Bethlem Hospital and the care of the insane

In 1247 Simon Fitz Mary, one of the sheriffs of London, gave his land west of Bishopsgate Street to Godfrey, bishop of Bethlehem, to found a priory of the order of St Mary of Bethlehem. Its members were to pray for the founder and receive the bishop and messengers of Bethlehem when they came to London, and they wore a star on their copes and mantles. The house is first called a hospital in 1329, with no indication of what kind of patients it took. The City of London took it under its protection in 1346.

In March 1403 two of the king's clerks carried out a visitation. By then the house was mainly, though not only, an asylum for the insane: they found six lunatics and three sick persons. Patients or their relatives paid something toward their keep, the most being 12 pence a week from a merchant of Exeter who stayed six weeks. Collections across England brought in about 40 marks a year, and boxes at the door and carried around London added more, with gifts of meat, ale, fish, salt and candles.

The same visitation exposed the porter, Peter Taverner, who in effect ran the place. He had given no accounts for years, disposed of beds and other goods at a loss of about £40, bought fuel with the alms and made the poor pay for it, played at dice and draughts, and sold ale within the close. An inmate's complaint that divine service was sometimes not said was found to be true.

After the dissolution of the religious houses the City bought the hospital from the king in 1547 and re-established it by royal letters patent as a hospital for lunatics. It moved to a new building in Moorfields in 1676, and in 1810 the City granted land in St George's Fields for a larger one. The Bethlem Museum of the Mind calls it the first institution in the United Kingdom to specialize in care of the mentally ill. Bethlem Royal Hospital has been in south London since 1930 and still gives in-patient care as part of the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.