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

fined at Bethlem or elsewhere without hope of reprieve. John Pomfret, for example, was on the
brink of being committed to Bethiem by the Board under these circumstances, in 1731, when,
on noticing 'His Madness going of[f]', the Board discharged him out of their custody2rs. Indeed,
the character of the hospital was defined not just by those individuals who were admitted to it,
but also by those who were not sent, were rejected, reprieved or sent elsewhere.
Those who disturbed and offended their family, neighbours or ordinary citizens, were, pre-
dictably, much more common amongst cominittals to Bethlem, than those who troubled the
governing classes, and it would be a mistake to draw too close a parallel between Bethlem and
the Bastille. The frequency with which patients committed to Bethlem were deemed to have
threatened the 'neighbourhood', or abused 'the neighbours' particularly during the seventeenth
century, when the emphasis on neighbourly virtues and cohesion was much stronger, is a striking
feature of the Governors' Minutes, and of the dealings of Sessions and parish officers with the
insane. Katherine Scudamore, for example, was sent to Bethlem in 1685 on 'com[m]itting many
disturbances amongst the neighbours to their terror and affrightmen]t.' 259 . Patients had often
simply been local nuisances, like Thomasin Withers, arrested and sent to Bethlem in 1682, 'for
being a continueall Disturber of her neighbours and threatening to fire the house of one John
Preston and being an idle person', but 'distracted'°. Many went on 'abusing and disturbing'
their neighbours after they were discharged, and were repeatedly arrested and returned to the
Bridewell Court. Indeed, the motives of many of those who applied for patients' committal to
the hospital were merely to get rid of bothersome presences in the locality, who had persistently
pestered them, their families and the inhabitants. In obtaining the committal of Katherine Can-
non to Bethlem, Samuel Wilson confessed (after the patient's death in 1656, and in an attempt
to evade his arrears), simply to having wanted to dispose of a woman who had been 'Trouble-
some att his do[or]' 261 . As outlined above, lack of space at Bethiem and a lack of means on the
258 PRO LS.ZS/177, loIs 35-6. Pomfret eeems'to have been in the hospital 20 year. before this, when he
was discharged at ye Earnest request of his wife and her Mother', but contrary to the opinion of the Dr. &
Committee, & ordered barred from future readmission. BSCM, 7 Oct. 1710, lot. 32.
259 GLRO LSM.55, 27 April 1885. See, also, e.g. cases of Joan Duning, Catherine (lazy/Gary; BCGM, 27
May & 1 July 1642, lola 385, 391; Appendix 61, ltr dated c16 Nov. 1765 re. Gazy. For an insightful analysis of
the nature & importance of the values of neighbourhood, in one eevententh century English district, see Jeremy
Boulton, Neighbosrh000d & Society.
260 BCGM, 16 June 1682, fol. 307. See, also, chap. 3, 'Tenants', re. the hospital's neighbours.
261 Or, literally, 'to ease himself of that trouble'. Cannon, born in Suffolk, where only a surviving grandmother
remained, & with a London goldsmith for an uncle, had been taken vagrant, & been in Bndwell during 1647.
See ibid, 23 July & 20 Aug. 1647, 13 Jan., 2 April & 4 June 1656, loIs 312, 316, 733, 747, 754.
479