Hospitals in Early Modern London Author2021 Lucas Simpson Proofreader2021 Kate LeBere Markup Editor2021 Kate LeBere Encoder2021 Lucas Simpson Programmer Martin Holmes Project Manager Katie Tanigawa Project Director Janelle Jenstad The Map of Early Modern Londonhttp://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/includes.xmlVictoria, BC, Canada
Department of English P.O.Box 3070 STNC CSC University of Victoria Victoria, BC Canada V8W 3W1
2016University of Victoria978-1-55058-519-3 Janelle Jenstad london@uvic.ca

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 Provider: University of Victoria Database: The Map of Early Modern London Content: text/plain; charset="utf-8" TY - ELEC A1 - Simpson, Lucas ED - Jenstad, Janelle T1 - Hospitals in Early Modern London T2 - The Map of Early Modern London ET - 7.0 PY - 2022 DA - 2022/05/05 CY - Victoria PB - University of Victoria LA - English UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/HOSP1.htm UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/xml/standalone/HOSP1.xml ER - Simpson, Lucas. Hospitals in Early Modern London. The Map of Early Modern London, Edition 7.0, edited by Janelle Jenstad, U of Victoria, 05 May 2022, mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/HOSP1.htm. Simpson, Lucas. Hospitals in Early Modern London. The Map of Early Modern London, Edition 7.0. Ed. Janelle Jenstad. Victoria: University of Victoria. Accessed May 05, 2022. mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/HOSP1.htm. Simpson, L. 2022. Hospitals in Early Modern London. In J. Jenstad (Ed), The Map of Early Modern London (Edition 7.0). Victoria: University of Victoria. Retrieved from https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/editions/7.0/HOSP1.htm.

The term hospital in the early modern England, especially before the development of English poor law, referred quite generally to places that offered a range of hospitality-related functions. Before the dissolution of the monasteries began in 1536, London’s hospitals were religious institutions that not only housed and provided care for the poor, sick, and orphaned, but also provided housing for knights on pilgrimage, as with St. John’s of Jerusalem, and provided education for young children, as with St. Anthony (Rawcliffe 2). Most of these hospitals were dissolved and the sites repurposed during the dissolution of the monasteries.

 Lucas Simpson Lucas Simpson LS

Research Assistant, 2018-2021. Lucas Simpson was a student at the University of Victoria.

 Kate LeBere Kate LeBere KL

Project Manager, 2020-2021. Assistant Project Manager, 2019-2020. Research Assistant, 2018-2020. Kate LeBere completed her BA (Hons.) in History and English at the University of Victoria in 2020. She published papers in The Corvette (2018), The Albatross (2019), and PLVS VLTRA (2020) and presented at the English Undergraduate Conference (2019), Qualicum History Conference (2020), and the Digital Humanities Summer Institute’s Project Management in the Humanities Conference (2021). While her primary research focus was sixteenth and seventeenth century England, she completed her honours thesis on Soviet ballet during the Russian Cultural Revolution. During her time at MoEML, Kate made significant contributions to the 1598 and 1633 editions of Stow’s Survey of London, old-spelling anthology of mayoral shows, and old-spelling library texts. She authored the MoEML’s first Project Management Manual and quickstart guidelines for new employees and helped standardize the Personography and Bibliography. She is currently a student at the University of British Columbia’s iSchool, working on her masters in library and information science.

 Katie Tanigawa Katie Tanigawa KT

Project Manager, 2015-2019. Katie Tanigawa was a doctoral candidate at the University of Victoria. Her dissertation focused on representations of poverty in Irish modernist literature. Her additional research interests included geospatial analyses of modernist texts and digital humanities approaches to teaching and analyzing literature.

 Janelle Jenstad Janelle Jenstad JJ

Janelle Jenstad is Associate Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of The Map of Early Modern London, and PI of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. She has taught at Queen’s University, the Summer Academy at the Stratford Festival, the University of Windsor, and the University of Victoria. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media (Routledge). She has prepared a documentary edition of John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Renaissance and Reformation,Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Early Modern Literary Studies, Elizabethan Theatre, Shakespeare Bulletin: A Journal of Performance Criticism, and The Silver Society Journal. Her book chapters have appeared (or will appear) in Institutional Culture in Early Modern Society (Brill, 2004), Shakespeare, Language and the Stage, The Fifth Wall: Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism, Performance and Theatre Studies (Arden/Thomson Learning, 2005), Approaches to Teaching Othello (Modern Language Association, 2005), Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate, 2007), New Directions in the Geohumanities: Art, Text, and History at the Edge of Place (Routledge, 2011), Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter, 2016), Teaching Early Modern English Literature from the Archives (MLA, 2015), Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana, 2016), Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota, 2017), and Rethinking Shakespeare’s Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge, 2018).

