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ORIGINAL BUILDING OF THE RETREAT, YORK. INSTITUTED 1792.
From a Painting by Cave.] [Frontispiece.

CHAPTERS
IN THE
HISTORY OF THE INSANE
IN THE BRITISH ISLES

BY

DANIEL HACK TUKE, M.D., F.R.C.P.

PRESIDENT OF THE MEDICO-PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION,
JOINT EDITOR OF "THE JOURNAL OF MENTAL SCIENCE," AND FORMERLY
VISITING PHYSICIAN TO THE YORK RETREAT

"I might multiply these instances almost indefinitely, but I thought it was desirable just to indicate the state of things that existed, in order to contrast the Past with the Present."—Earl of Shaftesbury.

WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1882

(The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved.)

DEDICATED TO
JONATHAN HUTCHINSON, F.R.S.,
PROFESSOR OF PATHOLOGY AND SURGERY, ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS, ENGLAND,
IN MEMORY OF
A LONG FRIENDSHIP.

PREFACE.

[[Skip to Contents]]

I think it was Pascal who said that the last thing an author does in making a book is to discover what to put at the beginning. This discovery is easily made in the present instance.

I wish to state that the range of this book, as its title implies, is mainly restricted to the salient points of the historical sketch it attempts to pourtray. To have written a complete History of the Insane in the British Isles would have necessitated the narration of details uninteresting to the general reader. Hence, as the periods and the institutions of greatest importance have alone been brought into prominence, others have been inevitably thrown into the shade. Thus Bethlem Hospital has occupied much space as the centre around which gathers a large amount of historic interest, having been with our forefathers almost the only representative for many centuries of the attempt to provide for the insane in England—the outward symbol of nearly all they knew on the subject. To the Retreat at York, again, considerable attention has been devoted in this history, as the cradle of reform which made the year 1792 the date of the new departure in the treatment of the unhappy class, on whose behalf the various charitable and national acts recorded in this volume have been performed.

Lincoln and Hanwell also, which in the course of time were the scenes of redoubled efforts to ameliorate the condition of the insane, have received in these pages a large, but certainly not too large, measure of praise; and the writer would have been glad could he have conveniently found space for a fuller description of the good work done at the latter establishment.[1]

Of no other malady would the history of the victims demand so constant a reference to legislation. In the chapter devoted to it, the Earl of Shaftesbury has formed the central figure, honourably distinguished, as have been several other members of the legislature in the same cause, both before and after the year 1828, when as Lord Ashley he seconded Mr. Gordon's Bill, and first came publicly forward in support of measures designed to advance the interests of the insane. A laborious and sometimes fruitless examination of Hansard from the earliest period of lunacy legislation, has been necessary in order to present a continuous narrative of the successive steps by which so great a success has been achieved.

No one knows so well as the historian of an important and extended movement like this, the deficiencies by which its recital is marred, but I trust that I have at least succeeded in supplying a want which some have long felt, in placing before the British reader the main outlines of a history with which every friend of humanity ought to be acquainted. Its interest, I need hardly urge, extends far beyond the pale of the medical profession, and no one who has reason to desire for friend or relative the kindly care or the skilful treatment required for a disordered mind, can do otherwise than wish gratefully to recognize those who, during well-nigh a century, have laboured to make this care and this treatment what they are at the present day.

In conclusion, it remains for me to express my obligations to those who have in various ways rendered me assistance in the prosecution of this work. In addition to acknowledgments made in the following pages, I have pleasure in thanking Dr. McDowall, of Morpeth, for the use of manuscript notes of works bearing on the first chapter; as also Mr. S. Langley. I have to thank Mr. Coote, of the Map Department at the British Museum, and Mr. F. Ross, for help in preparing the chapter on Bethlem Hospital; also Dr. W. A. F. Browne of Dumfries, and Dr. Clouston of the Edinburgh Royal Asylum, for valuable information utilized in the chapter on the history of the insane in Scotland. Lastly, in the preparation of this, as of other works, I am greatly indebted to the ever-willingly rendered assistance of Mr. R. Garnett, of the British Museum Reading Room.

4, Charlotte Street,
Bedford Square,
June 12, 1882.

Footnotes:

[1] The reader is referred to Dr. Conolly's "The Treatment of the Insane without Mechanical Restraints" (1856) for more details.

[CONTENTS.]

CHAPTER I.
MEDICAL AND SUPERSTITIOUS TREATMENT OF THE INSANE IN THE OLDEN TIME.

Among our Saxon ancestors the treatment of the insane was a curious compound of pharmacy, superstition, and castigation. Demoniacal possession was fully believed to be the frequent cause of insanity, and, as is well known, exorcism was practised by the Church as a recognized ordinance. We meet with some interesting particulars in regard to treatment, in what may be called its medico-ecclesiastical aspect, in a work of the early part of the tenth century, by an unknown author, entitled "Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England," or, as we should say, "Medicine, Herb Treatment, and Astrology." It forms a collection of documents never before published, illustrating the history of science in this country before the Norman Conquest.[2] It clearly appears that the Saxon leeches derived much of their knowledge directly from the Romans, and through them from the Greeks, but they also possessed a good deal of their own. The herbs they employed bespeak considerable acquaintance with botany and its application to medicine as understood at that day. The classic peony was administered as a remedy for insanity, and mugwort was regarded as useful in putting to flight what this Saxon book calls "devil sickness," that is, a mental malady arising from a demon. Here is a recipe for "a fiend-sick man" when a demon possesses or dominates him from within. "Take a spew-drink, namely lupin, bishopwort, henbane, cropleek. Pound them together; add ale for a liquid, let it stand for a night, and add fifty libcorns[3] or cathartic grains and holy water."[4] Here, at any rate, we have a remedy still employed, although rejected from the English Pharmacopœias of 1746 and 1788—henbane or hyoscyamus—to say nothing of ale. Another mixture, compounded of many herbs and of clear ale, was to be drunk out of a church-bell,[5] while seven masses were to be sung over the worts or herbs, and the lunatic was to sing psalms, the priest saying over him the Domine, sancte pater omnipotens.

Dioscorides and Apuleius are often the sources of the prescriptions of the Saxons, at least as regards the herb employed. For a lunatic it is ordered to "take clove wort and wreathe it with a red thread about the man's swere (neck) when the moon is on the wane, in the month which is called April, in the early part of October; soon he will be healed." Again, "for a lunatic, take the juice of teucrium polium which we named polion, mix with vinegar, smear therewith them that suffer that evil before it will to him (before the access), and shouldest thou put the leaves of it and the roots of it on a clean cloth, and bind about the man's swere who suffers the evil, it will give an experimental proof of that same thing (its virtue)."[6]

It is greatly to be regretted that the virtues ascribed to peony, used not internally, but in the following way, are not confirmed by experience. "For lunacy, if a man layeth this wort peony over the lunatic, as he lies, soon he upheaveth himself hole; and if he have this wort with him, the disease never again approaches him."[7]

Mandrake, as much as three pennies in weight, administered in a draught of warm water, was prescribed for witlessness; and periwinkle (Vinca pervinca) was regarded as of great advantage for demoniacal possession, and "various wishes, and envy, and terror, and that thou may have grace, and if thou hast this wort with thee thou shalt be prosperous and ever acceptable."

Then follows an amusing direction: "This wort shalt thou pluck thus, saying, 'I pray thee, Vinca pervinca, thee that art to be had for thy many useful qualities, that thou come to me glad, blossoming with thy mainfulnesses; that thou outfit me so, that I be shielded and ever prosperous, and undamaged by poisons and by wrath;' when thou shalt pluck this wort, thou shalt be clean from every uncleanness, and thou shalt pick it when the moon is nine nights old, and eleven nights, and thirteen nights and thirty nights, and when it is one night old."[8]

For epilepsy in a child a curious charm is given in this book, used also for "a dream of an apparition." The brain of a mountain goat was to be drawn through a golden ring, and then "given to the child to swallow before it tastes milk; it will be healed."[9]

Wolf's flesh, well-dressed and sodden, was to be eaten by a man troubled with hallucinations. "The apparitions which ere appeared to him, shall not disquiet him."[10]

Temptations of the fiend were warded off by "a wort hight red niolin—red stalk—which waxeth by running water. If thou hast it on thee and under thy head bolster, and over thy house doors, the devil may not scathe thee, within nor without" (lviii.).

Again, we have a cure for mental vacancy and folly: "Put into ale bishopwort, lupins, betony, the southern (or Italian) fennel, nepte (catmint), water agrimony, cockle, marche; then let the man drink. For idiocy and folly: Put into ale cassia, and lupins, bishopwort, alexander, githrife, fieldmore, and holy water; then let him drink."

Although hardly coming under my theme, I cannot omit this: "Against a woman's chatter: Taste at night fasting a root of radish, that day the chatter cannot harm thee."

For the temptations of the fiend and for night (goblin) visitors, for fascination, and for evil enchantments by song, they prescribed as follows:—"Seek in the maw of young swallows for some little stones, and mind that they touch neither earth nor water nor other stones; look out three of them; put them on the man on whom thou wilt, him who hath the need, he will soon be well."

The ceremonial enjoined in making use of a salve against the elfin race and nocturnal goblin visitors (nightmare) is extremely curious. "Take the ewe hop plant (probably female hop), wormwood, bishopwort, lupin, etc.; put these worts into a vessel, set them under the altar, sing over them nine masses, boil them in butter and sheep's grease, add much holy salt, strain through a cloth, throw the worts into running water. If any ill tempting occur to a man, or an elf or goblin night-visitors come, smear his forehead with this salve, and put it on his eyes, and where his body is sore, and cense him with incense, and sign him frequently with the sign of the cross; his condition will soon be better" (lxi.).[11]

There is no doubt that in these prescriptions a distinction was made between persons who were regarded as possessed and those supposed to be lunatics. For the latter, however, the ecclesiastical element came in as well as the medical one. Herbs were prescribed which were to be mixed with foreign ale and holy water, while masses were sung over the patient "Let him drink this drink," say they, "for nine mornings, at every one fresh, and no other liquid that is thick and still; and let him give alms and earnestly pray God for his mercies." The union of ale and holy water forms an amusing, though unintentioned, satire on the jovial monk of the Middle Ages. I may remark that the old Saxon term "wood" is applied in these recipes to the frenzied. It survives in the Scotch "wud," i.e. mad.[12] Thus for the "wood-heart" it is ordered that "when day and night divide, then sing thou in the Church, litanies, that is, the names of the hallows (or saints) and the Paternoster." This was, as usual, accompanied by the taking of certain herbs and drink. In some instances, a salve was to be smeared on the temples and above the eyes. Medicated baths were not omitted in their prescriptions. Thus for a "wit-sick man," as they call him, they say, "Put a pail full of cold water, drop thrice into it some of the drink, bathe the man in the water, and let him eat hallowed bread and cheese and garlic and cropleek, and drink a cup full of the drink; and when he hath been bathed, smear with the salve thoroughly, and when it is better with him, then work him a strong purgative drink," which is duly particularized. It is unnecessary to give more of these quaint prescriptions, one of which is a drink "against a devil and dementedness" (an illustration, by the way, how the one idea ran into the other); those which I have given will suffice to show the kind of pharmacopœia in use, with the Saxon monk-doctor, for madness. But did their treatment consist of nothing more potent or severe than herbs and salves and baths? It would have been surprising indeed had it not. And so we find the following decidedly stringent application prescribed:—"In case a man be lunatic, take a skin of mere-swine (that is, a sea-pig or porpoise), work it into a whip, and swinge the man therewith; soon he will be well. Amen."[13]

