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

increasing assumption of competence over patients' nourishment, to the exclusion of the visitor,
was not without drawbacks. When Wakefield visited Bethiem in 1814, he found that 'The
patients generally complained much of being deprived of tea and sugar' 407. Metcalfe's Jnlerior of
Bethlehem HospsaI (1818), describing two spells of confinement in the early nineteenth century,
indicates that, with less interference from visitors and their direct charity, staff were even freer
to monopolise an extortionate trade with the dainties patients desired408.
Thieves
As already outlined, some visitors came to Bethlem with the opposite intention of stealing from
patients. I have unearthed only five instances of theft recorded in the hospital records during
1680-1750, but a great many more must have gone undetected 409 . Thieves filched whatever
they could get their hands on, from the 'scarife' of 'a gentlewoman', or a woman patient's
'Handkerchief of Small Value' (and probably hospital issue), to a patient's 'Pewter Plate and
Porringer', or lead from the hospital roof. The persistent rifling of the poors' boxes, patients'
and provisions, may also occasionally have been the work of outsiders 410 . Thieves might work
the wards singly, or like John Welling, 'with others' in teams Moorfields had long been a haunt
of the city's crooks . The throngs at Bethlem, particularly over the holiday periods,
must have presented easy pickings. Selfish strangers and even 'the friends or Acquaintance[s]' of
patients might also, on their visits, attempt to steal or otherwise 'take' patients money, although
(whether through deception or good intention) this was forbidden by the Governors in 1677411.
Money found in the possession of a patient was supposed to be given to the Treasurer for safe
keeping, until his recovery or until it was expended for his own use in the hospital. In practice
this only seems to have occurred with very large sums, however, and one patient was still found
prendre le th en cominun. Le...fihIe d'un ré1ugi parloit Francois...me for ca de partager le the...'.
407 See Madhouse. Commfflee Report, 1st Report (1815), 11.
408 Urbane Metcalfe, Inferior of Bethlehem Hospital (London, 1818).
409 For these and ensuing discussion, see BCGM, 30 April 1680, 14 October 1720, 24 July 1751, & 9 December
1756; loIs 148, 433, 11 & 233, & Steward'. Account., 4-11 & 18-25 September 1731.
410 See e.g. BCGM, 30 March 1677, loIs 358 & 360, rule implying that considerable amounts of provision was
going missing, and Dekker's Honest Whore, part i, V, ii, 1. 27-30; 'How! no noise! do you know where you are:
sfoot amongst all the mad-cape in Millan: so that to throw the house out at window will be the better, and no
man will suspect that we lurke here to steale mutton'.
411 BCGM, ibid. fol. 358.
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