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

instructed to 'locke her upp in one of the roomes appointed for Lunatique persons there'. If
'the widdow Withers' had, indeed, been a patient and was still somewhat unstable, the remedy
prescribed by the Court is more comprehensible. It does suggest, however, that confining lunatics
was identified at Bethiem with punishment and deterrence and reflects a conviction in the
salutary (and not just pre-emptive) effects of incarceration. Whether Mrs Withers was merely
drunk, insane or half-sane, this recourse was clearly designed to shock her back into her senses.
It may also be that two ba.sketmen dismissed at the same Court for 'being rude and disor-
derly persons' had accompanied the widow on her jaunts 297. It was servants' conduct respecting
visitors, however, which had particularly concerned the Court at this juncture. Ultimately, one
can do little more than guess at the meaning or implications of the many cryptic entries in
the Governors' Minutes. While Committees of Governors are often appointed to investigate the
abuses of porter and servants at Bethlem, their findings and actions are frequently not repro-
duced in the Governors' Minutes. Often, on the other hand, abuses were simply not found by
visiting governors298 . The Board was, evidently, little interested in discussing how patients had,
or might be, affected by staff misconduct. Abuses were interpreted, more directly, as a matter
of disobedience to the governing patriarchy itself, than as an infringement of patients' rights or
a threat to patients' health299.
Staff drunkenness and related abuses virtually disappear from the Governors' Minutes from
the latter seventeenth century, but this has more to do with the delegation of Court business
onto Committees of governors and the hiatuses and taciturnity of the Committee Minutes, than
it does with any radical improvement in staff sobriety. The conveyance and intake of alcohol at
the hospital still remains a conspicuous enough concern in the general rulings respecting staff
duties for one to be certain of ongoing abuses, and is complained of explicitly by one moralistic
member of the Board, Walter Pryse, in 1742300. Indeed, one may question the thoroughness
of the Bethlem Committee's response to Pryse's criticism, which refused to admit 'that the
Servants or any of the patients are suffered to drink to excess'. More than twenty years later,
297 Ibid, 2 Sept. 1657, fol. 825.
298 See e.g. ibid, 25 Aug. 1643, 13 Feb. 1646, 3 Oct. 1655, 19 Jan. 1659, fol, 61, 243, 717, 88.
299 A prime example i the Court'. preparednes, to foive Richard Langley', manifold abuse,, without reference
to the patient., once the Steward had performed a quasi-religiou, form of Bubmiesiofi 'before god and this
wo[rshipfu]ll assembly of Governo(raj':- declaring 'freely from the bottome of hi, heart that he hath God and man
and in especiall manner the wo[shipfu]ll Govemo[rs] of thi, hoapitall [offendedj' and 'acknowledging Ins fault and
submitting himself in all humilitie to this Court'. JkJ, 2 April 1638, foL 172
300 Jbd, 27 Jan. & 12 March 1742, loIs 135 & 141; chap. 6, jipre.
391