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

to have secreted nearly £12 in her cell on her death in 1650412. That thieves were arrested
by staff in the hospital, no doubt at the instance and with the collaboration of other visitors,
or even patients themselves, is an indication that visitors were not simply left to their own
evil devices at Bethlem. From c1709, the Governors took the salutary initiative of getting the
Bethiem Porter annually elected as a city constable by the Court of Aldermen, and most of
the arrests at the hospital seem to have been carried out under his authority 413 . Bethlem's
thieves were naturally sent to Bridewell once apprehended, and in one special case the hospital
not only footed the bill for 'the Tryall of the Theefe' and 'Coach hire', but also rewarded 'ye
Theif catchers' with 'A bottle of wine' 414. The petty purloining of visitors to Bethlem and the
fact that so few of them were caught in the act could be used as further ballast for the scandal
sheet of Bedlam, and to emphasise the laxity of staff, and of procedures for the supervision of
visitors. Yet visiting entailed a highly prized source of income and provisions for the hospital
and its patients. Indeed, Bethlem gained much more in the way of resources from visitors, than
it lost through theft.
Holiday Visiting And Regulations
The appointment of the Porter to the constabulary was intended not only to curb the activities
of visiting thieves, but 'to [help] prevent disturbances' in general, 'at Holliday times' in par-
ticular 415 . This, at least, is what the Bethlem Sub-Committee claimed in response to another
complaint in the anonymous letter of 1742, that 'the Holyday behaviour in that Hospital [is] a
Nuisance to the Inhabitants & a scandal to passengers' 416 . While the Governors accepted that
'great numbers of people resort to the hospital' during these times, they totally dismissed the
412 The rule was selected for praise by Defoe in the 1720s, but he merely specified the liability of servant, to
confiscate patients' money; A Tovr, 367. The patient concerned was Mary MaIm (or Male), a widow of St. Bride,
London, admitted to Bethiem as a vagrant lunatic, 23 June 1649. £4 8/6 had already been confiscated from her,
on admission, and left with the Treasurer. That o much of this money was in sundry items of small change,
implies that Maim may have been an unusually successful beggar. The hospital's appropriation of both these
sums, on Maim a death, 'towards the charge of her keeping', suggests obvious motives for patients concealing
their funds. See BCGM, 11 April 1650, fols 432-3.
413
414 Steward's Accosnl,, 4-11 & 18-25 September.
415 BCGM, 12 March 1742, foL 175. Indeed, the initiative may have originated as a 'Remedy' to the 'idle'
visitors of 1707 (see .iipra), whose 'shameful disturbance of the Lunatikes' was referred to the Bethlem Committee
by the Court on 2 May; BCGM, fol. 347.
416 Ibid. 27 January, 17 February & 12 March 1742, loIs 138, 141 & 175.
91