very busy with their Bibles, 
 turning to the quotations with sighs and groans, as he 
 preached to them out of the window, I had the curiosity to 
 speak to one of these women, a grave, sober-like matron, and 
 1 asked her what she could profit by hearing such a fellow. 
 She with a composed countenance, and as pitying my ignor- 
 ance, replied that Felix thought Paul 'beside himself ' — which 
 made me reflect what ill-luck some had to be closed up, while 
 others were about the streets." 
 
 In 1907 some works of Prior, the poet, were published for 
 the first time by Mr. A. R. Waller : they had been lying for 
 many years among the manuscripts at Longleat. Among 
 them were " Four Dialogues of the Dead." One was a 
 conversation in the next world between Sir Thomas More 
 and the Vicar of Bray — a very tantalizing situation — and 
 another between Cromwell and his porter, Daniel. 
 
 Cromwell, finding himself very much "jostled and 
 affronted by a hundred cavalier ghosts," turns for sympathy 
 to a neighbouring shade. " By the length of his ear," mutters 
 the astonished Protector, as he looks more closely at him, 
 " and the sullenness of his brow, it should be my old porter." 
 So indeed it was, but a porter who is as good a man as, nay 
 a better man than, his master, and with some old scores 
 to pay off. 
 
 " From a porter I raised myself to be a prophet. I was 
 the senior inhabitant of old Bethlem, prince of the planets, 
 and absolute disposer of everything. I excommunicated, or 
 blest, as I thought proper, and, when the palace of Bethlem 
 was on fire, I forbade the people to quench the flames, and 
 told them the day of judgment was come, and unconcerned 
 I read on." 
 
 Oliver affects to pooh-pooh the grandiose rhetoric of his 
 
1 88 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 former servant as the emanation of the crazy brain of a man 
 who had been " so many years locked up in a little cell with 
 no other furniture but the torn leaves of three or four Bibles." 
 " I was, indeed, mad," rejoins the imperturbable Daniel. 
 " For that matter every mortal man is more or less mad — 
 when he is in love, for example, when he becomes a miser, 
 but, most of all, when he is ambitious. Your madness, how- 
 ever, was worse than mine, for you set the world on fire. 
 Men bring even to this place some germs of their former 
 madness, and the truth is — between friend and friend, you 
 know — that you are very far gone, and you must take a 
 course of Lethe waters for six months at least." 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 LAST YEARS IN THE OLD HOME 
 
 The citizens found to their cost that civil war was bad 
 for trade : they could not make any money, and what they 
 had made was draining away in loans and taxes. Their 
 young people, moreover, had no love for puritanism, and 
 sighed for the maypole, the playhouse, and the Christmas 
 frolic. 
 
 Everything was ripe for change, and the restoration of 
 Charles II was inevitable, when Lady Monck paid a visit to 
 Bethlehem Hospital in the February of 1660, and received an 
 address from one of the '' phanatiques," who thus " bespoke 
 her to the life " :— 
 
 " Most noble lady, now we see 
 The world turns round as well as we. 
 Whilst you adorn this place we know 
 No greater happiness below, 
 Than to behold the sweet delight 
 Of him that will restore our right. 
 Let George know we are not so mad. 
 But we can love an honest lad." 
 
 On 29th May in the same year her husband (George 
 Monck) restored the king, and Charles II passed through the 
 city to Whitehall along streets strewn with the flowers of 
 spring. The winter of the national discontent had vanished 
 before the rising sun of the Stuarts : it was spring, and the 
 joy of spring for everybody. The minute books are missing 
 
190 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 between August, 1659, ^'^d J^^Xj 1662 : perhaps the court 
 was too excited to sit, or the clerk to record the proceedings, 
 during these eventful years ! 
 
 With the autumn of 1662 came the anniversary of the 
 foundation of the hospital, and once more (I doubt not) on 
 St. Luke's Day, five days before it, mimic king and queen 
 and court issued forth in procession, with horns on their heads, 
 from the taverns in Bethlehem on their way to Horn Fair 
 and its ribaldries at Charlton, near Deptford. 
 
 And some months later — at Christmas — the governors 
 made an earnest attempt to grapple with a recurring scandal, 
 appointing a matron to take charge of the female patients in 
 a ward by themselves. 
 
 " The distracted women to be continually kept from the 
 distracted men there, and a discreet, careful and able single 
 woman to be provided to take care of the distracted women. 
 She may call to her help any one or more of the men 
 servants, when she cannot rule any distracted woman 
 herself." 
 
 Unfortunately the first two matrons misbehaved them- 
 selves, and the experiment was for the time abandoned, 
 the porter's wife being restored to her traditional place, 
 and the men servants having access, as before, to all the 
 cells. 
 
 The physician, under whose reign the women were 
 first segregated, was Dr. Thomas Nurse. He had a great 
 practice after the Restoration in Westminster, and was 
 buried 12 June, 1667, in the eastern cloister of the 
 Abbey. 
 
 Pepys, who was a governor, sails into the court books in 
 the year 1662. A hearth-tax of two shillings a chimney 
 threatened the hospital and the shivering patients, for no fire 
 was to be lit there, except in the kitchen. However, the 
 secretary to the Admiralty interceded with the farmers of 
 the tax, and the charity was for the time exempted from 
 payment. 
 
 There are many allusions in his diary (or shall we call it 
 
LAST YEARS IN THE OLD HOME 191 
 
 his confessions ?) to governors, physicians, patients, and 
 others, whose names are written on many pages of the court 
 books. Among his most intimate friends, for instance, were 
 the Huguenot Houblons, merchants who used their wealth in 
 our service as well as in financing William III against 
 France ; and Pepys has some scornful remarks to make 
 about Sir W. Bolton, who was expelled by our governors 
 from the Building Committee for making some disparaging 
 remarks — justified by events, I must admit — about the 
 mortar and materials of the new hospital. Dr. Thomas 
 Allen, physician of Bethlem from 1667 to 1684, was another 
 acquaintance of the diarist, who records how he often 
 walked in the park with him, or sat in a coffee-house dis- 
 cussing with him the action of something very like the 
 dynamite of to-day. 
 
 In the precincts of Bethlem lived the scrivener of Mr. 
 Pepys, and one of our tenants there kept a book-shop, which 
 had an unholy fascination for the connoisseur. Here Pepys 
 was " turning over some Spanish books," and had indeed 
 " pitched upon some," when he " remembered his oath," and 
 flung himself out of temptation. The taverns at Charing 
 Cross, associated with our history, also figure in the diary. 
 It was at the " Chequers " that instead of his own " dull 
 jade " he hired a " handsome and high-spirited horse," but the 
 music and the cavalry of a review upset the sobriety of the 
 animal. And it was at the " Goat " tavern previously men- 
 tioned that he spent many a merry hour with friends and 
 colleagues over a pint or two of wine. The " Goat " 
 (formerly, according to a lease of ours, " Martin's " tavern) 
 stood on hospital property, and there are many references to 
 it in the court books and leases at Bridewell. It appears 
 from them that the inn had a frontage of some 20 feet south 
 on " Charing Cross Street," and that it ran back towards the 
 Great Mews (say, the National Gallery) in the form of 
 " drinking rooms and stables." Baker, the landlord, 
 petitioned the governors to grant him a lease on easy terms, 
 as he had just laid out most of his ready money in a " stock 
 
192 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 of French wines." The court inchned an indulgent ear to 
 his prayer : perhaps they had already tasted his claret, or 
 because Baker had held aloof from the attempts made at law 
 by his fellow-tenants to dispute the title of the hospital. 
 
 In 1665 the Great Plague traced many a red cross in 
 Bishopsgate, and opened so many graves in its ancient 
 cemetery, that bones and coffin boards lay scattered about 
 the ground, and the taint of corruption hung over the sultry 
 streets. 
 
 Our patient, Daniel, is credited with prophecies of the 
 Plague and the Fire, and it may have been he who saw in 
 the changing forms of cloud an angel in white unsheathing 
 the sword of pestilence over a guilty city. 
 
 But in those dread months there were many who saw the 
 angel of the book of the Revelation emptying his vials of 
 wrath. From the casement in the porter's lodge, Matthews 
 and Millicent, his wife, must have watched, day after day, 
 a half-naked, demented creature running up and down the 
 street. He would enter into speech with nobody, but just 
 iterated, and re-iterated, without ceasing — " Oh ! the great 
 and terrible God," " Oh ! the great and terrible God." 
 
 There is a chasm in the registers of St. Botolph's, as, 
 indeed, in the court books of Bridewell, and I can furnish no 
 evidence of the mortality in our precincts. But, perhaps, the 
 angel of death, so often for our sufferers the angel of mercy, 
 did throw open the doors of the prison-house of Bethlem 
 with the benediction : — " The Lord hath had mercy on thee, 
 and thee, and thee : depart in peace." 
 
 The *' fierce and lamentable fire " of London swept through 
 Bridewell, devouring the rooms in which king and queen, 
 cardinal and captains once had moved : unfortunately it 
 spared Bethlem and its ruinous tenements. Indeed, Bishops- 
 gate ward was hardly scorched — thanks mainly to Pepys, 
 according to Pepys.^ However, Matthews, our porter, pre- 
 pared for the worst, and removed all that was movable 
 to a place of safety : for his forethought and pains he was 
 awarded i^4 by a grateful court. Imagine the panic and 
 
LAST YEARS IN THE OLD HOME 193 
 
 confusion in Bethlem on that Wednesday morning (5th Sep- 
 tember, 1666), till an east wind carried the flames westward 
 — tenants pouring out of overhanging wooden houses with 
 furniture and clothes, and patients stubbornly struggling 
 with their rescuers ! 
 
 For three years after the Fire of London the court was 
 obliged to sit at Bethlem, and their clerk, whose books were 
 kept at Shepherd's Bush, was provided with rooms in the 
 hospital. In one of these years plate to the value of ^100 
 was presented to the treasurer Gethin (1654- 1672) by his col- 
 leagues, who loved the man and appreciated his devotion. 
 He lived in Islington — quite a journey by coach from Smith- 
 field — but he was at the hospital two or three times a week 
 for eighteen years. During these years the governors were 
 of necessity brought into much closer touch with the hospital, 
 and realized more vividly — with a new London rising up 
 around them — the inadequacy of its accommodation. Partly, 
 perhaps, as a result of their experience, they passed a resolu- 
 tion on 24th January, 1674, that the " hospital-house was 
 old, weak, ruinous, and so small and strait for keeping the 
 great number applying for admission that it ought to be 
 removed and rebuilt elsewhere on some site grantable by 
 the city." 
 
 Long after I had written the manuscript of this book I dis- 
 covered a contemporary plan of this " hospital-house " while 
 rummaging in one of the tin boxes at Bridewell. It turned 
 out to be the actual " map or plan annexed " to a lease 
 granted by the hospital i6th March, 1678, to one William 
 Bates of " all that old, ruinous, and decayed building, lately 
 called the hospital of Bethlem." The muniment-room has 
 not yielded up anything more valuable than this plan, for 
 it traces out for us the foundations of the first Bethlehem 
 Hospital and its annexes. Indeed — with the help of the 
 court-books — I shall be able to distinguish the original, 
 perhaps the ancient, " prison-house of Bethalem " from later 
 additions. Many of the details, to which I have attached 
 letters, must^ no doubt, be accepted as purely conjectural, 
 
 H 
 
194 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 but you may wander through the house, or rather houses, 
 with some confidence, inasmuch as the court books have been 
 studied by your guide. 
 
 Instead of walking down Liverpool Street imagine that 
 you are walking down the " long entry " or " long walk of 
 the ' White Hart,' " through the precincts of a vanished con- 
 vent. It is paved with freestone (at any rate in 1656), and 
 is some seven feet wide. About one hundred and forty feet 
 from the old gateway of the liberty (the entrance to Liver- 
 pool Street) you will find your road intersected by a cross- 
 path, some four feet wide. Follow this for a few yards north 
 and you will reach the lodge of the hospital porter. He will 
 admit you — if you put your " footing " into the " servants' 
 box " in the space marked " E." Opposite the latter you 
 will notice the only indication of a fireplace. This must 
 have been the only fireplace in the institution, for under 
 a minute of 1663 the governors ordered that only one fire 
 was to be kept up " at the expense of Bethlem," and it was 
 to be in the kitchen — " unless the treasurer and any of the 
 governors want a fire in the parlour for themselves." At this 
 one fireplace the patients got what warmth they could on 
 wintry days, but much of their time they spent under the 
 straw. The northern promontory of the sketch shows us the 
 barn where the straw was stored, and, farther on, the fur- 
 nace where the soiled straw was burnt : over the straw-barn 
 was a room for drying clothes. 
 
 We will now explore what I will call the northern block, 
 the western block, and the southern block, which appear 
 to have formed three sides of a parallelogram. The 
 western and southern blocks were houses three storeys high, 
 and were arranged for the accommodation of the patients 
 and their keepers on a similar scale. On the ground floor 
 there seems to have been a corridor (perhaps " C ") with bed- 
 rooms (perhaps " D ") for several patients opening into it. 
 On the second floor there was accommodation for eight 
 patients, and the male keepers slept in the attics. I have 
 found no descriptive details of the northern block in the 
 
LAST YEARS IN THE OLD HOME 195 
 
 court books, but it appears to have contained cells as well 
 as offices. Under 19th July, 1669, the court book alludes 
 to " that part of the hospital the last built northwards." 
 Perhaps these were the " new buildings," to which twenty 
 of the worst female cases were transferred in 1662. We 
 know from the minutes that the western block was built in 
 1644 by order of the court of aldermen on the site of " two 
 old and ruinous tenements," which brought in little rent to the 
 governors. 
 
 There is now nothing but the southern block left to receive 
 its date and descriptive label. Well : this must be the original 
 " house or hospital of Bethalem," of 1555 and 1632, "where 
 the poor distracted people lie " : the ward of 1403 with its 
 six patients no doubt stood on the very same ground. I 
 wavered a good deal before I asked my friend, Mr. Arrow, 
 to write the word " yard " in the space between the northern 
 and southern blocks, but it seems to answer to the " yard " 
 into which the patients threw many undesirable things before 
 their windows were grated. 
 
 I found a view of the " hospital-house " in the " exact 
 survey" of London made by W. Hollar in 1667 after the Fire 
 of London : it shows us three blocks of buildings occupying 
 (as in our plan) three sides of a parallelogram. But he has 
 drawn the long wards as running north and south, whereas 
 it is certain from the measurements, boundaries and other 
 details given in the lease that they ran east and west 
 for two hundred feet. In the illustration Hollar's plan has 
 been reproduced by Mr. Arrow as Hollar drew it, but on a 
 somewhat larger scale. 
 
 It was necessary to obtain the permission of the king for 
 the removal of the hospital from Bishopsgate to Moorfields 
 nor might the ancient site of this "royal peculiar" be 
 retained for revenue without his consent. The signature 
 of Charles II was obtained without demur or delay to a 
 warrant, sought in proper form. 
 
 The city was also just as ready and anxious to help 
 Bethlehem Hospital as in 1346. Accordingly, on 9th October, 
 
196 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 i6y4, Sir W. Turner (president of Bethlehem and Bridewell) 
 was able to deliver to the governors a lease of certain land on 
 the City Ditch — seven hundred and twenty feet east to west 
 from the postern, Blomfield Street of to-day, to Moorgate, 
 which may be considered as situated at the junction of 
 London Wall and Finsbury Pavement ; the breadth of this 
 
 VIEW OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL IN 1667. 
 
 (Drawn by Mr. Raines Arrow after the sketch by W. Hollar.) 
 {Seep. 195.) 
 
 slip of land was eighty feet from London Wall northward. 
 The lease was to run for 999 years, from Michaelmas Day, 
 1674, at a quit-rent of a shilling a year, and the land was 
 given on the condition that it should be used for no other 
 purpose than that of a lunatic asylum — a condition which 
 afterwards proved embarrassing. 
 
 The governors chose as the architect of the new hospital 
 
LAST YEARS IN THE OLD HOME 197 
 
 one of the most remarkable men of his age. Robert Hooke, 
 the son of a clergyman in the Isle of Wight, was born at 
 Freshwater in 1635. Passing through Westminster School 
 into Christ Church, Oxford, he found his way into the society 
 of Boyle, Wilkins, and other men of science, and was em- 
 ployed by Christopher Wren in drawing and colouring on a 
 larger scale than that of life various objects for the microscope. 
 Through the influence of Boyle he was selected in 1662 as 
 the first curator of the Royal Society, of which he afterwards 
 became the secretary. He was appointed some three years 
 later to the professorship of mathematics at Gresham College, 
 and after the Fire of London served as one of the city 
 surveyors, who assisted Wren to rebuild the capital. When 
 Hooke died, there was found in his rooms at Gresham College 
 an iron chest which contained some thousands of pounds 
 in gold and silver. It is probable that he amassed this 
 fortune during his surveyorship — by fees and by speculation. 
 He had intended to leave it to the Royal Society, but he died 
 without executing a will. 
 
 Those to whom the name of Robert Hooke is at all 
 familiar, know him only as one of the most brilliant of his 
 contemporaries in natural and experimental sciences, in which 
 he appears to have anticipated Newton and his successors. 
 But he was also a great architect, whose name would have 
 descended side by side with that of Wren, had he worked on 
 anything like the same scale and with the same publicity. 
 He appears to have designed houses for many merchants and 
 noblemen, but his reputation must rest on his design of 
 Bethlehem Hospital. Curiously enough, Evelyn — one of 
 his most intimate friends — is silent about his masterpiece, 
 which, however, Aubrey assigns to him. But the court books 
 enable us to follow every stage of his work from the paste- 
 board model which he made of the hospital to his acceptance 
 of a gift of ^200 from the governors, with their warmest 
 thanks, on its completion. After years of sickness and 
 suffering, during which he grew more and more of a miser, 
 he died on 3rd March, 1703, and was buried three days later 
 
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LAST YEARS IN THE OLD HOME 199 
 
 in the church of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, where the Greshams 
 and other benefactors of ours rest after their labours of love. 
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 emaciated figure, " is the most, though he promises the least, 
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 80f^t 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 THE PALACE BEAUTIFUL 
 
 Bethlehem Hospital, the second, was built on the city 
 moat at the edge of Moorfields. Deeper far than its 
 foundations lay the culvert and pottery of the Romans, 
 who drained the moor and fen. In the Middle Ages it 
 was once more a marsh, dappled with sheets of water, 
 over which, when frozen, skimmed the apprentice on primi- 
 tive skates of bone. In the seventeenth century it was a 
 favourite promenade of the citizens on summer evenings, 
 and the site of the hospital (represented to-day by Fins- 
 bury Circus) was occupied by the homeless after the Fire of 
 London. 
 
 The hospital was, without exaggeration, a palace beautiful, 
 which excited the admiration of contemporary culture and 
 of foreign visitors. Evelyn — and he was a connoisseur — 
 considered it " very magnificent," and Thomas Jordan, the 
 laureate of the city, introduced a lusty psean to the glory of 
 the " structure fair, royally rais'd " into the pageant of Lord 
 Mayor Davies in 1676. 
 
 ; 
 
 " This IS a structure fair, 
 Royally raised ; 
 The pious founders are 
 Much to be praised, 
 
 That in such time of need, 
 When sickness doth exceed, 
 Do build this house of bread 
 Noble New Bedlam. 
 
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 p. 51 
 
 5;0f5 
 
 3 ~ 
 
THE PALACE BEAUTIFUL 203 
 
 'Tis beautiful and large 
 
 In constitution ; 
 Deserves a liberal charge 
 Of contribution. 
 
 If I may reach so high 
 To sing a prophecy, 
 Their name shall never die 
 That built New Bedlam." 
 
 French and German Guide Books of the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries may be sarcastic about English eccen- 
 tricity or the stench in parts of the hospital, but they are 
 unanimous in praising the grandeur of the design and the 
 spaciousness of the galleries and cells. 
 
 The verdict of these centuries has been unhesitatingly 
 endorsed in the nineteenth century by such authorities as 
 J. T. Smith (Keeper of Prints and Drawings, British Museum) 
 and by James Elmes, the author of some standard " Lectures 
 on Architecture " (1823). 
 
 Such testimony — the testimony of people who had actually 
 seen what they admired — should be conclusive, and we may 
 approach even an engraving of the palace-hospital in an 
 enthusiastic mood. I propose, however, if my readers will 
 accept me as a guide, not only to study the beauty and warmth 
 of the exterior, but also to make a tour of the building and 
 its grounds. But, before we start to explore yard and hall 
 and gallery, let me ask those who accompany me to turn to 
 the earliest engraving of " New Bedlam," which I have 
 reproduced for this chapter. 
 
 It was executed by Robert White, a popular and industrious 
 artist of the last half of the seventeenth century. He pro- 
 duced at a court of governors held in August, 1677, the 
 " brass plates " which he had been commissioned to make for 
 the sum of ^40 ; artists (his masters considered) are not men 
 of business, and so these merchants paid the money in 
 instalments, upon security taken, and after certificates of 
 accuracy. The court, however, was so pleased with the 
 work that they presented copies to Charles II and the duke 
 of York : the whole of the original edition was distributed 
 
204 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 amongst the governors, the metal plates being handed over 
 to the clerk "to make the best advantage he can out of 
 them." 
 
 The clue to the date of an engraving is the name of its 
 publisher. You will notice that our engraving was " printed, 
 coloured, and sold by John Garrett at his shop next the 
 Exchange Stairs in Cornhill " : the British Museum, there- 
 fore, dates it about 1690. On the other hand, the label on the 
 print in the house physician's room condemns it to the date 
 of 1758. The erasures in the copy at present in the office of 
 the clerk of the works also indicate a late date. 
 
 I have, however, had the luck to discover in the Print 
 Room of the British Museum a unique drawing executed by 
 John Dunstall (fl. 1644- 1690). It represents the entrance 
 gates of the hospital in their original form as iron bars set in 
 a wooden frame. I am tempted to assign to the drawing a 
 date before 1680. A photograph of this drawing should be 
 found on the walls of one of the wards. 
 
 In front of the hospital (please unfold the illustration 
 before we begin our round) ran a long, straight wall pierced 
 by the entrance gates and by three apertures of open iron- 
 work (afterwards filled up) on either side of them at regular 
 intervals. 
 
 Four steps led up to the large gates, which swung from 
 stone piers, and there were wicket gates for visitors on either 
 side of the double gates. 
 
 On the piers of the wicket gate the lion and the unicorn 
 of the Stuarts ramped in defence of Charles II and of a 
 loyalty so sorely tried at that time by loans and exactions. 
 Over the stone piers of the great gate sprawled — after the 
 fashion of Michael Angelo's " Night and Morning " in 
 Florence — the colossal statues, which were intended to 
 represent two phases of mental disorder. The chained 
 figure is drawing in his breath and about to bellow forth 
 words of anger and menace : he is an example of acute 
 mania. The vacancy of the face on the left suggests the 
 general paralysis of all energies, which precedes dissolu- 
 tion in the general paralysis of the insane. Cromwell's 
 
1^ .' , H • "*H!f»W 
 
 THE ENTRANCE. 
 
 DEMENTIA AND ACUTE MANIA. 
 
 To face p. 204. 
 
FEMALE AND MALE FIGURES WITH ALMS BOXES. 
 The money, dropped into the slot of the vessel, descended into the pedestal. 
 
 To f.ice p. 205. 
 
THE PALACE BEAUTIFUL 205 
 
 porter — so runs the tradition — was the model for the figure 
 in chains. 
 
 These statues, carved out of Portland stone, were the 
 work of Caius Gabriel Gibber, father of Golley Gibber, 
 the actor and dramatist. In their day they were considered 
 " first in conception, and only second in execution among 
 all the productions of English sculptors." I have found 
 no reference to them in the court books, but the Dictionary 
 of National Biography assigns 1680 as the date of their 
 erection. 
 
 Passing through the gate into a forecourt of grass plots 
 and paved walks, we will pause to get a general idea of 
 the style and details of the architecture, which was novel 
 in 1675. 
 
 Sir Ghristopher Wren was in Paris in 1665 studying 
 French architecture, and I am tempted to conjecture that 
 he handed over his drawings to his friend, Robert Hooke. 
 At any rate the design — a break in the monotony of the 
 classical work of Wren — was inspired by French models, 
 and was carried out in red brick with freestone dressings. 
 There was (you will see by the illustration) a '^ French 
 pavilion " in the centre with turret, cupola, and dragon-vane, 
 and there were similar pavilions at the east and west ends, 
 which were united to the centre by the galleries of the 
 inmates. At each end of the building— at that period — 
 was a high walled court, in which the patients took their 
 daily exercise. 
 
 Four semicircular steps led up to the principal entrance 
 under the iron balcony. Beyond the door were the " Penny 
 Gates," where the visitor put his penny or twopence into the 
 quaint money-boxes, which stood in a niche on either side of 
 the gates. The boxes were really figures of gypsies begging 
 with vessels slotted to receive money. They appear to have 
 been made, as well as painted blue — the livery of Bethlem 
 — at the cost of Gharles Foot, a merchant, to whom the 
 green staff of a governor was presented on 4th October, 
 1676. These " figures for the poor's box " in their time 
 earned thousands of pounds for charity, and I hope they 
 
2o6 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 will be saved from the carpenter's shed or the engineer's 
 fires ! 
 
 In charge of the "poor's box" stood the porter (Matthews) 
 in his gown of blue cloth, holding his " good large staff," 
 the silver head of which was beautifully chased, as in the 
 illustration. On 20th October, 1676, Mr. John Kendall, 
 a governor, received the thanks of the court for the "porter's 
 staff and plates about the same," but it would appear from 
 the inscription that it was not actually executed till 1682. 
 
 Possibly this unaccountable delay was caused by the 
 demand of our jealous sister, Bridewell, for something just 
 as good — or better. No doubt the unhappy donor sur- 
 rendered to tears, if not to taunts, and made his peace with 
 Bridewell by presenting her with a staff, identical in design, 
 but larger, of course, and more valuable. It must, however, 
 be admitted, that Bridewell has taken more care of her gift 
 than we have, for some forty years ago the Bethlem staff- 
 head fell from the top of an omnibus, and it is now the worse 
 for wear — and repairs ! 
 
 Throughout our history the porter lies under the suspicion 
 of taking toll of the visitors' fees for admission : anyhow 
 he never had change when it was wanted. This is the 
 latent humour or warning of the superscription, which used 
 to implore the visitor to " put his money into the box 
 with his own hands." In the committee-room at Bethlem 
 there is a stately, portly piece of furniture, finely carved, 
 which served in the eighteenth century to allure donations 
 from the wealthy. On three sides it bears the legend, " Pray 
 remember the poor lunaticks, and put your charity into the 
 box with your own hands." 
 
 The passage of the " Penny Gates " opened out into a 
 large hall, right and left of which on each storey were the 
 entrances to the galleries : later on, as in Hogarth's picture, 
 gates of open iron-work served to keep the most violent 
 patients in their proper place. To the right of the hall 
 at its north end was the office of the steward ; and to the 
 left was the room where the physician and apothecary saw 
 patients on their admission and discharge. 
 
THE PALACE BEAUTIFUL 
 
 207 
 
 Around the hall were marble tablets in memory of bene- 
 factors, linked by cherubs' heads in Grinling Gibbon style, 
 and from the back, or south of it, a staircase ascended 
 to the court room, where the " committee for Bethlem " — 
 henceforth a body of power and importance — met on 
 Saturdays. 
 
 In the court room, which had an ornamental ceiling of 
 plaster, were fireplaces east and west. Over the chimney- 
 piece on the west hung an ancient portrait of Henry VIII, 
 and on the south side of the room, at a later date, a " portrait 
 
 THE ARMS OF HENRY VIII AS PRESERVED IN 
 BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL. 
 
 of Sir W. Turner at an advanced age " : over the eastern 
 chimney-piece were the " arms of England surmounted by 
 the initials R. H. inscribed above them." At this end there 
 were also " two large drawings in Indian ink representing 
 the north elevation and the plan of the first floor " — 
 presumably the drawings which Hooke proposed to in- 
 corporate into White's engraving. 
 
 Round the walls hung, as in the modern committee room 
 the arms of the presidents and treasurers of the united 
 hospitals from 1557. 
 
2o8 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 The court room looked northward through three large 
 windows on Moorfields, the centre window leading on to 
 an iron balcony, on the face of which was painted the 
 arms of the city, of the hospital, and of the presidents. 
 Let me note here that a fortnight earlier the governors 
 did not know whether Bethlehem Hospital had any coat 
 of arms, and asked one of their colleagues (Withy, heraldic 
 painter) to consult with Sir W. Dugdale, Garter king of 
 arms. It is, therefore, to him that we owe in our present 
 shield the hideous skull, which has replaced the chalice 
 and the Host. It is significant (I think) of ignorance rather 
 than bigotry that there are so few allusions in the old 
 histories of London to the mediaeval origin of the ministry 
 which Bethlem has carried on among mental sufferers, at 
 least from 1377. 
 
 On either side of the balcony window, and within the 
 court room, depended the arms of Charles II and of 
 Henry VIII, which were ordered by a minute of 30th 
 March, 1677, to be "made and painted." Is this coat of 
 arms identical with that over the fireplace in the committee 
 room of the present building, or is it " the arms of England 
 surmounted by the initials R. H." which, as J. T. Smith 
 was informed, came from the Bishopsgate hospital? I 
 should consider the evidence of the minute as final were 
 it not that the Tudor arms show no signs of painting or 
 gilding.- 
 
 I believe, however, that J. T. Smith — an expert in 
 pictures — is right in saying that our ancient portrait of 
 Henry VIII was transferred from Bishopsgate to Moorfields. 
 The original of this portrait, as I have discovered, is, or was, 
 at Warwick Castle, and its authenticity as a Holbein has 
 never been challenged. Waagen, who sees in the eyes the 
 " suspicious watchfulness of a wild beast," considers that 
 the picture " shows transition from the second to the third 
 manner of Holbein " : he therefore dates the painting about 
 1530. In that case a copy of it might have been made 
 for George Boleyn, brother-in-law of Henry VIII and 
 master of the hospital from 1529 to 1536, or for Peter 
 
FIG. I. 
 
 FIG. 2. 
 
 The staff-head is encircled with the acanthus leaf in silver chasing. In the upper part of it appear 
 the arms of the City (i\g. i) of Sir W. Turner, and of the hospital (fig. 2). Below the silver thread 
 may just be discerned the arms of the donor (fig. i). The staff-head is crowned with a silver 
 medallion, bearing on one side the royal arms of the Stuarts (fig. i), and on the reverse the lion 
 
 and dragon of the Tudors (fig. 2). 
 
 To face p. 208. 
 
THE PALACE BEAUTIFUL 209 
 
 Mewtys, a confidential agent of the same king, and master 
 of Bethlem (i 536-1 546). 
 
 I was the first to identify the " portrait of Sir W. Turner 
 at an advanced age " with the picture — so long unidentified 
 — in Mr. Worsfold's room at Bridewell. It was painted 
 by Lanskroen, a native of Flanders, who worked under 
 Verrio for seven or eight years at Windsor Castle, probably 
 between 1683 and 1688. A minute of the General Com- 
 mittee under nth October, 1841, records the resolution that 
 the portrait of Sir W. Turner, a former president, painted 
 by Lanskroen, be removed from Bethlem Hospital, and 
 placed in the court room at Bridewell Hospital. 
 
 To right and left of the entrance hall on both storeys 
 were the galleries of the patients, out of which, as in the 
 present building, opened the cells, or bedrooms, of the 
 patients. The bedrooms were larger (as the gallery was 
 broader) than the present type, but were only provided 
 with narrow, unglazed windows high up in the wall at the 
 back (or south) of the building. In these cells most of 
 the patients were shut up with their dreams and passions 
 (it must be remembered that acute or dangerous cases 
 were preferred), except when they were taking the air in 
 the yards. Presumably these yards were gravelled, for on 
 one morning the male patients managed to do eight shillings' 
 worth of damage by throwing stones at a neighbour's 
 windows ! 
 
 Some patients were allowed the " liberty of the gallery," 
 but, as a rule, the galleries were reserved for visitors, who 
 amused themselves by looking through the hatches of the 
 cell doors, and in bandying unsavoury jokes with the in- 
 mates of the cells. 
 
 Cowley, the poet, has left us some thoughtful comments 
 on the scenes of drink and disorder which he witnessed on 
 visiting days in his "Several Discourses" (1668): ''I re- 
 turned not only melancholy, but sick with the sight. To 
 weigh the matter justly, the total deprivation of reason 
 is less deplorable than the total depravation of it in the 
 thousands I meet abroad." 
 
 15 
 
210 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 On 26th July, 1676, it was ordered that the men should 
 occupy the lower gallery, and the women the upper gallery 
 and " not to be suffered to lodge promiscuously " : after- 
 wards the east wing was set apart for the male patients. 
 The staff occupied some of the attics in a central pavilion, 
 the kitchen and other offices being in the basement : the 
 other basements were let to the East India Company for 
 the storage of pepper. 
 
 BETHLEHEMS BEAUTY 
 LONDONS CHARITY, 
 
 AND THE 
 
 CITIES GtORY, 
 
 A Panegyrical Teem on that Magmficent Stmaare^^ lately 
 
 Ereded in Moorfelds, vulgarly <^lled N^?© Bedlam. 
 
 iHumbly Addreft tp tbe Honourable TVIafter, Gavernours, and other 
 • Noble BenefaBsrs'joi tliat Splendid and moft ufeM Hofpital, 
 
 Xicenied Septemkr j6, i^'iS. ^oger V Strange. 
 
 S 
 
 To^ no Eiore fhall Aotient fdriiis boaft, M And comes fo Pvr^, 'the Sfintt to Refine* 
 
 Tine mould'ting Pyimidt on Ejgnis coaH^ Wk As if ^' wife Gavernouf s nad » Defigne 
 
 Soi't van Cehfai, or ibofc migrrty Things m TTfaat Thould «lonc, without Phpd Reifore 
 
 Which with Montlitf npbraiacd Kingt.'. W' Thofe whom Ortfi Vapows difcompos'd before.j 
 
 ^. All thcfc could but vaiftOftentgiion yield, ^ Bat tbis Costeit h fhfltd by their Cire^ 
 
 •Whilft we for Vf( and Chantj do Bmld. Wi The bcft ©f Artt 'Afii^aiKt to prepare. 
 
 When I^ N D N did in Fuatrd Afkts lie ^ What eVe QaleiiUk or Sermttid Skill 
 
 'Bus Ten years fince, "Re Gntf of tvety Eye, ^ Offeri in Natures Aid, ij ready rtiH, 
 
 Whfte DrfiUtitn Ttiasn^'d in etch Streetf ' w Convenient £>/<i*f liberally beflow'd, 
 
 •■■--- if. (^ A-j -ti ^„,. «.f,, c„m ritn^ fo fijiit:Al!av»y»' 
 
 Within six weeks of the opening of the palace hospital 
 a ballad-writer produced a broad-sheet of a hundred lines 
 in his " Bethlehem's Beauty, London's Charity, and the 
 City's Glory," which sparkles with playful allusions to the 
 foibles of its inmates. The press mark will be found in 
 the museum library under the title " Bethlehem Hospital." 
 
 Such a paradise, he fears, will encourage " exaltation " : 
 it will make everybody half mad — to be a lodger there : 
 
THE PALACE BEAUTIPUL nt 
 
 there is such comfort and " convenient diet " (very lowering, 
 with a staple of pottage, the chronicler may add). The 
 very air, winnowed through the trees of Moorfields, will 
 restore the mind without physic. None have reason there — 
 to complain ! 
 
 In the ballad one of the patients is " railing at Rome " : 
 this looks like Cromwell's porter, Daniel. Another is 
 making an almanac — doubtless freighted with famine, plague, 
 and fire. " Immoderate studies and pinching poverty " 
 have filled the cells. One of a group of university scholars 
 at the time was John Thamar, Fellow of St. John's College, 
 Cambridge : he is described in literary sketches of the day 
 as a musician, and a Cambridge organist. Six shillings a 
 week — more than the average fee — was paid by the College 
 for him " for dyet and attendance during his stay in the 
 hospital of New Bethlem for the cure of his present dis- 
 traction besides allowance for a bedel, according to the 
 custom of the place and appointment of the governor." 
 Other University scholars were Francis Wordis and John 
 Shaxton. They were allowed clothing as " having no friends 
 and no means." 
 
 But the topical poet — to get a market for his wares — 
 must tickle the hearts of the sentimental and romantic. 
 
 " One fancies still his cruel mistress by : 
 Th' other upbraids her friend's inconstancy. 
 He weaves straw bracelets, which he calls her hair, 
 And she o'er th' wall writes letters to her dear. 
 Th' only true lovers now-a-days are here." 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 PRESIDENT, PEER, AND PATIENT 
 
 According to the inscription in its entrance hall the actual 
 building of the new hospital was completed within the short 
 space of fifteen months, between April, 1675, ^.nd July, 1676. 
 A century or so later, when it began to stagger under the 
 burden of its roof, the surveyor reported that it had been 
 run up too hastily, and that the bricks used were inferior 
 and unseasoned. The quality of the materials, it may be 
 noted, was challenged at the time, " a governor reporting 
 that the mortar was not good enough." In consequence of 
 this criticism the city surveyor (Oliver) and several other 
 experts were asked to examine the work already done. 
 Their report was, on the whole, favourable : the bricks were 
 good and the workmanship was good, if the " mortar was 
 rather lean." On the strength of this report the governors 
 came to a decision on 4th December, 1674, to remove Sir 
 W. Bolton from the Building Committee, considering that 
 his remarks had " wronged the committee and the brick- 
 layer" (Fitch). In an audible aside they also observed that 
 " such a matter should not be blazoned abroad." 
 
 Sir W. Bolton was not the kind of man to take his 
 punishment without kicking, or even scratching, and I have 
 no doubt that the governors had received some provocation 
 before 23rd December, 1674, when they expelled him, not 
 without some nasty interjections. 
 
 " He has obstructed and retarded public business by 
 false and scandalous reflections on other governors without 
 just or reasonable cause, and he has been notoriously 
 
PRESIDENT, PEER, AND PATIENT 213 
 
 troublesome and vexatious to the public government for his 
 own private and sinister ends." 
 
 Sir W. Bolton slinks through the pages of Pepys as a 
 lord mayor suspected of having stolen some of the money 
 subscribed for the benefit of the sufferers in the Great Fire : 
 he was convicted in 1675 o^^ such a count. He is the 
 only instance of a lord mayor of London, reduced at the 
 close of his career to accept a compassionate allowance of 
 £'iy a week from the city. But, after all, Sir W. Bolton was 
 right about the bricks! 
 
 It is, perhaps, possible to date the migration of the staff 
 and patients from their old to their new home as taking 
 place in the last week of July, 1676. For on the 21st of 
 that month the court ordered that fifteen new bedsteads 
 should be made for certain patients " before their removal," 
 and, as appears by the registers of St. Stephen's, Coleman 
 Street, the first burial from the new building took place on 
 2nd August. 
 
 This was the burial of " Thos. Tymes, the first lunatic in 
 New Bedlam buryed." 
 
 The total cost of "New Bedlam" was ;^ 17,000, and the 
 money was raised partly by donations and partly by loans. 
 The loans were paid off in the course of a few years — so 
 golden were the sands, over which our history flowed then, 
 and for many a year. Churchmen and dissenters might be 
 fighting one another with poisoned weapons, but the 
 charitable of both sides met at the hospital, as on neutral 
 ground, for the common cause they had at heart. For 
 example, the Fowke estates in Great Tower Street came 
 from the son of a republican mayor, but Sir John Moore, 
 whose name appeared in the benefaction tables for ;^5oo, 
 was a partisan of Charles II. And as for Lord William 
 Craven, equally ready to help a discrowned queen or a burnt- 
 out tradesman, he could always spare Bethlem a " bag of 
 gold " on an emergency. 
 
 There is every reason, however, to believe that the second 
 hospital would not have been built on a site presented by 
 the City, or with such magnificence, had it not been for the 
 
214 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 enthusiasm and generosity of Sir William Turner, president 
 of the associated hospitals, 1669 to 1689, and from 1690 to 
 1693. No good cause ever appealed to him in vain, and 
 many of the donations and legacies, which fell into the lap 
 of the hospital, were directly traceable to his influence. 
 
 As lord mayor he was a man who paid as high a salary 
 to his cook as to his chaplain, and he was — a circumstance 
 which allowed him to be charitable and to die rich — a 
 bachelor. Accordingly his year of office (1668-9) was 
 
 
 ^^-«^'£5z'B UbQ:iMcl0 
 
 
 \0::i}} 
 
 M 
 
 FROM A PAGE OF SIR W. TURNER S LEDGER. 
 
 Each page is headed with the words " Laus Deo" (Praise be to God). According to the 
 Sfedator (No. 509) the draper's motto was, " Keep to your shop and your shop will keep you." 
 
 signalized by the splendid entertainments which he twice 
 gave to the bachelors of the city. Two scribblers of the 
 year, who describe these costly feasts, unite in lavishing upon 
 him verses, which might secure a patron and a market, but 
 neither of them can refrain from slinging provocative 
 remarks against the creed to which he does not himself 
 subscribe. The sworn foe of episcopacy is delighted to 
 think that, while the bishop of London wears a beard, the 
 mayor shaves. 
 
PRESIDENT, PEER, AND PATIENT 215 
 Quite unnecessarily, however, he interjects the remark : — 
 
 " Bedlam and Bishop's Gate near neighbours are." 
 
 The champion of the Church, who has the advantage of 
 writing later, retorts with an episcopal Roland for a dissent- 
 ing Oliver : — 
 
 " Still may all those that sneer at Bishop's Gate, 
 Feel an eternal Bedlam in their pate ! " 
 
 %. 
 
 Y !V'^'^- 
 
 
 > *. -;.- ' of } 
 
 The lord mayor amassed his original fortune out of a 
 draper's shop in St. Paul's Churchyard. Pepys, a connection 
 of his by marriage, was also a customer ; it was at his shop 
 that he bought some very fine raiment. 
 
 " It will cost me money, but I must go handsomely, what- 
 ever it cost me, and the charge will be made up in the fruit 
 it brings." 
 
 The son of a tailor must advertise the trade ! 
 
 Sir William Turner died on the morning of 9th February, 
 1693. There is still preserved in his native village (Kirk- 
 leatham, Yorkshire) the waxen effigy of the deceased 
 alderman which, dressed as in life, would have been carried 
 
2i6 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPTTAL 
 
 in his funeral procession. You may also disinter at the 
 British Museum a brace of broadsides (an elegy and a satire) 
 which would have been hawked round the streets. 
 
 The elegy is an indiscriminate eulogy of the epitaph type : 
 it was Turner who rebuilt London after the Fire : it was 
 Turner, churchman and member of parliament for the 
 city, who recovered for London her liberties, and their 
 fortunes for her orphans. But the satire on the austerity 
 of the magistrate (it is entitled " Knock, Sir William, 
 
 
 < mh h 
 i t t 
 
 tl 1, I 1 } 
 
 <n 1, 
 
 / ' I I t y ! < It C |1> I 'Jl! 
 
 Knock ") is a very clever and amusing specimen of literary 
 craftsmanship. 
 
 It should be explained — to bring out the full flavour of 
 the allusions — that it was Sir William's duty — he seems to 
 have also felt it his privilege — to commit to Bridewell the 
 " Black Madges " and " Country Besses " of the street, and 
 to preside over their flogging. When he thought that a 
 sinner had received her deserts, he let his uplifted hammer 
 fall, and the poor wretch ceased to shriek out, " Knock, Sir 
 William, knock." 
 
 The author of the " Lamentation " — darting here and 
 
PRESIDENT, PEER, AND PATIENT 217 
 
 there with his lance of a pen — is sure that such a flogging 
 alderman must have been born when the Scorpion and the 
 Dragon were in conjunction in the heavens — a presage that 
 he was to wield barbed tails, and thongs, and whips. How- 
 ever, Death, the common beadle, has at last arrested the 
 judge himself, and tied up that terrible hammer-hand. 
 Merchants and citizens are lamenting the death of the presi- 
 dent of Bridewell, and it would be strange if the frail sister- 
 hood failed to drop a tributary tear, for he never suffered 
 their tears to cease from flowing. But naturally enough 
 their fervent prayer is that he may leave no successor to 
 inherit his " mantle and a double portion of his flogging 
 spirit." 
 
 And then the graceless wit makes his exit with a grimace 
 and a mock bow to Bridewell : — 
 
 " Oh, Bridewell ! what a shame thy walls reproaches. 
 Poor Molls are whipp'd, while rich ones ride in coaches." 
 
 In the first year or two of the new hospital's existence 
 curious crowds of visitors used to gather in front of it, and in 
 the Whitsun holidays of 1677 quite a serious riot flared up 
 all in a moment just outside the four steps, which then 
 ascended to the entrance gates. 
 
 By following up one clue after another I discovered in the 
 British Museum a contemporary narrative of this disturbance, 
 plentifully peppered with the capitals and italics of disgust 
 and indignation. The author of " Bedlam Broke Loose," 
 lays so much emphasis on the " pious education " which 
 young Lord Gerard had received, and his spluttering wrath 
 is barbed with such wit and learning, that I smell the breath 
 of a nobleman's tutor. 
 
 It appears that Digby, Lord Gerard, who was in his 
 fifteenth year, and was a lad of " natural sweetness of 
 temper," drove out in his coach with his mother to visit the 
 hospital. A strapping virago happened to be standing on 
 the steps, and in an unfortunate moment, when asking her 
 to allow him to enter, he addressed her as " my good 
 
2i8 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 woman." No viler innuendo — such was the degradation of so 
 polite or so charitable a phrase — could have been uttered, 
 and the lady, whose face was a " landscape of Bridewell and 
 Newgate," without further parley planted a damaging blow 
 upon the young lord's nose, her husband pressing forward to 
 thrust him down the steps. To protect himself Lord Gerard 
 drew his " little sword," and the porter — we are asked to 
 
 1 
 
 'A Kx^Xif V. h^t'i 
 
 
 N - . • 
 
 
 
 
 
 tm'Ufflu 
 
 
 •■'' ? 
 
 believe—" heedlessly met it," at a tender point in his brawny 
 paunch. 
 
 Shouts of "kill him," "knock him on the head," "tear 
 them to pieces " greeted the catastrophe, and the coach was 
 bombarded by a mob with brickbats, a rescue party of con- 
 stables being swept away in the tumult. However, Sir W. 
 Turner managed to get Lord Gerard and his mother dragged 
 
PRESIDENT, PEER, AND PATIENT 219 
 
 into his house, and the " Bedlamis'd multitude " gradually 
 melted away. 
 
 The " brute with stomach but without brains " (his name 
 no less than his nature was Noise) was not much the worse — 
 as a day or two proved — for his irregular blooding, and the 
 author of the narrative was driven to confess that the people 
 within Bethlem are often not so bad as those without. 
 
 This is our boast at Bethlem to-day, for many are the 
 uncaught ! 
 
 So much for president and peer ; let the patient now be 
 brought into court. 
 
 In the court books under 29th November, 1678, occurs the 
 following entry : — 
 
 " To this court was brought Mr. James Carcas, who hath 
 been kept about six months, and petitioning the court that 
 he may be discharged, as he allegeth that he is recovei^ed 
 to hjs_ right mind and reason. It appears to the court 
 that he is not now distracted, and several of his relations 
 being present, and not able to satisfy the court that he 
 is void and discomposed of his senses, or that he is fit 
 to be any longer in Bethlem, it is ordered that he be dis- 
 charged." 
 
 There is a story and a book behind this entry. It has 
 been reserved for me to find flesh and blood for the skeleton 
 in the bodies of Mr. Pepys and Mr. Carcasse. 
 
 James Carcasse or Carkesse, one of the clerks in the 
 Ticket Office, had issued duplicate tickets for seamen's 
 wages, and had committed other irregularities at the Navy 
 Office, which were not unremunerative to him and to others. 
 Mr. Pepys, although his own hands were not very clean, 
 determined to purge the public service of a scandal and of 
 a " cunning knave." On his report the duke of York ordered 
 the dismissal, and recommended the punishment, of. Carcasse, 
 who was in the end dismissed. 
 
 When we hear of him ten years later he is in Bethlehem 
 Hospital, posing as a " minister of God's most holy Word." 
 It does not — believe me — follow that he had any right to the 
 title, for he was in an acute stage of religious exaltation, and 
 
220 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 felt that his words and his acts were inspired by the "heavenly 
 fire, born in Bethlehem." 
 
 During his captivity he wrote a little volume of poems 
 (" Lucida Intervalla"), in which he attributed his dismissal 
 from the Navy Office to the design of Providence, that he 
 should "reduce Dissenters to the Church." 
 
 " I'm a minister of God's most holy Word : 
 Have taken up the gown, laid down the sword. 
 Him I must praise, who open'd hath my lips, 
 Sent me from Navy to the Ark by Pepys. 
 By Mr. Pepys, who hath my rival been 
 For the Duke's favour more than years thirteen. 
 But I excluded, he high, fortunate ; 
 This Secretary I could never mate. 
 But, Clerk of th' Acts, if I'm a parson, then 
 I shall prevail : the voice outdoes the pen." 
 
 Notice that he rhymes " Pepys " with " lips," and twice 
 treats the name of the diarist as a monosyllable. 
 
 It took a coach (the windows of which he broke) and a 
 strong escort to remove him to the hospital. On his admis- 
 sion he was consigned to the "hole," where no doubt he 
 scrawled some of his libels against " Cerberus," the porter 
 and head attendant, on his door with chalk. Here, "delicate 
 and balmy," he lay in the straw " like a fly in amber," but 
 was afterwards transferred to a room with unglazed windows. 
 
 The physician of the hospital — in our profession we expect 
 at the beginning more kicks than ha'pence — is the St. 
 Sebastian, against whom the arrows of "Lucida Intervalla" 
 are directed. Dr. Thomas Allen is honourably mentioned 
 in the history of his times for refusing to allow his patients 
 to be experimented on, but to Carcasse he is nothing better 
 than a "mad quack," and nothing worse than a "dissector of 
 an oyster." One fact new to me I gathered from the author's 
 lampoons, viz., that Dr. Allen had also an interest in a private 
 asylum at Finsbury — " he haunts both Bedlams like a louse." 
 
 " Pot " and his searching emetics also receive lyrical casti- 
 gation. " Pot " is the " careful and diligent " apothecary 
 
PRESIDENT, PEER, AND PATIENT 221 
 
 Jeremy Lester, upon whom the infirmities, of .his prede- 
 cessor threw the work, if not the emoluments, of the place 
 for many years. 
 
 Many of Carcasse's lines contain allusions to fellow-patients. 
 Cromwell's porter was one of his colleagues in Moorfields : 
 another was the "humorous lieutenant" who had a mania 
 for buying up every likeness of the king he could find. I 
 
 Lucida Intervalla ; 
 
 Containing divers 
 
 Written at 
 
 Finsbury and Bethlem 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Dodors Patient 
 
 EXTRAORDINARY 
 
 -i^y H9jm.s, Coci.f^j$z 
 
 - — femelhfanmjnas omnes. 
 
 LONDON, 
 Printed Anno Dom. 16 ^^ 
 
 am inclined to identify him with one "Thomas Dun, mariner." 
 In his case the Council of State in a letter of 25th January, 
 1667, gave special orders that he was " not to be beaten, but 
 to be treated as well as the hospital can afford." 
 
 Every day except Sunday was a visiting day, and Car- 
 casse, who was a gentleman and a scholar, held quite a 
 lev^e for his acquaintances among the quality. The duke 
 of Grafton asked him how he did. He rallied the duchess of 
 
222 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 Portsmouth and Nell Gwyn on the favours of Charles II, 
 but expressed a preference for Nelly, because she was a pro- 
 testant. Many of his visitors whom he named were ladies of 
 the court, or the city. They threw into his cell a sixpence, 
 some apricots, a wig, or some writing materials, and each 
 donor received in return a poem — graceful and flattering — 
 indited in her honour. 
 
 Carcasse dedicated his " Lucida Intervalla" to Charles II. 
 The king is the Noah of the ark (the Church) which has 
 saved England. May he protect his humble suitor from 
 " further storms," and guide him into a " quiet station ! " 
 
 Perhaps, after all, Carcasse made his peace with Fepys, 
 and sometimes sailed into his hospitable anchorage on 
 Clapham Common. 
 
THE FUNERAL EFFIGY OF SIR W. TURNER. 
 
 THE SOUTH-WEST CORNER OF THE SECOND HuSPITAL, 
 
 1814. 
 
 To face p. 222 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 A DEVOTED PHYSICIAN 
 
 In his " Holy War" Bunyan relates how Diabolus, when he 
 took possession of Mansoul, replaced the mayor and cor- 
 poration by partisans of his own. The author had seen 
 the corporations of Bedford and other towns packed with 
 burgesses, who might be trusted to return to parliament 
 none but the nominees of the court. The same policy was 
 pursued by Charles II in the city of London, when in 
 1683 eight aldermen of dissenting principles were unseated 
 in favour of as many churchmen, and the royal hospitals 
 placed under control of the king's commissioners. In the 
 case of Bethlehem Hospital all the governors were continued 
 in office with the exception of Benjamin Du Cane, treasurer 
 from 1672, who had 5th December, 1683, to surrender his 
 books and keys to Daniel Baker, the father-in-law of the 
 chronicler, Narcissus Luttrell. Another victim of religious 
 tests was the butcher, whose "conscience," tender as his 
 meat, "did not permit him to go to church." 
 
