which the word " hospital " then, and long afterwards, bore — is uncertain. In 1375 Bethlem was seized by the Crown on the pretext that it was an alien or foreign priory. Twenty-five years later we read of six luna tics being confined there, and the inventory of the instruments kept on the premises for their treatment is curious — "six chains of iron, with six locks; four pairs of manacles of iron, and five pairs of stocks." In 1547, King Henry VIII granted Beth lem to the City of London. Even before this date, however, it had become known as "Bedlam," and as a receptacle for lunatics. Tyndalc, in his " Prologue to the Testa ment," before 1530, used the expression that it is " Bedlam madde to affirme that good is the natural cause of yvell"; and about the same time Sir Thomas More says, " Think not that everything is pleasant that men for madness laugh at. For thou shalt in Bed lam see one laugh at the knocking of his own lied against a post, and yet there is little pleasure therein." In 1555 the governors of Christ's Hospi tal were charged with the oversight of Beth lem, but two years later it was united with Bridewell, subject to the jurisdiction of the citizens of London; and in the reign of George III this union was cemented by an Act of Parliament (22 George III, Ch. 77). In the time of Henry VIII, Bethlem Hos pital is described as having been so "loath some as to be unfit for any man to enter." In the reign of Charles II, Evelyn reports that he saw patients in chains; and a century later a by no means hostile witness records that "the men and women in old Bethlem were huddled together in the same ward." By the year 1674 the original premises had become utterly unfit for the reception of their inmates, and the city granted land at Moorfields for the site of a new hospital which was completed two years later. There was, however, little change for the better in the asylum regimen. Hogarth's " Rake's Progress" gives an accurate representation
of the miseries of life in Bedlam; and a poem on the famous hospital, dated 1/76, contains these lines: — Far other views than these within appear, And woe and horror dwell forever here; For ever from the echoing roofs rebounds A dreadful din of heterogeneous sounds. From this, from that, from every quarter rise Loud shouts and sullen groans and doleful cries.
Within the chambers which this dome contains. In all her frantic forms distraction reigns.
Rattling his chains the wretch all raving lies, And roars and foams, and earth and heaven defies.
As late as 1815* a committee of the House of Commons appointed to investigate the condition of private madhouses in Eng land found in Bethlem Hospital a poor lunatic named Norn's secured by ( I ) a collar, en circling the neck and confined by a chain to a pole fixed at the head of the patient's bed, (2) an iron frame, the lower part of which encircled the body and the upper part of which passed over the shoulders, having on either side apertures for the arms, which encircled them above the elbow, and (3) a chain passing from the ankle of the patient to the foot of the bed. YORK LUNATIC ASYLUM.
Let us take now York Lunatic Asylum. This institution was erected in 1777 to hold fifty-four patients. From 177710 1808 the annual death rate was nine per cent. From 1808 to 1814 it was twenty per cent. A controversy into which the authorities of this asylum indiscreetly plunged with the super intendent of the York Retreat, of which more anon, and several other circumstances, di rected the attention of the public and the legislature to their proceedings and a party committee was appointed to inquire into the way in which this establishment was carried on. This committee reported " ( I ) that the asylum was overcrowded, (2) that opulent
- What was practically a third Bethlem was subsequently
erected under an Act passed in 1810.
