(place) by paraclete Sun Jul 03 2005 at 21:28:48

St Bartholomew's Hospital has the honour of being London's oldest surviving hospital, and has been in the business of healing the sick since 1123. More affectionately known as 'Bart's', the hospital is located in the City of London, near St Paul's Cathedral and Smithfield Meat Market. For those with an interest in Dickens, Little Britain, the location of the lawyer Jaggers's office from Great Expectations, is situated just next to the hospital.

Origins

The founder of St Bartholomew's was a courtier to the court of King Henry I known as Rahere. History remembers him as being a wit and a social climber, and it is thought that he may have been a chaplain to one of the noblemen of the King's entourage. He ascended to become one of the Minor Canons of St Paul's Cathedral, and at some point decided to complete a pilgrimage to Rome. While in Rome, he fell ill with malaria. In his misery, and afraid that he would die far from his native lands, he prayed to God to ask forgiveness of his sins and to promise that should he be allowed to recuperate and return safely to England, he would found a hospital for the poor and sick in the City of London.

God apparently accepted this bargain, and Rahere recovered from his illness. On his journey back to England, he experienced a vision in which St Bartholomew, one of the twelve apostles, visited him. He was commanded to build his promised hospital in Smithfield and that it should be dedicated to St Bartholomew, who would look after it and protect it as long as Rahere carried out his vows. In London, the King gave Rahere permission to build in Smithfield. At this point in time, Smithfield was a flat and marshy area of ground, used as a jousting area and the location of the city gallows. Here, Rahere built a small chapel for the Austin Canons, a new monastic order of whom Rahere was the first Prior, and a building for the sick who would be looked after by the Canons.

Rahere died in 1143, and was buried on the North side of the High Altar of the Priory Church of St Bartholomew, which he had built. His tomb, complete with an effigy added in 1405, can still be seen today.

Early History

In the years leading up the Reformation, Bart's established itself as a shelter for the sick, poor and children. The hospital was staffed by Brethren, Lay-Brethren and Sisters, who all served under a Master, whose job it was to visit the sick and decide upon their treatment. Patients came from the City of London and from the surrounding countryside (in those days, Bart's was situated right on the edge of the City and was surrounded by fields). The Brethren would also go and seek out unfortunates lying in the gutter, and bring them back to the hospital to care for them and nurse them back to health. When patients were eventually discharged from the hospital, they were given a pair of shoes and garments, either made by the Brethren or given by City authorities from forfeited merchandise. They also visited near-by Newgate Prison, taking away the small children and babies to be cared for by the Sisters of the hospital. By the fifteenth century, so many children were looked after by the hospital that a school was formed, with its own Latin master. There was also a night shelter on the premises for pilgrims and wandering people.

It was in front of the hospital that Wat Tyler, leader of the Peasants' Revolt, came to discuss terms with the young Richard II on the 14th June 1381. Here, despite the negotiations proceeding satisfactorily, he managed to in some way incur the displeasure of the King's party, and was stabbed in the throat by the Mayor of London, William Walworth. He survived this attack and was taken to Bart's to be treated. However, the King is not really someone you should upset, and later some of the King's knights dragged him from the hospital and beheaded him. He is not the only martyr/traitor (delete according to personal preference) to have been beheaded at the hospital's boundary wall. There are a number of plaques commemorating those who have been executed, though the true number of those whose deaths have contributed to Smithfield's bloody history will never be known.

The Reformation

In 1534, Parliament accepted the breach with the Pope, allowing King Henry VIII to become Supreme Head on Earth of the Church of England. In 1536, the first Act of Dissolution of the Monasteries of less than £200 was passed, heralding the start of the suppression of English monasticism. Fifteen thousand monks and nuns were cast out of their cloisters. The Priory of Bart's escaped this first cull because of the mass of valuable property that had been bequeathed to it over the years. However, in 1539, the second Act of Dissolution was passed, bestowing on the Crown all monastic possessions. This was a bullet that the Priory of Bart's could not dodge. However, this left the Hospital in a precarious position; without the Priory to support it, the Hospital would quickly disappear, and it'd be the poor that suffered for it. This problem was not Bart's alone; the Hospitals of St Thomas' in Southwark, of St Mary Without Bishopsgate, of Bethlehem in Bishopsgate Street and of St Mary of Graces, east of Tower Hill all stood to lose.