Before taking leave of this interesting book I think that the impression left on the mind of the reader in regard to the circumstances under which it was written, will be clearer, if I cite the following description by the editor:—"Here," he says, "a leech calmly sits down to compose a not unlearned book, treating of many serious diseases, assigning for them something he hopes will cure them.... The author almost always rejects the Greek recipes, and doctors as an herborist.... Bald was the owner of the book, Cild the scribe. The former may be fairly presumed to have been a medical practitioner, for to no other could such a book as this have had, at that time, much interest. We see, then, a Saxon leech at his studies; the book, in a literary sense, is learned; in a professional view not so, for it does not really advance man's knowledge of disease or of cures. It may have seemed by the solemn elaboration of its diagnoses to do so, but I dare not assert there is real substance in it.... If Bald was at once a physician and a reader of learned books on therapeutics, his example implies a school of medicine among the Saxons. And the volume itself bears out the presumption. We read in two cases that 'Oxa taught this leechdom;' in another, that 'Dun taught it;' in another, 'some teach us;' in another, an impossible prescription being quoted, the author, or possibly Cild, the reedsman, indulges in a little facetious comment, that compliance was not easy."[14]

Some light is thrown on the treatment of the insane in early English days by a study of the "Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages," published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls. The inference to be drawn, however, is only that which we might have drawn already from what I have stated. It is observed by Mr. Brewer, the editor of one of these works, written by Giraldus of Wales, who was born 1147, "For the sick, if medicine was required, there was none to be had except in the monastery; and in this country, at all events, the monks were the only medical practitioners."[15] That at that time chains were employed for the insane is incidentally shown by the following story. Walter Mapes, chaplain to Henry II., when living in Gloucestershire, in the Forest of Dean, fell ill. The abbot of a Cistercian house visited him, and used his utmost efforts to induce him to become a monk of their order. Mapes, who was well known to be inimical to Religious Orders, thereupon called his clerks and attendants (he was a canon and archdeacon), and said, "If ever in my sickness, or on any other occasion, I ask for this habit, be certain that it arises not from the exercise of my reason, but the violence of my disease, as sick men often desire what is foolish or prejudicial. But should it ever so happen that I resolutely insist on becoming a monk then bind me with chains and fetters as a lunatic who has lost his wits, and keep me in close custody until I repent and recover my senses." ("Tanquam furibundum et mente captum catenis et vinculis me statim fortiter astringatis, et arcta custodia," etc.[16])

That at this period the influence of the moon in producing lunacy was recognized (as, indeed, when and where was it not?) is proved by observations of the above writer, Giraldus of Wales, in his "Topographica Hibernica," vol. v. p. 79. "Those," he observes, "are called lunatics whose attacks are exacerbated every month when the moon is full." He combats the interpretation of an expositor of Saint Matthew, who said that the insane are spoken of by him as lunatics, not because their madness comes by the moon, but because the devil, who causes insanity, avails himself of the phases of the moon (lunaria tempora). Giraldus, on the contrary, observes that the expositor might have said not less truly that the malady was in consequence of the humours being enormously increased in some persons when the moon is full.

The name of Giraldus is associated with a celebrated holy well in Flintshire, that of St. Winifred, said to be the most famous in the British Isles. At her shrine he offered his devotions in the twelfth century, when he says, "She seemed still to retain her miraculous powers." The cure of lunacy at this well is not particularized, but it is highly probable from the practice resorted to, as we shall see, at others in Britain.[17]

I may here say that there is not much to be found in Chaucer (1328-1400) bearing in any way upon the insane, though he occasionally uses the word "wodeness" for madness, and "wood" or "wod" for the furiously insane.[18] So again in an old English miscellany of the thirteenth century, translated from the Latin, we read—

"Ofte we brennen in mod
And werden so weren wod;"

that is to say, "Oft do we burn in rage and become as it were mad."

I have, in examining that curious book, the "Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman," written in 1393 by William Langland,[19] found one or two passages having reference to my subject which are worth citing. The author, after saying that beggars whose churches are brew-houses may be left to starve, adds that there are some, however, who are idiotic or lunatic. He also says that men give gifts to minstrels, and so should the rich help God's minstrels, namely, lunatics. This is one of the rare instances in which the insane are spoken of in kindly terms by the old writers, although it would be quite unfair to regard what was doubtless harsh treatment as intentionally cruel. Piers the Plowman speaks of men and women wanting in wit, whom he styles "lunatik lollares," that is, persons who loll about, who care for neither cold nor heat, and are "meuynge after the mone." He says that—

"Moneyless they walke
With a good wil, witless, meny wyde contreys
Ryght as Peter dade and Paul, save that they preche nat."

In many instances mistaken kindness, in others ignorance and superstition, guided the past treatment of the insane. When residing in Cornwall some years ago, I was interested in the traditions of that once isolated county, and heard of a practice long since discontinued, which illustrates this observation. It was called "bowssening" (or ducking) the lunatic, from a Cornu-British or Armoric word, beuzi or bidhyzi meaning to baptize, dip, or drown.[20] There were, it seems, many places where this custom was observed in Cornwall, but the one I now refer to was at Altarnun, and was called St. Nun's Pool. It is situated about eight miles from Launceston. Though the name of this saint gives the impression of her being a nun, it appears that she was a beautiful girl, with whom Cereticus, a Welsh prince, fell in love. According to tradition, she was buried at Altarnun. The church was afterwards dedicated to St. Mary. The water from the pool was allowed to flow into an enclosed space, and on the surrounding wall the patient was made to stand with his back to the water, and was then by a sudden blow thrown backwards into it. Then (to quote a graphic description which has been given of it), "a strong fellowe, provided for the nonce, tooke him and tossed him up and downe alongst and athwart the water, untill the patient by forgoing his strength had somewhat forgot his fury. Then was he conveyed to the church, and certain masses sung over him, upon which handling, if his right wits returned, St. Nunne had the thanks; but if there appeared small amendment, he was bowssened againe and againe while there remayned in him any hope of life, for recovery." Men who had actually witnessed this treatment of lunacy related this narrative to Carew, the author of the "Survey of Cornwall," published in 1769, and he gives an explanation of the custom which is no doubt erroneous, but is curious for other reasons. "It may be," he says, "this device took original from the Master of Bedlam, who (the fable sayeth) used to cure his patients of that impatience by keeping them bound in pools up to the middle, and so more or less after the fit of their fury" (p. 123). The present Master goes further, and keeps them up to the neck in a prolonged warm bath!

The Vicar of Altarnun, Rev. John Power, in response to my inquiries, has been good enough to ask the oldest men in the parish whether they remembered the well being so used, but they do not. At the corner of a meadow there is still an intermittent spring, flowing freely in wet weather. The tank which was formerly on the spot has gone, the farmers having removed the stone in order to mend the fences, and consequently much of the water has been diverted into other channels, emptying itself into the river St. Inny, which runs a few hundred yards in the valley below. It seems probable that the working of a large stone quarry in the hills above has cut off the main current of the spring.

To Carew's account Dr. Borlase adds that in his opinion "a similar bowssening pit has existed at a well in St. Agnes' parish." Among other Cornish wells which had healing virtues assigned them was St. Levan's, and the insane, no doubt, partook of them. "Over the spring," says Dr. Boase, "lies a large flat stone, wide enough to serve as a foundation for a little square chapel erected upon it; the chapel is no more than five feet square, seven feet high, the little roof of it of stone. The water is reckoned very good for eyes, toothache, and the like, and when people have washed, they are always advised to go into this chapel and sleep upon the stone, which is the floor of it, for it must be remembered that whilst you are sleeping upon these consecrated stones, the saint is sure to dispense his healing influence." Madron Well attained a great celebrity for healing diseases and for divining. "Girls dropped crooked pins in to raise bubbles and divine the period of their marriage."[21]

Mr. W. C. Borlase, M.P., informs me that at St. Kea, near Truro, within the walls of the church, was a stone to which, within the memory of an old gentleman who died only about two years ago, an inhabitant of the parish, on becoming insane, was chained. He adds that just as Altarnun is Nun's altar, the parish of Elerky is derived from St. Kea's altar (Eller or Aller-kè).

Scotland was still more remarkable than Cornwall for its lunacy-healing wells and extraordinary superstitions, surviving also to a much later period; in fact, not yet dispelled by civilization and science. Every one has heard of St. Fillan's Well (strictly, a pool) in Perthshire, and knows the lines in "Marmion"—

"Then to Saint Fillan's blessed well,
Whose spring can frenzied dreams dispel,
And the crazed brain restore."

This well, derived from the river of that name in the vale of Strathfillan, and consecrated by the saint who, according to tradition, converted the inhabitants to Christianity,[22] has been ever since distinguished by his name, and esteemed of sovereign virtue in curing madness.

There was an abbot living in the Vale of St. Fillan in 1703. "He is pleased," says Pennant, in his "Tour in Scotland" (vol. ii. p. 15), "to take under his protection the disordered in mind; and works wonderful cures, say his votaries, unto this day." It was, he says, a second Bethesda. He wrote in 1774.

Mr. Heron, the author of a "Journey through Part of Scotland," made in the year 1793, observes that in his day "about two hundred persons afflicted in this way are annually brought to try the benefits of its salutary influence. These patients," he continues, "are conducted by their friends, who first perform the ceremony of passing with them thrice round a neighbouring cairn; on this cairn they then deposit a simple offering of clothes, or perhaps of a small bunch of heath.... The patient is then thrice immerged in the sacred pool; after the immersion he is bound hand and foot, and left for the night in a chapel which stands near. If the maniac is found loose in the morning, good hopes are conceived of his full recovery. If he is still bound, his cure remains doubtful. It sometimes happens that death relieves him during his confinement from the troubles of life."[23]

An Englishman who visited the spot five years afterwards (1798) says the patient was fastened down in the open churchyard on a stone all the night, with a covering of hay over him, and St. Fillan's bell put over his head. The people believed that wherever the bell was removed to, it always returned to a particular place in the churchyard next morning. "In order to ascertain the truth of this ridiculous story, I carried it off with me," continues this English traveller. "An old woman, who observed what I was about, asked me what I wanted with the bell, and I told her that I had an unfortunate relation at home out of his mind, and that I wanted to have him cured. 'Oh, but,' says she, 'you must bring him here to be cured, or it will be of no use.' Upon which I told her he was too ill to be moved, and off I galloped with the bell." To make this story complete, I should add that the son of this gentleman, residing in Hertfordshire, restored to Scotland this interesting relic, after the lapse of seventy-one years, namely, in 1869.

At Struthill, in Stirlingshire, was a well famous for its healing virtues in madness. "Several persons," says Dalyell, "testified to the Presbytery of Stirling in 1668, that, having carried a woman thither, they had stayed two nights at an house hard by the well; that the first night they did bind her twice to a stone at the well, but she came into the house to them, being loosed without any help; the second night they bound her over again to the same stone, and she returned loosed; and they declare also, that she was very mad before they took her to the well, but since that time she is working and sober in her wits." He adds that this well was still celebrated in 1723, and votive offerings were left; but no one then surviving knew that the virtues of the stone were in request. The chapel itself was demolished in 1650, in order to suppress the superstitions connected with this well.[24]

The virtues of St. Ronan's Well were renowned of old, and are still credited. The lunatic walks round the Temple of St. Molonah, whose ruin near the Butt of Lewis remains. He is sprinkled with water from the well, is bound, and placed on the site of the altar for the night. A cure is expected, if he sleep; if not, the fates are considered adverse, and he returns home. My authority, Dr. Mitchell, records a case of recovery.

