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.”

[♦] PLATE V. HARBLEDOWN HOSPITAL, NEAR CANTERBURY ONCE USED FOR LEPERS