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

at meal times, when put to bed, or if found unruly, and might enjoy as much as thirteen hours of
such liberty each day 178 . Patients, like Joseph Periam, complained bitterly about being obliged
to retire at 7 or 8 p.m. 'and not being let out till' 6 or 7 a.m., and of being 'debarred the use of
candle, and consequently books', at Bethlem 179. They would, however, have found no greater
indulgence at any other contemporary, English, carceral institution, nor should one expect the
Bethlem Governors to have been any less concerned about the risk of fire or injury entailed in
entrusting patients with candles.
While there was only a single yard at old Bethiem (entailing obvious problems of segre-
gation), until the expansion of 1643/4 added another, and both of these yards were rather
modestly sized, the space allotted patients was greatly extended at the Moorflelds site, where
separate (green) yards for both sexes at either end of the hospital house comprised grass and
gravel plots of 120 feet each' 80 . Benches were added for patients to sit on by (at least) 1719,
although nothing quite as swanky or considerate as the 'covered seat' erected 'in one of the
Airing Grounds at St. Luke's' in 1790 was contemplated 181 . On the other hand, the Governors
had been much more concerned with 'the Grace & Ornament of the...[Moorfields] Building' than
with patients' exercise or any other therapeutic purpose. Patients had actually been forbidden
to walk in the front yard and gardens of new Bethlem, as apparently was originally intended,
simply because its front wall would have had to be built so high (to prevent escape) that the
view of the hospital 'towards Moorefields lyeing Northwards' would be spoiled' 82 . New Bethiem
was constructed pre-eminently as fund-raising rhetoric, to attract the patronage and admiration
of the elite, rather than for its present and future inmates, whose interests took a poor second
place. Nor did contemporaries fail to perceive and remark upon the ironic antithesis between
also, Strype's edn of Stow's Ssrve, 195.
178 Thid, 30 March 1677, fol. 358.
179 See George Whitefield, Jo.rnat., hr from Periam dated 5 May 1739, query 3, 262. Even Whitefield counselled
Periam that it was his 'duty...to submit to the rules of [the houseJ'; ib,d, 264.
180 For the yards at old Bethlem, see BCGM, 2 June 1643, fols 43-4. For those at new Bethlem, see ,lsJ, 23
Oct 1674, fol. 52 & in/re.
181 See BSCM, 16 May 1719, fol. 45, when 2 new benches are ordered put up in the men's yard, indicating
their prior existence. For St. Luke's seat, see Appendix 3a(i) & (ii), and Madhoues Commiuee Report, 11 July
1815, 7, where the Committee laments the lack of covering in the airing grounds at St. George's Fields and
recommends 'the covering in the middle thereof., at St. Luke's' as a model.
182 BCGM, 23 Oct. 1674, fol. 52.
174