Bermudas (The), a nest or rookery of obscure alleys and avenues running between the bottom of St. Martin's Lane, Bedford Street, and Chandos Street, now cleared away. [See Bedfordbury and Porridge Island.]

Town pirates here at land,

Have their Bermudas, and their Streights i' the Strand.

BEN JONSON, Ep. to the Earl of Dorset.

Justice Overdo. Look into any angle of the town, the Streights or the Bermudas, where the quarrelling lesson is read, and how do they entertain the time, but with bottle-ale and tobacco ?-Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair.

On Wednesday at the Bermudas Court, Sir Edwin Sandys fell foul of the Earl of Warwick. The Lord Cavendish seconded Sandys and the Earl told the Lord, "By his favour he believed he lied." Hereupon, it is said, they rode out yesterday, and, as it is thought, gone beyond sea to fight.-Leigh to Rev. Joseph Mede, July 18, 1623.

At a subsequent period this cluster of avenues exchanged the old name of Bermudas for that of the Caribbee Islands, which the learned possessors of the district corrupted, by a happy allusion to the arts cultivated there, into the Cribbee Islands, their present appellation.-Gifford's Ben Jonson, 1816, vol. iv. p. 430.

Bernard Street, RUSSELL SQUARE, is built on the Foundling Hospital estate, and was so called from Sir Thomas Bernard, Treasurer of the Hospital (1795-1806), who increased the funds of that institution by arranging for building streets on its property. Joe Munden, the actor, lived and died (February 6, 1832) at No. 2 in this street, on the south side, near Russell Square-house next gateway. The Rev. George Croly lived at No. 14; Dr. Roget at No. 39.

Berners Street, OXFORD STREET, derives its name from William Berners, Esq., of Woolverstone Hall, Suffolk (d. 1783), who leased the ground to the various tenants in 1763. Three years before it was merely a passage way to the Middlesex Hospital; and in September 1760 the committee "ordered that the causeway be repaired from Wardour Street and continued up to the hospital. It was at one time a favourite abode of artists. Sir William Chambers, R.A., built himself a house, No. 53 in this street, and was living in it in 1773; it is now occupied by the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society; Frank Stone, the painter, had his studio in the first floor of this house. Fuseli was at No. 13 in 1804, and remained there till 1806, when he was appointed Keeper to the Royal Academy. In the following year Sir Robert Smirke, the architect, lived in the same house. Opie resided at No. 8 from 1792 till his death, April 9 1807. In his last illness he was attended in this house by Pitcairn and Baillie, physicians, and Cline and Carlisle, surgeons. Henry Bone, R.A., the most eminent English painter in enamel, lived at No. 15 from the beginning of the century till his death in 1834. J. Lonsdale, the portrait painter, lived at No. 8. Here Thomas Campbell records (April 1813):

I dined yesterday with Captain Morris, the old bard, who sang his own songs in his 81st year with the greatest glee, and obliged me to sing some Scotch songs and the "Exile of Erin." The party was at Lonsdale's the painters. Poor old Morris was cut a little. I was as sober as a judge.-Life, vol. ii. p. 227.

At No. 19 lived that accomplished and kindly physician, Dr. Robert Gooch. William Shield, the composer, at No. 31. Whilst he was living there (June 16, 1800) the house was broken into and £200 worth of plate carried off. He died here January 25, 1829, aged eighty. James Bartleman (1769-1821), bass singer, lived and died at No. 45. Richard Wroughton, the actor, was living at No. 29 in March 1816. Mrs. Macaulay-Kate Macgraham, as Walpole calls her-lived in Berners Street.

The other day I paid her a visit at her house in Berners Street, Oxford Row, on a particular occasion by her desire. That house, a new one she had bought and furnished handsomely. She had the air of a princess-out-Comelyed the Comelysians, and had the frank Bath air on her countenance. It seems she keeps two servants in laced liveries, treats cleverly and elegantly, and, in short, author or fine lady, surpasses all her sex.-T. Hollis to Rev. T. Lindsay (Mitford in Walpole and Mason, vol. i. p. 427).

No. 6 was the Banking House of Marsh, Stracey, Fauntleroy, and Graham. The loss to the Bank of England by Henry Fauntleroy's forgeries amounted to the sum of £360,000. No. 7 was Fauntleroy's private house. The two are now the Berners Hotel. No. 54 was (November 26, 1810) the scene of the famous Berners Street hoax -a trick of Theodore Hook's when a young man (described at length in the Quarterly Review, No. 143, p. 62). The lady on whom the hoax was played was Mrs. Tottingham, and the trick itself (since frequently imitated) consisted in sending out 200 orders to different tradespeople to deliver goods, both bulky and small, at the same house, to the same person, and at the same hour. Thomas Hardwick, architect, died at No. 55 in 1829. David Roberts, R.A., was walking down the west side of this street when he was struck with apoplexy. He clung to the railings for support, and was removed to the Middlesex Hospital at the north end of the street.

Berwardeslane, BISHOPSGATE.

