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

were adopted by most eighteenth century asylums), while their method of heating was still being
recommended as 'proper' by such eminent authorities as John Howard, over a century after its
implementation 198. That patients had formerly got so close to fires, however, as to 'many tymes
burne themselves' and that the Governors were more concerned about the 'greate Charges' this
'occasion[ed] to the.. .hospitall for their Cure' than the circumstance itself, suggests just how cold
patients must have been and just how poorly patients' comfort might be rated on the Governors'
scale of priorities' 99 . Nor is it clear for exactly how long patients had been enjoying even this
rudimentary privilege of warmth. As late as 1663, fires appear to have been maintained only in
the hospital's kitchen or in rooms set apart as the Governors directed for their own meetings200.
At Moorfields, possibly out of misplaced frugality, the hospital reverted to a system of 'grates'
and persisted with it for over three decade, despite risks of injury, before installing stoves again
'for the better and safer accomodateing the Patients'201 . Within four years of this alteration,
the Committee declared the stove rooms too small and inconvenient for the hordes of cold
patients. Yet their enlargement and alteration 'for ye Conveniency of ye patients' (despite being
the easier and cheaper of two options) over the next eighteen months, and the addition and
renovation of heating facilities over the ensuing decades, demonstrates that the Governors did
not simply ignore inmates' needs for warmth and comfort. Moreover, from the 1760s these
rooms began to be seen as more than simply warming rooms for patients, gradually taking on
a more therapeutic and recreational function, as parlours where convalescents might associate
and take tea together 202 . Scull has recently emphasised how pervasive and tenacious were
theories supporting the insensibility of the mad to physical discomfiture and the inclemencies of
198 Howard, Laze re glos, 139.
199 BCGM, 3 Dec. 1675, fol. 199.
200 Ibid, 3 July 1663, fol. 57.
201 BSCM, 21 Oct. 1710.
202 AFter much discussion in 1714-15, the Board rejected a plan for the removal of the stove rooms to the east
& west end. of the hospital which would have cost £366. In 1719, however, 2 more fire hearth. were ordered new
laid in the men's chequer. By 1766, patients were using what had formerly been the 2nd gallery maid's room as
a warming room, while, in the same year, two more cells were converted into 'one Room For the Conveniency of
the Patient.'. In 1778, a room adjoining the kitchen was ordered converted into a stove room; while, in 1793, a
room at the end of the men's gallery was to be enclosed 'for the Convalescent Patients', at a cost not exceeding
£70. See I1'sd, 15 June 1714, 10 May, 7 July & 26 Nov. 1715 , 16 May 1719, 17 April 1725, 15 Nov. 1766, 30
Oct. 1778, loIs 160, 191, 203, 45 & 228; BCGM, 25 June 1714, 13 May, 7 Oct. 1715 & 28 Feb 1793, fols 62, 135
& 155.
178