Bedlam
n. the popular name for the Hospital of Saint Mary of Bethlehem in Bishopsgate, London, founded as a monastery in 1247 and converted into an asylum for the insane by Henry VIII in 1547. Many of the inmates were in a state of frenzy, and as they were shackled, starved, beaten, and exhibited to the public for a penny a look, general turmoil prevailed. The word itself thus became synonymous with wild confusion or frenzy. Sometimes the term bedlamism was used for psychotic behavior, and the term bedlamite for a psychotic individual.