The crying need for the permanent relief of genuine distress made itself heard. Langland, the poet of the people, called attention to the necessity of rebuilding hospitals. In his Vision “Truth” begs rich merchants to put their profits to good uses and “amenden meson-dieux” therewith. In 1410, and again in 1414, the Commons suggested that new almshouses might be founded if some ecclesiastical property were confiscated. Although this was not done, many were provided through private liberality. By the redistribution of wealth and the rise of the middle classes, a fresh impetus was given to building. The chantry system also had an increasingly powerful influence upon the charity of this period. The newer foundations, even more explicitly than the older, were “bede-houses” or houses of prayer. All p030 charitable foundations were to a certain extent chantries. Many, alas! were solely on this account marked with the stigma of superstition, and fell under the two Acts for the dissolution of chantries: the plea of usefulness, however, happily prevailed in several cases.[20] For a time the work of building almshouses ceased, but revived after a while. In 1583 Philip Stubbes complained that although in some places the poor were relieved in hospitals, yet more provision was required:—
“For the supplie whereof, would God there might be in euerie parish an almes house erected, that the poore (such as are poore indeede) might be maintained, helped, and relieued. For until the true poore indeed be better provided for, let them neuer thinke to please God.”[21]
- Notes — Chapter II
- [13] Rolls of Parl. 2 Hen. V, Vol. IV, p. 19b Petitions, No. III.
- [14] St. John’s, Bedford, was intended only for townsmen; all such applying to the master for relief were to be received, but “all poore folkes dwellyng without the same town to be expulsed and put out.” Chantry Cert. (ed. J. E. Brown).
- [15] Pat. 9 Hen. IV, Pt. i. m. 8.
- [16] Tovey, Anglia Judaica, 227.
- [17] Chron. and Mem. 44, iii. 262.
- [18] Pat. 8 Edw. I, m. 17.
- [19] Bishop Drokensford’s Reg. p. 268.
- [20] See Chapter XVI.
- [21] Anatomie of Abuses, Pt. II, 43.
[♦] p031
CHAPTER III 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.”