 Martin D. Holmes Martin D. Holmes MDH

Programmer at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC). Martin ported the MOL project from its original PHP incarnation to a pure eXist database implementation in the fall of 2011. Since then, he has been lead programmer on the project and has also been responsible for maintaining the project schemas. He was a co-applicant on MoEML’s 2012 SSHRC Insight Grant.

 Edward VI Edward VI King of England King of Ireland 1537-10-22 1553-07-16

King of England and Ireland 1547-1553. Buried at Henry VII’s Chapel.

EB ODNB Wikipedia Corporation of London

The Corporation of London was the municipal government of London, made up of the Mayor of London, the Court of Aldermen, and the Court of Common Council. It exists today in largely the same form.

 Born digital. Rawcliffe, Carole. The Hospitals of Later Medieval London. Medical History. 28.1 (1984): 1–21. Slack, Paul. Hospitals, Workhouses, and the Relief of the Poor in Early Modern London. Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe. Routledge, 1997. 229–246. Print. Slack, Paul. English Poor Law: 1531–1782. London: MacMillan Education, 1990. Print. London

The city of London, not to be confused with the allegorical character (London).

(LOND5.xml) St. John’s of Jerusalem

St. John’s of Jerusalem provided housing and care for pilgrims and crusading knights. It was held by the Knights Hospitallers and dissolved in the reign of Henry VIII (Stow 1598, sig. 2D7r).

(STJO3.xml) St. Anthony’s Hospital

St. Anthony’s Hospital was associated with the Parish of St. Benet (Fink) and was on the opposite side of Threadneedle Street from the church of the parish, St. Benet Fink. According to Stow, Henry III granted the construction of a synagogue in this space. The building was constructed for that purpose in 1231, but, as Stow writes, the christians obtayned of the king that it should be dedicated to our blessed Lady, and since an Hospital being there builded, was called S. Anthonies in London (Stow 1598, sig. K8v). The hospital consisted of a church, almsnouse, and school.

(STAN10.xml) St. Bartholomew’s Hospital

According to Stow, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital was located on the west side of Smithfield in Farringdon Without Ward. Originally a religious hospital, it was founded by its first prior, Rahere, in 1102 (Stow 1598, sig. X1r). It was dissolved under Henry VIII and reendowed and granted to the City of London in 1544 as a part of the civic hospital system.

(STBA2.xml) Bethlehem Hospital

Although its name evokes the pandemonium of the archetypal madhouse, Bethlehem (Bethlem, Bedlam) Hospital was not always an asylum. As Stow tells us, Saint Mary of Bethlehem began as a Priorie of Cannons with brethren and sisters, founded in 1247 by Simon Fitzmary, one of the Sheriffes of London (Stow 1:164). We know from Stow’s Survey that the hospital, part of Bishopsgate ward (without), resided on the west side of Bishopsgate Street, just north of St. Botolph without Bishopsgate (Stow 1:165).

(BETH1.xml) St. Thomas Hospital

St. Thomas Hospital was a hospital and parish church dedicated to St. Thomas Becket (Stow 1598, sig. Y7v). Originally located in St. Mary Overies Priory Close, St. Thomas Hospital was relocated to the eastern side of Long Southwark near Thieves’ Lane in the thirteenth century (Walford). The early modern location of St. Thomas Hospital is depicted near the bottom of the Agas map, though it is not labelled. It is also depicted on Rocque and Pine’s 1746 map (<ref type="bibl" target="BIBL1.xml#ROCQ1">A Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster, and Borough of Southwark with Contiguous Buildings</ref>), where it is labelled St. Thomas’s Hospital.

(STTH4.xml) Bridewell

Bridewell was a prison and hospital. The site was originally a royal palace (Bridewell Palace) but was transferred to the City of London in 1553, when it was converted to function as an orphanage and house of correction. Bridewell is located on the Agas map at the corner of the Thames and Fleet Ditch, labelled as Bride Well.

(BRID2.xml) Christ’s Hospital

Located in Farringdon Within Ward, Christ’s Hospital was a opened in 1552 as a home for London’s needy children. Inspired by the preaching of Dr. Nicholas Ridley, Edward VI decided to charter the hospital days before his death in 1553 (Manzione 33). Although it began as a hospital, Christ’s Hospital eventually became known for its respected school (Pearce 206).

(CHRI2.xml) Greyfriars

Enduring for over three centuries, longer than any other London friary, Greyfriars garnered support from both England’s landed elite and common Londoners. Founded in 1225 on a tenament donated by London Mercer John Iwyn, Greyfriars housed London’s Franciscan Friars (known in England as the Grey Friars). The friary expanded from its original pittance of land on the west side of Stinking Lane to over four-and-a-half acres by 1354. With the patronage of Queens Margaret, Isabella, and Philippa throughout the fourteenth century, the Franciscans constructed a formidable church, London’s third largest after St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey. After the friary’s closure in 1538 pursuant to the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the church became the centre of the newly established Christ Church parish, and the cloisters housed Christ’s Hospital (Holder 66–96).

