From The Hall We Ascend By Nine Stone Steps To The Mayor's Court, Council Chamber, And The Rest Of The

Apartments of the house, which, notwithstanding it may not be equal to the grandeur of the City, is very well

Adapted to the ends it was designed for, namely, for holding the City courts, for the election of sheriffs and other officers, and for the entertainment of princes, ministers of State, and foreign ambassadors, on their grand festivals.

17. Coleman Street Ward. The principal streets in this ward are the Old Jewry, part of Lothbury, Coleman Street, part of London Wall, and all the lower part of Moorfields without the walls.

The public buildings are Bethlem or Bedlam Hospital, Founders' Hall, Armourers' Hall, the churches of St. Olave Jewry, St. Margaret, Lothbury, and St. Stephen, Coleman Street.

New Bethlem, or Bedlam, is situated at the south end of Moorfields, just without the wall, the ground being formerly part of the town ditch, and granted by the City to the governors of the hospital of Old Bethlem, which had been appropriated for the reception of lunatics, but was found too strait to contain the people brought thither, and the building in a decaying condition.

The present edifice, called New Bedlam, was begun to be erected anno 1675, and finished the following year. It is built of brick and stone; the wings at each end, and the portico, being each of them adorned with four pilasters, entablature and circular pediment of the Corinthian order. Under the pediment are the King's arms, enriched with festoons; and between the portico and each of the said wings is a triangular pediment, with the arms of the City; and on a pediment over the gate the figures of two lunatics, exquisitely carved. The front of this magnificent hospital is reported to represent the Escurial in Spain, and in some respects exceeds every palace in or about London, being 528 feet in length, and regularly built. The inside, it is true, is not answerable to the grand appearance it makes without, being but 30 feet broad, and consisting chiefly of a long gallery in each of the two storeys that runs from one end of the house to the other; on the south side whereof are little cells, wherein the patients have their lodgings, and on the north the windows that give light to the galleries, which are divided in the middle by a handsome iron gate, to keep the men and women asunder.

In order to procure a person to be admitted into the hospital, a petition must be preferred to a committee of the governors, who sit at Bedlam seven at a time weekly, which must be signed by the churchwardens, or other reputable persons of the parish the lunatic belongs to, and also recommended to the said committee by one of the governors; and this being approved by the president and governors, and entered in a book, upon a vacancy (in their turn) an order is granted for their being received into the house, where the said lunatic is accommodated with a room, proper physic and diet, gratis. The diet is very good and wholesome, being commonly boiled beef, mutton, or veal, and broth, with bread, for dinners on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, the other days bread, cheese, and butter, or on Saturdays pease-pottage, rice-milk, furmity, or other pottage, and for supper they have usually broth or milk pottage, always with bread.

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