 Benjamin Du Cane belonged to the Huguenot family of 
 Du Quesne which had fled to Canterbury from the perse- 
 cution of Alva. His services to the hospital had already 
 received the recognition of his colleagues, who presented 
 him in 1677 with two silver flagons of the value of ;^40 
 for his " extraordinary pains and care " during the re- 
 building of Bethlem. One of these flagons — the work of 
 Robert Cuthbert, goldsmith and a governor — is still in the 
 possession of C. H. C. Du Cane, Esq., who was recently 
 offered ;^ 1,000 for a piece of plate so well authenticated. 
 
 It bears the inscription set forth in the minutes. 
 
 223 
 
224 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 In 1688 it suited the designs of James II to pay court to 
 the dissenters and to give them office, and so it came to 
 pass that Du Cane spent the last two years of his Hfe in 
 the duties he had so conscientiously discharged. 
 
 There are other echoes of these see-saw times in the court 
 books. In 1688, for example, just after the landing of 
 William III, Sir W. Turner was removed, by Whig 
 influences, from his aldermanry and from the presidency of 
 Bridewell and Bethlem. Two years later, however, he was 
 elected a member of parliament for the city in the interests 
 of the Church and Toryism, his re-election as president 
 taking place a few months later. 
 
 From 1683 to the accession of William III all appoint- 
 ments were made by the Royal Commissioners. The most 
 memorable of their appointments was that of Edward Tyson, 
 who visited the hospital as its physician from 1684 to 1708. 
 He was one of those who poured out the best they had to 
 give upon the heads of our stricken folk, and a statue 
 of this reformer and benefactor shall occupy a niche in 
 this chapter. 
 
 It so happens that he himself has left us an account of 
 his sympathetic labours in Bethlehem Hospital in some 
 observations supplied in 1703 to the Rev. John Strype, who 
 wrote the continuation of Stow's "Survey of London." In 
 a description of his treatment, Dr. Tyson remarks that many 
 of his patients, when admitted, were suffering from some 
 physical disorder. Some, for example, had partially lost 
 the use of limbs, or their toes had mortified. Others there 
 were who had dropsical swellings, or the skin was disfigured 
 by some loathsome disease. Edward Tyson realized that 
 the cure of the physical ailment might have to precede 
 the use of the lancet and purge. The patient was, therefore, 
 as a preliminary, fed up in such cases on flesh-forming foods, 
 given a hot or cold bath ; and medicines, proper to the 
 physical disease, were administered under the super- 
 intendence of a nurse — the first installed in the hospital. 
 
 Keepers and maids had often been forbidden to subject 
 their helpless victims to rough usage or abusive language, 
 
A DEVOTED PHYSICIAN 225 
 
 but Dr. Tyson seems to have achieved a more positive 
 advantage for them — " all the care and tenderness imagin- 
 able." No wonder that the grateful objects of his sympathy 
 preferred the hospital to a sullen or frightened home, or that 
 there was always a long list of cases waiting to be admitted. 
 
 Dr. Tyson estimated that he had cured (perhaps we should 
 add the words " or relieved ") two-thirds of the patients who 
 had passed through his hands in the course of twenty years. 
 This is rather a high percentage, but he had a rival who was 
 even more successful, or perhaps less veracious. It is, alas ! 
 too late to be of any service, but I am quite willing to give 
 the quack the advertisement which he gave the " Post Boy" 
 of 6th January, 1699 : — 
 
 " In Clerkenwell Close, where figures of the sick are over 
 the gate, liveth one who by the blesssing of God cures all 
 distracted people. He seldom exceeds three months in the 
 cure of any person, several have been cured in a fortnight, 
 and some in less time ; he has cured several from Bedlam, 
 and other houses in and about this city." 
 
 Prevention is better than cure in mental maladies, and Dr. 
 Tyson deserves to be canonized among the wisest and most 
 devoted of Good Samaritans, if only because he set himself 
 to prevent relapse by a system of after-care, thus anticipating 
 the ideals of to-day. 
 
 In the case of poor or friendless convalescents he found 
 means to fit them out with clothes and to provide for their 
 immediate necessities. Further, with the hearty concurrence 
 of the governors, he organized an out-patients' department, 
 where former patients might continue to receive treatment. 
 
 In his will he left money in aid of the charities he had 
 established, and out of one of them grew the Wardrobe Fund, 
 which could open the stoutest safe. 
 
 And now that I have constructed a niche for Dr. Tyson 
 out of his reforms, his charities, and his devotion, let me with 
 my mallet and chisel fashion such a statue of him as shall 
 preserve the thoughtful and earnest lineaments of his portrait 
 in the College of Physicians. 
 
 He was one of the first anatomists of his day, and he 
 
 16 
 
226 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 published elaborate monographs on such animals as the por- 
 poise and chimpanzee, which sea-captains used to bring to 
 his house for dissection. He was also a scholar of profound 
 and out-of-the-way erudition, and there was nothing he 
 enjoyed so much (and what enjoyment it is to look for new 
 worlds among old books!) as hunting among the penny boxes 
 of second-hand booksellers for the tattered folios of abandoned 
 or forgotten authors. It vastly amused his colleagues to sug- 
 gest that he bought by the yard the old books, amongst 
 which he was well-nigh buried, merely to impress the awe- 
 struck crowd in his consulting-room. 
 
 Some of his voluble patients at Bethlem found his taci- 
 turnity rather embarrassing, and Samuel Garth, in the 
 " Dispensary," playfully satirizes the hesitating, deliberat- 
 ing speech of " Carus." Your blood (he jests) is just a cold 
 stagnant puddle, from which rise — clouding your sable brows 
 — dank and heavy fogs ! 
 
 Elkanah Settle, the laureate of the city, to whom I 
 turn for some last loving touches, had a pen ready to 
 serve Whig or Tory, and he kept quite a ready-made de- 
 partment for marriage odes or funeral panegyrics. But his 
 " Threnody on the death of Dr. Edward Tyson " is not 
 without beauty of thought and genuine feeling. And I 
 am sure that the following lines from the poem faithfully 
 reflect the indignation with which Elkanah's patron viewed 
 any attempt to rank Bethlehem Hospital as inferior in use- 
 fulness and dignity to the hospitals of St. Bartholomew and 
 St. Thomas. 
 
 ' "O Bethlem, Bethlem, with a grinning smile 
 Let sneering fools thy glorious rise revile, 
 As if Augusta too profuse they saw 
 To raise such costly walls for beds of straw, 
 The lazar lodg'd ev'n in the Dives' roof. 
 'Tis Charity that builds, and that's enough ! 
 Then let thy walls magnificently shine, 
 When founded in a service so divine." 
 
 Edward Tyson died on ist August, 1708, aged 58 years. 
 
A DEVOTED PHYSICIAN 227 
 
 Settle makes a very pretty allusion to his sudden and 
 painless end. Death so loved him (he softly sings) that 
 he plucked every thorn from the roses on which he pillowed 
 the physician's head for his last long sleep. 
 
 The court books of 1680 record some of the arrangements 
 made and items of the expense incurred at the funeral of a 
 benefactor (Nicholas Mead). 
 
 Doubtless, therefore, on the night of Dr. Tyson's funeral 
 many a governor and officer of Bridewell and Bethlem wore 
 a sprig of rosemary for remembrance, and drank of spiced 
 wine over the coffin to the memory of the dead. 
 
 You and I are also mourners : let us put on our long 
 black cloaks, light our torches, and take our places in the 
 procession to the church of St. Dionis, Lime Street. 
 
 In the van march the apprentices of Bridewell and 
 scholars from Christ's Hospital, and behind the chief 
 mourner (Dr. Richard Tyson, nephew and heir) walk 
 governors, physicians, merchants, and former patients. The 
 velvet pall is held by governors from the royal hospitals, 
 who carry their coloured staves of office. They are flanked 
 on either side by beadles with the escutcheons of Bride- 
 well, Bethlem, the College of Physicians, and other insti- 
 tutions. 
 
 Through crowded streets the mourners file into a church 
 hung with black, and dimly lit with waxen candles in 
 silver sconces. Here after a funeral panegyric the inter- 
 ment takes place, each man quenching his flaring torch 
 at the open grave, ere he passes out of the church into 
 the night. 
 
 High up on the northern wall of All Hallows', Lombard 
 Street, to which it was removed on the demolition of St. 
 Dionis, you may still dimly descry the beautiful monument 
 erected to Edward Tyson. Here amidst the dust and 
 shadows two sturdy Cupids guard the bust of our physician 
 and benefactor, while chubby cherubs flutter below amidst 
 foliage, fruit, and flowers. 
 
 In the last plate of the "Rake's Progress" Hogarth 
 has scratched the letters LE on the walls of a ward in 
 
THE MONUMENT TO DR. TYSON, ON WHICH APPEARS THE LINE — 
 
 He was to the last hour of his life the devoted physician of Bethlehem Hospital, 
 
 (Drawn by Mr. Jarnes Arrow.) 
 
A DEVOTED PHYSICIAN 229 
 
 Bethlehem Hospital This is an allusion to Nathaniel Lee, 
 the dramatist, who was under Dr. Tyson's care from nth 
 November, 1684, to 23rd April, 1688. 
 
 Handsome and clever, he descended upon London in the 
 train of a patron, expecting to find on the stage greater 
 opportunities than Cambridge offered. With the voice and 
 emphasis of a natural elocutionist, he was nevertheless a 
 failure as an actor. However, he took the town by storm 
 with turgid plays of a classical type, in which the fire of 
 genius was often obscured by the smoke. Dryden and 
 Purcell consented to add to his triumphs by collaborating 
 with him, and one of his plays (the " Rival Queens ") long 
 held its own on the boards as a stock piece. We still 
 misquote a line of his which originally ran : — 
 
 " When Greek join'd Greek, then was the tug of war," 
 
 Unfortunately he imitated the vices of his friends and 
 patrons without the discretion of the prudent profligate. 
 Indeed, at the house of Pembroke, his patron, he drank 
 so hard that the butler was afraid that even the cellars 
 of Wilton would soon be drained quite dry. 
 
 Ned Ward introduces some reminiscences of Lee's thirst 
 and rubicund countenance into some sketches of the hospital 
 and its whimsical characters which he published a few years 
 afterwards : — 
 
 " No wonder claret is so scarce when he carries so much 
 in his nose, but if a spoonful of Lees would save him from 
 choking, he should not have a drop." 
 
 Many stories were told in the taverns of the sayings and 
 doings of Lee during the years of his seclusion. He was 
 composing, it was said, an extravagant play in his cell, 
 when a cloud happened to pass over the moon, his only 
 candle. " Jupiter, snuff the moon," he pettishly ejaculated, 
 with a flash of his old humour. And Dryden relates how 
 some sane idiot of a visitor observed to Lee that it must 
 be very easy for him now to write like a madman. " No, 
 sir," thundered the playwright, much nettled, " it is not so 
 
230 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 easy to write like a madman : but it is very easy indeed to 
 write like a fool." 
 
 Journalists and novelists, please digest the moral of this 
 anecdote ! 
 
 As though he had a dim presentiment of his fate, 
 Lee drew many of his similes from scenes which he had 
 witnessed as one of a holiday crowd in Bethlem. A 
 quotation from his " Caesar Borgia " may be cited in illus- 
 tration. 
 
 " To my charm'd ears no more of women tell ! 
 Name not a woman, and I shall be well. 
 Like some poor lunatic that makes his moan, 
 And for a while beguiles his lookers on. 
 He reasons well : his eyes their wildness lose : 
 He vows the keepers his wrong'd sense abuse 
 But, if you touch the cause that hurt his brain. 
 Then his teeth gnash, he jfoams, he shakes his chain. 
 His eyeballs roll^ and he is mad again." 
 
 The author of a " Satire on the Poets," which was re- 
 printed in 1747, had the last lines in his mind when he 
 penned a dark picture of Lee, as doubtless he had seen 
 him, in the acutest stage of his malady. 
 
 " There in a den removed from human eyes, 
 Possest with muse, the brain-sick poet lies. 
 
 . Too miserably wretched to be nam'd. 
 For plays, for heroes, and for passions fam'd. 
 Thoughtless he raves his sleepless hours away. 
 In chains all night, in darkness all the day. 
 And, if he gets some intervals from pain. 
 The fit returns, he foams, and bites his chain ; 
 His eyeballs roll, and he grows mad again." 
 
 The truest charity in his case, as later in that of Christopher 
 Smart, would have been to turn the key upon him for his life 
 and his good. He was, however, released, and died in a fit of 
 drunkenness — his years not numbering forty — in 1692. 
 
 It appears from the steward's accounts that after his first 
 
The original of this portrait of Lee appears to be the painting, erroneously ascribed 
 
 to Dobson, in the Garrick Club. But in the engraving reproduced the setting of the 
 
 bust is slightlv altered, and it is stated that it was engraved in 1778 by John Watts 
 
 from the original picture by Richard Cosway. 
 
 To face p. 230. 
 
A DEVOTED PHYSICIAN 231 
 
 year of detention the Board of Green Cloth paid for his 
 maintenance. This was the Board which sent to the hospital 
 people who obtruded themselves on fantastical errands into 
 royal palaces or were objects of the king's solicitude. Lee 
 wrote almost exclusively for the " King's Company " of 
 players, and may, therefore, have been regarded as one of the 
 royal household. 
 
 Four years before the death of Dr. Tyson, Thomas Guy 
 made a donation of ;^200 to Bethlem. 
 
 The founder of Guy's Hospital was a bookseller who 
 amassed an immense fortune by speculating in South Sea 
 Stock. He had the reputation of being parsimonious, not to 
 say miserly, and I am inclined to think that a story told fifty 
 
 "jl 
 
 t t. / u- J 
 
 "FROM THIS TYME THE GREENE CLOTH PAYED FOR HIM." 
 
 years later to a French tourist may have been originally told 
 of Guy. 
 
 " A collection was being made" (writes P. J. Grosley) "for 
 some building in progress at Bethlem, and the collectors were 
 about to knock at the door of a house, when they heard 
 within an old gentleman vehemently scolding his servant for 
 wasting a match. This did not seem a very favourable 
 moment for introducing themselves and their errand. How- 
 ever, to their surprise he responded to the halting accents of 
 their appeal with a large bag of guineas, adding, ' I keep my 
 house in my own way that I may spend my money in my 
 own way.' " 
 
 In his will Guy made provision for the keeping of curable 
 and incurable cases of insanity in his hospital, but in 1859 
 the house, which had served the purpose of its founder since 
 
/ 
 
 232 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 1744., was converted into the " John " and " Miriam " Wards 
 of Guy's Hospital. 
 
 Another man of letters with whom Dr. Tyson came in 
 contact, though under other circumstances, was Daniel Defoe. 
 Defoe, whether he was in or out of prison, whether he was 
 making tiles or importing cloth, was always throwing off a 
 pamphlet or a paper for some political paymaster. In 1706 
 he was running a journal of the Spectator type known as 
 A Review. One of its aims was to invite correspondence 
 from outsiders, by preference something that would become 
 the talk of the town. 
 
 It appears — to tell the story after having read the last 
 chapter — that for the first six years of the century a young 
 lady in London had given her friends such anxiety that they 
 had laid her case [before Dr. Tyson. She was under the 
 delusion that the food given her by her mother and brothers 
 was poisoned, and she also suffered from hallucinations of 
 sight or hearing. She left home, but her extravagances and 
 her neglect of herself drove her out of one house after another. 
 The physician of Bethlem advised that, as she was a young 
 lady of wealth, application should be made for a commission 
 of inquiry. The commission found that the lady was insane, 
 and Dr. Tyson, with the help of the Bethlem porter, placed 
 her as a patient in the private house of a medical man. The 
 removal of the lady was the signal for a great outburst of 
 indignation on the part of some of her friends, who insisted 
 that she had been kidnapped and subjected to all the horrors 
 of a private madhouse, although perfectly sane, for the sake 
 of her money. Defoe inserted statements of the case from 
 both sides, without taking the part of the patient and her 
 friends, but he allowed himself to suggest that all private 
 asylums should be registered, as a preliminary reform. 
 
 Some twenty years later Defoe returned to the subject of 
 private madhouses in his " Augusta Triumphans, or the way to 
 make London the most flourishing city in the Universe" (1728). 
 According to him, private asylums had greatly multiplied 
 during the reign of George II, and were not subject to any 
 visitation or inspection. He proposed, therefore, that it 
 
A DEVOTED PHYSICIAN 233 
 
 should be made illegal to consign anybody to imprisonment 
 in a private madhouse without some official inquiry and 
 authority. In this the "True Born Englishman" (as he "■ 
 loved to sign himself) was without doubt advocating a very- 
 necessary reform in the cause of common sense and humanity. 
 The only matter for regret is that, in spite of parliamentary 
 investigations in 1765, in 181 5, and in 18 16, it was left to the 
 nineteenth century in its middle age to subject private asylums 
 to stringent rules. 
 
 No doubt there was a basis of fact under the sensational 
 charges of the " Ramblers " and " Spys " of the eighteenth 
 century as well as in the " Valentine Vox " of iienry Cockton 
 (1840) and the " Hard Cash " of Charles Reade (1878). We 
 need not, however, take too seriously the author of " Robinson 
 Crusoe," when he illustrates his appeal to the queen of 
 George II and the ladies of her court with sensational stories 
 about wives immured in madhouses by unfaithful husbands. ^^ 
 The foundation of such stories — whether in Defoe or others — • 
 is the statements made by patients. But neither journalist 
 nor novelist is in a position to appraise such statements with- ' 
 out some of the experiences of an alienist, or of the harassed 
 relations of a patient. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 VISITING DAYS 
 
 On the death of Dr. Edward Tyson, the governors elected 
 Richard Hale as their physician. He had been driven out of 
 Oxford in his earlier days b}^ a practice which dwindled along 
 with his reputation, but he recovered his ground in London, 
 and, had he cared, might have died a baronet and a court 
 physician. His Harveian oration on the mediaeval physicians 
 is a very scholarly performance, and it interested me to find 
 that he included amongst them John Arundell, unaware, 
 however, that he might be styled one of his predecessors at 
 Bethlem in 1457. It was said of Hale after his death that, 
 although his face "wore the look of sternness characteristic of 
 a mental specialist," he was nevertheless in reality the kindest 
 of men. There is a portrait of him in the College of Physicians 
 which assuredly fails to do justice to his sterner moods. 
 Indeed, the artist has rather succeeded in introducing us to 
 the most jovial of hosts, at whose table many a dragon-china 
 punch-bowl would have been drained to the victories of 
 Marlborough or the discomfiture of the Jacobites. 
 
 It is not, therefore, surprising to find that Dr. Hale con- 
 sidered "company very beneficial to the patients" of Bethlem, 
 especially to such as were suffering from mental depression ; 
 indeed, he insisted (so we are informed) that " jollity and 
 merriment, and even a band of music," would contribute to 
 recovery. In support of these views it was also urged by the 
 staff of the hospital that, if ever a resident did any mischief 
 to himself, it was always on a Sunday, when visitors were 
 
 excluded. 
 
 234 
 
VISITING DAYS 235 
 
 There are, of course, ingredients of truth and value in the 
 sparkling prescription of Dr. Hale. Music is one of our 
 medicines in Bethlem to-day, as it was elsewhere in the days 
 of Saul, or in the practice of the pagan physicians. A band 
 of music is no longer merely a suggestion not meant to be 
 taken too seriously : our excellent band is one of our most 
 popular institutions. And some measure at least of "jollity 
 and merriment" does somehow contrive to insinuate itself 
 into frozen heart or listless mind, when a dance is given, 
 or comedy played, in the recreation hall of the present 
 hospital. 
 
 Moreover, the company even of casual visitors is a tonic or 
 a champagne, which may on occasions and under conditions 
 be administered with the happiest of results. But the visitors 
 and the visiting days of our earlier history must have 
 aggravated disease or retarded recovery, inasmuch as they 
 encouraged publicity and excitement to invade the sick- 
 room, better left to seclusion and tranquillity, the best of 
 nurses. 
 
 The governors, however, continued to encourage or tolerate 
 the indiscriminate admission of visitors till towards the close 
 of the eighteenth century, for a public exhibition of its bene- 
 ficiaries advertised the charity, and added hundreds of pounds 
 annually to its revenues. 
 
 In an earlier chapter I have sketched a visiting day in the 
 reign of James I — perhaps it was the day when the young 
 people of the house of Percy " paid ten shillings to see the 
 show at Bedlam." Let me now present to the reader a 
 corresponding panel — a scene in the time of Hogarth. 
 
 The beau has had a morning bout with his French master- 
 of-arms, and he has listened — guinea in hand and boredom 
 in his eyes — to the sugary dedication read to him by the 
 author who composed it while his only shirt was being 
 washed. And now there is the afternoon to be dawdled 
 away somehow or other, Carestini, the Italian tenor, is 
 singing at red-haired Mrs. Lane's, and there is cock-fighting 
 in Birdcage Walk, but the valet opines that Bedlam on a 
 public holiday will be just the thing to tickle his master's 
 
236 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 jaded palate. Accordingly the beau allows himself to be 
 arrayed in sky-blue coat and long embroidered vest, and his 
 Irish chairmen trot off with him, making for Moor Gate 
 through a mob of the blue-coated apprentices of Bridewell, 
 who are off with the engines to a fire in Grub Street. 
 
 Inside the hospital he finds on his arrival all the jollity 
 and merriment of an old-fashioned fair. Nuts, fruit, and 
 cheesecakes are being peddled up and down the galleries ; 
 beer comes in with the connivance of the keepers, and toasts 
 are being drunk by visitors, patients, and keepers — v/ith 
 a curse upon Spain or a blessing upon " Wilkes and 
 liberty." 
 
 And there were the side shows of a Bartholomew or 
 Southwark Fair, with the keeper as showman. Let me treat 
 you to a specimen of his patter, which our macaroni heard 
 with a disdainful smile at its vulgarity. 
 
 " Here, y'r worships, are the two cells (numbers 54 and 55) 
 which Mr. Hogarth painted. Number 55 thinks as how he's 
 the Great Mogul hisself. Sure, we put a crown of twisted 
 straw on his head an' a bit of broken broomstick in his hand 
 for a sceptre : just by way of a frolic, d'ye see ? Ho ! ho ! 
 Mr. Hogarth said as how he never had a better sitter in his 
 life, for of course No. 55 was the Emperor of the Indies, and 
 he wasn't going to move while he was being painted as sich. 
 Number 54, next door, don't speak a word, never, faith, all 
 the year through. The light happened to be streaming 
 through the bars (it was about twelve o'clock), and it fell 
 upon a wooden cross which we had set up on the bed against 
 the wall. And Mr. Hogarth, he said as he painted : ' There's 
 hope, Tom, for the worst of us hereafter through the cross.' 
 But the pore ould gentleman looked at the cross for a 
 moment, then turned away all of a tremble, and wrung his 
 hands, just as he's a-doing now. And now, y'r honours, 
 before you go, won't ye buy some verses — written by one of 
 our own gentlemen — Mr. Clark yonder — only threepence 
 with a picture ; and please to remember the pains of the 
 sarvants, who work very hard for little money, and often get 
 hurt. Thank you, y'r honour, and you, my lady." 
 
VISITING DAYS 
 
 237 
 
 The keeper has, I think, missed the significance of three 
 medallions painted by Hogarth in the cell of No. 54. 
 
 The artist, who was saturated with the religious preju- 
 dices of his period, thought just as badly of the Papists as 
 
 %^"nT' i " '^^' f " ''">?' r '*^ y* ' '* ?^ " " -^^ ^ ^rpr'°T**^''*;^>T^'"'''nr"''^"°"'*}T*''?*"r'' 
 
 I I 
 
 VERSES SOLD TO VISITORS. 
 
 These verses bear the date of 1744, but the illustration represents 
 
 the hospital as it was before 1733. They are dedicated to 
 
 Admiral Vernon, elected a governor after his capture of Porto 
 
 Bello, Central America, from the Spanish in 1739. 
 
 of the Methodists. He has, therefore, portrayed a Roman 
 Catholic as a natural victim of religious melancholia, painting 
 medallions of three Fathers of the Church (SS. Athanasius, 
 Clement, and Laurence) on the walls of the cell. Trusler 
 was the official interpreter of Hogarth, and he also explains 
 
/ 
 
 / 
 
 238 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 the condition of the man as due to the terrors and austerities 
 of his religion. 
 
 Visitors went to Bethlem at Easter, Whitsun, or Christ- 
 mas, very much as the uncouth rustic goes to the menagerie 
 of a travelHng circus, to poke up the animals with an ash 
 plant. "I saw," says a writer in the World of 1753, "a 
 hundred spectators making sport of the miserable inhabi- 
 tants, provoking them into furies of rage." The fair then 
 turned into a pandemonium, the prisoners clanking their 
 chains and drumming on their doors in sympathy. Or, in 
 exchange for a glass of gin through the peep-hole, a merrier 
 lodger, nothing loth, would burst into his favourite ditty, 
 
 "Wine does wonders every day," 
 
 calling upon all the company present to roar out the lusty 
 chorus, 
 
 "Sing tan taranara, my brave sport." 
 
 With quite an appetite for dinner the beau retrieves his 
 sword from Wood, the porter, and goes off in his chair to 
 his club near St. James's Palace. 
 
 He was much chaffed through a night of cards by sly 
 allusions to the words flung after him as he left the women's 
 ward. 
 
 "Yonder goes a prodigal puppy that has got more flour 
 in his wig than my poor mother has in her meal-tub for 
 a pudding." 
 
 Unsavoury scandals were inseparable from a system of 
 indiscriminate admittance, and the reputation of the hospital 
 was sadly tarnished by the degradation of its wards. In one 
 of his thumb-nail sketches, Ned Ward writes thus of what he 
 had himself witnessed in the reign of Anne. 
 
 " The spectators were bad of all ranks, qualities, colours, 
 and sizes. There was a Jack to every Jill : people came in 
 singly and went out in pairs. And all I can say of Bedlam 
 is that it is a hospital for the sick, a promenade of rogues, 
 and a dry walk for loiterers." 
 
JACK SHEPPARD VISITS HIS MOTHFK IX OLD BEDLAM. 
 
 (The original of this illustration was drawn by George Crnikshank for W. H. AinswortJfs novel, 
 
 '•Jack Sheppard," 1839.) 
 
 To face p. 239. 
 
VISITING DAYS 
 
 239 
 
 The patients were actually robbed on such days of food, 
 clothing, and money, by professional thieves. And the beau 
 might very well have been present at the arrest of Jack 
 Sheppard or one of his pals in such a haunt of the lewd and 
 disorderly. 
 
 Protests were made in vain for nearly a century against 
 
 \YISIT-ioBEBTA>'J 
 
 The patient in the cell on the left has been advising the 
 husband to watch his wife more closely ; the husband is in 
 a state of collapse, and the wife storms. This caricature, 
 designed and etched bj' Richard Newton, was published 
 in 1794, apparently as an advertisement of an exhibition 
 of caricatures. 
 
 such an exhibition as I have described, in the pulpit, by 
 neighbours, and in literature. Direct representations were 
 made to the governors in 1699 and 1742. The preacher of 
 the Spital sermon in 17 19 spoke as frankly as a man could 
 who was invited to dine with the court after his discourse. 
 In the middle of the eighteenth century the World and the 
 Gentleman s Magazine voiced the disgust of a more thought- 
 
240 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 ful and refined age, and without doubt the foundation of 
 St. Luke's Hospital in 175 1 was partly prompted by the 
 abuses at Bethlem. For the tenth "consideration," addressed 
 by the founders of St. Luke's to the public, ran as follows : — 
 " That the patients shall not be exposed to public view." 
 
 It was not, however, till 1766 that the court began to 
 abandon point by point the positions which had become 
 untenable, when it was decided — as in the puritan period — 
 to slam the doors in the faces of curiosity and wantonness. 
 Three years later no man except a governor was to be 
 allowed access to the women's side, a male visitor being 
 permitted to see a female patient only in the committee 
 room, and in the presence of a nurse. Finally on nth 
 November, 1770 — probably on the advice of Dr. John Monro 
 — the last fortress was evacuated, and it was ordered that 
 admittance should for the future be by ticket only, and that 
 accredited visitors should be accompanied by keepers or 
 nurses. 
 
 The domestic affairs of the hospital were administered 
 after 1676 by a house committee and a grand committee, 
 which sat at Bethlem. If I may compare them to the House 
 of Commons and its committees, then the court of all the 
 governors of Bridewell and Bethlem formed a House of 
 Lords, which ratified or disagreed with the recommendations 
 or decisions of the Lower House. 
 
 The Bethlem committees have left no minutes of their 
 proceedings, and the records of Bridewell, although the 
 current will still bear my light barque, tend at points to 
 lose themselves in the sands of summaries and leases. 
 Accordingly, the historian who would be interesting has 
 often to fall back upon the gossip of such men as Thomas 
 Brown and Edward Ward. 
 
 Tom Brown was a scholar who used his wit and learning 
 against the sanctities of religion (he was, however, buried in 
 the Abbey cloisters) and the decencies of life. Ned Ward 
 (the '' London Spy ") kept a public-house near Bethlehem 
 Hospital, and associated with the wits and men of letters 
 who made it their house of call. He had the gift of telling 
 
VISITING DAYS 241 
 
 a story with all the realism of Defoe and the coarse humour 
 of Swift. 
 
 Many of our patients sat unconsciously to these ruffians for 
 their portraits, and I am indebted largely to their purses, 
 although I have had to wash the money they gave me. 
 
 Ned Ward, for example, had a chat with Thamar, the 
 gentle musician with many crotchets in his head, of whom 
 1 have spoken elsewhere. Tom Brown also gives him a 
 playful dig in the ribs, as having deserted sonnet and 
 madrigal for a philosophy which would not allow him to 
 kill vermin or to eat good roast mutton. I find on exam- 
 ining the registers at St. Stephen's, Coleman Street, that 
 Thamar died in 1700. 
 
 I do not know who the patient was who denounced the 
 monarchy, while he munched his bread and cheese, at the 
 same time confessing that Bethlem was the only place in 
 London where a man could speak his mind about king or 
 statesman without being prosecuted, for it. But the "Jacobite 
 ranting against the Revolution " was one Richard Stafford, 
 who gave William III and Mary considerable trouble. 
 
 As a scholar at Oxford he would naturally be an ardent 
 Jacobite, but his natural sympathies were further inflamed 
 by mental disease. He was, accordingly, committed to 
 Bethlem on 4th November, 1691, and for seven weeks the 
 "scribe of Jesus Christ and the servant of the most High" 
 was shut up in a dark room, "stinking," and far from celestial. 
 When he was allowed the liberty of walking up and down in 
 the gallery, his Jacobite friends visited him, bringing him all 
 the means of writing seditious libels against the king who 
 had usurped the throne of James H. These violent and 
 incoherent tirades were carried out of doors to the printer, 
 and scattered broadcast over the town to the annoyance 
 of the government. Orders were, therefore, sent down from 
 the council to Bethlem that he was to be " more closely 
 confined, and no suspected person was to be permitted to 
 communicate with him." 
 
 Stafford got very sick of being shut up, and presumably 
 began to recover, for at last he gave his word that he would 
 
 17 
 
242 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 "testify" no more against king or parliament. He went back 
 in 1692 to his native Gloucestershire, and devoted the last 
 twelve years of his life to the duller but safer occupation of 
 writing sermons. 
 
 But I have a whole budget of literary associations to gossip 
 over as we saunter through the wards. Will you allow me to 
 open the pack, and spread out some of my attractive wares ? 
 
 Henry Carey, the poet, began, I take it, to hammer out 
 the opening lines of " Sally in our Alley " (the song that 
 Addison loved), as he followed Sally and her young man, 
 a shoemaker's apprentice, up and down the promenades of 
 the hospital menagerie. Not that the rustic lover — in his 
 grave simplicity — thought even a holiday in Bedlam enough 
 for such a paragon of homely virtues. For he swept her on 
 — in his masterful way — to the " puppet shows and flying 
 chairs of Moorfields"; and the happiest of days was crowned 
 with bacon, stuffed beef, cheesecakes, and bottled ale at the 
 " Farthing Pie House." 
 
 Yet just one more story of a visiting day in a house, which 
 is the scene of many unexpected encounters. Have I not 
 run up against old schoolmasters, old schoolfellows, and old 
 friends, now and again, in the course of my long chaplaincy ? 
 Well, Samuel Richardson, novelist and publisher, tells us 
 how a lady of his acquaintance suddenly found herself face 
 to face with a well-known man of letters — of all places in 
 the world — in Bedlam. This episode occurs in No. 153 of 
 his "Letters written to and for particular friends" (1741), and 
 no doubt the anecdote refers to a personality of the period. 
 
 " I had the shock of seeing the late polite and ingenious 
 
 Mr. in these woeful chambers. We had heard, you 
 
 know, of his being somewhat disordered, but I did not expect 
 to find him here. No sooner did I put my face to the grate, 
 but he leaped from the bed and called me with frightful 
 fervency to come into his room. The surprise affected me 
 pretty much ; and, my confusion being observed by a crowd 
 of strangers, I heard it presently whispered that I was his 
 sweetheart and the cause of his troubles. This accident drew 
 so many eyes upon me, as obliged me soon to quit the place." 
 

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CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 HOGARTH 
 
 Perhaps the spiteful fairy, who had doomed so many to 
 Bethlem from their birth, had not the heart to be present, when 
 the second hospital was christened near Moor Gate in 1676, 
 
 At any rate, during the last quarter of the seventeenth 
 century and the first half of the eighteenth century, through 
 which we are sauntering with wig and sword, good fairies 
 kept trooping up to the money-boxes at the Penny Gates 
 with estates in London, Kent, and Lincolnshire, which once 
 had belonged to John Fowke, John Edmanson, John 
 Parsons, and others whose names I recite in the chapel on 
 Founder's Day. 
 
 The fairy queen, our godmother, had but to smile, and 
 straightway men like Edward Barkham, of Lincoln, began 
 to ask themselves what they could personally do to alleviate 
 the condition of the incurably insane, so dangerous to them- 
 selves and so offensive to their neighbours. 
 
 There are to this day, up and down England, houses, or 
 the sites of houses, haunted by the name of " Bedlam." In 
 these houses acute and dangerous cases were once chained 
 down to the floor, often in cellars and outhouses, just as they 
 were chained in America until the 'forties, when Dorothea 
 Dix set forth on her errand of mercy and reason. There 
 were no county asylums for the poor in the eighteenth 
 century, and it was to remove chronic cases from such sur- 
 roundings that Bethlehem Hospital appealed to the charity 
 of England for means to build suitable accommodation for 
 such outcasts. 
 
 243 
 
244 'THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 It was laid in 1729 upon the heart and conscience of 
 Edward Barkham to leave to Bethlem for the maintenance 
 of incurable wards nearly all that he had in lands and houses 
 in Lincolnshire. 
 
 The will was disputed by Barkham's sister, and, as in the 
 case of the Fowke legacy, some allowance had to be made 
 from the estate to disappointed relatives. But there were 
 years — even in the nineteenth century — when the farm 
 lands realized in the gross as much as £6,000 per annum ; 
 and the governors have gratefully written the name of Bark- 
 ham in letters of gold on a leaf of marble in the Great Hall 
 at Bridewell, where so many worthy presidents serenely 
 smile from Olympian heights upon the poor mortals left 
 below. 
 
 Many benefactions, however, had been received for the 
 establishment of an incurable foundation before the legacy 
 of Barkham, and in the autumn of 1725 the governors were 
 in a position to build. Accordingly male wards were run out 
 at right angles from the line of the main building at the east, 
 or Bishopsgate end, a corresponding wing for women being 
 constructed on the west after October, 1733. 
 
 Unfortunately the building committee spoilt for ever the 
 beauty and symmetry of a palace by upsetting the architec- 
 tural balance. But much must be forgiven to these sinners 
 against taste, seeing that they held out hands of help to those 
 who were perishing in the raging, raving waters. 
 
 In the autumn of 1732, or the spring of 1733, Hogarth 
 
 was painting the eighth scene of his " Rake's Progress " in 
 
 the new incurable ward of Bedlam, and the engravings of it 
 
 were being executed in 1734 or 1735. Now these were just 
 
 the years in which the governors were soliciting subscriptions 
 
 to pay off the debt incurred on account of the new wing for 
 
 female incurables. I venture, therefore, to suggest that his 
 
 " Bedlam " picture represents something more than an 
 
 inevitable episode in the progress of a rake from bad to 
 
 worse : it looks as though it were also an endorsement 
 
 of a subscription-book at that time being circulated through 
 
 the city. 
 
HOGARTH 245 
 
 In support of my suggestion, let me ask you to remember 
 what a generous friend Hogarth was to the London hospitals. 
 In 1736 he painted the " Good Samaritan " and the " Pool of 
 Bethesda " for St. Bartholomew's Hospital ; he turned the 
 Foundling Hospital into quite a lounge for wealthy con- 
 noisseurs ; and St. George's Hospital, Hyde Park, still 
 treasures the view of the institution painted by Hogarth and 
 others in 1746. 
 
 I hold in my hand — please notice — a copy of the engrav- 
 ing in its first " state" published 25th June, 1735, just a day 
 after the Copyright Act, promoted by Hogarth, came into 
 force. 
 
 The original painting is in the Soane Museum, Lincoln's 
 Inn Fields, with the rest of the series known as " A Rake's 
 Progress." These eight pictures formed part of Alderman 
 Beckford's collection at Fonthill, where they escaped the fire 
 which devoured five canvases of " A Harlot's Progress." 
 They were purchased by Sir John Soane in 1802 for ;^S52, 
 or triple the price {^£\Z/\) originally received by the artist for 
 the set. 
 
 In every painting or print of so dramatic an artist there 
 is a whole world of passion, incident, and allusion. But 
 the story of the play is printed in such small type, and the 
 allusions are so obscure to-day, that I must accompany the 
 reader much as Dr. James Monro, our physician, would 
 have accompanied Hogarth with case-book and a running 
 commentary. 
 
 In the first place, the incurable ward with its cells and 
 staircase is painted with absolute exactitude : even the iron 
 grille at the head of the staircase in the illustration seems 
 to represent a rearrangement only made in 1729 to divide 
 freeholders from leaseholders, incurables from curables. 
 
 Now let us study the details of the picture : they have all 
 some value and significance. 
 
 In the foreground is Thomas Rakewell, who has reached 
 by way of the Fleet Prison the last stage in the pilgrimage 
 of the prodigal. His head has been shaved by the hospital 
 barber, and one of the keepers, in blue livery, is manacling 
 
246 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 his ankles. Poor Tom has lost all self-control : he has lost 
 his identity : the black patch of plaister on his side shows us 
 that he is a danger to himself. In these, his last, days he 
 is forsaken of all save Sarah Young, the woman he deserted 
 in her trouble : perhaps it is Weston, the steward (in the 
 original picture he wears a pink coat), who is gently unloosing 
 the clasp of a woman's devotion. 
 
 Absorbed in himself, and insensible to the tragedy before 
 his very eyes — this is the sure touch of trained observation — ■ 
 each of the incurables delineated inhabits a solitary world of 
 his own making. The barking of the dog does not disturb 
 the fixed, stony gaze of the ruined dupe of passion : the 
 fatuous " pope " with mitre and crozier drones snatches of 
 the mass over and over again, the musician feels no indignity 
 in being made to wear an open music-book instead of a 
 cock'd hat, and the emaciated astronomer gazes at phantom 
 stars through a paper telescope — for all the tears of Sarah 
 Young. 
 
 Mewed up in a dark corner behind the door is the 
 geographer, whose nautical calculations — so ruthlessly does 
 Fate knock science off the highest perch — measure vast 
 oceans and portion out a world. 
 
 Along the rail of the staircase you may pick out with a glass 
 the words "Charming Betty Careless," which have been carved 
 by her victim. Betty, who figures in Fielding's " Amelia," 
 was, in spite of child-like, innocent looks, a Circe who turned 
 men into swine. Nemesis was already digging a pauper's 
 grave for this queen of the streets, but meanwhile the lugu- 
 brious thing that was once a man sits on the stairs with 
 shaven head and ungartered stockings in the penultimate 
 stage of his malady. 
 
 Ah ! the radiant day when he entered the hospital with 
 her miniature round his neck, and it seemed to his exalted 
 vision that it was the new palace he had built for his love. 
 It was on one of these beatific days, which disclosed the 
 nature of his malady, that he scratched on the post of the 
 staircase a shrine for his and her initials. Once he tried to 
 tell the demented tailor of her surpassing beauty, but the 
 
A rake's progress" (Plate VIII. 
 
 (The second ''state" of the engraving.) 
 
 A PIRATICAL IMITATION OF HOGARTH's ENGRAVING. 
 
 To face p. 247.. 
 
HOGARTH 247 
 
 tailor only gibbered idiotically over his yard measure, 
 squatting, as of old, cross-legged on the floor. 
 
 The story of the two patients in bed I have already told 
 in the last chapter, putting it for literary purposes into the 
 mouth of a keeper. In one of the cells you may see 
 Nebuchadnezzar, ere he made his lair with the beasts of 
 the field ; in the other cell you may hear a Bunyan crying 
 out in the iron cage of despair that the very heavens must 
 fall on so vile a wretch. 
 
 Just one last paragraph from my handbook to Hogarth. 
 
 There are two visitors — a fashionable lady and her maid 
 — in the gallery, as unconcerned as the patients at the pathos 
 of the play. Strolling up and down, as people did at the 
 time, amidst the ruins of modesty and decency, the lady in 
 pink only permits herself to leer through the sticks of her fan 
 at something which we cannot see ; less hypocritical, or not 
 so refined, the lady's maid gazes and describes. 
 
 Terrible moralist, you would rob even the most shameful 
 thought of its fig leaves ! 
 
 The original plate of the engraving was much worked on, 
 and some alterations were made in the faces and shadows of 
 later editions. Moreover, Hogarth himself re-touched it in 
 1763 (a year before his death), drawing on the walls of the 
 ward Britannia seated, as on our copper coinage, by the side 
 of her shield, but with dishevelled mien and a distracted 
 visage. 
 '^ In 1763 Methodism was still speeding over land and sea 
 with its cross of fire, and the mob was huzzaing Wilkes, 
 undeterred by the ugliness or immorality of its idol. Hogarth 
 only saw the hysterical side of revivalism, and he felt a 
 mortal antipathy towards Wilkes, as an unpatriotic 
 demagogue. England must therefore (so he reasoned) have 
 lost her senses to show any favour either to Wilkes or 
 to Methodism. 
 
 Piratical imitations of Hogarth's " Bedlam " were actually 
 on the market before it was published. In one of them, 
 which I have reproduced, Sarah Young has fallen into a 
 swoon, and her friends are trying to bring her round, A 
 
248 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 milder " pope " Is giving his benediction to the world, and 
 the vessel of gruel is retained from the original. There are, 
 however, several new characters in the scene. " Cheshire 
 Johnson " taps his forehead with one finger, while he holds 
 in his hand the libretto of a crazy opera: there is the intellec- 
 tual poet in front of the pope with his " song to Phyllis." 
 The second figure to the left of the poet is a political 
 pamphleteer, soured by the meanness and ingratitude of his 
 party : he is casting a suspicious glance at a female patient 
 who is studying a rather grim visage in a cracked mirror. 
 
 Hogarth, successful in his own field but covetous of other 
 fields of art, had his rivals, and their hour struck at last. 
 
 In 1753 he wrote, or fathered, his " Analysis of Beauty," 
 which holds up the serpentine line as the sole canon of 
 beauty and grace. The caricaturists had a carnival week 
 over the obscurities and incoherencies of the treatise. Paul 
 Sandby, for example, consigned Hogarth to the incurable 
 ward of the "Rake's Progress," where he is painting a wall 
 of his cell with his religious pictures (worthless daubs, 
 according to the critics), while a bundle of his engravings 
 hangs from the ceiling. He is chained by the leg, but the 
 chain assumes the double curve of beauty. He is as fantasti- 
 cally dressed as he has dressed up his models in the picture, 
 and on his head is a crown of straw with an ink-pot and 
 quill pen perched on the top of it — everything somehow 
 simulating the line of beauty. 
 
 The tormentor now proceeds to rub salt into the wounds 
 of his victim's vanity. On the left wall of the cell there is 
 a long straw bed, and above it faintly traced a pyramid, a 
 constituent of perfect beauty. Within it is the orb of world- 
 sovereignty, but higher still is Hogarth's crown of pre- 
 eminence, which other artists, see-sawing on paint brushes, are 
 attacking. Nearer heaven, or the ceiling, is the painter in 
 divine glory: his feet (as in an Assumption) are on the moon, 
 whose horns are lines of beauty, and at the back of his 
 angelic wings stream the rays of a sun in splendour. 
 
 Parallel with this apotheosis of Hogarth are two lines 
 of painters, poets, and other artists. In the nearer line, 
 
HOGARTH 249 
 
 adoring artists eagerly mount on one another's shoulders 
 with gestures of ecstacy and worship : in the farther line, 
 the worshippers strive to climb up into the presence of the 
 Sun God, but dazzled by his effulgence, tumble headlong, 
 like Icarus, into space. 
 
 Among the governors who built the incurable wards, 
 arranged an infirmary, and lowered the fees, there are many 
 notable names. Edward Colston endowed Bristol as well 
 as Bethlem : Edward Gibbon, who rented a basement under 
 the hospital, was the grandfather of the historian : Dean 
 Atterbury, who had been the preacher at Bridewell, com- 
 posed the charge which is still read aloud in open court to 
 every governor, save those who represent the city, on his ad- 
 mittance. 
 
 Then there were the three Rawlinsons — the lord mayor 
 (our president) and his two sons, Richard and Thomas. 
 Thomas is the " Tom Folio " of satire, who had to sleep 
 in the passage, because his rooms were all choked up with 
 books. Dr. Richard Rawlinson was the famous antiquary, 
 who enriched the Bodleian Library with pictures and manu- 
 scripts. Amongst his legacies was a gift to the hospital of 
 ten guineas as an equivalent for the coffee served to him 
 at the monthly meetings of the " Grand Committee " at 
 Bethlem. 
 
 The last to be honoured with introduction to the reader 
 shall be the author of " Gulliver's Travels." Dean Swift ^ 
 was elected a governor with Atterbury 26th February, 17 14. 
 I have found no record of any attendance of his at court 
 or dinner, but in 1722 (as Dr. Leeper, Medical Superinten- 
 dent of St. Patrick's Hospital, reminds me) he used his 
 position to nominate one Beaumont for admission into 
 Bethlehem Hospital. 
 
 " Beaumont is mad in London riding through the streets 
 on his Irish horse with the rabble after him, and throwing 
 his money about the street. I have sent to the secretary 
 of the governors of Bedlam to have him sent there, for you 
 know I have the honour to be a governor." 
 
 Bedlam had quite a fascination for Swift, and he made 
 
2 so THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 considerable copy out of his visits to it. In three of his 
 works at least, he plays with the whimsical fancies which 
 rose to the surface as he sauntered through the noisy, fetid 
 galleries. For example, in "A Tale of a Tub" (1704) he 
 devotes section ix to " a digression concerning the use 
 and improvement of madness in a commonwealth." Antici- 
 pating Nisbet on the " Insanity of Genius," he starts with 
 the theory that great conquerors, founders of religious and 
 political schools " have generally been persons, whose reason 
 was disturbed." Would it not, therefore, be worth while (he 
 archly queries) appointing commissioners to search Bedlam 
 for suitable people to command regiments during war, to 
 carry out the less agreeable researches of the laboratory, or 
 to bawl and wrangle in the pandemonium of a law court or 
 a contested election ? Here, for instance, you have a patient 
 tearing his straw to pieces, swearing and blaspheming, and 
 biting his grating. Well, give him a regiment and send 
 him to Flanders. In another cell you find a person of 
 foresight and insight. " He walks daily in one pace, and 
 entreats your penny with due gravity and ceremony : talks 
 much of hard times and taxes : bars up the wooden shutters 
 of his cell regularly at eight o'clock : dreams of fires and 
 shoplifters and customers." Now why should the city of 
 London be deprived of such a model tradesman ? Let 
 the man out at once ! 
 
 The foundation of the incurable establishment in 1733 
 suggested to the dean a satire on moral incurables. It is 
 entitled " A serious and useful scheme to make an hospital 
 for incurables," and the author appropriately represents it as 
 issuing "from my garret in Moorfields August 20th, 1733." 
 Incurable fools, incurable rogues, incurable liars, the in- 
 curably vain or envious were to be eligible for admission 
 on urgency orders, and Jonathan Swift hoped that a certi- 
 ficate as an " incurable scribbler " would elect him a patient 
 on the foundation. 
 
 One of his latest satires was "The Legion Club" (1736). 
 "The Legion Club" of political demoniacs is the Irish 
 House of Commons, which may (he snarls) be considered 
 
" HOGARTH IN BEDLAM." 
 A parody of Hogarth's " Bedlam." 
 
 To face p. 250. 
 
HOGARTH 251 
 
 as the Bedlam of Dublin, and receive an endowment 
 under the dean's will. Throughout his coarse and brutal 
 verses the allusions to familiar scenes in Bedlam are fre- 
 quent : — 
 
 " Keeper, I must now retire 
 You have done what I desire. 
 j^But I feel my spirits spent 
 With the noise, the sight, the scent," 
 
 The dean has left us an account of one of his visits to 
 the hospital in one of his bright, chatty letters to Stella on 
 9th December, 17 10, telling her how they had spent it — 
 three hackney coaches full of them — seeing the sights with 
 children and nursemaids. The hospital seems to have given 
 them quite an appetite ! 
 
 " Set out at ten o'clock to the Tower, and saw the lions ; 
 then to Bedlam ; then dined at the chop-house behind the 
 Exchange ; and concluded the night at the Puppet Show. 
 The ladies were all in mobs ; how do you call it ? un- 
 dressed ; and it was the rainiest day that ever dripped ; 
 and I am weary, and it is now past eleven." 
 
 It was the dean of St. Patrick's who said — with a pre- 
 sentiment of his doom — to his friend. Dr. Young, in 17 17, 
 " I shall be like that tree ; I shall die at the top." As early 
 as 1 73 1 it was in his mind to leave his fortune to "build 
 a hospital called Bedlam in Dublin." And in 1740 — 
 
 " He gave the little wealth he had 
 To build a home for fools and mad, 
 And show'd by one satiric touch 
 No nation wanted it so much." 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 WHITEFIELD, WESLEY, AND AN EARTH- 
 QUAKE 
 
 In the court room of the Foundling Hospital there- is a 
 painting by Haytley of the Bethlera of 1745 which has 
 quite a chronological interest, as indicating some of the 
 alterations carried out from time to time in the frontage. 
 The great gates, for instance, are now set back several feet, 
 and the outside wall breaks at its centre into two half 
 crescents, which lead up to them. The ground has been 
 levelled up, and steps are no longer necessary. 
 
 This outside wall is plastered over with public notices 
 and advertisements, while the wooden palings, which run 
 parallel with it on the other side of the gravelled pro- 
 menade, are " befringed " (to quote Pope's description) with 
 the fluttering broadsheets of the ballad-monger. Between 
 these palings and the long line of wall stand some stalls 
 for the sale of second-hand books, and just such a book- 
 worm as Dr. Tyson or Richard Rawlinson is nibbling into 
 some scarce old folio — it may be a Stow, or a Dugdale — 
 which alludes to our earlier history. 
 
 The fields in front of the hospital — divided at this date 
 into four quarters by gravel walks and planted with elms 
 — made up Lower Moorfields. Finsbury Circus approxi- 
 mately occupies the ground at the present time. But 
 Middle and Upper Moorfields stretched away towards the 
 north in the shape of an unenclosed common. Fairs were 
 held upon it at holiday times, and it was generally fre- 
 quented by vile and dissolute characters. On this common, 
 
THE PORTER S BADGE. 
 
 (See p. 413.) 
 
 "harlequin METHODIST.'' 
 
 The date of this print is 1763, and the theatrical setting? of the satire reflects the attack made on 
 
 Whitefield by Foote, the actor. 
 
 To face p. 253. 
 
WHiTEFlELD, WESLEY— AN EARTHQUAKE 253 
 
 where to-day Finsbury Square displays the brass plates 
 of doctors and dentists, multitudes used to assemble, 
 promising themselves some capital sport in the baiting of 
 the first preachers of the Evangelical Revival, George 
 Whitefield and John Wesley. 
 
 The caricaturists of the period lost no opportunity of 
 manufacturing significant links of association between these 
 revivalists and the Bedlam, which — to the satirist's eye — 
 seemed to look down upon their emotional converts with 
 an assured air of proprietorship. 
 
