Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
The overlays that highlight 17th century London features are approximate and derived from Wenceslaus Hollar’s maps:
Open location in Google Maps: 51.512882, -0.104671
Bridewell Palace was a residence of Henry VIII. His son, Edward VI, gave it to the City of London and it eventually became a prison.
Not to be confused with either of the two prisons in Clerkenwell, further north, one of which was also called Bridewell Prison.
This text was copied from Wikipedia on 22 April 2024 at 6:10AM.
Bridewell Palace in London was built as a residence of King Henry VIII and was one of his homes early in his reign for eight years. Given to the City of London Corporation by his son King Edward VI in 1553 as Bridewell Hospital for use as an orphanage and place of correction for wayward women, Bridewell later became the first prison/poorhouse to have an appointed doctor.
It was built on the banks of the Fleet River in the City of London between Fleet Street and the River Thames in an area today known as Bridewell Place, off New Bridge Street. By 1556 part of it had become a jail known as Bridewell Prison. It was reinvented with lodgings and was closed in 1855 and the buildings demolished in 1863–1864.
The name "Bridewell" subsequently became a common name for a jail, used not only in England but in other cities colonised by Britain including Dublin and New York.
The palace was built on the site of the medieval St Bride's Inn directly south of St Bride's Church at a cost of £39,000 for Henry VIII who treated it as a main London residence 1515–1523. Standing on the banks of the River Fleet, the related saint since the medieval age has been St Bride. The papal delegation had preliminary meetings here in 1528 before advising the pope on whether the King could divorce Catherine of Aragon. The building was a project of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey.
Bridewell Palace consisted of two brick-built courtyards, with the royal lodgings in three storeys around the inner courtyard. A grand processional staircase led to them from the outer courtyard. Bridewell was the first royal palace not to have a great hall and its staircase was a feature that recurs in Henry VIII's later residences. On the north side of the outer courtyard stood the kitchens and gatehouse. There was a long gallery (240 feet (73 m)) which connected the inner court with Blackfriars,[1] issuing out at Apothecaries Hall[2] on Blackfriars Lane which formerly ran beyond its western façade.
After Wolsey's fall in 1530, the palace was leased to the French ambassador 1531–1539, and was the setting for Holbein's celebrated painting, The Ambassadors (1533).
In 1553, Edward VI gave the palace over to the City of London for the housing of homeless children and for the punishment of "disorderly women". The City took full possession in 1556 and turned the site into a prison, hospital and workrooms. In 1557 the City authorities created a joint administration for the Bridewell and Bethlehem Hospitals when Bethlem Royal Hospital also became the responsibility of the Bridewell Governors.[3]
In the late 17th century, the infamous London brothel keeper Elizabeth Cresswell was incarcerated in Bridewell Prison, possibly for reneging on a debt. She died there at some point between 1684 and 1698.[4][5][6][7] She is probably interred in the Bridewell graveyard and legend runs that in her will she left £10 for a sermon to be read that said nothing ill of her. After considerable time, a young clergyman was found who would perform the funeral rites. After an extremely lengthy sermon on social morality, he said "By the will of the deceased it is expected that I should mention her and say nothing but what was well of her. All I shall say of her, therefore, is this — she was born well, lived well, and died well; for she was born with the name of Cresswell, lived at Clerkenwell, and died in Bridewell."[a][9]
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Most of the palace was destroyed in the Great Fire of London, and rebuilt in 1666–1667. In 1700 it became the first prison to appoint medical staff (a doctor).
Eventually, the prison became a school confusingly and variously known as Bridewell (Royal Hospital/School/Royal Hospital School). The prison element closed in 1855 and the buildings were demolished in 1863–1864. Nevertheless, some prison activities continued on the site: in the 1871 census, the Beadle and Turnkey, Joseph Ashley, had charge of two prisoners;[10] and in 1881 Mr Ashley was still there as Collector and Beadle, but no prisoners are named.[11] The school moved in 1867 to a much larger site in Surrey and changed its name to King Edward's School, Witley which accordingly celebrated its 450th year in 2003.
