Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles. Daniel Hack Tuke

Читать онлайн.
Название Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles
Автор произведения Daniel Hack Tuke
Жанр Языкознание
Серия
Издательство Языкознание
Год выпуска 0
isbn 4064066208912



Скачать книгу

of London, Simon FitzMary, gave in the thirty-first year of the reign of Henry III., 1247, to the Bishop and Church of Bethlem, in Holyland, all his houses and grounds in the parish of St. Botolph without Bishopsgate, that there might be thereupon built a Hospital or Priory for a prior, canons, brethren, and sisters of the Order of Bethlem or the Star of Bethlem, wherein the Bishop of Bethlem was to be entertained when he came to England, and to whose visitation and correction all the members of the house were subjected.[57]

      

      "And in token of subjection and reverence, the said place in London shall pay yearly a mark sterling at Easter to the Bishop of Bethelem.

      "This gift and confirmation of my Deed, & the putting to of my Seal for me and mine heirs, I have steadfastly made strong, the year of our Lord God, 1247, the Wednesday after the Feast of St. Luke the Evangelist."

      From this it appears that Simon Fitzmary's land extended from the King's Highway on the east (Bishopsgate Street without) to the fosse called Depeditch on the west. The land of Saint Botolph Church bounded it on the south, and the property of a Ralph Dunnyng on the north. The author of "The History of St. Botolph" (1824), Mr. T. L. Smartt, suggests that the old White Hart Tavern is a vestige of the hostelry. If not forming part of the original hospital, it certainly led to it. Among the tokens in the British Museum I find "Bedlem Tokens E.K.E. at Bedlam Gate, 1657," and the "Reverse at the White Hart." At an early period Bethlem is styled "Bethlem Prison House," and the patients, "who sometimes exceeded the number of twenty," are called prisoners. One token at the British Museum is G.H.A. "at the Old Prison."

      A considerable portion of this site is occupied at the present day by Liverpool Street, and the railway stations which have sprung up there.

      The topographer in search of the old site finds striking proofs of the changes which six hundred years have brought with them—the steam, and the shrill sounds of the Metropolitan, North London, and Great Eastern Railways; while Bethlem Gate, the entrance to the hospital from Bishopsgate Street, was, when I last visited the spot, superseded by hoardings covered with the inevitable advertisement of the paper which enjoys the largest circulation in the world. Depeditch is now Bloomfield Street. The name of Ralph Dunnyng, whose property is mentioned in the charter as bounding Bethlem on the north, is, I suppose, represented, after the lapse of six centuries, by Dunning's Alley and Place.

      There was a churchyard on the property, which was enclosed for the use of adjoining parishes by Sir Thomas Rowe, Lord Mayor of London, at a much later period (1569)—no doubt the ground where the inmates were buried. The Broad Street Railway Station booking-office is situated upon part of its site. In connection with this, I may refer to a statement in Mr. Buckland's "Curiosities of Natural History," to the effect that a skeleton, on which fetters were riveted, was found in 1863, in St. Mary Axe, by some workmen engaged in excavations. Mr. Buckland states, on the authority of Mr. Hancock, that Sir Thomas Rowe gave ground in St. Mary Axe, for the use of Old Bethlem Hospital and certain adjoining parishes. Mr. Buckland, therefore, concluded that the skeleton was that of a man who had been a patient in Bedlam, and buried in his chains. He was on one occasion good enough to place them at my disposal, but as I can find no evidence that Sir T. Rowe did more than what I have above stated, I think there is no connection proved between the skeleton in irons and Bedlam.

      

      In this churchyard was buried Lodowick Muggleton—an appropriate resting-place, considering its proximity to a mad-house. Also John Lilburne; four thousand persons, it is said, attending his funeral.

      Mr. Roach Smith, who formerly lived in Liverpool Street, informs me that on one occasion an incident proved the former existence of a burial-ground on this spot. He writes, "Opposite my house (No. 5) on the other side of the street was a long dead wall, which separated the street from a long piece of garden-ground which faced some high houses standing, probably, on the site of Bedlam. This garden may have stood on the burial-ground. When my man buried in it a deceased favourite cat, he said he came upon the remains of human skeletons. But revolution brought about the disturbance of the cat which had disturbed some of old London's people. A few years since the cat's coffin and her epitaph were brought before the directors of a railway as a very puzzling discovery." The engineers of the North London and Great Eastern Railways inform me that many bones were dug up in excavating for the Broad Street and Liverpool Street Stations.

      The locality of the first Bethlem Hospital is, I hope, now clearly before the reader. I will describe the form of the buildings shortly, but will first trace the history of the convent to the time of Henry VIII.

      In the year 1330, eighty-three years after its foundation, it is mentioned as a "hospital," in a licence granted by King Edward III., to collect alms in England, Ireland, and Wales, but it must not be inferred from this that it was necessarily used for the sick, as the word hospital was then, and long after, employed as "a place for shelter or entertainment" (Johnson). It is so employed by Spencer in the "Faerie Queen":—

      "They spy'd a goodly castle plac'd

       Foreby a river in a pleasant dale,

       Which chusing for that evening's Hospital They thither march'd."

      Very shortly after this, viz. in 1346, the monastery or hospital was so miserably poor that the master applied to the mayor, aldermen, and citizens of London to be received under their protection. This was agreed to, and it was governed afterwards by two aldermen, one chosen by the mayor and the other by the monastery.

      Then we come to an important event—the seizure of Bethlem by the Crown. This was in 1375, the forty-eighth year of Edward III. It was done on the pretext that it was an alien or foreign priory. There was not therefore any seizing of the monastery by Henry VIII., as is usually stated. That had been done already. The master of Bethlem stated at this time that the annual value of the house was six marks; and that he paid 13s. 4d. a year to the Bishop of Bethlem, and 40s.