 For example, in the unsigned print here reproduced, 
 Whitefield is a harlequin in mask and spangles, who has 
 disguised his identity and true character behind gown and 
 bands. Among the types of a Moorfields audience which 
 are grouped on the stage, where, according to the cynic, the 
 preacher is playing the hypocrite, there is a young buck 
 from the Temple, accompanied by some modish damsels. 
 They have come to flirt and to scoff, but they will certainly 
 not remain to pray. On the other side of the preaching- 
 stool there are many awakened sinners, whose gestures betray 
 their emotions. " What shall I do to be saved ? " seems 
 to be the cry wrung from the conscience of the repentant 
 procuress in the centre. An old rake — not, alas ! converted 
 — glances at her with a quizzical look, reminiscent of other 
 days and more carnal pleasures. 
 
 Let us do justice to the wicked humour of the satirist by 
 noting (as he would wish) that the harlequinade is set on the 
 stage of a theatre, where Bethlehem Hospital serves as the 
 appropriate scenery of some farcical acting. The reader 
 must imagine himself to be sitting among the audience, 
 sniggering over each vile innuendo and roaring aloud at every 
 topical hit. 
 
 Perhaps the artist who sketched the scene caricatured in 
 the illustration actually heard Whitefield enliven his rhetoric, 
 as he adjusted his gown and pointed dramatically to the 
 hospital, with the story of Joseph Periam. 
 ^ Periam, who came from Hatton Garden, was admitted 
 into the hospital 23rd December, 1738, one of his securities 
 
254 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 being a tenant of ours at the " Magpie," Bishopsgate 
 Without. 
 
 According to his sister, Periam had interpreted the Bible 
 
 / literally, rather than after the spirit. He had " prayed with- 
 out ceasing," but so loudly as to be heard from the bottom to 
 the top of a four-storeyed house. He had obeyed to the very 
 letter the command to sell all that he had to give to the poor, 
 leaving himself only the clothes in which he knelt. The 
 
 r result was that he found himself lodged in a private asylum, 
 from which he was afterwards transferred to a " cold place 
 without windows " in Bethlehem Hospital. On his arrival he 
 was seized by some of the keepers, and cursed with fervour 
 I and fluency as " one of Whitefield's gang." A gag in the 
 shape of a large key was then forced into his mouth, and a 
 more than generous dose of medicine poured down his throat. 
 Some days later Periam to his delight found lying about the 
 ward to which he was promoted a sermon by Whitefield, and 
 got into correspondence with its author. A second letter 
 from " No. 50 " was handed to the revivalist on 5th May, 
 1739, when he was preaching on Kennington Common. 
 Periam complained that he was debarred the use of candles, 
 and consequently of books, from seven at night till seven 
 next morning, and, incidentally, asked for some advice as to 
 the profession — that of an attorney — to which his father 
 proposed to article him. 
 
 Whitefield replied to this part of the letter by urging that 
 it was a dangerous experiment for a Christian to become a 
 lawyer, and a little later sent two well-known Methodists to 
 intercede with the committee for Periam's discharge. The 
 public opinion of the day was hostile to open-air preaching, 
 and the committee behaved with great brusqueness, frankly 
 informing the deputation that they were just as mad as the 
 object of their visit. However, on 19th May, 1739, Dr. James 
 Monro, the physician of Bethlem, pronounced " No. 50 " con- 
 valescent, and he accompanied Whitefield on his next voyage 
 to the English colony of Georgia, in America, where he died 
 after some years of good service rendered to the orphanage 
 which Whitefield had established in Savannah. 
 
WHITEFIELD, WESLEY— AN EARTHQUAKE 255 
 
 On a memorable Sunday, 17th June, 1739, as early as 
 seven o'clock in the morning, John Wesley first preached in 
 the open air to a London audience. The windows of the 
 hospital commanded a full view of the vast congregation, 
 and, even if the actual words of the preacher were inaudible, 
 the fervid ejaculations of sympathizers and the noisy inter- 
 ruptions of the roughs must have created a good deal of 
 excitement in the corridors, stirring sluggish waters and pro- 
 voking geysers of loquacity. Perhaps Diana Hodges, the 
 wife of the steward, heard the famous text ('* Ho ! every one 
 that thirsteth "), or " honest Wood," the porter, learnt it 
 from a passer-by. At any rate, you may be sure that it was 
 discussed in Bethlem with as much heat as a summer's day 
 permitted, and possibly with just a little mystical incoherence. 
 
 On two occasions at least did John Wesley pass through 
 the iron grille into the wards on an errand of mercy. On 
 one of them he had a rather mortifying experience, and he 
 writes about it in his diary under 22nd February, 1750, with 
 bitter irony : — 
 
 " I went to see a young woman in Bedlam ; but I had not 
 talked to her long before one gave me to know that none of 
 the preachers were to come here. So we are forbidden to go 
 to Newgate for fear of making them wicked, and to Bedlam 
 for fear of making them mad ! " 
 
 There was some justification, no doubt, for the ban pro- 
 nounced against John Wesley by physician and committee. 
 Wherever he preached there were extraordinary outbursts of 
 contagious hysteria. At his meetings many women and some 
 men would suddenly fall, as if mortally wounded, to the 
 ground, where they writhed and howled in an agony of pain 
 or terror. Meanwhile the singing and praying proceeded 
 without intermission, and just as suddenly, in the course of 
 ten minutes or an hour, these very same persons would break 
 out into hymns and ecstasies of joy. They were then " con- 
 verted." 
 
 There are always people suffering from — or predisposed to 
 — that morbid exaltation or despair, which so paradoxically 
 finds its food and its logic in the Scriptures. Such cases 
 
 / 
 
256 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 would be the first to be unfavourably affected by the atmo- 
 sphere of revivalism, and no doubt there were in the hospital 
 
 as it was persistently and malevo- 
 lently alleged, many examples of 
 what the eighteenth century called 
 " enthusiasm " — spiritual intoxication 
 or madness. 
 
 Similar phenomena have, of course, 
 been witnessed in the Christian 
 Church from the apostolic age with 
 its " unknown tongues " onwards, and 
 no campaign — even on a spiritual 
 field — can be waged without its list 
 of killed and wounded. Though this 
 is true, yet " God is not the author 
 of confusion," and too much stress 
 cannot be laid on the danger — in 
 religion and in politics— of appealing 
 too exclusively to the emotional side 
 of human nature. There are strange 
 and uncouth tenants lying asleep in 
 the cellars of the human house. 
 Some religious or political tocsin 
 sounds, when to our dismay and 
 disgust they swarm into the upper 
 storeys of the mind, where they break 
 windows, set furniture on fire, and 
 dance the "Carmagnole" over reason, 
 decency, and self-control. 
 
 With the more obvious forms of 
 insanity John Wesley was familiar, 
 and some of his prescriptions for 
 their cure may be glanced at in 
 " Primitive Physic," which he first 
 published in 1747. He advises — in 
 acute cases of mental excitement — 
 
 The result of Wesley's preaching 
 was disastrous to unbalanced 
 minds, according to Hogarth in 
 his "Credulity, Superstition and 
 Fanaticism" (1763), from which 
 
 this detail of the thermometer has that Water should be poured from 
 
 been taken. ^ 
 
 {Drawn by Mr. James Arrow.) 
 
 a kettle upon the head of the patient. 
 
WHITEFIELD, WESLEY— AN EARTHQUAKE 257 
 
 or the patient may be placed " under a great waterfall," so 
 long as his strength will bear. Quite an anticipation of the 
 immersion-bath and the shower-bath treatment of the present 
 day. 
 
 But in the obscurer and more subtle forms of mental 
 malady he only saw a soul in deadly conflict with Apollyon, 
 
 DR. JOHN MONRO. 
 
 In the famous election of. 1784 Pitt defeated Fox and his followers, who had hitherto been 
 in the majority. Fox is represented as having gone raving mad in consequence of this 
 catastrophe. It has therefore been necessary to call in the physician of Bethlehem Hospital. 
 He at once orders the removal of Fox, who is already in a strait jacket, to the incurable ward. 
 
 {From the caricature of "The Incurables," by Gillray.) 
 
 and his remedies were purely spiritual. The physician of 
 Bethlem, on the other hand, bundled all cases of hallucination 
 and of religious melancholia without further argument into 
 the hospital, and ordered the apothecary to apply a blister. 
 No wonder, then, that the mother of the Wesleys used to 
 describe him as " that wretched fellow, Monro ! " 
 
 John Wesley has jotted down in the pages of his diary 
 
 18 
 
258 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 several allusions to the earthquakes which disturbed London 
 and its slumbers on 8th February and 8th March, 1750. 
 
 The second of these earthquakes was the more violent, 
 and, as it had occurred exactly one month after the first, 
 religious people regarded it as a warning from God. Charles 
 Wesley issued a sermon and the bishop of London a pastoral 
 letter, the burden of both being that national repentance 
 could alone avert the chastisement overhanging a depraved 
 and irreligious nation. 
 
 In the midst of the prevailing excitement a Lifeguards- 
 man ran about the town prophesying that a third earthquake 
 would swallow up London and Westminster on 4th April, 
 1750 — just a lunar month from the second earthquake. 
 
 From the first day of April quite a panic set in. The 
 roads out of London were crowded with people on foot or in 
 coaches, flying from the City of Destruction and the " wrath 
 to come." Horace Walpole has ridiculed the manifold 
 absurdities of this panic-stricken exodus with a light humour 
 and cynicism all his own : — 
 
 " Several women have made earthquake gowns, i.e., warm 
 gowns to sit in out of doors all night. Others go this even- 
 ing to an inn ten miles out of town, where they are to play 
 brag till 5 o'clock in the morning, and then come back, I 
 suppose, to look for the bones of their husbands and families 
 under the rubbish. Dick Leveson, on his way home the 
 other night, knocked at several doors, and in a watchman's 
 voice cried : ' Past four o'clock and a dreadful earthquake.' " 
 One day before the threatened earthquake the prophet 
 was "found delirious," and, according to Walpole, sent to 
 Bethlehem Hospital. The colonel sent for the man's wife, 
 and asked her if her husband had ever been disordered 
 before. She cried : " Oh dear ! my lord, he is not so now. 
 If your lordship would but get any sensible man to examine 
 him, you would find he is quite in his right mind." 
 
 According to the Whitehall Evening Post of 31st March 
 to 3rd April, 1750, the Lifeguardsman was a Swiss, a man 
 of fortune, whose mind was periodically disturbed on religious 
 subjects. He considered himself the " occasion of the 
 

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WHITEFIELD, WESLEY— AN EARTHQUAKE 259 
 
 earthquake," and says that he "has a ball of fire in his 
 body," and possesses a " sword which will cut devils in two," 
 
 The arrest of the crazy Lifeguardsman did not abate the 
 panic, and it is not likely that anybody in the hospital went 
 to sleep that fateful Wednesday night, when the blast of the 
 last trump might at any moment usher in the Day of Doom. 
 Excited people were moving to and fro all the night long, 
 and the dark fields in front of Bethlem were lit up with 
 numberless fires, round which shivering families were 
 bivouacking in terror and discomfort behind their bedding 
 and furniture. However, Thursday morning dawned with 
 imperturbable punctuality ; London had not met the fate of 
 Pompeii ages before, or even of Lisbon five years later, and 
 Charles Wesley arose after several hours of calm, refreshing 
 sleep. 
 
 The G enteral Advertiser of 13th April, 1750, is in hopes 
 that Mr. Hogarth will oblige the town with a print of the 
 fright and flight. I do not find Hogarth's name anywhere 
 associated with the contemporary satire which illustrates 
 my story, but it was certainly executed by a pupil or 
 imitator. 
 
 The most dramatic figure in it is the Lifeguardsman on 
 horseback : he is urging on the panic-stricken crowd, waving 
 the flaming sword of " Prophecy." Below him two credulous 
 women are reading with dismay the " Lifeguardsman's 
 Prophecy," which they have just purchased from the bawling 
 hawker. A little farther on is a carriage and four horses, 
 waiting to take up the decrepit owner, whose buxom wife 
 has evidently transferred her affections to a younger man. 
 Other figures are some Phrynes from Drury Lane in a 
 handsome equipage, and an itinerant gin-seller, who has an 
 unfailing tonic for the nerves — very much in demand. 
 
 I meant to have taken the reader to see the new apothe- 
 cary's shop just fitted up after the model of the dispensary 
 at St. Bartholomew's, but Mr. John Winder (apothecary, 
 1751-1772) fears that it would be too "dangerous" an 
 adventure, as the only way to it lies through the " long 
 gallery of the men." I will, however, entertain him with an 
 
26o THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 anecdote illustrative of the fascination which Bedlam 
 exercised on the provincial imagination. 
 
 In 1749, one William Hutton — a stocking- weaver who 
 became a historian — walked from Nottingham to London 
 and back, spending three days amid the manifold pleasures 
 of the town, at a cost of ten shillings and eightpence. He 
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE DRAGON. 
 
 The centre block of the second hospital. 
 {Drawn by Mr. Sydney Howarth.) 
 
 saw St. Paul's, the king's palace, and everything else he 
 could see for nothing. But he was not satisfied. " I wished 
 to see a number of curiosities, but my shallow pocket forbade. 
 One penny to see Bedlam was all I could spare." And in 
 this haunt of romance and whimsicality he met a "multitude 
 of characters " and heard a " variety of curious anecdotes," 
 which more than recompensed him for the loss of his penny. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 "THE BETSY PRIG SCHOOL OF NURSING" 
 
 Let me give you a glimpse of Bethlehem Hospital and of its 
 sister hospitals in the year 1752. In this year Dr. John Monro 
 (the second of his dynasty) succeeded his father as 
 physician of Bethlem, and an effort — unhappily defeated — 
 was made to suppress some of the feasting with which the 
 governors indulged themselves each year at the expense 
 of the charities. It was also the year in which was published 
 the first edition of a very remarkable little book, now very 
 scarce and valuable, viz. : — " Low Life : or one Half of the 
 World does not know how the other Half lives." It ran 
 through three editions between 1752 and 1764, and I am 
 quoting, as a rule, from the third and enlarged edition. 
 
 The anonymous author removes the roofs from the houses 
 replaces their walls with panels of glass, and, if it is night, 
 lights up every room and street for the entertainment of the 
 curious. 
 
 It is to no purpose that the clergyman pretends to preach 
 
 his own sermons, the watchman not to have an amicable 
 
 arrangement with the burglar, and the little tradesmen to 
 
 know nothing of gambling and the alehouse. You, my dear 
 
 Mr. Pry, know exactly how each of them has spent every 
 
 hour of the day. This literary Hogarth has a tongue as well 
 
 as an eye, and you laugh to see the freemason led home 
 
 drunk from his lodge, or the prisoners at Bridewell playing 
 
 "blind-man's buff" or "hunt the slipper" on a Sunday 
 
 evening. The works of Thackeray and Besant are largely 
 
 indebted to this minute and graphic panorama of London 
 
 261 
 
262 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 life ; Sala has also imitated its general plan in his " Twice 
 Round the Clock." 
 
 The action of the drama covers the twenty-four hours of 
 Whit Sunday, 21st June, 1764. 
 
 In the first hour of the new day, when the ballad-singers 
 
 One H A L : c-f die Y^c r l d. 
 
 Tlije Other H /. c r Lire, 
 
 T Vv' E N 1' V " "• (J t il lU'! U li ., 
 
 0- If X^ r-- A V 
 Cl" O ^ X\ it,- ^'V x^ 
 
 Is it is uru?lly firent within the Bi!'. <>f Mo^ i , i try, 
 Okuhtcu for the Tv/.-2nty-fii-lt of '/ U tV IL 
 
 With art ADDRES'^ to th; u j-racu*- and lngea»-<j^.s 
 
 a' 
 
 Mn i^ O G .f ie r '-^ 
 
 Lit Fancv ^tft'/j <^t* ny? Bj'Cvn'TJ-^M. 
 
 The T H I R D E D I T I O N. 
 
 L O N'.D O K: 
 Printed for Jo Hv LEvt., at I//^<:. M-X-^^, n.xt I^^ 
 ;/.*.7, neat ^/»«^#/m 1 764- ^ ' 
 [Pyk€ Oils Shilling and ::ix-penco.3' 
 
 are sharing with the professional thieves the purses they 
 have stolen in the Saturday markets, few of our patients 
 have managed to get to sleep. The ubiquitous journalist is 
 below their ungiazed bedrooms which look out on London 
 Wall, and he jots down in his note-book: — "the unhappy 
 patients of Bethlehem Hospital employed in breaking their 
 
" THE BETSY PRIG SCHOOL OF NURSING'' 263 
 
 / 
 wooden bowls, drawing figures with chalk on their partitions, 
 rattling their chains, and making a terrible outcry occa- 
 sioned by the heat of the weather having too great an effect 
 upon their rambling brains." 
 
 The hands on the face of Bethlem's clock find their way 
 through the darkness till they point to six this summer's 
 morning, and serious folk are passing the hospital on their 
 way to Upper Moorfields to " hear their beloved apostle, 
 Mr. Wesley," whilst asses' milk, in which Dr. James Monro 
 had such unlimited faith, is being peddled about the streets. 
 Three hours later the surgeons and their pupils are going 
 their rounds in the hospital wards, or visiting their private 
 cases in the city. At half-past ten the bells begin to ring 
 for church, but at Bridewell fledgling barbers are practising 
 their 'prentice hands on the agonized faces of the inmates. 
 
 Paul, the inquisitive, is due again at Bethlem a little after 
 noon, but he has just time on his way from church to make a 
 thumbnail sketch of the physician, who holds that a good 
 impression is a genteel and legitimate advertisement : — 
 
 " Physicians in their chariots, poring over books to give 
 the town a sense of their religious or deep study, when 
 perhaps they are reading maybe a ludicrous pamphlet." 
 
 At the hospital there is boiled-beef broth and bread, and 
 a pint of small (sometimes the contractors supply very small) 
 beer for each patient. But our cynical guide has been — 
 where the governors do not usually go — behind the scenes, 
 and this is his revised version of the authorized diet table : — 
 
 " The nurses of Bethlehem Hospital are carrying the 
 appointed messes in wooden bowls to the people under their 
 charge, and putting by the best part of it for their ancient 
 relations and more intimate friends, who are to come and 
 visit them in the afternoon." 
 
 Throughout our history the keepers have constantly fallen 
 under the suspicion of stealing from their charges the food 
 rejected by people who were too ill to relish it, or were under 
 the delusion that it had been tampered with. Indeed all 
 who have had anything to do with the stores seem to have 
 suffered from the temptation, which still haunts every public 
 
^64 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 institution, to help themselves, when nobody was looking. 
 The steward of the period, who, by the by, was blinded by a 
 fire at the hospital in 1754, died a thousand pounds in debt 
 to the governors, and one of the governors was actually 
 expelled in 1777 for sending to the buttery for all that he 
 fancied or wanted. He did not even refrain from laying his 
 sacrilegious hands on the emetics ! 
 
 Everybody has heard of Sairey Gamp and of Betsey Prig, 
 so highly " recommended by St. Bartholomew's," and I hope 
 that occasional quotations from such a classic as " Martin 
 Chuzzlewit " will provoke reminiscent chuckles. 
 
 " He hates his nusses," petulantly snapped out Mrs. 
 Gamp as she eyed the convalescent Lewsome, " to this 
 hour. They always does it. If you could have heard the 
 poor dear soul a-findin' fault with me and Betsy Prig, 
 you would have wondered how it is we don't get fretted 
 to the tomb." 
 
 It would really appear as if the author of " Low Life " 
 and of his contemporary the " Country Spy " had them- 
 selves been patients, before they sat down to scribble their 
 scathing libels on London hospitals and London nurses, 
 midway in the eighteenth century. 
 
 But, my dear nurses of Bart's and Bethlem, you need 
 not be " fretted to the tomb " at the description in " Low 
 Life" of quite an ordinary scene in a hospital of 1764 
 between ten and eleven at night. Dickens drove out the 
 nurses who had inherited the traditions of these times. 
 
 " Some nurses and watchers at St. Bartholomew's, St. 
 Thomas's, St. George's, Guy's, the London Infirmary, and 
 others getting together, when they think a poor patient is 
 making his end and taking their pillow from under their 
 heads, that they may go gently out of the world a few 
 hours sooner than they would otherwise have done. In 
 the meanwhile they search their pockets, conveying away 
 what is valuable and vouch for each other that they found 
 nothing but a tobacco box, or some trifling thing about 
 them." 
 
 Even Mrs. Gamp respected her patient's pockets, so long 
 
« THE BETSY PRIG SCHOOL OE NURSING'' 265 
 
 as she had pickled salmon and plenty of gin and water ; 
 after all, she only took away the sick man's pillow to place 
 it under her own head ! 
 
 Fielding and Smollett (a surgeon) write very much in the 
 same strain about the treatment of the sick poor in the 
 London hospitals ; according to the " Country Spy," if you 
 *' saw a person with a Friday face and a body very thin," 
 you might at once conclude that he had that day " come 
 out of Bethlehem or a hospital." 
 
 The "Country Spy" (c. 1750) was one of the many 
 imitations of the " London Spy," which has been cautiously 
 tapped in an earlier chapter ; his rambles through London 
 contain " many curious remarks, diverting tales and merry 
 jokes," which are quite as entertaining and not nearly as 
 coarse as Edward Ward's spyings. 
 
 The author of the satire made a preliminary reconnais- 
 sance into Bethlem, where he inclined his credulous ears 
 to the romantic tales of some of our imaginative ladies, 
 but the reference to " sisters " in the following quotation 
 suggests a general hospital. Let St. Bartholomew's and St. 
 Thomas's dispute for the honour of housing the medical 
 student, whose amorous " duchess " was traced by his fellows 
 to the purlieus of Drury Lane ! 
 
 The " Country Spy " had noticed, while going the rounds 
 of the wards with the doctors, that the patients regarded 
 the sisters and nurses with a "cowed and frightened look." 
 He set himself, therefore, to find out the reason by inviting 
 nurses and convalescents to " give their orders " at the 
 tavern frequented by both parties. He came, I may say, 
 to the conclusion that the nurses were a "swearing, bullying," 
 set of viragoes. A full-length portrait would, the etcher 
 adds, turn a squeamish stomach, and so he stays his graver 
 with these parting strokes : — 
 
 " But you should see the affected animal on a Thursday 
 or a holiday in her fine clothes. She apes the gentlewoman 
 in wearing silk, but the clumsy piece of mortality looks 
 more like an oyster woman, though bedizened to the best 
 advantage. Nay : she must touch quality forsooth, and 
 
266 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 pretend to dance, and yet the best of her performances 
 is to hobble a cow's courant." A courant (let me explain) 
 was a sort of waltz ! 
 
 In 1788, on the contrary, a French tourist, on a flying 
 visit to London, speaks very highly of the " orderliness, 
 method, and cleanliness of the London hospitals," our own 
 included. The French hospitals were (he admits) absolutely 
 lacking in these qualities, but on the other hand he missed 
 the tenderness and devotion exhibited in French hospitals 
 by women, who drew their inspiration from their religion. 
 
 " I never saw in the hospitals consecrated to suffering 
 the delicate feeling which is marked by the tone of voice, 
 by the gestures and by the personal attention, in fact, 
 which a sick man would have had from his wife and 
 children. How tenderly in France would a sister of mercy 
 support and serve a poor wretch worn out with fever ! 
 How sweet and consoling are their voices ! How their 
 eyes fill with tears over a dying patient ! " 
 
 I am afraid, however, that during the greater part of 
 the century under review the nurses of Bethlem, in common 
 with those of other hospitals, were trained in the " Betsy 
 Prig school of nursing." 
 
 " You want," said Mrs. Gamp to poor old Chuffey, " a 
 pitcher of cold water thrown over you, to bring you 
 round ; and if you was under Betsey Prig, who has nussed 
 a many lunacies, and well she knows their ways, you'd 
 have it too. Spanish flies is the only thing to draw the 
 nonsense out of you, and, if anybody wanted to do you 
 a kindness, they'd clap a blister of 'em on y'r head, and 
 put a mustard poultige on y'r back." 
 
 Tradition has hitherto asserted without a shade of hesita- 
 tion that Christopher Smart, the poet, was incarcerated once, 
 twice, even thrice, in Bethlehem Hospital, and that his 
 glorious "Song to David" was originally written — in dis- 
 jointed lines and stanzas at any rate — on the walls of one 
 of its cells. But I have searched in vain for any mention 
 of his name in the " Admission Book," in the " Steward's 
 Accounts," and in the " Minutes of the Bethlem Committee," 
 
jM^jmp' i ajM W W 
 
 
 THE BACK OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL, AS IT APPEARED IN l8l2. 
 
 In the foreground is the ancient wall of London, of which some little bits are 
 
 still preserved in the city. The shaft to the left may be the chimney of the 
 
 place "where the dirty straw was burnt. 
 
 {Drawn and Etched by J. T. Smith for his "Ancient Topography of London," 1815.) 
 
 To face p. 266 
 
''THE BETSY PRIG SCHOOL OF NURSING'' 267 
 
 between 1747 and 1765. These books do not always, it 
 is true, appear to tally, but it must be admitted that no 
 contemporary authority actually identifies the hospital as 
 the place of his seclusion. On the contrary, Mrs. Piozzi in- 
 cidentally observes that he was " first sent to private 
 lodgings/' and it is, perhaps, significant that Smart alludes, 
 in the course of a sketch which he wrote about a visit to 
 Bedlam, to a medical friend of his, who kept and managed 
 a private asylum. The poverty of the poet would have 
 made the charity of Bethlem his only resource, but this 
 friend may have intervened. 
 
 There was, it is true, some ground for the association 
 of the poet's name with the hospital. In March, 1747, 
 when Kit Smart was a Fellow of Pembroke College, Cam- 
 bridge, the poet Gray, in a letter to Thomas Warton, 
 ventured on a prophecy : — 
 
 " Smart's debts are increasing daily, and he takes harts- 
 horn from morning to night. Lawman, the mad attorney? 
 is his copyist, and truly the author is as mad as he. . . . 
 And for his vanity and facility of lying, they are come 
 to their full maturity. All this must come to a gaol, or 
 Bedlam." 
 
 On the strength of this passage a well-known authority 
 on the eighteenth century (Edmund Gosse) proceeded to 
 argue in a literary study that, in all probability, the poet 
 was shortly afterwards admitted to Bethlehem Hospital. 
 And it seemed to him that his theory was confirmed by 
 some entries which he had extracted from the treasury 
 records of Pembroke. 
 
 These entries, indeed, prove that in 1745, 175 1, and 1752, 
 " Mr. Smart being obliged to be absent," it was ordered 
 by the college that certain allowances in money should 
 be made to him "in lieu of commons." It is, of course, 
 quite possible that these absences were due to mental illness, 
 but the evidence of Gray and other contemporaries rather 
 suggests that he was at such times in hiding from his London 
 tailor and other creditors. 
 
 In the course of his remarks on Smart's life and genius, 
 
268 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 Dr. Gosse advanced another quotation, but the conclusion 
 he drew from it shows that he blundered, in failing to 
 give proper weight to the context of the letter. 
 
 " We have a man here," writes Gray to Walpole, 8th 
 October, 1751, "who writes a good hand, but he has little 
 failings that hinder my recommending him to you. He 
 is lousy, and he is mad : he sets out for Bedlam this week." 
 
 Assuredly " he " in this passage refers to Lawman, and 
 not to Smart. Walpole wants a copyist, and Lawman, who 
 had already acted as a copyist to Smart, might otherwise 
 have suited him. However, if our Admission Book is 
 accurate. Lawman also failed to present himself at the 
 doors of the hospital. In any case, the term "Bedlam" 
 has often only a general significance on the lips of Gray 
 and Walpole. 
 
 The balance of testimony, therefore, tends to discredit 
 the tradition that Smart was confined in Bethlem, or any- 
 where else, before 1753. After this date the evidence of 
 his insanity, if not of his imprisonment in Bethlem, is 
 irrefutable. 
 
 I gather from an authoritative statement, made in the 
 memoirs published by the family in 179 1, that he had 
 been prostrated by temporary attacks of alcoholic insanity 
 before 1756. In that year, however, his paroxysms became 
 so violent that it was found necessary to place him in confine- 
 ment — unfortunately it is not stated where. He remained 
 under restraint for a couple of years at least, but I think that 
 he must have been at large about the beginning of 1759, 
 when Garrick played in a comedy for his benefit at Drury 
 Lane. I should judge that a relapse — for he never over- 
 came his intemperate habits— occurred about a year later, 
 and that he did not emerge from this attack until 1763, when 
 Gray advised that no money should be given him, until 
 he had agreed to relinquish the legal proceedings with 
 which he had threatened his relations. 
 
 It may, therefore, have been in 1762 or 1763 that Dr. 
 Johnson had his celebrated interview with him. Smart 
 was then getting fat, although working every day in the 
 
" THE BETSY PRIG SCHOOL OF NURSING'' 269 
 
 garden. This meant rather more exercise than usual, for, 
 as Dr. Johnson said to Dr. Burney, " before his confinement 
 he had to walk to the alehouse, but he was always carried 
 back again." 
 
 The " Song to David " may not have been written in 
 Bethlehem Hospital, but at any rate in 175 1 the poet paid 
 a private visit there, of which he wrote an account in some 
 pleasant papers after the style of Addison, contributed by 
 him to the " Old Woman's Magazine," of which he was 
 the editor. 
 
 As he approaches the entrance gates of the hospital, 
 his eyes rest with a whimsical twinkle on the colossal statues 
 which then sprawled over them. Quite original is the 
 sprightly way in which he compares the figures of Dementia 
 and Mania with the fate of some of the personalities of 
 his age. 
 
 Possibly he had Swift — disappointed at not receiving 
 a bishopric for his political services — in his mind, when 
 he wrote : — 
 
 " The melancholy gentleman is employed by the Govern- 
 ment, but can't get to the summit of power, and on that 
 account has been many years sullen and dissatisfied." 
 
 In the companion portrait we may certainly recognize 
 the features of the Young Pretender, whose cause had 
 been finally shattered some five years earlier at Culloden. 
 
 " The other was fortune's favourite, and, for attempting 
 the chariot of the Sun, he was hurled down like Phaeton, 
 and ever since has done nothing but rave and grin." 
 
 According to Miss Burney, Smart's " physiognomy was 
 of that round and stubbed form that seemed appertaining 
 to a common dealer behind a common counter," but, never- 
 theless, the little poet — his hat under his arm — is permitted 
 to " galant " a lady into one of the wards. Bethlem is — 
 believe me — a chosen haunt of the goddess of romance, 
 and a house of many strange meetings, and Smart has 
 no difficulty in finding materials for a couple of pathetic 
 tales, the second of which concerns itself with the fate 
 of Will Wimble, one of the friends of Sir Roger de Coverley. 
 
270 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 These entertaining little sketches conclude with a delicious 
 touch of comedy, quite redolent of the humour of asylum 
 life. 
 
 Many of the patients were allowed to mix freely among 
 the visitors, and one of them on this occasion enters into 
 conversation with Smart, professing to be only a casual 
 visitor like himself. He is afraid, however, of the surly 
 
 LXXXII 
 
 Precious the penitential tear; 
 And precious is the sigh sincere, 
 
 Acceptable to God : 
 And precious are the winning fiowcjs. 
 In glaasoine Israel's feast of bower>, 
 
 Bound on tlie hallowed sod. 
 
 LXXXII I 
 
 More precious that diviner part 
 
 Of David, e'en in the Lord's own heart. 
 
 Great, beriutiful, and new : 
 In all things where it \vas intent. 
 In all extremes^ in each event. 
 
 Proof — answ'ring true to true. 
 
 LXXXIV 
 
 Glorious the sun in mid career; 
 Glorious th' assembled fires appear ; 
 
 Glorious the comet's train : 
 Glorious the trumpet and alarm ; » 
 Glorious th' Almiglviy's stretch'd-out arm; 
 
 Glorious th' enraptured main : 
 
 FROM THE "SONG TO DAVID. 
 
 keeper spoiling his game, and, therefore, makes a pretence 
 of treating him as a nervous countryman to whom he has 
 undertaken to show the sights of tjie town. 
 
 " He kept whispering encouragingly to the keeper, held 
 him affectionately by the hand, and bade him not be uneasy, 
 as he would protect him ! " 
 
 In the edition of Smart's work, to which reference has 
 
''THE BETSY PRIG SCHOOL OF NURSING'' 271 
 
 been made, the " Song to David " was excluded with some 
 other poems, as " bearing melancholy proofs of the recent 
 estrangement of his mind." It was left to the nineteenth 
 century to do justice to the freshness of its beauties and 
 to the majesty of its solemn organ-notes. Browning, for 
 example, who loved to declaim some of its glowing passages, 
 placed Christopher Smart among the immortals between 
 Milton and Keats. 
 
 Some of the grandest of Smart's poems were intensely 
 religious, and he composed parts of them on his knees in 
 the attitude of worship. And yet Kit's friend's used to 
 say that he was most mad, when he was most religious. 
 In his case this was probably the truth ; indeed it is a 
 paradox with which the alienist is familiar. Dr. Johnson, 
 however, who did not realize the significance of a morbid 
 and maudlin religiosity, was inclined to think that Smart 
 ought not to have been shut up. 
 
 " His infirmities were not noxious to society. He insisted 
 on people praying with him ; and I'd as lief pray with 
 Kit Smart as any one else. Another charge was that he_ 
 did not love clean linen ; and I have no passion for it." 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 WHEN GEORGE THE THIRD WAS KING 
 
 The last forty years of the eighteenth century, which I shall 
 survey in this chapter, were among the heroic years, in which 
 England marched over Holland, France and Spain to the 
 supremacy of Europe. This was the age in which Rodney 
 "broke the line" of the French fleet in the West Indies, and 
 the Dutch were overwhelmed at Camperdown. But let it never 
 be forgotten by the nation that many of the sailors, who gave 
 England the command of the seas, had to seek — as the price 
 of their valour — an anchorage in Bethlehem Hospital. It 
 was the period in which the mother-land lost her colonies in 
 America but built up another empire in Hindostan ; this was 
 the reign in which the virulence of political faction and the 
 unnatural misconduct of his graceless heir contributed to 
 the mental malady of George III. Conspicuous amongst the 
 statesmen and orators, who cut and thrust in parliament in 
 the name of America, India and the Regency, were Pitt, Fox 
 and Burke. With a sense of surprise and shock my readers 
 will learn that each of them was once a patient in Bethlem 
 — or at least, should have been, according to the carica- 
 tures of Gillray and Rowlandson, which illustrate these 
 pages. 
 
 But other stars swim into the field of vision, and I turn 
 the telescope of the historian towards that part of the firma- 
 ment where the literary luminaries of the eighteenth century 
 still shine serene. Such were Dr. Johnson and Horace 
 Walpole, who visited the hospital, or wrote about it. Dr. 
 
 Johnson has been waiting too long in the ante-room : let him 
 
 272 
 
WHEN GEORGE THE THIRD WAS KING 273 
 
 be admitted by the groom of the chambers to the presence- 
 chamber without further delay. 
 
 On two occasions at least did Dr. Johnson inspect the 
 " mansions of Bedlam " ; on one of these visits he came with 
 Murphy, the dramatist, and Foote, the comedian. Foote, 
 
 'M 
 
 "COOLING HIS brains" (1789). 
 
 Burke was thought to have conducted the prosecution of Warren Hastings with such 
 extravagant vituperation that Gillray, the caricaturist, has consigned him to a cell in 
 Bethlehem Hospital. Here he is represented as heavily fettered to the floor by a double 
 chain, the hnks of which, in the shape of letters, record the verdict of the Lords and Commons 
 on the violence of his invective. The patient's head is being shaved, as was usual in acute 
 cases, the barber being Major Scott, the parliamentary agent of Hastings. Burke is uttering 
 a stream of abuse, as he thinks of the reception accorded by the king to the monster who 
 had instigated the hanging of Nundcomar. 
 
 who was a merciless mimic, used to give a very diverting 
 account of Dr. Johnson's interview with a Jacobite patient, 
 who was banging his straw under the delusion that he was 
 chastising the duke of Cumberland for his cruelties after the 
 battle of Culloden. I can quite imagine Johnson, whose 
 sympathies had been with the Pretender rather than with 
 
 19 
 
274 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 George II, urging on the man to redouble his blows, and 
 bringing down his own oak stick with great gusto and many 
 a contortion on the inanimate victim. 
 
 There are traces, I think, of the impressions left upon 
 his mind by his visits to Bethlem in many conversations 
 recorded by Boswell. He had evidently studied living 
 models very closely, presumably in the company of the man 
 with the case-book. The result is quite a philosophic 
 pathology of insanity. He has, for example, in the case of 
 Collins, the poet, (i 721-1759), pointed out that it was the 
 sensible approach of his mental disorder which first drove 
 him to the temporary relief of stimulants : it was not in his 
 case, as in that of Smart, the stimulants which caused the 
 disease. He also argued that the demoniacs of the Gospel 
 fled to fire or water, because physical pain served to ease 
 their mental anguish, but I should be inclined to suggest that 
 they also heard " voices " goading them to suicide. 
 
 It was also, it is probable, in the hospital that the author 
 of " Rasselas " encountered the crazy astronomer, who figures 
 in that philosophic romance. This philanthropic genius (just 
 such another was for many years one of my friends) was 
 under the impression that he controlled the sun and weather. 
 Naively, however, he confessed that he found it very difficult 
 — in spite of a conscientious distribution of the elements — 
 to prevent grumbling among the recipients of his favours in 
 the varying climates of the world. 
 
 Dr. Johnson, who had inherited hypochondria from his 
 father, used to say that he had been all his life on the border- 
 line — sometimes an almost imperceptible line — which divides 
 sanity from insanity. 
 
 " When Dr. Johnson," says Boswell, " was at Lichfield in 
 the college vacation of 1729, he felt himself overwhelmed 
 with a horrible hypochondria with perpetual irritation, fret- 
 fulness and impatience, and with a dejection, gloom and 
 despair which made existence a misery. From that dismal 
 malady he was never afterwards perfectly relieved, and all 
 his labours and all his engagements were but temporary 
 interruptions of its baleful influence." 
 
WHEN GEORGE THE THIRD WAS KING 275 
 
 Here, then, is one example — and George Borrow is, per- 
 haps, another — of many who have to Hve their lives and 
 earn their bread under dark clouds that seldom show a silver 
 lining. To such sufferers Dr. Johnson would say as he said 
 to himself : " It is madness to attempt to think down dis- 
 tressing thoughts ; try and divert them." He himself kept 
 a lamp burning at night by his bedside, and used to read 
 a book, till he had chased away the phantoms which 
 haunted him. 
 
 Enter Horace Walpole with all the grace of a Chesterfield, 
 the wit of a Selwyn, and a delightful frivolity all his own. 
 If he disapproved of a man politically, he was fond of 
 dubbing him an " out-pensioner of Bedlam," and he once 
 sarcastically advised the government, which he detested, to 
 secure a free hand for its mischievous policy by shutting 
 up all the sane and sensible people in Bethlehem Hospital. 
 "Horry" has much he would like to say about our physicians, 
 whom he knew personally, but I have only time to listen to 
 one of his anecdotes. 
 
 "I am charmed," he writes on 29th October, 1764, "with 
 the answer I have just read in the papers of a poor man 
 in Bedlam, who was ill-used by an apprentice, because he 
 would not tell him why he was confined there. The un- 
 happy creature said at last : ' Because God has deprived me 
 of a blessing which you never had.' " 
 
 That apprentice, I dare wager, came from Bridewell ! 
 
 It was in 1780 that Lord George Gordon, a crack-brained 
 nobleman whom Walpole would have sent to Bethlem rather 
 than to the Tower, fomented an agitation for the repeal of 
 the act which had emancipated the Roman Catholics from 
 many of their political disabilities. This agitation might 
 have maintained its constitutional character, had not the 
 supineness of the civil magistrates reinforced the Protest- 
 ant Associations with all the refuse and scum of the 
 metropolis. 
 
 The mob had already threatened to burn down the prisons 
 and to release the prisoners — a threat which they success- 
 fully carried out — when a rumour got into circulation that 
 
276 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 the rioters intended to burn down Bethlehem Hospital, and 
 to release its desperate inhabitants. 
 
 " This rumour," says Dickens in " Barnaby Rudge," " sug- 
 gested such dreadful images to the people's minds, and was 
 indeed an act so fraught with new and unimaginable horrors 
 in the contemplation, that it beset them more than any loss 
 or cruelty, of which they could foresee the worst, and drove 
 many sane people nearly mad themselves." 
 
 At the first whisper of such a rumour no doubt the hospital 
 was barricaded, and all the straw removed from the barn. 
 Not content with these precautions the little garrison would 
 have thought it politic to chalk the words " No Popery " in 
 the largest letters along the outer walls, and to follow the 
 example of their neighbours by hanging out streamers of 
 blue ribbon from the windows. 
 
 The hospital was not, after all, attacked by the mob, 
 but two or three scenes in the drama of the Gordon Riots 
 were actually played on the fields within full view of the 
 patients. 
 
 The rioters had evidently intended to destroy the Roman 
 Catholic chapel in Ropemaker's Alley, Moorfields, on the 
 afternoon or evening of Sunday, 4th June, 1780, but, accord- 
 ing to the official records of the city, the incendiaries finally 
 yielded to the appeals of the lord mayor and aldermen and 
 dispersed for the night. However, on the following morning 
 (Monday, 5th June), and in " broad daylight," this chapel and 
 adjoining houses, inhabited by Roman Catholics, were pillaged 
 and destroyed. With the woodwork taken from chapel and 
 houses great bonfires were lit, and into the flames were 
 thrown vestments, images of saints, rich stuffs, and sacred 
 pictures from the plundered chapel. 
 
 Round and round these fires — without interference from 
 anybody — the rioters danced and howled and roared, and 
 among them, each with his club and his blue cockade, 
 Barnaby Rudge, with Hugh, Dennis the hangman, and 
 Simon Tappertit. 
 
 The glare of the writhing flames blazed in the glass of 
 the hospital windows, and, while some of the patients danced 
 
WHEN GEORGE THE THIRD WAS KING 277 
 
 in glee, others shrieked as if they were already ascending 
 their own funeral pyres. 
 
 Three years after the Gordon Riots the governors issued 
 an appeal for funds to provide additional accommodation for 
 incurable cases. In these years, when land was the most 
 profitable of investments, they were able out of the estates 
 left by Barkham and others to maintain a hundred patients 
 of this class, fifty of either sex. But there were, it appears, 
 generally as many as two hundred applicants waiting for a 
 vacancy on the incurable list. They had already been under 
 observation in the hospital, but their harassed friends could 
 only hope to secure their admission some six years after 
 their first discharge. In any case money was wanted, for 
 the governors relied on casual benefactions to make up the 
 annual deficit, but an ugly fact, unknown to the benevolent 
 public, lurked behind this appeal. Some six years earlier 
 Mr. W. Kinleside (treasurer from 1768 to 1774) had been 
 adjudged bankrupt, and the associated hospitals had lost 
 nearly six thousand pounds which he had of their money. 
 It was necessary to borrow in order to meet the ordinary 
 liabilities, and meanwhile Bethlem had, jointly with Bride- 
 well, to contribute a considerable sum annually to repay 
 capital and interest. 
 
 The appeal was written by the Rev. Thomas Bowen, 
 reader and schoolmaster of Bridewell Hospital. Nothing 
 can be more sympathetic or forcible than the rounded 
 periods in which he pleads the cause of those "who, so 
 far from recompensing, cannot even feel the least gratitude 
 to their benefactors." But in a moment of infatuation Bowen 
 pretended to be a historian and ambitiously designated what 
 was no more than a meritorious pamphlet "An Historical 
 Account of the Origin, Progress, and Present State of 
 Bethlem Hospital, founded by King Henry VIII for the 
 Cure of Lunatics." 
 
 His little work contains much valuable information as to 
 the " Present State of Bethlem," but there is no history 
 whatever in his " Historical Account of the Origin," and 
 very little in his few allusions to the " Progress " of the 
 
278 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 hospital. The author had not the faintest idea that Bethlem 
 had been engaged in her present work since 1377 at least. 
 With ridiculous complacency, therefore, he contrasts the 
 " enlarged spirit of Protestant benevolence " with the " con- 
 tracted view of monkish hospitality." I could not, it is 
 true, have disinterred the buried monastery of St. Mary of 
 Bethlehem from a grave three centuries deep, or reverently 
 vindicated the memory of those who devoted themselves 
 from 1247 to 1547 to the cause of the poor and the sick, 
 had not the records of London and the nation been made 
 accessible to students. 
 
 But Mr. Bowen was a Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford, 
 and he had access to the library of Sion College. A little 
 research, therefore, in Stow, Dugdale, and some pre- 
 Reformation books would have saved him from ascribing 
 the foundation of Bethlehem Hospital to the " liberality of 
 Henry VHI." 
 
 This performance of his, which appears to have benefited 
 the funds very considerably, was printed and published at 
 the expense of the hospital, and a copy of it was sent to 
 every governor of the royal hospitals, to every member of 
 the House of Commons, to every banker, to every editor, 
 and to every peer. 
 
 Mr. Bowen, who was made a governor in recognition of 
 his literary services, lived to read large portions of the court 
 books, and, as its chaplain, to defend Bridewell against the 
 " corrosive canker of modern reform," which threatened to 
 deprive it of arts-masters and apprentices. 
 
 Eight years after the publication of the " Historical 
 Account," i.e., on 20th August, 1791, Hannah Snell, the 
 female marine, was received into Bethlehem Hospital, where 
 she died of senile decay at the age of 69 on 8th February, 
 1792. She is described in our Admission Book as belonging 
 to the parish of St. Leonard's, Bromley, Middlesex, and her 
 securities are entered as " George Eyles, Attorney, of the 
 same parish, and John Day, of the Excise Office, Broad 
 Street." Hannah married as the second of her three hus- 
 bands one Samuel Eyles, a carpenter, of Newbury, and I 
 
These two figures may, perhaps, represent the apothecary and a keeper of Bethlehem 
 Hospital. The apothecary, who would be John Gozna, is about to administer a 
 confection, and the keeper is carrying strait jackets for some refractory patients. Two 
 of these are Pitt and the Duke of Richmond, who, according to Rowlandson, are 
 suffering from the exaltation of the insane. The allusion is to the events of 1788-9, 
 -when Pitt sought to restrict the power of the prince of Wales, in the event of the 
 kmg's insanity proving incurable. 
 
 HANNAH SXELL. 
 After the painting of Ricliard Plielps, ivliicit 7vas engrai'ed by J. Faber.) 
 
 To face p. 278. 
 
WHEN GEORGE THE THIRD WAS KING 279 
 
 imagine that George was her son, who was brought up under 
 a lady of quality. 
 
 The romantic incidents in the career of the female marine 
 are established beyond cavil by the archives of Chelsea 
 Hospital. In the "Admission Roll" under 21st November, 
 1750, is the following entry: — 
 
 " Regt. 2nd Marq., Frazer's. Hannah Snell, age 27. Time 
 of service 4J years in this and Guise's Regt. Wounded at 
 Pondicherry in the thigh and both legs. Born at Worcester, 
 her father a dyer." 
 
 Hannah was awarded a pension of fivepence a day, but 
 it is noted in the " Chelsea Hospital Journal" (1783-87) that 
 
 ; ^...::_. '^:±^z'z:'.-.rf,±^:Q^,l.ll..^...l-^^ 1-- -.— 
 
 -. , , , -% . V-, ' 
 
 yy^.. ^f^ - — V ^::^^.^^^^_^ {^-.-.^y^- ■ ^^ ^■■■--<-^^^-^ 
 
 ^ *--.■, i m^.%>)ijs!ixi i?v- i-— " . ^- ''- ■ - ■ -':•■ •^" ' ' 
 
 THE ENTRY IN THE BETHLEM ADMISSION BOOK. 
 
 it was raised to a shilling a day, by authority of the king's 
 letter, from 9th June, 1785, "in compassion to her infirm 
 state of health." 
 
 On her return from India in 1750, Hannah, who had 
 resumed petticoats, was engaged to appear at the Royalty 
 Theatre, Wellclose Square, E., and at Sadler's Wells. In 
 these houses she entertained her audiences with what to-day 
 would be termed a music-hall performance, going through 
 various military exercises and singing several topical songs 
 in her marine's uniform. From the stage she drifted into 
 a public-house at Wapping, to which she endeavoured to 
 attract custom by giving it the sign of the " Widow in 
 Masquerade." 
 
N 
 
 280 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 I have reproduced the title-page of a bombastic little 
 book of 1750, in which a clever but unscrupulous man of 
 
 II 
 
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 ^ 
 
 %% 1 
 
 y J 
 
 L I F E <-^?/fi' A D V E N T U R E S 
 
 HANj\ AH 
 
 Jl 
 
 Who too^v Hjioti ncr/elf the 't^.^w^c o{ 
 
 J.'me^ Gr.^y , an \ ^ cj; dc/ it A Ly htr >>uita.iJ, 
 p<^t on iVier' jpsn-^ arJ !ruv\'j>-' r>s Zoientry 
 hi qiieit of him, v'^*- ^ i'^i, {^1 fti ' ^^ v-jI C:'//*''-'^ 
 Kegiment of Foot, ^n.^ xi u. ^' u i r at F^-gi- 
 nvcuv 10 Carbjh^ 5-5 tn "^^ ''u li . .> iw-a 5 1 
 
 A Fell a,.'^ Tr je ^\o' . 
 
 V/,th rhe m<*ny Vn , of ^ 
 
 4 "«.'./■/, >vh je ui'" rev \v 1 """ 
 huit ./'her PO"h 
 
 \f f, n 
 
 
 '' "1 
 
 a I p ' 
 
 Ci.urij ta the / 
 
 "V^ 
 
 letters has overlaid the real facts of her adventures with 
 ridiculous or sensational incidents, spicing his confectionery 
 with reflections unctuously moral. The austere virtue of the 
 
WHEN GEORGE THE THIRD WAS KING 281 
 
 woman carries her unscathed through the most compromising 
 situations ; her chivalrous devotion to her own sex subjects 
 her to the ill-will of her rough comrades, but with practised 
 hand the novelist always contrives a hairbreadth escape for 
 his heroine. 
 
 The politics of the publisher may be judged by the 
 splendid relief in which her devotion to her king and country 
 appears by the side of the mean and unpatriotic conduct of 
 the opposition. But the commercial side of his character 
 may be read at a glance in a paragraph, which I extract from 
 the affidavit, sworn before the lord mayor, with which the 
 book was prefaced : — 
 
 " And this deponent lastly saith that she has not given 
 the least hint of her surprising adventure to any person to be 
 printed, save and except to the above-mentioned Robert 
 Walker." 
 
 Robert Walker ! " Walker, London ! " What havoc you 
 would have made among your competitors in these days of 
 American journalism with your " scoops " and " exclusive 
 news " ! 
 
 Three French tourists visited the hospital during the 
 latter half of the eighteenth century, and have left us much 
 cleaner and brighter pictures of the daily life of its wards 
 than some of their English contemporaries. 
 
 In 1765 Monsieur Grosley found quite a gay little 
 party in progress, and was invited to take a dish of tea 
 with them : — 
 
 " The president of the assembly was the daughter of a 
 French refugee, and with great good humour gave me the 
 history of her companions : their malady was occasioned 
 either by love or religious enthusiasm. I took the liberty to 
 inquire the cause of her own trouble. She, thereupon, told 
 me a long story, by which I could discover nothing but a 
 great affection for France. Before I entered the hall I 
 inquired whether I could be there with safety, and was assured 
 that I could. This was the gayest and most noisy of all the 
 coteries I had seen in London." 
 
 Another Frenchman (Lacombe) came away from the 
 
\ 
 
 282 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 ward in 1784 with the conviction that the EngHsh tempera- 
 ment would cease to be " gloomy, melancholy and taciturn," 
 if only wine were once more the cheap drink of the people, 
 as in the Middle Ages. Plant vines (he urges) and encourage 
 dancing on Sundays, and you will make the nation gay, 
 sociable and happy — and empty Bethlem ! 
 
 But a more thoughtful account is that written in the 
 sunny autumn of 1788 by the author of " De Londres et de 
 ses environs." I have already drawn upon some of its philo- 
 sophic reflections, but, in view of the storm which was to 
 break in the next century over Bethlem, I cannot refrain 
 
 It -/ • >t 
 
 ']'--/{/(/.'(/' - //v ti,i^/ ///^-y-i- 
 
 
 / 
 
 A TICKET OF ADMISSION (1794). 
 
 from inserting the author's tribute to the superiority of 
 Bethlem over the asylums in Paris : — 
 
 " I stayed for some time in Bedlam. The poor creatures 
 there are not chained up in dark cellars, stretched on damp 
 ground, nor reclining on cold paving stones, when a moment 
 of reason succeeds to delirium. When they seem to be 
 awakening from a long dream, there is nothing to recall 
 their pitiable condition — no bolts, no bars. The doors are 
 open, their rooms wainscoted, and long airy corridors give 
 them a chance of exercise. A cleanliness, hardly conceivable 
 unless seen, reigns in this hospital. Five or six men maintain 
 
WHEN GEORGE THE THIRD WAS KING 283 
 
 this cleanliness, assisted by the patients themselves, when 
 they begin to come to themselves, who are rewarded by small 
 presents." 
 
