CHAPTER XXIX
HOSPITALS
Stow provides a list of Hospitals in the City and suburbs “that have been of old time and now presently (1598) are.”
“Hospital of St. Mary, in the parish of Barking church, that was provided for poor priests and others, men and women in the City of London, that were fallen into frenzy or loss of their memory, until such time as they should recover, was since suppressed and given to the hospital of St. Katherine by the Tower.
St. Anthony’s.
St. Bartlemew, in Smithfield.
St. Giles in the Fields, a hospital for leprous people.
St. John of Jerusalem, by West Smithfield, a hospital of the Knights of the Rhodes.
St. James in the Field, a hospital for leprous virgins of the City of London.
St. John at Savoy, a hospital for relief of one hundred poor people, founded by Henry VII., suppressed by Edward VI.: again new founded, and endowed, by Queen Mary.
St. Katherine, by the Tower of London.
St. Mary Within Cripplegate, a Hospital founded by William Elsing.
St. Mary Bethlehem, without Bishopsgate, was an hospital, founded by Simon Fitzmary.
St. Mary without Bishopsgate, a hospital and priory called St. Mary Spital.
St. Mary Rouncevall, by Charing Cross.
St. Thomas of Acon, in Cheap.
St. Thomas in Southwark.
A hospital there was without Aldersgate, a cell to the house of Cluny, of the French order, suppressed by King Henry V.
A hospital without Cripplegate, also a like cell to the said house of Cluny, suppressed by King Henry V.
A third hospital in Oldborne, being also a cell to the said house of Cluny, suppressed by King Henry V.
The hospital or almshouse called God’s House, for thirteen poor men, with a college, called Whittington College, founded by Richard Whittington.
Christ’s Hospital, in Newgate Market.
Bridewell, now an hospital, or house of correction, founded by King Edward VI., to be a workhouse for the poor and idle persons of the city, wherein a great number of vagrant persons be now set a-work, and relieved at the charges of the citizens. Of all these hospitals, being twenty in number, you may read before in their several places, as also of good and charitable provisions made for the poor by sundry well-disposed citizens.”
Londina Illustrata, published 1813 by Robert Wilkinson, No. 58 Cornhill.
The care of the sick, and especially of the helpless and incurable, is one of the first duties recognised by men when they begin to associate. Stow says that the hospital for leprous women at St. James’s existed from time immemorial. Leprosy is the most incurable of all diseases; it devours body and mind; it renders the unhappy victim helpless. The Lazar House, therefore, was very naturally founded before any other hospital. Those of London already mentioned were St. James’s on the site of the present Palace; and St. Giles’s, Holborn, founded by Matilda, Queen to Henry the First. To these were afterwards added, in the 20th year of Edward the Third, four Locks for lepers—viz. one in the Old Kent Road, one in the Mile End Road, one at Kingsland, and one at Knightsbridge; all, it will be observed, at a convenient distance from the city walls. In the reign of Edward the Fourth one William Pole, yeoman of the Crown, being afflicted with leprosy, founded a Hospital for lepers at Highgate. Three hundred years before this, King Stephen founded a Lazar House at Great Ilford in Essex, which still exists as an Almshouse.