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

for the benefit of the City. Disputes afterwards arose between the Crown and the City as to their right to appoint the master of the house, but the former triumphed, and Richard II., Henry IV., Henry VI., and Henry VIII. insisted upon and exercised their right of presentation.

      

      It appears that the City had let some house to the hospital for which they received rent. And further, that afterwards, when disputes arose, they actually pretended that the hospital itself was originally theirs.

      I now call attention to the year 1403, the fourth year of Henry IV. It seems that Peter, the porter of the house, had misbehaved himself in some way, and it was deemed sufficiently important to necessitate an "inquisition," to ascertain the condition and management of the monastery. And it is here that we meet with the earliest indication of Bethlem being a receptacle for the insane. I have examined the Report of this Royal Commission, and find it stated that six men were confined there who were lunatics (sex homines mente capti). The number, therefore, was very small at that time. As might be expected, the glimpse we get of their mode of treatment reveals the customary restraints of former days. The inventory records "Six chains of iron, with six locks; four pairs of manacles of iron, and two pairs of stocks." I do not here, or elsewhere, find any reference to the use of the whip. I may remark, by the way, that the Commissioners observe that whereas originally the master of the house wore the Star of the Order of Bethlem, the master at that time did not. The original star contained sixteen points, which we may consider to indicate, appropriately, the words Estoile de Bethlem.

On the arms of Bethlem[59] was also a basket of bread, in reference to the Hebrew etymology, "House of Bread." The bread is described as wastell cake, a word first met with in a statute 51 Hen. III., where it is described as white bread well baked.

      Chaucer says of the "Prioress"—

      "Of small houndes hadde she, that she fedde

       With roasted flesh, and milk and wastel brede."

      The derivation of the word, according to Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," is from gasteau, now gâteau, anciently written gastel, and, in the Picard dialect, ouastel or watel, a cake.

I would here draw attention to the site of St. Martin's Lane, and the adjoining district. At the southwest corner of St. Martin's Lane, in the angle formed by it and Charing Cross, was situated a religious (?) house, of the foundation of which I can discover nothing. The point of interest to us in connection with it is this: that at a very early period lunatics were confined there. Stow, in his "Survey of London," etc., written in 1598, says, under "The Citie of Westminster," "From thence is now a continuall new building of diuers fayre houses euen up to the Earle of Bedford's house lately builded nigh to Iuy Bridge, and so on the north side, to a lane that turneth to the parish church of S. Martin's in the Field, in the liberty of Westminster. Then had ye an house, wherein some time 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 some time a king of England, not liking such a kind of people to remaine so neare his pallace, caused them to be removed further off to Bethlem without Bishopsgate of London, and to that Hospitall the said house by Charing Crosse doth yeth remaine."[60]

I have spent considerable time in endeavouring to discover who this king was, but without success. If we assume that this was the first time that Bethlem received lunatics within its walls, we must refer the event to a date prior to 1403, because we know, as I have pointed out, that there were mad people in Bethlem at that date. One statement is that the sovereign was Henry IV., and that is not improbable, but it may have been Richard II. Whoever the king was, he appears to have been rather fastidious, considering the proximity is not very close between Charing Cross and any of the Royal Palaces. Possibly, as the Royal "Mewse" was at Charing Cross, his Majesty, whenever he visited his falcons, which were "mewed" or confined here—long before the same place was used for stables—may have been disturbed by the sounds he heard.[61] It is interesting in this connection to learn that Chaucer was clerk of the Charing Cross Mews. On the site of the Mews stands now the National Gallery, and the house for lunatics must have been situated in Trafalgar Square, about where Havelock's equestrian statue stands.

Here I may note also, on the same authority, that there was in Edward III.'s reign (1370) a hospital founded in the parish of Barking by Robert Denton, "chaplen," "for the sustentation of poor Priests and other men and women that were sicke of the Phrenzie, there to remaine till they were perfectly whole and restored to good memorie."[62] I know nothing further of this asylum. It must remain an undetermined question whether there were any lunatics in Bedlam prior to the establishment of the houses at Charing Cross and Barking. As, however, both these were devoted to their exclusive care, and Bethlem at that period was not, I think we must grant their priority as special houses for deranged persons.

      It will be observed that in the passage cited from Stow, the house at Charing Cross is described as belonging to Bethlem Hospital. I have ascertained that the Charing Cross property belonged to Bethlem Hospital until 1830, when it was sold or exchanged in order to allow of the improvements which were shortly afterwards made there in laying out Trafalgar Square and building the National Gallery.

      We know, then, that from about 1400—probably earlier—Bethlem received lunatics, on however small a scale; and we have here an explanation of the fact which has occasioned surprise, that before the time of the charter of Henry VIII., whose name is inscribed over the pediment of the existing building, the word "Bedlam" is used for a madman or mad-house. Thus Tyndale made use of the word some twenty years before the royal grant in his "Prologue to the Testament," a unique fragment of which exists in the British Museum, where he says it is "bedlam madde to affirme that good is the natural cause of yvell."

      Speaking of Wolsey, Skelton, who died in 1529, says in his "Why come ye not to Court?"—

      "He grinnes and he gapes,

       As it were Jacke Napes,

       Such a mad Bedlam."

The familiar expression "Jackanapes" is evidently a corruption of the above. The term occurs in "The Merry Wives of Windsor": "I vill teach a scurvy jackanape priest to meddle or make."[63] The origin of the phrase in Jack-o'naibs, a Saracen game of cards, seems doubtful. Any way, it came to be used for a witless fellow, or Bedlamite.

And Sir Thomas More, in his treatise "De Quatuor Novissimis," says, "Think not that everything is pleasant that men for madness laugh at. For thou shalt in Bedleem see one laugh at the knocking of his own hed against a post, and yet there is little pleasure therein." And, again, in the "Apology" made by him in 1533 (thirteen years before the grant), in which he gives a most curious account of the treatment of a poor lunatic: He was "one which after that he had fallen into these frantick heresies, fell soon after into plaine open franzye beside. And all beit that he had therefore bene put up in Bedelem, and afterward by beating and correccion gathered his remembraance to him and beganne to come again to himselfe, being thereupon set at liberty, and walkinge aboute abrode, his old fansies beganne to fall againe in his heade." Although what follows has nothing to do with Bethlem, I cannot avoid quoting it, as it illustrates so graphically the whipping-post treatment of that day. "I was fro dyvers good holy places advertised, that he used in his wandering about to come into the churche, and there make many mad toies and trifles, to the trouble of good people in the divine service, and specially woulde he be most busye in the time of most silence, while the priest was at the secretes of the masse aboute the levacion." After proof of his indecent behaviour, he proceeds, "Whereupon I beinge advertised of these pageauntes, and beinge sent unto and required by very devout relygious folke, to take some other order with him, caused him, as he came wanderinge by my doore, to be taken by the connstables and bounden to a tree in the streete before the whole towne, and ther they stripped [striped] him with roddes therefore till he waxed weary