 All the evidence of the court books and of Mr. Bowen's 
 " Account " tends to confirm the favourable testimony of this 
 foreign traveller. 
 
 In 1769 a resident medical officer (the "apothecary") had 
 been appointed, and he, with Dr. John Monro, introduced, 
 or inspired, reforms which gave the patients more tran- 
 quillity, privacy, and medical attention. The holiday crowds 
 were banished, measures were taken to keep the neighbour- 
 hood of the bedrooms free from a noisy watchhouse, and the 
 keepers were instructed to examine the feet of patients who 
 were lying on straw in chains, night and morning. In such 
 cases the feet were apt to mortify, unless regularly chafed 
 or covered with flannel. In the past scurvy and dysentery 
 had clung persistently to the hospital, but about 1780 the 
 committee allowed their patients vegetables and better beer, 
 with most salutary results. In another direction — probably 
 the growth of St. Luke's stimulated progress — an advance 
 was ordered, and the charges lowered to the friends of 
 patients, the officials being encouraged by a rise in their 
 salary to forego their perquisites. 
 
 A concluding extract from " De Londres " will give me an 
 opportunity of alluding to the nervous breakdown of the 
 great Lord Chatham, of which the author, presumably, had 
 never heard. 
 
 "1 saw among the patients great men, scholars and philoso- 
 phers, and shuddered to think that the fall of a slate, an 
 accidental stumble, or a bullet fired by a child might bring 
 to Bedlam a Lord Chatham, a Locke, or even a Newton." 
 
 Chatham suffered from periodical attacks of the gout, but 
 the strong medicines administered to him at the end of 
 1766 to disperse the disease caused it to settle upon his 
 nerves. For two years (1767 to 1768) the sound of a 
 child's voice or a casual allusion to a debate in parlia- 
 ment " produced an irritation in his mind amounting 
 almost to a frenzy." 
 
284 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 < / 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 'A PEEP INTO BETHLEHEM. 
 
 The figure on the left is "Peter Pindar" (John Wolcott), the satirist, who set 
 himself to ridicule the private life of George III in the books on the floor — the 
 "Lousiad" and "Ode upon Ode." On the right is Burke, whom his enemies 
 assailed as "little better than a briUant madman." He is trampling on two books, 
 of which the notorious Tom Paine was the author — "Common Sense" (1774) and 
 the " Rights of Man" (1792). This caricature must have been published between 
 1792 and 1794, when Burke was launching passionate invectives against the 
 French Revolution. In the background of the picture is " Peggy of Bedlam," 
 with wreaths of straw, one for the Grub Street versifier and the other for 
 the excited rhapsodist. In all these cartoons Burke is represented with a 
 rosary and crucifix round his neck, his enemies falsely asserting that he was 
 a Roman Catholic like his mother. 
 
 {Rowlandson.) 
 
 Whately has left us a description of Chatham's melan- 
 cholia or neurasthenia in a letter which he wrote to Lord 
 Lyttelton in July, 1767 : — 
 
 " He sits all day leaning on his hands, which he supports 
 
WHEN GEORGE THE THIRD WAS KING 285 
 
 on the table : does not permit any person to come into the 
 room : knocks when he wants anything ; and having made 
 his wants known, gives a signal without speaking to the 
 person who answered his call." 
 
 Chatham was the statesman who gave Canada to England, 
 and might have kept the United States in the Empire, but 
 you may still see in Pitt House, Hampstead, two rooms on 
 the top storey, where he locked himself away from human- 
 kind. Through the windows stretched a heath fair with 
 birch and bracken, but Chatham surveyed its beauty with 
 horror and despair. 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 ST. GEORGE'S FIELDS 
 
 In the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century patients 
 and staff still clung, though walls gaped and floors undulated, 
 to that hospital in Moorfields, where Swift and Cowper, if not 
 Collins, the poet, and the great duke of Marlborough, had 
 gazed, albeit unconsciously, upon the shadow of their ap- 
 proaching doom. The author of " London Scenes and 
 London People " (" Aleph," i.e., W. Harvey) has shown us 
 how in these years houses and shops began to crowd in upon 
 the moribund edifice, depriving it of the fresh air and sun- 
 light, indispensable to the proper treatment of hypochron- 
 driacal maladies. 
 
 Very little was now left of the open fields. On the west 
 of the hospital was Finsbury Pavement, and on the north 
 and east of it were lines of sheds, occupied by the dealers 
 in second-hand furniture. Here were cracked mirrors in 
 dingy frames, four-post bedsteads in the last stages of decay, 
 and cupboards with one shelf left out of three. Up and 
 down in this colonnade of canvas-covered booths swarthy 
 men and women of Israel paraded, seeking to inveigle 
 passers-by into acquiring some odds and ends of frowsy 
 upholstery. 
 
 After running the gauntlet of these importunate traders 
 of "Brokers' Row" (Blomfield Street represents the eastern 
 side of it to-day), you emerged into the light of day — in 
 sight of the dusty windows and lurching wing of our second 
 hospital. The oldest part of the building had only been 
 
 standing one hundred and twenty-five years, when in 1800 
 
 286 
 
ST. GEORGE'S FIELDS 287 
 
 our surveyor (James Lewis, the architect) presented to the 
 governors his report on the dangerous insecurity of the whole 
 structure. According to his alarming statements, which were 
 endorsed by Robert Mylne and other authorities, there was 
 not one floor which was level, and not one wall which was 
 upright : settlements and fissures were visible everywhere. 
 The imminent subsidence of the beautiful French palace, 
 which the genius of Robert Hooke had designed, was 
 attributed to several causes. The foundations, which rested 
 on the yielding soil of the city moat, as well as on the 
 Roman wall, had not been laid on piles : the walls, stagger- 
 ing under a heavy roof, had not been tied together through- 
 out the whole of the buildings as should have been done ; the 
 brick piers in the basement, which carried much of the super- 
 structure, had been cut away, or tampered with, for purposes 
 of storage. The surveyor, therefore, recommended that the 
 hospital should be re-built elsewhere, as it could only be kept 
 standing at a cost of some hundreds of pounds annually. 
 
 This recommendation certainly sounded like a signal for 
 instant retreat, but, for reasons which will be set forth in 
 their place, it was actually twelve years from the date of the 
 report before the foundation-stone of the present hospital was 
 laid. As we have so many years still to wait, you will not, 
 I am sure, begrudge me a few minutes while I tell an affect- 
 ing story associated with one of the windows of the old 
 house in Moorfields. 
 
 The Rev. John Newton, the rector of St. Mary Wool- 
 noth, was one of the leaders in the Church of England of 
 the Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century. The 
 eloquent epitaph, which may still be read in the vestibule of 
 his church, unfolds in measured sentences the romance of his 
 extraordinary career. He was the " slave trader and the 
 blasphemer" whom the terrible experiences of a shipwreck 
 converted into the champion of " the faith he had once 
 laboured to destroy." In the year in which the surveyor's 
 report was received by the court, Newton was very old 
 and nearly blind. His niece, Elizabeth Catlett, managed 
 his house, and acted as his secretary and district visitor. 
 
288 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 During the spring of the following year (1801) she had fallen 
 into that slough of despond which Bunyan has painted from 
 his personal experience of it, and her burden of imaginary 
 sins had dragged her down into the treacherous quagmire of 
 religious melancholia. She was now convinced that all her 
 religious professions had been nothing but sheer hypocrisy, 
 and that she had for ever forfeited the mercy of God. She 
 was admitted (I find by referring to the Register of Admis- 
 sions) into Bethlehem Hospital as a free patient on 
 1st August, 1 80 1. It was about this time that Newton 
 committed these pathetic reflections to his diary : — 
 
 " Thou hast tried me, as Thou didst try Abraham in his 
 old age, when my eyes are failing away and my strength 
 declines. Thou hast called for my Isaac, who had so long 
 been my chief stay and staff, but it was Thy blessing which 
 makes her so. I am to say from my heart, ' not my will but 
 Thine be done.' " 
 
 Miss Catlett remained with us for nearly a year, and 
 through all these dreary months of suspense it was the custom 
 of the heart-broken old man to walk with a companion at a 
 certain hour beneath the windows of the female wards on the 
 western front. Pointing to a particular window, he would say 
 to his guide : — " Do you see a white handkerchief being 
 waved to and fro ? " 
 
 This was the preconcerted signal, and, as often as his 
 niece felt well enough to wave a silent message of love or 
 hope, the saintly Newton went back to No. 6, Coleman 
 Street Buildings, with fervent thanksgiving in his heart and , 
 on his quivering lips. 
 
 I am glad to be able to add that the story had the ending 
 it deserved, for Elizabeth Catlett went home in due course, 
 and afterwards made a happy marriage. I see by our books 
 that she was sent out on a month's trial on 26th June, and 
 her name was finally removed from our registers 24th July, 
 1802. 
 
 How often has the name of Elizabeth Catlett recurred to 
 my mind on visiting days, as I have stood watching relatives 
 and friends reluctantly drifting towards the open gate and 
 
"a study in bethlem hospital. 
 
 The original of this etching appears in " Etchings of remarkable beggars, itinerant traders, and 
 other persons of notoriety in London and its environs" (1815). 
 
 (The artist ii>as J. T. Siiiitli, the keeper of prints at tlie Britisli Miiseiini.) 
 
 To face p. 288. 
 
ST. GEORGE'S FIELDS 289 
 
 freedom ! How often have I observed some visitor turning 
 back with a tear to wave a loving farewell ; and in response a 
 handkerchief fluttered for a moment behind the narrow 
 window panes ! 
 
 Take courage, dear hearts ! Elizabeth Catlett became her 
 bright, useful self again, and many dark clouds, if not all, will 
 yet reveal a silver lining. 
 
 One wing of the hospital is already in ruins, and even 
 " Mad Joe " knows that his old friends will soon have to 
 find another shell. " Mad Joe " — now on the right side of 
 the gate — has small bells attached to his head, his wrists, 
 his knees and toes, and contrives to ring the changes not 
 unmelodiously. His pitch is just outside the wall of 
 Bedlam, and here he is the publisher of his own poems, 
 as often as his chimes have attracted a market. But now 
 these chimes seem to die away in a parting knell over 
 his old home ! 
 
 In the selection of a suitable site for a new asylum the 
 governors were, no doubt, confronted with a succession of 
 unexpected difficulties. They refused, however, to be hustled 
 into anything like undignified haste. Indeed, it is not hyper- 
 critical to say that only one event marks each year, and that 
 only one step forward was adventured annually, in the course 
 of negotiations which extended from 1800 into 1809. At the 
 close of 1 801, for example, the court, after spending a year or 
 more on the surveyor's report, came to the resolution to 
 remove the hospital to another neighbourhood, and agreed to 
 confer with the city corporation as to a new site. Two years 
 later the Drapers' Company offered the governors nearly seven 
 acres of land on the breezy heights of Islington — "in the 
 Back Road [Liverpool Road] near the workhouse." From 
 this point committees and courts seem to have spent a couple 
 of years or so in discussing whether it might not be possible 
 after all to patch up the old buildings for another four or five 
 years, and whether or not any more patients ought to be 
 admitted. The surveyor and other experts continued to 
 report on the danger of the delay, and at last the governors, 
 taking their courage boldly in their hands, appointed a new 
 
 20 
 
290 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 Building Committee. In a spasm of energy, on ist August, 
 1805, this committee instructed Mr. Lewis to prepare plans 
 for a new building, while the court ordered that appeals for 
 donations should be placed before the charitable in the 
 advertisement columns of the daily press. 
 
 Application was also made to parliament for a grant, on 
 the ground that the governors were willing to make permanent 
 provision for a considerable number of soldiers and sailors 
 — the mental wreckage of the French wars — in their new 
 buildings. In response to this petition the House of 
 Commons in 1806 appropriated ^10,000 in aid of the funds 
 being raised, but success in this direction was counter- 
 balanced by some unforeseen difficulties which now arose 
 about the purchase of the site selected at Islington. For it 
 was discovered, while the bill was in the House of Lords, 
 that the ground was trust property and could not be sold 
 unless the purchase money was re-invested in land. The 
 Drapers' Company were unwilling to take this course, and 
 the committee in vain explored Ball's Pond, Clerkenwell, and 
 the district at the back of the Foundling Hospital for some- 
 thing suitable to their purse and needs. At last, in 1807, 
 these footsore and harassed pilgrims, like the founders of 
 some mediaeval monastery, halted in sight of the healing 
 waters of St. George's Spa, and felt that this was the new site 
 destined by Providence for their ancient institution. A 
 memorial presented to the city, the owners of the land, for a 
 portion of it, was favourably received, when another hitch 
 occurred. The spiteful fairy was at work again ! 
 
 It had been an essential part of the scheme of the 
 governors to retain the ground on which their hospital stood 
 and to make it a source of increasing revenue by letting it 
 out on building leases. They had been able to deal in this 
 way with the site of the first hospital in Bishopsgate. But 
 the case of the Moorfields land was not on all fours with the 
 Bishopsgate property. The Moorfields estate was in reality 
 the property of the city, and it had only been leased to the 
 hospital on certain conditions. On the other hand, the 
 ground on which the first hospital had been built, was the 
 
ST. GEORGE'S FIELDS 291 
 
 property of the hospital, and was not held on lease. 
 Originally it had been the free gift of a citizen of London to 
 a foreign priory, but the kings, who successively seized the 
 hospital, confirmed it in the enjoyment of its Bishopsgate 
 and other estates. 
 
 The governors, indeed, held a lease of nine hundred and 
 ninety-nine years, which was to run from Michaelmas, 1674, 
 but the lease contained a provision of re-entry, in case 
 the land was employed otherwise than for the accommodation 
 of Bethlehem Hospital. It would be impossible to remove 
 the hospital, and at the same time to retain its former 
 site for purposes of revenue. A way out of this dilemma 
 fortunately presented itself. It was suggested that the 
 corporation might — with the sanction of parliament — ex- 
 change a certain amount of the land which belonged to them 
 in St. George's Fields for the whole of the ground in Moor- 
 fields which had been leased to the hospital in 1674. In this 
 case the unexpired term of the old lease might be transferred 
 to a new lease. 
 
 Again the gallant vessel, which had weathered so many 
 storms, prepared to set sail from her old moorings. But the 
 wind veered, and the destination of the crew and cargo 
 became once more a matter of uncertainty, while the owners 
 of the vessel and the authorities of the port sat down to 
 haggle over the terms of exchange. No doubt it was difficult 
 from a business point of view to arrive at an exact valuation, 
 for the Moorfields site was ripe for building developments, 
 and was, therefore, infinitely more valuable than land in 
 St. George's Fields. 
 
 Two whole years (1807- 1809) were frittered away in valua- 
 tions, proposals, and even recriminations, but at length 
 charity — or common sense — prevailed, and it was agreed that 
 a simple exchange of sites should take place without any 
 payment of money entering into the transaction. On this 
 understanding it was agreed by both parties that the hospital 
 should receive rather more than eleven acres of land in St. 
 George's Fields in exchange for a plot of some two and a 
 half acres in Moorfields, Eight of these eleven acres were 
 
292 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 to form the site of the hospital, its exercise grounds, gardens, 
 and necessary offices, the remaining three being placed at 
 the disposal of the governing body to make what profit they 
 could out of them by letting them on building leases. 
 
 The preliminary agreement between the city and the 
 hospital, having been ratified by parliament on 15th June, 
 1810, the corporation on the nth July, 1810, formally 
 demised to Sir Richard Carr Glyn, the president, and 
 Richard Clark, the treasurer, as trustees, the greater part 
 of the land covered to-day by Bethlehem Hospital and 
 King Edward's School (Girls) and their gardens on a lease 
 of eight hundred and sixty-five years from Michaelmas, 
 1809. 
 
 I have repeated the language of the new lease which 
 describes the unexpired term of the original lease as consist- 
 ing of eight hundred and sixty-five years at Michaelmas, 
 1809. But it should be noted that the lease is inaccurate in 
 this detail, and that the correct figures should be eight 
 hundred and sixty-four years, for the date of the original 
 lease was Michaelmas, 1674, ^^^ the new lease was intended 
 to run from Michaelmas, 1809. ^^ ^ subsidiary lease of 
 1793, with which we are no longer concerned, the term 
 of unexpired years is stated correctly, but in the lease 
 of 1839, to which reference is made below, the term of 
 unexpired years should have appeared as eight hundred 
 and thirty-five years instead of eight hundred and thirty- 
 six years. In other words, the corporation have uncon- 
 sciously made us a present of a year ! 
 
 It will prevent confusion hereafter if I explain that the 
 land leased to us in 18 10 did not extend beyond the northern 
 and outermost walls of the front airing courts. Approxi- 
 mately the avenue which runs from the steward's house on 
 the east through the front gardens to the carpenter's shop 
 on the west indicates the northern frontier of the hospital 
 territory until 1839. This avenue, let me add, was part of 
 the Newington to Lambeth road which then followed the 
 line of these walls into the Kennington and Lambeth 
 roads. 
 
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294 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 The rest of the front garden and a narrow strip of land in 
 King Edward's School grounds (something over two acres) 
 were leased to the hospital in 1839. The governors had been 
 alarmed by a proposal of the ministry to plant a new Fleet 
 Prison in front of the hospital windows and probably hurried to 
 secure the vacant ground. In that year an act of parliament 
 was passed which enabled the city to grant to the hospital 
 on 1 2th December, 1839, a lease of this land for a term 
 of eight hundred and thirty-six years, from Michaelmas, 
 1838, so that both leases might run concurrently till the full 
 term of nine hundred and ninety-nine years had expired. 
 It was a condition of this indenture that the land thus leased, 
 which had been laid out in 1837, when the lodge was also 
 built, should be maintained as an ornamental garden, and 
 that no buildings other than a lodge should be erected upon 
 it. To enclose this additional space it was, of course, 
 necessary to divert the Newington to Lambeth Road. 
 The diversion appears to have been begun in May, 1838, 
 or possibly somewhat earlier, under the provisions of an 
 act of 1823. The Surrey and Sussex Turnpike Trust 
 received ;^300 out of our revenues for the expenses incurred 
 in carrying the road along its present course. On the other 
 hand the triangle of land which carries Barkham Terrace, 
 Laurie Terrace, and Price Terrace, was not taken on lease, 
 but bought outright by the governing body, the date of the 
 conveyance being 2nd April, 1840. In this case also their 
 policy was dictated by an attempt of the Receiver of Police 
 to buy the land for a police station. 
 
 Many memories haunt the fields which take their name 
 from the church of St. George the Martyr, Southwark. 
 Hard by the causeway which the Romans carried from 
 London Bridge across the marshes through Newington, 
 their legions, maybe, pitched their summer camp amid 
 the water violets. Where the great highways between 
 London or Westminster and the Continent converged — 
 whether at St. George's Circus or elsewhere — king and 
 priest, warrior and statesman, were received in state on their 
 arrival from Dover. Aye, and what crowds have mustered 
 

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296 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 in St. George's Fields, in the panoply of war or passion, from 
 the year when Canute was digging his famous canal at 
 the back of the present hospital in Brook Street to the 
 day when the Chartists passed Bethlem on their way 
 to Westminster ! If clattering tram and whizzing motor- 
 bus have not driven all the ghosts away, mediaeval archers 
 should be wandering discqnsolately about Newington Butts, 
 and the " No Popery " henchmen of Lord George Gordon 
 scowling impotently at St. George's Roman Catholic 
 cathedral, in the misty nights of autumn. 
 
 But there is a particular part of St. George's Fields — that 
 on which the present Bethlehem Hospital stands — which 
 possesses for us and our descendants associations of a very 
 curious but not always reputable character. In the year 1642 
 parliament threw up a fort to defend London against her 
 king on the site of the hospital : the fort is localized as at the 
 " Dog and Duck." The name of the tavern proclaims that it 
 was the scene of a very popular pastime, in which the sports- 
 man matched the strength and spirit of his dog against the 
 elusiveness of a terrified duck. 
 
 There is embedded in the front of the outermost wall of 
 airing-court M.i^ the stone sign of the "Dog and Duck" 
 tavern. It represents a squatting spaniel — said to have been 
 the dog of his day for such sport — gripping a duck by the 
 neck. It will be seen by a look at the illustration which 
 accompanies the text that the sign consists of two panels, 
 and that the left-hand panel bears the arms of the city ward 
 of Bridge without, which is Southwark. The date of 17 16 is 
 attached to this panel, and I suggest that in this year the 
 rustic tavern of my picture gave way to the " small public- 
 house," which a grateful publican bequeathed to his barmaid, 
 one Mrs. Hedger. Possibly it was she who advertised in the 
 public journals of 173 1 and 1736 the virtues of waters, which 
 would disperse the most obstinate diseases. But it was 
 by all accounts her son who gave the place its period of 
 popularity and made such a fortune out of it personally that 
 he was known as the " King of the Fields." This astute 
 young fellow, who had been a postboy at Epsom, conceived 
 
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ST, GEORGE'S FIELDS 
 
 297 
 
 the idea of creating a St. George's Spa after the model of 
 Epsom or Tunbridge Wells. In 1754 he added to the 
 original public-house a Long Room of the sort found in 
 most of the sixty pleasure gardens of the eighteenth century 
 in and about London. Here the company danced or listened 
 to the organ, dined at the ordinary, or sat and drank tea or 
 cgffee together. In 1769 a bowling-green and a swimming- 
 bath were added to the out-of-door attractions of the place, 
 and in the well-kept gardens by the willow-shaded pond 
 there were discreet alcoves for customers of a retiring dis- 
 
 THE STONE SIGN OF THE "DOG AND DUCK TAVERN. 
 
 position. The " Dog and Duck " never, it is certain, enjoyed 
 the vogue of Vauxhall, but, at any rate, it was well patronized 
 by the quality between 1754 and 1770. Dr. Johnson, for 
 instance, recommended the waters to Mrs. Thrale, and the 
 Spa was in such favour with a good class of people that 
 Hedger issued a silver admission ticket to regular subscribers. 
 There is a specimen of this medal in the Banks' collection at 
 the British Museum. It is quite a work of art, and bears 
 on the obverse the head of a famous French professor of 
 medicine in the seventeenth century (Lazare Riviere). It 
 must have been in these halcyon days of sleek respectability 
 
298 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 that the proprietor (or his advertisement manager) rhapso- 
 dized on the " Dog and Duck " as the favourite haunt of 
 modesty and virtue. He informs all fond mammas that the 
 boarding school has now become obsolete, since Miss can 
 be instructed in all the accomplishments and fashionable 
 practices of the world at such a seminary as the " Dog and 
 Duck"! 
 
 The spa, however, soon found it impossible to live up to 
 such an exalted ideal. In 1 771, or thereabouts, a circus 
 pitched its tents near the tavern, which gained in customers, 
 but lost irremediably on the score of their character. It is 
 an indication of the date of the decline in the moral reputa- 
 tion of the spa that in 1775 Garrick described the "frowsy 
 bowers" of the "Dog and Duck" as peopled with "fauns 
 half drunk" and "Dryads breaking lamps." The day of all 
 pleasure gardens was rather on the wane, and ten years later 
 a place, which is now consecrated to the temples of mercy 
 and science, had degenerated into the haunt of the dissolute 
 and criminal classes. I found in the " Gardner Collection " 
 a ballad in thieves' slang which purports to give an account 
 of the way in which the female sharp preyed on the male flat 
 " at the duck rig and puppy " {i.e.^ at a lively frolic in the 
 "Dog and Duck" gardens). Another verse, perhaps, refers 
 to the notorious Charlotte Shaftoe, who is said to have 
 betrayed seven of her lovers to the gallows. 
 
 THE DOG AND DUCK RIG 
 
 Each night at the Duck rig and Puppy 
 
 What a swell by the side of your blowing, 
 Till she meets with a spooney that's nutty, 
 
 Then tips you the turnips, my knowing ! 
 Sherries home with a flat to be stroking, 
 
 Then tips you the hint at the jig 
 She will meet you with gallows good joking, 
 
 And boast of her bilking the prig. 
 
 How sweet is the life of a Kitty, 
 
 Who swaggers a summer or two, 
 To be called by the knowing ones tippy ! 
 
 And oh ! my sweet blowing, that's you. 
 
ST. GEORGE'S FIELDS 299 
 
 To the scaffold he'll go in a rattle, 
 
 (Her heart you might think it would break), 
 
 Till he drops with the rest of the cattle. 
 She laughs, and you see she's the stake. 
 
 At last the "Surrey College of Crime" with its " Drury 
 misses " becoming too notorious, and societies for the pre- 
 vention of immorality too intrusive, on 12th September, 1787, 
 the Surrey magistrates refused to renew the licence of the 
 Gardens. The landlord, however, was a wealthy and 
 resourceful man, and he at once appealed to the city as 
 possessing jurisdiction in Southwark. Within a week two 
 city justices had crossed the Thames and vindicated the 
 privileges of the corporation by reinstating Hedger. Litiga- 
 tion, of course, followed, and in 1792 Lord Kenyon decided 
 that the city had no right to over-ride the local magistrates. 
 The " Dog and Duck" may be said to have expired in 1796, 
 when the buildings were turned into a manufactory for 
 making bread out of potato flour. Part of the site of the 
 pleasure gardens, and, therefore, of Bethlehem Hospital, 
 was occupied between 1799 and 181 1 by the School for 
 the Indigent Blind, which afterwards removed to the south- 
 western side of St. George's Circus. This beneficent institu- 
 tion, which thus invaded the haunts of crime and immorality, 
 was reinforced by quite an array of philanthropic and rescue 
 agencies, the Magdalen Hospital (now at Streatham) being 
 situated near the junction of Blackfriars Road and St. 
 George's Circus, and the Female Orphan Asylum (now at 
 Beddington) at the junction of Hercules Road and West- 
 minster Bridge Road. 
 
 The medicinal waters of the " Dog and Duck," which were 
 known as early as 1695, were analysed in 1856, and certified 
 to contain many impurities. On the other hand, we have 
 every reason to be thankful to waters which defended us 
 in 1832 and 1866 from the cholera which ravaged 
 the neighbourhood. One of the physicians of George HI 
 may also be cited in favour of the virtues of our springs. 
 Sir John Pringle says that he cured a soldier by the 
 
ST. GEORGE'S FIELDS 301 
 
 use of two quarts of " Dog and Duck " water daily. A 
 French translator, not catching the allusion to the tavern 
 sign, gravely ascribed the cure to an excellent broth 
 made from the water in which a dog and duck had been 
 boiled ! 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 THE PRESENT HOSPITAL 
 
 In the last chapter I tramped over St. George's Fields, 
 dragging, so to speak, a surveyor's chain after nae to measure 
 off a portion of the rather swampy ground as a site for the 
 third Bethlehem Hospital. I found on my arrival the land 
 occupied by the pleasure gardens and buildings of a famous 
 eighteenth-century spa as well as by a couple of rows of 
 tumbledown houses, but I left the land cleared of all that 
 encumbered it, and ready for the architect or contractor. 
 Many structures have been successively erected from 1815 to 
 the present day on the land thus surveyed, and, if the reader 
 will make a perambulation of the hospital estate in my com- 
 pany, I will point out to him the extent of the original 
 hospital, indicating, as we walk along, what has been added, 
 as progress demanded and economy permitted. 
 
 Let us start from the present entrance-gate in Lambeth 
 Road. In 181 5 this road ran, as I have already explained, 
 alone the line of our northern and outermost walls. Between 
 181 5 and 1838, therefore, the visitor entered the corner 
 of the airing-court of M. ib, a railing running midway across 
 the front lawn from the eastern to the western lodge. 
 Beyond the coal-yard there was on the east — as there is still 
 — a laundry, but it was then equipped with everything neces- 
 sary for dealing with the washing of a large institution. The 
 patients of the first half of the nineteenth century were 
 largely of the labouring class, and the females under super- 
 vision did most of the necessary washing. Before passing 
 
 round to the back of the house let me make it plain to you that, 
 
 302 
 
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THE PRESENT HOSPITAL 303 
 
 at the first, the main range of buildings did not extend east- 
 ward or westward more than two windows beyond the dining- 
 rooms of the wards. An arch inside the galleries and a 
 coat of arms on the stone coping outside mark the limits 
 of the main buildings up to the year 1838. The stately 
 portico admitted the curious visitor or the reluctant patient 
 as soon as the hospital was ready for occupation, but 
 the edifice was crowned with a species of pumpkin-shaped 
 cupola, on which the government were very anxious to erect 
 a semaphore in 181 2, when danger seemed to threaten from 
 France. The medical officers steadily resisted the proposal. 
 With weird, waving arms a semaphore would, undoubtedly, 
 have called up in many a morbid mind the vision of a dread 
 unearthly genie, mocking and flouting the victim in its 
 clutches, or spelling out to the doomed soul messages of 
 unutterable horror and woe. 
 
 At the back, that is, on the south, of the hospital, there 
 were — in these years of infancy — the lawns and flower- 
 gardens, which were appropriated to the " apartments " of 
 the " apothecary-superintendent " and to the steward, who 
 after so many centuries was now subordinated to a resident 
 medical officer. The present kitchen and offices were com- 
 pleted and in use at the beginning of the year 1857, the 
 recreation hall and ante-room (since 191 1 used as a dining- 
 room) not appearing on the scene until after 1896. Up 
 to the year 1857 the kitchen of the institution appears to 
 have occupied the whole or part of the basement of the 
 resident physician's house. 
 
 On either side of these back lawns were rudimentary 
 wings running southward. For motives of economy they 
 had been carried in 181 5 no farther than four windows from 
 the corner room of the attendant in charge of each gallery. 
 After the year 1838 these southern wings were carried 
 forward — some fourteen windows farther — to the point where 
 they now terminate. In the course of the same scheme 
 of operations the two back basement wards — M. la and 
 F. la — were drawn out still farther, but without any super- 
 imposed storeys. Sydney Smirke, the surveyor, proposed 
 
304 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 in 1838 only to extend the rudimentary wings in the shape 
 of two wards of one storey high — after the pattern of the 
 extremities of M. la and F. i^, for he urged that wings of 
 four storeys high would injuriously interfere with the light 
 and air at the back. The governors, however, appear to have 
 felt that extra accommodation and greater facilities for 
 classifying the patients were of greater importance. Accord- 
 ingly they instructed their architect to lay the foundations 
 of the back basement wards in a bed of concrete, and to con- 
 struct the basement walls of sufficient strength to carry with 
 ease the weight of three additional storeys. By October, 
 1844, in pursuance of the general scheme adopted, Smirke 
 had advanced the wings on each side beyond the workrooms 
 and billiard-rooms. My friend Miss S. who came into resi- 
 dence in 1854 (the year of the historian's birth) thinks that 
 the infirmaries and the " Old Ball Room," the extreme point 
 of the female wing, were finished in this year. The " Old 
 Ball Room " (now the quarters of the night-nurses) and the 
 " Large Billiard Room " (now devoted exclusively to the 
 medical staff) were till the dawn of the twentieth century 
 miniature Crystal Palaces, the sides being all glass and iron. 
 So far I have found no official explanation of their peculiar 
 construction, which was altered about 1905, but it is quite 
 possible that they were originally intended for conservatories, 
 which would provide a safe and agreeable occupation for 
 some of the patients. They used, at any rate, as I remember, 
 to generate the tropical heat of a palm-house at Kew 
 Gardens ! 
 
 To the east and west of these wings are the " airing- 
 courts," or "green yards," as they were called in 1820. Let 
 us pass into the " back garden " (as we call it to-day), where 
 our ladies walk, play tennis, and might very well do some 
 gardening. Imagine that we are standing just outside the 
 projecting workroom of F. ib. From 181 5 to 1864 all the 
 land to the left or east of us was appropriated to the female 
 Criminal Block and its exercise-ground. Perhaps a glance 
 at the architectural plan and at the illustration will make 
 my explanation still more intelligible. On the other side of 
 

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3o6 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 the house a much larger male " Criminal Block " with its 
 court for exercise sprawled over the tennis-court, the bowling- 
 green, and racquet-court of to-day. These prisons (four 
 storeys high, I should add), which were built and maintained 
 by the State for such people as would now be detained in 
 Broadmoor "during his majesty's pleasure," were isolated from 
 the rest of the buildings by high walls, but they were con- 
 nected by passages with lA. lb and F. ib. The workroom 
 and the billiard-room of these wards were built in 1866 
 partly on the site of these passages. There is so much to be 
 said in such a perambulation about the hospital buildings 
 generally that I must reserve what I have to say about the 
 establishment of the Criminal Blocks and their troublesome 
 tenants to another chapter. 
 
 Before we leave the airing-courts for the workshops, 
 let me jot down some necessary memoranda about King 
 Edward's School for Girls and the subterranean baths in the 
 hospital. The school was built in 1830 on that part of St. 
 George's Fields which was leased to Bethlehem for the aug- 
 mentation of its revenues, and therefore pays an annual rent 
 to the hospital under the covenants of a lease. On its 
 erection and until i860 it was a sort of reformatory for 
 children of both sexes under the title of " The House of 
 Occupations." The subterranean baths are at the foot of 
 each " garden staircase." It appears to be very doubtful 
 whether they were ever used for bathing, as they were so 
 manifestly unsuitable for such a purpose. Soon after their 
 excavation in 181 5 they were converted into storehouses for 
 straw, and in recent years they have been very handy for 
 keeping the croquet set or the box of bowls. It is just 
 as well to state these cold, unromantic facts : otherwise a 
 thousand years hence antiquaries might be gloating over 
 the " discovery of two Roman baths or sarcophagi in a fine 
 state of preservation." 
 
 A turn of the key — if you happen to have one — will take 
 us from the gentlemen's garden into a stuccoed court of 
 an irregular, octagonal shape, one side of which consists 
 of workshops. Originally they were intended to provide 
 
l^HE PRESENT HOSPITAL 307 
 
 employment for the male patients. As early as 1822 Lord 
 Robert Seymour had urged with great truth and force that 
 some form of employment was one of the best medicines for 
 certain forms of mental malady, where it is necessary to 
 divert painful thoughts or restart the machinery of a lethargic 
 mind. He suggested that the making of mats, paper bags, 
 and felt slippers might be safely entrusted to the patients, 
 but it was not till the beginning of 1844 that these work- 
 shops were completed. In them from this date for another 
 ten or fifteen years painting, glazing, engineering and other 
 trades were followed by male patients under the superin- 
 tendence of attendants skilled in the various handicrafts. As 
 I have already had occasion to mention, the patients were 
 mostly of the artisan class between 181 5 and 1852, and this 
 salutary experiment was therefore inaugurated and carried 
 on under exceptionally favourable circumstances. No acci- 
 dent (I learn from the " Annual Reports ") ever occurred, and 
 it is a pity that the principle of prescribing employment as 
 part of the treatment was ever parted with at Bethlem : the 
 county pauper asylums, which are hives of beneficial in- 
 dustries, have been wiser. The fact is that after Dr. Hood's 
 appointment in 1852 the governors began to give a pre- 
 ference to the educated classes, and the male representatives 
 of these classes found work derogatory. There has never 
 been any want of work on the female side and seldom any 
 idle hands. 
 
 Right across the western end of the hospital — say from 
 the men's Racquet Court on the south to the small court near 
 the builder's yard on the north, ran a pond, marked on a plan 
 at Bridewell as the " pond on the common." It must have 
 been destroyed in 1838, when the hospital was extended 
 sixty-four feet to the west. This pond, which was oblong 
 in shape and surrounded with a wall and railings, appears 
 to have been part of a large swimming bath constructed 
 for the landlord of the " Dog and Duck " in 1769. I imagine 
 that it absorbed the original " Dog and Duck " ponds, and, 
 doubtless, it was fed by the famous springs. Appropriately 
 enough it was, at least in 1823, the home of several 
 
3o8 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 ducks, which were under the charge of one of the criminal 
 patients. 
 
 In the course of a conscientious beating of our bounds we 
 have reached the dwarf wall and massive railing which testify 
 to the diversion of the high road and to the enclosure of 
 additional grounds in 1839. A few yards from where we are 
 standing, and on the outside of the north-west angle of the 
 wall, is a slab of blue slate — set up during the mayoralty of 
 Christopher Smith in 18 18, which marks the limit of the 
 hospital property and of the jurisdiction of the city in South- 
 wark. In old maps it appears as " London Stone." At this 
 point we may turn round and examine the general appearance 
 of Bethlem, from an architectural point of view. In spite of 
 a somewhat small entablature, the stately portico must pro- 
 voke admiration from all who approach it ; and the dome, 
 which was finished in June, 1846, has been ranked by such a 
 competent judge as the Right Hon. G. W. E. Russell as only 
 second to St. Paul's in shapeliness. But the rest of the front- 
 age, if examined too critically, seems to belong to the box- 
 of-bricks order of architecture, and the impression left by a 
 prolonged inspection of the front wings (the centre block 
 being excluded) is that of something dingy, cheerless and 
 forbidding. But the very ugliness of the exterior will en- 
 chance the surprise and delight with which the visitor views 
 the beauty and comfort of the long drawing-rooms which 
 have replaced plain, whitewashed wards. Furthermore, the 
 edifice has some substantial, practical virtues. It is absolutely 
 fireproof in construction, and every part of it has been con- 
 structed of such strength and solidity that the difficulty at 
 the expiration of the lease in 2673 will be how to pull it 
 down without a bombardment ! 
 
 The foundation-stone of the hospital in its original form 
 was laid by the president (Sir Richard Carr Glyn) on 
 Saturday, i8th April, 181 2. Three years later on the night 
 of Thursday, 24th August, 181 5, one hundred and twenty- 
 two patients were conveyed in hackney coaches — without 
 accident or incident — to their new quarters, at a cost of some 
 i^i8, or so. 
 
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THE PRESENT HOSPITAL 309 
 
 We have now seen, from outside, all the separate buildings 
 which make up the hospital, but before making a tour of the 
 interior, I have something to say about the mystery which 
 veils the identity of the architect, or architects, of the original 
 pile which arose in St. George's Fields. 
 
 In the Times of 3rd July, 18 10 — to begin my story 
 from the beginning — there appeared an advertisement offer- 
 ing in the name of the governors premiums of i^200, ^100, 
 and £^0 for the best three designs for a new Bethlehem 
 Hospital. Some seven months later (30th January, 181 1) 
 three well-known architects (James Lewis, the hospital 
 surveyor, George Dance, the younger, and S. P. Cockerell), 
 who had been asked to adjudicate on the plans sent in, 
 made their award. The first premium fell to a design 
 bearing, according to the court books, the word " spero " 
 [I hope] within an anchor : on the plans preserved at Bride- 
 well — I have some reason for noticing so slight a descrepancy 
 — the motto is "dumspiro, spero" [while I breathe, I hope] 
 without an anchor. The mottoes given in the court books, 
 as identifying the winners of the second and third prizes 
 do not (let us observe) correspond with any of the mottoes 
 entered in the list at Bridewell of the plans deposited by the 
 competitors. Again, while the court books speak of thirty- 
 six competitors, the list shows that thirty-two sets of plans 
 were returned to the senders, and that one — the winning set 
 of plans — was retained. 
 
 Inside this set of plans I found a letter from the architect 
 who prepared them, which identifies him as E. John Gandy, 
 of 21, New Street, Spring Gardens, Charing Cross. At the 
 moment of writing I can only presume that E. John Gandy 
 belonged to the well-known architectural family of that name, 
 one of whom, Michael, also took part in the competition, 
 which included James Elmes, Joseph Bonomi, the younger, 
 'and other notable names. I have studied Mr. Gandy's plans 
 critically and industriously. It is evident that he derived 
 some inspiration from St. Luke's Hospital, but very naturally 
 his plans reflect the domestic arrangements of the Moorfields 
 hospital, or were dictated by the experience of Moorfields. 
 
3IO THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 He has, for instance, put all his bedrooms in the front of the 
 building with the tiniest and ugliest of windows. The 
 Moorfields frontage was so near the public promenade, that 
 the mocking wit of the apprentice often found its way along 
 with a stone through the windows into the wards. The 
 authorities feared that something of the same kind might 
 happen in St. George's Fields, the high road being then so 
 near the buildings. And, though Gaudy's arrangement was 
 reversed by Lewis, the windows of the galleries were, until 
 the House of Commons interfered, bricked up about five or 
 six feet from the floor, to ensure the privacy of the patients. 
 After the fashion of the former hospital, Gandy placed the 
 female wards in the western block, and his disposition of the 
 centre block with its offices and official quarters and of the 
 basement wards for stores was that of the second hospital. 
 
 I have reproduced in an illustration the centre block as 
 Gandy designed it. There is no trace of the present dome or 
 portico, the front entrance being dignified by six plain Doric 
 pillars which support a pediment. Outside each corner — on 
 the coping — the architect ingeniously placed one of Gibber's 
 figures, a statue of Henry VHI, whom he imagined to be the 
 founder, standing at the apex. 
 
 Lewis was instructed by the governors to build the present 
 hospital on the basis of the three premiated designs, and 
 nothing would appear to be more certain than that he 
 worked chiefly on Gaudy's plans, taking a portico and 
 possibly some type of dome from the second or third com- 
 petitor. But just as I am about to ring down the curtain on 
 the act, an elusive figure creeps across the stage, muttering— 
 " You have forgotten me." 
 
 The name of this mysterious figure is James Gandon 
 ( 1 742-1 823), and I tell the story as it was told by his bio- 
 grapher (Mulvany) after his death. I am sure that some 
 confusion — in date, place, or person — has insinuated itself 
 into the narrative, but I cannot for the moment do more 
 than conjecture how the confusion has arisen. 
 
 According to Mulvany, Gandon obtained a premium of 
 ;^ioo as early as 1776 in an open competition for the best 
 
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312 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 design of a new Bethlehem Hospital. The architect, it is 
 added, was so anxious to produce an ideal hospital that he 
 consulted Howard, the prison reformer, at every stage of his 
 drawings. Now Howard was thanked by the House of 
 Commons for his visitation of the prisons in 1774, and his 
 "State of Prisons" was first published in 1776. So far the 
 dates attached to parts of the story may be said to confirm 
 it, but, on the other hand, there could be no conceivable 
 reason for re-building the Bedlam of 1776 before any signs 
 of serious decay had set in. Further, there is no reference 
 to anything of the kind in the court books, or in Bowen's 
 "Historical Account" (1783). 
 
 And yet it is absolutely certain that Gandon made a pro- 
 fessional study of the Moorfields hospital — presumably before 
 he migrated to Ireland in 1782. Here is an extract from his 
 reminiscences as reported by Mulvany : — 
 
 " The design I made for that hospital very nearly 
 terminated my existence. It was necessary that I should 
 visit every apartment in the original structure. In these 
 visits I encountered the most deplorable cases. At last I 
 experienced sleepless nights, and when I did at last procure 
 any rest, I was troubled with horrible dreams of the affecting 
 scenes I had witnessed. I was at last attacked by brain 
 fever, and my medical attendants had no hope of my recovery. 
 But through the affectionate care of my wife, aided by a 
 strong and vigorous constitution, I gradually recovered." 
 
 Now if Mulvany had by any means confused Gandy with 
 Gandon, and if the real date of the award was 181 1 and not 
 1776, the pieces of the story might be made to fit into one 
 another. But, again, the curious thing is that some of the 
 details in Gandon's Custom House at Dublin might seem to 
 have suggested the portico and dome at Bethlem, and it does 
 appear as if there were two or three plans submitted to the 
 committee of architects, which were not on the official list as 
 sent in for the competition of 181 1. 
 
 I ran up against yet another legend about the original 
 architect of the present hospital, when I was dipping into 
 the " Memoirs of De Castro," which were written by R. 
 
THE PRESENT HOSPITAL 313 
 
 Humphreys about 18 12, or later. "Some years ago," he 
 writes, " an eminent architect became insane, and was for 
 some time an inmate of Old Bedlam. At last he was dis- 
 charged, and when the committee proceeded to award a pre- 
 mium for the best design of a new asylum, lo ! it was the 
 production of him who had been confined in the old one. 
 Still more strange to say he lived to see its completion, was 
 the first to be confined there, and the first to be removed to a 
 better world." 
 
 This story is rather too dramatically complete, and I can 
 find nothing in our registers of admissions and discharges to 
 connect it with Gandy. Indeed, I cannot help thinking that 
 it grew out of the story of James Tilley Matthews. He was 
 a patient, to whom the governors presented ^30 in acknow- 
 ledgment of his skill and trouble in drawing the plans which 
 he sent in for the competition of 181 1. A series of his 
 elaborate plans with a whole volume of elucidations may still 
 be inspected in the muniment-room at Bridewell. 
 
 Matthews was admitted in 1797 and placed on the 
 incurable list in 1798. He had been a tea broker in Leaden- 
 hall Street, and was a well-educated man with a wide range 
 of reading. His hallucinations of sight and hearing were not 
 patent to ordinary people, and an effort was made in the law 
 courts to secure his liberation. The effort was unsuccessful, 
 but, upon the recommendation of the court, he was allowed a 
 special room with many comforts and privileges, and visitors 
 generally asked to be introduced to him and to see his draw- 
 ings. Haslam, the apothecary, was put through a severe 
 cross-examination, based on a memoir of his treatment sup- 
 plied by himself, in the parliamentary committees of 181 5 and 
 1 8 16, the members of which had not the special experience 
 requisite to foresee the practical and logical results of ideas 
 apparently innocuous, if fantastic. In hopes of enlightening 
 his critics he published a book on the case of Matthews, 
 which has even now considerable psychological value as 
 containing a full account of his actual sensations by the 
 patient himself Matthews lived in an aerial world which was 
 peopled by beings possessed of the temperaments and habits 
 
314 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 of human beings, and the language — which alone he could 
 hear — was the speech of ordinary men : "JBill the ^ King," 
 " Jack the Schoolmaster," the " Glove Lady," and other 
 phantom personalities carried on their intrigues and quarrels 
 among themselves with the airs and gesticulations — visible 
 to himself alone — of the court or the boudoir, but these 
 inquisitors united in inflicting upon their victim the most 
 excruciating tortures. Haslam's monograph is illustrated by 
 a weird but exhaustive drawing done by this crazy fellow of 
 the supernatural apparatus — which was ever before his eyes 
 — by which his malignant persecutors continuously tortured 
 him — by the turn of a lever infecting his blood with noisome 
 effluvia, or affecting muscles and nerves and flesh with the 
 sensations of every kind of agony : these are the " delusions 
 of persecution," to give the technical term. Matthews died 
 in the autumn of 1 8 14 in a private asylum to which he had 
 been removed for change of air. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 NIGHT 
 
 I PROPOSE in this chapter to sketch — I cannot do more than 
 sketch — the history of a great revolution. During the first 
 half of the nineteenth century the treatment of insanity was 
 revolutionized, though I regret to add that Bethlehem 
 Hospital — refractory to the last — had to be coerced into a 
 better frame of mind. By degrees chains and lancet vanished 
 along with the straw from asylums ; patients were more and 
 more treated as if they were only suffering from physical 
 maladies with mental symptoms : paupers were no longer 
 herded together in workhouses and cellars, in filth and 
 darkness. 
 
 Many circumstances contributed to swell the stream of 
 revolution — some abuses in Bethlem,for example, the increase 
 of a humanitarian spirit, and the experiments of Tuke and 
 Pinel, of Gardiner Hill, Charlesworth and Conolly. With 
 some of these points I shall deal in their proper place, but, as 
 an indispensable preliminary, suffer me to relate in some 
 detail the moving story of the insanity of George III. For 
 I am convinced that so terrible and so protracted a tragedy in 
 so exalted a personage focused the attention and sympathies 
 of the public on the condition of his afflicted subjects, and 
 procured for them a sympathetic hearing in the House of 
 Commons. 
 
 The real nature of the king's malady was not at the outset 
 suspected, or, at any rate, it was carefully concealed, even 
 from his ministers. We may, however, surmise that 
 George III suffered from a slight and premonitory attack of 
 
 315 
 
3i6 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 r^ insanity as early as 1762, when he was 24 years of age and 
 had been but two years on the throne. It is significant of the 
 character or violence of the malady that his majesty was 
 blooded seven times and had three blister^ applied. I am 
 inclined to suggest that the illness of 1762, and perhaps of 
 other years, was in its original form an influenza. For 
 Walpole ascribes the condition of the king as due to the 
 " strange, universally epidemic cold " then prevailing, and 
 the preliminary symptoms of later attacks usually included 
 a " feverish cold " or " cough " with " stiffness " and a " cramp 
 of the whole body." This illness of 1762 — whatever it was — 
 lasted but a month or two. Three years later (1765) the king 
 was again said to be slightly indisposed, but it is now known 
 that the profound secrecy, in which his indisposition was 
 shrouded, concealed a mental derangement, which, however, 
 passed away after a month or two. 
 
 For twelve years the veritable father of his country en- 
 joyed a respite from the worst of calamities. But in 1788, 
 
 V when he was fifty years of age, his insanity recurred in a 
 more acute and unmistakable form. On this and on every 
 occasion mental worry or excitement, arising out of events 
 in his kingdom or family, preceded and produced the attack. 
 The king and his government had for years been exposed 
 to the persecution of an opposition inspired by Wilkes, 
 Fox, and Burke. And the loss of his American colonies, 
 after the surrender of a British army in 1781 to Washington, 
 was a rankling wound which never closed. In 1788 the 
 tense nerves snapped. 
 
 In an early stage of the disorder Dr. Thomas Monro, 
 who was at the time physician of Bethlehem Hospital 
 jointly with his aged and ailing father, was called into 
 consultation. But the court was very nervous about as- 
 sociating the king's illness with the name of a physician 
 of Bethlem, and he retired. However, in the middle of 
 November, 1788, the cerebral irritation became so alarming 
 that the cabinet decided to place the king at once under 
 the control of a recognized authority on mental disorders. 
 The queen had no objection to Dr. Monro but she hesitated 
 
THE INSANITY OF GEORGE III. 
 
 " I run bound 
 Upon a wheel of fire thnt mine own tears 
 Do scald like molten lead. " 
 
 King Lear, iv. 7. 
 
 {This illustration, reproduced by pcniiission of Messrs. Siiiiili. Elder & Co., 7fas originally 
 drawn by Frank Dicksee for tlie edition de In.ve of Thackeray's " Four Georges.") 
 
 To face p. 316. 
 
NIGHT 317 
 
 to ask a popular specialist to give up his duties at the 
 hospital and his large and profitable practice outside, so 
 that he might devote his whole time and attention to her 
 husband. In the end Pitt, one of the few staunch friends 
 of the royal family, entrusted the care of his master to a 
 remarkable clergyman of the name of Willis, who had for 
 twenty-eight years treated insanity on original lines in a 
 village of Lincolnshire. 
 
 The practice of the Rev. Dr. Willis, who was, of course, 
 denounced as a mountebank by the faculty, was to board 
 out his patients after the Gh^el fashion in the village of 
 Greatford, near Stamford, two patients occupying a cottage 
 with a keeper for each. The foundation of his system was 
 to instil a wholesome sense of fear, and a keeper was in- 
 structed to return blow for blow. Willis employed, as other 
 institutions generally employed, the blister and strait 
 jacket, but, as the case progressed, unusual liberty was 
 allowed to the patient, and long walks encouraged. Should, 
 however, a patient escape, the keeper's wages were stopped, 
 and his earnings charged with the expenses of re-capture. 
 
 An amusing, but probably exaggerated, account of the 
 doctor's system may be enjoyed in the " Life " of Fred. 
 Reynolds, the playwright. "As the unprepared traveller 
 approached Gretford he was astonished to find all the 
 surrounding ploughmen, gardeners, threshers, and other 
 labourers in black coats, white waistcoats, black silk breeches, 
 and the hair of each well powdered. These were the 
 doctor's patients, and neatness of dress and exercise being 
 the principal features of his system, health and cheerfulness 
 conjoined to aid recovery." 
 
 The prince of Wales, the duke of York, and the leaders 
 of the opposition had been speculating with brutal and 
 indecent glee on the hopelessness of the monarch's condition. 
 They were, however, doomed for the time to disappointment, 
 and to the enthusiastic delight of his admiring people the 
 most virtuous and religious of sovereigns recovered his 
 reason, after five months' detention at Kew, being able to 
 be present at the Thanksgiving Service, which was celebrated 
 
3i8 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 in St. Paul's Cathedral on 23rd April, 1789. I see by the 
 court books that a gentleman sent a donation of ;^ioo 
 to the hospital as an " acknowledgment of a signal act 
 of mercy to England to be commemorated " on this date. 
 
 For another twelve years or so the health of George III 
 continued more or less normal, but in 1801 and 1804 there 
 were relapses of no very great severity or duration. On 
 the first of these occasions he was treated at Kew by the 
 Willis family, but on the second he vehemently refused to 
 have anything more to do with them, and Dr. Simmons, 
 the physician of St. Luke's Hospital, was called in. His 
 majesty was perfectly contented with his treatment, cheer- 
 fully submitting to the strait jacket and other limitations 
 . of his liberty. 
 
 George HI always maintained that the Willises had 
 behaved towards him with unnecessary severity in 1788 
 and 1 801. Many of the stories told by the king of the 
 violence offered to his royal person were probably ex- 
 aggerations, but, undoubtedly, he was knocked down, once 
 ^ at least, as " flat as a flounder." 
 
