[Illustration: LONDON HOSPITAL BURIAL-GROUND.]
Bridewell also had its burial-ground, where the lazy and evil were interred. It is at the corner of Dorset and Tudor Streets, near the Thames Embankment, and is an untidy yard, boarded off from the street with a high advertisement hoarding, and in the occupation of a builder.
The Bethlem burial-ground had a more interesting history. In 1569 Sir Thomas Roe, or Rowe, Merchant Taylor and Mayor, gave about one acre of land in the Moorfields “for Burial Ease to such parishes in London as wanted convenient ground.” It was especially intended for the parish of St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, and was probably used for the interment of lunatics from the neighbouring asylum, besides being used by St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. It was enclosed with a brick wall at the persuasion of “the Lady his Wife,” and she was buried there; and it was the custom upon Whit Sunday for the Lord Mayor and Aldermen to listen to a sermon delivered in this “new churchyard, near Bethlem.” We read that in 1584 “a very good Sermon was preached ... and, by Reason no Plays were the Same Day (_i.e._, Whit Sunday, as there used to be), all the City was quiet.” But the Churchyard and the Asylum have disappeared, Liverpool Street Station having taken their place, and hundreds of the Great Eastern Railway goods vans daily roll over the mouldering remains of the departed citizens.
[Illustration: CHELSEA HOSPITAL GRAVEYARD.]
Very different to the fate of these hospital burial-grounds is that of another one I will mention. Facing Queen’s Road, Chelsea, is the long, narrow graveyard of the Chelsea Hospital. It is neatly kept, with good grass and trees. Here many a venerable pensioner has been laid to rest, and, although it can no longer be used for burials, it still serves to remind the living of their brethren who have gone before them. There are some fine monuments and epitaphs to very long-lived invalids, two aged 112, one 111, one 107, and so on, and it is one of those quiet and quaint corners of London which form so marked a contrast to the noisy streets close by. One pensioner, who died in 1732, named William Hiseman and aged 112, was “a veteran, if ever soldier was.” It is recorded that he took unto himself a wife when he was above 100 years old. There is something very peaceful about these old men’s graves; the grain gathered in by the “Reaper whose name is Death” was fully ripe:—