There is in Ross-shire a small Island on Loch Maree, called Inch or Innis Maree, where is a famous well, bearing the name of this saint,[25] who lived at the beginning of the eighth century. This well was celebrated for its virtues in the cure of mental disorders. Pennant, the author already quoted, visited it in 1769, and gave a graphic description of the superstitious practices connected with its supposed sanctity. "The curiosity of the place," he writes, "is the well of the saint, of power unspeakable in cases of lunacy. The patient is brought into the sacred island, is made to kneel before the altar where his attendants leave an offering in money; he is then brought to the well and sips some of the holy water; a second offering is made; that done, he is thrice dipped in the lake, and the same operation is repeated every day for some weeks; and it often happens, by natural causes, the patient receives relief, of which the saint receives the credit. I must add that the visitants draw from the state of the well an omen of the disposition of St. Maree; if his well is full they suppose he will be propitious; if not, they proceed in their operations with fears and doubts, but let the event be what it will, he is held in high esteem."[26]

This practice was, no doubt, closely connected with the belief of the inhabitants that the insane were possessed. "To preclude the demon from lurking in the hair, a special water was sometimes used; the patient was plunged over head and ears in a bath of Gregorian water,[27] and detained there just up to the drowning point."[28] Dr. Mitchell (Commissioner in Lunacy in Scotland) has given a most interesting account of similar Scotch customs associated with their treatment of their insane, practised from time immemorial, and therefore illustrating the proceedings of a remote antiquity, pagan as well as Christian. But I must content myself with a very brief reference to his descriptions. Writing of the island of Maree in 1862, he states that about seven years before a furious madman was brought there; "a rope was passed round his waist, and with a couple of men at one end in advance, and a couple at the other behind, like a furious bull to the slaughter-house, he was marched to the Loch side and placed in a boat, which was pulled once round the island, the patient being jerked into the water at intervals. He was then landed, drank of the water, attached his offering to the tree, and, as I was told, in a state of happy tranquillity went home."[29]

Whittier has expressed in verse the virtues of the well of St. Maree, as Scott those of St. Fillan:—

"And whoso bathes therein his brow,
With care or madness burning,
Feels once again his healthful thought
And sense of peace returning.

"O restless heart and fevered brain,
Unquiet and unstable,
That holy well of Loch Máree
Is more than idle fable."

Of another place, the island of Melista, in the Hebrides, it is stated that, according to tradition, no one was ever born there who was not from birth insane, or who did not become so before death. "In the last generation, three persons had the misfortune for the first time to see the light of day on this unlucky spot, and all three were mad. Of one of them, who is remembered by the name of Wild Murdoch, many strange stories are told. It is said that his friends used to tie a rope round his body, make it fast to the stern of the boat, and then pull out to sea, taking the wretched man in tow. The story goes that he was so buoyant he could not sink; that they 'tried to press him down into the water;' that he could swim with a stone fastened to him; that when carried to the rocky holms of Melista or Greinan, round which the open Atlantic surges, and left there alone, he took to the water and ran ashore; and that when bound hand and foot, and left in a kiln, by a miracle of strength he broke his bonds and escaped. It is thus they are said to have treated him during his fits of maniacal excitement; and there are many still alive who saw it all, and gave a helping hand.... The further story of Wild Murdoch will astonish no one. He murdered his sister, was taken south, and died in an asylum, or, as the people say and believe, in the cell of a gloomy prison, under which the sea-wave came and went for ever."[30]

Curious ancient superstitions besides those connected with wells still survive in the "land o' cakes." The same observant writer says that in the north of Scotland they literally sacrifice a cock to a nameless but secretly acknowledged power, whose propitiation is sought in the cure of epilepsy. On the spot where the patient falls a black cock is buried alive, along with a lock of the patient's hair, and some parings of his nails. Let it not be supposed that this was done in some outlandish part of the world. Dr. Mitchell assures us that this sacrifice was openly offered recently in an improving town to which the railway now conveys the traveller, and which has six churches and ten schools for a population of about four thousand. If such things are done in the green tree, what must have been done in the dry? We may safely read the past in the present. In fact, Dalyell[31] states that in 1597 the "earding of ane quik cok in the grund" was regarded as a cure of madness.

He also records the fact that a Scotch empiric of the seventeenth century professed the cure of those "'visseit with frenacies, madness, falling evil (epilepsy), persones distractit in their wittis, and with feirful apparitiones, etc., and utheris uncouth diseases; all done be sorcerie, incantation, devellische charmeing.' Above forty persons are enumerated for whom he had prescribed, for which he was strangled and burnt as too familiar with Satan."[32] The same author relates that a poor woman having become frantic, the alleged author of the malady came, and "laying hands on hir, she convaleschit and receivit hir sinsis agane."[33] This was in 1616.

Insane persons were sometimes treated with holy water, to which salt was added, with the idea that the devil abhorred salt as the emblem of immortality (we have already had to notice this use of salt among the Saxons). Hence it was "consecrated by the papists, as profiting the health of the body, and for the banishment of demons." A certain remedial "watter," used in Scotland by wise women or herbalists, is supposed to have contained the same ingredient. Elspeth Sandisone, in 1629, was bereft of her senses. One Richart was thus accused of having tried to cure her. "Ye call the remedie 'watter forspeking,' and took watter into ane round cape and went out into the byre, and took sumthing out of your purse lyk unto great salt, and did cast thairin, and did spit thrie severall times in the samen; and ye confest yourself when ye had done so, ye aunchit in bitts, quhilk is ane Norne terme, quhilk is to say ye blew your braith thairin and thairefter ye sent it to the said Elspeth with the servand woman of the hous, and bad that the said Elspeth sould be waschit thairin, hands and feit, and scho sould be als holl as ever scho was."[34]

I may give here a curious illustration of insanity being induced, not cured, by superstition in Scotland. John Law's servant "rane wode" when John Knox had retreated to St. Andrews during the civil contentions of his later years. The story is thus quaintly told in Bannatyne's "Journal" (p. 309). John Law of that city, being in Edinburgh Castle in January, 1572, "the ladie Home wald neidis thraip in his face that he was banist the said toune because that, in the yarde reasit (rose) sum sanctis, among whome cam up the devill with hornis, which when his servant Ritchart saw, rane wode, and so deit."[35]

But I must not dwell longer on the treatment of lunatics by the Highlanders, or the superstitions of Scotland in this connection, and will now say a few words in reference to Ireland.

It would be easy to narrate the stories which in Ireland connect popular superstition with the treatment of the insane, but I will only refer to one. The reader may have heard of the "Valley of the Lunatics," or Glen-na-galt, in that country. It is situated in Kerry, near Tralee. It was believed, not only in that county, but in Ireland generally, that all lunatics would ultimately, if left to themselves, find their way to this glen to be cured.[36] In the valley are two wells, called the "Lunatic's Wells," or Tober-na-galt, to which the lunatics resort, crossing a stream flowing through the glen, at a point called the "Madman's Ford," or Ahagaltaun, and passing by the "Standing Stone of the Lunatics" (Cloghnagalt). Of these waters they drink, and eat the cresses growing on the margin; the firm belief being that the healing water, and the cresses, and the mysterious virtue of the glen will effectually restore the madman to mental health.

Dr. Oscar Woods, the medical superintendent of the District Lunatic Asylum, Kilkenny, informs me that the superstition has nearly died out since this asylum was opened, about thirty years ago. Dr. Woods gives a different etymology, namely, bright, for galt; the valley in that case deriving its name in contradistinction to that on the other side of the hill, Emaloghue, on which the sun scarcely ever shines. He thinks the superstition arose from persons labouring under melancholy going from the sunless to the bright valley. "Why this place," wrote Dr. C. Smith in 1756,[37] "rather than any other should be frequented by lunatics, nobody can pretend to ascertain any rational cause, and yet no one truth is more firmly credited here by the common people than this impertinent fable." He, however, says that having regard to the awful appearance of these desolate glens and mountains, none but madmen would enter them! Recurring to the meaning of the word galt, a gentleman in Ireland, a professor of Irish, states that geilt is a mad person, one living in the woods, and that gealt is the genitive plural. It is interesting to find, also, from the same source, that the Irish word for the moon is gealach, indicating a probable etymological connection.

As to the origin of this superstition, it appears to be of very ancient date. It is stated[38] that the Fenian tale, called "Cath Finntraglia," or "The Battle of Ventry," relates how Daire Dornmhar, "the monarch of the world," landed at Ventry to conquer Erin, and was opposed in mortal combat by Finnmac-Cumhail and his men. The battles were many and lasted a year and a day, and at last the "monarch of the world" was completely repulsed, and driven from the shores of Ireland. In the battle, Gall, the son of the King of Ulster, only a youth, who had come to the help of Finnmac-Cumhail, "having entered the battle with extreme eagerness, his excitement soon increased to absolute frenzy, and, after having performed astounding deeds of valour, fled in a state of derangement from the scene of slaughter, and never stopped till he plunged into the wild seclusion of this valley." The opinion is that this Gall was the first lunatic who went there, and that with him this singular local superstition originated, followed as it has been by innumerable pilgrimages to the beautiful "Valley of Lunatics" and its wells.

A visitor to this valley in 1845 writes: "We went to see Glenagalt, or the 'Madman's Glen,' the place, as our guide sagely assured us, 'to which all the mad people in the world would face, if they could get loose.' After pursuing for miles our romantic route, we came to the highest part of the road, and turned a hill which completely shut out Glen Inch; and lo! before us lay a lovely valley, sweeping down through noble hills to Brandon Bay. The peak of the mighty Brandon himself ended one ridge of the boundary, while high, though less majestic, mountains formed the other; and this valley so rich and fertile, so gay with cornfields, brown meadows, potato gardens, and the brilliant green of the flax, so varied and so beautiful in the bright mingling of Nature's skilful husbandry, was the 'Madman's Glen.' I felt amazed and bewildered, for I had expected to see a gloomy solitude, with horrid crags and gloomy precipices. Not at all; the finest and richest valley which has greeted my eyes since we entered the Highlands of Kerry is this—smiling, soft, and lovely.

