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

unhealthy obstructions, and even attempted to restrict the types of occupations open to tenants
(by replacing laystalls with cobblers' stalls, or banning the use of hospital property for taverns,
hempdressing, breweries, soap-boiling houses or glass houses, e.g.396 ), the occasional supervision
of ad hoc committees could preserve only a modicum of salubrity.
The reciprocity of the relationship between hospital and tenants needs stressing. While
the Governors were prepared to spend money on improving the hospital's immediate milieu,
they required tenants to keep their properties in good repair and to ensure that yards, passages
and doorways were kept clean and free. When consenting to erect a new gate at Bethiem in
1638, the Board also directed resident families to take weekly turns 'to kepe the same unstopt'.
Yet inhabitants were often lax in complying with their landlords' wishes, while the legislative
powers open to the hospital board were often inadequate. Typically, in 1645, while the Governors
demonstrate their concern for patients' health, deeming a new building erected by John Hopper
(a tenant), next to the hospital's little yard, to 'hinder the aire of the hospitall' and to constitute
'an annoyance' for which hopper 'ought to bee indicted', they could find no legal means to compel
him to demolish the building397. Just seven years earlier, the Governors had ordered the same
tenant to unblock the passage leading to the hospital's front door and not to allow 'filth' to be
dumped there398. Ironically, the Board's own mandate for tenants to improve and extend their
leaseholds continued to deprive Bethiem of the air and light where good health was deemed to
reside.
Despite the Governors' preoccupation with the interests of the hospital's neighbours and
tenants, these interests were seldom permitted to take precedence over the interests of patients,
however. That revenues received from tenants sealing agreements with the Court over Bethiem
property were commonly spoken of as 'for the use/benefitt of the lunatics', suggests how centrally
the Governors viewed patients' needs in their negotiations as landlords. Of course, this was
also a rhetorical device, legitimising administrative policy as disinterested charity. Yet the
connection between the hospital's rent roll and the money allocated for the support of patients
was not merely rhetorical. The Governors justified and partially offset the expense of Bethlem's
expansion in 1643-4, through the income provided by fines and the raising of rents on the renewal
396 Hempdressing was deemed to be 'dalngerous noisome and inconvenient to be used' in hospital property and
was banned altogether at Bethiem in 1654, although 2 existing hempdressers were permitted, in 1656, to see out
the duration of their kases on compassionate grounds. See !bsd, 12 Nov. 1638, 25 Oct. 1654, 7 May 1656, 16
Mardi 1677, foI' 207, 678, 751 & 350-51, & infra.
ii,,d, 4 Oct. 1645, fol. 217.
Jbsd, 12 Nov. 1638, fol. 207.
223