(GREY2.xml) St. Katherine’s Hospital

St. Katherine’s Hospital was a religious hospital founded in 1148. According to Stow, the hospital was founded by Queen Matilda. The hospital, the grounds of which contained a church, gardens, orchards, and residences, was at the southern end of St. Katherine’s Lane and north of the St. Katherine Steps, all of which is east of the Tower of London. Stow praised the choir of the hospital, noting how it was not much inferior to that of [St.] Paules [Cathedral] (Stow).

(STKA3.xml) Savoy Hospital

Savoy Hospital was located along the Strand in Westminster. Henry VII founded the hospital in 1505 (Slack 229–30). Stow writes that the hospital was for the reliefe of one hundreth poore people (Stow 1598, sig. 2D7r). The hospital was suppressed by Edward VI and reendowed by Mary I. Savoy Hospital was finally dissolved in 1702, while its St. John the Baptist’s Chapel remains (Sugden 452).

(SAVO1.xml)

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The term hospital in the early modern England, especially before the development of English poor law, referred quite generally to places that offered a range of hospitality-related functions. Before the dissolution of the monasteries began in 1536, London’s hospitals were religious institutions that not only housed and provided care for the poor, sick, and orphaned, but also provided housing for knights on pilgrimage, as with St. John’s of Jerusalem, and provided education for young children, as with St. Anthony (Rawcliffe 2). Most of these hospitals were dissolved and the sites repurposed during the dissolution of the monasteries.

As John Slack writes, the dissolution of the monasteries destroyed much of the institutional fabric which had provided charity for the poor, leaving a perceived vacuum which had somehow to be filled (Slack 16). To this end, several of the hospitals that had been taken under the possession of the crown in the dissolution were granted to the City of London. The hospital, therefore, transformed in tandem with the development of English poor law, from a religious responsibility of the churches to a secular responsibility of the city government. Accordingly, the former religious hospitals of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, Bethlehem Hospital, and St. Thomas Hospital were reendowed and granted to the City of London between 1544 and 1555, while new hospitals (Bridewell and Christ’s Hospital) were founded. The civic proceedings resulted in the unification of the royal hospitals. Despite the name, the unified hospital system was a civic program under the administration of the City of London. The five royal hospitals were as follows: Bethlehem Hospital (hospital function predates dissolution; granted to city in 1546) Bridewell (founded as hospital/prision in 1555) Christ’s Hospital (site granted to city in 1546) St. Bartholomew’s Hospital (hospital function predates dissolution; reendowed in 1544) St. Thomas Hospital (hospital function predates dissolution; reendowed in 1552)

As recalled in the 1633 Survey, the Lord Mayor appointed a committee of 2. Aldermen and 6. Commoners, and afterward more were appointed, to the number of 24, to address the problem of poverty in London (Stow 1633, sig. 2G4r). The resulting report created three degrees of poverty, each with three subdivisions. The three general categories were poverty by impotency (unable to work because of age, blindness, or lameness), by causalty (temporarily unable due to injury or disease), or thriftlessness (which includes Rioutours, Vagabonds, and the Idle person, as Strumpets and others) (Stow 1633, sig. 2G4r). Christ’s Hospital was designated for those falling under the first category, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and St. Thomas Hospital for the second, and Bridewell, where the vagabond and idel Strumpet is chastised and compelled to labour, to the overthrow of the vicious life of idleness, for the third (Stow 1633, sig. 2G4r). Thus, although part of London’s civic hospitals program, Bridewell functioned more like a prison and workhouse than a hospital in the modern sense. While Bethlehem Hospital is left out of this account from the 1633 Survey, Slack, citing the 1836 Memoranda, References, and Documents relating to the Royal Hospitals of the City of London, gives a more precise account of the different hospitals’ different assignments: St Bartholomew’s for the sick, St Thomas for the old and impotent, Christ’s Hospital in the old Greyfrairs for the virtuous education and bringing up of orphan children and foundlings, Bethlehem Hospital for lunatics, and Bridewell for employing the idle poor (Slack 231).

Because St. Katherine’s Hospital was founded by the crown originally, it was not affected by the dissolution. Similarly, Savoy Hospital was held by the crown before the dissolution, and its status was therefore not affected by it. Edward VI granted Savoy Hospital to the City of London in 1553. Thus, to complete the list, we have: St. Katherine’s Hospital Savoy Hospital Aside from these seven hospitals, most of London’s hospitals mentioned in our early modern sources were repurposed either before or during the dissolution of the monasteries. See the full list here.