"We took our leave of fair Glenagalt, and assuredly if any aspect of external nature could work such a blessed change, the repose, peace, and plenty of this charming valley would restore the unsettled brain of a poor unfortunate."[39]

The late Professor Eugene O'Curry, in his work on the "Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish," published in 1873, makes no reference to madness, idiocy, or possession. He refers to a sort of witchcraft under the head of divination, where he gives an instance of a trance produced by magical arts; of the mad rage of the hero, and of how, in the midst of that rage, he was caught, as it were, by the hands and feet, through Druidical incantations.[40]

Returning to England, let the reader imagine himself in London in the early and middle part of the sixteenth century. There, in St. Giles's, might have been seen a physician, Dr. Borde, who, born in 1490 in Sussex, had made some practice in the metropolis, including that of mental disorders. He had been a Carthusian monk, but was "dispensed of religion," studied medicine, and followed the medical profession, first at Glasgow, and then in London. What, it may be asked, would have been his method of caring for lunatics? The answer may be found in a curious book which he wrote, entitled "A Compendious Rygment or a Dyetry of Helth," and published in 1542.[41] There are several references, of much interest, to insanity. One chapter of the book is headed, "An order and a dyett for them the whiche be madde and out of theyr wytte." In it the doctor says, "I do advertyse every man the whiche is madde or lunatycke or frantycke or demonyacke, to be kepte in safegarde in some close house or chamber where there is lytell light; and that we have a keeper the whiche the madde man do feare." The remainder is conceived in quite a kindly spirit. The patient is to have no knife or shears; no girdle, except a weak list of cloth, lest he destroy himself; no pictures of man or woman on the wall, lest he have fantasies. He is to be shaved once a month, to drink no wine or strong beer, but "warm suppynges three tymes a daye, and a lytell warm meat." Few words are to be used except for reprehension or gentle reformation.

This, then, is the way in which a well-intentioned doctor would take care of a lunatic in the reign of Henry VIII. We wish that all the treatment pursued had been as considerate. That it was not so we shall see; but I would first add the curious experience of Dr. Borde in Rome, which he visited, and where he witnessed the treatment of a lunatic which was very singular, and founded on the vulgar notion of his being possessed. He says that to a marble pillar near St. Peter's, persons supposed to be possessed, that is, insane, were brought, and said to be cured. A German lady was the patient when the English physician was the spectator, and he describes her as being taken violently by some twenty men to the pillar, or rather into it, for it appears to have contained a chamber; "and after her did go in a priest, and did examine the woman in this manner. 'Thou devil or devils, I adjure thee by the potential power of the Father and the Son our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the virtue of the Holy Ghost, that thou do show to me for what cause thou doest possess this woman?'" What words were answered, Dr. Borde says he will not write, "for men will not believe it, but would say it were a foul and great lie." What he heard made him afraid to tarry, lest the demons should have come out of her and entered into him. We are not left in doubt as to his belief in the possession of lunatics. "I considering this," he says, "and weke of faith and afeard crossed myself and durst not hear and see such matters for it was so stupendous and above all reason if I should write it." It is certainty a pity that the worthy doctor did not stay longer to watch, and to record in his graphic language, the effect of the treatment.

From the same motives lunatics in Great Britain were bound to holy crosses. Sir David Lyndsay, in his poem called "Monarche," written nearly four hundred years ago, says—

"They bryng mad men on fuit and horsse,
And byndes theme to Saint Mangose Crosse."

To this cross (at Lotherwerd, now Borthwick, county Edinburgh), says an old writer, Jocelin, a monk of Furness, "many labouring under various disorders, and especially the furious and those vexed with demons, are bound in the evening; and in the morning they are often found sane and whole, and are restored to their liberty."[42]

The resort to pillars of churches is illustrated by what an Augustine Canon of Scone says, in a work on the rule of his foundation (Paris, 1508), for he protests against the desecration of churches, with the exception of curing lunatics in the way I have just described, as being bound to the church pillars.

Nearly a hundred years after Dr. Borde wrote, that remarkable work was published, "The Anatomy of Melancholy," by Burton. Some quaint lines and a rough engraving on the title-page illustrate but too well the treatment of the insane familiar to him, although not a physician; it seems worse, instead of better, than that of the doctor of St. Giles.

"But see the madman rage downright
With furious looks, a ghastly sight!
Naked in chains bound doth he lie
And roars amain, he knows not why."

The first edition of Burton's work was published in 1621, five years after the death of Shakespeare, who speaks, in "As You Like It" (Act iii. sc. 2), of madmen deserving "a dark house and a whip," and in "Twelfth Night" makes Sir Toby say of Malvolio (Act iii. scene 4), "Come, we'll have him in a dark room and bound." The medical treatment of melancholia contained in Burton consists mainly of herbs, as borage, supposed to affect the heart, poppies to act on the head, eupatory (teazel) on the liver, wormwood on the stomach, and endive to purify the blood. Vomits of white hellebore or antimony, and purges of black hellebore or aloes, are prescribed.

The famous "Herbal" of Gerarde, published in 1597, gives various remedies for madness, but they are, unfortunately, copied for the most part from Dioscorides, Galen, and other ancient writers. They are so far of interest that they show what was accepted as the best-known drug practice at the time in England in mental disorders. Under "A Medicine against Madnesse" we have rhubarb and wild thyme, the latter being "a right singular remedie to cure them that have had a long phrensie or lethargie." He is here only following Aetius, and when he says, "Besides its singular effects in splenetical matters, it helpeth any disease of melancholy," he appears to follow Galen. Feverfew is said to be "good for such as be melancholike, sad, pensive, and without speech." Syrup made of flowers of borage "comforteth the heart, purgeth the melancholy, and quieteth the phrenticke or lunaticke person." Hellebore, of course, has its virtues recognized. Black hellebore, or the Christmas rose, "purgeth all melancholy humors, yet not without trouble and difficultie, therefore it is not to be given but to robustious and strong bodies as Mesues teacheth. It is good for mad and furious men, for melancholy, dull, and heavy persons, for those that are troubled with the falling sickness (epilepsy)," and "briefely for all those that are troubled with blacke choler, and molested with melancholy."[43]

Gerarde strongly commends "that noble and famous confection Alkermes, made by the Arabians," containing the grains of the scarlet oak (Ilex coccigera). "It is good against melancholy deseases, vaine imaginations, sighings, griefe and sorrow without manifest cause, for that it purgeth away melancholy humors" (p. 1343). Poultices applied to the head, of mustard and figs, are recommended for epilepsy and lethargy. Gerarde adopts from Apuleius the virtues of double yellow and white batchelor's buttons, hung "in a linnen cloath about the necke of him that is lunaticke, in the waine of the moone, when the signe shall be in the first degree of Taurus or Scorpio."

Such are the principal remedies for insanity given by Gerarde, original and second hand.

Returning to Burton, it should be said that among the causes of the disease he distinctly recognizes the same uncanny influence that his contemporaries Coke and Hale regarded as a legal fact—I mean witchcraft. After saying that "many deny witches altogether, or, if there be any, assert that they can do no harm," of which opinion, he adds, "is our countryman (Reginald) Scot (of Kent),[44] but of the contrary opinion are most lawyers, physicians, and philosophers," he proceeds, "They can cause tempests, etc., which is familiarly practised by witches in Norway, as I have proved, and, last of all, cure and cause most diseases to such as they hate, as this of Melancholy among the rest."[45]

It may be asked, What was the medical knowledge or practice at the time of Coke and Hale, to which they would turn for direction when insanity came before them in the courts of law? and I think a correct reply would be best obtained by taking this wonderful book of Burton's, the works of Sir Thomas Browne, who gave evidence before Hale, and what may be called the case-book of the celebrated Court physician, Sir Theodore de Mayerne. A Genevese, he settled in England in 1606, and was regarded as the highest authority in mental and nervous affections. A medical work of his was translated into Latin by Bonet. Mayerne's treatment was certainly of a somewhat cumbrous character, and his patients must have had an unusual and commendable amount of perseverance if they pursued it thoroughly. The drugs probably cured in part, at least, from the duty entailed upon the patients of collecting the numerous herbs which were ordered for the composition of the mixture, and Sir Theodore truly and naïvely remarks to one of his patients, "It will take some time before you have mixed your medicine." It is clear that he was under the influence of the old belief in the connection between the liver and insanity, and the paramount importance of getting rid of the black bile. Of one case he asserts that the root of all the griefs wherewith the patient has been afflicted is a melancholy humour, generated in the liver and wrought upon in the spleen. This humour is stated to be mixed in the veins, and so extended to the brain, which this offensive enemy of nature doth assault as an organical part. Hence, he says, it happens that the principal functions of the soul do act erroneously. His treatment consisted of emetics, purges, opening the veins under the tongue, blisters, issues, and shaving the head, followed by a cataplasm upon it, the backbone anointed with a very choice balsam of earthworms or bats. One prescription for melancholia contains no less than twenty-seven ingredients, to be made into a decoction, to which is to be added that sine quâ non, the ever precious hellebore. Other remedies were prescribed; in some cases the "bezoartick pastills," composed of an immense number of ingredients, including the skull of a stag and of a healthy man who had been executed. The commentary triumphantly made by this lover of polypharmacy in the case in which this medicine was administered, runs thus:—"These things being exactly performed, this noble gentleman was cured." With certain modifications, the general treatment here indicated was that in fashion at the period to which I refer, and was based on a strong conviction of the presence of certain peccant humours in the body, affecting the brain, which required elimination.

Mayerne, of whom there is a portrait in the College of Physicians, was physician to more crowned heads than has fallen to the lot of probably any other doctor, namely, Henry IV. of France, James I. of England, his queen, Anne of Denmark, Charles I., and Charles II. He introduced calomel into practice. Dying in 1654/5, he was buried in the church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, where a monument was erected to his memory.[46]

The royal author of the book on Demonology (first published in 1597)—the high and mighty Prince James—gives sundry learned reasons why witches are not to be regarded as mad, and why, therefore, the plea of insanity should be rejected in the legal tribunals. Written in the form of a dialogue between Philomathes and Epistemon, the latter, who personates the king, says, "As to your second reason (that Witchcraft is but very melancholique imagination of simple raving creatures), grounded upon Physicke, in attributing the confessions or apprehensions of Witches to a natural melancholique humour, any one that pleased physikally to consider upon the natural humour of Melancholy, according to all the physicians that ever writ thereupon, shall find that that will be over short a cloake to cover their knavery with."[47]

James is very wroth with Reginald Scot and Wierus[48] for their opposition to the prevalent belief, and urges, as proof of the existence of witches ("which have never fallen out so clear in any age or nation"), daily experience and their confessions. Reginald Scot had dared to write, in his "Discovery of Witchcraft" (1584): "Alas, I am sorry and ashamed to see how many die who being said to be bewitched, only seek for magical cures, whom wholesome diet and good medicines would have recovered.... These affections tho' they appear in the mind of man, yet are they bred in the body and proceed from the humour which is the very dregs of the blood; nourishing those places from whence proceed fear, cogitations, superstitions, fastings, labours, and such like."

It is striking to observe how much more enlightened this writer was than a physician to whom I have already referred, Sir Thomas Browne. His famous sentence, in which he gives full credence to witches, makes us obliged to admit that when so distinguished a man entertained such superstitious notions, we cannot be much surprised if contemporary judges regarded many of the really insane as witches, although they had before them the enlightened opinions of Reginald Scot.

The history of incubi, or "night-comers," is doubtless, to a large extent, a narrative of the hallucinations, delusions, and automatic thoughts of the insane, although to what extent would be a difficult question to determine, because some were assuredly frightened into the confessions which they made; and, further, it is hard to say how much of a certain belief was due to the current popular ignorance and credulity, and how much to actual mental disease. Still the ignorant opinions of an age find their nisus and most rapid development in persons of weak or diseased mind, and they form the particular delusion manifested; and at a period when witches are universally believed in, there must be some reason why one believes he or she has had transactions with Satan, and another does not believe it. It is, indeed, impossible to read the narratives of some of the unfortunate hags who were put to death for witchcraft, without recognizing the well-marked features of the victims of cerebral disorder. In this way I have no doubt a considerable number of mad people were destroyed. Their very appearance suggested to their neighbours the notion of something weird and impish; the physiognomy of madness was mistaken for that of witchcraft, while the poor wretches themselves, conscious of unaccustomed sensations and singular promptings, referred them to the agency of demons. Strangely enough, even an inquisitor—Nider, who died in 1440—gives many instances of persons whose symptoms he himself recognized as those not of possession, but of madness.

