ABSTRACT
B ethlem's move in 1676 to the building designed by Robert Hooke (1635-17°3) inaugurated great changes for the Hospital. Its size permitted expansion; its magnificence, expansiveness - that is, a new dignity among London's charitable institutions and international renown. Bethlem became one of the sights of London, its more than five hundred feet of fa<;ade facing Moorfields illustrated in at least thirty-six tourist guides and topographical books published in 1681 and after (see Plate 15.1). Among London's hospitals, only Chelsea and Greenwich would be pictured more often.! References to visits there abound, and Bethlem's significance as a cultural nexus, the place where England questioned not just its own socio-political sanity (or lack of it) but the relations between body and soul, imagination and memory, has been the subject of sophisticated modern exegesis.2 Like the Bastille or Newgate, Bethlem at Moorfields has achieved emblematic status sufficient to dematerialize it, to turn it into something more or less than a building. We however know less about this building than is generally assumed: Hooke's Bethlem remains mysterious in several respects. This chapter describes its construction, and its receptions: the celebrations, condemnations, and its influence.
