Bedlam (Catholic Encyclopedia article)
James Joseph Walsh · 1913
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Description
Bedlam is the popular shortening of Bethlehem, Hebrew for house of bread, a London hospital founded in 1247 as a priory in Bishopsgate Street. Simon Fitz Mary founded it for the order of St Mary of Bethlehem, to serve the poor sick and homeless. By the fourteenth century it partly housed the insane, as a 1405 Royal Commission report shows. In 1375 it became a royal hospital, seized as an alleged alien priory, and later reverted to the city.
By Tyndale's day the word meant a madman, and in 1547 Henry VIII granted Bedlam with St Bartholomew's to London. A new hospital rose at Finsbury Circus in 1674, and the old site now holds Liverpool Street station. Hogarth pictured fashionable ladies visiting it as a show, and after an 1851 investigation it came under regular inspection. It now houses about three hundred patients with over sixty attendants, curing more than half each year.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | James Joseph Walsh |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 1913 |
| COLLECTION | REFERENCE |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 3 KB |
| LICENSE | PUBLIC_DOMAIN |
| RIGHTS | PUBLIC DOMAIN |
| SOURCE | New Advent — Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) |