It is hardly necessary to say that the treatment of the unfortunate lunatics and epileptics who were judged to be witches by James I. was nothing else than death, and he thus coolly comments on this punishment: "It is commonly used by fire, but that is an indifferent thing, to be used in every country, according to the law or custom thereof."[49]

I cannot pass from this subject without doing honour to two men who abroad, no less than Reginald Scot in Britain, opposed the immolation of lunatics—Wierus, physician to the Duke of Cleves, who wrote a remarkable work in 1567, and appealed to the princes of Europe to cease shedding innocent blood; and Cornelius Agrippa,[50] who interfered in the trial of a so-called witch in Brabant, having sore contention with an inquisitor, who through unjust accusations drew a poor woman into his butchery, not so much to examine as to torment her. When Agrippa undertook to defend her, alleging there was no proof of sorcery, the inquisitor replied, "One thing there is which is proof and matter sufficient; for her mother was in times past burnt for a witch." When Agrippa retorted that this had reference to another person, and therefore ought not to be admitted by the judge, the inquisitor was equal to the occasion, and replied that witchcraft was naturally engrafted into this child, because the parents used to sacrifice their children to the devil as soon as they were born. On this Agrippa boldly exclaimed, "Oh, thou wicked priest, is this thy divinity? Dost thou use to draw poor guiltless women to the rack by these forged devices? Dost thou with such sentences judge others to be heretics, thou being a greater heretic than either Faustus or Donatus?" The natural consequence was that the inquisitor then threatened to proceed against the advocate himself as a supporter of witches; nevertheless, he continued his defence of the unhappy woman, who, whether a lunatic or not, was delivered, we read, by him "from the claws of the bloody monk, who, with her accuser, was condemned in a great sum of money, and remained infamous after that time to almost all men."

Scot, who cites this case, shows great familiarity with examples of melancholy and delusion, and from his work have been derived many of the best known illustrations of the latter, including the delusions of being monarchs, brute beasts, and earthen pots greatly fearing to be broken. The old story of the patient who thought Atlas weary of upholding the heavens and would let the sky fall upon him, is narrated by this author, as well as that of the man who believed his nose to be as big as a house.

It comes then, to this—to revert to the question, what was the medical knowledge or practice at the time of Coke and Hale, to which they would turn for direction when insanity came before them in the Courts of Law? —that when the lawyers went to the doctors for light they got surprisingly little help. They had better have confined themselves to reading the old Greek and Roman books on medicine, of which the medical practice of that period was but a servile imitation, and not have added, from their belief in witchcraft, the horrible punishment of lunatics, which in our country extended over the period between 1541 and 1736, when the laws against witchcraft were abolished. The last judicial murder of a witch in the British Isles (Sutherlandshire) was in 1722.

Leaving now the insane who were punished as witches, I pass on to remark that in Percy's "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," it is stated that the English have more songs and ballads on the subject of madness than any of their neighbours. "Whether," the writer proceeds, "there be any truth in the insinuation that we are more liable to this calamity than other nations,[51] or that our native gloominess hath peculiarly recommended subjects of this class to our writers, we certainly do not find the same in the printed collections of French and Italian songs." Half a dozen so-called mad songs are selected. These refer to much the same period as that we have been considering; and, in fact, we come upon the "Old Tom of Bedlam," or Cranke or Abram man, who "would swear he had been in Bedlam, and would talk frantickly of purpose," so notorious in connection with the beggary which endeavoured to make capital out of the asylum most familiar to our ancestors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this light the Bedlam beggars appear in "King Lear"—

"The country gives me proof and precedent
Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices,
Stick in their numb'd and mortify'd bare arms
Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary;"

and these enforce their charity by lunatic "bans," that is, by licences to beg under the badge of the Star of Bethlehem.

Some doggerel from the most ancient of the Percy "Reliques" will serve for a sample of the rest:

"Forth from my sad and darksome cell,
Or from the deepe abysse of Hell,
Mad Tom is come into the world againe,
To see if he can cure his distemper'd braine."

Tom appears to have brought away with him some of his fetters, then sufficiently abundant in Bedlam:

"Come, Vulcan, with tools and with tackles,
To knocke off my troublesome shackles."

This method of treatment—by fetters—has not, it may be well to state, survived, like immersion, in the practice of the present Master of Bedlam.

We learn from Shakespeare how "poor Tom that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the tadpole, the wall-newt and the water [newt]; ... swallows the old rat, and the ditch-dog;" and "drinks the green mantle of the standing pool," was "whipped from tything to tything, and stocked, punished, and imprisoned....

Mice, and rats, and such small deere
Have been Tom's food for seven long yeare."[52]

Whipping-posts were very common in the reign of Henry VIII., and we suppose long before; certainly also much later. About the middle of the seventeenth century an old poet, John Taylor, once a waterman on the Thames, and hence called the "Water Poet," wrote:

"In London, and within one mile, I ween,
There are of jails and prisons full eighteen,
And sixty whipping-posts and stocks and cages."

The whipping-post was sometimes called the "tree of truth." There is a curious passage in Sir Thomas More's works, in which he orders a lunatic to be bound to a tree and soundly beaten with rods.

"There was a tree in Sir Thomas More's garden, at which he so often beat Lutherans, that it was called the 'tree of troth,'" says Burnet. This was not the tree at which he had the poor lunatic flogged, for he says that was in the street.

"It was a good plea in those days to an action for assault, battery, and false imprisonment, that the plaintiff was a lunatic, and that therefore the defendant had arrested him, confined him, and whipped him."[53]

Whipping-posts may still be seen in some villages in England, in the vicinity of stocks. Of course they were largely employed for idle vagabonds, but many really insane people suffered. The following item from the constable's account at Great Staughton, Huntingdonshire, illustrates the custom of whipping wandering lunatics:—"1690/1. Paid in charges, taking up a distracted woman, watching her and whipping her next day, 8s. 6d."[54]

Let me here refer for a moment to the "brank."

The "brank" or "scold's bridle" was very probably used in former days for lunatics—an instrument of torture which has received much elucidation from my friend Dr. Brushfield, the late medical superintendent of Brookwood Asylum. Indeed, it is certain that it, or a similar gag, called the "witch's bridle," was employed for these unfortunate suspects, of whom so many, as we have good reason to conclude, were insane or hystero-epileptics. In the church steeple at Forfar one was preserved, within recent times, with the date 1661.[55] Archdeacon Hale many years ago suggested that the "brank" was used to check noisy lunatics of the female sex; and in reference to this, Dr. Brushfield remarks: "Medical officers of asylums can always point out many female patients who, if they had been living a couple of centuries back, would undoubtedly have been branked as scolds. One of the female lunatics in the Cheshire Asylum gave me, a few days since, a very graphic account of the manner in which she had been bridled some years ago whilst an inmate of a workhouse."[56]

No doubt, in addition to branks and whipping-posts, the pillory and stocks, and probably the ducking-stool, were made use of for unruly and crazy people, who nowadays would be comfortably located in an asylum.

What now, let us ask in conclusion, are the practical inferences to draw from the descriptions which I have given respecting the popular and medical treatment of lunatics in the good old times in the British Isles?

In the first place, we see that the nature of the malady under which the insane laboured was completely misunderstood; that they often passed as witches and possessed by demons, and were tortured as such and burnt at the stake, when their distempered minds ought to have been gently and skilfully treated. Some, however, were recognized by the monks as simply lunatic, and were treated by the administration of herbs, along with, in many instances, some superstitious accompaniment, illustrating, when successful, the influence of the imagination.

Further, the medical treatment, so far as it made any pretension to methods of cure, was either purely empirical, or founded upon the one notion that descended from generation to generation from the earliest antiquity—that there was an excess of bile in the blood, and that it must be expelled by emetics or purgatives.

Again, there was the more violent remedy of flagellation, one always popular and easy of application; equally efficacious, too, whether regarded as a punishment for violent acts, or as a means of thrashing out the supposed demon lurking in the body and the real cause of the malady. And there was, of course, as the primary treatment, seclusion in a dark room and fetters.

To anticipate what belongs to subsequent chapters, we may say here that when the insane were no longer treated in monasteries, or brought to sacred wells, or flogged at "trees of truth," they fared no better—nay, I think, often worse—when they were shut up in mad-houses and crowded into workhouses. They were too often under the charge of brutal keepers, were chained to the wall or in their beds, where they lay in dirty straw, and frequently, in the depth of winter, without a rag to cover them. It is difficult to understand why and how they continued to live; why their caretakers did not, except in the case of profitable patients, kill them outright; and why, failing this—which would have been a kindness compared with the prolonged tortures to which they were subjected—death did not come sooner to their relief.

Footnotes:

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[2] Collected and edited by the Rev. Oswald Cockayne, M.A., 1865. Published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls.

[3] Corn or seed to cure bewitching (Saxon). Supposed to be the seeds of "wild saffron."

[4] Op. cit., vol. ii. p. 137; Leech Book, I. lxiii.

[5] That is, a small bell used in the church, probably the acolyte's. St. Fillan's was twelve inches high. See postea.

[6] Op. cit., vol. i. p. 161.

[7] Op. cit., p. 171.

[8] Op. cit., pp. 313-315.

[9] Op. cit., p. 351 ("Medicina de quadrupedibus" of Sextus Placitus).

[10] Op. cit., p. 361.

[11] Op. cit., vol. ii. pp. 343, 143, 343, 307, and 345.

[12] Wodnes (Saxon) signifies madness. "Ance wod and ay waur," i.e. increasing in insanity. (See Jamieson's Scotch Dictionary, 1825: "Wodman = a madman.")

[13] Op. cit., vol. ii. p. 335.

[14] Preface to vol. ii. p. xix.-xxiii.

[15] Vol. iv., preface, p. xxxiv.

[16] Vol. iv. p. 225.

[17] In Chambers's "Book of Days," in an article on "Holy Wells," it is added to the above statement that in the seventeenth century St. Winifred could boast of thousands of votaries, including James II.

[18] In the "Miller's Tale," the carpenter is befooled into looking like a madman. "They tolden every man that he was wood," etc. (Percy Society's edition, vol. i. p. 152).

[19] Early English Text Society, vol. iii. p. 163. See also Clarendon Press Series, edited by Mr. Skeats. London, 1866.

[20] "Archæologia Britannica," by Ed. Lhuyd, 1707. The Armoric word for mania is diboelder or satoni; the Cornish, meskatter; the British, mainigh, among others.

[21] These passages from Dr. Borlase and Dr. Boase will be found in the valuable address at the Royal Institution of Cornwall, by W. C. Borlase, F.S.A., 1878 (Journal of the Institution, 1878, No. xx. pp. 58, 59). It forms a little work on Cornish Saints, and from it is derived the statement made in regard to St. Nonna or Nun.

