Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British IslesTuke, Daniel Hack
History
Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles
Tuke, Daniel Hack
Mental health laws -- Great Britain; Mental illness -- Great Britain; Mentally ill -- Care; Psychiatric hospitals -- Great Britain
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":--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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