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Beginnings: The Bethel at Norwich

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Mark Winston
Mark Winston*
Affiliation:
Cefn Coed Hospital, Swansea SA2 0GH
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In the centre of Norwich stands a red brick building which has a rare place in psychiatry. Its history began on 12 December 1712 when a lease on a small piece of waste ground was granted by the Corporation of the City of Norwich to four men. The men were acting as trustees for an elderly widow, and the deed specified the purpose of the lease: it was to build a house, or houses for “the benefit and use of such as are lunatics.” The term of the lease was 1,000 years at an annual rent of one peppercorn. The widow was one Mary Chapman. Born in 1647, she was the daughter of Thomas Mann, Mayor of the city and one of the richest and most influential men in Norwich. It is thought that she grew up close to the city's Bridewell, where many difficult lunatics would have been housed, and she is known to have had immediate experience of mental illness in her own, and her husband's families. In 1682 she married a widowed cleric, Samuel Chapman, some years her senior and the vicar of a local parish. Together they made plans for the Bethel but in 1700 she was widowed and left childless. Despite this she continued to develop her charitable project. The final choice of name, Bethel, or house of God, was her husband's.

Type
Sketches from the History of Psychiatry
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , March 1991 , pp. 161 - 163
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1991

Footnotes

(An extensive collection of other manuscripts is held in the Norfolk Record Office; these include continuous minutes from 1724, disbursement books from 1730, account books, registers (some extending back to the late 18th century, albeit damaged), casenotes from the 19th century, and miscellaneous bills and correspondence).

References

Sources

Barclay, C. V. (1963) An eighteenth century mental hospital. British Journal of Psychiatric Social Work, 7, 21–26.Google Scholar
Bateman, F. Sir & Rye, W. (1906) A History of the Bethel at Norwich. Norwich: Gibbs & Walleaur.Google Scholar
Norfolk Record Office Minutes of the Bethel Hospital, 1724–1895: BH9–15, BH16–20.Google Scholar
Norfolk Record Office Visitors Book, 1828–1850: BH25.Google Scholar
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