[22] Honoured both in Scotland and Ireland on account of his great sanctity and miracles, he "exchanged his mortal life for a happy immortality in the solitude of Sirach, not far from Glendarchy, Scotland. His mother, Kentigerna, was also a woman of great virtues, and honoured after her death for a Saint" ("Britannia Sancta, or Lives of British Saints," 1745, p. 20).

[23] Vol. i. p. 282.

[24] "Darker Superstitions of Scotland," p. 82. Macfarlane, "Geographical Collections," MS., vol. i. p. 154.

[25] Dr. Mitchell has clearly shown that St. Maree is a corruption of Maelrubha, who came from Ireland, and not of Mary, as stated by Pennant.

[26] "Tour in Scotland and the Hebrides," vol. i. p. 332, edit. 1774.

[27] Or Gringorian water. In what respect it was special I do not know, but holy water is said to have been so called because Gregory I. recommended it so highly. "In case," says Rabelais, "they should happen to encounter with devils, by virtue of the Gringoriene water they might make them disappear" ("Gargantua," i. 43). See Brewer's "Dictionary of Phrase and Fable."

[28] "On Various Superstitions in the North-West Highlands and Islands of Scotland, especially in Relation to Lunacy," by Arthur Mitchell, A.M., M.D., 1862; from the "Proceedings of the Antiquarian Society of Scotland," vol. iv. The aphorism of Boerhaave, relating to the treatment of lunatics, quoted by this writer, is entirely in keeping with the practice described in the text, "Præcipitatio in mare, submersio in eo continuata quamdiu ferre potest, princeps remedium est."

[29] Op. cit., p. 15.

[30] Mitchell, op. cit., p. 18. He adds it was Murdoch's "calamity to live among an unenlightened people, a thousand years removed from the kindly doctrines of the good Pinel." "I am not here detailing what happened in the Middle Ages. It is of the nineteenth century—of what living men saw that I write." In the Inverness Courier, August 31, 1871, is an extraordinary account of dipping lunatics in Lochmanur, in Sutherlandshire, in the district of Strathnaver, at midnight: "About fifty persons were present near one spot.... About twelve (affected with various diseases) stripped and walked into the loch, performing their ablutions three times. Those who were not able to act for themselves were assisted, some of them being led willingly, and others by force. One young woman, strictly guarded, was an object of great pity. She raved in a distressing manner, repeating religious phrases, some of which were very earnest and pathetic.... These utterances were enough to move any person hearing them. Poor girl! What possible good could immersion be to her?... No man, so far as I could see, denuded himself for a plunge.... These gatherings take place twice a year, and are known far and near to such as put belief in the spell. But the climax of absurdity is in paying the loch in sterling coin.... I may add that the practice of dipping in the loch is said to have been carried on from time immemorial, and it is alleged that many cures have been effected by it" (Correspondent of the Courier, who witnessed the scene on the 14th of August, 1871).

[31] "Darker Superstitions of Scotland," p. 190.

[32] Op. cit., p. 60; from "Trial of Alexander Drummond in the Kirktown of Auchterairdour," July 3, 1629.

[33] Op. cit., p. 61, "Trial of Marable Couper," June 13, 1616.

[34] Op. cit., p. 98.

[35] Dalyell, p. 550.

[36] Joyce's "Irish Names of Places," vol. i. p. 172.

[37] "Ancient and Present State of the County Kerry," p. 196.

[38] Joyce's "Irish Names of Places."

[39] "Letters from the Kingdom of Kerry, in the year 1845." Dublin, 1847.

[40] Vol. ii. p. 226. On witchcraft in Ireland see the "Annals of Ireland," translated from the original Irish of the Four Masters, by Owen Connellan, Esq. Dublin, 1846.

[41] His "Breviary of Helth" was published in 1547.

[42] This cross was made of sea sand, in the sixth century, by St. Kentigern, called also St. Mungo. A collegiate church was erected there in 1449. He healed the maniacal by the touch. See "The Legends of St. Kentigern," translated by Rev. William Stevenson, D.D., Edinburgh, 1874; and Notes and Queries, April 21, 1866.

[43] Page 976, ed. 1633. According to modern botanists, black hellebore is not, as was for long supposed the Ἐλλεβορος μελας of Hippocrates. Of several species growing in Greece, the medicinal virtues of Helleborus orientalis resemble most nearly those of the classic descriptions of H. niger. See "The British Flora Medica," by B. H. Barton, F.L.S., and T. Castle, M.D., 1877, p. 203.

[44] Scot was born near Smeeth, 1545. He was educated at Oxford, and lived on his paternal estate. He was the son of Sir John Scot, of Scot's Hall. Died 1599. His famous work, "The Discovery of Witchcraft, proving the common opinions of Witches contracting with Divels, Spirits, or Familiars to be but imaginary conceptions; wherein also the lewde unchristian practices of Witchmongers in extorting Confessions, is notably detected; whereunto is added a Treatise upon the nature and substance of Spirits and Divels," was published in 1584. This is the title of the second edition, which differs slightly from the first.

[45] Op. cit., p. 72.

[46] "Medical Councils," 1679; "Opera Medica," 1703.

[47] Edit. 1616. James says he wrote it "chiefly against the damnable opinions of Wierus and Scot, the latter of whom is not ashamed in public print to deny that there can be such a thing as witchcraft, and so maintains the old error of the Sadducees in the denying of spirits."

[48] Johann Wierus, born at Grave on the Meuse, Brabant, published his work against the prevalent view of witchcraft in 1567. See "Histoires, Disputes, et Discours des Illusions, et Impostures des Diables, des Magiciens infames, Sorciers, etc. Par Jean Wier, 1579." He died 1588, at Tecklenburg. His works were printed in one volume in 1660.

[49] Op. cit., p. 234.

[50] Henry Cornelius Agrippa was born in 1486, at Cologne, and was the contemporary of Paracelsus. Agrippa was the master of Wierus. He was Town Advocate at Metz and secretary to the Emperor Maximilian. Imprisoned for a year at Brussels, on the charge of magic, and ceaselessly calumniated after his death. See Plancey's "Dict. Infern.," art. "Agrippa," and Thiers' "Superst." (vol. i. pp. 142, 143). See his Memoir, by Professor Morley, 1856. He was a doctor of medicine as well as law. He himself believed in witchcraft.

[51] As in Hamlet. "There" (England) "the men are as mad as he."

[52] "King Lear," Act iii. sc. 4.

[53] Lord Campbell's "Lives of the Lord Chancellors."

[54] Notes and Queries, vol. vi. p. 327, No. 153. A more extraordinary entry occurs under the same date: "Paid Thomas Hawkins for whipping 2 people y^t had the small-pox, 8d." Under date 1648: "Given to a woman that was bereaved of her witts the 26 of Aprill, 1645, 6d." (Op. cit., No. 242, July 22, 1854).

[55] According to Dr. Brushfield, torture was practised in Scotland after it was used for the last time in England in 1640. No specimens of the "brank" are known to exist in Ireland or Wales.

[56] "Obsolete Punishments," Part I., "The Brank," by T. N. Brushfield, M.D., 1858, p. 20.

CHAPTER II.
BETHLEM HOSPITAL AND ST. LUKE'S.

The chief point of interest in the subject to which this chapter has reference, centres in the questions where and what was the provision made for the insane in England at the earliest period in which we can discover traces or their custody?

Many, I suppose, are familiar with the fact of the original foundation in 1247 of a Priory in Bishopsgate Street, for the Order of St. Mary of Bethlem, but few are aware at what period it was used for the care or confinement of lunatics, and still fewer have any knowledge of the form of the building of the first Bethlem Hospital—the word "Bethlem" soon degenerating into Bedlam.

Before entering upon the less known facts, I would observe that an alderman and sheriff of London, Simon FitzMary, gave in the thirty-first year of the reign of Henry III., 1247, to the Bishop and Church of Bethlem, in Holyland, all his houses and grounds in the parish of St. Botolph without Bishopsgate, that there might be thereupon built a Hospital or Priory for a prior, canons, brethren, and sisters of the Order of Bethlem or the Star of Bethlem, wherein the Bishop of Bethlem was to be entertained when he came to England, and to whose visitation and correction all the members of the house were subjected.[57]

The following is the wording of the original grant, slightly abridged:—"To all the children of our Mother holy Church, to whom this present writing shall come, Simon, the Son of Mary, sendeth greeting in our Lord, ... having special and singular devotion to the Church of the glorious Virgin at Bethelem, where the same Virgin brought forth our Saviour incarnate, and lying in the Cratch,[58] and with her own milk nourished; and where the same child to us being born, the Chivalry of the Heavenly Company sange the new hymne, Gloria in excelsis Deo ... a new Starre going before them. In the Honour and Reverence of the same child, and his most meek mother, and to the exaltation of my most noble Lord, Henry King of England, ... and to the manifold increase of this City of London, in which I was born: and also for the health of my soul, and the souls of my predecessors and successors, my father, mother and my friends, I have given, and by this my present Charter, here, have confirmed to God, and to the Church of St. Mary of Bethelem, all my Lands which I have in the Parish of St. Buttolph, without Bishopsgate of London, ... in houses, gardens, pools, ponds, ditches, and pits, and all their appurtenances as they be closed in by their bounds, which now extend in length from the King's high street, East, to the great Ditch, in the West, the which is called Depeditch; and in breadth to the lands of Ralph Dunnyng, in the North; and to the land of the Church of St. Buttolph in the South; ... to make there a Priory, and to ordain a Prior and Canons, brothers and also sisters, who in the same place, the Rule and Order of the said Church of Bethelem solemnly professing, shall bear the Token of a Starre openly in their Coapes and Mantles of profession, and for to say Divine Service there, for the souls aforesaid, and all Christian souls, and specially to receive there, the Bishop of Bethelem, Canons, brothers, and messengers of the Church of Bethelem for ever more, as often as they shall come thither. And that a Church or Oratory there shall be builded, as soon as our Lord shall enlarge his grace, under such form, that the Order, institution of Priors, &c. to the Bishop of Bethelem and his successors shall pertain for evermore.... And Lord Godfrey, Bishop of Bethelem, into bodily possession, I have indented and given to his possession all the aforesaid Lands; which possession he hath received, and entered in form aforesaid.

"And in token of subjection and reverence, the said place in London shall pay yearly a mark sterling at Easter to the Bishop of Bethelem.

"This gift and confirmation of my Deed, & the putting to of my Seal for me and mine heirs, I have steadfastly made strong, the year of our Lord God, 1247, the Wednesday after the Feast of St. Luke the Evangelist."

From this it appears that Simon Fitzmary's land extended from the King's Highway on the east (Bishopsgate Street without) to the fosse called Depeditch on the west. The land of Saint Botolph Church bounded it on the south, and the property of a Ralph Dunnyng on the north. The author of "The History of St. Botolph" (1824), Mr. T. L. Smartt, suggests that the old White Hart Tavern is a vestige of the hostelry. If not forming part of the original hospital, it certainly led to it. Among the tokens in the British Museum I find "Bedlem Tokens _E.^K._E. at Bedlam Gate, 1657," and the "Reverse at the White Hart." At an early period Bethlem is styled "Bethlem Prison House," and the patients, "who sometimes exceeded the number of twenty," are called prisoners. One token at the British Museum is _G.^H._A. "at the Old Prison."

A considerable portion of this site is occupied at the present day by Liverpool Street, and the railway stations which have sprung up there.

