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

p[re]dudiciall to the said hospital! or to the Lunatiques therein'. Ultimately, after an investi-
gation by the Committee, the Court rejected Man's petition, finding 'That the smoake thereof
wilbe p[re]dudiciall and inconvenient to the poore Lunatiques...besides the dainger of fire...to
the strawhouses in the said yard' 403 . Fifteen years later, the Bethiem Committee rejected a
like application from a Mr. Wheeler for the same reasons, and recorded this decision in the
Minutes only in order 'to prevent any Applycacon of the like nature for the future' 404 . At the
Bishopagate site, a chimney had already been added by Thomas Vandall (a tenant of Nicholas
Beard, the aforementioned Bethlem lease holder), 'the smoake' of which had already proven
'very noysome to the Lunatikes' and a fire hazard, when the Court ruled upon the matter in
1666 (significantly, soon after the Great Fire of London, which had come so close to Dethlem405).
Although the rationales governing both these incidents demonstrate a consistent regard to pa-
tients' well-being, in the earlier case, the tenant was given the more generous option of either
removing the chimney, or of altering it, as a means of prevention406.
Similarly, while the Board was quite prepared to rent out basement space beneath the
Moorfields buildings as warehouses, to trading members of their own ranks and to independent
tradesmen and companies (like the East India Company, and John Smith and Partners), this
was justified in so far as it would 'increase the revennue of the said hospitall for the k[ee}ping
and mainteyning the poore Lunatiques' and was countenanced only on condition that the lease
holder 'put floe goods into the warehouse that may be offensive to the Lunatiques or [a fire
hazard]'. On the other hand, when pepper, potash, beer, victuals, fruit and tobacco, were
all permitted to be stored under patients' cells, it is questionable what exactly the Governors
considered 'offensive to the Lunatiques' 407. Furthermore, the extended excavation of cellar space
403 Ilad, 16 July & 3 Sept. 1686, fols 185 & 192.
404 BSCM, 12 May 1711, fol. 53.
405 Historians have often mistakenly averred that old Bethiem was destroyed in the Great Fire. In fact, only
its properties were touched, the fire reaching only as far as a group of house, without Bishopagate. See i&ii, 28
Sept. 1666, fol. 8.
406 Thid, 19 Dec. 1666, foL 27. For Beard's lease, see i&,d, 3 & 22 July 1663, loIs 57 & 59.
407 These warehouses were normally advertised when vacant in the city newspapers and governors were rarely,
in fact, the lease-holders. For example:- in 1678, the Governor, leased 2 long ground rooms in the cellar of new
Bethiem to the East India Company, for the storage of pepper, at £100 p/a; they leased the warehouse under
the hospital's east end to Peter Houblon, a governor, at £40 p/a, in 1686; to Thomas Styles, merchant, for the
storage of potash, at £35 p/a, in 1709; to John Blake, a Cooper, at £4 10/ p/rn, in 1715; to Thomas Palmer,
a lruit.erer, at 20/ p/w, in 1717, and at £35 p/a, in 1718; to Richard Lockwood, for potash storage, sometime
before 1727; the warehouse under the hospital'. west end was leased to William AateII, at £40 p/a in 1712; to Sir
John Will seus, in 1717, at £4 10/ p/rn; to Samuel Palmer, a tobacconist, for £18 p/a, in 1733; they leased the
225