From Bethlehem to Bedlam: classifying the incurables through science. What was founded as a place open to those in need became a palatial institution that housed those deemed mentally unsound. From the article:

By the 17th Century, the asylum was well-known enough to appear in numerous Jacobean dramas and ballads. Often – as in Shakespeare’s plays Hamlet and Macbeth – it was used as a way to explore the popular question of who was mad, who was sane, and who had the power to decide…. 

The interior (and reality) of the hospital, though, was altogether different. Because the ornate façade was so heavy, it immediately cracked at the back. Whenever it rained, the walls ran with water. And as the hospital was built on the rubble next to the city’s Roman wall, it didn’t even have a proper foundation.

The new hospital was, quite literally, putting a pretty face on what many Londoners saw as a messy, distasteful problem. “You had this weird, creaking, collapsing building from the very beginning. It was a contrast everyone picked up on at the time: this grand façade – and how grim it was on the inside,” [Mike] Jay says.