As early as the fourteenth century the hospital of St. Mary of Bethlem had begun to care for those sick in mind. “Pore naked Bedlam, Tom’s a-cold.” “God Almighty bless thy five wits-Tom’s a-cold!” Their cries might also have been heard in St. Mary, Barking, “a hospital for priests and inhabitants of London, both male and female, who were inflicted with insanity.” Yet it is through Bethlem that London has always been associated with insanity. Thomas More asked if the city itself were not a great madhouse, with all its afflicted and distracted, so that Bethlem became the epitome or little world of London. In 1403 the records suggest that there were nine inmates supervised by a master, a porter and his wife, as well as a number of servants. But the number of patients steadily increased. In the Chronicles of London, dated 1450, there is a reference to “A Church of Our Lady that is named Bedlam. And in that place be found many men that be fallen out of their wit. And full honestly they be kept in that place; and some be restored unto their wit and health again. And some be abiding therein forever, for they be fallen so much out of themselves that is incurable to man.”
Some were allowed to leave the “madman’s pound,” as it was known, in order to wander the streets as mendicants; a tin badge on the left arm signified their status, and they were variously known as “God’s minstrels” or “anticks.” There was dread and superstition, as well as pity, surrounding them; in the streets of the city they might be regarded as tokens of the city’s madness. They were wandering spirits-sometimes abject and sometimes prophetic, sometimes melancholy and sometimes denunciatory-calling attention to the naked human condition in a city that prided itself upon its artifice and civilisation.
Early sixteenth-century maps show “Bedlame Gate” beside the highway of Bishopsgate. You opened this gate and walked into a courtyard with a number of small stone buildings; here was a church and a garden. There were thirty-one of the insane crowded into a space designed for twenty-four, where “the cryings, screechings, roarings, brawlings, shaking of chains, swearings, frettings, chafings are so many, so hideous, so great; that they are more able to drive a man that hath his wits rather out of them.” The usual treatment was the whip and the chain. In an inventory are mentioned “six chains with locks and keys belonging to them, four pairs of iron manacles, five other chains of iron, and two pairs of stocks.” Thomas More writes in that century of a man who had “ben put uppe in bedelem, and afterward by betyinge and correccyon gathered hys remembraunce to hym,” so it can be assumed that punishment or “correction” was considered efficacious. You had to be brave to be mad.
By the early seventeenth century Bedlam had become the only hospital used for the incarceration of “lunaticks.” The preponderance of them were “vagrants, apprentices and servants, with a sprinking of scholars and gentlemen. Of the fifteen vagrants, eleven were women.” There were many wandering the streets of London who might be deemed mad, and could be thrown into the compter for the night, but they generally remained at liberty. The large proportion of female vagrants among the inmates of Bedlam, approximately one in three, also throws a suggestive light on the life of the London streets.
One inmate was Lady Eleanor Davis who was confined in the winter of 1636 for proclaiming herself a prophet; she was kept in the steward’s house, rather than in the ordinary ward, but she later complained that Bedlam itself was “like hell-such were the blasphemies and the noisome scenes.” It was “the house of such restless cursing,” and she complained that the steward and his wife abused her when they were “very farre gone in drincke.” So Bedlam represented an intensification of the worst aspects of London life. That is why, in the early years of the seventeenth century, it was put on stage. In a number of dramas the madhouse became the scene of violence and intrigue, where the inmates act
Such antic and such pretty lunacies,
That spite of sorrow they will make you smile.
These lines are from Thomas Dekker’s play of 1604, The Honest Whore, which was the first to include scenes within Bedlam itself.
The fact that London contained the only madhouse in the country was in itself suggestive to dramatists. In Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi madness is associated with various urban professions, such as that of a tailor “crazed i’ the brain with the study of new fashions,” intimating once more that life in the city can render you insane. It is the most important point of contact between London and lunacy. There was another important association manifested in John Fletcher’s The Pilgrim of 1621, where the drama is concerned with the mental stability of the keepers rather than the patients. If the custodians and gaolers are mad, then so is the society that bestowed their status and responsibilities upon them.
The old madhouse was, by the middle of the seventeenth century, in such a squalid and ruinous condition that it had become a civic scandal. So in 1673 it was decided that a great modern building, situated in Moorfields, would take its place. Designed upon the model of the Tuileries Palace, and decorated with gardens and columns, it took three years to complete. Above its entry gate the sculptor, Cibber, created two bald-headed and semi-naked figures called “Raving Madness” and “Melancholy Madness”; they became one of the great sights of London, rivalling the fame of those earlier guardians of the city Gog and Magog. From this time forward Bethlem Hospital acquired its true renown; visitors, foreign travellers and writers flocked to its apartments in order to see the mad confined within them. It was of great importance to the city, and to the civic authorities, that lunacy should be seen to be managed and restrained. It was part of the great movement of “reason” after the Great Fire and the plague, when the city itself had become the scene of madness and unreason on an enormous scale. Daniel Defoe had narrated the events of 1665 when so many citizens were “raving and distracted, and oftentime laying violent hands upon themselves, throwing themselves out of their windows, shooting themselves, mothers murdering their own children in their lunacy-some dying of mere grief as a passion, and some of mere fright and surprise without any infection at all, others frightened into despair and melancholy madness.” Londoners had a propensity for mania; perhaps that was the condition for their very existence in the city.