 It was, as I have stated, a principle in Dr. Willis's system 
 to inspire wholesome fear as a preliminary. But he also 
 professed the power of terrifying a patient into obedience 
 by the eye. When Burke commented on his allowing 
 George III the use of a razor, he interjected: — "Place the 
 candles between us, Mr. Burke. I should have looked at 
 him — thus, sir — thus." 
 
 George HI succumbed to the last and worst derange- 
 ment of his intellect in the autumn of 18 10, when he was 
 72 years of age and practically blind. The immediate 
 cause of his nervous prostration was the fatal illness of 
 the young Princess Amelia, the darling of her father's 
 old age. 
 
 For the last ten years of his life George HI was confined 
 
 \J in Windsor Castle, and there he died 29th January, 1820 
 
 — in the rooms occupied by Charles I on his journey to 
 
 the scaffold. In this castle more than three centuries and 
 
 a half previously Margaret of Anjou had watched the 
 
NIGHT 319 
 
 lethargy and dejection of madness creep, like an eclipse, 
 over the face of her husband, Henry VI, while he who 
 was to receive the mastership of Bethlehem Hospital 
 administered his "head-purges," or chanted his services of 
 exorcism. 
 
 How many an Eton boy — between 18 10 and 1820 — 
 turned from his freedom and his games to gaze up at the 
 windows, behind which a white-haired figure — a silvery 
 beard falling on his velvet dressing gown — wandered rest- 
 lessly from room to room, hungering for a sight of his 
 queen and children. 
 
 The mania of the king was of an acute character, and 
 was accompanied by definite delusions. He would talk 
 incessantly for hours together, telling anecdotes and sketch- 
 ing the characters of people long dead, analysing his 
 previous illnesses, or repeating passages, relating to madness 
 or blindness, from " King Lear " and ** Samson Agonistes." 
 Often, however, he would imagine that he was conversing 
 with the angels, and then he would speak with a smile 
 of infinite pity of those he loved, because they were still 
 tied down to earth and its miseries. Sometimes, however, 
 there were lucid intervals, and in one of them Queen 
 Charlotte entered his apartments, and found her poor blind 
 husband singing a hymn to his own accompaniment on 
 the harpsichord. When he had finished, he knelt down 
 and prayed for his family and people, concluding his fervent 
 supplication by imploring God to deliver him from his 
 heavy calamity, or, at least, to give him strength to bear 
 it. He then burst into tears, and his reason fled. 
 
 " I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity," said 
 Hildebrand, " and therefore I die in exile." I confess that 
 my eyes fill with tears when I think of the pathos and 
 mystery of such living sacrifices. 
 
 His people appreciated his piety and simplicity, and their 
 sympathies and prayers flung themselves against the gates 
 of his living tomb, as though they would burst them open. 
 But fate, alas! had spun the destiny of George HI before 
 his premature birth, and prayers might not avail even the 
 
320 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 most God-fearing of men. And yet the sacrifice was not 
 fruitless. The doom of so beloved a sovereign lifted up 
 the tragedy of a mind in ruins so high above the level of 
 common things that the eyes of Englishmen again and 
 again turned towards it throughout ten long years. And, 
 as they moved away from the spectacle with pitying hearts, 
 it was to think about the thousands of humbler folk who 
 lay in " darkness, fast bound in misery and iron," at Bethlem 
 and elsewhere. 
 
 Three years after the incurable condition of the aged king 
 had declared itself, a bill for the " better regulation of mad- 
 houses " was introduced by the Right Hon. George Rose, and 
 between 1813 and 1845 the pitiful and hopeless plight of 
 the insane received the serious attention of the House of 
 ^ Commons, intermittently, in a dozen sessions. The House 
 of Lords might reject or revise a bill year after year, but 
 Rose, Wynn, Gordon and Ashley (the seventh Earl of 
 Shaftesbury) refused to take " no " for a final answer. At 
 last, in 1845, Lunacy Commissioners were appointed with 
 Lord Ashley for their chairman. Bethlehem Hospital had 
 already spent £600 to secure exemption from the Madhouse 
 Act of 181 5, and haughtily refused, on the plea of ancient 
 / privileges, to be placed under reasonable restraint. She was, 
 however, as we shall see, subjected between 181 5 and 1852 
 to so many examinations and to so much physic that she was 
 /v restored in the end to her better self. 
 
 To go back to the beginning of a period so pregnant with 
 revolution and reform, it was in 18 14 that a spark from a 
 Bethlem hearth fired a dormant train of sympathy with the 
 prisoners of the asylum. 
 
 Edward Wakefield, a land agent of Pall Mall, belonged to 
 a group of men of the Howard type ( W. Hone of the " Every 
 Day Book " was another), who were in the habit of visiting 
 asylums throughout England on philanthropic tours of 
 inspection. In the spring of 18 14 he chanced to visit 
 Bethlem, where he saw one James Norris in his house of 
 chains. 
 
 Norris was an American by birth, and had served in the 
 
 \ 
 
JAMES NORRIS. 
 
 The ferocity of his disposition had been very much \veal<ened by time 
 
 and disease, when he was interviewed by Walvcfield :ind otliers. 
 
 Probably they would have hesitated even to converse with him m 
 
 the years of his furj^ and violence. 
 
 (Aftei a ciraiving made in Bethlcni by George Anialci, A.K.A.) 
 
 To face p. 320. 
 
NIGHT 321 
 
 English or American Army, where his back had been liberally 
 scored by the lash. He had already attempted to murder his 
 keeper and others, and the nature of his delusions as to his 
 food indicated a continuance of these homicidal attacks. The 
 padded room had not been invented, and it was, therefore, 
 necessary to confine him very closely, but, as he could slip 
 out of any ordinary handcuffs, the governors felt obliged to 
 have a special apparatus manufactured to meet his case. 
 This contrivance allowed the prisoner to stand up, to lie 
 down, and to advance a foot or so beyond it. In these fetters 
 Norris lived for nine long years, reading his books and papers, 
 or playing with his cat, Wakefield was horrified by what 
 he had witnessed, and promptly brought some members of 
 parliament to see the conditions of his captivity. In conse- 
 quence of the indignation aroused, Norris was hastily relieved 
 of his irons, but he only lived eight months after his release, 
 dying of consumption in February, 181 5. Pictures of Norris 
 in chains were circulated after his death with extracts from 
 the evidence taken in parliament, and helped to hasten the 
 abolition of chains, except in the criminal ward. One was 
 the drawing by Arnald, and another the picture by George 
 Cruikshank, reproduced by F. W. Hackwood in his biography 
 of Hone. 
 
 Select Committees of the House of Commons sat in 181 5 
 and 1 816, when the treatment of Norris and of the insane 
 generally was considered. It appeared that the treatment of 
 troublesome and uncleanly patients was much the same in 
 all public and private asylums. But the searching cross- 
 examination, to which all the witnesses were exposed, revealed 
 many things which threw great discredit on Bethlehem 
 Hospital. The evidence showed, for example, that the visits 
 of the governors had become infrequent, and their inspection 
 superficial. Dr. Thomas Monro, the physician, did not 
 perform his stipulated duties week by week. The steward 
 and matron were both of them septuagenarians, and every- 
 thing was left to the mercy of the servants. Among many 
 things which the governors learnt for the first time to their 
 surprise was that their surgeon (Bryan Crowther, 1789-18 15) 
 
 22 
 
322 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 was for ten years " mostly drunk and generally insane " — 
 sometimes, indeed, in a strait jacket. 
 
 It is not surprising to learn that Wakefield and other 
 witnesses examined by parliament considered -that St. Luke's 
 Hospital was very much better managed than Bethlem. The 
 superintendent of St. Luke's, under whose supervision the 
 hospital achieved a high reputation in Europe, was Thomas 
 Dunston, who had learnt his trade at Bethlem, where he was 
 a keeper from 1778 to 1786. I imagine that he was the elder 
 brother of Edward Dunston, whose name appears at the back 
 of our porter's badge. Another witness was of opinion that 
 the incurable ward for females at Guy's was in its way quite 
 a model for Bethlem and St. Luke's. A padded chair of 
 restraint — an anticipation of the padded room — particularly 
 excited his admiration. 
 
 The general laxity which prevailed at Bethlem during the 
 early years of the nineteenth century cannot be disguised, but 
 I should like to explain how it arose. The hospital was, as it 
 were, sitting among its luggage and furniture, ready packed up 
 for removal. Under such circumstances an ordinary house- 
 hold gets disorganized ; and meals are served in the rough 
 while the family is waiting for the van. Unfortunately the 
 negotiations for a new site were protracted, and meanwhile at 
 Bethlem many things were left undone, or postponed till the 
 staff should be transferred to new buildings, and the new 
 machinery set in motion. 
 
 It may not be out of place to mention here some experi- 
 ments in the treatment of insanity which had gradually been 
 feeling their way to success in England and France. Many 
 members of parliament had followed with sympathy the work 
 of the York Retreat, and in 181 5 and the following year the 
 House of Commons confronted the hospital with the success 
 of the humaner methods employed in that place. 
 
 In the spring of 1792 William Tuke, a tea merchant of 
 York, suggested to the Society of Friends, of which he was a 
 member, that insanity had hitherto been treated by irritating 
 forms of compulsion, which tended to exacerbate the disease. 
 The Friends resolved, therefore, to try the experiment of 
 
NIGHT 323 
 
 treating the irrational as if they were rational beings, and to 
 dispense, as far as possible, with irritating forms of coercion. 
 Many obstacles barred the way to the accomplishment of their 
 novel idea, but in 1796 the York Retreat was opened, and by 
 degrees its influence began to make itself felt in ever-widening 
 circles. 
 
 Curiously enough in the year 1793 it had also occurred to 
 Philippe Pinel, medical director of the Bicetre in Paris, that 
 
 WILLIAM TUKE. 
 A centenary medallion. 
 
 his patients had also a just claim to share in the " rights of 
 man," and he asked permission of his superiors to suppress 
 all irons. The Directory had just inaugurated the reign of 
 terror, in France, but they had no wish to add terror to 
 terror. 
 
 " Look here, citizen " (said Couthon, or some such 
 monster), " thou art mad thyself to think of letting loose such 
 wild beasts ! " 
 
 However, at last permission was grudgingly given on con- 
 
324 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 dition that Pinel harboured no "enemies of the people" 
 among his patients, and in two years Pinel, who had medical 
 knowledge and discretion, had replaced the chains and 
 dungeons of the Bicetre by promenades and workshops. 
 
 In the spring of 1816 the House of Commons forwarded 
 to the governors a copy of the evidence taken before their 
 committee, expressing at the same time their desire that it 
 should be carefully considered before the annual re-election 
 of the medical officers. The governors were afraid to run 
 counter to the current of public opinion, which was running 
 high at the time ; accordingly they refused to re-elect 
 Thomas Monro, their physician, and their "apothecary," John 
 Haslam. Less than a year previously Haslam's health had 
 been drunk and congratulations tendered to him at the 
 annual dinner of the governors on the result of his 
 examination. 
 
 I have read the evidence of this parliamentary committee 
 two or three times over, and I have read it with the 
 judgment of one who has had twenty-two years' experience 
 of the extraordinary conditions under which the officers of 
 an asylum have to work. After the fullest consideration of 
 the report I endorse the opinion of one of the governors 
 that Haslam was "sacrificed to public clamour and party 
 spirit." He had proposed that two adjoining cells should 
 be set apart for Norris, to serve as a sleeping-room and a 
 day-room : he did not suggest the iron apparatus, in which 
 he was housed ; and he had taken the precaution to see that 
 the sub-committee recorded in the minutes their decision as 
 to the treatment to be pursued in the case. 
 
 Haslam had carried out with zeal and firmness the system 
 approved by his employers, he had introduced many 
 reforms, and he had only been absent from the weekly 
 meetings of the sub-committee three times in the course of 
 twenty-one years. Nevertheless, he was turned out of the 
 hospital at the age of fifty-two without a pension, although a 
 pension was not withheld from other contemporary officials, 
 whose accounts or sobriety there had been reason to question. 
 
 Dismissal, for the moment, spelt disaster, and an appeal 
 
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 S 
 
NIGHT . 325 
 
 was made to Individual governors to relieve his distress. It 
 appears, however, from a catalogue which I disinterred in 
 the British Museum that he was forced to part with his 
 library. Upwards of a thousand books were sent to the 
 hammer. Many of them were professional treatises in 
 English and German, but the rest suggest a literary man of 
 wide reading and culture with a taste for old books and the 
 curiosities of literature. 
 
 Haslam had studied under famous professors at Bart's, in 
 Edinburgh, and Upsala, but he was not at the time qualified 
 to act as a physician. He was, however, in the year of his 
 dismissal able to secure the degree of M.D. at Aberdeen ; 
 and in 1824 he was, after some residence at Pembroke 
 College, Cambridge, admitted as a licentiate of the College 
 of Physicians. It is quite a personal pleasure to me to be 
 able to add, that, in spite of the ordeal through which he 
 had to pass, Haslam achieved fame, and, I presume, fees as 
 a leading specialist in mental disorders, an author of works 
 on insanity, and as a man of letters. In the " Dictionary of 
 National Biography" will be found a list of his professional 
 works, which have yielded me much general information. 
 But in the biographical sketches of W. Jerdan and in the 
 articles — notably the " John Barleycorn Club " — contributed 
 by Haslam to the Literary Gazette will be found interesting 
 testimony to the fund of humour which played round his 
 pen, as well as to the hoard of information which he had 
 accumulated in the course of his reading. He was one of 
 those men who could sit down and throw off a light and 
 interesting paper on any subject suggested. His bosom 
 friend was Dr. Kitchener — a great character. Oculist and 
 musician he was also the oracle of the kitchen. If you went 
 to any of his experiments in ideal dinners, you found your- 
 self faced with the legend — " Come at seven, go at eleven." 
 A wag altered this into " Go it at eleven." One of Haslam's 
 practical jokes was to write quite an insulting critique on 
 one of Kitchener's books, and then to goad on the infuriated 
 author to take personal vengeance on a literary friend, who 
 knew nothing about the article whatever. 
 
326 THE STORY OP BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 In 1818 Haslam was living at 57, Frith Street, whence he 
 launched a scathing invective against the governors. He 
 died at 56, Lamb's Conduit Street, on 20th July, 1844, at the 
 age of eighty. 
 
 While I am in a gossiping mood, I should like to allude 
 to the services rendered to the art of painting in water 
 colours by Thomas Monro, his colleague at Bethlem. Monro 
 was the making of Turner, Cozens, Girtin, Linnell, and many 
 another artist. He had a house in Adelphi Terrace full of 
 pictures and drawings by famous artists, and here on a winter 
 evening he set his young pupils to copy drawings or to paint 
 in water colours. Among the little group was one Thomas 
 Girtin, whom Turner once regarded as his superior. In 
 earlier days Girtin was apprenticed to Dayes, the water 
 colourist, who is said to have sent his recalcitrant apprentice 
 to Bridewell on the warrant of the city chamberlain — John 
 Wilkes. Girtin is said to have turned his underground cell 
 into quite a miniature Academy, with the result that he had 
 many visitors. Among them was the earl of Essex, who 
 gave Dayes what he asked to cancel Girtin's indentures. 
 
DR. JOHN HASLAM, ''APOTHECARY" OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL (1793-1816). 
 {Painted by G. Dmve, ci-igraved and published by H. Daice, 1812.) 
 
 To face p. 326. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 TOWARDS THE DAWN 
 
 It was decided — as a result of the events related — to appoint 
 a second physician (non-resident) on the staff. Consequently 
 the departure of Thomas Monro left two vacancies to be filled 
 up. Dr. (afterwards Sir) George L. Tuthill received the 
 highest number of votes for one of the new appointments, 
 but the medical succession of the Monros as hereditary 
 physicians of Bethlem was not interrupted, for Edward 
 Thomas Monro was allowed to follow in his father's foot- 
 steps as second physician. 
 
 A month earlier William (afterwards Sir William) Law- 
 rence — a pupil of Abernethy — was elected surgeon to the 
 associated hospitals. Lawrence was in his earlier days a 
 radical and a friend of radicals. He was, for example, a 
 staunch supporter of William Hone, who had helped to get 
 up the Norris case against Bethlem with the assistance of 
 George Cruikshank and Wakefield. Moreover, when Hone 
 emerged successfully from his three trials for blasphemously 
 parodying the Litany, he sent him a cheque towards the 
 expenses of his defence. Lawrence himself came into 
 collision with our governors in 1819 and 1822 on account of 
 some lectures which he had printed. These lectures, which 
 discussed the " Physiology, zoology, and natural history of 
 man," nearly terminated his connection with us. The press 
 denounced the author for his radicalism, and the pulpit 
 censured the book for its blasphemy, flippancy, and indecency. 
 The governors, taking alarm at such a storm of criticism, 
 called upon their surgeon to withdraw his book from circulation. 
 
 327 
 
328 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 The formal demand of the governors elicited from Law- 
 rence a very apologetic letter. In it he expressed the 
 greatest regret that he should have said, or published, 
 anything which could be deemed " unfavourable to morality 
 or religion." His public and private life, he added, ought to 
 be accepted as evidence of the respect which he entertained 
 towards the " peculiar excellence of the pure religion un- 
 folded in the New Testament." However, if his friends 
 thought that he ought to suppress the work, he was quite 
 ready to accept their verdict. 
 
 The book, however, had received such an advertisement 
 that it continued to be asked for by friends and foes. The 
 governors, finding that the book was still being circulated, 
 came to the conclusion that Lawrence had broken faith with 
 them, and suspended him, pending an explanation. In reply 
 he asserted that he had ordered the " Lectures " to be with- 
 drawn, but that his intentions had been defeated by "piratical 
 acts of a bookseller in the Strand named Smith," who con- 
 tinued to sell them to all comers. The governors accepted 
 the explanation, and, although his book went into many sub- 
 sequent editions, he retained his post till the close of his life. 
 A career of controversy — which enmeshed in its coils the 
 members of his own profession — did not prevent Lawrence 
 from making a fortune, and he settled down into a safe and 
 courtly old gentleman, dying in 1867 a baronet, and the senior 
 sergeant-surgeon to Queen Victoria. 
 
 Two years after the election of the medical officers, one of 
 our patients on his discharge presented to the sub-committee 
 a copy of a sensational little pamphlet he had written under 
 the title of " The Interior of Bethlem Hospital." I did not 
 know of the existence of this curiosity of literature until, 
 quite accidentally, I lighted upon it in the Minet Library, 
 Camberwell. The author of it, one Urban Metcalf, usually 
 earned his livelihood by hawking laces, garters, and such 
 small wares up and down the country, but he suffered inter- 
 mittently from delusional insanity, which impelled him now 
 and again to attempt an entrance into one of the royal 
 palaces. In such cases — and they are not uncommon — I may 
 
TOWARDS THE DAWN 329 
 
 remark that the intruder does not proceed in the spirit of the 
 burglar, but under the obsession that the palace is his personal 
 property. Quite logically, therefore, he considers it his duty 
 to dispossess the usurper. 
 
 I glanced at the little threepenny pamphlet on my first 
 discovery of it, without dreaming that its poor, cheap paper 
 carried very much of any value upon its face, but later on, when 
 I was reading through the minutes of the general committee 
 for May, 1818, I found that Urban had used his eyes and 
 ears to some purpose, and that his innuendoes against two or 
 three of the officials were not wholly symptoms of diseased 
 and irritable nerves. 
 
 The governors of the day made a practice of sifting with 
 the finest of sieves every allegation brought under their 
 notice, and Urban, who had astutely forwarded a copy of his 
 " Interior " to the duke of Sussex (a governor), fired a train 
 which exploded and dislodged certain persons and practices. 
 
 As a sequel to a searching inquiry it transpired that 
 Wallett, who had succeeded Haslam as resident apothecary, 
 had managed to extort several guineas a week from the 
 wealthy relations of a French criminal patient, whom he had, 
 nevertheless, housed at the expense of the charity in the 
 criminal block. Naturally, the new steward (Humby), as 
 soon as he had ferreted out this lucrative arrangement, insisted 
 on receiving his fair share of the plunder. 
 
 Arraigned by the indignant committee for a breach of the 
 printed regulations, under which they had been elected, 
 Wallett and Humby concocted a joint letter to the committee, 
 in the course of which they affected to deplore what was at 
 the worst but an "error of judgement." The letter of the 
 two worthies concluded with a peroration, which — with its 
 mixture of poetry and moral sentiment — would have brought 
 tears to the eyes of Pecksniff himself 
 
 " We commit our case to you, confiding in your avowal 
 that there is no person at all times so entirely himself, nor 
 any man so perfect in his judgement, but that error will some- 
 times steal his best ideas, and place him on a basis of fragile 
 composition." 
 
 V 
 
330 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 Even the " basis of fragile composition " left the committee 
 cold and unconvinced, both officials being ordered to send in 
 their resignations without delay. Their places were filled up 
 by the court 24th March, 18 19, when Edward Wright, M.D., 
 was appointed resident apothecary-superintendent, and 
 Nathaniel Nicholls steward. 
 
 Nicholls held his onerous place for no less than thirty- 
 five years, resigning at the age of sixty-one on a well- 
 merited pension of ;^350 per annum. Further, as a mark 
 of " appreciation for his faithful and valuable service," 
 the governors took out a life policy of ;^2,ooo in his 
 name, and agreed to keep up the payment of the annual 
 premiums. 
 
 Dr. Wright, if he was " humane in his treatment of the 
 patients and considerate to his subordinates," did not, alas ! 
 leave the service of the charity with the gratitude or respect 
 of the governors. I should not, indeed, like the friends of 
 Bethlem who read this book to forget how much he did 
 towards the establishment of something like an out-patients' 
 department- — an indispensable feature of an asylum, at any 
 rate for old patients. It was his custom to attend either at 
 the hospital, or at their private residences, without fee or 
 reward, any patients who were ineligible for re-admission to 
 the wards. I have, however, to chronicle that he was 
 adjudged to have "forfeited the confidence of the governors," 
 after a patient and costly inquiry into the grave charges 
 made against him, and fully substantiated. 
 
 To omit many topics, let us pass on to the year 1837 when 
 the short, sharp knock of a Charity Commissioner was heard 
 on the doors of Bridewell and Bethlem. There was some little 
 hesitation at first in admitting anybody who came in the 
 name of a parliament of inquisitive reformers. For the 
 court did not wish it trumpeted abroad that the treasurer of 
 the two hospitals and the receiver of Bridewell had fled to 
 the Continent two years previously, leaving the charities to 
 face a net loss of i^i 2,000. But the chain had to be taken 
 off the door, and after searching, sifting, and ransacking he 
 found himself able to praise much that he witnessed in 
 
I TOWARDS THE DAWN 331 
 
 Bethlem. He called attention, however, to the lack of any 
 medical teaching in the hospital. 
 
 I should explain that Dr. James Monro (1728-1752) had 
 steadily refused to admit students or physicians to observe 
 his methods of treatment in the wards. This interested 
 policy was resented by contemporaries, one of the reasons 
 advanced for the foundation of St Luke's in 175 1 being that 
 " more gentlemen of the faculty might be introduced to the 
 study and practice of a branch of physic, too long confined 
 almost to a single person." However, the Monro dynasty 
 was true to the traditions of its founder, and it was not 
 until 1843 that Dr. Webster, a governor who rendered many 
 valuable services to the hospital, was able to induce the 
 court to sanction the admission of physicians' pupils. 
 
 In the summer of the following year they agreed to pay 
 to the physicians a fee of twenty guineas each for one pupil 
 from St. Bartholomew's and another from St. Thomas's. A 
 year later (1845) John Lathom Ormerod was nominated by 
 the former hospital, and John Le Gros by the latter. 
 Insanity was not, however, one of the subjects required to 
 qualify for a degree, and throughout the 'forties the attend- 
 ance of students was intermittent, and their interest rarely 
 visible. In the next decade fees were lowered to students, 
 and various attempts were made to attract pupils to Bethlem. 
 In 1865 it was decided to admit two resident pupils, and 
 to-day two house physicians form part of the medical staff. 
 
 My readers must be rather sick of hearing that Bethlem is 
 a lady with a notorious past, and I hope (and indeed believe) 
 that I have only one more " Visitation of Bethlehem Hospital " 
 to add to that of Henry IV, Henry VI, Charles I, and of 
 parliament in 181 5 and 18 16. 
 
 In 185 1 — to begin at the beginning — some complaints of 
 harsh and coarse treatment at the hands of their nurses were 
 made to the Lunacy Commissioners by the relatives of two 
 female patients. Hitherto — from the absence of wisdom or 
 the presence of civic disdain — the hospital had contrived to 
 secure exemption from periodical inspection. No doubt, 
 therefore, it was not without a triumphant chuckle that the 
 
332 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 commissioners rang the bell at the porter's gate on 28th June, 
 185 1, armed with the authority of the Home Secretary, and 
 insisted on examining everybody and everything. 
 
 I have often studied the report which they published in 
 1852 with a verbatim transcript of the evidence taken: I 
 have often read and re-read the printed replies of the phy- 
 sicians, the resident apothecary, the matron, and some of the 
 governors : I have carefully weighed page after page of 
 correspondence. Bewilderment only increased with each 
 reading ; but if I had to give judgment on appeal I should 
 admit that the report justly condemned some features in the 
 system under which the hospital had been — conscientiously 
 enough — administered up to this period. 
 
 Two physicians — to illustrate my contention — were sup- 
 posed to dictate the general and individual treatment of the 
 patients, but they were not resident, they had large outside 
 practices, and they spent only a few hours a week in the 
 wards. As a matter of fact most of the work and responsi- 
 bility fell upon the resident medical man (the apothecary), 
 who had to neglect his own proper duties of writing up the 
 medical records, so that he might perform the duties of the 
 physicians. 
 
 The commissioners of 1852, therefore, put their fingers on 
 tender flesh when they recommended that the hospital should 
 for the future have "at least two resident medical officers, 
 one of whom should have paramount authority, and be 
 responsible for the whole internal management." 
 
 On the other hand, I am of opinion that the commis- 
 sioners, and for that matter the governors, did serious injus- 
 tice to some of the individuals who had endeavoured to carry 
 out the system in force in accordance with the decisions of 
 the courts and committees. 
 
 There had, no doubt, been a great deal of friction between 
 Dr. Wood and Mrs. Hunter, the matron, as early as 1847, when 
 a committee of investigation credited each of the two with a 
 spice of temper and each with a determination to rule the 
 other. But the fact seems to have been that the matron 
 had — very disastrously — been allowed to divide the authority 
 
' TOWARDS THE DAWN 333 
 
 with the resident medical officer in the female wards. Con- 
 sequently Dr. Wood found it impossible to introduce the 
 reforms he considered essential on the female side, especi- 
 ally as he felt that he was not backed up by the majority of 
 the governors. 
 
 William Wood was sent out with Monro and Morison into 
 the wilderness, a scapegoat bearing the sins of others, but, 
 before he went, he addressed some passionate words of 
 reproach to his former masters : — 
 
 " I have had to contend with difficulties which have never 
 been appreciated. I have been oppressed with an amount of 
 labour, and ceaseless anxiety, and overwhelming responsi- 
 bility to the very verge of human endurance. With a limited 
 authority and no assistance I have struggled to promote the 
 welfare of those committed to my charge." 
 
 The commission of 1852 was unable to prove that the 
 patients of the hospital were generally treated with 
 inhumanity, or neglect, but the governors recognized that on 
 two points, at any rate, the commissioners were in the right. 
 Accordingly, on 13th June, 1853, they elected a resident 
 medical superintendent (Dr. Hood), and on November ist in 
 the same year the hospital was registered by the Lunacy 
 Commissioners, and has been under their supervision from 
 that date. Nicholls, the steward, was succeeded by the 
 genial and artistic G. H. Haydon. 
 
 During the period covered by this chapter the hospital 
 parted with an estate at Charing Cross, which had been in its 
 possession at least from 1403. In earlier chapters I have 
 asked my readers to sit down and gaze at the story of 
 Charing Cross, as it were, in a moving panorama. A scene 
 in the Middle Ages showed us near the mews at Charing 
 Cross the " Stone House," a home for the insane under the 
 care of some order of monks. In the reign of Henry VIII 
 the mews of the falcons had become the stables of horses, 
 and the Stone House had been converted into three 
 tenements. A turn of the cylinder, and Pepys rode up to 
 the inn of one of our tenants. There are always crowds, as 
 you have observed, in these pictures at Charing Cross, baiting 
 
334 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 a Spaniard or a Scotchman with equal zest, pelting the 
 pillory, according to their sympathies, with eggs or flowers, 
 huzzaing at a civic or royal procession. 
 
 But the panorama still revolves, and this panel is dated 
 17 16. The "Chequer" inn — perhaps once the half-way 
 house between London and Westminster, where the judges 
 used to breakfast — has become the " Coach and Horses." A 
 little farther west is another coaching inn, the " Golden 
 Cross." It arrogates to itself an ancient pedigree, though it 
 does not come into literature or our leases until after 1708. 
 
 And now we are midway in the eighteenth century — so 
 briskly move the feet of Time in pictures — and we are 
 looking at five brick houses, which face the high road at 
 Charing Cross. 
 
 The changes and fashions of the times are altering the 
 value of these houses to the tenants, and leaseholders (the 
 Hammersleys) and their sub-tenants are making petition 
 to the governors. The burden of their complaint is that 
 members of parliament no longer take apartments for the 
 session in the houses belonging to Bethlem. They prefer the 
 " wainscoted rooms " and " marble mantelpieces " of the new 
 dwellings, which are springing up round the House of 
 Commons. Even the shop-keepers seem disinclined to take 
 the vacated floors, unless the landlord will give them " shops 
 as fine as their neighbours." Ruefully they confess that 
 " their customers are decoyed by the modern temptation of a 
 gay shop and fittings up." Before we pass on to the next 
 picture, notice the one-legged sweeper at the crossing by the 
 Mews Gate. He is one Ambrose Gwinett, who was hanged 
 near Deal for a murder he did not commit. He was taken 
 down by his friends, and, miraculous to relate, resuscitated 
 and went to sea. In the course of his voyage to the West 
 Indies he ran up against the man he was supposed to have 
 killed ! At least this is what we are expected to believe 
 in his " Life and Adventures." 
 
 While I have been talking, the horizon of the panorama 
 has been shifting. Here is a picture of Charing Cross as it 
 appeared in 1825, just a year before Agar-Ellis obtained 
 
'*«- ti!' 
 
 CHARING CROSS ABOUT 1825. 
 
 The higher and lighter blocks of houses on the left belonged to the hospital, and occupied part 
 
 of its ancient estate. 
 
 To face p. 334. 
 
TOWARDS THE DAWN 335 
 
 leave to bring in a bill for the clearing away of the courts 
 and alleys and " stacks of houses " between Pall Mall East 
 and St. Martin's Lane. Across the road is the duke of 
 Northumberland's palace, which I myself can remember. 
 Fronting it are five of our houses, Nos. 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, 
 Charing Cross. No. 5 is occupied by Wyld, a well- 
 known map engraver, No. 6 by Prater, a draper and an army 
 clothier, No. 7 by Carroll and Co., lottery contractors, No. 8 
 by the London Genuine Tea Company, and No. 9 by the 
 famous Tom Bish, another lottery contractor. There was a 
 third lottery firm (Swift and Co.) at No. 12, outside our 
 boundaries. Charing Cross was an indispensable place for 
 lottery offices, which were closed by parliament in 1826. 
 I dare say it was from Bish or Carroll that little Miss 
 Mitford, then just ten years of age, got the lottery ticket, 
 which won ;^20,ooo for her gambling father. The authoress 
 of " Our Village " tells us how she insisted on getting a 
 ticket, the numbers of which, when added up, would make 
 up a total of ten : the number eventually chosen was 2422 ! 
 
 Tom Bish advertised on a mammoth scale, and his 
 doggerel verses, illustrated with coarse but humorous cuts, 
 must have run to miles, and limed many a poor bird. Even 
 Charles Lamb seems to have written " lottery puffs " for him 
 in 1809. 
 
 No. 4 appears in our plan as the Northumberland Coffee 
 House, and according to one of our leases the upper floors of 
 two of our houses (Nos. 5 and 6) were also used to accom- 
 modate literary and other visitors. Among those who used 
 it for an occasional cup of chocolate in 1790 or thereabouts 
 was a taciturn, olive-complexioned Frenchman. There is 
 little or no evidence that Napoleon the Great was ever in 
 London, but I tell the tale as it was told by bookseller 
 Mathews, the father of Charles Mathews, the actor. 
 
 The rest of my story concerns a business transaction, and 
 it cannot be told in a series of pictures. On 5th October, 
 1825, Philip Hardwick, the architect of the hospital, reported 
 to the general committee that the London Gazette contained 
 an announcement of the intention of the government to 
 
336 THE STGRY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 make some improvements at Charing Cross. The governors 
 at once put themselves into communication with the Com- 
 
 " TRAFALGAR SQUARE" IN 1830. 
 
 The hatched areas of the plan show the houses and land of the hospital. Bethlem was 
 robbed of the unshaded portions on the north and west, if not on the east, in the 
 
 sixteenth century. 
 
 missioners of Woods and Forests, with whom a provisional 
 agreement was reached in May, 1826. Towards the close 
 
 % 
 

 
 
 
 
 23 
 
338 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 of the following year the commissioners made Bethlem a 
 definite offer of an estate in Piccadilly, Duke Street, and 
 Jermyn Street, in exchange for the property at Charing 
 Cross belonging to the institution, a valuation to be made 
 by the architects of both parties, Philip Hardwick and John 
 Nash (the designer of Regent Street). It took these experts 
 a year to decide that they could not agree on the value of 
 each estate. Accordingly, William Inwood — a well-known 
 architect in his day — was invited by both parties to give an 
 independent valuation, which should be final. In the result 
 he valued the estate of the hospital in " Trafalgar Square " 
 and St. Martin's Lane (where we had six houses) at ^^38,334, 
 estimating the value of the estate of the crown in Piccadilly 
 at ^47,872. This award left a balance of ;^9,538 to be paid 
 by Bethlehem Hospital. The surveyor reported that the 
 charity would make the best of bargains by securing a 
 Piccadilly estate on such terms ; and our governors have 
 never had any reason to regret the indenture to which 
 their predecessors put their hands and seals on 5th July, 
 1830. 
 
CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 THE CRIMINAL DEPARTMENT 
 
 In the earlier stages of English civilization men who were 
 obviously raging, raving madmen may have escaped the 
 punishment of death, legally entailed by their crimes, on 
 the ground of insanity. But until lawyers learnt to look 
 for and to recognize signs of the subtler and less palpable 
 forms of mental unsoundness, such as the " delusions of per- 
 secution" or the hearing of "voices," insane criminals had 
 meted out to them the same treatment which was meted out 
 to the ordinary thief, blasphemer, or sedition-monger. They 
 were, that is to say, either thrown for months or for years into 
 a gaol, which was both a pandemonium and a cesspool, or 
 worse. 
 
 In all periods of our national history, however, numbers 
 of insane people, whose homicidal or destructive mania had 
 not been detected, must, as I have pointed out in an earlier 
 chapter, have been tramping up and down the country, com- 
 mitting mysterious murders, setting ricks or houses on fire, 
 and maiming cattle. Such people often escaped detection, 
 for they showed — often they had — no consciousness of crime, 
 and they moved rapidly from place to place. 
 
 I have indeed found some traces of the imprisonment 
 of criminal lunatics, as the law now designates them, in 
 Bethlehem Hospital during the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries : for example, among the two thousand patients 
 confined during fifteen years (1772-1787) Gozna, the resident 
 medical officer, noted that some twenty had committed murder. 
 They were exceptional cases, for the governors appear to 
 
 339 
 
 1/ 
 
340 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 have taken by preference acute cases, which were just 
 becoming dangerous to the community. On the othef 
 hand, from the Stuart period, at any rate, the hospital was 
 the official house of detention for a certain class of deranged 
 people, who had been originally arrested on charges of 
 treason. These were men or women, who had intruded 
 Into royal palaces with a revelation from God to the king, 
 to propose marriage with a prince or princess, or even to 
 attempt assassination. In the reign of James I, as I have 
 already noticed, a crazy fanatic was incarcerated in Bishops- 
 gate by royal warrant. In the reigns of Charles II and 
 William III servants of the household who became insane, 
 or insane people who wrote seditious pamphlets, were com- 
 mitted to Moorfields by warrant from the Board of Green 
 Cloth. In the reign of George III attempts were actually 
 made by people, proved on examination to be mentally 
 disordered, upon the life of the king, and to one of these 
 attempts may be ascribed, indirectly at least, the building 
 of two forbidding blocks in the back gardens of the hospital, 
 which were employed from 1816 to 1864 for the housing of 
 criminal lunatics. 
 
 The attack on the person of George III led, in the first 
 place, to the immediate passing of " The Insane Offenders' 
 Act" (39 and 40 Geo. Ill c. 75), the object of which was to 
 provide for the safe custody of insane people, who had been 
 guilty of treasonable offences, or even of ordinary mis- 
 demeanours. Hitherto, when an acquittal had been pro- 
 nounced on the ground of insanity, the offenders, who had 
 often committed atrocious crimes, had — in the absence of 
 proper provision for such cases — been set at liberty, some- 
 times, as it happened, to repeat their crimes. This act 
 remedied many of the defects of the existing law, and 
 provided the formula by which criminal lunatics are still 
 " detained during his majesty's pleasure." But the act 
 was passed in a hurry, and required to be supplemented 
 by additions and definitions. It made no provision for 
 the proper treatment of those it affected, and many — if 
 not most — of the insane criminals continued to be confined 
 
THE FEMALE CRIMINAL BLOCK. 
 
 In the back garden. 
 
 [Drawn by Mr. C. Naish after a photograph f reserved in the stewards offic^.) 
 
342 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 in the county gaols with other prisoners. Here they were 
 the sport of their fellows, ridiculed, goaded into fury, and 
 initiated into evil practices. These and other scandals pro- 
 voked the intervention of a parliamentary committee, which 
 sat in 1807 to consider the defects of the system. The com- 
 mittee made their report, and in the following year the 
 House of Commons petitioned George HI to sanction the 
 erection of a State asylum for criminal lunatics, assuring 
 him at the same time of their readiness to vote the necessary 
 funds. 
 
 It so happened, as my readers may remember, that our 
 governors were at the time negotiating with the corporation 
 of London about a site in St. George's Fields, Southwark, for 
 a new hospital. Accordingly the Home Secretary (Lord Sid- 
 mouth) wrote on behalf of the ministry to inquire whether they 
 would be disposed to set aside a portion of such a site for 
 the criminal asylum contemplated. The Home Secretary 
 assured the governors that the necessary buildings would 
 be erected at the public expense, and that no charge for 
 maintenance would fall on the revenues of the charity. It 
 may, perhaps, be questioned whether the governors did well 
 in depriving the ordinary patients of so large a portion of 
 their airing-grounds, which were but small at the best. How- 
 ever, they closed — without misgiving — with the offer of Lord 
 Sidmouth, only stipulating that the new department should 
 be placed under their absolute control, and should not be 
 subjected to the visitation of the county magistrates. The 
 criminal establishment was completed and in occupation by 
 31st October, 18 16. 
 
 A glance at one of the architectural plans of the hospital 
 in a previous chapter will indicate the situation of the male 
 and female blocks in the back gardens of the main buildings. 
 Four storeys high, and generally reproducing the structural 
 arrangements of the rest of the hospital, they were con- 
 structed to accommodate fifteen females and forty-five males. 
 But, freed from working and plentifully fed, the male 
 criminals lived long, and, as crime increased, Bethlem 
 gradually became overcrowded. Those who failed to obtain 
 
THE CRIMINAL DEPARTMENT 343 
 
 admission with us had perforce to be relegated to county 
 gaols. 
 
 Now the House of Commons had already in 1807 laid 
 down the humane principle that it was undesirable to treat 
 criminal lunatics as ordinary prisoners under ordinary prison 
 discipline, or to expose them to the taint and taunts of the 
 usual type of prisoner. The Home Secretary, therefore, once 
 more approached the governors in 1835, proposing that they 
 should, on the same financial conditions as before, enlarge the 
 male block to accommodate thirty additional cases. The 
 court of governors assented, and the wards were ready for 
 their new tenants in 1838. Not long afterwards, however, 
 even the enlarged block proved inadequate to the demands 
 made upon it, and in the 'forties and 'fifties drafts of male 
 criminal lunatics had to be packed off to a special ward 
 in Fisherton House, Salisbury, and elsewhere. 
 
 Throughout these decades the tide of sentiment — philan- 
 thropic and medical — was rising gradually, but surely, against 
 the association within the same area, if not in the same wards 
 and gardens, of such patients as suffered from melancholia 
 with criminal patients, who had, as the ordinary patients 
 knew, been guilty of revolting crimes. Representations were 
 made to the Lunacy Commissioners, who adverted to the 
 evils of mixed asylums, like Bethlem, in their Reports of 1849 
 and succeeding years. In 1852 their chairman, who had 
 recently become the earl of Shaftesbury, introduced into 
 the House of Lords a motion advocating the creation of 
 a State asylum, in which insane people who had committed 
 crimes, and convicts who had become insane during their 
 term of imprisonment, might be grouped together by them- 
 selves. During the next eight years the resident physician 
 of Bethlehem Hospital set himself to leaven the sentiment 
 of the House of Commons, whose duty it would be to give 
 the bill its final shape and powers. Dr. Hood published 
 convincing pamphlets in 1854 and i860, in which he put 
 his experience at Colney Hatch and Bethlem at the service 
 of the government, and he was also able to give a practical 
 demonstration of his views on classification among criminal 
 
344 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 lunatics. Concentrating the ordinary patients into the other 
 galleries he was able, in 1857, to instal some forty of the 
 orderly and more refined male criminals in M. 4, where they 
 inherited the pictures, flowers, and birds of their exiled 
 predecessors. 
 
 With the most brutal and depraved class of criminals, who 
 remained in their old quarters, Dr. Hood had infinite trouble 
 and anxiety. Many of these lazy, cunning rogues had learnt 
 to feign insanity with initial success, and under cover of 
 irresponsibility set all rules at defiance, encouraging among 
 their fellows a spirit of discontent and mutiny. Time and 
 trained observation sufficed to demonstrate their essential 
 sanity, but the state of the law made it possible at the time 
 for the governors of convict hulks and prisons to refuse to 
 receive convicts who were certified to be well enough to 
 complete their sentences, or to transfer them back again 
 to Bethlem on the superficial plea of a relapse into insanity. 
 
 In their slang these convicts were accustomed to speak 
 of Bethlem as the " Golden Bank," and many of the worst of 
 them, if sent back to the meagre diet and exhausting labours 
 of a convict prison, proceeded within a month or two to feign 
 the stupor and inertia of dementia. Their supposed insanity 
 gave the authorities of the prison the excuse they wanted 
 to send them back to the idleness and plenty of the " Golden 
 Bank." 
 
 At one time Dr. Hood — by way of assisting in the classi- 
 fication of criminal lunatics — was inclined to keep open the 
 criminal blocks for such criminal patients as the hospital had 
 anciently received by royal warrant, but the march of events 
 drove him to favour an entire withdrawal of the criminal 
 element from the hospital at the earliest opportunity. 
 
 In the early 'fifties he recognized the fact that the time 
 had now come to eliminate the pauper patients, for whom 
 county asylums had already been built. The pauper class 
 was draining away with a last gurgle in the late 'fifties, but 
 it was difficult to attract an educated and refined class of 
 patients in their place, so long as the taint of the criminal 
 clung to the institution. No man was, therefore, more 
 
THE CRIMINAL DEPARTMENT 345 
 
 pleased than Dr. Hood, when he found that the criminals 
 were to follow the flight of the paupers. 
 
 Broadmoor was built under the provisions of the act 
 passed in i860 (23 and 24 Vict. c. 75). The asylum was 
 completed in the course of 1863, and in the May of that year 
 eleven females were dispatched to their new home, only one 
 woman being left behind in Bethlem on account of her age 
 and blindness. On 17th February of the succeeding year 
 the exodus of the male criminals began. During the next 
 six months batches of seven or eight patients were removed 
 once or twice a week, till the whole number (a hundred 
 or more) had looked their last upon the iron cages and high- 
 walled yards of Bethlem's criminal blocks. 
 
 A few of the more desperate characters had to be hand- 
 cuffed or leg-locked, but the arrangements of the South 
 Western Railway were so admirable that the transfer was 
 unattended by any sensational incidents. Among the last 
 to wave farewell to the dome were Edward Oxford, who 
 discharged two pistols at Queen Victoria in 1840, and a well- 
 known artist with a tragic dossier, whose paintings and 
 water colours are still exhibited to visitors at Bethlem and 
 Broadmoor. 
 
 There is one book, and only one book so far as I know, 
 which unlocks the doors of the criminal blocks, and shows 
 us each inmate in his cell, mending boots, making baskets, or 
 sorting his phantom treasures. There are copies of this 
 curious but coarse book in the British Museum Library and 
 at Bridewell, but it is a very rare book, and has a history 
 attached to it. The book was published in July, 1823, under 
 the title of " Sketches in Bedlam : or characteristic traits of 
 insanity, as displayed in the cases of one hundred and forty 
 patients of both sexes, now, or recently, confined in New 
 Bethlem." The anonymous author sheltered himself under 
 the modest signature of a " Constant Observer," but it was 
 obvious that he was, or had very recently been, an officer of 
 the institution. 
 
 For many years I had puzzled over the secret of the 
 authorship, and was at last on the point of building on 
 
346 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 the statement of Dr. Hood that it was " generally believed " 
 that John Haslam, formerly our apothecary, was the author, 
 when I ran up against the proceedings of a Special Com- 
 mittee which met at Bridewell on i6th July, and at Bethlem 
 19th July, 1823. 
 
 At the outset of his examination Dr. Wright, the resident 
 apothecary, stated that a "late keeper, James Smyth" had 
 " verbally and by letter " avowed himself the author of the 
 book. He refused, however, to produce the letter which 
 (as he alleged) he had received from Smyth, and he declared 
 that he had kept no copy of the letter, which he professed to 
 have sent in reply to the former attendant. The suspicions 
 of the committee had by this time been thoroughly aroused, 
 and they made an effort to secure a personal interview with 
 Smyth, to ascertain if he was the " Constant Observer " : 
 Smyth, however, " respectfully declined to attend." 
 
 It was, of course, inexpedient to promote the sale of the 
 volume by going to the courts of law for an injunction 
 against it. The governors, therefore, had to content them- 
 selves with thundering against the violation of their confidence 
 in some reverberating sentences : — 
 
 " Resolved that the publication entitled ' Sketches in 
 Bedlam ' contains statements of the cases of several patients, 
 the greater part of which are false and erroneous : that such 
 statements are drawn up in almost every instance with 
 unfeeling levity, in many cases with considerable inhumanity 
 and in most with gross indecency : that the information 
 conveyed to the public of the private history of the patients 
 and their relatives, together with copies of their suppressed 
 letters presents an abuse of confidence in some quarter : that 
 the several statements of the cases of the criminal patients, 
 both as to the crimes with which they are charged, and also 
 as to their deportment in the hospital, are detailed in an 
 equally offensive way : in addition to which there appeared 
 printed various extracts from the hospital visiting book with 
 the signatures of the persons making such entries ; and 
 the committee is of opinion, on the whole, that the work 
 in question is disgraceful to the writer, and disgusting to 
 
THE CRIMINAL DEPARTMENT 
 
 347 
 
 the reader, displaying an inexcusable violation of the con- 
 fidences of the governors in some person, who is, or has 
 been, under their employ, and manifesting the most unkind 
 
 A DOSE OF IRON — OLD STYLE. 
 
 
 A DOSE OF IRON — NEW STYLE. 
 
 and improper feeling towards the unhappy patients and their 
 friends in making the public parties to their private history, 
 their mental affliction, and their personal infirmities." 
 
348 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 Among the patients described in the " Sketches " who had 
 played a conspicuous part on the public stage, before they 
 were consigned by judge and jury to our criminal establish- 
 ment, were such men as Walsh, Barnett, and Hadfield. 
 
 Walsh had been one of the ringleaders of the mutinous 
 crew, who murdered the officers of H.M.S. Hermione, of 
 32 guns, and carried the frigate into La Guayra, 22nd 
 September, 1797. Later on and under an alias, he managed 
 to enter the navy again, and while serving on the Victory^ was 
 standing close to Nelson when he fell. 
 
 Barnett was a simpleton of weak intellect. A lawyer's clerk, 
 he spent the time he should have devoted to the passionless 
 technicalities of wills and leases in writing amatory epistles, 
 sonnets and acrostics to Miss Frances Kelly, a vivacious 
 actress of the early nineteenth century. Receiving no 
 response to the pleadings of his stage-struck heart, he fired 
 a pistol at her in 18 16, when she was playing the part 
 of Nan in "Modern Antiques" at Drury Lane. It was 
 Miss Kelly — with her " divine plain face " — whom Charles 
 Lamb sought to marry : he and his sister were in the 
 theatre when Barnett fired, and some of the shots fell 
 into Mary Lamb's lap. 
 
 James Hadfield had been a gallant dragoon : his face 
 was scarred with the wounds received in his country's 
 service. One of these wounds had weakened his intellect, 
 when he met a man (afterwards a patient of ours), who was 
 suffering from delusional insanity. This man persuaded him 
 to " prepare the way for the reign of the Messiah " by 
 firing a pistol at George III, as he was entering the royal box 
 at Drury Lane, ist May, 1800. Hadfield spent forty-nine 
 years of his life — sane enough for much of the time while he 
 was under proper control — among his birds and cats, selling 
 to his numerous visitors a basket or a poem. The money 
 which he made by his sales provided him with tobacco and 
 other little alleviations of his captivity. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 TRANSFORMATION 
 
 In the course of the thirty-second chapter we made a perambu- 
 lation of the various buildings of the hospital With a light 
 heart you accompanied me from garden to court, and from 
 court to garden, always on the safe side of solid walls and 
 locked doors. But a tour of the wards and halls behind the 
 walls and locks need have no terrors even for the nervous and 
 sensitive, for I shall only take you where you will receive a 
 cordial and courteous reception. I am sure, moreover, that 
 you will find our residents just as interested as yourselves, 
 who come from the world outside, in hearing how the hospital 
 and its patients, their diet and their surroundings, underwent 
 quite a transformation, in the course of a century. 
 
 Passing through the pillars of the noble portico, which 
 divides the house of the resident physician from that of 
 the second medical officer on your left, we pass into the 
 entrance hall. Here until 1858, or thereabouts. Gibber's 
 colossal statues couched behind curtains, which were drawn 
 aside on committee days. Such dread reminders of mental 
 agony and of the mind in ruins carried misgiving and 
 suspicion into the hearts of those who had come up on such, 
 days to submit afflicted relatives to the treatment and 
 discipline of an asylum. Consequently the figures were sent 
 into banishment at the South Kensington Museum. 
 
 In front of us (to the right, or west) is the steward's office. 
 Naturally it faces the house, which was appropriated to him 
 at the beginning of the nineteenth century ; and he had a 
 large store-room attached to his office as late as the 'fifties, 
 
 349 ^ 
 
350 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 which is represented by the clerks' office and the case-book 
 room of to-day. To our left {i.e., to the east) stands the 
 dispensary, which appears to have always occupied the same 
 position, and in front of it what used to be known as the 
 " physician's parlour." Here the resident physician is " at 
 home" every Monday to a host of anxious or bewildered 
 callers, who have just parted from their friends in the galleries 
 — at four o'clock to the second. To the left of this office is 
 the waiting-room, with its reassuring photographs of the staff 
 and wards, and the typist's office with its letter-books. 
 These two rooms combined seemed to have made up the 
 " servants' hall," or " visiting-room," of the 'twenties. In this 
 hall (for there were no night watches and clocks till the 
 'forties) each attendant took his turn of watching four hours 
 each night, within sight and sound of the ward bells. In the 
 " servants' hall " male patients also saw their visitors at this 
 period, the female patients receiving theirs in the waiting- 
 room adjoining the committee room. For a few years 
 Divine service, which was regarded in 1816 as an experiment 
 of very doubtful value, was held here on Sundays at half-past 
 nine, and also on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the congregation 
 comprising both the civil and criminal patients. 
 
 I shall be glad if you will now follow me into some of the 
 wards on both sides of the house, for I want you, first of all, 
 to get a general impression of our present environment. 
 Here, on the eastern side devoted to the neater and more 
 careful sex, you might be in the drawing-room of a ladies' 
 club in Piccadilly. There are flowers, pictures, and nick- 
 nacks everywhere ; really a lady visitor feels that she must sit 
 down on one of the tempting sofas, and order afternoon tea 
 from one of the pleasant, uniformed maids, while she turns 
 over the pages of an illustrated paper, or a recent novel. If 
 by way of contrast and complement, we cross over to the 
 western wards, we shall find the smoking-rooms, the card- 
 tables, and the billiard-rooms of a Pall Mall palace. These 
 cavernous arm-chairs would transform Spartans into dreamy 
 lotus-eaters. Perhaps, if you looked closely at the windows, 
 you would see how unmistakably they betray their origin and 
 

 
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TRANSFORMA TION 3 5 1 
 
 use, but your attention is diverted now by a natural history 
 case, now by a gallery of engravings. You cannot, to be 
 sure, call for a liqueur and coffee, but somebody can always 
 find you a cigarette, or some forgotten grains of loose tobacco, 
 for we are all devotees of the mystic weed. 
 