Part of the vacated site was used for the erection of De Keyser's Royal Hotel in 1874,[12] which was requisitioned for military purposes in 1915 and became the subject of a leading case on the use of the royal prerogative decided by the House of Lords in 1920. By 1921 Lever Brothers had acquired the hotel building for use as the head office of the company's business.
A rebuilt gatehouse in the style of the original is incorporated as the front of the office block at 14 New Bridge Street,[13] including a relief portrait of Edward VI. The main site area of the buildings stretched from there southwards through the Hyatt Regency London Blackfriars Hotel to Unilever House (built in 1931) which stands at the corner of Watergate – the name of the lost river entrance to the palace's precincts beside the former Fleet-Thames confluence (memorialised in the name of the street between the two).[14]
The name "Bridewell" became synonymous with large prisons and was consequently used as a generic name for them.[15] It was adopted for other prisons in London, including the Clerkenwell Bridewell (opened in 1615) and Tothill Fields Bridewell in Westminster. Similar institutions throughout England, Ireland, Scotland and Canada as well as in the United States[16] also borrowed the name Bridewell. The term frequently refers to a city's main detention facility, usually close to a courthouse, as in Nottingham, Leeds, Gloucester, Bristol, Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.[17]
In the Beatles film, A Hard Day's Night, Paul's grandfather (Wilfrid Brambell) reports the arrest of Ringo to the studio by saying "The police have the poor lad in the Bridewell – he'll be pulp by now!"
The nearby Bridewell Theatre takes its name from the palace. [18]
Prisons intermediate between the Common Jail and the State Prison [...] receive different designations in the different states - house of correction, penitentiary, workhouse, bridewell and city prison. [...] Illinois has a bridewell in the city of Chicago, managed by the common council of the same.
51°30′42″N 0°6′21″W / 51.51167°N 0.10583°W / 51.51167; -0.10583
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Chart showing the number of references in each month of the diary’s entries.
8 Annotations
First Reading
vincent • Link
great place for the Reformers to study the Common Justice system:
c.1553 Founding of Bridewell Hospital, London (see 1530-40).
http://www.chronology.ndo.co.uk/1…
London ca. 1676 London Prison
Bridewell's prominent position in the daily life of London is testified to by the frequency with which references to the prison appear in the literature of the period; it also serves as the setting for the fourth panel of William Hogarth's The Harlot's Progress.
Marked on map as tudor street between lugate/fleet and embankment and blackfriars place
Bridewell prison and hospital. Many (IN)famous people spent some of their Life studying the finer points of life:
Both Reeve and Muggleton (Muggletonians) were imprisoned in Old Bridewell Prison (London) during 1653 for their beliefs
The visionary Anna Trapnel.....she was an active part of the Fifth Monarchists......, she was arrested, putted on trial, and sent to Bridewell (the female London jail).
.....On the 17th January 1657, Nayler was taken to Bridewell Prison and locked into a damp, dark cell. He would remain there for two and a half years and, although the order was that he be kept without pen and paper, he managed to produce some of his finest work.1 It was gathered together and published in 1716:
Locatedbetween fleet street south to river & white fryers stairs to fleet river (now Blackfriars bridge)
http://www.londonancestor.com/map…
a tale of Restoration intrigue by Molly Brown : Bridewell Palace:
http://www.okima.com/tour/bridewe…
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/1…
http://www.crbs.umd.edu/programs/…
http://www.kings-ripton.com/Histo…
http://www.exlibris.org/nonconfor…
David Quidnunc • Link
Sam and Bridewell after the diary years
He became a governor (member of the governing board?) of Bridewell Prison in 1675.
-- Claire Tomalin, "Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self," Chapter 21, p 297
in Aqua Scripto • Link
Bridewell palace 1660 pix;
http://www.corpoflondon.gov.uk/Co…
Geoff • Link
Bridewell Prison is near Bridewell dock, where the Fleet River joins the Thames.