Yet, as if to point the moral that lunacy is undignified and absurd, the inmates were on display like so many wild beasts in a zoo; they were ravening creatures that had to be manacled or tied. There were two galleries, one above the other; on each floor a corridor ran along a line of cells, with an iron gate in the middle to divide the males from females. Outside it seemed to be a palace; inside, it closely resembled a prison. The price of admission was a penny and it has been reported that the “distempered fancies of the miserable patients most unaccountably provoked mirth and loud laughter in the unthinking auditors; and the many hideous roarings, and wild motions of others, seemed equally entertaining to them. Nay so shamefully inhuman were some … as to provoke the patients into rage to make them sport.” This “familiar letter” from Samuel Richardson provides a mid-eighteenth century picture of desolation which is fully documented by other sources.
One other commentator, on witnessing these scenes, remarked “that the maddest people in this kingdom are not in but out of Bedlam.” Here was the most curious thing: the building in Moorfields provoked irrational behaviour in its visitors as well as in its inmates, the whole scene of “wild motions” (which can be deemed to be sexual) and “hideous roarings” creating an unimaginable confusion of types and roles. Prostitutes used to linger in the galleries, looking for custom, on the principle that lustfulness might be excited by the antics of the mad. It was suggested, only half seriously, that another asylum be built to house those who came to mock and make sport of the insane. So it might seem that the contagion of madness spread from Moorfields across the whole city.
Thus, in the literature of the period, “Bedlam” becomes a potent metaphor for all the evils of London. In Pope’s verses it casts its shadow over Grub Street, where poverty and lack of accomplishment have driven many mad. Traherne wrote that<
br />
The World’s one Bedlam, or a greater Cave
Of Mad-men, that do alwaies rave.
John Locke compared temporary madness to being lost in the streets of a strange city, a suggestive analogy which was taken up by many observers of London. In Smollett’s Humphry Clinker, for example, Matt Bramble remarks of Londoners that “All is tumult and hurry; one would imagine that they were impelled by some disorder of the brain, that will not suffer them to be at rest … How can I help supposing they are actually possessed by a spirit, more absurd and pernicious than anything we meet within the precincts of Bedlam?” So the building at Moorfields rears over a city which is infected with the same disorder. The citizens of London live in a state of unnatural energy and uproar; they live in foul houses with no light or air; they are driven by the whip of business and money-making; they are surrounded by all the images of lust and violence. They are living in Bedlam.
By the end of the eighteenth century Bethlem Hospital had acquired its own patina of decay and desolation. In 1799 a commission described it as “dreary, low and melancholy” as if the material fabric had been infected by the melancholy madness of its inhabitants. The neighbourhood was itself suffused with dreariness; the hospital was “surrounded by squalid houses” as well as a number of shops dealing in old furniture. So in 1807 it was agreed that the institution should move across the river to Southwark. The third Bedlam in London’s history rose within appropriate surroundings, since Southwark had always been the nursery of prisons and other institutions.
The new building was as grand as its predecessor, with a portico decorated with Ionic columns and surmounted by a great dome. Yet the conditions of the interior were as sparse as before, as if once again the whole purpose of the building was a theatrical display designed to depict the triumph over lunacy in London. The two sculpted giants of madness, known popularly as “the brainless brothers,” were kept in the vestibule.
Methods of treatment remained severe, and were largely dependent on mechanical restraint; one patient lay in chains for fourteen years. It was not until the mid-nineteenth century that a more “enlightened” policy was developed; after two inquiries had been severely critical of the hospital regime, a “moral medical” treatment was instituted with the patients being given jobs or occupations as well as medical therapy with drugs such as chloral and digitalis.
It was a world within a world. Its water came from an artesian well within the grounds, so that the patients remained free of the cholera and dysentery which raged around them. And there was a monthly ball, where the patients danced with one another; many observers commented on this moving and somewhat bizarre occasion. Yet still the persistent question about madness remained. Charles Dickens walked past the hospital one night, and was moved to reflect: “Are not all of us outside of this hospital, who dream, more or less in the condition of those inside it every night of our lives?”
The rate of insanity in London had tripled by the middle of the nineteenth century, and other institutions for the mentally ill were established; those of Hanwell and Colney Hatch were perhaps the best known. Bethlem moved to the country, near Beckenham, in 1930, but by that time the capital was well stocked with asylums. These in turn have become known as mental health units or “trusts,” where patients are “service users.”
In more recent years, too, the mentally ill have been released on medication “into the community.” On the streets of London it is not uncommon to see passers-by talking rapidly to themselves and sometimes gesticulating wildly. On most main thoroughfares you will see a lone figure huddled in a posture of despair, or staring vacantly. Occasionally a stranger will shout at, or offer violence to, others. There was once a famous saying of London life,
Go thy way! Let me go mine
to which may be added,
I to rage, and you to dine.
