Few or none of the very early records and laws of the magistrates of Edinburgh have been preserved, but amidst some lately recovered, of a date as late as 1530, we find the following statute anent the “Leper Folke,”—“It is statut and ordanit be the Provost, Baillies, and Counsell of this burghe that na manner of Lipper persone, man nor woman, fra this tyme furth, cum amangis uther cleine personis, nor be nocht fund in the kirk, fische merket, nor flesche merket, nor na other merket within this burghe, under the pane of burnyng of their cheik and bannasing off the toune.”[344]
Some of the old edicts and regulations made in regard to the diseased in London have been preserved for us by Stow. According to the record of Edward III., that king sent, in 1346, “a commandment under his Great Seal, to the mayor and sheriffs of London, willing them to make proclamation in every ward of the city and suburbs, that all leprous persons within the said city and suburbs should avoid within fifteen days, and that no man suffer any such leprous person to abide within his house, upon pain to forfeit his said house, and to incur the king’s further displeasure. And that they should cause the said lepers to be removed into some out places of the Fields, from the haunt and company of all sound people.”[345] From some of the city records it further appears that the magistrates ordered “That the lepers walk not about the streets, nor tarry there; that the keepers of the gates swear that they will not permit lepers to enter into the city.” “There was at one time,” adds Stow, “a brief for removing them from the city and suburbs. At another time there was an edict for levying a hundred shillings out of a tenement of the lepers, and delivering it to their officers for sustaining them.”[346]
Restrictions placed upon the Inmates of the Leper Hospitals.
The chance of contagion was provided against by other means besides the mere separation of the infected from the community, and their banishment to the lazar hospitals. In many instances the regulations and statutes to which the lepers were subjected, as inmates of these hospitals, were strongly restrictive, and framed with a view of preventing them from spreading the disease to others by any dangerous degree of personal communication with the healthy. The occasional severity of the restrictions to which, with this view, the leper inhabitants of the hospitals were subjected, affords us a curious example both of the great dread in which the disease was held, and of the extent and stringency of the measures of medical police which the local judicatories of this country had in these times both the power and the will to exercise.
The rules of the Greenside Hospital, Edinburgh, present in themselves a striking proof of this, and the occupants of the hospital were bound to observe these rules under the penalty of death. “That this,” observes Arnott, “might not be deemed an empty threatening, a gallows was erected at the gavel of the hospital for the immediate execution of offenders.”[347]
The persons placed in the Greenside Hospital in 1591 were five male lepers with two of their wives—viz. (to quote the record) “Robert Mardow, James Garvie, Johnn MacRere, James Wricht, and Johnn Wilderspune, lepperis, togidder with Isobel Barcar, spous to the said Robert Mardow, and Janet Galt, spous to the said James Garvie.” Among other regulations enacted in regard to them, it was specially ordained, “That nane of the said personis Lepperis, or their wyffes, depart or resort fra the said hospitall to na oyder pairt, or place, bot sit still thairat, and remayne thairin nicht and day, halyday and wark-day; and that they resave na oyder maner of personis, oyder man or woman, within the said place, bot sic as sall be placit with thame thairin, at command of the said Counsall and Session; and that they keip the dure of the said hospitall fast and clois, fra the dounpassing of the sone to the rysing thairoff, under the payne of hanging.”
“That the said Jonet Galt only cum to the markatts for buying sic viveris as is necessary to the saids personis, and presume to gang to na oyder pairt nor place in her cuming and returning to and frae the said markatts, under the payne aforesaid. Quhilk and other injunctions being red to the personis foresaids, they agreit thairto, and promisit to obey and underly the samyn, under the paynes therabove written. And thairfore, for the better obedience thairof, and for terrefying the said lepperis to transgress the samyn, the said commissioners has thocht meitt and expedient that there be ane gibbet sett up at the gavell of the said hospital; and that the forme and order thairof be insert baith in the buiks of Counsall and Sessioun of this burgh, ad perpetuam rei memoriam.”[348]
The tenor of the regulations of the British leper hospitals was probably in few or no other cases so extremely stringent as in the establishment at Greenside. At least, if we may judge by the records of most of those hospitals, the rules of which have been accidentally preserved, the restrictions placed upon the inmates were confessedly great, but certainly by no means so severe either in their degree or in the punishment applied to them, as in those which we have just cited. Besides, in most institutions, the prior, master, or warden of the hospital, exercised a discretionary power in relation to the degree of seclusion of the lepers of their establishment.
Thus, among the rules of the leper hospital of St. Magdalene, Exeter, it was provided that “no brother or sister shall go or pass out of the house beyond the bridge, without the gate of the said hospital, without the license of the Warden or his deputy, upon pain to be put into the stocks, and to have but bread and water for one day.”[349]