It was presented, upon oath of twelve reputable men of the Ward of Bisshopesgate, at the Wardmote holden before John Lyttle, Alderman of the same ward, on the Sunday next after the Feast of St. Nicholas the Bishop [December 6, 1373], that after great rains the waters coming down from the fields of the Lord Bishop of London into Berwardeslane, and from the street without Bisshopesgate, used, and of right ought, to have their course through an arched passage beneath a certain tenement belonging to Nicholas de Altone, which Thomas de Lenesham, skynnere there held, opposite to Berwardeslane aforesaid, towards the town of London, which watercourse was then choked up.-Riley's Memorials of London, 1868, p. 374.

The name had been changed to Hog Lane in Stow's time. Berwick Street, SOHO, leads from Oxford Street by Walker's Court to Pulteney Street. In 1708 it was "a kind of a Row, the fronts of the houses resting on columns, make a small piazza."1 John Hall, the engraver, was living at No. 83 in this street when he engraved, in 1791, Sir Joshua's portrait of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and he died there in 1797. George Anne Bellamy, the famous actress, lived in this street for a time when she was in pecuniary distress.

1 Hatton, p. 7.

Sheridan came twice or thrice during the engraving of his portrait [says Abraham Raimbach the engraver, Hall's pupil at this time], and my memory dwells with pleasure to this hour on the recollection of his having said a few kindly and encouraging words to me when a boy, drawing at the time in the study. I was, however, most struck with what seemed to me, in such a man, an undue and unbecoming anxiety about his good looks in the portrait to be executed. The efflorescence in his face had been indicated by Sir Joshua in the picture, not, it may be presumed, à bon gré on the part of Sheridan, and it was strongly evident that he deprecated its transfer to the print. I need scarcely observe that Hall set his mind at ease on this point.-Raimbach's Memoirs, p. 9.

In this street is St. Luke's Church, built from the designs of Mr. Edward Blore in 1838-1839 at a cost of about £14,000.

Bethlehem Churchyard, ST. BOTOLPH, BISHOPSGATE, on the north side of Liverpool Street. This ground was converted into gardens belonging to the houses in Broad Street Buildings, but in 1863 was sold to make way for the Broad Street Station of the London and North-Western and North London Railways.

In the year 1569, Sir Thomas Roe, merchant-taylor, mayor, caused to be inclosed with a wall of brick about one acre of ground, being part of the hospital of Bethlehem. This he did for burial and ease of such parishes in London as wanted ground convenient within other parishes. The lady his wife was there buried, by whose persuasion he enclosed it.-Stow, p. 62.

Eminent Persons interred in.-Robert Greene, the dramatic writer and contemporary of Shakespeare, died September 3, 1592, and on the following day was "buried in the new churchyard near Bedlam": the charges were 6s. 4d. John Lilburne (d. 1657), of whom it was said by Lord Clarendon, that John would quarrel with Lilburne, and Lilburne quarrel with John, rather than have no quarrel at all. John Reeve, the colleague of Muggleton, who died in July 1658,1 and afterwards Muggleton himself. Muggleton died on March 14, 1697-1698.

Upon the 16th day of March his corps was removed to Lorsimus Hall [? Loriners Hall,, London Wall], and on the 17 day was from thence attended on, with two hundred forty-eight friends accompanying him, to Bethlehem Church Yard, where he was buried by his fellow-witness, which was according to his own appointment.— Preface to Muggleton's Acts of the Witnesses, p. 7.

Bethlehem Royal Hospital (vulg. BEDLAM), LAMBETH ROAD, ST. GEORGE'S FIELDS, a hospital for insane people, founded in Bishopsgate Without, and for a different purpose, in 1246, by Simon Fitz-Mary, one of the Sheriffs of London. "He founded it to have been a priory of canons with brethren and sisters." 2 The site of the original hospital was that known long after its removal as Old Bethlemen, subsequently as Liverpool Street. The greater part of it is now occupied by the stations of the North London and Great Eastern Railways. On the petition of Sir John Gresham, Lord Mayor, Henry VIII. gave the building of the dissolved priory, in 1547, to the City of London, in order that it might be converted into a hospital for lunatics. In 1557 the management was given to the governors of Bridewell Hospital. [See BRIDEWELL.]

1

1 Muggleton's Acts of the Witnesses, p. 80.

2 Stow, p. 62.

Then had ye [at Charing Cross] one house, wherein sometime were distraught and lunatic people, of what antiquity founded or by whom I have not read, neither of the suppression; but it was said that sometime a king of England, not liking such a kind of people to remain so near his palace, caused them to be removed farther off, to Bethlem without Bishop-gate of London, and to that hospital the said house by Charing Cross doth yet remain.-Stow, p. 167.

By the beginning of the 17th century Bethlehem Hospital had become one of the London sights, and it so continued till the last quarter of the 18th century. In Webster's Westward Ho! (4to, 1607), some of the characters, to pass the time while their horses are being saddled at "the Dolphin, Without Bishopsgate," resolve to "cross over "the road "to Bedlam, to see what Greeks are within," and a highly comic scene ensues. One of the party happening to turn his back the rest persuade the keeper that their friend is a lunatic, that his "pericranium is perished."

