Queen Mary and Westfield College London University PhD Thesis ...

carceral institutions447. If such depictions reflect a literary trope, they also document a real
kinship and continuity in the character of staff at hospitals and prisons.
Besides the deception of visitors by staff, a large part of the problem in this period was
the infrequency with which the poors' box was opened and brought to account, and the lack
of any direct supervision of it by governors. The reforms devised by the Grand Committee
immediately after Wood's death were the first really effective measures taken at Bethlem to
ensure that charity given at the door benefitted patients and not staff. Not only was the
inscription made much more conspicuous, and the box itself made more secure, but also the box
was ordered to 'be opened once a month att the least on a Committee day' 4 . The surviving
Sub-Committee Minutes and Steward's Accounts for the remainder of the century confirm that
the box was generally brought to account every month as directed in 1709.
The disappearance of the poors' box as an item of abuse in the Governors' Minutes after 1709
manifests the enhanced efficiency of the new safeguards. Quite apart from this, mounting gate
receipts since the move to Moorfields may have made governors and staff alike more satisfied with
their profits from visiting. Visitors too were wising up to the racket of officers and servants. On
visiting the hospital in 1725, de Saussure was forewarned of the 'custom' whereby the Porter kept
'the whole sum' instead of returning the 'change' of any 'silver coin' given him by a spectator,
declaring that 'as everyone is aware of this custom, the Porter [rarely makes]. ..such a good thing
out of you'449 . Staff had plainly not given up trying.
In fact, staff had partly switched their attention to the servants' box. The new nurse, Sarah
Wright, was warned to put all her perks into this box, on her appointment in 1718, while half a
century later the Steward informed the Committee that takings in the servants' box were falling
suspiciously short of what they used to be 450 . Embezzlement was a fact of life at Bethlem.
To a significant degree, the Governors had positively condoned the pecuniary preoccupation
Typically, Geifray Mynshul described the 'Entertainment' available 'in Prison' as like that of 'Hell', with
'Cerberus' 'at the gate', 'who at thy entrance will fawne upon thee bidding thee welcome in respect of the golden
crust which hen must have cast him', but soon converts into a 'fury'. See Murphy, A Caine of Chsrecter,, 33-4.
Placed under closer scrutiny, the increase in the box's takings was apparent within 3 months of these
reforms, and was directly attributed 'to the care & inspeecon of Mr [John] Buckler'. Buckler was a governor who
also filled in as Bethlen, Steward temporarily, in 1713, and was probably the son of the late Bridewell Steward,
Thomas Buckler, who died in 1687. See i&,d, 25 January, 25 February & 6 May 1709, fols 460, 465 & 481.
Travels, 93.
450 BSCM, 25 January 1718, fol. 3 & 9 Jan. 1768. A common servants' box must have checked embezzlement
insofar as it encouraged staff to inform on individual colleagues they observed pocketing proceeds to which they all
had a rightful share. The Committee's response to their steward's information in 1768—to re-emphasise previous
rulings, order that the box be opened every half year, and promise the dismissal of future offenders—was a httle
belated, coming just 2 years before public visiting and servants' perks were abolished.
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