 You have been privileged to pass beyond the fence of 
 iron spears, which protects us from an inquisitive and un- 
 imaginative world, and you must acknowledge that we dwell 
 in quite a little earthly paradise of our own. Ah ! if only 
 Adam and Eve were content with their Eden, and did not 
 seek to taste too soon of the Tree of Life and Liberty. 
 
 This comfort, refinement, and luxury has transformed 
 these long avenues only within the last twenty years : grub 
 and chrysalis preceded the butterfly. Dismantle the wards 
 of their rich, warm carpets and agreeable furniture : send 
 away all the pictures, flowers, and cabinets of curiosities. 
 Imagine just a bare ward with bare walls and floors bare, 
 except for some bare wooden benches screwed down at 
 intervals to the unstained floors. This was the grub stage of 
 Bethlehem Hospital between 181 5 and 1852. Our wards, I 
 have read, were spotlessly clean : they were whitewashed 
 twice a year : no unpleasant odours betrayed an ill-drained or 
 ill-cleaned house. Good order and quietness prevailed — at 
 any rate in the receiving wards (No. 2), the convalescent 
 wards (No. 3), and the incurable wards (Nos. 4 and 5), even 
 though there was only one nurse or attendant in charge of 
 each of these wards, perhaps as late as 1842, when additional 
 attendants were appointed and salaries increased. You will 
 understand at once, without my adding letterpress to the 
 picture, that these are the wards of a model workhouse, and it 
 is necessary to add that those who sat brooding alone or paced 
 restlessly up and down within them belonged, in the main, to 
 the lower classes. I will now try to explain to you how the 
 grub grew into a butterfly, how a workhouse was transformed 
 into a club. 
 
 We must not be unjust to the governors of the grub period. 
 I have been privileged to read through the minutes of the 
 committee and courts of the nineteenth century, so far as it 
 
352 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 was desirable, and I have had access to the annual reports of 
 the physicians, which have been issued in type since 1848. 
 You feel, as you peruse the reports made and the statistics 
 submitted to the governors each week, that no institution 
 could be administered on stricter lines of business. Each 
 account is checked, and every complaint, however trivial, is 
 rigorously investigated. Throughout the first half of the 
 nineteenth century there were always critics raking up 
 Bethlem's past against her, and— with more justification — 
 trying to make her amenable to public control. But I 
 can testify — for I know — how anxious these men of business 
 and money and charity were — in their own way and always 
 at their own pace — to do everything that, after mature con- 
 sideration by two economical committees, seemed to be for 
 the real welfare of the hospital, its staff, and above all, of 
 its patients. 
 
 Between 18 15 and 1854, for example, they found them- 
 selves able — thanks to a prudent husbanding of their resources 
 — to double the accommodation of the institution, no fewer 
 than four hundred patients being in residence at the same 
 time in the later 'forties. In some ways, indeed, we of the 
 present generation have fallen short of the standard of their 
 beneficent wisdom, for after 1844 they introduced — on the 
 recommendation of the physicians — a system of classification 
 more minute than prevails to-day, separating convalescents 
 from the intractable or incurable in special wards and places 
 of exercise. Convinced, moreover, that employment was 
 one of the best medicines in mental sickness, they provided 
 safe and suitable work for as many as two hundred and fifty 
 patients, either about the hospital, or in the workshops which 
 they erected for this purpose. 
 
 But it was the era of reform — in the reigns of William IV 
 and Victoria: the world was changing around men of rank 
 and privilege and traditions, and our city aristocrats failed to 
 recognize the trend and significance of social upheavals and 
 of levelling proposals. 
 
 In the yeasty period under review, medical men were 
 studying the manifold problems of insanity, and propounding 
 
TRA NSFORMA TION 3 5 3 
 
 revolutionary theories of treatment in a series of volumes. 
 A society for improving the condition of the insane was 
 not only reading papers at periodical meetings, but also 
 through its members abolishing restraint, and treating even 
 the pauper as a being entitled to consideration, in the Poor 
 Law asylums, which were rising in every county. 
 
 In 1851, as I have already related, the Lunacy Commis- 
 sioners — not over-pleased that Bethlem had so long evaded 
 their inspection — undertook to awaken the Rip Van Winkles 
 ot the city to a world, which had been so completely trans- 
 formed, while they reposed on their dignity and traditions. 
 The governors were naturally a little testy at being dis- 
 turbed by a shaking and shouting that was meant to make 
 them feel that they were disgracefully behind the times. 
 However, after a little rubbing of their eyes, they recognized 
 that they would have to adapt the charity to altered con- 
 ditions, and accordingly they elected Dr. W. Charles Hood 
 to advance the present hospital from the grub to the 
 chrysalis stage, and to bring it into line with more modern 
 sentiments and requirements. 
 
 Dr. Hood gauged the situation as well as the feeling of 
 the governors and he may be said to have laid the founda- 
 tions of the hospital such as it is to-day, and to have inspired 
 it with a new spirit and modern ideals. 
 
 In the first place — with the sanction and sympathy of 
 his masters — he raised by degrees the social status of the 
 patients who were to be eligible for admission. The pro- 
 vincial asylums had already begun to drain Bethlem and 
 also St. Luke's of their parish patients, and Dr. Hood pointed 
 out to the governors in 1856 that the time had now come 
 to throw the hospital open to a higher and more educated 
 class of people — in fact, to the professional and middle 
 classes — with straitened resources. From the year 1857 
 the governors proceeded to carry out the policy submitted 
 to their judgment, and subsequent events tended still 
 further to elevate the mother of asylums in the social scale 
 after so many centuries in the service of the poorest. For 
 in 1859 the governors were able to defeat an effort made 
 
 24 
 
354 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 in the Common Council to saddle them with the pauper 
 insane of the city — a class which was being steadily elimin- 
 ated. Best of all, the government of the day decided to 
 collect all insane criminals under one roof at Broadmoor, 
 and in 1864 our Lady of Bethlehem, as I have already 
 noted, shook her contaminated skirts with a vicious swish, 
 as she slammed her doors behind the departing convicts. 
 
 Now Dr. Hood had realized from the first that, if he was 
 to attract and retain a more educated and refined class, he 
 must be prepared to offer them something akin to what 
 they were familiar with in their own homes. As early, 
 therefore, as 1852 the wizard waved his wand, and the 
 great transformation began. Carpets began to find their 
 way into chilly bedrooms, and cocoa-nut matting to unroll 
 itself over the bare boards of the echoing promenades. 
 Hey ! presto ! and the wooden benches and tables that 
 sparsely dotted the austere wards turned into arm-chairs and 
 sofas, of a comfortable, if not luxurious^ pattern, and straight- 
 way multiplied exceedingly. More magic, for the unadorned 
 walls broke out into lines of pictures, the gift of Mr. Graves, 
 a well-known print seller of Pall Mall, and, still more 
 marvellous to relate, statues in light robes of plaster, tripped 
 into the wards and obligingly occupied ugly corners, while 
 the busts of poets and kings and soldiers radiated sermons 
 on hope and courage and patience from their exalted pulpits 
 between the windows. 
 
 Dr. Hood was also the Thor who with his hammer 
 knocked out of the thick brick walls the heavy iron guards, 
 which disfigured and darkened all the windows in the upper 
 galleries until 1854. There is a solitary specimen of these 
 iron guards left embedded in the building, like one of 
 the fossils in the Portland stone pillars of the portico. It 
 may be inspected — and shuddered at — on the landing west 
 of the chapel door. You might imagine from a casual glance 
 at it that you would be able — once the casement was opened, 
 to wriggle through the iron criss-cross work of the illus- 
 tration, but it is too ingeniously contrived to allow exit, 
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TRANSFORMA TION 
 
 355 
 
 Iron bars do make a cage just as certainly as stone walls a 
 prison, and this cage-work — painted black, if you please — 
 obstructed the light, and drove the iron into many a patient's 
 soul. Charles Dickens — a good friend both to Bethlem and 
 St. Luke's — saluted the removal of the window guards with 
 quite a lyrical outburst in an account of a visit to our 
 little colony which he contributed to Household Words in 
 August, 1857: — "The light has been let into Bethlem: it 
 gives light to the flowers in the wards : it sets the birds sing- 
 ing in their aviaries : it brightens up the pictures on the 
 walls." 
 
 Transformation is a long word, and transformation is 
 
 WINDOW-GUARDS AS IN M- 4 IN 1838. 
 
 generally a long process. In the case of our windows, for 
 example, the process of transformation is still incomplete : 
 the butterfly has not yet emerged from the chrysalis stage. 
 The guarded windows were, by degrees, succeeded by the 
 general type of window, which still prevails in the corridors 
 and bedrooms : the windows, you will notice, are composed 
 of long, upright panes of glass, set in a light framework of 
 iron. If, however, you will follow me into the billiard-rooms, 
 and workrooms, of the upper wards, or into the basements, 
 you will see some harbingers of what no doubt represents the 
 final type of sash windows, with large squares of glass set in 
 
356 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 strong woodwork. It is, perhaps, significant of the comfort- 
 able pace at which we love to amble along that this form 
 of sash window, which was already in use at Lincoln and 
 Nottingham, was recommended to the governors for their 
 adoption by the Charity Commissioners as far back as 
 1838. Sash windows were not, I think, introduced into 
 our basements until 1910, and elsewhere only a few years 
 earlier. 
 
 Nearly every object, in the wards we are sauntering 
 through, might be described as a milestone to indicate the 
 great distance we have travelled since 181 5. The parquet of 
 this basement ward was preceded by a floor of wood over 
 stone : earlier still the ward was paved with cold stone and 
 for years was very damp indeed. The zephyrs from the new 
 system, by which the whole of the hospital has just been 
 heated in every crevice and cranny, almost move me to write 
 another chapter on the systems which battled for a century 
 with open fires, and fell back discomfited. It is a far cry 
 from the straw to the sheets, and from a single oil lamp in 
 each ward to a blaze of electric light. But I will make the 
 plain — not to say ugly — meal-room of each ward a porch 
 leading to some remarks on the contrasts and metamorphoses 
 of a hundred years in two departments of our daily life. 
 Originally these rooms were not only the " meal-rooms," 
 but also the " day-rooms " — the only places where there was 
 warmth in the winter. They have also had their little 
 dramas. In 18 16, for example, there was consternation one 
 Christmas : the sub-committee had ordered the roast beef 
 and mince pies to be " suppressed." However, Drs. E. T. 
 Monro and George L. Tuthill gravely informed their portly 
 masters that the health of the patients would be " injured," 
 unless Christmas fare was allowed as usual. Christmas Day, 
 indeed, came and went before the sub-committee sat again, 
 but, when they did come together again, they graciously 
 put mince pies and roast beef on the bill of fare for Old 
 Christmas Day ! And, I think, I must tell you about the 
 " banyan days " which once served to mortify the carnal 
 appetite in these dining-rooms. In the eighteenth and 
 
TRANSFORMATION 35; 
 
 nineteenth centuries the word "banyan" was used to designate 
 a Hindoo — the vegetarian who never eats meat. Banyan, or 
 meatless, days were as many as five a week before the 
 'twenties, when additions were made to the dietary table. 
 On these days broth and suet dumplings triumphed : these 
 suet dumplings, by the by, were positively loathed by the 
 criminals and house patients ! 
 
 There was a reason — and even a good reason for the times 
 — in the case of nearly everything in the long annals of 
 Bethlem which now provokes disgust, or a shudder. The 
 hospital — in its desire to serve the community — gave a 
 preference to violent and dangerous cases, and the traditional 
 canon of the physicians proclaimed a lowering diet and 
 depleting operations as the only conceivable way of treating 
 the inflamed brain. However, when the " new disease " (the 
 cholera) arrived in London at the beginning of 1832, banyan 
 days made a hurried retreat from the ward dining-rooms. 
 The most elaborate precautions were very properly taken, 
 and meat was thereafter served on seven days, rice being for 
 the time substituted for potatoes. 
 
 No doubt throughout the century the food was good of its 
 kind, and always plentiful, but it was served under conditions 
 which never allowed a man to forget the character of his 
 disease. The meat, for instance, was cut into thin strips by 
 the keeper, the patient being given a bone knife and fork to 
 tear it into eatable morsels. Steel knives, of a special kind, 
 and forks were not put into the hands of the inmates until 
 1848, but some four years earlier crockery had been substi- 
 tuted in all the wards in place of trenchers, bowls, and spoons 
 of wood. 
 
 The county asylums, of course, started life in new buildings 
 and without embarrassing traditions. Even in 1838 such 
 institutions as Hanwell and Lincoln were serving up dinners 
 with the crockery and cutlery of every-day life. This fact 
 moved the Charity Commissioners to animadvert very 
 pointedly on the " gloom of a dinner at Bethlem." 
 
 Well, I think we shall find since 191 1 the chef has 
 dissipated the "gloom of a dinner at Bethlem": a club 
 
358 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 dinner of three or four courses, which include green vege- 
 tables and fruit, has replaced gloomy with agreeable sensa- 
 tions : it is quite a sauce piquante to our meal to sit in a 
 well-lighted room, with a clean tablecloth, and in the 
 presence — at any rate — of female society ! The transfor- 
 mation of a ward meal into a hall dinner is one of the 
 greatest feats of legerdemain which our enlightened and 
 beneficent trustees have performed for the benefit of their 
 wards. 
 
 Let us now make our way through the dining hall into 
 the recreation hall, which was opened by the duke of 
 Cambridge on 9th June, 1896. In the winter season some 
 entertainment takes place here once a week at least. At the 
 back of the hall is a stage equipped with dressing-rooms and 
 all the accessories of a theatre, and once a fortnight a com- 
 pany from outside gives a comedy, when the hospital band 
 serves as an orchestra. Another night there may be a dance 
 or a lantern lecture, and on a Wednesday afternoon a sewing 
 party in the service of some charitable object. Quite a 
 butterfly existence ! Perhaps we shall appreciate our privi- 
 leges better when we learn something of the earlier forms of 
 recreation in Bethlem. 
 
 In the 'twenties the women solaced their winter evenings 
 with the strains of a barrel organ, took snuff, and "occasion- 
 ally read": in the summer they sat on the grass of their 
 garden, or played battledore and shuttlecock. As for the 
 men, they had to pump up water at a capstan (which may 
 still be seen in the grounds) for the upper galleries, but they 
 also had their football and other games. The apothecary- 
 superintendent seems also to have held a kind of drawing 
 class, for the committee at his request had blackboards 
 erected in the males' airing-court. In 1838 cricket, leap-frog, 
 and trap-ball gave the men the exercise their animal spirits 
 demanded. In the evening knitting, tailoring, cards, or 
 dominoes passed the time away in the male wards, while the 
 women were encouraged to get up little dances among 
 themselves. In 1844, although some of the governors 
 prognosticated the increase of a spirit of gambling or luxury, 
 
TRANSFORMATION 359 
 
 a billiard table slunk into one side of the house, and a piano 
 timidly insinuated itself among the ladies. Possibly the 
 piano and billiard table did, after all, raise the sluice-gates 
 of vanity and frivolity, for in the same year the patients 
 celebrated the re-opening of the Royal Exchange by a fancy 
 dress ball. It is reassuring to know that the " greatest 
 gaiety" — "and decorum" — prevailed. Eight years later 
 Dr. Hood inaugurated the new regime at Bethlem with the 
 *' social evenings," which had proved so popular a feature 
 at Hanwell : at these entertainments — which did not include 
 the association of the sexes — there was music and whist, as 
 a rule. 
 
 In the transformation scenes of the pantomime the imps of 
 darkness disappear through trap-doors, while bowers of bliss 
 and landscapes of fairyland rise tier on tier at a sign from 
 the fairy queen. I am sure that, when Dr. Hood, Dr. Helps, 
 and Dr. Rhys Williams sent out parties of patients daily to 
 visit the "sights" of London, or to make excursions to Kew 
 or the Nore, they exorcised many a mind of its gloomy or 
 irritable tenants, and lodged more hopeful and placid thoughts 
 in their room. From the first day of my chaplaincy I have 
 tried to follow in the footsteps of these pioneers, for with 
 them I realize that half an hour outside the walls does more 
 good than two hours in an airing-court. 
 
£/s/yo^^c-*re: Sr/f/tcr Jf/Ty/otrr 
 
CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 CHAPEL AND CHAPLAIN 
 
 Before we pass from the recreation hall to the chapel, I 
 want to show you two places which I overlooked in our tour 
 through the wards — the plunge bath and a padded room. 
 
 In other times it was thought that some form of shock 
 might do what it sometimes does in ordinary life, when it 
 shakes a person out of himself, his moods, and his exclusive- 
 ness. Patients were, therefore, sometimes put into revolving 
 chairs (an invention of Dr. R. W. Darwin) or thrown into a 
 plunge bath. I have never found any allusion to such a use of 
 our plunge bath at Bethlem, but as late as 1856 patients were 
 thrown into the plunge bath at St. Luke's, in hope that the 
 shock might unloose the silent tongue or thaw the frozen 
 blood. The medical officer of St. Luke's considered immer- 
 sion " valuable in certain cases and with proper precautions " : 
 indeed, the last patient ducked ascribed his recovery to the 
 practice. 
 
 I have found no account of the origin of the padded room 
 in any of the exhaustive articles of D. H. Tuke's " Dictionary 
 of Psychological Medicine." But Dr. G. M. Burrows in his 
 "Commentaries on Insanity" (1828) says that the padded 
 room was invented in 1807, or thereabouts, by a distinguished 
 German professor. Dr. Autenrieth (1772-183 5). The pro- 
 fessor knew that some form of restraint — mechanical, 
 chemical, or personal — is inevitable, but he thought that a 
 strong room, lined with india-rubber and cork, on which 
 a maniac could spend his futile fury without injuring himself, 
 
 would be found to be the best of substitutes for iron chains. 
 
 362 
 
CHAPEL AND CHAPLAIN 
 
 363 
 
 A padded room was seen at Frankfort by Mr. F. O. Martin 
 in the 'thirties, but it does not appear to have found its way 
 into Bethlem till 1844, when one was fitted up in the base- 
 ment ward on each side of the house. 
 
 We may now conclude our inspection of the interior of 
 Bethlehem Hospital, which will henceforth have no secrets 
 from us, by a glance at the committee room and chapel. 
 Let your feet sink into the luxurious carpet of the board 
 room, and walk round the room to have a look at its treasures 
 and curiosities. Here is an altar cloth — a splendid piece of 
 needlework — which once belonged to the church of All 
 Saints, Wainfleet. Here is the visitors' book : notice the 
 page which just contains the word " Elisabeth," and no more. 
 The signature is that of the murdered empress of Austria, 
 
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 mrHlfWB^ 
 
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 Keepers' 
 Room, 
 
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 Day Room. P^^ t^ 
 18.5X14.2 n|.... 
 
 ■H ■■■idilHi lit^^ 
 
 
 r 1 
 
 
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 49 
 
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 iImiii 
 
 
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 WAI 
 
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 N[0. 
 
 
 who made a progress over our realms on 25th August, 1874. 
 On this occasion I believe she presented the medical 
 superintendent with a set of pearl studs, each attendant 
 also receiving a gift of money. As for the pictures, the crests 
 of the presidents and treasurers from the reign of Edward VI 
 and other objects of interest — you will find something about 
 them in my chapter on " The Palace Beautiful." 
 
 Passing up the fireproof stone staircase we pause for 
 breath outside the landing of M. 4. From this landing to 
 the corresponding landing on the female side formerly ran a 
 gallery known as " No. 5." This gallery, of which I give a 
 plan, was on the south side of the centre of the main building, 
 and included the rooms, which are now in the occupation of 
 the first, second, and third medical officers. It was used as 
 late as the 'forties to house fifteen quiet old bodies of the 
 
364 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 female sex. A short staircase from this landing leads up to 
 the chapel, very plain and rather institutional, but not without 
 some lightness and brightness of colouring in its walls and 
 hangings. The building of this chapel closed the last chapter 
 in a long volume of controversy. 
 
 Christianity founded Bethlehem Hospital, and maintained 
 the fabric and its ministry among the insane until the Refor- 
 mation, attaching to the convent its chaplains and religious 
 services. But a reformed Church found no sphere for a 
 chaplain, and no thought was given to the spiritual welfare 
 of our patients, until 1675, when the Rev. E. Cressy wrote 
 some prayers for them as well as for the inmates of the other 
 London hospitals. Two years later the house committee 
 proposed that a " sober, aiscreet, single person " should be 
 permitted to reside in the hospital to read prayers twice a 
 day, and to administer such consolation, or give such instruc- 
 tion, as might be expedient. The proposal fell to the 
 ground, but Mr. Masters, the chaplain of Bridewell, whose 
 name I mention with respect and affection, offered to visit 
 Bethlehem five times a week. Masters, who died in 1692, 
 was succeeded by Dean Atterbury. On his resignation in 
 171 3 the court decided that the "visitation of Bethlehem was 
 quite unnecessary." 
 
 In 1788 Howard, the prison reformer, made a tour of 
 inspection through every part of the Moorfields hospital. 
 He found nothing to condemn in the condition of the various 
 buildings, nor in the arrangements made for the care and cure 
 of the patients. He noted, however, in his report that there 
 was " no chapel," and in his comments on St. Luke's Hospital 
 he did not hesitate to assert that a chapel would be an 
 advantage, at any rate in the case of recovering patients. 
 
 I may interrupt the narrative for a moment to say that 
 St. Luke's did not provide itself with a chapel until 1842, 
 when a " cholera house" was converted into a chapel ! 
 
 Something of the same kind of makeshift with associations 
 equally gruesome might have been employed at Bethlem long 
 after the new county asylums had appointed chaplains, had 
 it not been for one of the governors (W. H. Burgess), who 
 
CHAPEL AND CHAPLAIN 365 
 
 wrote with all the invective oi a Junius, and all th^ style of a 
 Gibbon. At a special court, 31st May, 18 16, he moved that 
 it was " expedient to revive the ancient practice of affording 
 to the patients the consolations to be derived from the 
 exercise of religion, and that the chaplain of the House of 
 Occupations be requested to pray with the patients of 
 Bethlem." 
 
 The physicians (George Tuthill and Edward Thomas 
 Monro) were frankly hostile to the resolution, and in justice 
 to them certain facts about certain forms of insanity should 
 be disclosed to the layman of the street. Paradoxical as it 
 may seem, certain forms of insanity are nourished by the 
 reading of the Bible or by attendance at a religious service. — 
 The man who claims to be the Messiah finds in Holy Writ 
 his justification at every page, and a woman, who is suffering 
 from religious melancholia, adds to her torments, as she looks 
 up every text of menace or condemnation in gospels or 
 epistles. Again, there are always in an asylum patients who 
 feel that every word uttered is pointed at them, and indicates y 
 very dreadful aspersions on their character, or is a veiled 
 warning of imminent disaster. 
 
 The physicians of the hospital were able to peer into the 
 minds of their patients ; their critics — inside and outside — 1 
 naturally understood very little of the psychology of a , 
 disordered mind. However, experimental services were 
 held, and a year or two was spent in collecting the ex- 
 periences of our officers and of provincial asylums, and in 
 debating the whole question. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mr. Burgess was chafing at the inaction im- 
 posed on his impatience, and at last he dashed into the 
 lists. He transfixed president and physician successively, 
 and galloped round the arena, twirling the one and the 
 other at the point of his lance. In 18 19 he published a 
 trenchant " Letter to the President," and in the following 
 year he added a corrosive postscript. The hospital was 
 still smarting under the criticism of parliamentary com- 
 mittees and the abuse of an indignant and ill-informed 
 public. The governors were, therefore, in no mood to stir 
 
366 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 up any further controversy, and the chaplain of the House 
 of Occupations (King Edward's School) was instructed in 
 the April of 1819 to act as chaplain of Bethlehem. The 
 experiment was quite a success in its way. In 1844, for 
 instance, when there were four hundred patients in residence, 
 one hundred and sixty patients — curables, incurables, and 
 criminals — were in the habit of attending service. Between 
 1824 and 1844 these services were held in the pumpkin- 
 shaped cupola, which preceded the dome. In 1844 it was 
 decided to build an octagonal dome, which would increase 
 the accommodation of the chapel, long overcrowded by its 
 congregation. 
 
 During parts of the years 1844, 1845, and 1846 the male 
 patients met at King Edward School for worship, and the 
 women in one of the wards. On 28th June, 1846, the Bishop 
 of Winchester consecrated the new chapel in the hospital, 
 " on which occasion he also held a confirmation of one 
 hundred and six inmates belonging to the House of Occu- 
 pations." The roof of the old chapel had been raised, the 
 present gallery constructed, and an organ installed. The 
 chapel at Bethlem was served by the chaplain of the House 
 of Occupations until 31st January, 1856, when the Rev. James 
 Turner was elected the first chaplain of Bethlem : he was 
 succeeded three years later by George Greenwood and 
 Charles P. Hobbs. This gentle and amiable clergyman 
 died in October, 1864, just a month before Dr. Helps. He 
 was succeeded by the Rev. J. S. Vaughan, who resigned 
 at the beginning of 1892. The Rev. J. S. Barrass held the 
 appointment for some six weeks, before he was appointed 
 rector of St. Lawrence, Jewry, and I was elected by the 
 court in the April of 1892. 
 
 Times and circumstances have altered since Mr. Burgess 
 persuaded the governors to sanction such a form and 
 measure of a religious service. The chaplain to-day has a 
 smaller parish, and his congregation is perpetually changing 
 — seldom for the better. For since 1870 the patients, as 
 they begin to recover, are drafted to a comfortable house, 
 which our good governors built among the pine woods of 
 
CHAPEL AND CHAPLAIN 367 
 
 Witley, Surrey. Their place is taken by patients not so 
 far advanced on the road to health. 
 
 We hold bright musical services every Sunday under the 
 dome, and all is done that can be done to encourage the 
 congregation to take a hearty and intelligent part in the 
 singing and praying. Nor is the chapel without its special 
 attractions — lantern services in the winter on missionary 
 travels, and festal services at other times in the year. But 
 the chaplain must find more than half his work outside 
 the chapel. He is the father-confessor of a large class of 
 his people : he can take some of the ladies or gentlemen — 
 under proper escort — to see some of the sights, or for a 
 walk in the suburbs and country ; there is the magazine to 
 be written up, or a chatty letter to be sent to an old patient. 
 Hereafter, perhaps, other work may be found for him, and 
 he may be partly a charity organization inquiry officer 
 and partly a well-equipped almoner in some Samaritan 
 scheme for the present care of a patient's family and the 
 after-care of convalescent patients. 
 
 In other pages I have striven to shed some glamour of 
 the past over the Bishopsgate property of the hospital, 
 what time the monk offered up sacrifices for the living and 
 dead, or the Elizabethan dramatist staggered into the long 
 gallery, " where the poor distracted lie," in search of a plot 
 or some characters. But I am afraid that it will be harder 
 to find any picturesque illustrations for the rest of a rather 
 prosaic narrative. 
 
 When Bethlehem Hospital, without a sigh of regret, 
 passed away in 1675 from her noisy, fetid home to a palace 
 in Moorfields, the site was let to a contractor, who seems 
 to have run up small houses upon it. Early in the same 
 century the court books lament over the stopped-up sewers, 
 dilapidated houses, and defaulting tenants of the estate 
 covered by the donation of Simon FitzMary. In the two 
 succeeding centuries the periodical " views," or surveys, of 
 the estate in like manner suggest a grimy labyrinth of 
 alleys, courts, and lanes inhabited by flax dressers, turners, 
 shoemakers, and other mechanics. . In 1752, however, the 
 
368 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 governors appear to have improved the character of the prin- 
 cipal street on this estate. This was " Bethlem Street," or 
 " Old Bethlem " (now Liverpool Street), which represents the 
 ancient path or road from Bishopsgate Street through or by 
 the convent quadrangle and over a bridge into Moorfields. 
 Ruinous houses were pulled down and replaced by houses 
 which merchants and shopkeepers were glad to occupy. 
 At the same time the entrance to the street was widened 
 at the Bishopsgate end. Towards the close of the century, 
 Finsbury Circus and Broad Street attracted the doctors as 
 Harley Street does to-day, and I gather that Bethlem Street, 
 if it did not become residential, had good commercial 
 tenants. In a directory of 1817, for example, I find that 
 the two hundred and seventy-five yards of the street in- 
 cluded a bedstead manufacturer, a brush maker, a dyer, 
 and other people of that class. 
 
 In 1825 the Commissioners of Sewers were allowed to 
 efface the historical name of Bethlem, and our committee 
 heard with some annoyance on 2nd March that the old 
 name had been replaced by Liverpool Street without any 
 reference to them. Protest was futile, but the committee 
 ordered that the words " late Bethlem Street " should be 
 affixed to the two corner houses. The new title was meant 
 to be a compliment to the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool. 
 The hospital parted with all that was left of FitzMary's 
 orchards and gardens on 6th November, 1870, when the 
 governors sold to the Great Eastern Railway Company and 
 the Metropolitan Railway Company premises indicated on 
 the accompanying plan (pp. 360, 361). 
 
 One, and one estate only, is still in the possession of 
 the hospital, as it was as early as 1330. This is the Staple 
 Hall of the Middle Ages, the Campions' house in Jacobean 
 times, and to-day part of the Devonshire House property 
 of the Society of Friends. In the 'thirties of the eighteenth 
 century it was called Magpie Alley, and the "Magpie" 
 tavern was a tied house in the hands of old Thrale, the 
 father of Dr. Johnson's friend. It has been a pleasure to 
 me to beat the bounds of this historic property in the 
 
CHAPEL AND CHAPLAIN 
 
 369 
 
 company of Mr. Norman Penny, the librarian of the Friends' 
 Library, and an antiquary like myself I hope that 
 Bethlehem Hospital will never break the last link which 
 binds her to the home where she was born, but if the site 
 of Staple Hall is ever to be sold or bartered, I hope that 
 it may pass into the care of the Friends, from whom we 
 and others learnt to treat the irrational as rational beings, 
 and to overcome evil with good. 
 
 Three years ago — towards the close of the autumn — I 
 began to write this book, and I am writing the last para- 
 
 00 f>Q 70 At sp to sa t »^ />» S 
 
 - Til I I I I r I iiMiiiMi i 
 
 'J^Sf^ V^^jr 
 
 & 
 
 
 XT 
 
 'jJie^iek-ac Tnagpye aieX>>^e. 
 
 i_r 
 
 I 
 
 ^taii fs^f. 
 
 AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SURVEY OF OUR DEVONSHIRE HOUSE ESTATE IN 
 
 BISHOPSGATE. 
 
 graphs this fine September day in 191 3. I am sitting in 
 the chaplain's room in M. 4, surrounded by portfolios of 
 illustrations and the brown-paper bags, in which I stored 
 the memoranda and transcripts destined to feed each 
 chapter. Far below my window is the glorious jungle of 
 flowers, which has replaced a grim corrugated iron verandah 
 — symbol of so many a transformation in this home of ours. 
 My staider parishioners are playing bowls with sober zest 
 on the grass : the most active and skilful are cutting viciously 
 at the lawn tennis balls : the sorrowful and listless are 
 sitting in the shelters, or moodily pacing the gravel paths 
 
 / 25 
 
370 THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 between the shrubs, hearing a voice which others cannot 
 hear, and seeing visions which are only vouchsafed to 
 insanity and genius. How many a man is sauntering 
 underneath the high wall who might have been a Blake 
 or a Swedenborg, had not his lot forbade ! 
 
 Perhaps I have undertaken a task too great for my 
 powers, for more than six centuries and a half frown in- 
 dignantly upon my daring enterprise, but at any rate — 
 in spite of limitations of temperament and training — I have 
 essayed to tell the story of Bethlehem Hospital from its 
 foundation in 1247. What I had to give, I have given, 
 and given ungrudgingly. 
 
 I have told my story frankly, not disguising how slowly 
 humanity grew up in our wards, nor how coldly the spirit 
 of progress was welcomed in a progressive age. I am not 
 even here to say that we have yet resumed the place, to 
 which our history and bur resources entitle us, at the head 
 of those who have the spirit of devotion and the material 
 and moral equipment necessary for work so delicate as ours. 
 This I can say, that the star of Bethlehem has emerged 
 from the clouds that so often dimmed its brilliancy, and 
 that the sky is now clear and blue around it. May its 
 rays for ever guide many sufferers to where peace and 
 hope and courage may be vouchsafed to them ! , 
 
APPENDIXES 
 A 
 
 QUALIFICATION OF GOVERNORSHIP 
 
 A benefaction to the hospitals (Bridewell and Bethlem), or to 
 one of them, of ^50 at the least. 
 
 \ 
 
 B 
 
 FORM OF BEQUEST 
 
 I give and bequeath to Bethlehem Royal Hospital, London, the 
 sum of jQ , free of legacy duty. 
 
 c 
 
 PRESENT STAFF OF BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL 
 
 Resident Physician and Medical Superintendent. 
 William Henry Butter Stoddart, M.D. (Lond.), F.R.C.P. Joined 
 the staff 1898. 
 
 Assistant Medical Officers. 
 John George Porter Philhps, M.D. (Lond.), B.S., M.R.C.P., 
 
 M.R.C.S. Joined the staff 1907. 
 Ralph Brown, M.D. (Lond.), B.S., L.R.C.P., M.R.C.S. Joined 
 
 the staff 191 1. 
 
 Pathologist. 
 
 Clement Lovell, M.D. (Lond.). 
 
 371 
 
in 
 
 Consultants. 
 Surgeon. — Arthur Evans, M.D. (Lond.), F.R.C.S. 
 AncESthetist. — Cecil Hughes, M.B., B.S. (Lond.). 
 Aurist and Laryngologist. — W. Mayhew Mollison, M.A., M.C. 
 
 (Camb.), F.R.C.S. 
 Ophthalmologist. — J. Francis Cunningham, F.R.C.S. 
 GyncEcologist. — Thomas G. Stevens, M.D. (Lond.), F.R.C.S. 
 Dental Surgeon. — Frederick Todd, M.R.C.S., L.D.S. 
 
 Chaplain. 
 Edward Geoffrey O'Donoghue, B.A. (Oxon.). Joined the staff 1892. 
 
 Steward. 
 Arthur Henry Martin, Colonel A.S.C. (Territorial Force). Joined 
 the staff 1889. 
 
 Matron. 
 Gladys S. Bettinson. 
 
 Head Attendant. 
 Ernest Gordon Clark. 
 
 Clerk and Receiver. 
 John Lade Worsfold. Joined the staff 1894. 
 
 MEDICAL STAFF FROM 1619. 
 
 Physician and Keeper. 
 Hilkiah Crooke ... ... ... 1 619-1634 
 
 Non-resident Physicians. 
 Othowell Meverall 
 Thomas Nurse 
 Thomas Allen 
 Edward Tyson 
 Richard Hale 
 James Monro 
 John Monro 
 Thomas Monro 
 Edward Thomas Monro 
 George Leman Tuthill .. 
 Edward Thomas Monro 
 Alexander Morison 
 
 I 634-1 648 
 1648-1667 
 1667-1684 
 1684-1708 
 1708-1728 
 1728-1752 
 1752-1792 
 1792-1816 
 
 1816-1853 \ r ' 4J 
 
 o ^ o \ Jointly 
 I8I6-I835 ) -^ 
 
 1816-1853 \ r ■ .1 
 
 o o \ Jointly 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 373 
 
 Resident Physicians. 
 
 
 William Charles Hood 
 
 1852-1862 
 
 William Helps ... 
 
 1862-1865 
 
 W. Rhys Williams 
 
 1865-1878 
 
 George H. Savage 
 
 1878-1888 
 
 Robert Percy Smith 
 
 1888-1898 
 
 Theophilus B. Hyslop ... 
 
 1898-1910 
 
 Surgeons. 
 
 
 Samuel Sambrooke 
 
 1634-1643 
 
 John Meredith 
 
 1643-1656 
 
 Edmund Higgs ... 
 
 1656-1669 
 
 Jeremy Higgs 
 
 1669-1693 
 
 Christopher Talman 
 
 1693-1708 
 
 Richard Blackstone 
 
 1708-1714 
 
 John Wheeler ... 
 
 1714-1741 
 
 Charles Wheeler... 
 
 1741-1761 
 
 Henry Wentworth 
 
 1761-1769 
 
 Richard Crowther 
 
 1769-1789 
 
 Bryan Crowther ... 
 
 1789-1815 
 
 William Lawrence 
 
 1816-1867 
 
 " Apothecaries." 
 
 
 Ralph Yardley 
 
 ?i634-i656 
 
 James James 
 
 1656-1678 
 
 Jeremy Lester ... 
 
 1678-1685 
 
 John PeUing ... ... 
 
 1685-1689 
 
 Wm. Dickenson ... ... 
 
 1689-1695 
 
 John Adams 
 
 1695-1715 
 
 Wm. Elderton 
 
 1715-1751 
 
 John Winder 
 
 1751-1772 
 
 John Gozna 
 
 1772-1795 
 
 John Haslam ... ... ... 
 
 1795-1816 
 
 George Wallett 
 
 1816-1819 
 
 Edward Wright ... 
 
 1819-1830 
 
 John Thomas 
 
 1830-1845 
 
 William Wood ... 
 
 1845-1852 
 
 WiUiam Helps ... 
 
 1852-1862 
 
 W. Rhys Williams 
 
 1862-1866 
 
374 
 
 APPENDIXES 
 
 Assistant Medical Officers. 
 
 Henry Law Kempthorne 
 
 Henry Rayner ... 
 
 Geo. Henry Savage 
 
 W. E. Ramsden Wood... 
 
 Robert Percy Smith 
 
 Theophilus Bulkeley Hyslop 
 
 Maurice Craig ... 
 
 William Henry Butter Stoddart 
 
 1866-1870 
 1870-1872 
 1872-1878 
 1878-1885 
 1885-1888 
 1888-1898 
 1898-1908 
 1908-1911 
 
 Second Assistant Medical Officers. 
 
 Harry Corner ... ... ... 1891-1894 
 
 Maurice Craig 1894-1898 
 
 William Henry Butter Stoddart... 1 898-1 908 
 
 J. G. Porter Phillips ... ... 1908-1911 
 
 INCREASE OF INSANITY 
 
 I am often asked whether insanity is not increasing at an 
 alarming rate. Experts differ in their estimates, but I will quote 
 the tenor of the conclusions reached by my friend, Dr. R. H. Cole, 
 in his " Mental Diseases " (Hodder and Stoughton), inasmuch as 
 they are generally in accord with the conservative views of the 
 Lunacy Commissioners. 
 
 The figures are available to everybody in the sixty-fifth Report 
 of the Commissioners, and there is no reason to question their 
 accuracy. In 191T the number of the certified insane reached 
 133,157, and these numbers would be very largely increased if 
 we were in a position to add the figures (which have never been 
 tabulated) for the uncertified insane and for the uncertified mentally 
 defective. On an analysis of the returns of the certified insane for 
 191 1 we have to admit that, while the general population increased 
 at a rate of io| per cent, in the decade 1901-11, the increase 
 of the certified insane in the same period was no less than 23J 
 per cent., or more than double. The rate of increase is an un- 
 deniable fact, but allowance must be made for the growing 
 accumulation of incurable cases, and for the tendency of the 
 
APPENDIXES 375 
 
 poorer classes to send mild cases and cases of senility to asylums 
 instead of putting up with them at home. Ninety per cent, of 
 the certified insane — this is a pivotal fact — belong to the pauper 
 class. 
 
 In any case (for Dr. Cole is optimistic) there are still left 267 
 sane persons to every one who is insane ! 
 
 Some further statistics may be quoted from the same source. 
 The recovery rate is 33 per cent, of the admission rate, but of 
 the patients discharged at least one-third relapse at one time or 
 another. Indeed the recovery rate, in spite of modern methods 
 and comfortable surroundings, shows very little tendency to rise. 
 
 BOOKS WRITTEN BY CONVALESCENT PATIENTS 
 ABOUT THEIR OWN CASES 
 
 "A Mind that Found Itself," Clifford W. Beers (an American), 
 
 1908. Published by Macmillan. 
 " The Maniac," Anonymous, 1909. PubHshed by Rebman. 
 
NOTES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 I 17 The story of John the Roman and of the other actors in the 
 scenes of this chapter may be read in " The Registers of 
 Innocent IV," by E. Berger, 1877. See Nos. 757, 958, 
 980, 1066, 1079, 1531, 1532, 1533, 2025, 2057, 3742, 3851, 
 4043, 4044. The transcriptions of the papal registexs will 
 be found in the British Museum catalogues under the 
 names of the popes, or under "Academies" — " Bibliotheque 
 des ecoles fran9aises d'Athenes et de Rome." 
 
 4 I M. PariSj "Chron. Maj.," ed. H. R. Luard, 1877, vol. iv. 
 pp. 590, 602, 640, 644, 
 
 4 23 " Archaeological Researches in Western Palestine," C. Cler- 
 
 mont-Ganneau, vol. ii. p. 152. 
 
 5 8 The cartulary of Holy Trinity ("Liber Trinitatis") may be 
 
 consulted at the Guildhall in four manuscript volumes, 
 MSS. catalogue. No. 122. For entry concerning FitzMary, 
 cf . vol. ii. fol. 886. The earliest lists of aldermen form one 
 of the appendixes to Sir W. Besant's " London " (Mediaeval 
 London — H istorical). 
 
 5 12 For metronymics, cf. " Family Names," Rev. S. Baring-Gould, 
 1910 : " Enghsh Surnames," C. W. Bardsley, 1875. 
 
 5 26 " History of London," 2 vols., vol. i. ch. v. p. 132, Rev. W. J. 
 Loftie. 1883. 
 
 377 
 
378 NOTES 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 In compiling this chapter I have studied very many books, 
 some of which may be named : — 
 
 " Etudes sur I'histoire de I'eghse de BethLeem," Comte 
 P. Riant and C. Kohler, 1889 : " Histoire de I'eveche de 
 Bethleem," Louis Lagenissiere, 1872 : " Les hospitaliers en 
 Terre sainte," J. Delaville le Roulx, 1904 : " The Hospital 
 of St. Germains in East Lothian and the Bethlemites," Pro- 
 ceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (1910-11), 
 vol. xlv. p. 371 (the author of this illuminating paper, to 
 which I am indebted in many ways, is Mr, Egerton 
 Beck, F.S.A.) : " Military Religious Orders," Rev. F. C. 
 Woodhouse, 1879. 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 6 7 The Byzantine Research Fund issued in 1910 an exhaustive 
 and lucid narrative, " The Church of the Nativity, Beth- 
 lehem." The interesting letterpress has been written by 
 Wm. Harvey and other authorities. I have to thank the 
 "Fund" for allowing me to reproduce some of the 
 illustrations. 
 
 10 30 The number of rays in the heraldic star of Bethlehem appears 
 
 to have varied. Matthew Paris gives us a star of five rays, 
 Riant reproduces from the arms of a convent a star of 
 seven rays, and the hospital star boasts no less than 
 sixteen. 
 
 11 8 See ch. v. 
 
 13 9 For many years I hoped to find some association of the 
 mother-house at Bethlehem with the care of the insane. 
 My search has been without success, but I may note that in 
 his " Lives of the Saints " under nth January Alban Butler 
 relates how Theodosius, the Coenobiarch, built a spacious 
 monastery at a place called " Kathismus," four or five miles 
 east of Bethlehem, and that it was soon filled with holy 
 monks. To this monastery were annexed three infirmaries. 
 One, for the sick, was the gift of a pious lady. He built 
 the other two himself — one for the aged and feeble, and 
 the other " for such as had been punished with the loss of 
 their senses or by falling under the power of the devil. 
 Every kind of succour, spiritual and temporal, was em- 
 ployed in the service of those in the infirmaries." There 
 
NOTES 379 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 were four churches — one for " convalescent lunatics, who 
 were considered in a state of penance and detained till 
 they had expiated their fault." 
 
 I may comment on the narrative so far as to explain that 
 what in this and other monastic documents is described 
 and punished as spiritual pride was really the exaltation of 
 acute or delusional mania. 
 
 13 27 Piers Plowman, Text B, pass. xv. 11. 538 and foil. : ed. 
 
 W. W. Skeat, 1886. 
 
 "A peril to the pope and prelates that he maketh, that 
 bear bishops' names of Bedleem and Babiloigne, that 
 hop about in England to hallow men's altars, and creep 
 about among the clergy, hearing confessions, which they 
 have no right to do." 
 
 Two bishops of Bethlehem were Englishmen: Ralph (1156- 
 1174) and Wilham of Bottisham (1384), a Dominican, who 
 was translated to Llandaff in the following year. 
 
 14 24 For the appeal of Welles, see ch. vii. 
 
 15 14 A military order of the star of Bethlehem was actually 
 
 founded in 1459 by Pius II, but it was suppressed when 
 the Turks took Lemnos. An order of Bethlemite hospi- 
 tallers was founded in Guatemala in i66o. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 3 St. Paul seems to have suffered from mental depression : 
 cf . 2 Cor. i. : the " thorn in the flesh " has also been 
 interpreted as epileptic seizures. 
 
 6 The atmosphere here and elsewhere is derived from 
 "Memorials of London and London Life," H. T. Riley, 
 1868, or from Sir W. Besant's books on London. 
 
 13 Matthew Paris was present himself, and afterwards dined 
 with the king. The picture will be found in a manuscript 
 at C.C.C, Cambridge. 
 
 21 The allusions in the descriptions are based on the " Rituale 
 Romanum," which Father Hendriks, of Eastwell, Melton 
 Mowbray, was good enough to lend me. 
 
380 NOTES 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 17 II It appears from Riley that a dispute took place 14th Sep- 
 tember, 1289, between the bishop of Bethlehem and one 
 of the citizens, William Poyntel, about the cutting of 
 " reeds, which were growing upon that part of the 
 meadow land which remained over and above the tenement 
 of the bishop of Bedlem." 
 
 17 19 Dunning's Alley was approximately opposite to Union 
 Street (now Brushfield Street) in Bishopsgate Without. 
 
 19 I See chapter on "Roman London" in the "Victoria History 
 of London," vol. i., ed. W. Page, 1909. 
 
 19 15 The deed poll will be found at the Record Office under 
 " Visitation of St. Mary of Bethlehem, A. D. 1403 " — Chancery 
 Miscellaneous Rolls, bundle 21, no. 5. 
 
 22 8 The names of some of the witnesses to the benefaction of 
 FitzMary receive notice in the chronicles and Letter-books 
 of the city. Ralph Sperlynges, for example, was an alder- 
 man of East Cheap ; Alexander of Shoreditch, an iron- 
 monger, succeeded FitzMary in the aldermanry, apparently 
 of Walbrook ; so far I have been unable to find what 
 jusciof stands for. Somebody at the Record Office sug- 
 gested jouster. But if the reading ought to be fusciof, we 
 might describe John as a maker of saddlery. 
 
 / CHAPTER IV 
 
 26 8 Among the original authorities for the life and policy of 
 Simon FitzMary may be mentioned : Robert Fabyan 
 (ed. H. Ellis) : "The New Chronicles," i8ri : "Chronicles," 
 Arnald FitzThedmar, ed. H. T. Riley, 1863. 
 
 26 25 Cf. " Feet of Fines," London and Middlesex (printed), 
 32 Hen. III., vol. i. no. 275. Pipe Rolls MSS. No. in, at 
 Guildhall Library. 
 
 30 6 Margery Vyell was the widow of a citizen named John 
 Vyell, who, at his marriage, had made a settlement on 
 her, and died the owner of a considerable property. She 
 claimed in 1246 to be entitled to a third of her deceased 
 husband's goods, as his widow; but the city authorities, 
 sitting at Guildhall, gave judgment against her, on the 
 
NOTES 3B1 
 
 PAGfe LINE 
 
 grounds that her settlement was sufficient, and that her 
 husband had made no further provision for her in his will. 
 The widow Vyell was by no means content, and appealed 
 to the king. The king was anxious to humble the citizens, 
 and Simon FitzMary played the king's game by opposing 
 the election of Nicholas Bat as sheriff. Henry had on 
 more than one occasion taken the city into his hands, as it 
 was termed, appointing the mayor, however, to govern it 
 for him. He now took a much more tyrannical step. 
 He sent Henry de Bath, a justice, to St. Martin's-le- 
 Grand, to try the case of the widow Vyell, and on the 
 refusal of the citizens to acknowledge his jurisdiction, took 
 possession of the city, and, setting aside the mayor and the 
 sheriffs, appointed two sheriffs in their stead. The mayor 
 journeyed to Woodstock, and had an interview with the 
 king, but could not induce him to change his mind. How- 
 ever, on 8th September, 1248, the king allowed the mayor 
 and sheriffs to be reinstated on condition that the city 
 would plead in the king's court as to the case of the widow 
 Margery. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 33 6 There are a few, and only a few, scattered allusions to priors 
 of the hospital in the earlier half of the century. For 
 example, we read in the Close Rolls that, when Walter of 
 Carlisle owed the king forty shillings, one of his securities 
 was " Brother Thomas of Doncaster, master and prior of 
 Bethlehem." Close Rolls, 21 Ed. I, m. %d (ist May, 1293). 
 This same Brother Thomas owed six marks to the clerk of 
 the king's chancery, but made default 30th January, 1304. 
 Close Rolls, 31 Ed. I, m. /\d and 32 Ed. I, m. 17 and i^d. 
 
 33 22 Richard de Swanlond, probably brother of Simon de Swan- 
 
 lond, mayor in 1327. The manor of North Mimms, Herts, 
 was conveyed to Simon in I3i6,and a chapel in the church 
 is attributed to his beneficence. 
 
 34 30 William de Banham, clerk, to be arrested (1324) : breaks 
 
 prison at Corfe (1327) : charged with robbery (1327) : pro- 
 tection as proctor (1327) : over seas with the king (1329). 
 Cf. Patent Rolls. 
 
382 NOTES 
 
 PACK LINE 
 
 35 12 John Geryn appears from R. R. Sharpe's " City Wills *' to have 
 inherited a brewhouse, garden, and shop. 
 
 35 13 John Brid (or Bird), according to H. T. Riley's " Memorials," 
 furnished the city with 24 swans at the cost of £6, 
 and 24 bitterns and herons at four guineas, for presen- 
 tation to the king's table in 1328. 
 
 35 19 A scholarly book, "Staple Inn : Custom House : Wool Court: 
 
 and Inn of Chancery," Elijah Williams, 1906, will give the 
 details upon which I have based my remarks. But there 
 is a large literature on the Staple. Cf. *' Two Thousand 
 Years of Guild Life," J. M. Lambert, 1891, and " The Gild 
 Merchant," Ch. Gross, 1890. 
 
 36 26 For the '' Protections," consult : — 
 
 P. R. 31 Hen. Ill, m. 2 (23rd September, 1247). 
 
 P. R. 41 Hen. Ill, m. 8 (20th May, 1257). 
 
 P. R. 20 Ed. I, m. 22 (5th February, 1292). 
 
 P. R. 20 Ed. I, m. 16 (15th April, 1292). 
 
 P. R. 9 Ed. II, pt. i. m. 28 (15th July, 1315). 
 
 P. R. 3 Ed. Ill, pt. ii. m. 19 (23rd September, 1329). 
 
 P. R. 4 Ed. Ill, pt. ii. m. 29 (20th April, 1330). 
 
 P. R. 5 Ed. Ill, pt. i. m. 25 (3rd March, 1331). 
 
 P. R. 5 Ed. Ill, pt. i. m. II (28th April, 1331). 
 
 P. R. 8 Ed. Ill, pt. ii. m. 25 (29th September, 1334). 
 
 P. R. 10 Ed. Ill, pt. ii. m. 9 (12th January, 1337). 
 
 P. R. 14 Ed. Ill, pt. iii. m. 9 (8th December, 1340). 
 
 P. R. 16 Ed. Ill, pt. ii. m. 30 (23rd June, 1342). 
 
 P. R. 21 Ed. Ill, pt. ii. m. 14 (i6th July, 1347). 
 
 P. R. 22 Ed. Ill, pt. ii. m. 3 (26th August, 1348). 
 
 P. R. 22 Ed. Ill, pt. iii. m. 38 (12th September, 1348). 
 
 P. R. 30 Ed. Ill, pt. ii. m. II (20th July, 1356). 
 
 39 2 It must be observed — once and for all — that there were 
 
 two convents of St. Mary in Bishopsgate Without, The 
 epithet " new " applied to our namesake seems to suggest 
 that it had been refounded. 
 
 40 5 One of my parishioners has reproduced the figure of the 
 
 brother of Bethlehem from the plate in " Ancient Abbeys," 
 John Stevens, 1723, at p. 274 in vol. ii. 
 