He's a

Greenshield. Look you, Sir, here's a crown to provide his supper. gentleman of a very good house: you shall be paid well if you convert [i.e. cure] him. To-morrow morning bedding and a gown shall be sent in, and wood and coal. Keeper. Nay, Sir, he must ha' no fires.

Greens. Let his straw be fresh and sweet, we beseech you, Sir.

Westward Ho! Act iv. sc. 3.

Ben Jonson in his Silent Woman makes it a part of Lady Haughty's instructions to her friend for taming a husband to make him attend her to the sights of London. "And go with us to Bedlam, to the China houses, and to the Exchange." The same combination occurs in the Alchemist, which comedy supplies another local touch :

"1

It may be,

For some good penance you may have it yet;

A hundred pounds to the box at Bethlem.-Alchemist, Act iv. Sc. 3. The Deputy Feodary of Somersetshire reported to Cecil, November 10, 1609, that he had found a lunatic in an under room chained and ironed on a straw bed "After the fashion of Bedlam." 2

"3

There seem to have been many complaints of the management. In May 1619 Dr. Hilkiah Crooke petitioned the King, James I., to "urge the Commissioners to be diligent in the prosecution of the commission, and to provide separate government for the hospital which had not thriven this hundred years.' A little later (1632) we learn for the first time what was the accommodation provided for the patients. Besides parlour, kitchen and larders below stairs, there were "twentyone rooms wherein the poor distracted people lie, and above the stairs eight rooms more for servants and the poor to lie in, and a long waste room now being contrived and in work, to make eight more rooms for poor people to lodge where they lacked room before." With some additions recently made there does not seem to have been provision made for more than sixty patients. The Great Fire did not reach Bethlehem Hospital, but shortly afterwards, when building was going on all around and many alterations were being made in the

1 Silent Woman, Act iv. sc. 2.

2 Cal. State Papers, 1623-25, p. 542. 3 Cal. State Pap., James I., 1619-1623, p. 50.

streets, it was decided rather than attempt to repair the buildings, which had become very dilapidated and quite inadequate to their purpose, to erect a larger hospital in Moorfields somewhat farther from the heart of the city. Simon Fitz-Mary's Hospital was accordingly taken down, as soon as the new building was ready for the reception of the patients. An inscription over the entrance stated that it was commenced in April 1675 and finished in July 1676, an instance of rapid building for those times. Robert Hooke was the architect, "the cost was nigh £17,000." In this as in other cases quick building did not imply sound building. When it was pulled down in 1814 it was discovered that the foundations were very bad, "it having been built on a part of the Town-ditch, and on a soil very unfit for the erection of so large a building." According to its historian,1 whose knowledge of Paris must have been very vague," the design was taken from the Chateau de Tuilleries at Versailles. Louis XIV., it is said, was so much offended that his palace should be made a model for a hospital, that in revenge he ordered a plan of St. James's to be taken for offices of a very inferior nature." Had this story had any foundation it would certainly have been alluded to by M. Misson, who, as a French refugee, bore no love to Louis XIV. He contents himself with saying (1697) that it is "well situated, and has in front several spacious and agreeable walks," slily adding, "all the mad folks of London are not in this hospital."2 Evelyn expressed the general admiration of the new building. Like its predecessor it was open as an exhibition to the public, and became a common promenade like the middle aisle of old St. Paul's, or the gravel walks of Gray's Inn. At one time the hospital "derived a revenue of at least £400 a year from the indiscriminate admission of visitants." In 1770 it appeared at last to have dawned on the authorities that the practice "tended to disturb the tranquillity of the patients." 3 The practice was continued for a few years longerJohnson with the faithful Boswell visited it, as we shall see, in 1775— when it was put an end to and no one was afterwards admitted without a particular introduction.

April 21, 1657.-Waited on my Lord Hatton, with whom I dined; at my return I stept into Bedlam, where I saw several poor miserable creatures in chains; one of them was mad with making verses.—Evelyn.

Rule V. That no person do give the lunatics strong drink, wine, tobacco, or spirits: Nor be permitted to sell any such thing in the hospital.

Rule VI. That such of the lunatics as are fit be permitted to walk in the yard till dinner time and then be locked up in their cells; and that no lunatic that lies naked, or is in a course of physic, be seen by anybody without order of the physician.— Rules drawn up in 1677 (Strype's Stow).

April 18, 1678.-I went to see new Bedlam Hospital, magnificently built and most sweetly placed in Morefields, since the dreadful fire in London.-Evelyn.

Ned Ward, in The London Spy, 1699, describes in his coarse way visits to Bedlam, and the behaviour of the inmates. So also, some ten

1 Historical Account of the Origin, Progress, and Present State of Bethlehem Hospital, 4to, 1783.

2 Travels in England, 1719.

3 Historical Account, p. 11.