In 1538, knowing what was going to become of the Priories that ran these hospitals, the City sent a petition to the King, requesting a grant to help save them, as they provided a desperately needed service, helping 'the myserable people lyeng in the streete, offendyng every clene person passyng by the way with theyre fylthye and nastye savors'. The City also requested that it be given care of the Churches of the Grey, Black, White and Austin Friars, with all the land and tenements within these precincts, to be used to house people from outside the City who were causing the ordinary parish churches to become overcrowded.

This petition was ignored, but in 1544, the King refounded St Bartholomew's Hospital, allowing all houses and gardens within the boundary of the Hospital walls to remain property of the Hospital. All the other possessions originally held by the Priory of St Bart's were claimed by the King. The King commanded that Bart's duty was to minister to prisoners, to shelter the poor, to visit the sick, to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked and bury the dead. The Masters of the Hospital resolutely ignored these instructions concentrating their efforts as before on caring for the sick.

In May of 1546, the King finally caved to pressure from various sides, and accepted the part of the petition from the City of London concerning St Bartholomew's and Bethlehem Hospitals. A survey of the property of St Bartholomew's and an inventory of the hospital were carried out, and on the 27th December 1546, the King at long last signed Letters Patent granting to the City both St Bart's and Bethlehem Hospitals. Bart's was also to be known from that day forth as 'The House of the Poore in West Smithfield in the suburbs of the City of London, of King Henry VIII's Foundation'. Strangely enough, everyone continued to call it St Bart's, but it wasn't until 1948 that the hospital was officially renamed as 'St Bartholomew's Hospital'. The Hospital itself was now to be managed by a group of people elected to the job who were known collectively as 'Governors', who were paid a wage to do their job. This system remained in place until the implementation of the National Health Service by Aneurin Bevan in 1948.

Architecture

Little is known about the buildings of the Hospital from the time of Rahere till the Great Fire of London in 1666. While the Hospital has always occupied the same site, it has had numerous incarnations over the centuries. In medieval times, the site consisted of hospital buildings and houses arranged around several closes or small squares. This 'precinct' planning allowed an intimacy away from the rest of the City and a degree of protection against the elements.

Two of the greatest influences on the current incarnation of St Bartholomew's Hospital, and the whole of London in fact, are Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren. Inigo Jones introduced of the revival of classical forms in architecture in the seventeenth century, and his legacy can certainly be seen in the buildings of Bart's Hospital. After the Great Fire, in which the Hospital lost a number of its buildings, it was Sir Christopher Wren who was handed the task of rebuilding London. This was a task that he took to with great gusto, and his work can be seen all over London. One of his main tasks was the rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral, which is but a stone's throw away from Bart's.

The first building to be commissioned was the North Gate in 1702. It was to be designed by Edward Strong Junior, who came from a family of stonemasons. His uncle, Thomas Strong, was Sir Christopher Wren's chief mason, and his father, Edward Strong Senior, is thought to have been the man to carry the final block of stone to the top of St Paul's Cathedral.

The North Gate today is exactly the same as when it was built, a richly ornate creation, with sculptured figures and mouldings that wouldn't look out of place gracing a mansion or other great building. Instead, it is the entrance from the street to a Hospital for the poor. The statue of Henry VIII that resides above the gate is the only public statue of him in London, and was commissioned to commemorate his saving of the hospital in 1546.

In 1713, the Governors of the Hospital took the plunge and decided the rest of the Hospital should also be rebuilt, an ambitious scheme to say the least. The architect commissioned to bring this project to life was James Gibbs, born in 1682 in Aberdeen, and one of the Governors of the Hospital. He had by this point designed several London churches, including St Mary-le-Strand and St Martin-in-the-Fields. Other buildings to his name include the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford and Senate House in Cambridge.