The topographer in search of the old site finds striking proofs of the changes which six hundred years have brought with them—the steam, and the shrill sounds of the Metropolitan, North London, and Great Eastern Railways; while Bethlem Gate, the entrance to the hospital from Bishopsgate Street, was, when I last visited the spot, superseded by hoardings covered with the inevitable advertisement of the paper which enjoys the largest circulation in the world. Depeditch is now Bloomfield Street. The name of Ralph Dunnyng, whose property is mentioned in the charter as bounding Bethlem on the north, is, I suppose, represented, after the lapse of six centuries, by Dunning's Alley and Place.

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":—

"They spy'd a goodly castle plac'd
Foreby a river in a pleasant dale,
Which chusing for that evening's Hospital
They thither march'd."

Very shortly after this, viz. in 1346, the monastery or hospital was so miserably poor that the master applied to the mayor, aldermen, and citizens of London to be received under their protection. This was agreed to, and it was governed afterwards by two aldermen, one chosen by the mayor and the other by the monastery.

Then we come to an important event—the seizure of Bethlem by the Crown. This was in 1375, the forty-eighth year of Edward III. It was done on the pretext that it was an alien or foreign priory. There was not therefore any seizing of the monastery by Henry VIII., as is usually stated. That had been done already. The master of Bethlem stated at this time that the annual value of the house was six marks; and that he paid 13s. 4d. a year to the Bishop of Bethlem, and 40s. rent to the Guildhall 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 and somewhat lenger. And it appeared well that hys remembraunce was goode ineoughe save that it went about in grazing [wool-gathering!] til it was beaten home. For he coulde then verye wel reherse his fautes himselfe, and speake and treate very well, and promise to doe afterward as well." Sir Thomas More ends with this delicious sentence: —"And verylye God be thanked I heare none harme of him now."[64]

To return to Bethlem Hospital. I can discover nothing of interest in regard to it between 1403 and 1523; except, indeed, that I observe in the "Memorials of London," 1276-1419, a man was punished for pretending to be a collector for the hospital of "Bedlem," in 1412. He was to remain for one hour of the day in the pillory, the money-box he had used being "in the mean time placed and tied to his neck." At the date mentioned above, 1523, Stephen Jennings, merchant taylor, previously Lord Mayor of London, gave a sum of money in his will towards the purchase of the patronage of Bethlem Hospital. Three and twenty years later (1546) the citizens of London are said to have purchased "the patronage thereof, with all the lands and tenements thereunto belonging." But there is no evidence that they did give any money for this patronage. Sir John Gresham, the Lord Mayor, petitioned the king in this year to grant Bethlem Hospital to the City; and the king did grant it along with St. Bartholomew's Hospital, on condition that the City should expend a certain amount of money on new buildings in connection with the latter. It is only in this sense, I believe, that they "purchased" Bethlem Hospital; and further, it must be understood that the City obtained the patronage or government only, and not the freehold of the premises, although in process of time the Crown ceased to claim or possess any property in the hospital.

In the indenture of the covenant made 27th December, 1546, between the King and the City of London granting St. Bartholomew's Hospital and Bethlem, there is no mention of appropriating the latter to the use of lunatics (for this, as we have seen, had been done already), but it is simply said "the king granted to the said citizens that they and their successors should thenceforth be masters, rulers, and governors of the hospital or house called Bethlem, and should have the governance of the same and of the people there, with power to see and to cause the rents and profits of the lands and possessions of the same hospital to be employed for the relief of the poor people there, according to the meaning of the foundation of the same, or otherwise as it should please the king for better order to devise." The charter was granted on the 13th of January, 1547. The King died on the 29th. The value of the estate at this period is said to have been £504 12s. 11d.[65]

I wish to reproduce here the form of the buildings of Bethlem (or, as we ought now to designate it, Bethlem or Bethlehem Royal Hospital) at the time of Henry VIII., and for long before and after that time. I have, I believe, consulted every important map of old London, and have found it no easy task to obtain a clear notion of the appearance of the building at that period. No print of the first hospital is in existence; at least, I have never been able to find it, or met with any one who has seen it. I believe, however, that a good idea of the premises can be formed from a study of the map of London by Agas, made not very long after the death of Henry VIII. (1560), and now in the Guildhall, where its careful examination has been facilitated by Mr. Overall, the Librarian. From it I have represented an elevation of the hospital (see [engraving]), which will, I believe, convey a fairly correct notion of the extent and character of the premises. I am gratified to know that the reader will see as distinct a representation of the first Bethlem as can be framed from the old maps—the real old Bedlam of Sir Thomas More, of Tyndale, and Shakespeare. Shakespeare, I may here say, uses the word Bedlam six times. It will be seen there is a rectangular area surrounded by buildings. In the centre is the church of the hospital. This was taken down in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and other buildings erected in its place.

The oldest written description of any portion of the building which is extant mentions "below stairs a parlour, a kitchen, two larders, a long entry [corridor] throughout the house, and twenty-one rooms wherein the poor distracted people lie; and above the stairs eight rooms more for servants and the poor to lie in."[66]

It will be observed that there was a gate on the west side, and another on the east.

PLAN OF THE FIRST BETHLEM HOSPITAL.
From Agas.] [Page 60.

A map of ancient London was reconstructed, with great ingenuity and labour, by the late Mr. Newton, 1855. But his reconstruction of Bethlem and its surroundings contains several inaccuracies which have been avoided in the accompanying view. The church in the quadrangle differs completely from that given in Agas; and Newton fails to recognize the character of the gate and its crenelated tower on the east side. There appear to have been, at the time of Agas, no buildings on the west side of the quadrangle, but in Braun and Hogenberg's or Stilliard's map, there are houses not represented in the engraving. I must express my great obligation to Mr. J. E. Gardner, of London, as also to Mr. J. B. Clark, for the assistance rendered me in this attempt to recover the outlines of the premises comprised under the true Old Bethlem.[67]

Eight years after the death of Henry VIII. (1555)—the second year of Philip and Mary—it was ordered that the governors of Christ's Hospital should be charged with the oversight and government of Bethlem, and receive the account of rents, etc., instead of the City chamberlain; but this arrangement lasted only a short time, for in September, 1557, another change was made, and the management was transferred to the governors of Bridewell (which had been given to the City by Edward VI. in 1553), subject, of course, to the jurisdiction of the citizens. The same treasurer was appointed for both. This union of the hospitals was confirmed by the Act 22 Geo. III., c. 77, and continues, as is well known, to the present day. It was not until this act passed that the paramount authority of the City ceased, and the government now in force was established, by which it was distinctly vested in a president, treasurer, the Court of Aldermen, and the Common Council, and an unlimited number of governors, elected by ballot. So that now the only sense in which Bethlem continues to belong to the City is that the aldermen and common councilmen are ex-officio governors. As there are at the present time upwards of two hundred governors, they are in a decided minority.[68]

Time was when Bethlem Hospital did not possess the magnificent income which she now enjoys. She knew, as we have seen, what poverty meant; and even if we make due allowance for the increased value of money we can hardly read without surprise that in 1555 the income from all the possessions of the hospital only amounted to £40 8s. 4d. Of course, considerable sums were collected as alms. Nearly a century after, the valuation of real estates showed an annual value of £470. Several annuities had also been bequeathed, as that of Sir Thomas Gresham in 1575, for "the poor diseased in their minds in Bethlem."

The revenues, however, fell far short of the requirements of the hospital—namely, about two-thirds of the yearly charge—and at a court held in 1642 preachers were directed to preach at the Spital of St. Mary, in Bishopsgate Street, informing the public of the need of pecuniary help, and exciting them to the exercise of charity.

Again, in 1669 a deputation waited on the Lord Mayor to acquaint him with the great cost of Bethlem, and to request that no patient should be sent until the president was informed, in order that he might fix on the weekly allowance, and obtain some security of payment.

I need not say that since the period to which I refer, the income of Bethlem Hospital has, in consequence of gifts, and the enormously greater value of house property in London, been immensely increased, and that what with its annuities, its stocks of various kinds, and its extensive estates, it is to-day in the position of doing, and without doubt actually does, an immense amount of good.

Half a century after Henry VIII.'s death, Bethlem Hospital was reported to be so loathsome as to be unfit for any man to enter. There were then twenty patients. 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]

It was a favourite resort for archers. An association called the Archers of Finsbury was formed in King Edward I.'s time. There is an old book on archery, entitled "Ayme for Finsbury Archers," 1628. An anonymous poem in blank verse, published in 1717, entitled "Bethlem Hospital," attributed to John Rutter, M.A., contains the following lines, referring to the appropriation of the ground for drying clothes:—

"Where for the City dames to blaunch their cloaths,
Some sober matron (so tradition says)
On families' affairs intent, concern'd,
At the dark hue of the then decent Ruff
From marshy or from moorish barren grounds,
Caused to be taken in, what now Moorfields,
Shaded by trees and pleasant walks laid out,
Is called, the name retaining to denote,
From what they were, how Time can alter things.
Here close adjoining, mournful to behold
The dismal habitation stands alone."

The following is the description of the building given by Smith in his "Ancient Topography of London":—"The principal entrance is from the north, of brick and freestone, adorned with four pilasters, a circular pediment, and entablature of the Corinthian Order. The King's arms are in the pediment, and those of Sir William Turner above the front centre window.... It certainly conveys ideas of grandeur. Indeed it was for many years the only building which looked like a palace[79] in London. Before the front there is a spacious paved court, bounded by a pair of massy iron gates, surmounted with the arms of the Hospital. These gates hang on two stone piers, composed of columns of the Ionic Order, on either side of which there is a small gate for common use. On the top of each pier was a recumbent figure, one of raving, the other of melancholy madness, carved by Caius Gabriel Cibber. The feeling of this sculptor was so acute, that it is said he would begin immediately to carve the subject from the block, without any previous model, or even fixing any points to guide him. I have often heard my father say that his master, Roubiliac, whenever city business called him thither, would always return by Bethlem, purposely to view these figures" (p. 32).

Under an engraving of these figures, drawn by Stothard, are the lines:—

"Bethlemii ad portas se tollit dupla columna;
Εἰκονα των εντoς χω λιθος εκτος εχει.
Hic calvum ad dextram tristi caput ore reclinat,
Vix illum ad lævam ferrea vinc'la tenent.
Dissimilis furor est Statuis; sed utrumque laborem
Et genium artificis laudat uterque furor."
Lustus Westmonasteriensis.

Pope, in the "Dunciad," thus spitefully refers to them in connection with the sculptor's son, Colley Cibber, the comedian:—

"Close to those walls where Folly holds her throne,
And laughs to think Monro would take her down,
Where o'er the gates by his famed father's hand
Great Cibber's brazen,[80] brainless brothers stand."

Nettled at being made the brother of two madmen, Cibber retaliated in a philippic upon Pope, which it is said (with what truth I know not) hastened his death.[81] It was entitled "A letter from Mr. Cibber to Mr. Pope, wherein the New Hero's Preferment to his Throne in the 'Dunciad' seems not to be accepted, and the Author of that Poem His more rightful claim to it is asserted.

——'Remember Sauney's Fate,
Bang'd by the Blockhead whom he strove to beat.'
Parodie on Lord Roscommon.

