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

in four public newspapers and posted 'upon the Pillars of this hospital'; that the outer gates
and front windows be kept locked and shut; and that staff 'attend their duty diligently during
these three ilolydays'; conjure up clearly enough the kind of holiday siege to which the hospital
had formerly been subjected 423 . Sundays and public holidays had throughout the period been
occasions for licentiousness of all sorts; for drunkenness, feasting, dancing, sexual indulgence,
laughter, physical exertion, impudence, aggression, violence, and generally letting off steam;
despite the interdicts and efforts of authorities and moral reformers aimed at curbing the worst
excesses424 . Plainly the riotous, carnival atmosphere of such days had occasionally been trans..
posed to the galleries of Bethlem. While the Governors were tardy in taking any effectual action,
poors' box receipts (Figz 2a suggest that it was only in the 1760s that holiday visiting reached
its summit425 . The gradual curtailment of visiting in the 1760s cannot simply be interpreted
as a reaction to the mounting disenchantment of the educated public. It was partly an internal
response to an escalation of the problems posed by visitors beyond the hospital's capacity to
cope. Undoubtedly, the historiography of visiting has been tainted by the publicity given to
holiday excesses, and by the self-righteous indignation of succeeding generations 4 . Those who
did pillory the practice of visiting over the duration of the period were primarily outraged with
'the holiday mob', rather than with visiting per se 427 . One must not presume, however, that
the riots of holiday periods were a generalised phenomenon at Bethiem.
Staff, Visitors And The Poors' Boxes
Perhaps the major obstacle frustrating the Governors' efforts to restrain the access and conduct
of visitors, was that their staff were more interested in supplementing their meagre wages out
of spectators' pockets. Originally, in point of fact, staff were absolutely forbidden 'to begge or
require anything of any p[er}son coming to Bethlem for.. .their paines', but were supposed to
423 m.
424 See e.g. Malcolmeon, Recreal,ons, asp. chap. 5.
425 Indeed, the very year before additional holiday policing was introduced at Rethiem, takings for the fist time
topped £450, over one third of which was taken during April, May and December alone
426 For an example of this retrospective distorted disdain, see Charles Dickens, A Ctrio. Dance, in Uncoflecf ad
Wrthngi (ed.), Stone, vol. ii, 382: '[at) Bethlehem Hospital...lunatice were chained, naked in rows of cages that
flanked a promenade, and were wondered and jeered at through iron bars by London loungers'. See, also, Daniel
Hack Tuke, CIsapers is the H,sory of the Insane in the Brit,dt Isles (London, 1882).
427 See e g. Tryon, Dreams md Vi,, on,, 290; de Saussure, Travel,, 93; BCGM, 27 January 1742, fol. 175, &
The World, no. xxiii, 138.
93