HOSPITALS FOR THE INSANE
“_Hospitals . . . to maintain men and women who had lost their wits
and memory._” (Rolls of Parliament, 1414.)
Little is known regarding the extent and treatment of insanity during
the Middle Ages. Persons “vexed with a demon” were taken to holy
places in the hope that the “fiends” might be cast out. An early
thirteenth-century window at Canterbury shows a poor maniac dragged by
his friends to the health-giving shrine of St. Thomas. He is tied with
ropes, and they belabour him with blows from birch-rods. In the second
scene he appears in his right mind, returning thanks, all instruments
of discipline cast away. Even in the sixteenth century we read of
pilgrimage by lunatics, especially to certain holy wells.
Formerly, all needy people were admitted into the hospital, mental
invalids being herded together with those weak or diseased in body.
From the chronicle of St. Bartholomew’s, Smithfield, we learn that in
the twelfth century mad people were constantly received as well as
the deaf, dumb, blind, palsied and crippled. One young man lost “his
resonable wyttys” on his journey to London. He wandered about running,
not knowing whither he went. Arriving in London, he was brought to the
hospital and “ther yn shorte space his witte [p032] was recoueryd.”
Another patient was taken with the “fallynge euill” [epilepsy], which
is described as a sickness hindering the operation of the senses.
It would seem that persons subject to fits were sometimes placed in
a lazar-house, for at St. Bartholomew’s, Rochester (1342), was one
patient “struck with the epilepsy disease.”
The public did not make itself responsible for the custody of the
lunatic, whose own people were required to guard him and others from
harm. One of the “Customs of Bristol” (1344) orders that the goods and
chattels of demented men be delivered to their friends until they come
to a good state of mind (_ad bonam memoriam_). The sad condition of
“lunatick lollers” is described by Langland, who speaks compassionately
of this class of wanderers.
In London, the question of making special provision for the insane
came to the front about this time, for in 1369 one Denton intended to
found a hospital “for poor priests and others, men and women, who in
that city suddenly fell into a frenzy (_in frenesim_) and lost their
memory,” but his plan was not carried out. Stow mentions that the
earliest asylum for distraught and lunatic persons was near Charing
Cross, “but it was said, that some time a king of England, not liking
such a kind of people to remain so near his palace, caused them to be
removed farther off, to Bethlem without Bishopsgate.”
St. Mary of Bethlehem was the most famous refuge for the mentally
disordered. In 1403 there were confined six men deprived of reason
(_mente capti_), and three other sick, one of whom was a paralytic
patient who had been lying in the hospital for over two years. The good
work [p033] done in the institution was fully recognized. A bequest
was made in 1419 to the sick and insane of St. Mary de Bedlam. A
Patent Roll entry of 1437 speaks of “the succour of demented lunatics”
and others, and of the necessity of cutting down these works of
piety unless speedy help were forthcoming. The then town clerk, John
Carpenter, recalled this need and remembered in his will (1441) “the
poor madmen of Bethlehem.” Another citizen, Stephen Forster, desired
his executors to lay out ten pounds in food and clothing for the poor
people “detained” there. Gregory, citizen and mayor, describes in his
_Historical Collections_ (about 1451) this asylum and its work of
mercy, and it is satisfactory to hear that some were there restored to
a sound mind:—
“A chyrche of Owre Lady that ys namyde Bedlam. And yn that place
ben founde many men that ben fallyn owte of hyr wytte. And fulle
honestely they ben kepte in that place; and sum ben restoryde unto
hyr witte and helthe a-gayne. And sum ben a-bydyng there yn for
evyr, for they ben falle soo moche owte of hem selfe that hyt ys
uncurerabylle unto man.”
Probably the utterly incurable were doomed to those iron chains,
manacles and stocks mentioned in the inventory of 1398 and quoted at
the visitation of 1403:—
“Item, vj cheynes de Iren, com vj lokkes. Item iiij peir manycles de
Iren. ij peir stokkys.”[22]
In other parts of the country it was customary to receive persons
suffering from attacks of mania into general infirmaries. At
Holy Trinity, Salisbury, not only were sick persons and women in
childbirth received, but mad people were to be taken care of (_furiosi
custodiantur donec sensum adipiscantur_). This was at the [p034] close
of the fourteenth century. In the petition for the reformation of
hospitals (1414) it is stated that they exist partly to maintain those
who had lost their wits and memory (_hors de lour sennes et memoire_).
Many almshouse-statutes, however, prohibited their admission. A
regulation concerning an endowed bed in St. John’s, Coventry (1444),
declared that a candidate must be “not mad, quarrelsome, leprous,
infected.” At Ewelme “no wood man” (crazy person) must be received; and
an inmate becoming “madd, or woode” was to be removed from the Croydon
almshouse.
Such disused lazar-houses as were inhabitable might well have been
utilized as places of confinement. This, indeed, was done at Holloway
near Bath. At what period the lepers vacated St. Mary Magdalene’s is
not known, but it was probably appropriated to the use of lunatics
by Prior Cantlow, who rebuilt the chapel about 1489. At the close of
the sixteenth century, St. James’, Chichester, was occupied by a sad
collection of hopeless cripples, among whom were found two idiots. A
hundred years later the bishop reported that this hospital was of small
revenue and “hath only one poor person, but she a miserable idiot, in
it.”
Bethlehem Hospital was rescued by the Lord Mayor and citizens at the
Dissolution of religious houses and continued its charitable work. In
1560 Queen Elizabeth issued on behalf of this house an appeal of which
a facsimile may be seen in Bewes’ _Church Briefs_. “Sume be straught
from there wyttes,” it declares, “thuse be kepte and mayntend in the
Hospital of our Ladye of Beddelem untyle God caule them to his marcy or
to ther wyttes agayne.”
[Illustration: _PLATE V._ HARBLEDOWN HOSPITAL, NEAR CANTERBURY ONCE
USED FOR LEPERS]
FOOTNOTES:
[22] Char. Com. Rep., xxxii. vi. 472.
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