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

I do not know, however, that any action was taken in consequence. Thirty-four years afterwards (1632), I observe that the buildings were enlarged, and mention is made of "one messuage, newly builded of brick at the charge of the said hospital, containing a cellar, a kitchen, a hall, four chambers, and a garret, being newly added unto the old rooms." Also, "a long waste room now being contrived and in work, to make eight rooms more for poor people to lodge where there lacked room before."[69]

      

      In 1624, and I dare say at many other periods, the patients were so refractory that it was necessary to call in the flax-dressers, whose tenter-boards may be seen in the adjoining field in the maps of London of this period, in order to assist the keepers in their duties!

Just about the same date (1632) I notice that an inquisition mentions various sums being expended on fetters and straw. The governor at that time, I should add, was a medical man. This is the first mention of such being the case. His name was Helkins or Hilkiah Crooke. He was born in Suffolk; graduated M.B. in 1599 and M.D. in 1604. He was a Fellow of the College of Physicians, and was author of "A Description of the Body of Man," etc. (1616). There is in the second edition of this work a small whole-length portrait by Droeshout.[70]

      Ten years later (1642) there was a still further addition to Bethlem. Twelve rooms were built on the ground floor, over which there were eight for lunatics. The hospital, however, only accommodated some fifty or sixty patients, and it is observed in "Stow's Survey of London," that besides being too small to receive a sufficient number of distracted persons of both sexes, it stood on an obscure and close place near to many common sewers.

The hospital was one day visited by Evelyn. He had been dining with Lord Hatton, and writes on returning: "I stepped into Bedlam, where I saw several poor miserable creatures in chains; one of them was mad with making verses." This was on the 21st of April, 1657. Pepys does not record a single visit to it himself, but on February 21, 1668, he enters in his diary that "the young people went to Bedlam."[71]

Smith, in his "Ancient Topography of London," says—and the authority for most of his statements was Mr. Haslam[72]—"The men and women in old Bethlem were huddled together in the same ward." It was only when the second Bethlem was built that they had separate wards.

      In Hollar's Map of London, engraved 1667, which gives the most distinct representation of Bethlem Hospital at that period, there are no additional buildings given, although we know they had been made. Nor are those inserted which were built on the site of the church in the centre of the quadrangle.

I have in the previous chapter spoken of Bedlam beggars, and would add here that they are represented as wearing about their necks "a great horn of an ox in a string or bawdry, which when they came to an house for alms, they did wind, and they did put the drink given them into their horn, whereto they did put a stopple." This description by Aubrey[73] illustrates "Poor Tom, thy horn is dry!" in "King Lear." So in Dekker's "English Villanies" (1648) the Abram-man is described as begging thus: "Good worship master! bestow you reward on a poor man who hath been in Bedlam without Bishopsgate three years, four months, and nine days, and bestow one piece of small silver towards his fees which he is indebted there of £3 13s. 7½d. (or to such effect), and hath not wherewith to pay the same but by the help of worshipful and well-disposed people, and God to reward them for it." "Then," adds Dekker, "will he dance and sing, and use some other antic and ridiculous gestures, shutting up his counterfeit puppet play with this epilogue or conclusion—'Good dame, give poor Tom one cup of the best drink. God save the king and his Council, and the governor of this place.'"

Bedlam beggars were so great a nuisance, even in 1675, that the governors gave the following public notice:—"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 commonly called Bedlam, with brass plates about their arms, and inscriptions thereon. These are to give notice, that there is no such liberty given to any patients kept in the said Hospital for their cure, neither is any such plate as a distinction or mark put upon any lunatick during their time of being there, or when discharged thence. And that the same is a false pretence to colour their wandering and begging, and to deceive the people, to the dishonour of the government of that Hospital."[74]

I will now pass on to the close of the chapter of this the first Bethlem Hospital, with the remark in passing that Charles I. confirmed the charter of Henry VIII. in 1638,[75] and will direct attention to the year 1674, when the old premises having become totally unfit for the care—to say nothing of the treatment—of the inmates, it was decided to build another hospital. The City granted a piece of land on the north side of London Wall, extending from Moor Gate, seven hundred and forty feet, to a postern opposite Winchester Street, and in breadth eighty feet—the whole length of what is now the south side of Finsbury Circus. At the present time the corner of London Wall and Finsbury Pavement, Albion Hall, and the houses to the east, mark this spot, the grounds in front of the hospital being, of course, situated in what is now Finsbury Circus.

      Smith's plates, in his "Ancient London," show the back and west wing of the asylum very well; and an elevation showing its front, which looked north towards what is now the London Institution, is represented in an engraving frequently met with in the print shops. Circus Place now runs through what was the centre of the building. The building, intended for a hundred and twenty patients (but capable of holding a hundred and fifty), was commenced in April, 1675, and finished in July of the following year, at a cost of £17,000. It was five hundred and forty feet long by forty feet broad.

      Of this building, Gay wrote—

      "Through fam'd Moorfields, extends a spacious seat,

       Where mortals of exalted wit retreat;

       Where, wrapp'd in contemplation and in straw,

       The wiser few from the mad world withdraw."

      

Evelyn thus records his visit to the new hospital: "1678, April 18. I went to see New Bedlam Hospital, magnificently built, and most sweetly placed in Moorfields since the dreadful fire in London."[76]

      "Sweetly" was not an appropriate term to use, as it proved, for it was built on the ditch or sewer on the north side of London Wall, and this circumstance led to the foundations ultimately proving insecure, not to say unsavoury.

As the hospital was opened in 1676, it is noteworthy that it is now more than two centuries since the first large asylum[77] was built for the sole object of providing for the insane in England. This is the building in Moorfields so familiar to our forefathers for nearly a century and a half, and known as Old Bethlem by print-dealers, and, indeed, by almost every one else; for the memories and traditions of the genuine Old Bethlem, which I have endeavoured to resuscitate, have almost faded away. Indeed, in 1815, when one of the physicians of the hospital (Dr. Monro) was asked, at the Select Committee of the House of Commons, whether there had not been such a building, he replied that he did not know.

Let me bring before the reader the condition of Moorfields in those days. Finsbury was so called from the fenny district in which it lay. Skating was largely practised here. In the old maps Finsbury fields lie on the north-east side of Moorfields. Now Finsbury Circus and Square correspond to the site of a part of Moorfields. Formerly Moorfields extended up to Hoxton, "but being one continued marsh, they were in 1511 made passable by proper bridges and causeways. Since that time the ground has been gradually drained and raised."[78]