"Joseph ingenuously confessed to me, that, under his first awakenings, he was one day reading the story of the young man whom our Lord commanded to sell all he had, and to give to the poor, and, thinking it must be taken in the literal sense, out of love, to Jesus Christ, he sold his clothes, and gave the money to the poor." For such reasons, Joseph Periam was put into the general receptacle of all London lunatics--Bethlehem Hospital; an old edifice founded in 1547, and standing in St. George's Fields, Lambeth. The institution was a disgrace to all connected with it. The miserable inmates were treated most brutally. Their terrible affliction was turned into pecuniary profit, and the hospital received about £400 a year, in the form of fees, collected by exhibiting the poor maniacs, chiefly naked, and uniformly chained to the walls of their respective dungeons. The practice of entertaining the outside public by thus shewing the inside patients of this infernal prison house was not abolished until the year 1770; and, even then, the abolition was unaccompanied by any other improvement of the usage of the unhappy sufferers.[219] If men were not mad when they entered, there was enough to make them mad before they left. [219] "Pictoral Handbook of London." Joseph Periam became the occupant of No. 50 in this dismal dungeon, miscalled an hospital. "His room," says Whitefield, "was a cold place, without windows, and had a damp cellar under it." On entering, Joseph's first refection was a dose of physic. Whitefield writes:-- 'Being sensible that he wanted no physic, Joseph was unwilling at first to take it; upon which four or five men took hold of him, cursed him most heartily, put a key into his mouth, threw him upon the bed, and said, 'You are one of Whitefield's gang,' and so drenched him." Poor Periam wrote to Whitefield as follows:-- "BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL, NO. 50. "DEAR SIR,--I have read your sermon on the New Birth, and hope I shall always have a due sense of my dear Redeemer's goodness to me. May Almighty God bless and preserve you, and prosper your ministerial function! I wish, sir, I could have some explanatory notes upon the New Testament, to enlighten the darkness of my understanding, to make me capable of becoming a good soldier of Jesus Christ; but, above all, I should like to see you. "I am, dear Sir, yours affectionately with my whole heart, "JOSEPH PERIAM." Whitefield writes:-- "According to his request, I paid him a visit, and found him in perfect health both in body and mind."