W. R. Macdonbll 
89 
In Rocque's and eailior maps the present Liverpool Street is termed Old 
Bethlem, and this street rnns from the modern Blomfield Street, then bounding 
Moorfields, to the site of the original Bedlam. Now if Rocqne's map and the 
Ordnance Survey be reduced to a common scale, — and in doing this we have taken 
the north-east corner of St Botolph's Church and the old Moorfields postern in the 
city wall, which are marked on both maps — it will be found, as shown in the 
accompanying reproduction, that Old Bethlem coincided with the southern half 
of the modern Liverpool Street, and that the site of the latrine excavation was 
immediately on the left of the entry into Old Bethlem from Moorfields. If then, 
the bones were from interments in Sir Thomas Roe's Burial Ground, that ground 
must originally have extended to the corner where the centre line of the Liverpool 
Street of to-day runs into Blomfield Street. The available maps appear to provide 
no confirmation of this view. It is true that maps of the 18th century give 
most diverse forms to the ground, and there can be little doubt that in the latter 
half of that century and the beginning of the next, buildings encroached largely on 
the original space*. Not only Rocque, however, but Ogilby of 1677 show a distinct 
enclosure or a building, falling exactly h\ the south-west corner of the plot, the 
centre of which is marked Old Bethlem Burial Ground. In Horwood's map of 
1799, this enclosure, separated from the burial ground, still remains of much the 
same shape as in Rocque's. In W. Faden's map of 1813, the road between 
Moorfields and the Burial Ground is termed Brokers' Row — -the modern Blomfield 
Street — and the separate enclosure in the south-west corner is called No. 1. This 
house stands apart from the others, and I think there is little doubt that No. 1 
Brokers' Row, in 1813, stood almost on the site of the modern latrine, and since it 
is marked as a separate enclosure as early as 1677, was not one of the encroach- 
ments on the original burial ground to which reference has been made. Strong 
confirmation of this view will be found in Morden and Lea's map of 1690. In this 
we find that the space marked churchyard did not extend on the west fully up to 
Brokers' Row, or on the south to the street marked Old Bethlem. There were 
at that date strips of intervening land. 
To account for this, I think we have only to turn back to the original condition 
of affairs. The hospital of St Mary Bethlem was founded by Simon Fitz-Mary in 
1246 as a priory of canons with brothers and sisters. The mayor and commonalty 
of London, in the year 1546, purchased the patronage thereof and all the lands and 
tenements belonging thereto. In the same year King Henry VIII. gave the hospital 
to the city, and the church and chapel were removed in the reign of Elizabeth, and 
houses built there by the Governors of Christ's Hosjaital. Now if we look at 
Aggas' map of London in the reign of Elizabeth (fi'om 1560), before Roe's 
enclosure, we see that north of St Botolph's a row of houses stretched along to the 
road leading north from the Moorfields postern (i.e. the later Brokers' Row) and 
that the road passed under an archway into some sort of a quadrangle. Within 
* This is very clearly indicated in the copy of part of the "deposited" plan of the North London 
Kailway, 1861, kindly provided by the Eiifjineer to the Company. 
Biometrika v 12 