NOTES 383 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 44 36 For the wills, in which legacies were bequeathed to Bethlehem 
 
 Hospital in mediaeval times, consult " Calendar of City 
 Wills," R. R. Sharpe, 1889. Notice, however, that he has 
 confounded Bethlehem Hospital with the " new Hospital 
 of St. Mary, Bishopsgate," which stood on the ground 
 covered by Spital Square. Other books, upon which I have 
 drawn for wills, are " The Fifty Earliest Wills (1387- 
 1439)," F. J. Furnivall, 1882; " Testamenta Vetusta," N. H. 
 Nicolas, 1826 ; " Excerpta Historica," S. Bentley, 183 1. 
 
 45 16 Dr. Magrath, the Provost of Queen's, Oxford, has reproduced 
 
 the obituary of his college, and with his permission I have 
 copied a page from it, and filled it up with names of our 
 own benefactors. 
 
 45 37 Among the Guildhall MSS. may be found transcriptions from 
 returns made to Richard H in 1389, This transcript is 
 made from " Guild Certificates," No. 202, in the Public 
 Record Office. 
 
 47 33 The agreement between the hospital and the rector of St. 
 Botolph's, Bishopsgate, may be found in the library of St. 
 Paul's Cathedral, A. Box 6, No. 837. The transcription was 
 made for me by Miss E. Salisbury. 
 
 49 34 The petition to Urban V is noted in the Calendar of Papal 
 Petitions (1342-1419), ed. W. H. Bliss : granted at Avignon, 
 June, 1363. Cf. p. 423. 
 
 51 I The letters in Norman-French to Roger de Freton and the 
 bishop of Bethlehem are to be found in " Letters from the 
 Mayor and Corporation (1350-1370)/' R. R. Sharpe, 1885. 
 
 CHAPTER VH 
 
 The picture in the text is an adaptation by one of my patients 
 cf a mediaeval drawing in J. J. Jusserand's " English Way- 
 faring Life in the Middle Ages." 
 
384 NOTES 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 53 7 The seizure of Bedlam as an alien priory in 1375 by 
 Edward III is mentioned, according to Dugdale, in a 
 bundle in the Public Record Office, " De beneficiis alieni- 
 genorum," 48 Ed. III. I cannot trace it, but I am inchned 
 to suggest that he had in his mind P. R. 41 Ed. Ill, pt. ii. 
 m. 6d (i6th December, 1367). 
 
 53 7 For alien priories consult "Alien Priories," John Nichols, 
 
 1779. 
 
 54 15 St. Anthony's priory was converted into a "royal free 
 
 chapel" after seizure as an alien priory. Cf. Sir W. 
 Besant, " London " (Mediaeval — Ecclesiastical). 
 
 55 10 The documents relating to the contest between the king and 
 
 the mayor about the right of presentation may be consulted 
 in the city Letter-books, the Patent Rolls, and elsewhere. 
 
 Appointment of Gardyner on the death of Norton — Letter- 
 book, H, p. 165, 4 Rich. II (21st April, 1381). 
 
 Distraint on the hospital — Letter-book, H, p. 343, 
 13 Rich. II (20th July, 1389). 
 
 Writ to the sheriffs — Letter-book, H, p. 338, 12 Rich. II 
 (nth January, 1389). 
 
 58 I Rolls of Parliament, vol. iii. p. 128&, 5 Rich. II (1382). 
 
 Circular desks, British Museum. 
 
 59 I For corrodies and lease to Robt. Baron, who only lived some 
 
 seven years longer, cf. Patent Rolls, 15 Rich. II, pt. i, 
 m. 22. In the same year Richard II inspected a building 
 lease granted to Wilham Seel, baker, of a vacant piece of 
 ground " near the new tenement of the-master '' with per- 
 mission to erect all the plant of a bakery. Seel was, no 
 doubt, the baker who intruded his bakehouse into the 
 cemetery, as we shall read in a later chapter. In one of these 
 leases the measurement is computed according to " Poules 
 f et." This appears to be an allusion to the length of old St. 
 Paul's, seven hundred and twenty feet. Cf. Stow, i. 318. 
 
 59 16 For everything relating to the Skinners' Company, consult 
 " Some Account of the Skinners' Company," J. F. Wad- 
 more, 1902. I am also indebted to Chas. Knight's " History 
 of London," vol. iv, p. 114, for details of a procession of the 
 Skinners. 
 
NOTES 385 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 64 10 John of Gaddesden and John Arderne : cf . " Dictionary of 
 
 National Biography." 
 
 65 33 Stow, ii. 76. 
 
 66 3 " Piers Plowman," ed. W. W. Skeat, vol. i., Text C, pass. x. 
 
 vv. 107-37. 
 
 66 17 See ch. ix. and x. 
 66 26 See p. 68, 11. 1-9. 
 
 66 29 See ch. xiv. 
 
 67 10 " Survey of London," by J. Stow, ed. C. L. Kingsford, 1908, 
 
 vol. ii. pp. 98, 264, 379. Other references to Bethlem 
 Hospital in Stow are in vol. i. pp. 32, 106, 114, 164-5, 230, 
 319 : in vol. ii. pp. 73, 76, 144, 155, 297-8. 
 
 68 I See ch. xx. p. 165. 
 
 69 38 Concerning Robt. Denton, cf. Stow, i. 137 : P. R. 44 Ed. Ill, 
 
 pt. ii. m. 12 : 2 Rich. II, pt. i. m. 38. 
 
 72 8 For an account of the stained glass windows in the Trinity 
 chapel, in which the healing of insanity is pourtrayed, 
 consult " Notes on Painted Glass in Canterbury Cathedral," 
 with a preface by Dean F. W. Farrar, 1897. In the illus- 
 trations the figures have been taken out of the leaded 
 panes, redrawn, and enlarged by Mr. C. Naish. 
 
 CHAPTERS IX AND X 
 
 The original manuscript of the " Visitation " may be inspected 
 in the Pubhc Record Offices : Miscellaneous Rolls 21.5. It 
 may also be found transcribed with the abbreviations of 
 the original Latin on pp. 600-7, being Appendix III to the 
 Report of the Charity Commissioners (xxxii. pt. vii) on 
 Bethlem, dated 30th June, 1837. I have translated the 
 whole of the "Visitation" into English in the hospital 
 magazine {Under the Dome) for 1901 (pp. loi and 141) 
 and 1902 (pp. I and 39). 
 
 26 
 
386 NOTES 
 
 In the course of the inquiry the two following documents 
 were put in evidence : — 
 
 Grant of Mastership to Lincoln, '' the same being vacant 
 and in our presentation." P. R. 12 Rich. II, pt. i. m. 10 
 (22nd November, 1388). 
 
 Ratification of the same, the king " being unwilling that 
 the said master should be harassed, disturbed, or molested." 
 P. R. I Hen. IV, pt. i. m. 16 (25th October, 1399). 
 
 VKGE. LINE 
 
 74 4 Chaucer, " House of Fame." 
 
 74 17 For the licence granted by the archbishop of Canterbury, 
 cf. the registers of Archbishop Wittlesye, fol. 536. The 
 librarian of the Lambeth Palace library was so good as to 
 transcribe it for me from the original Latin. The licence 
 of the bishop of Salisbury may be found in the Manuscript 
 Room of the British Museum in the catalogue of the 
 Harleian Collection — vol. i. p. 461, no. 862 (33). Robert 
 Rede, bishop of Chichester, " of his special favour," also 
 granted to the " questor " of Bethlem, London, a licence to 
 collect alms. Preb. Cecil Deedes was so kind as to call my 
 attention to the licence on p. 246 of the diocesan registers 
 under Rede, printed by the Sussex Record Society. 
 
 80 3 The bursar was Master Hamond Brereton, rector of Marwood, 
 dio. Exeter : he received licence of non-residence for one 
 year, 7th April, 1397, and died 1403. Episc. Reg. dio. 
 Exeter, "Stafford." 
 
 84 34 Ratification by Henry IV to Alice Goldsmyth of Lincoln and 
 Margaret, her daughter, of an indenture dated in the 
 hospital of St. Mary, Bethleem, 26th September, i Hen. IV 
 by Robert Lincoln, the master, of a chamber and solar or 
 upper room on the north side of the chief kitchen with a 
 parcel of the great garden. P. R. 5 Hen. IV, pt. i. m. 26 
 (i8th November, 1403). 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 86 2 For St. Guthlac, consult " Memorials of St. Guthlac," W. de 
 G. Birch, 1881. 
 
NOTES 387 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 86 12 The service of exorcism will be found in the "■ Rituale 
 Romanum.'" 
 
 88 3 P. R., 7 Hen. IV, pt. ii. m. 2()d (24th May, 1406). 
 
 88 II Rolls of Parliament, vol. iv. pp. 19 and 80. 
 
 89 3 Rob. Dale appointed Master '' by advice of the council " : 
 
 P. R. I Hen. VI, pt. v. m. 6 (13th July, 1423). He 
 issues letters testimonial to Simon Baret to collect alms 
 for the hospital in the archdeaconry of Oxford, 27th 
 October, 1424. Cf. Ninth Report of Hist. MSS. Com., 
 pt. i. app. p. 213a. 
 
 89 I Atherton appointed : P. R. 15 Hen. VI, m. 43 (i8th March, 
 
 1437) with ''writ de intendendo to the brethren and 
 sisters of the hospital." Commission to mayor and others : 
 P. R. 15 Hen. VI, m. 21^^ (8th May, 1437). Cf. Harley 
 Charters, 56 F. 48 for a bond, by which Atherton is bound 
 along with John Sty ward, chandler, and John Tate, mercer, 
 the lessee of the hospital, in the sum of ;£5o. 
 
 Canon Manning, F.S.A., in some notes on Diss Church, 
 Norfolk, writes : — " In the centre of the chancel floor is a 
 stone that formerly held a chalice, and it is likely that it is 
 the burial place of a rector, in whose times the alterations 
 were made. Perhaps he was Edward Atherton, instituted 
 in 1428, who was clerk of the closet to Henry VI." 
 
 90 12 Cf. "Memorials of London," H. T. Riley, 1868. The extract 
 
 is from the city Letter-book, I, fol. 114, 13 Hen. IV 
 (1412). 
 
 90 21 Gower's will, dated 15th August, 1408, may be found in 
 
 "Testamenta Vetusta," N. H. Nicolas, 1826, vol. ii. p. 778 : 
 also the will of Lord Bassett of Drayton, who left money in 
 1389 for two chantries at the church of St. Mary Bethleem, 
 and that of Edward, Lord Hastings, who left a legacy in 
 1556 for the benefit of our patients. Forster's will is 
 transcribed in " Somerset Mediaeval Wills." 
 
 91 10 Mr. J. Gairdner has edited "The Historical Collections of 
 
 a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century" (W, 
 Gregory) for the Camden Society, 
 
388 NOTES 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 91 30 Arundell was a fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, between 
 142 1 and 1430, and he died at Chichester, i8th October, 
 1477. He was a shameless pluralist : cf. Rev. G. Hennessey's 
 edition of Newcourt's " Repertorium," The arms of 
 Arundell are still extant, and show the hirondelles of the 
 Sussex family. For these details about Arundell and for 
 many other kindnesses I am indebted to a fellow-antiquary, 
 Prebendary Cecil Deedes of Chichester. 
 
 J 91 37 The significant terms, in which three physicians (John 
 Arundell, John Faceby, and William Hatcliffe) and two 
 surgeons (Robt. Warren and John Marshall) are authorized 
 to treat the insane king, may be read in the " Proceedings 
 of the Privy Council," ed. N. H. Nicolas, 1837, under the 
 date 15th March, 1455. Cf. also D.N.B. under Arundell 
 with authorities, and P. R. 35 Hen. VI, pt. i. m. 7 
 (25th February, 1457). 
 
 94 3 For the will of Crosby and for assistance in other ways I 
 have to thank my friend, Mr. C. F. Goss, the librarian of 
 Bishopsgate Institute, and the author of a very readable 
 and scholarly life of the alderman. 
 
 94 6 The librarian of the Bodleian, Oxford, writes me about the 
 seal, reproduced at the close of the chapter : — 
 
 " We have no matrix of the old seal of the priory of St. 
 Mary of Bethlehem at London, such as Hearne reports that 
 Dr. Richard Rawlinson procured. 
 
 "What we have is an engraved copper-plate made for 
 Dr. Rawlinson, presumably from a seal of the priory which 
 he had seen, or from the original matrix he is said to have 
 possessed. And from this copper-plate we have two 
 impressions: (i) an incorrect one with 'Sigillu antiquu,' 
 etc., and (2) a corrected one with ' Sigillii comune,' the 
 copper-plate showing evident signs of it having been 
 altered to 'comune.' 
 
 "If Dr. Rawlinson had really procured an old matrix he 
 might, I suppose, have had it copied on copper-plate for 
 printing purposes. But, as I say, we have neither the 
 matrix nor an original seal, but only a copper-plate and 
 impressions printed from it." 
 
NOTES 389 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 96 7 For Hervey, cf. Patent Rolls, 37 Hen. VI, pt. i. m. 3 (6th May, 
 1459). For John Brown, P. R. 37 Hen. VI, pt. i. m. 3 
 (14th June, 1459). For Snethe (or Smeethe) P. R. 49 
 Hen. VI, m. 14 (i8th December, 1470). 
 
 q6 20 John Davyson, " king's clerk," is mentioned in the Patent 
 Rolls between 1467, when he was a clerk in chancery, and 
 1479, when he received a "general pardon." He died in 
 1485, according to an entry in the bishop of London's 
 registers (Kempe, 142) quoted by Rev. G. Hennessey in 
 his edition of Newcourt. 
 
 96 24 For Bate and Hobbs, P. R. 19 Ed. IV, m. 17 (4th Novem- 
 
 ber, 1479). A William Hobbys was the king's physician 
 in 1485. 
 
 97 I For Maudesley, P. R. i Hen. VII, pt. i. m. 10 (20th Sep- 
 
 tember, 1485): Rolls of Parliament, vol. vi. p. 372a (1485). 
 
 97 10 Thomas Deynman, P. R. 9 Hen. VII, pt. i. m. 33 (27th 
 June, 1494). 
 
 97 24 The items relating to ist June and ist December, 1495, will 
 be found under p. 103 of Bentley's " Excerpta Historica," 
 1831. 
 
 97 34 See Sir W. Besant's *' London " (Tudor period) for incidents 
 narrated. 
 
 99 33 For the Cavalari black-letter broadsheet, see British Museum 
 catalogue under " Bethlehem Hospital." 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 106 6 Cavalari was appointed warden 27th March, 15 12 (Letters 
 and Papers, 3 Hen. VIII, pt. iii. m. 10), and master 
 nth June, 1513 (5 Hen. VIII, pt. i. m. 16). So far as I 
 know, there was no difference between a warden and a 
 master. For a record of the dealings of the Cavalari 
 family with Henry VIII, cf. Letters and Papers (1510-1517). 
 In 1518 a petition is presented on account of an act of 
 immorality against one "John Cavalari," but I cannot 
 identify him for certain. I 
 
390 NOTES 
 
 PAGE LIXE 
 
 io6 26 Sir Thomas More, "The Four Last Things": ed. D. 
 O'Connor, 1903. Also his "Apology," 1533, in ^"^ edition 
 of his "Works," published in 1557, p. 9016, vol. ii. 
 
 109 3 "Why come ye nat to Courte?" Jno. Skelton, 1522: ed. 
 Dyce, ii. p. 26. 
 
 109 17 "Appointment of Boleyn, squire of the body, to be governor," 
 cf. L. and P. Hen. VIII, vol. iv. pt. iii. p. 2598 (27th 
 July, 1529) ; cf. L. and P., vol. x. 878 (p. 363) and 880 
 (p. 366). 
 
 109 24 Towards the close of Boleyn's mastership — in 1535 — Thomas 
 Corthope, curate of Harwich, preached a violent sermon 
 against the Reformation in the chapel of Bethlehem 
 Hospital. In the course of it he remarked that "these 
 new preachers nowadays that do preach their three 
 sermons in a day have made and brought in such 
 divisions and seditions as never was seen in this realm, 
 for the devil reigneth over us now" (L. and P., vol. ix. 
 1059)- 
 
 no 20 For John Mewtys, cf. Stow, i. 152: ii. 240, and 295. For 
 Peter Mewtys, cf. Letters and Papers of Henry VIII from 
 2nd October, 1536, onward. 
 
 no 31 For all documents relating to the transfer of Bethlehem 
 Hospital to the city as well as to many other events in the 
 evolution of the royal hospitals, consult at the Guildhall, or 
 in the British Museum, " Memoranda Relating to the 
 Royal Hospitals," 1836, with a supplement of 1863. 
 
 112 24 For Bowes consult "Memorials of Goldsmiths' Company," 
 
 W. Prideaux, 1896 : also Stow. 
 
 113 3 The charter of Henry VIII may be seen in Patent Rolls, 
 
 38 Hen. VIII, pt. V. m. 53. Also cf. L. and P., vol. xxi. 
 pt. ii. g. 771 (14, p. 416). 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 114 4 This lease will be found at length in the hospital magazine 
 for December, 1913. 
 
\ 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 NOTES 391 
 
 115 3 It appears from the Letters and Papers of Henry VIII under 
 27th May, 153 1, that the king's surveyors were ordered to 
 pull down the " Mews beside Charing Cross," in order that 
 the old stone, chalk, and flint, with which they were built, 
 might be used up in the building of St. James's Palace. 
 The Mews would seem to have been demolished, wholly 
 or in part, by April, 1532. But a fire burnt down the 
 royal stables at Bloomsbury, as Stow tells us, on 26th 
 August, 1534, and the Mews must have been rebuilt to 
 receive the horses transferred to Charing Cross after that 
 date. 
 
 115 5 Various custodians of the Mews, who were also farriers, 
 yeomen of the stables, and the Uke, are mentioned in the 
 Letters and Papers of Hen. VIII, e.g., Thomas Wilson 
 (1527) and our Thomas Wood (1533). 
 
 115 17 P. R. O. Miscell. Bks., vol. 223, fol. 120. 
 
 115 38 P. R. 3 and 4 Phil, and Mary, pt. vh. m. 5. 
 
 117 17 A copy of Wood's will is preserved at Bridewell. I propose 
 to insert a transcript of it in our Under the Dome for June, 
 1914. Succeeding issues of the magazine will contain 
 copies of other documents occurring in this chapter. 
 
 117 29 For the burial of Wood and other events in his life and in the 
 
 lives of other tenants of ours at Charing Cross, cf. " The 
 Accounts of the Churchwardens of St. Martin's-in-the- 
 Fields for 1525 1603," ed. J. V. Kitto, 1901. 
 
 118 19 P. R. 10 Eliz., pt. vi. m. i. 
 
 1 18 24 P. R. 6 James I, pt. ix. no. 9. 
 
 119 5 In the fire-proof room at Bridewell Hospital, where the 
 
 archives of Bethlem also find sanctuary, various documents 
 relating to this lawsuit and other lawsuits will be found. 
 One is a copy of an examination held 15th October, 43 
 Eliz. [1601], and of depositions taken 8th June, 44 Eliz. 
 [1602], in the Star Chamber. It appears from a certificate 
 annexed, as well as from various entries in the court books, 
 that these documents were extracted from the records of 
 the courts of law 14th November, 5 James I [1607], in 
 connection with a lawsuit between two of our tenants at 
 Charing Cross. Another document, which I have printed 
 
392 NOTES 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 in our magazine under March, 1914, appears to be a brief 
 drawn up for our counsel in 1648. The local and 
 picturesque touches which I have introduced into my 
 description of " Trafalgar Square " are derived from these 
 documents. 
 
 1 19 34 The sign of the " Chequers " appears to be as old as the 
 
 taverns of Pompeii, nor does there appear to be any 
 evidence to associate it with the earl of Warrenne and 
 Surrey in the reign of Edward IV. In any case, however, 
 the " Chequer " was the name of the only inn at Charing 
 from the reign of Edward VI. The "Chequer" inn 
 appears to have changed its name to the " Coach and 
 Horses" about 1716, but under date of 1732 on an 
 endorsement attached to the Star Chamber documents at 
 Bridewell it is described as the " Bell " inn. Now it is 
 a curious coincidence — if nothing more — that the sign of 
 the inn in the first plate of the "■ Harlot's Progress " (1734) 
 is indicated not only by a bell, but also by the addition 
 of chequers. 
 
 120 I I have consulted — for my reproduction of "Trafalgar 
 
 Square" — all plans available in the Print Room of the 
 British Museum, at Bridewell, and elsewhere. I have, there- 
 fore, supposed Northumberland House to cover the site of 
 Northumberland Avenue, and St. Martin's Lane to issue 
 at no great distance from, say, the "Grand Hotel," or a 
 little to the westward of it. Undoubtedly the equestrian 
 statue of Charles I occupies the site of the Eleanor Cross, 
 pulled down by the order of parliament in 1647 : just 
 behind this cross was, I imagine, the vacant strip of land 
 on the west which we lost in the sixteenth century. The 
 island refuges, right and left of the equestrian statue to-day, 
 approximately indicate, to my thinking, the earliest line of 
 the frontage of our houses at Charing Cross. 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 123 7 The " Repertories" and "Journals" of the corporation and the 
 court books of the royal hospitals will furnish the student 
 with original materials for tracing the evolution of their 
 present form of government. Also consult a rare little 
 black-letter book — to be seen at the Guildhall and else- 
 
NOTES 393 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 where — "An Order of the Royal Hospitals," 1557. An 
 admirable summary of the various stages in the develop- 
 ment of the present relations between the city and the 
 governing bodies may be found in the report of the Charity 
 Commission, XXXII, pt. vi. p. 7, under St. Bartholomew's 
 Hospital. 
 
 124 14 See p. 64 in " Church Briefs," W. A. Bewes, 1896. I have 
 
 to thank Messrs. A. & C. Black for permission to repro- 
 duce the illustration. 
 
 125 36 For Grafton, cf. D.N.B. ; he seems to have been the first 
 
 treasurer of Bridewell, Bethlem, and St. Thomas's. 
 
 126 14 The first record of a regular court at Bridewell Hospital 
 
 bears the date of 9th July, 1561. 
 
 128 28 Other keepers of Bethlehem were Sleeford, mentioned 1587 : 
 Wm. Parrett (1599-1605) : Richard Lonsdale, mentioned 
 between 1605 and 1609 : he was succeeded by J. Grimston. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 132 14 "Memoirs of Tim. Bright," W. J. Carlton, 191 1 : " Melan- 
 choHe," T. Bright, 1613 : " Shakespeare and Bright," 
 M. Levy, 1910. 
 
 132 19 " On the Tragedy of King Lear," E. Hart, 1851. 
 
 133 13 " English Medicine in Anglo-Saxon Times," J. F. Payne, 1904. 
 133 17 Court of Requests : bundle 377, No. 24, January, 1561. 
 
 133 22 "Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles," 
 
 D. Hack Tuke, 1882. " Natural History of Cornwall," Wm. 
 Borlase, 1758. 
 
 134 8 "Good Old Times," F. W. Hackwood, 1910. 
 
 134 22 "The Belman of London," Thos. Dekker : "A Caveat against 
 Common Cursitors," Thos. Harman, 1566, ed. F. J. 
 Furnivall ; " Vagrants and Vagrancy," C. J. Ribton-Turner, 
 
 1887. 
 
394 NOTES 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 138 4 There are entries in the court books of 1674 and 1675, 
 instructing Dr. Thos. Allen, the physician, to put the 
 following advertisement in the London Gazette : — 
 
 "Whereas several Vagrant Persons do wander about the 
 City of London and Countries pretending themselves to be 
 Lunaticks under cure in the Hospital of Bethlem, com- 
 monly called Bedlam, with brass plates upon their Arms 
 and inscriptions thereon. These are to give notice that 
 there is no such liberty given to an}^ Patients kept in 
 the Hospital for their cure, neither is any such plate as 
 a distinction or mark put upon any Lunatick during their 
 being there or when discharged thence. And that the 
 same is a false pretence to colour their wandering and 
 begging, and deceive the people to the dishonour of the 
 Government of that Hospital." 
 
 138 9 "Old Enghsh Popular Music," W. Chappell and H. E. 
 Wooldridge, 1893 : " Le prince d'amour," with a collection 
 of several ingenious poems and songs by the wits of the 
 age, 1660 : "The Dancing Master" (1658) and "Antidotes" 
 (1669) ; Pepys Collection, i. 460. Bishop Percy says that 
 the English have more songs on the subject of madness 
 than their neighbours ; cf . " A Collection of Old Ballads," 
 Thos. Percy, 1765. 
 
 140 15 " History of Signboards," J. Larwood and J. C. Hotten, 1875. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 141 10 " History of Parish Clerks' Company," Jas. Christie, 1893. 
 
 143 16 Among the patients mentioned in this " view" was "Anthony 
 Greene, Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, sent in 
 by the Lord of Canterbury, and Dr. Andrewes payeth 
 twenty nobles a year for him." Anthony Greene, who 
 appears to have been born in Russia, was elected a scholar 
 of Pembroke, Cambridge, on the foundation of Dr. Watts, 
 27th June, 1588. He was Reader in Greek, 1590. I have 
 to thank the librarian for information about Greene and 
 Christopher Smart. 
 
 143 37 The " Registers of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate," transcribed by 
 the Rev. A. W. C. Hallen in 1889, have been printed. 
 
NOTES 395 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 144 35 Bedlam is continually rising to the surface in Elizabethan 
 
 and Jacobean literature. Among other works, cf. Ben 
 Jonson, '' Alchemist " and " Bartholomew Fair " : Thos. 
 Middleton, '' The Changehng " ; Beaumont and Fletcher, 
 "Monsieur Thomas," "The Pilgrim," "Fie on Love"; 
 John Ford, " The Lover's Melancholy " ; and Jno. Taylor, 
 the waterman poet. Two of the bears on the Bankside 
 were known as "Rose" and "Bess" of Bedlam. 
 
 145 22 The court books contain a protest against the encroachments 
 
 of the "White Hart." 
 
 145 34 " Thy bold and brazen-fac'd exploit. 
 
 In want some coin to get, 
 At Bedlem's Bowling-alley late. 
 
 Where citizens did bet. 
 And throw their money on the ground. 
 
 To which thou did'st incline, 
 And, taking up an 'angel,' swore, 
 
 * By Heav'n, this game is mine ! ' 
 While they upon each other look, 
 
 Not knowing what to say, 
 * Clubs ' calls, ' Come, sirrah,' to his man, 
 
 And goes with coin away." 
 
 Cf. also Thos. Nash, " Pierce Pennilesse." 
 
 146 22 Works of Nicholas Breton, 2 vols., ed. A. B. Grosart, 1876-9. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 148 24 Reference has already been made to certain ecclesiastical 
 privileges possessed by Bethlehem priory. I fancy from 
 the remonstrance of convocation against the " ungodly 
 celebration of marriages frequently used in the hospital 
 of Bethlehem " (i6th Feb., 1543) that Bethlem may have 
 had its "Fleet marriages" and its "Fleet parson," while 
 it was yet a semi-monastic institution. Such a Bethlehem 
 marriage occurred in April, 1539, when a widow, refused 
 marriage by the clergy at Hitchin, achieved it at the 
 hospital (Letters and Papers of Hen. VIII, vol. xiv. pt. i. 
 no. 896). In the same year parliament petitioned the king 
 that " penalties might be devised for people, who, avoiding 
 the ordinary's jurisdiction, go to privileged places like 
 
396 NOTES 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 Bethlehem, and are married without banns by virtue of the 
 licence of the Archbishop of Canterbury confirmed under 
 the great seal " (id. no. 870). And the allusion of Dekker 
 to the marriage taking place in Bethlem suggests that the 
 privileges of a religious house outside the jurisdiction of 
 the bishop may have survived, as in the case of Holy 
 Trinity Priory, Aldgate. 
 
 151 7 J. Stow, i. 165, ii. 74. Collections relating to inns at Public 
 Library, St. Martin's Lane, W.C. "A Short Account of the 
 History of Devonshire House," Society of Friends' Library, 
 Bishopsgate, E.C. 
 
 151 9 J. W. Archer. 
 
 152 18 Cf. "History of RationaHsm," W. E. Lecky, 1865: "Eliza- 
 
 bethan Demonology," T. A. Spalding, 1880 : "Demonology," 
 Sir W. Scott, 1876. 
 
 153 1 8 " Illustrated Itinerary in the Ward of Bishopsgate," Thomas 
 
 Hugo, 1862. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 156 2 State Papers, Domestic Series, Jas. I, vol. civ. no. 19 (loth 
 
 December, 1618). 
 
 157 6 " Mikrokosmographia," Helkiah Crooke, 163 1 (2nd ed.) at the 
 
 British Museum and College of Physicians. 
 
 158 27 Petition against Bridewell, S. P. Dom. Jas. I, vol. cix. no. 68 
 
 (May, 1619). 
 
 160 19 " Micrologia," R. M., 1629; "London and the Country 
 Carbinadoed," Donald Lupton, 1632. 
 
 160 32 For Yelverton, cf. D.N.B. and S.P.D., Jas. I, vol. cxvii. no. 76 
 
 (15th November, 1620). 
 
 161 16 The name of the patient was Weekes : he had been secretary 
 
 to Lord Willoughby in Denmark. S.P.D., Jas. I, vol. cix. 
 no. 18 (8th May, 1619). 
 
NOTES 397 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 165 2 Report on Bethlehem Hospital : State Papers, Domestic 
 Series, Chas. I, vol. ccxxiv. no. 21 (loth October, 1632). 
 
 165 3 Report on Dr. Crooke, S.P.D.S., Chas. I, vol. ccxxxvii. nos. 5 
 
 and 6 (17th April, 1633), 
 
 166 8 "Ordered that henceforth the accounts of Bridewell and 
 
 Bethlem be kept apart " (court books, 13th November, 
 1630). 
 
 166 9 Order to governors and officers of Bridewelland Bethlehem 
 to bring in a clearer account, 2nd May, 163 1, cf. S.P.D.S., 
 vol. ccxiii. (Feb., 1632). 
 
 168 7 The illustrations of Pindar's house and lodge are taken from 
 J. W. Archer's ''Vestiges of Old London," 1851. See 
 also " London Vanished and Vanishing (p. 51), Philip 
 Norman. 
 
 168 31 The charter of Charles I may be found in " Historical 
 Charters of the City of London," W. de G. Birch, 
 
 1887. 
 
 168 38 Statement of commissioners of pious uses, 9th May, 163 1. 
 
 169 10 For Farnham, cf. D.N.B. : " Remarkable Characters," J. 
 
 Caulfield, 1790 : "False Prophets Discovered," J.W., 1642, 
 press mark, E. 138 (4). Printed by LW. 
 
 169 34 For Dr. Meverall, cf. " Roll of the College of Physicians," 
 W. Munk. When he was twenty-three years of age he 
 had the small-pox, and every aperture in the sick-room 
 was carefully closed up. He became insensible under 
 this treatment, and was supposed to be dead. However, 
 the preparations for burial exposed him to fresh air, and 
 he revived, just in time to escape being buried alive. 
 
 171 2 For Robins and Tannye, cf. L. Muggleton, "Acts of the 
 Witness." Tannye appears to have been an epileptic. I 
 found the entry of his death in the registers of St. Stephen's 
 church, Coleman Street, under 1689, "Thomas Tanney, 
 buried at Bedlam Yard." 
 
398 NOTES 
 
 PAGE LIXE 
 
 171 13 My friend, Mr. H. B. Wheatley, has noticed Lady Eleanor 
 and her prophecies in his " Of Anagrams," pp. 1 14-18. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 For the history of the period, so far as it affected the city, 
 I have, as elsewhere, relied on '' London and the Kingdom," 
 R. R, Sharpe. Here, as always, the local touches are 
 inspired by the court books. 
 
 179 12 For Sir G. Whitmore, cf. D.N.B. : Catalogue to the Pictures 
 at Orsett Hall, Essex, ed. Major F. H. D. C. Whitmore: 
 " London and the Kingdom " (vol. ii.), R. R. Sharpe ; and 
 letter in Times, 26th May, 1852, with references. Balmes 
 House, where Whitmore lived, was afterwards a private 
 asylum. Charles and Mary Lamb were confined in 
 *' Hoxton House," with which I identify Balmes House. 
 
 179 20 "The treasurer to be intreated to give his lands at Fulham 
 
 as security for the money he has in hand upon his several 
 accounts" (c.b., 12th May, 1641). 
 
 " The auditors treating Mr. Treasurer about the sale 
 of his land at Fulham towards satisfying the foot of his 
 account. He values the property at £,2>S P^^ annum, and 
 the price thereof ;£7oo. This is thought to be excessive 
 and ;^6oo is offered, which the treasurer thinks too little " 
 (c.b., 28th July, 1641). 
 
 180 6 R. R. Sharpe, " London and the Kingdom," is, I am sure, 
 
 in error. There would be no room in the hospital for 
 prisoners of war. But it is possible that soldiers who 
 had become insane were admitted, as in the French wars 
 of the eighteenth century. 
 
 181 I Parhament exempted the " royal hospitals " from certain 
 
 taxes; cf. Hist. MSS. Commission, Report VI, pt. i. 
 appendix, p. 36a, i6th November, 1644 : " Draft Ordinance 
 for freeing the rents and revenues of St. Bartholomew's, 
 St. Thomas's, Bridewell and Bethlem from assessment 
 in consideration of many sick and wounded soldiers being 
 supported in them, while their revenues are much 
 diminished in these dead and troublous times," 
 
NOTES 399 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 " The rents of Bethlem have lately been assessed, 
 towards payment of the arm}?^, the assessors not being 
 acquainted with the ordinance of exemption" (c.b., 4th 
 May, 1649). 
 
 182 I Some six years earlier the court began to make provision for 
 the destitute : — 
 
 " Gowns, coats, shirts, and smocks to be provided for the 
 poor lunaticks, who have no friends to take care of them" 
 (c.b., November, 1646). 
 
 182 5 ;^5o given to Bethlem by the Custom House on the order of 
 the commissioners for the " new impost on coals brought 
 into London " (c.b., 7th February, 1655). 
 
 182 6 Evelyn imagined that a patient whom he saw had been 
 
 " driven mad by writing verses," but the fact, presumably, 
 was that he had taken to write verses in consequence of 
 his acute mania. I have known very many patients become 
 poets under the inspiration of mental disease. Even in the 
 exalted stage of general paralysis many of my parishioners 
 have written long poems or translated books of Homer 
 into verse. 
 
 183 9 A list of the tokens issued by taverns in the liberty of Bethlem 
 
 during the seventeenth century will be found in William 
 Boyne's book, 1858, pp. 192, 193. There are specimens of 
 such tokens in the Guildhall library. 
 
 184 6 For George Fox, cf. " Studies in Mystical Theology," R. M. 
 
 Jones, 1909. For the story of Bunyan's religious mania I 
 have carefully studied the text of "Grace Abounding" and 
 "Pilgrim's Progress" in the Cambridge English Classics, 
 edited by Rev. John Brown. 
 
 185 22 Cf. the British Museum catalogue, under Nathaniel Bacon 
 
 and Francesco Spira. 
 
 186 25 For Daniel, cf. Granger, " History of England," ii. 460 : "The 
 
 Wonderful Magazine," vol. ii. pp. 22-3 : " Remarkable 
 Characters," James Caulfield, 1790. 
 
 187 34 The allusion may be to the Great Fire, which did not, 
 
 however, touch thje hospital, or, it may be, to a fire in 
 the roof in 1681. 
 
400 NOTES 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 189 8 "The entertainment of the Lady Monk at Fisher's Folly, 
 
 together with an address made to her by a member of the 
 college of Bedlam at her visiting these Phanatiques." 
 
 "Illustrations of English Popular Literature," J. Payne 
 Collier, vol. ii., Broadsides, p. 31, 1864. 
 
 190 30 For all references to S. Pepys, cf. H. B. Wheatley's edition 
 
 of his " Diary " — quite a classic. 
 
 191 4 For the story of the Houblon family, cf. Lady A. F. A. 
 
 Houblon's " The Houblon Family," 1907. 
 
 192 5 For local details as to the Plague I am indebted to D. Defoe, 
 
 "History of the Plague," and R. R. Sharpe's "London 
 and the Kingdom." 
 
 197 I There is no modern life of Robert Hooke, the universal 
 genius. I have, however, printed a more detailed memoir — 
 based largely on the life prefaced to his " Works " by 
 Dr. Richard Waller (1706) — in our magazine [Under the 
 Dome) for March and June, 1909. The Haberdashers' 
 Company still preserve the pasteboard model which Hooke 
 made for their almshouses. Hooke was also the architect 
 of Montagu House, erected in 1678 on the site of the 
 present British Museum : it was burnt down in 1686. 
 There are two or three manuscript volumes in the Guild- 
 hall Records Office which contain a survey of the London 
 streets after the Fire of London by Hooke and others. If 
 published, they would give us quite a directory of the 
 citizens of the period, and much general information 
 useful to historians. It is much to be wished that the 
 corporation would hasten the calendaring of their public 
 records. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 202 3 For the history of the Roman period, cf. " Victoria History 
 of London," W. Page. 
 
 202 16 I have transcribed the rest of the song in the hospital 
 magazine {Under the Dome) for December, 1909. In 
 the following year a skit on the puritans was sung by 
 somebody dressed as a " New Bedlamite " at the lord 
 mayor's banquet. 
 
NOTES 401 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 203 14 A technical and exhaustive description of the architecture 
 may be studied in the Gentleman's Magazine Library, 
 architectural volume, pt. ii. pp. 65-7. 
 
 203 16 "Ancient Topography of London," J. T. Smith, 1815. The 
 traditional story of the anger of the French king at the 
 employment of a French style of architecture may be 
 dismissed as an anti-Gallican fable. 
 
 203 29 For Robert White, cf . pp. 55 and 56 of *' The Old Engravers 
 
 of England," M. A. Salaman, 1906. 
 
 204 30 For Gibber, consult D.N.B. : " Lives of British Painters," 
 
 vol. iii. p. 26, Allan Cunningham, 1829 : " Nollekens and 
 His Times," J. T. Smith, ed. Gosse, 1875 : " Anecdotes of 
 Painting," H. Walpole, ed. R. N. Wornum, 1888. 
 
 In the 'eighties Mr. Deputy Atkins told Lieut-Colonel 
 Copeland, the treasurer, that he remembered these figures 
 over the gates of the Moorfields hospital in the early part 
 of the nineteenth century, as also seeing the gardeners 
 mowing the lawns in Lothbury at the back of the Bank 
 of England. The figures accompanied the patients from 
 the Moorfields hospital to the present building, where they 
 remained until 1858. In that year they were removed to 
 the South Kensington Museum. Finally Mr. Joshua Butter- 
 worth, F.S.A., removed them to the Guildhall, where they 
 now shun the public eye in a dark corner of the crypt- 
 museum, in 1888. 
 
 There are many allusions in the court books to repairs 
 executed on the "figures." 
 
 ?o6 4 My friend, Mr. James Arrow, has furnished me with some 
 valuable remarks on beadles' staves in general, and on ours 
 in particular : — 
 
 " The beadle's staff came in shortly after the Restoration. 
 But the date cannot always be definitely stated, for the 
 hall-marks are in many cases obliterated. Your very hand- 
 some, massive, and beautifully preserved staff-head is of 
 solid silver, some 13 inches in height. Elongated and 
 pear-shaped, it is surmounted by a circular medallion 
 measuring 4 inches in diameter, bearing on both sides 
 the royal arms, Tudor and Stuart. The heraldic devices 
 are embossed and chased in extreme relief. The summit 
 of the staff-head is encircled with acanthus-leaf chasing, 
 beneath which are three shields on a level, bearing 
 27 
 
402 NOTES 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 the arms respectively of Sir William Turner, Bethlem 
 Hospital, and of the city. Acanthus-leaf ornamental 
 work fills up the spaces, and a bold thread-work divides 
 the lower portion, which is ornamented by the figure 
 of a lion rampant, some scroll-work, and the coat of 
 arms, which the donor, J. Kendall, caused to be placed 
 upon it to commemorate his princely gift. Round the 
 base of the staff-head is the following inscription, clearly 
 engraved in contemporary lettering : — ' The gift of Jno. 
 Kendall, a Governor of this Hospital, 1682.' But, as is so 
 often the case, the hall-marks have become obliterated by 
 time and the rather hard wear to which it has been 
 subjected. There is, however, very little doubt that it was 
 made by the silversmith commissioned to execute the 
 fellow staff-head (identical in every respect except exact 
 weight and size) at Bridewell about the year 1682, the date 
 of the inscription, which in itself somewhat confirms the 
 assumption. The Bridewell staff-head still bears the 
 maker's mark in exquisite perfection, which is repro- 
 duced in William Chaffers' work on Hall-marks (1913), 
 as one of those still unidentified, viz. 'G. S.' above a 
 star on a pointed shield, about which Chaffers says : ' On 
 the above plate are the marks from workmen taken at this 
 office (Goldsmiths' Hall) prior to the 15th of April, 1697, of 
 which not any other entry is to be found, from the date 
 of the Goldsmiths' order, 1675, to the new standard, 1697.' " 
 
 207 9 The treasurer, Lieut. -Colonel Copeland, who is an authority on 
 art, thinks that the portrait of Henry VTH might have been 
 painted by Guillim Streetes, painter to Edward VI, in 155 1. 
 I might also suggest the name of Nicholas Lyzard (d. 1570). 
 Cf. The Connoisseur, vol. xxxi. p. 72, October, 191 1 ; "An 
 Early English pre- Holbein School of Portraiture," William 
 A. Shaw. There is a reproduction of the Warwick Castle 
 Henry VHI in the Magazine of Art for April, 1895, p. 212. 
 D'Arlincourt remarks that Henry VHI is appropriately 
 housed in Bedlam. 
 
 209 3 Another portrait of Sir William Turner in the Hall at Bride- 
 well, where are many Lelys and Knellers, was painted by 
 Mrs. Mary Beale (1632-1697). Her husband says in his 
 diary, under January, 1677 : " Mrs. B. painted Sir William 
 Turner's picture from head to foot for our worthy friend, 
 Mr. Knollys." See also court book (2nd March, 1677) : — 
 "At this court Mr. Francis Knollys, one of the governors, 
 
NOTES 403 
 
 MGE LiNfi 
 
 thanked for Sir W. Turner's picture, which he of late freely 
 gave to Bridewell. . . . Mr. Beale to be added to the 
 committee for regulating Bethlem." 
 
 211 II The master of St. John's College, Cambridge, has been good 
 enough to give me details of John Thamar : — "John 
 Thamar, son of Thomas Thamar, of Peterborough, B.A. 
 of Peterhouse. He was admitted to St. John's, 26th 
 January, 167 1, and elected a Fellow of St. John's on the 
 nomination of the bishop of Ely, 30th October, 1672." 
 Thamar appears to have been admitted into the hospital 
 at the end of 1676 or thereabouts. He died 13th May, 
 1700, and was buried two days later in the Bethlem 
 burial-yard. 
 
 The site of the hospital burial-ground appears to be 
 occiipied to-day by the church and churchyard of St. Mary, 
 Charterhouse. The neighbourhood of the burial-ground 
 was known as the " Wooden World,'' from the number of 
 houses surrounding it which were built of lath, plaster, and 
 timber. Some of the patients were also buried in " Tindall's 
 burial-ground," which was Bunhill Fields. Close to St. 
 Mary's, Charterhouse, is a street still called Play House 
 Yard. Here stood the famous "Fortune" theatre, opened 
 in 1601, burnt down in 1621, rebuilt, but gutted by sectaries 
 in 1649. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 212 2 Roger Jarman was the carpenter, Cartwright the mason, and 
 Fitch the bricklayer. 
 
 212 16 For Bolton, see R. R. Sharpe, " London and the Kingdom," 
 
 vol. ii., and Pepys's " Diary." 
 
 213 27 In the annals of the Society of Friends I notice that in 1678 
 
 John Goodson, surgeon, of St. Bartholomew Close, proposed 
 to take a " large house for distempered and discomposed 
 people." 
 
 213 32 For Lord William Craven and other members of the family, 
 
 who were good friends to the hospital, cf. D.N.B. 
 
 214 14 The broadsides on Sir William Turner will be found in the 
 
 "Large Room" of the British Museum, "Poetical Broad 
 
 ^ C. 20 f. 2 C. 20 f . 2 _, 
 
 sides, p. 158, — , , 82 L. 8. 
 
 ^ "^ 198 200 ' 
 
404 NOTES 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 222 13 Cedars Road, Clapham Common, approximately indicates the 
 site of the house occupied by Hewer and Pepys. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 For the history of the period, cf. R. R. Sharpe, '' London and 
 the Kingdom," vol. ii. The court books also reflect the 
 policy of Charles II and James II towards the institutions 
 of the city. 
 
 223 18 Mr. C. H. C. Du Cane wrote to me on 27th July, 1912 : — - 
 
 " I have in my possession among the family plate a flagon 
 weighing about 70 oz., and bearing the hall-mark of 1676/7. 
 It is inscribed as follows : ' Given by order of Courte for 
 the Hospitalls of Bridewell and Bethlem, London, to 
 Benjamin Du Cane Esqre., as a Memorial of their thanks 
 for his great care and paines in building of new Bethlem 
 and Bridewell, and likewise for his faithfull discharge of 
 the office of Treasurer to both houses April 27, 1677.' It 
 is interesting to hear of the record of the presentation, and, 
 perhaps, there were originally a pair of the flagons. The 
 price given (;^4o) is also interesting from the fact that two 
 years ago a well-known dealer made me an offer of a 
 thousand guineas for the flagon, I believe on behalf of an 
 American purchaser. It is in an unusually good state of 
 preservation, and, of course, the inscription adds largely to 
 its value." 
 
 Benjamin Du Cane, the sixth son of John Du Quesne, 
 born 20th March, 1612, married Olive, daughter of Richard 
 Price, and died 13th April, 1690. His ancestor fled out 
 of Flanders from the duke of Alva's persecution, and 
 settled in Canterbury. 
 
 224 15 For Tyson see D.N.B. and authorities quoted : " Survey of 
 
 London " (Stow), 2 vols.. Rev. John Strype, 1720 : " Roll 
 of the College of Physicians," W. Munk, 1878 : also Thomas 
 Hearne's "Collections," Oxford Historical Society, vol. vii., 
 from which I give a quotation in all its wealth of capitals : — 
 
 "Tyson (Edw.), A.M. of Magd. Hall, became a Practi- 
 tioner of Phys. in London, and rais'd himself to some 
 eminency. After this, by the Perswasion of some intimate 
 Friends, he was prevail'd with to commence Dr. of Phys. 
 
NOTES 405 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 in Cambridge. Being a man of Parts and Ingenuity he 
 prepared his Exercise before he went down to the Uni- 
 versity ; but when he came there (as he himself was pleased 
 to tell his Friend and Fellow Student, Dr. Plott) they would 
 not let him do his Exercise, but insisted upon having his 
 Money instead of it. Which Dr. Tyson took so very ill yt, 
 tho' he accepted of his Degree, as not knowing well how 
 to avoid it, yet he frequently said yt he could not well look 
 upon himself as a Doctor of Physick." 
 
 227 12 Many touches in my sketch of Tyson's funeral are derived 
 from a chapter in Sir W. Besant's novel, "The Orange 
 Girl." 
 
 229 I A painting of Lee hangs on the walls of the Garrick Club, 
 and also at the Dulwich picture gallery, and there are 
 engraved portraits of him in the Print Room at the British 
 Museum. A writer in the Connoisseur, vol. xxxiv. p. 6 
 (September, 1912), in an article on " Plumbagoes," or 
 miniatures in lead pencil, attributes to William Faithorne, 
 the elder (1616-1691), a portrait, which he reproduces. I 
 cannot, indeed, find it in the list of Faithorne's works, but 
 it looks to me as if the Garrick Club portrait and other 
 pictures of Nathaniel Lee had been painted from it. It is 
 stated that Lee was released at the wish of the duke of York. 
 The Board of Green Cloth formerly dealt with all crimes 
 and misdemeanours committed within the precincts of the 
 royal palaces : to-day it confines itself to regulating the 
 duties of the servants of the royal household. 
 
 231 8 For Guy see D.N.B. and " Biographical History of Guy's 
 Hospital," G. T. Bettany and S. Wilks, 1892. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 234 2 For Dr. Hale cf. Dod, Harveian oration (1729), in the Museum 
 
 Library : also " Collections " (Thomas Hearne), Oxford 
 Historical Society, vol. vii. : for his portrait at Oxford cf. 
 "Catalogue of Portraits at Oxford," Rachel E. Poole, 1912. 
 
 235 27 Hist. MSS. Report VI, pt. i., appendix, p. 2296, under date 
 
 6th February, 1609-1610. Lord Percy with Lady Penelope 
 and her two sisters " saw the lions, the show of Bethle- 
 hem, the place where the prince was created, and the 
 fireworks at the Artillery Gardens," 
 
4o6 NOTES 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 235 29 The details used in this chapter to describe the scenes 
 on visiting days may be studied in the Taller, i8th June, 
 1709 : 28th January, 1710 : Gentleman's Magazine, 1745 : 
 London Spy, Edward Ward, 1699 : Thomas Brown, Works, 
 vol. iii., ed, 1760 : The World, 7th June and 22nd November, 
 1753 • " The Adventures of a Specialist," G. A. Stevens, 
 1788: "The Man of Feeling," Henry Mackenzie, 1771. 
 
 241 18 A list of the pamphlets and sermons of Stafford will be found 
 
 under his name in the British Museum catalogue. 
 
 242 8 "Poems on Several Occasions," H. Carey, 1729. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVn 
 
 243 13 Some details of the life of Edward Barkham may be found 
 in Dome, Dec, 1904 ; Hannah Fowke, sister of our bene- 
 factor, was granted an annuity of £^0, but "she died very 
 poor, having to pawn her things." 
 
 243 18 There was a " Bedlam Square " in Worksop within the memory 
 
 of one of my correspondents ; I have found traces of the 
 name near Cheltenham and near Wareham. Mr. F. W. 
 Hackwood tells me that fifty years ago in the Midlands 
 children had a game, " Release Bedlam," based on the 
 captures and escapes of local patients. 
 
 244 9 For the yield of the estates, the gift of Barkham, between 
 
 1817 and 1836, cf. Charity Commissioners' Report, p. 496. 
 
 244 15 I have extracted from the court books the following notes 
 relating to the building of the Incurable blocks :— 
 
 1723 (i8th July). Court resolves that special apartments 
 for incurables be built and application to be made to the 
 city for a piece of land in Moorfields. 1723 (iSth Novem- 
 ber). Building Committee desired to proceed to build wing 
 for male incurables. Richard Walton elected first incurable 
 patient — acute case, no lucid intervals, no friends or means. 
 1725 (17th December). Subscription book to be sent round. 
 Building has begun out of benefactions already given. 
 1728 (12th July), The incurable list not to include 
 "mopes": only mischievous and ungovernable eligible. 
 1733 (28th June). Agreed to erect a wing for female 
 incurables at west. 1736 (nth February). Thanks to a 
 governor for supervising the building of the female 
 incurable wing. 
 
NOTES 407 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 244 27 For description of Hogarth's " Bedlam " cf . '' Political and 
 Personal Satires," F. G. Stephens, 1877, vol. iii. pt. i. 
 No. 2246 and following : " Hogarth MoraHsed," Jno. 
 Trusler, 1768: "Description of Soane Museum" (1905). 
 Let me at this point make acknowledgment to the curator 
 (Mr. Spiers) of this httle known, but most interesting, 
 museum, for many courtesies. 
 
 249 15 For the Rawlinsons cf. D.N.B. : " Literary Anecdotes of the 
 Eighteenth Century," J. G. Nichols: "Catalogue of Por- 
 traits at Oxford," Rachel E. Poole, 191 2. Richard RawUn- 
 son left Bridewell £200 on condition that the portrait, a 
 Kneller, of his father, Sir Thomas Rawlinson (president 
 1705-1708), was hung on the walls of the Mansion House. 
 It was finally restored to Bridewell, but not before it had 
 received damage by neglect. 
 
 249 26 I have to thank Dr. Richard R. Leeper, Resident Medical 
 Superintendent of St. Patrick's Hospital (fd. 1745), Dublin, 
 for more than one reference about Swift, and also for the 
 gift of the print reproduced elsewhere. For the " Closing 
 years of Swift's life" (1849) see Sir W. R. Wilde. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVni 
 
 252 12 Pope : " Imitations of Horace," bk. ii. ep. i. 1. 419. 
 
 '• Let my dirty leaves 
 Clothe spice, line trunks, or, fluttering in a row, 
 Befringe the rails of Bedlam and Soho." 
 
 Also cf. Taller, No. 174, and note there by J. Nichols that 
 r the "walls of Bedlam were almost covered from 17 10 to 
 
 1786 by the dealers in second-hand books." 
 
 253 II For the "Harlequin Methodist" caricature consult "Cata- 
 
 logue of Prints and Drawings," F. G. Stephens, vol, iv. 
 No. 4092, p. 330 ; date c. 1763. A fuller description of the 
 thermometer design will be found in vol. iii. pt. i. p. 304 of 
 the same work. 
 
 253 36 For the story of Periam see "Journals of G. Whitefield," 
 W. Wale, 1905, pp. 261 and foil. 
 
