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

compassion being eroded at the eighteenth century hospital, although it was Hharply subject to
social arbitration, tending to be conferred in particular, for example, on anglican clerics and
their relations, and other professional and social groups, which appealed to the of
values. Mary Heath, for example, was ordered viewed and subsequently admitted to Bethlem,
in 1709, on the petition of her father, William, minister of flathwick, 'it appearing that she
is an Object of great Compassion and young and lately deprived of her senses'40 . As we shall
see, while obligors increasingly forfeited their bargaining powers with the governing board, the
admission of patients was conducted in a manner less trammelled by economic considerations,
and more concerned with the physical and mental condition of the individual patient.
Petitions submitted to the Court also indicate a considerable reserve of sympathy amongst
patients' obligors for the circumstances and condition of the insane. While the majority of those
friends supporting patients in Bethlem had a direct responsibility to them as relatives, petition-
ers commonly stressed their lack of obligation to the insane and claimed to have undertaken to
provide for them out of 'pity' to them 'as neighbours'; or out of 'lcindnesse' and charity' to their
friendless and penurious state, and to their 'distressed', 'forlorne' or 'miserable abandoned Con-
dition'41 . Many obligors, like Thomas Stinton's sister, Ann, were clearly 'willing to contribute
to the utmost of [their]...power towards the maintenance' of an insane relative in Bethlem (or
elsewhere)42.
Obviously, on the other hand, petitioners were keen to emphasise, and apt to exaggerate,
their own, as well as the patient's, indigence, and their own charitable disposition towards the
insane, in order to obtain the Governors' favour and to strike a good bargain for patients' main-
tenance. It is also questionable how much these petitions, whether paraphrased by the hospitals'
clerk, or reproduced/extant in their entirety, truly represent the sentiments of patients' obligors,
who were substantially framing their appeals according to the Governors' guidelines 43 . More-
over, it is very much in doubt how much the mad themselves really had to do with Bethlem's
material relief of poverty. The language of orders of admission or abatement reflects a profound
ambiguity as to who the hospital was primarily relieving; the insane, or their obligors. Indeed,
40 BSCM, 1 Oct. 1709, fol. 3.
41 Ibid. e.g. 10 June 1669, 19 & 28 Nov. 1673, 12 March 1697, 1 April 1698, 3 Nov. 1699 & 12 April 1700 loIs
145, 587, 591, 99, 177, 321 & 363; GLRO LSM.44,8 Dec. 1873; case, of Thomas Almond, Sarah Wyatt, Denise
(Dennis) Bundy, Daniel Bull, Edward Cook & Mary Dolling.
42 Ibid, 20 May 1698, lot. 186.
Petitions were usually drawn up at Bridewell, by, or under the direction of, the Clerk (or Treasurer).
423