Old
London Maps
Free access
to scores of rare and detailed maps, plans, articles, information and
views of medieval, sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century
London for the genealogist, family historian, student and the curious.
Bethlehem
Hospital (Bedlam), east side of Moorfields
Bethlehem
(or Bethlem)Hospital has a long history stretching back
into medieval times. The first Bethlehem Hospital was
a priory between Bishopsgate and Moorfields, dedicated
to St Mary of Bethlehem, and founded by Simon Fitz-Mary,
sheriff of London in 1247, for a prior, canons, brethren
and sisters who were to dress in a black habit with a
star on their breasts.
In
1523 Stephen Gennings, merchant taylor, bequeathed £40 toward
the purchase of this hospital for the reception of the insane. In 1545
during the dissolution, Henry
VIII bestowed the hospital on the city of London and it was converted
into a lunatic asylum.
The
hospital for the insane was removed to the east side of Moorfields,
just beyond the city walls, in 1675. The building pictured above was
declared unsafe in 1800 and a new hospital for the insane was built
in Lambeth (what remains of this hospital is now the Imperial War Museum)
and patients were transferred there from the Moorfields establishment
in 1815.
See
a view of some figures
which used to adorn the front of Bethlehem Hospital.