408 NOTES 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 254 3?) There are several allusions to Dr. James Monro and Dr. John 
 
 Monro in Walpole's " Letters." The portraits of the four 
 Monros of this book, who served the hospital as physicians 
 — the son succeeding the father from 1728 to 1853 — may 
 be inspected on the walls of the College of Physicians. 
 
 255 20 For the association of John Wesley with Bethlem and 
 
 insanity cf. the standard edition of his "Journals," by 
 Rev. N. Curnock, 1909. Many curious problems are sug- 
 gested by some of the entries. The presence and the voice 
 of Wesley often provoked the paroxysms of raving mad- 
 ness : on the other hand he was often able after praying 
 and singing for a long while to reduce acute mania to 
 silence, or even to calmness. Wesley describes in his 
 " Journals " many cases of religious mania with which 
 he came in contact, but always as if they were cases of 
 demoniacal possession. 
 
 259 19 For fuller descriptions of the " Military Prophet " satire see 
 
 " Catalogue of Prints and Drawings," F. G. Stephens, 
 vol. iii. pt. i. No. 3076 : Walpole's " Letters," 2nd April 
 and 19th May, 1750 : General Advertiser 3.n.d other journals 
 in April and May, 1750 : '' Diary of Charles Wesley " under 
 4th and 5th April, 1750 : London Magazine, 1750. Stephens 
 gives the prophet's name as Mitchell. A man of that name 
 was certainly admitted into Bethlem later in the year ; 
 he, however, came from a Somersetshire village. 
 
 260 3 William Hutton's ''Life," 1816, pp. 71, 74. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 264 4 On ist October, 1777, a report was made to the court by 
 the grand committee of Bethlem that Thomas Home, a 
 governor of long standing, had for five or six months 
 drawn from the buttery " joints, milk, bread, beer, cheese, 
 butter, and vomits." The steward, William Rashfield, was 
 reprimanded for his connivance. 
 
 266 4 " De Londres et ses environs," printed at Amsterdam without 
 an author's name in 1788. An interesting article on the 
 London of the period might be written out of this book, 
 which is in the Guildhall Library. 
 
NOTES 409 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 266 32 For " Bibliography ot the Writings of Christopher Smart " 
 (1903), cf. G. J. Gray. It is to the late Rev. D. C. Tovey 
 that the literary world owes the straightening out of the 
 Smart tangle. I hope that Pembroke College, Cambridge, 
 may acquire Mr. Cowslade's picture of Smart. The refer- 
 ences to Bethlem in "The Midwife" (3 vols., 1750-1753), 
 which Smart edited, are in vol. i. pp. 176, 193, and ii. 
 p. 17. Cf. also R. Browning's " Parleyings with Certain 
 People," 1887. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 For the " Life and Reign of George III " I have generally 
 followed J. H. Jesse, 1867, and Sir N. Wraxall, " Historical 
 Memoirs," 1815, and " Posthumous Memoirs," 1836, as well 
 as other authorities given in D.N.B. 
 
 I discovered most of the caricatures reproduced in these 
 pages by a systematic search, year by year, in the " Smith 
 Collection " of caricatures in the Print Room at the British 
 Museum. 
 
 272 27 For the allusions to Dr. Johnson there is only one book and 
 one index to consult — the edition of Boswell with Dr. G. B. 
 Hill's notes and references. 
 
 274 10 CoUins, the poet, seems to have died in 1759 of general 
 paralysis of the insane, though the incubation of the disease 
 must be dated from 1750. 
 
 274 31 In A. C. Benson's " Thy Rod and Thy Staff," 1912, there 
 
 may be studied the best description — in a literary sense — of 
 melancholia, which often assumes the names of neuras- 
 thenia or nervous breakdown : Mr. Benson suffered (he 
 tells us) from melancholia for two or three years. 
 
 275 I There are many allusions in the works and biographies of 
 
 George Borrow to the "screaming horrors," the "delirium,'' 
 and the " depression " from which he suffered from time 
 to time. It would appear to have been some form and 
 measure of melancholia, possibly accompanied by voices 
 or visions. Borrow found draughts of port or good ale the 
 best medicine. The disciples of Borrow will recall the 
 
4IO ^ NOTES 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 letter attributed to Isopel Berners in " Romany Rye " 
 (ch. xvi.) : — 
 
 " For some time past I have become almost convinced 
 that, though with a wonderful deal of learning, and ex- 
 ceedingly shrewd in some things, you were — pray don't be 
 offended — at the root mad ; and though mad people, I have 
 been told, sometimes make very good husbands, I was un- 
 willing that your friends, if you had any, should say that 
 Belle Berners, the workhouse girl, took advantage of your 
 infirmity." 
 
 275 10 Among other allusions to the hospital in Walpole's letters 
 
 (ed. Mrs. P. Toynbee, 1903) may be cited ii. 173 ; iv. 381 ; 
 vi. 133 ; ix. 273 ; xi. 114 and 215. 
 
 276 20 In some accounts of the Gordon riots the destruction of the 
 
 Roman Catholic chapel is assigned to the .Sunday evening. 
 
 277 17 On 15th December, 1774, the treasurer, W. Kinleside, was 
 
 suspended, and it was decided to borrow ;^5,ooo at 4 per 
 cent, from Messrs. Ladbroke, Rawlinson, & Co., to meet 
 the necessary expenses of both hospitals. On 29th Decem- 
 ber, 1774, Kinleside was discharged from his office and 
 struck off the list of governors. On 29th May, 1775, a 
 committee made their financial recommendations, one of 
 which was that the treasurer should give security for 
 ;^5,ooo. Another financial committee sat in 1792, and 
 issued a very valuable report, which may be read in the 
 British Museum, or at Bridewell. -. 
 
 277 24 The Rev. Thomas Bowen matriculated from Merchant 
 Taylors' School at St. John's College, Oxford, 4th May, 
 1766, at the age of 17 : he took his B.A. in 1770, and M.A. 
 in 1774. He succeeded on his matriculation to a fellowship 
 at St. John's by virtue of his school, where he was third 
 undermaster in 1772 : in 1774 he was elected reader and 
 schoolmaster at Bridewell. In 1798, when he was chaplain 
 (a superior office) of Bridewell and private chaplain to Sir 
 Richard Carr Glyn (our president and the lord mayor of the 
 year), he preached on the Thanksgiving Day for the victory 
 of the Nile. He was also chaplain to the Temple Bar 
 Military Association (formed to resist the invasion by 
 Napoleon), of which our treasurer, Richard Clark, was 
 commandant. Bowen died in 1.800. 
 
NOTES 411 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 278 30 It appears from the records in Chelsea Hospital for 1775-1776 
 that Hannah Snell was resident for some years at Walsall 
 in Staffordshire, but the town clerk has been unable to 
 trace any account of her residence. She is also stated to 
 have lived with her son (Eyles) in Church Street, Stoke 
 Newington. 
 
 281 21 "A Tour to London," translated by T. Nugent, 1772, from the 
 French original by P. J. Grosley ; " Observations sur 
 Londres," Franc. Lacombe, 1777. 
 
 283 19 For St, Luke's (founded 13th June, 1750, and opened 30th 
 July, 1751, in the " Foundry," the scene of John and 
 Charles Wesley's ministry) see '' A Short History of St. 
 Luke's Hospital," Wm. Rawes, M.D., the Medical Super- 
 intendent, 190 1. 
 
 285 I I made a pilgrimage to Pitt House, Hampstead, in 1913, to 
 see the two rooms which Lord Chatham occupied, while 
 suffering from melancholia. The ante-room has a door 
 with a small hatch or cupboard. His servant placed the 
 food in the cupboard and then went downstairs, where- 
 upon Chatham opened the door of the hatch or cupboard, 
 and removed the food. A picture of the room will be 
 found in Thos. J. Barratt's "Annals of Hampstead," 1912, 
 Cf. also London County Council, " Houses of Historical 
 Interest," part xxv., with authorities quoted. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 286 4 According to an anecdote preserved in " Diaries of a Lady of 
 
 OuaHty " (ed. A. Hayward, 1864), " the duke of Marl- 
 borough, when in a state of complete imbecility, was 
 actually exhibited by his servants to all who chose to give 
 an additional fee, after having stared at all the magnificence 
 of Blenheim." 
 
 287 27 I have quoted from a life of John Newton by the Rev. Josiah 
 
 Bull, i\ 
 
 289 9 I found the story of " Mad Joe " {Joseph Hill) at the Guildhall 
 in Scrap-book no. 9 — a collection of newspaper cuttings, 
 etc. 
 
412 NOTES 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 296 II For St. George's Fields consult " London Pleasure Gardens," 
 W. W. Wroth, 1896; " Old Southwark," W. Rendle, 1878 ; 
 "Inns of Old Southwark," W. Rendle and Ph. Norman, 
 1888 ; collections of cuttings, etc., at Guildhall. 
 
 298 20 To make this thieves' slang intelligible, let me explain a few 
 of the words. " Rig " is a lively froUc ; " blowing," a showy, 
 sweetheart ; " nutty," amorous ; " tips you the turnips," 
 throws you over ; " sherries," runs away ; " stroking," 
 stealing money from ; " gallows good," awfully good ; 
 "bilking," swindling; "prig," thief. In the last verse 
 "tippy" is, up to everything ; " rattle," a coach ; "she's the 
 stake " (while her lover hangs), she has the stolen property 
 on her. According to Byron this song was very popular in 
 his day, and was often sung by Wm. Jackson, his teacher 
 of boxing. Cf. p. 248, " Musa Pedestris," J. S. Farmer, 
 1896. 
 
 300 2 The " Gardner Collection " is now in the possession of Sir 
 E. F. Coates, who is building a house to enshrine his 
 treasures. Students will be grateful to him, if he will make 
 them as accessible as are the prints of the Grace Collection 
 in the British Museurn. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 310 31 Life of J. Gandon, T. J. Mulvany, 1846. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 315 2 Details concerning the work of Tuke and others will be found 
 in " Chapters in the History of the Insane," D. H. Tuke, 
 1882 : D.N.B., " Philippe Pinel," Francis Tiffany, 1898. It 
 was not till the 'forties that America was driven to reform 
 her asylum system under the lash of Miss Dorothea Dix : 
 cf. her life by F. Tiffany. 
 
 315 15 R. Gardiner Hill (1811-1878) : appointed in 1835 resident 
 house surgeon at the Lincoln Asylum, where he " literally 
 lived among his patients." He was, perhaps, the first to 
 carry out the non-restraint system on a large scale. 
 
 E. P. Charlesworth (1783-1853): visiting physician to the 
 Lincoln Asylum from 1820 : devoted himself to the limita- 
 
NOTES 413 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 tion of restraint and insisted on the necessity of classification 
 and proper exercise. 
 
 A genial memoir of John Conolly (1794-1866) will be found 
 in the Journal of Mental Science for July, 1866, by Henry 
 Maudsley. He was resident physician at Hanwell from 
 1839 t<^ 1^43 • ^^' D.N.B. and British Museum catalogue. 
 
 315 18 For the insanity of George HI consult J. H. Jesse, Sir N. 
 Wraxall ; "Court and Private Life of George HI," Mrs. 
 C. L. H. Papendiek, 1887 ; " Life of Sir H. Halford," W. 
 Munk ; Madame D'Arblay's " Diary," etc. 
 
 317 6 For Francis WilHs (1717-1807) and his sons cf. D.N.B., 
 Madame D'Arblay's " Diary," etc. 
 
 320 17 Antony Ashley Cooper (1801-1885) became the seventh earl 
 
 of Shaftesbury in 185 1. 
 
 321 24 The evidence taken before the parliamentary committee may 
 
 be read in " Report with Minutes of Evidence," arranged by 
 J. B. Sharpe, 1815. 
 
 322 II My friend, Mr. James Arrow, writes to me about the porter's 
 
 badge as follows : — 
 
 "The porter's badge, which measures 5|- inches by 4^ 
 inches, is beautifull)^ embossed and chased and has in its 
 centre a raised representation of the coat of arms of the 
 hospital encircled by a laurel wreath of leaves and berries, 
 tied at the base by a small ribbon with flowing ends. The 
 hall-marks are four in number (denoting its origin to a date 
 previous to 1784), but the year-mark is not sufficiently clear 
 to be fixed upon with certainty — but it looks remarkably 
 like 1686 — a very probable date for many reasons. The 
 rnaker's mark is not to be found in Chaffers' ' London Hall 
 Marks ' — but the letters are probably IS.AE, and the name 
 is uncertain. A small space has been filed down at the 
 back and the following engraved upon it : — Edward Dunsion,' 
 1782, in addition to which in a rough untutored hand some 
 probable wearer of the badge has scratched with a sharp 
 point the letters W.N.H." 
 
 324 13 For John Haslam cf. D.N.B. : W. Jerdan, "Autobiography," 
 1852 : Genilema7i's Magazine, 1844 ; " Roll of College of 
 Physicians," W. Munk. An amusing sketch of George 
 Dawe, who painted the portrait of Haslam, may be enjoyed 
 in ch. xxii. of the " Life of Ch. Lamb," by E. V. Lucas. 
 
414 NOTES 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 326 7 An account of Thomas Monro and of his hospitality towards 
 artists will be found in the " Life of J. M. W. Turner," by 
 G. W. Thornbury. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 327 4 A little biography of George Leman Tuthill will be found in 
 Mr. Munk's '' Roll of the College of Physicians." Tuthill 
 was an honourable gentleman ; nothing, if not straight- 
 forward. His manner was sententious, and his speech 
 leaped forth through his lips in quick, short sentences. He 
 was a friend of Charles Lamb and of Mary Lamb, his sister, 
 and it was he who advised Hoxton House in view of her 
 recurring mania. Charles Lamb himself spent some six 
 weeks in the same private asylum in early life (1795-1796). 
 
 327 7 Edward Thomas Monro was the last of his family (let the 
 D.N.B. note) to hold office in the hospital. After the up- 
 heaval of 1852 the governors dislodged him from the staff by 
 appointing him in 1853 consulting physician. He survived 
 the grant of this shadowy dignity for two years. Just before 
 his death (in June, 1855) he had applied for a pension, 
 alleging that his private resources were inadequate. A 
 pension was eventually granted to the doctor (in January, 
 1856), but meanwhile he had died. However, Mrs. Monro 
 was awarded a gratuity. 
 
 327 ID For Lawrence cf. D.N.B. with authorities quoted. 
 
 328 18 The " bookseller named Smith " was probably the founder of 
 
 W. H. Smith & Son, who moved into the Strand about 
 this period. 
 
 330 25 The evidence taken against Edward Wright in 1830, with his 
 defence, will be found in " Minutes of Evidence taken by 
 the Committee appointed to inquire into the Charges against 
 Dr. Wright, and his Answer." Reprinted for E. Wright, 
 M.D., president of the Phrenological Society of London, 
 member of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh," etc. 
 A copy of this pamphlet is preserved in the library of the 
 College of Physicians, and another at Bridewell. 
 
 330 28 " The Report of the Charity Commissioners concerning 
 Hospitals," xxxii. pt. vi., 1837. 
 
NOTES 415 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 331 3 In his "Treatise on Madness" (1758) Dr. Battie, physician of 
 St. Luke's, animadverted on the policy of Dr. James Monro 
 in excluding medical pupils from the wards of Bethlem. 
 Dr. John Monro (his son) replied to Dr. Battie in a pamphlet 
 of considerable asperity in the same year. Battie resigned 
 his place at St. Luke's in 1774, and was nominated for the 
 treasurership of Bethlem in 1775. 
 
 331 32 "Bethlehem Hospital : Return to the House of Commons," 
 
 December, 1852. 
 
 332 34 William Wood, to whom we owe the long panes of our front 
 
 windows, was the author of " Remarks on the Plea of 
 Insanity" (1851). It contains some account of the more 
 notorious of the criminal patients. Dr. Wood was the 
 founder and sole proprietor of " The Priory," Roehampton. 
 His son (Dr. E. Ramsden Wood) served the hospital as 
 assistant medical officer from 1878 to 1885. 
 
 333 6 Dr. (afterwards Sir) Alexander Morison (1779-1866) was 
 
 appointed physician to Bethlehem Hospital on the decease 
 of Tuthill 7th May, 1835 • o^^® o^ ^^^ earliest to give lec- 
 tures, in 1820, to pupils and others on insanity, he was also 
 progressive in his views. He was, for example, an original 
 member of an " Association of Medical Officers from 
 Hospitals for the Insane," formed at Gloucester, July, 1841. 
 The object of the association was to " improve the manage- 
 ment of asylums and the treatment of the insane." Each 
 year it was their custom to visit one or two institutions, and 
 afterwards to hold a meeting when papers were read and 
 discussed. The association was very anxious to visit Bethlem 
 in 1843, but the governors had already been singed by 
 the blaze of publicity, and declined the pleasure of their 
 company. 
 
 I think there is no doubt that nothing in the report of the 
 parliamentary committee could with any justice reflect on 
 Morison, who spared neither time nor trouble in his treat- 
 ment of our patients. Indeed, the governors seem to have 
 felt that they had misjudged his case in coupling him with 
 Monro, for when he agreed to resign at the age of 74, after 
 eighteen years' service, fitting tribute was unanimously paid 
 to his industry and kindness, and he was awarded a pension 
 of ;^i5o a year. I am indebted to Sir A. Morison's "Cases 
 of Mental Disease " and " Physiognomy of Disease " for 
 some of my remarks on Hogarth's " Bedlam " and Cibber's 
 statues. 
 
416 NOTES 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 333 21 William Charles Hood, the son of a doctor, was born in 
 S. Lambeth in 1824. Educated at Brighton and Trinity 
 College, Dublin, he entered at Guy's in the early 'forties. 
 He commenced his professional career as resident 
 physician in a private lunatic asylum (Fiddington House, 
 Devizes), but was shortly afterwards appointed first 
 medical superintendent of Colney Hatch, which had been 
 recently erected. At a special court, held 12th June, 1852, 
 Dr. Hood was elected resident medical superintendent of 
 ■' Bethlem, when he resigned the governorship which he had 
 
 held since 1849 : he seems to have actually entered on 
 his duties 4th November, 1852. He resigned his appoint- 
 ment at Bethlem 30th August, 1862, to take up the duties 
 of a Lord Chancellor's visitor for the insane. He was 
 elected treasurer of Bridewell and Bethlem 29th June, 
 1868, and was knighted at Windsor 7th July in the same 
 year. The incessant work of the two offices undermined 
 a constitution naturally robust and vigorous, and he suc- 
 cumbed at the treasurer's house at Bridewell to an attack 
 of pleurisy at the early age of 45 on 4th January, 1870. 
 
 333 25 I hope that the historian who corrects and continues my 
 work will find time and place for a little biography of 
 George Henry Haydon (1822-1891), who was elected 
 steward in succession to Nathaniel Nicholls, 4th April, 1853 
 — the very day on which one of the governors, nearly 
 twenty years in advance of his day, suggested the estab- 
 lishment of a convalescent home in the country for our 
 patients. Haydon was not only the steward of the hospital, 
 but he was also an artist and a man of literary gifts. He 
 was the author of some Australian sketches and of other 
 papers of a lighter turn, and he also contributed some 
 twenty or thirty pictures to Punch between i86o and 1863. 
 It may be said of him that he left his mark on two worlds. 
 He was an explorer in Australia in 1840, when Melbourne 
 was just a cluster of huts on the north bank of the Yarra, 
 and little else. In England (this was in 1852) he was 
 among the first to originate the volunteer movement at 
 Exeter. It was Haydon who presented to the hospital 
 most of the plaster statues and statuettes, which help to 
 soften the severe lines of our wards. A short account 
 of his career will be found in Under the Dome for March, 
 1892, and there is a bundle of his letters at Bridewell, 
 delightfully illustrated, which would bear setting out in 
 cold type. 
 
NOTES 417 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 333 27 I have for the most part relied on J. H. MacMichael's 
 " Charing Cross," 1906, for my pictures of Charing Cross, 
 but the minute books of the court and committees have 
 corrected many of his mistakes and given the finishing 
 touches. 
 
 335 10 For T. Bish and all that concerns lotteries cf. " English 
 Lotteries," Jno. Ashton, 1893. Carrol & Co. at no. 7, 
 Charing Cross, and Swift & Co. at no. 12, were also lottery 
 contractors, and are often mentioned in lottery literature. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 Authorities consulted for this chapter : — The minutes of 
 the court and other committees of the hospital, the annual 
 reports of the medical officers. Dr. Hood's pamphlets, the 
 writings of D. Hack Tuke, and "Sketches in Bedlam." 
 
 339 25 For Gozna and his scientific analysis of his own statistics, cf. 
 
 "Dissertation on Insanity," William Black, 181 1. 
 
 340 6 In his "Memorials of St. James's Palace" (1894), Canon J. E. 
 
 Sheppard has devoted a chapter (vol. i. ch. xxi.) to 
 " Eccentric Visitors " at the palace. In the same chapter 
 will be found an illustration of the attack on George III, 
 2nd August, 1786, by Margaret Nicholson from an 
 engraving by Robert Pollard of a picture painted by 
 Robert Smirke. Margaret was confined in Bethlem from 
 1786 to 1828. 
 
 343 34 The titles of Dr. Hood's pamphlets will be found in the 
 British Museum Library catalogue. 
 
 345 20 The story of the well-known artist may be read in the World 
 26th December, 1877. 
 
 348 5 The librarian of the Admiralty library tells me that the 
 Hermione was recaptured from the Spaniards at Puerto 
 Cabello in Venezuela 25th October, 1799, and restored to 
 the navy under the name of the Retribution ; he refers me 
 to vol. iv. of "The History of the Royal Navy," Laird 
 Clowes, 1899, and to Blackwood's Magazine for April, 1910. 
 
 28 
 
41 8 NOTES 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 PAGE LINE 
 
 365 33 "A letter to the president," 1819, and "The chaplaincy 
 appointment," 1820. 
 
 367 28 For the evolution of Liverpool Street out of Old Bethlem, 
 
 I have studied the court books and old leases of the 
 hospital, William Maitland's " History of London " (vol. ii. 
 p. 795, in ed. 1756), and "London and Westminster/' 
 Richard Horwood, 1799. 
 
 368 25 The whole, or part, of the site of Broad Street station 
 
 belonged to Bethlehem Hospital in the Middle Ages. 
 Portions of this ground, however, appear to have been 
 alienated from time to time, and in 1569 the city appro- 
 priated an acre of it (presumably the burial ground of 
 the convent) as a burial ground for strangers. This burial 
 ground would seem to be represented by the western side 
 of the station, inasmuch as the North London Railway 
 Company had to purchase this part of the estate from 
 the city : the rest of the area was bought from individual 
 owners. 
 
 368 30 The lease of our Staple Hall estate granted by Mewtys in 
 1536 may be inspected at Bridewell. In that year the 
 property consisted of a cottage — in a state of ruin and 
 decay — together with a garden. Monastic property was 
 hardly worth keeping in good repair in the crisis of the 
 dissolution of religious houses. However John Stryng- 
 fellow was ready to rebuild the cottage, and to enclose the 
 ' garden with a brick wall. He was, therefore, granted a 
 lease of ninety-nine years at a yearly rental of thirteen 
 shillings and four pence. This cottage — the Society of 
 Friends will be interested to know — lay betVv^een the 
 tenement of one William Parker on the north and the 
 great messuage called "The Dolphin" on the south. 
 Parker, I think, was a speculator in Church property. 
 On the east Stryngfellow's garden abutted on the land 
 of the dissolved priory of St. Mary Spital, the cottage 
 fronting Bishopsgate Street. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Adams (J.), apothecary, 373 
 
 Agas (R.), his map of Charing 
 
 Cross, 120 
 Aldgate, Priory of Holy Trinity, 5, 
 
 30, 377, 396 
 Alien priories, 53-55, 384 
 Allen (Edward), keeper, father of 
 Edward AUeyne, 130, 131, 141 
 Allen (Thomas), physician, 191, 
 
 220, 372, 394 
 Allen (William), 130, 131 
 Alleyne (Edward), actor, 131 
 Anatomy of Melanclioly, The, 147, 
 
 161-163 
 Arderne (J.), surgeon, 64, 385 
 Arms of Bethlehem Hospital, Pre- 
 Reformation and Post-Refor- 
 mation, 15, 60, 102-105, 208 
 Arundell (J.), master, 91, 92, 234, 
 
 319, 388 
 Atherton (E.), master, 89, 387 
 Audeley (Lady E.), a patient, 171- 
 
 176, 398 
 Audley (James de), 49, 58 
 Autenrieth (Professor), inventor 
 
 of the " padded room," 362 
 
 Baker (D.), treasurer, 223 
 Banham (W. de), prior, 33-35, 
 
 381 
 Barkham (Edward), a benefactor, 
 
 25, 243, 244, 406 
 Barkham Terrace, 294 
 
 Barnes (Dr. R.), suitor for master- 
 ship, no 
 Barnett (G.), a patient, 348 
 Basketmen, see Keepers (male 
 
 attendants) 
 Bate (Walter), master, 96, 389 
 Battie (W.), physician of St. Luke's 
 
 Hospital, 415 
 Beadle's staff, An account of the, 
 
 206, 401, 402 
 Beauchamp (John), 58 
 Beauchamp (William de), 33 
 Bedlam, as a place-name, 243, 406 
 *' Bedlam," as a term of abuse, 107- 
 
 109, 145 
 Bedlam, Bethlem, Bethalem, 
 
 Betleem, etc. ; see Bethlehem 
 
 Hospital 
 Bedlam Broke Loose, 217-219 
 " Bedlam," painted and engraved 
 
 by Hogarth, see Hogarth 
 Bethlehem Cross, 65, 385 
 Bethlehem Hospital, the first, built 
 
 in Bishopsgate Without, 16- 
 
 201 
 Bethlehem Hospital, the second, 
 
 built in Moorfields, 202-292, 
 
 312, 313, 314, 320-322, 324- 
 
 326, 340, 364, 401 
 Bethlehem Hospital, the third, 
 
 built in St. George's Fields, 
 
 South wark, 292-294, 302-310, 
 
 327-333, 342-367, 369, 370 
 
 419 
 
425 
 
 INDUX 
 
 Bethlehem (Palestine), Basilica of, 
 2, 5) 6-9» 13) 20-24, loO; loi. 
 377, 378 
 
 Bishops of, 
 
 I, 2, 3, 4, 7, 13, 15, 16, 21, 50, 
 
 51, 377, 378, 379, 380, 383 
 
 ■Brothers of, 
 
 3, 4> 7, 9-15, 33, 34, 47, 48, 51, 
 59, 100, 377, 378, 382, 383 
 
 —History of, 
 
 I, 2, 6-8, 12, 13, 17, 378 
 
 Monastery 
 
 of, 3, 7, 8, 12, 13, 100, 377, 
 
 378 
 Bethlehem's Beauty ^ 210, 211 
 Bethlem, a poem, 237 
 Bettinson (G. S.), matron, 372 
 Bishopsgate, Within and Without, 
 
 16, 31, 36, 38, 60, 84, 85, 92, 
 
 93,97,98, 106, 131, 155, 179, 
 
 189, 215, 389 
 Bishopsgate Without, Parish of 
 
 St. Botolph, 16, 17, 19, 20, 32, 
 
 33, 34, 35, 39, 47, 48, 5^, 57, 
 141, 142, 145, 151, 153, 154, 
 155, 165, 182, 183, 191, 194, 
 198, 367, 368, 390, 396 
 
 Black Death, disastrous to hos- 
 pital, 49 
 
 Blackstone (R.), surgeon, 373 
 
 Boleyn (George), Viscount Roch- 
 ford, master, 109, no, 114, 
 208, 390 
 
 Bolton (Sir W.), a governor, 191, 
 212, 2T3, 403 
 
 Borrow (G.), 275, 409, 410 
 
 Bowen (Rev. T.), his Historical 
 Account, 277, 278, 283, 312, 
 410 
 
 Bowes (Sir M.), 112, 390 
 
 Bradelay (John de), rector of St. 
 Botolph' s, Bishopsgate, 47, 48, 
 
 383 
 Breton (N.), author of The Forte 
 
 of Fancie, 146, 147, 395 
 
 Brid, or Bird (J.), 35, 382 ; see also 
 "Dolphin "inn 
 
 Bridewell Hospital, 54, 68, 106, 
 114, 119, 123-130, 137, 143, 144, 
 145,151,153,158,159,166,167, 
 179, 181, 193, 206, 209, 216,217, 
 227, 236, 240, 244, 249, 263, 277, 
 278, 326, 330, 391, 393, 396, 397, 
 398, 402, 410 
 
 Brief, issued by Elizabeth, 124, 
 
 393 
 Bright (Dr. T.), author, 132, 164, 393 
 
 Broadmoor Asylum, 345, 354 
 
 Broad Street station, 141, 142, 384, 
 
 418 
 
 Brown (John), master, 96, 389 
 
 Brown (R.), assistant physician, 
 
 371 
 Brown (Tom), author, 240, 241, 
 
 406 
 Bunyan (J.), Insanity of, 184-186, 
 
 399 
 Burke (Edmund), Caricature of, 
 284, 409 
 
 Campion Family, The, 153, 368 
 Carcas (J.), a patient, 219-222 
 Carpenter (John), a benefactor, 
 
 90 
 Catlett (Elizabeth), a patient, 287, 
 
 288, 411 
 Cavalari (J.), master, 15, 100, 106, 
 
 389 
 Certiorari, writ of, 54 
 
 Changeling, The, 158, 395 
 
 Chantries, 81, 387 
 
 Chapel of the first hospital, The, 
 
 44, 45, 47, 48, 52, 56, 57, 59, 
 
 60, 76, 81, 84, 89, 141, 390 
 Charing Cross Estate, 66-68, 1 14- 
 
 122, 179, 180, 191, 333-338, 
 
 391, 392, 417 
 Charity Commission of 1837, The, 
 
 125, 330, 356, 357, 385, 393, 
 414 
 
INDEX 
 
 421 
 
 Charles I, 157, 164-167, 168, 176, 
 
 179-181, 397 
 — II, 180, 195, 203, 204, 208, 
 
 213, 222, 223, 340, 404 
 Charles worth (E. P.), lunacy 
 
 reformer, 315, 412 
 Charters, see Henry VIII and 
 
 Charles I 
 Chatham (Lord), his melancholia, 
 
 283-285, 411 
 " Chequer " inn, The, Charing 
 
 Cross, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 
 
 i9i> 334. 392 
 Chircheman (R.), proctor, 54, 384 
 
 Cibber (C. G.), sculptor ; see Statues 
 of Mania and Dementia 
 
 City assumes control of first hos- 
 pital, 11,37-44 
 
 Clamecy, France, 3, 7, 15, 50-52, 
 
 378 
 Clark (E. G.), head attendant, 372 
 " Coach and Horses " inn. Charing 
 
 Cross, formerly the "Chequer," 
 
 120, 334, 392 
 ColHns (W.), poet, 274, 286, 409 
 Commission of 1632 and 1633, 
 
 165-167, 397 
 " Concealed lands," Significance 
 
 of, 118 
 Confraternity of St. Mary of 
 
 Bethlehem, 45, 47, 91, 99-101, 
 
 383, 389 
 Conolly (J.), lunacy reformer, 315, 
 
 413 
 Copeland (Lt.-Col. A. J.), treasurer, 
 
 125, 402 
 Corner (H.), medical officer, 374 
 Corpus Christi, Confraternity of, 
 
 59-61 
 Corrodies, 59, 384 
 Counterfeit Cranke, The, 135-137 
 Country Spy, The, 264, 265 
 Court Books, The, 125, 126, 128, 
 
 129, 130, 156, 189, 192, 193, 
 
 240, 395, 398, 399, 402, 406 
 
 Craig (M.), medical officer, 374 
 Criminal establishment, The, 339- 
 
 348, 417 
 Cromwell (O.), 176, 180-188, 398, 
 
 399 
 Crooke (Dr. H.), Keeper, 156-160, 
 
 164-168, 372, 396, 397 
 Crosby (Sir J.), a benefactor, 94, 
 
 388 
 Crowther (Bryan), surgeon, 321, 
 
 373 
 (Richard), surgeon, 373 
 
 Croydon (John of), a benefactor, 
 
 25; 45 
 Cunningham (J. F.), ophthalmo- 
 logist, 372 
 
 Dale (R.), master, 89, 387 
 Daniel, Cromwell's porter, 186- 
 
 188, 192, 399 
 D'Arcy (John), 58 
 Davies (Lady E.), see Audeley 
 Davyson (J.), master, 96, 389 
 Defoe (D.), 232, 233, 400 
 Dekker (T.), dramatist, 145, 148- 
 
 152, 393 
 De Londres et de ses environs, 266, 
 
 282, 283, 408 
 Denton (R.), 69, 70, 385 
 Devonshire House, 153, 154, 155, 
 
 368, 396, 400 
 Devonshire House Estate, Bishops- 
 gate, see Staple Hall, and 
 
 Friends, Society of 
 Deynman (T.), master, 97, 389 
 Dickenson (W.), apothecary, 373 
 Dix (Dorothea), her work in 
 
 American asylums, 243, 412 
 " Dog and Duck " tavern, The, 
 
 296-301, 307, 412 
 "Dolphin" inn. The, 151, 153, 
 
 179' 396* 418 ; see also Staple 
 
 Hall, and Brid 
 Doncaster (Brother Thomas of), 
 
 prior, 381 
 
422 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Douglas (Lady E.), see Audeley 
 Drapers' Company, 45-47, 289, 
 290, 383 ; see also Confra- 
 ternity 
 Du Cane (B.), treasurer, 223, 224, 
 
 404 
 Dugdale (Sir W.), herald, 102, 208 
 Dunning's Alley, Bishopsgate, 17, 
 
 20, 31, 165, 380 
 Dunstall (J.), artist, 204 
 
 Earthquake, The, see Military 
 
 Prophet 
 Edward I, 4, 67, 382 
 
 11, 36, 382 
 
 Ill, 13, 53, 54, 58, 68, 74, 
 
 382, 384, 385 
 
 IV, 6, 389 
 
 VI, 115, 117, 118, 126, 141, 
 
 391 
 Elderton (W.), apothecary, 373 
 Elizabeth, 36, 118, 119, 120, 122, 
 
 124, 125, 126 
 Evans (A.), surgeon, 372 
 Evelyn (J.), 182, 197, 202, 399 
 Exemption from taxes, 181, 398 
 Exorcism, 60, 61, 70-72, 74, 86, 87, 
 
 387 
 
 Farnham (R.), a patient, 169, 170, 
 
 397 
 Fire of London, The, 192, 193, 
 
 197; 399 
 FitzMary (Simon), founder of 
 
 Bethlehem Hospital, 5, 10, 
 
 16-32, 36, 377, 380, 381 
 
 Fitz Osbert (W.), reformer, 30-32 
 
 Forster (S.), a benefactor, 90, 387 
 
 Foundation deed of 1247, The, 
 
 19-22, 85, 380 
 
 Four Dialogues of the Dead, 187 
 
 Fox (Charles J.), Caricature of, 
 
 257> 409 
 Fox, (G.), quaker, 184, 186, 187, 
 
 399 
 
 Franciscans at Bethlehem, 2, 7, 
 
 8,378 
 Freton (Roger de), prior, 51, 383 
 Friends (Society of), 36, 151, 184, 
 186, 322, 323, 369, 396, 403, 
 418 ; see also Staple Hall, 
 Devonshire House, and 
 " Dolphin " inn 
 
 Gaddesden (John of), physician, 
 
 64, 385 
 Gandon (J.), architect, 310, 312, 
 
 412 
 Gandy (E. J.), architect, 309-312 
 Gardyner (J.), master, 55, 384 
 George HI, 315-320, 340, 342, 409, 
 
 413 
 Geryn (J.), 35, 382 
 Gethin (G.), treasurer, 193 
 "Goat" tavern, The, ' Charing 
 
 Cross, 180, 191 
 Godfrey, bishop of Bethlehem, 2, 
 
 3, 4, 10, 16, 21, 22, 377, 378, 
 
 379> 380 
 " Golden Cross" inn, The, Charing 
 
 Cross, 121, 334, 336 
 Golightly (J.), 115, ii7> 118, 391 
 Gordon Riots, The, 275, 276, 410 
 Government of the hospital, 43, 
 
 44, 55, 58, 9O5 112, 123, 240, 
 
 390, 392 
 Gower (J.), poet, 90, 387 
 Gozna (J.), apothecary, 339, 373, 
 
 417 
 Grafton (R.), master of Bridev^ell, 
 
 125, 126, 127, 393 
 Green Cloth, Board of, 231, 340, 
 
 405, 417 
 Greene (A.), a patient, 394 
 Gregory (W.), a benefactor, 91, 
 
 387 
 Grosley (P. J.), French tourist, 
 
 231, 281, 411 
 
 Guy (T,), and Guy's Hospital, 231, 
 
 232, 264, 322, 405 
 
INDEX 
 
 423 
 
 Hadfield (J.), a patient, 348, 417 
 Hale (R.), physician, 234, 235, 372, 
 
 405 
 Hardwick (Philip), the younger, 
 
 architect, 305, 335, 337, 338 
 Harlequin Methodist, 253, 407 
 Harman (T.), author, see Counter- 
 feit Cranke, The 
 Haslam (J.), apothecary, 313, 314, 
 
 324-326, 346, 373, 413 
 Haydon (G. H.), steward, 333, 416 
 Helps (W.), resident physician, 
 
 359» 366, 373 
 Henry HI, 16, 20, 27-30, 74, 382 
 
 IV, 19, 66, 75, 88, 386, 387 
 
 VI, 89, 91, 92, 96, 319, 387, 
 
 388, 389 
 
 VII, 66, 68, 97, 389 
 
 VIII, 106, 108, 109, no. 
 
 III, 112, 114, 115, 118, 207, 
 
 208, 277, 278, 310, 333, 389, 
 
 390, 402 
 Hervy (T.), master, 96, 389 
 Higgs (E.), surgeon, 373 
 Higgs (J.), surgeon, 373 
 Hill (R. G.), lunacy reformer, 315, 
 
 412 
 Hobbs (William), master, 96, 389 
 Hogarth (W.), his " Bedlam," 236, 
 
 237. 244-249, 407 
 Hollar (W.), his view of the first 
 
 hospital, 195, 196 
 Honest Whore, The, 148-15 1 
 Hood (Sir W. C), resident 
 
 physician, 333, 343, 344, 346, 
 
 353, 354, 359, 373, 416, 417 
 Hooke (R.), architect of the 
 
 second hospital, 197, 199, 287, 
 
 400 
 Howard (John), philanthropist, 
 
 312, 364 
 Hughes (C), anaesthetist, 372 
 Humby (H.), steward, 329 
 Hutton (W.), his visit to Bedlam, 
 
 260, 408 
 
 Hye-way to the Spytiel House, The, 
 
 109 
 Hyslop (T. B.), resident physician, 
 
 373, 374 
 
 Incurable Wards, The, 244, 277, 
 
 406 
 Innocent IV, 1-5, 13, 16, 21, 377, 
 
 378 
 Insane patients transferred from 
 
 Charing Cross to Bethlehem 
 
 Hospital, 65, 67, 68 
 Insane, Treatment of the, 69, 90, 
 
 91, 132-134, 143, 144, 147, 149, 
 156, 160, 168, 182, 183, 225, 
 236-240, 243, 263, 265, 266, 
 
 282, 320-324, 350, 351-358. 
 
 393 
 Insanity, Treatment of, 60, 61, 69, 
 70-72, 74, 81, 86-88, 98, 99, 
 107, 129, 156, 163, 164, 166, 
 224, 225 234, 23s, 256, 257, 
 
 283, 307, 315, 317, 318, 347, 
 352, 353, 357, 385, 393 
 
 Interior of Bethlehem Hospital, The, 
 328, 329 
 
 James I, 68, 118, 119, 152, 156, 157, 
 158, 160, 235, 391, 396 
 
 II, 203, 219, 224, 404, 405 
 
 James (J.), apothecary, 373 
 Jenner (T.), Keeper, 156, 396 
 John the Roman, 1-3, 7, 377, 378 
 Johnson (Dr. S.), 268, 269, 271, 
 
 273, 274, 275, 297, 368, 409 
 Jordan (T.), city laureate, 202, 400 
 
 Keeper, The, 128, 130, 136, 143, 
 144, 156, 166, 167, 393 
 
 Keepers, or male attendants, 70, 
 71, 88, 107, 144, 149, 150, 152, 
 158, 160, 168, 182, 220, 224, 
 236, 263, 282, 283, 307, 317' 
 318,321,322,346,350,357 
 
424 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Kempthorne (H. L.), medical 
 
 officer, 374 
 King and the city, Controversy 
 
 between the, 55, 58, 160, 161, 
 
 168, 195, 384 
 King Edward's School for Girls, 
 
 292, 294, 306, 311, 366 
 King's Commissioners, The, 223, 
 
 224 
 Kinleside (W.), treasurer, 277, 410 
 Knave of Clubs, The, 146, 395 
 Knights of the Star, possibly a 
 
 military order, 11, 14, 15, 37, 
 
 378, 379 
 Knollys (Francis), a governor, his 
 gift of a picture, 402 
 
 Lacombe (F.), French tourist, 281, 
 
 411 
 Lamb (Charles and Mary), 335, 
 
 348, 398, 413, 414 
 Langland (W.), his description 
 
 of wandering lunatics, 65, 66, 
 
 385 
 Langley (R), steward, 171, 177, 
 
 178 
 Lawrence (Sir W.), surgeon, 327, 
 
 328, 373, 414 
 Lee (Nathaniel), dramatist and 
 
 patient, 227-231^ 405 
 Lester (J.), apothecary, 221, 373 
 Letters written to Particular 
 
 Friends, 242 
 Lewis (J.), architect, 287, 289, 290, 
 
 309* 310 
 Licences to collect alms, 3, 13, 14, 
 
 36, 39, 48, 54, J2» 74» 75 » 124, 
 138, 386, 387, 393, 394 
 
 Lincoln (R.), master, 58, 75, 78, 
 84, 384, 386 ; see also Visita- 
 tion, and Peter, the porter 
 
 Liverpool Street, 17, 20, 31, 32, 
 141, 142, 165, 191, 193-195, 
 198, 200, 201, 360, 361, 367, 
 368, 399, 418 ; see also Beth- 
 
 lehem Hospital, the first. 
 
 White Hart tavern, and 
 
 Broad Street station 
 London Scenes and London People, 
 
 286 
 Lovell (C), pathologist, 371 
 Low Life, 261-264 
 Lucida hitervalla, 220-222 
 Lunacy Commissioners, 320, 331, 
 
 332, 333, 343> 353 
 Lupton (D.), author, 160, 396 
 
 "Mad Joe," 289, 411 
 Marlborough, The duke of, 286, 
 
 411 
 Marriages, Irregular celebration 
 
 o£, 78, 79, 148 
 Martin (A. H.), steward, 372 
 Mary I, 117, 119, 155,391 
 Matron, The, 190, 332 
 Matthews (J. T.), a patient, 313, 
 
 314 
 Maudesley (T.) master, 97, 389 
 
 Mawere (H.), attendant, 88 
 
 Medical officers, past and present, 
 
 371-374 
 Medical pupils, 331 
 Mell (J.), keeper, 128 
 Memoirs of De Castro, 312 
 Meredith (J.), surgeon, 178, 373 
 Metcalf (U.), a patient, 328, 329 
 Methodism associated with in- 
 sanity, 237, 247, 255-257, 407, 
 408 
 Metronymics, Significance of, 5, 
 
 377 
 Meverall (O.), physician, 169, 178, 
 
 372, 397 
 Mews, The, Charing Cross, 69, 114, 
 
 115, 121, 333, 391 
 Mewtys (Sir P.), master, no, 114, 
 
 115. 151. 390 
 Micrologia, 396 
 
 Mikrokosmographia, see Crooke 
 
INDEX 
 
 425 
 
 Military Prophet, The, 258, 259, 
 
 408 
 MoUison (W. M.), aurist, 372 
 Monck (Lady), 155, 189, 400 
 Money-box figures, 205, 206 
 Monro (Edward Thomas), physi- 
 cian, 327, 333, 365, 372, 414 
 
 (James), physician, 245, 254, 
 
 257» 263,331,372,415 
 (John), physician, 240, 261, 
 
 283, 372, 415 
 
 (Thomas), physician, 316, 
 
 321, 324. 326, 372, 414 
 Moorfields, 16, 34, 126, 129, 202, 
 
 242, 252, 253, 259, 263, 276, 
 
 286, 400, 411 
 More (Sir Thomas), 106, 107, 390 
 Morison (Sir A.), physician, 333, 
 
 372, 415 
 
 Nativity, Church of the, see 
 
 Bethlehem, Basilica of 
 Newton (Rev. J.), see Catlett 
 Nicholls (N.), steward, 330, 333 
 Norris (J.), a patient, 320, 321 
 'Northward Ho / 151 
 Norton (Brother John M.), 37-41, 
 
 55, 384 
 Nurse (T.), physician, 186, 190^ 
 
 372 
 Nurses, 224, 240, 263-266, 331 
 
 Obituaries, The Book of, 45, 46, 
 
 383 
 O'Donoghue (E. G.), chaplain and[ 
 
 historian, 372 
 
 Oxford (E.), a patient, 345 
 
 Padded Rooms, 362 
 
 Paris (M.), chronicler, 4, 10, 16, 
 
 104, 377, 378, 379 
 Parish Clerks' Company, 61, 141, 
 
 394 
 Parliamentary Committees, 321, 
 
 413 
 
 Paulet (Lord John), 153 
 
 Pauper patients eliminated, 353, 
 
 354 
 Pelhng (J.), apothecary, 373 
 Pepys (S.), 190, 191, 192, 213, 219- 
 
 222, 400, 404 
 Periam (J.), a patient, 253, 254, 
 
 407 
 Peter, the porter, 75-84, 168 
 Phillips (J. G. P.), assistant physi- 
 cian, 371, 372 
 Pindar (Sir Paul), 168, 397 
 Pinel (Dr. Philippe), lunacy re- 
 former, 323, 324, 412 
 Plague of London, The, 192, 400 
 Porter's badge. The, 322, 413 
 " Possession," see Exorcism 
 Private asylums, 232, 233 
 " Protection " documents, 36, 74, 
 75, 382 
 
 Quince (J.), surgeon, 166 
 
 " Rake's Progress, A," see Hogarth 
 Rawlins (John), treasurer, 179, 
 
 398 
 Rawlinson family, 249, 407, 410 
 Rayner (H.), medical officer, 374 
 Registers of St. Botolph's, Bishops- 
 gate, 128, 130, 143, 153, 192, 
 
 394 
 Religious services instituted, 364- 
 
 367, 418 
 Richard II, 55, 58, 59, 68, 82, 384, 
 
 385, 386 
 Richardson (S.), his Familiar 
 
 Letters, 242 
 Roman London, 19, 202, 380, 400 
 
 Saint Bartholomew's Hospital, 
 32, 109, III, 112, 132, 143, 156, 
 226, 245, 259, 264, 265, 331, 
 
 398 
 
 George's Fields, 290, 291, 
 
 292, 294-301, 412 
 
426 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Saint George's Hospital, 245, 264 
 
 Germains, East Lothian, 
 
 10, 15, 378 
 
 Guthlac, exorcist, 86, 87, 
 
 386 
 
 John of Jerusalem, Order 
 
 of, 10, II, 12, 14 
 
 Luke's Hospital, 240, 283, 
 
 309, 318, 322, 353, 355, 362, 
 364,411 
 
 Mary's Hospital, Norton 
 
 Folgate, 39, 382, 383 
 
 ■■ Thomas's Hospital, iii, 
 
 124, 156, 226, 264, 265, 331, 
 
 398 
 " Sally in our Alley," 242, 406 
 Sambrooke (S.), surgeon, 373 
 Savage (Sir G. H .), resident physi- 
 cian, 373, 374 
 Scot (R.), author of Demotiologie, 
 
 152, 396 
 Seals of the hospital, 94, loi, 102, 
 
 388 
 Settle (E.), city laureate, 226 
 Suggested segregation of the, 183, 
 
 190, 210 
 Sey (E.), surgeon, 166 
 Shaftesbury, The seventh earl of, 
 
 168, 320, 343, 413 
 Shakespeare (W.) and insanity, 
 
 132, 133, 145, 148, 153, 154, 
 
 393 
 Shepherd's Bush estate, 179, 193, 
 
 398 
 Skelton (J.), poet, 108, 109, 390 
 Sketches in Bedlam, 345-348 
 Skinners' Company, 59-61, 63, 
 
 384 ; see also Confraternity. 
 Smart (Christopher), poet, 266- 
 
 271, 409 
 Smeethe (J.), master, 96, 389 
 Smirke (Sydney), architect of the 
 
 dome, 303, 304 
 Smith (R. P.), resident physician, 
 
 373. 374 
 
 Snell (Hannah), female marine, 
 
 278-281, 411 
 Spira (F.), melancholiac, see 
 
 Bunyan 
 Stafford (R.), a patient, 241, 242, 
 
 406 
 Staple Hall estate, 31, 35, 36, 66, 
 
 151, 153, 166, 179, 368, 369, 
 
 382,418; see also Devonshire 
 
 House, and Friends, Society 
 
 of 
 Star of Bethlehem, in heraldry 
 
 and otherwise, 10, 15, 40, 103, 
 
 104, 105, 378 
 Statues of Mania and Dementia, 
 
 204, 205, 269, 349, 401, 415 
 Stevens (T. G.), gynaecologist, 
 
 372 
 Stoddart (W. H. B.), resident 
 
 physician, 371, 374 
 Stone House, see Charing Cross 
 
 estate 
 Stow (John), his references to the 
 
 hospital, 67, 69, 385 
 Stryngfellow (J.) a tenant of 
 
 ''Staple Hall," 151,418 
 " Surveyors of Bethlehem," 123, 
 
 128 
 Swanlond (R. de), lessee of the 
 
 hospital, 33, 35, 381 
 Swift (Dean J.), a governor, 249- 
 
 251, 269, 407 
 
 Talman (C), surgeon, 373 
 Tannye (T.), a patient, 171, 397 
 Tavern tokens, 183, 399 
 Taverner, see Peter 
 Thamar (J.), a patient, 211, 241, 
 
 403 
 Theodosius, his infirmary for the 
 
 insane, 378 
 Thomas (J.), apothecary, 373 
 Todd (F.), dentist, 372 
 Tom o' Bedlam, 128, 132-140, 
 
 393; 394 
 
INDEX 
 
 427 
 
 Trafalgar Square, ste Charing 
 
 Cross estate 
 Tuke (D. H.), writer on insanity, 
 
 362, 393, 412 
 Tuke (W.), lunacy reformer, 168, 
 
 322, 323, 412 
 Turner (Sir W.), president, 196, 
 
 207, 209, 214-217, 218, 224, 
 
 402, 403 
 Tuthill (Sir G. L.), physician, 327, 
 
 365, 372, 414 
 Tyson (E.), physician, 25, 224- 
 
 228, 229, 232, 372, 404, 405 
 Tytte (Brother William), master, 
 
 45, 54 (?)> 55, 80 
 
 Urban V, 49, 383 
 
 "Views," or inspections, of the 
 
 hospital, 143, 144, 394 
 Visitation, The, by Henry IV, 69, 
 
 75-85, 380, 385 
 Visiting Days, 144, 145, 148-150, 
 
 151, 182, 183, 209, 235-242, 
 
 260, 282, 405, 406 
 
 Wallett (G.), apothecary, 329, 
 
 373 
 Walpole (Horace), 258, 275, 410 
 Walsh (P.), a patient, 348, 417 
 Ward (Edward), author, 229, 238, 
 
 240, 241 
 Welles (W.), claims the master- 
 ship, 14, 55, 58, 379 
 
 Wentworth (W.), surgeon, 373 
 Wesley (John), 255-257, 408, 411 
 Wheeler (C), surgeon, 373 
 Wheeler (J.), surgeon, 373 
 White (R.), engraver, 203, 401 
 "White Hart" tavern. Bishops- 
 gate, 82, 145, 182, 183, 194,395 
 Whitefield (G.), revivalist, 253, 
 
 254, 407 
 Whitmore (Sir G,), president, 171, 
 
 179, 398 
 William HI, 224, 241, 340 
 Williams (W. Rhys), resident 
 
 physician, 359, 373 
 Willis (Rev. Dr.), and his sons, 
 
 317, 318, 413 
 Wills, 78, 382, 383, 387, 388, 391 
 Winder (J.), apothecary, 259, 373 
 Witches and witchcraft, 152, 396 
 Wolsey (Cardinal), 106, 109 
 Wood (T.), a tenant at Charing 
 
 Cross, 114, 117, 119, 121, 391 
 Wood (W.), apothecary, 332, 333, 
 
 373, 415 
 
 Wood (W. E. R.), medical officer, 
 
 374, 415 
 
 Worsfold (J. L.), clerk and re- 
 ceiver, 372 
 Wright (E.), apothecary, 330, 346, 
 
 373, 414 
 
 Yardley (R.), apothecary, 178, 
 
 373 
 Yelverton (Sir H.), attorney-gene- 
 ral, 160, 161, 396 
 
Ube (Bresbam Press 
 
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