Women and Children
An etching of a “mud-lark,” one of those small children who searched the banks of the Thames for pieces of coal, wood or metal, which could be sold in the streets. They comprised one of those small communities, separate and apart, which made up the sum of London’s heterogeneous life.
CHAPTER 67. The Feminine Principle
It is generally supposed that London is, or was, a male city. Phallic symbols of copper alloy have been found beneath Leadenhall Street and Cheapside, and phallic sculpture in Coleman Street. The great phallus-like erection, Canary Wharf Tower, now dominates all of London; it is also a symbol of successful commercial speculation, thus displaying the twin poles of London’s identity. The buildings close to that tower have “wrap-around sheaths” of sandstone, yet another example of the penis in stone. London has always been the capital of masculine fashion, its structures of power characteristically dominated by men. Rivers are normally feminine deities, but London’s river is known as “Old Father Thames.” Yet there is a strange ambiguity in all this imagery. The Monument rises erect by London Bridge, and upon its base London is depicted as a weeping woman. In its fall, through fire, it changes its gender.
In the early written records women acquire status and identity only through their commercial dealings. The role of medieval London widows, for example, is indicative of a world in which trade, matrimony and piety were thoroughly mingled. On the death of her husband, the widow was allowed a half-share in his goods and, unlike civic law in the rest of the country, was permitted to occupy their joint house until the time of her own death. She could become a freewoman of the city, and was expected to continue her husband’s old trade or business. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the known widows of artisans, for example, all continued with their husbands’ businesses. The continuity of trade was important to the civic authorities, but these arrangements also suggest the formidable position which women could assume in the city. They could also join the guilds or fraternities and there is a record, from the fraternity of the Holy Trinity in St. Stephen’s, Coleman Street, of a charity box “to whiche box eche brother amp; sister schal paie eche quarter a peny.” There were also rich widows who played a large part in city life, but they were in the minority. In another context there are references in fourteenth-century records to “the female practitioners of surgery.” Certainly there were “wise women,” who fulfilled a role as doctors within certain London parishes, but we may also find women in the trades of haberdasher and jeweller, spice merchant and confectioner. For every twenty or thirty men paying tax, however, only one woman appears in the fourteenth-century records.
The general images of order and subordination, of decency and seemliness, were of course applied to the women of the city. For many centuries unwed women went bareheaded, while married women wore hats or hoods. Wife-beating was acceptable, while the ducking of “scolding” wives was on occasions deemed a fit punishment. The ecclesiastical authorities often condemned women for wearing red antimony and other “make-up” upon their faces, for curling their hair with tongs of iron, and for wearing finery; they had, as it were, taken on the unnatural colours of the city. In contrast, the presence of the great convents in London, up to the time of the Dissolution, offered an image of women who had retired from the world; theoretically, at least, they were part of the city of God rather than the city of men. A general portrait of London women might, therefore, be constructed along familiar lines as the subordinate elements of a hierarchical and patriarchal society; in a city of power and of business, they retain a supportive invisible presence.
Yet the women of London were also distinguished by other characteristics. The daughters of wealthier households, together with some of those from the merchant class, were sent to elementary schools; we may presume that a significant number of women could read and write, or owned manuscripts, and might deal with the males of the household on terms of practical if not theoretical equality. A study of wills and testaments, Medieval London Widows, 1300-1500, edited by C.M. Barron and Anne F. Sutton, describes them as “verbose, bossy, disorganised, affectionate and anecdotal” with a c
oncern for distant relatives and distinct expressions of affection for household servants. They also reveal “networks of female friendships and loyalties” which stretched across London.
Most of the early descriptions of London women, then, suggest that they were very much part of the city. One German traveller of the fifteenth century entered a London tavern and a woman, presumably the landlady, kissed him fully on the lips and murmured: “Whatever you desire, that we will gladly do.” This is not quite the docility and propriety expected of women of a patriarchal culture, but it supports evidence from other sources of women who seem to be filled with all the energy and licentiousness of the city.
Representations of women in drama, from the scold to Noah’s wife, display characteristics of aggression and violence. As mentioned earlier, in the Chronicles of London for 1428, there is recorded the fate of a Breton in London who murdered a widow “an as he wente hys wey where as he hadd i-do this cursed dede, women of the same parissh come owte with stonys and canell dong, and there made an ende of hym in the hyghe strete, so that he wente no ferther notwithstondynge the constables and othere men allso, the wiche hade hyum undir gouernans to condite hym forwarde; ffor ther whas a gret manye of them, and no mercy ne no pity.” This scene, which was “without Algate” and thus on the site of the present Whitechapel High Street, is of some interest. A large party of women, aroused by the murder of one of their own, overpower or intimidate a group of men surrounding the murderer; then they stone him to death. This is not a city of order and subordination, but one in which some communal or egalitarian feminine spirit seems to be at work. The women were also without “mercy ne no pity,” which in turn suggests that they were in some sense brutalised or rendered callous by their existence in London.
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