 
LITTLE is known regarding the extent and treatment of insanity during the Middle Ages. Persons “vexed with a demon” were taken to holy places in the hope that the “fiends” might be cast out. An early thirteenth-century window at Canterbury shows a poor maniac dragged by his friends to the health-giving shrine of St. Thomas. He is tied with ropes, and they belabour him with blows from birch-rods. In the second scene he appears in his right mind, returning thanks, all instruments of discipline cast away. Even in the sixteenth century we read of pilgrimage by lunatics, especially to certain holy wells. Formerly, all needy people were admitted into the hospital, mental invalids being herded together with those weak or diseased in body. From the chronicle of St. Bartholomew’s, Smithfield, we learn that in the twelfth century mad people were constantly received as well as the deaf, dumb, blind, palsied and crippled. One young man lost “his resonable wyttys” on his journey to London. He wandered about running, not knowing whither he went. Arriving in London, he was brought to the hospital and “ther yn shorte space his witte p032 was recoueryd.” Another patient was taken with the “fallynge euill” [epilepsy], which is described as a sickness hindering the operation of the senses. It would seem that persons subject to fits were sometimes placed in a lazar-house, for at St. Bartholomew’s, Rochester (1342), was one patient “struck with the epilepsy disease.” The public did not make itself responsible for the custody of the lunatic, whose own people were required to guard him and others from harm. One of the “Customs of Bristol” (1344) orders that the goods and chattels of demented men be delivered to their friends until they come to a good state of mind (ad bonam memoriam). The sad condition of “lunatick lollers” is described by Langland, who speaks compassionately of this class of wanderers. In London, the question of making special provision for the insane came to the front about this time, for in 1369 one Denton intended to found a hospital “for poor priests and others, men and women, who in that city suddenly fell into a frenzy (in frenesim) and lost their memory,” but his plan was not carried out. Stow mentions that the earliest asylum for distraught and lunatic persons was near Charing Cross, “but it was said, that some time a king of England, not liking such a kind of people to remain so near his palace, caused them to be removed farther off, to Bethlem without Bishopsgate.” St. Mary of Bethlehem was the most famous refuge for the mentally disordered. In 1403 there were confined six men deprived of reason (mente capti), and three other sick, one of whom was a paralytic patient who had been lying in the hospital for over two years. The good work p033 done in the institution was fully recognized. A bequest was made in 1419 to the sick and insane of St. Mary de Bedlam. A Patent Roll entry of 1437 speaks of “the succour of demented lunatics” and others, and of the necessity of cutting down these works of piety unless speedy help were forthcoming. The then town clerk, John Carpenter, recalled this need and remembered in his will (1441) “the poor madmen of Bethlehem.” Another citizen, Stephen Forster, desired his executors to lay out ten pounds in food and clothing for the poor people “detained” there. Gregory, citizen and mayor, describes in his Historical Collections (about 1451) this asylum and its work of mercy, and it is satisfactory to hear that some were there restored to a sound mind:—
Probably the utterly incurable were doomed to those iron chains, manacles and stocks mentioned in the inventory of 1398 and quoted at the visitation of 1403:—
In other parts of the country it was customary to receive persons suffering from attacks of mania into general infirmaries. At Holy Trinity, Salisbury, not only were sick persons and women in childbirth received, but mad people were to be taken care of (furiosi custodiantur donec sensum adipiscantur). This was at the p034 close of the fourteenth century. In the petition for the reformation of hospitals (1414) it is stated that they exist partly to maintain those who had lost their wits and memory (hors de lour sennes et memoire). Many almshouse-statutes, however, prohibited their admission. A regulation concerning an endowed bed in St. John’s, Coventry (1444), declared that a candidate must be “not mad, quarrelsome, leprous, infected.” At Ewelme “no wood man” (crazy person) must be received; and an inmate becoming “madd, or woode” was to be removed from the Croydon almshouse. Such disused lazar-houses as were inhabitable might well have been utilized as places of confinement. This, indeed, was done at Holloway near Bath. At what period the lepers vacated St. Mary Magdalene’s is not known, but it was probably appropriated to the use of lunatics by Prior Cantlow, who rebuilt the chapel about 1489. At the close of the sixteenth century, St. James’, Chichester, was occupied by a sad collection of hopeless cripples, among whom were found two idiots. A hundred years later the bishop reported that this hospital was of small revenue and “hath only one poor person, but she a miserable idiot, in it.” Bethlehem Hospital was rescued by the Lord Mayor and citizens at the Dissolution of religious houses and continued its charitable work. In 1560 Queen Elizabeth issued on behalf of this house an appeal of which a facsimile may be seen in Bewes’ Church Briefs. “Sume be straught from there wyttes,” it declares, “thuse be kepte and mayntend in the Hospital of our Ladye of Beddelem untyle God caule them to his marcy or to ther wyttes agayne.” 22 Char. Com. Rep., xxxii. vi. 472. |
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