Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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Spital Square was laid out in the 1720s and 30s on the site of the earlier Spital Yard. That in turn stood on the site of the Augustinian Priory and Hospital (hence the abbreviated name
Pepys’s spelling “spittle” is actually the older; here’s part of the OED entry:
[ME. spitel, spittel, etc., = MLG. spittel, spettel, MHG. spittel, spittol (G. spittel), ultimately representing an aphetic form of HOSPITAL, modified on the analogy of native words in -el. […] The common source of these is app. Italian or Levantine: cf. It. spedale, dial. spitale[…]; also med.L. spitalerius (1342 in Du Cange) […].]
1. A house or place for the reception of the indigent or diseased; a charitable foundation for this purpose, esp. one chiefly occupied by persons of a low class or afflicted with foul diseases; a lazar-house. (Now written SPITAL.)
a1225 Ancr. R. 148 Moiseses hond,.. so sone he hefde withdrawen hire ut of his boseme, bisemede othe spitel-vuel, & thuhte leprus. […] 1388 WYCLIF 1 Kings ii. 34 marg., Rabi Salomon seith, that he made in desert a spitele for pore men. c1400 Rom. Rose 6505 Whanne I see beggers quakyng,.. Lete bere hem to the spitel anoon. […] 1556 Chron. Gr. Friars (Camden) 43 At sent Mary spettell, the iij. dayes in Ester weke, preched the vicar of Stepney one Jerome. 1601 B. JONSON Ev. Man in Hum. II. iii, May they lie and starue in some miserable spittle. 1698 FRYER Acc. E. India & P. 150 We descended from this..to the Spittle, where we found the Poor faring well from their Benefactors. […]
b. Distinguished from hospital, as being of a lower class than this.
1571 GRINDAL Articles Bivb, Whether your Hospitals, Spittles, and almose houses be well and godly vsed according to the foundation and auncient ordinances of the same. […] 1621 BURTON Anat. Mel. III. i. III. i. 524 Put vp a supplication to him in the name of.. an hospitall, a spittle, a prison. a1641 BP. R. MONTAGU Acts & Mon. (1642) 385 They were fitter, if any were alive, for some Spittle or Hospitall, then for any service that they were able to do for Herod. […]
A year ago I annotated that “Hospital” & “Hospice” were words imported from the Holy Land by the crusaders, together with the institution. Arab medicine was much better in those days than anything the crusaders knew. The original word was
“Hospital” is *not* from Aramaic.
I’m sorry, but that’s complete nonsense. It’s not even debatable. The French word is from Latin hospitale ‘place of reception for guests,’ neut. sing. of hospitalis ‘hospitable,’ from hospit- (nominative singular hospes) ‘host, guest.’ Please look in a dictionary next time rather than relying on something you found on the internet.
Warrington has a note here and calls the Spittle: “Christ’s Hospital”.
By the way the German word for hospital is still ‘Spital’. Here in my home town Zutphen, not far from the German border the local hospital is called: ‘Het Spittaal’.
The name ‘Spitalfields’ was named after a Hospital and Priory known as St. Mary’s Spital, founded in 1197.
http://www.spitalfields.org.uk/history.html
http://casebook.org/victorian_london/spital1.html
Jack the Ripper, Spitalfields.
September 8th 1888, scene of the murder of Annie Chapman at the Rear Yard at 29 Hanbury Street.
And someone who lived in Spittlefields during Roman times…
The discovery of a limestone sarcophagus with an inner lead coffin at Spitalfields in 1999 came as a surprise to the archaeologists excavating the site.