The basic plan was of four wings, built around a central square. The first wing to be built was the North wing, in 1732. It is the North Wing that contains the Great Hall and the Hogarth murals. The South Wing followed in 1740, the West Wing in 1752 and finally the East Wing in 1769. The Square itself has been called one of the great outdoor rooms in England. It is definitely one of the secret places of London, hemmed in as it is on all sides by buildings and hidden from the street. In 1859, a fountain was placed in its centre along with a small garden for patients, physicians and the public alike to enjoy.

Buildings have since grown off the back of each of these Wings, and the Hospital has sprawled into all the space available to it. Each building is built as a stand-alone in terms of structure and style, and so when wandering around the grounds of the Hospital, one is afforded a view of many different periods of architecture. However, all this development was completed with little thought to vehicular and pedestrian access, and the result is somewhat maze-like.

William Hogarth

When designing the North Wing, the Governors request that a Great Hall be designed in order to impress visitors and to hold fundraising functions. On the walls of the staircase leading the Great Hall they wanted two large murals. They approached a Venetian artist, Jacopo Amigoni, to do the work, and when Hogarth heard of this, he offered his services for free, to prove that English painters were just as able as Italians when it came to classical painting. The results of his work are the 'Pool of Bethesda', completed 1736, and the 'Good Samaritan', completed in 1737, and they are regarded as his most successful venture into history and decorative painting, as well as serving to represent the ideal of the Hospital in caring for the sick and injured.

It is believed that the 'Pool of Bethesda' was painted by Hogarth in St Martins Lane in Covent Garden, and then later pulled into position on the stairway. It depicts Christ at the Pool of Bethesda curing the sick, and is of particular interest in the choice of maladies that Hogarth has chosen to portray, with some thinking that he used the patients from Bart's as models for the sick surrounding Christ. It is thought that the 'Good Samaritan' was painted in situ, in order to ensure colour toning with its mate.

Recent History

In 1992, the future of Bart's was called into question by the publication of Sir Bernard Tomlinson's 'Report of the Inquiry into the London Health Service'. In this report, it was stated that Bart's was not seen as a viable hospital for the future and recommended that it should be closed. In 1993, the Government published its response to the report, and stated three possible outcomes for Bart's Hospital:

  1. closure
  2. downsized and kept as a small, specialist hospital
  3. merged with the Royal London Hospital and London Chest Hospital

The threat to Bart's provoked public outcry, and the beginning of a campaign to save it. Over one million people signed a petition to save the Hospital and its Smithfield site. However, it couldn't stay as it was and in April 1994, Bart's merged with the Royal London and London Chest Hospitals to form the The Royal Hospitals NHS Trust. In 1998, the Government announced that Bart's was to remain open, and was to become a specialist cancer and cardiac hospital, while general hospital services would be looked after at the Royal London in Whitechapel, 2.5 miles away. In 1999, the Trust was renamed Barts and the London NHS Trust.

Famous Bart's Physicians and Surgeons

Hospital Museum

The North Wing of the Hospital houses the Hospital's Museum and also all its archives, including financial, patient and treatment records. The museum charts the growth of the Hospital from its humble beginnings to the present day, and is well worth an hour of your time to explore. It is open from Tuesday to Friday, 10am till 4pm, and admission is free.

Links of Interest

  • Barts and The London NHS Trust - http://www.bartsandthelondon.org.uk
  • The 'Good Samaritan' - http://www.peterwestern.f9.co.uk/hogarth/hogarth14.html
  • The 'Pool of Bethesda' - http://www.artrenewal.org/asp/database/image.asp?id=5445

References

  • Kerling N J M, 1972, The Foundation of St Bartholomew's Hospital and the City of London, Guildhall Miscellany 4, 137-148
  • Medever V C, Thornton J L, 1974, The Royal Hospital of Saint Bartholomew 1123 – 1973, 1st edition, W.S. Cowell

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