Church No. 103 is St Brides.
http://www.oldlondonmaps.com/newc…
Second Reading
Bill • Link
Bridewell, a manor or house, so called—presented to the City of London by King Edward VI., after an appeal through Mr. Secretary Cecil, and a sermon by Bishop Ridley, who begged it of the King as a Workhouse for the Poor, and a House of Correction "for the strumpet and idle person, for the rioter that consumeth all, and for the vagabond that will abide in no place."
But the gift was found before long to be a serious inconvenience. Idle and abandoned people from the outskirts of London and parts adjacent, under colour of seeking an asylum in the new institution, settled in London in great numbers, to the great annoyance of the graver residents. The citizens became alarmed, and Acts of Common Council were issued against the resort of masterless men "upon pretence to be relieved by the almes of Christ Church and Bridewell."
The house was destroyed in the Great Fire.
---London, Past and Present. H.B. Wheatley, 1891.
San Diego Sarah • Link
The Bridewell Palace stood on a vast site along the western bank of the Fleet River, reaching up from the Thames to the present day Fleet Street. It was built during the reign of Henry VIII as a rambling and spacious complex arranged around three large courtyards. In its early days, the palace was mostly used to lodge foreign monarchs and dignitaries. Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, was entertained at Bridewell Palace in 1522. From 1531 to 1539, it was leased by the French Ambassador.
In 1550, Bridewell Palace was given over to the relief of the poor. The rural poor had been streaming into London for some time. It is estimated that at a time when London had a population of 70-80,000, it received a further 12,000 desperately poor migrants from around the country. Although most were honest, many begging until they could find work, among them were organized bands of robbers and hoodlums. Concern for the poor soon became mixed with fear of a threat to public order.
As a result, Bridewell Palace became not just a refuge, but the first "House of Correction", the idea being that enforced labor and punishment would reform the work-shy, the drunkard, and the petty criminal.
Prisoners were put to a wide variety of tasks, from carding and spinning to (for those who were to be punished as well as detained) the cleaning of sewers in gangs. Treadmills were installed. An ingenious hand-and-foot mill ensured that even those who had lost a limb would not be excused from working.
Prostitutes and vagrants were whipped on arrival, with 12 lashes for adults and six for juveniles. Disobedience or any other offence was punished by further flogging. Whippings were carried out in the courtroom.
Bridewell Palace became a tourist attraction for those whose idea of a good day out was watching half-naked women being flogged. Bridewell whippings became so popular that a balustrade gallery had to be built to hold all the onlookers.
Although much of the old Bridewell Palace was destroyed in the Great Fire, it was rebuilt between 1666-67 and carried on much as before.
http://www.okima.com/tour/bridewe…
San Diego Sarah • Link
Bridewell Palace was built in the early 16th century in the edge of the Thames as a residence for Henry VIII. The palace was a unique structure because it deviated from the architectural norms of the time by not having a great hall and featuring an elaborate staircase. It was also constructed around a large inner courtyard.
Under Edward VI in the 1550s, Bridewell Palace was given to the City of London as a home for the city’s homeless children and a place of punishment for “disorderly women.” It was run in conjunction with Bedlam Hospital throughout Shakespeare’s lifetime, and formed the blueprint for later large prisons:
including the Clerkenwell Bridewell prison which opened as a correctional institute for prostitutes and vagrants in 1615;
and Tothill Fields Bridewell prison which was opened in 1618 in Westminster.
The original building was mostly destroyed by the Great Fire in 1666, but the reputation of Bridewell outlasted the structure, with the term “bridewell” continuing in use around the world to today as a description for a city’s detention facility, usually close to a courthouse.
To see a copperplate map of the original Bridewell Palace as surveyed between 1553 and 1559, and to hear more details on a podcast given by Duncan Salkeld, the Professor Emeritus of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at the University of Chichester, and Visiting Professor at The University of Roehampton, go to:
https://www.cassidycash.com/ep-17…
Third Reading
San Diego Sarah • Link
For pictures and maps about the Bridewell Palace and prison, see
https://alondoninheritance.com/lo…
The article starts off lamenting the loss of London pubs since COVID, but about a third of the way through focuses on St. Brides Tavern, which was built on the grounds of the old prison.