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

abuse of patients by Bethlem staff was much more common than the Governors were aware, or
than the impression they sought to give, it was also far rarer than the popular image of the
hospital has suggested.
Provisions and Peculation: Embezzlement, Extortion and Drunkenness
Much more prevalent and easier to detect than the physical abuse of patients at Bethlem,
was the embezzlement and extortion of the provisions and funds of the hospital and its patients,
and bouts of inebriation. I have explained elsewhere how alcohol was something of an institution
within and without the hospital walls (chaps 2 and 3). Staff drunkenness and embezzlement
was often combined with going AWOL to the lively taverns which had grown up close by the
hospital. Amongst 'divers abuses lately complayned of against them' in 1651, the servants
and Porter (the previously exonerated Withers) were found guilty of 'curring p[ro]visions to
Alehouses & abiding there to tiple & disorder themselves & neglect their service & [of] staying
out late in the evening' 287. The Steward's 1635/43 articles demonstrate that this was far from
the first time that provisions had been diverted by staff to 'other places before it comes inte the
house', an abuse which continued to figure in the standing orders and rulings of the Governors
throughout the period288. During the 1630s, the Steward, Richard Langley, and his wife, were
also found guilty of carousing, of frequently returning 'home both together very farre gone in
drinke and that at 11 and 12 of Clocke at night' 289 ; while, throughout the 1630s and 40s, Langley
was persistently stealing hospital provisions and falsifying hi8 accounts to conceal the evidence.
Obviously, such conduct had grave implications concerning the neglect and ill-treatment of
patients, and (almost as important to the Governors) the ill-feeling of the hospital's tenants
and neighbours. The Langleys were not only 'very unquiet uncivell and ungoverned people'
('especiall[y]...Mrs Langley'), but also 'very much disturbe[d] the Lady Davies who is prisoner
performed the role of flogging-beadle. See spra, 'Recruitment'; chap. 2, & B COM, 19 ian. 1659, fol 87.
Whatever the character or behaviour of one Bridewell apprentice in 1670, his complaint that his master 'had
soc greivouly whipped him that hee fowled his Breeches And that his Master putt the Excrements into his
mouth' and the tolerance of the Court's response, inspires little confidence in the treatment of inmates at either
institution. The Court merely admonished the master not to administer 'immoderate correc(cijon or ill usage'
and reproved the boy 'for his nastinesse', telling him 'that hee must be punished for the same'; ilsd, 22 April
1670, fol. 197.
287 Ibii, 27 May 1651, fol. 496.
288 Jbid, 4 Nov. 1635 & 23 Oct. 1643, loIs 66-7 & 74-5, & see mire.
289 BCGM, 28 Feb. 1638, loIs 165-6.
389