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

absolute necessity for the better Governm[en]t of the said hospitall Lunatickes'. While the
Governors may only have been referring to the use of 'force' against patients, the matter was
very much open to interpretation on the part of the attendant.
Outsiders patently believed that flogging at Bethlem was de rg1e. Despite the impression
which had been formed contemporaneously by Parliament, however, when sending the blasphe-
mer, John Taylor, to Bethlem with the instruction that he be confined on 'bread and water and
such due bodily Correcon as may conduce to his Recovery', the Bethlem Board did not sanction
such treatment. Indeed, on the Physician finding Taylor sane, he was directed to inform the
Clerk of Parliament not only of the patient's 'Disposition', but, more to the point, 'that there
is floe punishm[en]t for any kept in Bethlem' 264 . When deliberating over the case of Thomas
Dunn, a mariner and another Privy Council committal, however, just eight years prior to this
affair, the Governors somewhat antithetically commanded the Bethiem Porter that Dunn 'bee
not whipped or beaten but treated as well as the said hospitall will aford' 265 ; implying that
such punishment was standard issue for the ordinary patient. The Court was probably simply
echoing in this instance the language employed in the original Privy Council warrant (cited,
but not reproduced, in the Minutes), yet Dunn does appear to have been accorded preferential
treatment266.
Nevertheless, in 1720, not long before Swift was writing about the 'daily' lashing of Bedlamite-
Irish politicians, Strype was pronouncing, on the authority of Edward Tyson (Bethlem Physician
1684-1708), that 'there is nothing of violence suffered to be offered to any of the Patients, but
they are treated with all the Care and Tenderness imaginable' 267. In fact, there is remarkably
little evidence in the Governors' Minutes over the entirety of the period 1635-1785 that staff
were ever found guilty of physically assaulting patients. The only recorded autopsy conducted
on a patient who appears to have died in suspicious circumstances, concluded that she had died
of 'naturall' causes 266. Although the Bethlem Porter, humphrey Withers, was accused by a
264 Latin warrant/letter dated 14 May 1675 from John Browne, Clerk of Parliament, with English translation,
at back of 1666-74 Court Book, & BCCM, 19 May 1675, loIs 129-30, for response.
265 flid, 25 Jan 1667, fol. 29.
266 The warrant was Issued on 16 Jan. 1667, just 9 day. prior to the Court of Governors' meeting. Dunn was
also ordered to be provided with 2 blankets and a coverlet, while the Porter was instructed 'to taice care for his
safe custody', special provisions not accorded the average Bethiem patient. See ibid.
267 See Swift, Leg,on Chib (1733), & Strype's up-dating of Stow's (1598), Svrvey, (1720), 196.
268 BCGM, 11 Feb. 1674, fol. 613. Two examinMions were in (act co,tducted by the City Coroner, one on
the body of Elizabeth Soc alias Jackson, a lunatic who had been sent to Bethiem from Newgate, & the other on
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