London, MDCCXLIV." And certainly Pope died a few months after, May, 1744. It is, however, highly improbable that he would in the slightest degree care for this letter, though he might suffer some remorse for his spiteful attack on so good-natured a fellow. Cibber says in this letter that people "allow that by this last stale and slow endeavour to maul me, you have fairly wrote yourself up to the Throne you have raised, for the immortal Dulness of your humble servant to nod in. I am therefore now convinced that it would be ill-breeding in Me to take your seat, Mr. Pope. Nay, pray, Sir, don't press me!... I am utterly conscious that no Man has so good a Right to repose in it, as yourself. Therefore, dear, good good Mr. Pope, be seated!... Whether you call me Dunce or Doctor, whether you like me, or lick me, contemn, jerk, or praise me, you will still find me the same merry Monarch I was before you did me the Honour to put yourself out of Humour about me," etc.

These figures, now banished to South Kensington Museum, and there incarcerated at the top of the building, and only seen by special permission, are, of course, quite unsuitable for the entrance of the hospital, but I would plead for their being placed somewhere in Bethlem, their natural habitat. As works of art, the governors and officers cannot but be proud of them. I suppose, however, their banishment is intended as a public protest against the old system of treatment which one of them exhibits, and from this point of view is no doubt creditable. I would here observe that the figure of the maniac is superior to that of the melancholiac, whose expression is rather that of dementia than melancholia. I think that when Bacon, in 1820, repaired this statue, he must have altered the mouth, because, in the engraving by Stothard, this feature, and perhaps others, are more expressive.

At Bethlem Hospital there were also certain gates called the "penny gates," and on each side of them was a figure of a maniac—one a male, the other a female. "They are excellently carved in wood, nearly the size of life, have frequently been painted in proper colours, and bear other evidence of age. It is reported they were brought from Old Bethlem. In tablets over the niches in which they stand, is the following supplication:—'Pray remember the poor Lunaticks and put your Charity into the Box with your own hand.'"[82]

There was a portrait of Henry VIII. in the hospital, which was also said to have been brought from the first Bethlem. A portrait is now in the committee-room of the hospital.

The "penny gates" refer, no doubt, to the custom of allowing Bethlem to be one of the sights of the metropolis, the admission of any one being allowed for a penny, by which an annual income of at least £400 was realized. The practice was discontinued in 1770. This amount is, however, probably exaggerated, as it is difficult to believe that 96,000 persons visited the hospital in the course of the year. Ned Ward, however, from whom I shall shortly quote, says the fee was 2d. in his time. If so, 48,000 may be about correct.

In the "Rake's Progress," Hogarth represents two fashionable ladies visiting this hospital as a show-place, while the poor Rake is being fettered by a keeper. The doctor, I suppose, is standing by. The deserted woman who has followed him in his downward course to the hospital is by his side. The expression of the Rake has been said to be a perfect representation of

"Moody madness laughing wild, amid severest woe."

A maniac lying on straw in one of the cells is a conspicuous figure. There is a chain clearly visible.

In another cell is a man who believes himself a king, and wears a crown of straw.

An astronomer has made himself a roll of paper for a telescope, and imagines that he is looking at the heavens. The patient near him has drawn on the wall the firing off a bomb, and a ship moored in the distance. Ireland, in his notes on "Hogarth," says it was to ridicule Whiston's project for the discovery of the longitude, which then attracted attention, and had sent some people crazy. Then there is a mad musician with his music-book on his head; a sham pope; and a poor man on the stairs "crazed with care, and crossed by hopeless love," who has chalked "Charming Betty Careless" upon the wall. One figure looks like a woman, holding a tape in her hands, but is intended for a tailor.[83]

There is in Mr. Gardner's collection a print representing the interior of one of the wards of Bethlem about the year 1745, when the hospital, therefore, was in Moorfields. There are manacles on the arms of a patient who is lying on the floor, but there are none on the legs, as represented in Hogarth. With this interior, kindly placed at my disposal by Mr. Gardner, the reader can compare an interior of the existing institution, from a photograph, for the use of which I am indebted to the present medical superintendent, Dr. Savage. The artist of the former picture has evidently aimed at giving as pleasant an impression as possible of the care bestowed on the inmates of Bethlem, but the contrast is an interesting commentary on the past and present appearance of an asylum gallery.

WARD IN BETHLEM HOSPITAL ABOUT 1745.
Print in Mr. Gardner's collection.] [Page 74.

WARD IN BETHLEM HOSPITAL AT THE PRESENT DAY.
From a Photograph.] [Page 74.

In a poem bearing the title of "Bedlam," and dated 1776, the writer, after bestowing praise on the building, adds:—

"Far other views than these within appear,
And Woe and Horror dwell for ever 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."

Ned Ward, in his "London Spy," gives a graphic account of his visit with a friend to Bedlam:—"Thus," he says, "we prattled away our time, till we came in sight of a noble pile of buildings, which diverted us from our former discourse, and gave my friend the occasion of asking me my thoughts of this magnificent edifice. I told him I conceived it to be my Lord Mayor's palace, for I could not imagine so stately a structure to be designed for any quality interior; he smiled at my innocent conjecture, and informed me this was Bedlam, an Hospital for mad folks. In truth, said I, I think they were mad that built so costly a college for such a crack-brained society; adding, it was a pity so fine a building should not be possessed by such who had a sense of their happiness: sure, said I, it was a mad age when this was raised, and the chief of the city were in great danger of losing their senses, so contrived it the more noble for their own reception, or they would never have flung away so much money to so foolish a purpose. You must consider, says my friend, this stands upon the same foundation as the Monument, and the fortunes of a great many poor wretches lie buried in this ostentatious piece of vanity; and this, like the other, is but a monument of the City's shame and dishonour, instead of its glory; come, let us take a walk in, and view its inside. Accordingly we were admitted in thro' an iron gate, within which sat a brawny Cerberus, of an Indico-colour, leaning upon a money-box; we turned in through another Iron-Barricado, where we heard such a rattling of chains, drumming of doors, ranting, hollowing, singing, and running, that I could think of nothing but Don Quevedo's Vision, where the lost souls broke loose and put Hell in an uproar. The first whimsey-headed wretch of this lunatic family that we observed, was a merry fellow in a straw cap, who was talking to himself, 'that he had an army of Eagles at his command,' then clapping his hand upon his head, swore by his crown of moonshine, he would battle all the Stars in the Skies, but he would have some claret.... We then moved on till we found another remarkable figure worth our observing, who was peeping through his wicket, eating of bread and cheese, talking all the while like a carrier at his supper, chewing his words with his victuals, all that he spoke being in praise of bread and cheese: 'bread was good with cheese, and cheese was good with bread, and bread and cheese was good together;' and abundance of such stuff; to which my friend and I, with others stood listening; at last he counterfeits a sneeze, and shot such a mouthful of bread and cheese amongst us, that every spectator had some share of his kindness, which made us retreat."[84]

Many other dialogues with the inmates of Bedlam are given, but they are evidently embellished, or altogether fictitious; true as I believe the description of the building and the uproar within to be.

Mr. Harvey, from his recollections of the hospital in Moorfields, in the early part of this century, thus writes in 1863: "When I remember Moorfields first, it was a large, open quadrangular space, shut in by the Pavement to the west, the hospital and its outbuildings to the south, and lines of shops with fronts, occupied chiefly by dealers in old furniture, to the east and north. Most of these shops were covered in by screens of canvas or rough boards, so as to form an apology for a piazza; and if you were bold enough, in wet weather, you might take refuge under them, but it was at the imminent risk of your purse or your handkerchief. It was interesting to inspect the articles exposed for sale: here a cracked mirror in a dingy frame, a set of hair-seated chairs, the horse-hair protruding; a table, stiff, upright easy chairs, without a bottom, etc. These miscellaneous treasures were guarded by swarthy men and women of Israel, who paraded in front of their narrow dominions all the working day, and if you did but pause for an instant, you must expect to be dragged into some hideous Babel of frowsy chattels, and made a purchaser in spite of yourself. Escaping from this uncomfortable mart to the hospital footway, a strange scene of utter desertion came over you; long, gloomy lines of cells, strongly barred, and obscured with the accumulated dust, silent as the grave, unless fancy brought sounds of woe to your ears, rose before you; and there, on each side of the principal entrance, were the wonderful effigies of raving and moping madness, chiselled by the elder Cibber. How those stone faces and eyes glared! How sternly the razor must have swept over those bare heads! How listless and dead were those limbs, bound with inexorable fetters, while the iron of despair had pierced the hearts of the prisoned maniacs!"[85]

It was in 1733 that two wings were added for incurable patients, but this proved insufficient in the course of time; and in 1793 an adjoining plot of ground was obtained, and more accommodation provided. Only six years later, however, surveyors appointed to inspect the premises reported that the hospital was dreary, low, melancholy, and not well aired; and in 1804 the condition of the building was so dangerous that it was resolved to admit no more patients except those already petitioned for.[86] As the asylum had been built upon the ancient ditch of the city, a large portion of the foundation was insecure. Serious settlements had taken place, and rendered it necessary to underpin the walls.[87] When one looks at the palatial building represented in engravings, one feels some surprise to find it described as so low and dreary; but doubtless it was quite time to erect another asylum, and seek a better and more open site.

I do not propose to enter upon the revelations made as to the internal condition of Bethlem Hospital by the investigations of the Committee of the House of Commons in 1815;[88] many are familiar with the prints exhibited at this Committee, of poor Norris who was secured by chains as there represented, consisting of (1) a collar, encircling 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; (3) a chain passing from the ankle of the patient to the foot of the bed.

As to the treatment pursued at this time at Bethlem, the pith of it is expressed in one sentence by Dr. T. Monro in his evidence before the Committee. He had been visiting physician since 1783. "Patients," he says, "are ordered to be bled about the latter end of May, according to the weather; and after they have been bled, they take vomits, once a week for a certain number of weeks; after that we purge the patients. That has been the practice invariably for years long before my time; it was handed down to me by my father, and I do not know any better practice." If in all this we are disposed to blame Bethlem, let us still more condemn the lamentable ignorance and miserable medical red-tapism which marked the practice of lunacy in former times.

I may here remark that, prior to the Monros, Dr. Thomas Allen[89] was, in 1679, visiting physician to Bethlem, and that, as I have observed already, Helkins Crooke (1632) was the first medical man who is known to have been at the head of this hospital. Dr. Tyson was physician from 1684 to 1703. Mr. Haslam was appointed resident apothecary in 1795, and in 1815 gave evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons. At that time he said there were a hundred and twenty-two patients; "not half the number," he stated, "which we used to have." For these there were three male and two female keepers: the former assisting the latter when the female patients were refractory. Ten patients, he said, were at that moment in chains, and we may be sure that the number was much larger before public feeling had been aroused to demand investigation. "The ultimatum of our restraint," said Mr. Haslam, "is manacles, and a chain round the leg, or being chained by one arm; the strait waistcoat, for the best of reasons, is never employed by us." Mr. Haslam, when asked whether a violent patient could be safely trusted when his fist and wrists were chained, replied, "Then he would be an innoxious animal." Patients, however, were frequently chained to the wall in addition to being manacled.

A brief reference here to Dr. Allen and Dr. Tyson will not be out of place.

"To his [Dr. Allen's] credit let it be recorded," says Dr. Munk, "that he refused to accede to a proposition which had met with general approbation at the Royal Society (of which he was himself a Fellow), to make the first experiment of the transfusion of blood in this country 'upon some mad person in Bedlam.'" He died in 1684.