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

and that the Committee regularly went round the house inspecting it for cleanliness 155 . In
Augustan times, (male) patients had been shaved just once a fortnight and washed when staff
or visiting governors conceived a need 156. I'he observations of late century visitors to Bethlem
appear to reflect this amelioration, although their accuracy was often distorted by a suffusion
of moral sensibility and stark contrasts continued to prevail. The Frenchman, Grosley, when
visiting Bethlem c1770, found the female's parlour (or convalescents' room) 'full of women of
various ages. ..wearing rather clean linen and camisoles...about to take tea together'. On the
male side, however, he still encountered 'A whole corridor [i.e. gallery]', 'in each' of the 'large
cells' of which a patient 'was lying chained up in his bed', one (if not most) of whom was 'in
a state of almost complete nudity" 57 . Sophie von Ia Roche eulogised over the merits of the
hospital, without reservation, after her visit in c1784. She found its rooms so 'sound, spacious
[and] clean' that she wished that (let alone the insane), 'every good, honest worker and wage-
earner and their families' in her native Germany might have it so good'. The environment of
Bethlem had not altered radically over the fourteen years separating these accounts, of course,
and it is the rose of sentiment tinting the vision of von Ia Roche that marks the real difference
here. Indeed, von Ia Roche praised the 'tidily attired' patients, with their 'comfortable beds',
less than a decade before the clothing and bedding provided at Bethlem were deemed unfit by
the Governors themselves (see sspru). Yet there were more objective observers who also testified
to the comparatively clean and wholesome provision offered by the hospital in this period. J. De
Cambry, the author of De Londres ci ses environs (1788), found 'a cleanliness, hardly conceivable
unless seen' prevailing at Bethlem' 59 . Standards at French hospitals may well have been inferior,
and the comments of natives upon the environment of Bethlem offer a more immediately reliable
context than those of foreigners. Despite judging Bethlem in 1789 inferior in most departments,
including cleanliness, to St. Luke's and in need of whitewashing, nevertheless, John howard
155 'Soap' had been used at Bethlem since the early seventeenth century. In 1642 the Porter was quizzed by
the Court as to why 'soc much soape was spent at Bethiem' and offered the rather unsatisfactory answer that
there were simply more patients than there used to be. By 1785 81b. of soap was being provided every week for
the hospital's use. See BCGM, 29 April 1642, fol. 382; BSCM, 17 & 24 Sept. 1785, 20 June 1795, 25 July 1812.
156 See i&id, 22 Dec. 1768, fol. 238, where patients are ordered, henceforth, to be shaved once a week.
157 '...une salle remplie de femmes de diufCrens age. qui, en linge & en camisoles asses propres, alloient prendre
Ic the en commun'; 'Tout un corridor de Bedlam a de grande. loge., dans chacune des quelie. Ctoit tin malheureux
couchC & enchainC dans son lit'; '...un garotté....dans un Ctat de nuditC presque totale'; see Londres, vol. ii, 12-13.
158 Sophie in London, 168-171.
op. cit. (Paris, 1788). The work was cited in O'Donogl,ue, Bethlehem, 283.
169