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

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were only permitted entrance <strong>and</strong> continuing maintenance, on the Physician's <strong>and</strong> Committee's<br />

discretion, <strong>and</strong> only during Lady Day <strong>and</strong> Michaelmas 160 . While such a policy was also designed,<br />

rather artificially, to bolster the hospital's success rate, nevertheless it. was very much concerned<br />

with targeting resources where they might be most e1ficacous; on recent <strong>and</strong> curable cases, <strong>and</strong><br />

it is simply erroneous to suggest that the hospital's administrators were not committed to the<br />

cure of their patients.<br />

Throughout the period under consideration, patients were only supposed to be supported at<br />

Bethiem so long as they remained in a condition (mental or economic) that made it imposs ble<br />

to support them elsewhere. Patients were commonly discharged, in the seventeenth century as<br />

'conceived not now soe Lunatiq[ue]' or 'soe unruly but that they may bee kept in any other<br />

place as well as here', rather than as completely recovered' 61 . The emphasis at Bethlem was<br />

increasingly on a rapid turnover, so that the more desperate cases could be admitted, a po icy<br />

dictated both by the hospital's lack of space, <strong>and</strong> by a. therapeutic <strong>and</strong> security conscious<br />

utilitarianism, which placed a mounting emphasis on the virtues of early treatment <strong>and</strong> the<br />

need to concentrate limited resources on the 'curable' <strong>and</strong> dangerous'. Patients were discharged<br />

explicitly to 'give place.. .to others whoe are distracted Lunatiq[ue] & dangerous abroad for<br />

obteyning helpe <strong>and</strong> Cure" 62. The priority in maintaining a patient at Bethlem, however, was a<br />

matter of security, or the tractability/disruptiveness of an individual in the community <strong>and</strong> the<br />

hospital, <strong>and</strong> 'cure' was, thus, often simply an estimate of how agreeable or cooperative was an<br />

individual patient. Patients' discharge was often explained <strong>and</strong> justified on the grounds that they<br />

were now 'quiett <strong>and</strong> orderly' or 'civil' (as their admission had been legitimised for the opposite<br />

reasons), underlining how fundamental was submission to authority in determining a patient's<br />

recovery 163 . First <strong>and</strong> foremost, Bethlem offered families, parishes <strong>and</strong> authorities, a relatively<br />

secure <strong>and</strong> affordable facility for the detention of the threat, both real <strong>and</strong> potential, of the<br />

volatile <strong>and</strong> wayward insane, when their own means of provision were severely circumscribed.<br />

Patients were repeatedly admitted because those responsible for them claimed to be unable<br />

160 Applicants' representative. were required to provide a statement as to the duration or the insazuty oF those<br />

they proposed. See e.g. petitions in Appendix 6; BSCM, 1 Nov. 1700, 4 March 1769, fols 329, 346.<br />

161 See BCGM, e.g. 27 June 1638, 11 March & 1 April 1642, 24 Mardi 1643, 5 Dec. 1645, 12 June 1667 & 11<br />

July 1674, fols 186, 375, 27, 229, 49 & 15, cases of Richard Famham, James Whithall, Joan Cawconibe, Jane<br />

Bynneyman, Katherine Killigrew, Elizabeth Heyley, Elizabeth Deane,, Sarah Ingrain.<br />

162<br />

163 See e.g. cases of James Whitall, Sarah Ingram, John (Jean) Stafford; slid, 1 April 1642, 11 July 1674, loIs<br />

27 & 15; PRO £5.13/i 05, fol. 54, 17 Jan 1689.<br />

454

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