Definition
An archaic term for a hospital or charitable house of refuge for the sick, poor, or infirm. In legal usage, "spittal" (also spelled "spital") refers principally to: (1) a house or institution maintained for the shelter and care of the diseased or destitute, particularly those suffering from contagious illness; and (2) lands or revenues dedicated to the support of such an institution. The term appears in older English property and charitable trust records where the identity, governance, or endowments of such institutions came before courts of equity or ecclesiastical tribunals. By the time of modern legal usage, the term had been entirely displaced by "hospital" and "charitable institution."
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Spittal" survives in dialectal and historical English with two senses — a house of refuge for the sick (especially those with contagious disease) and, in Scottish usage, a roadside shelter built in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as protection against wolf attacks. It also describes lands whose revenues supported a hospital.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 does not carry a standalone entry for "spittal," reflecting its near-total disappearance from common usage by the late nineteenth century. The related form "spital" does appear in period literary and historical sources as a contracted form of "hospital," particularly in reference to institutions for lepers or plague victims.
The gap between common and legal meaning here is narrow but worth flagging: in common historical usage, "spittal" could refer loosely to any rough shelter or refuge. In legal usage — particularly in Chancery and ecclesiastical records — it carries the more precise meaning of a formally constituted charitable institution with associated endowments, revenues, and governance obligations. A researcher encountering the term in a legal document should not read it as a casual shelter but as a recognized charitable foundation with attendant legal duties.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter "spittal" almost exclusively in pre-nineteenth-century English legal materials: Chancery cases involving charitable trusts, ecclesiastical records governing hospital endowments, and property disputes over lands historically granted to support such institutions. The single citation in Burrill — 1 P. Wms. 426 — points to Peere Williams's Reports, a foundational Chancery collection, signaling that spittal lands and their governance were treated as matters of equity jurisdiction, particularly under the law of charitable uses.
The principal research trap is terminological: modern databases and indexes will not surface "spittal" under searches for "hospital," "charity," or "trust," and vice versa. When tracing the legal history of a charitable institution, its founding documents or early litigation may use "spittal" while later records use "hospital" for the same entity. The institutional continuity can be obscured entirely by the terminological shift.
Scottish researchers face an additional layer. In Scottish usage, "spittal" acquired a geographic and shelter-specific meaning tied to road refuges, and Scottish place names incorporating "spittal" or "spital" often mark sites of former charitable houses. Legal documents touching land tenure or right-of-way near such sites may carry the term in a geographic rather than institutional sense.
Corpus connections: entries on CHARITABLE USE, MORTMAIN, and HOSPITAL in the Law Mind corpus will provide the doctrinal framework within which spittal disputes arose. The law of charitable uses — later codified and reformed through statutes of Elizabeth I — governed the enforcement and cy-près application of spittal endowments just as it did other charitable foundations.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is spare: "An old form of hospital. 1 P. Wms. 426." It does exactly what a reference dictionary should do — confirm the legal sense, signal the archaic character of the term, and anchor it to a source — but it offers nothing on the governance, endowment structure, or jurisdictional treatment of spittals as legal entities.
What the historical dictionaries miss is significant. Spittals occupied a distinct position in medieval and early modern English charity law: they were often founded under ecclesiastical authority, governed by wardens or masters, and their revenues were subject to both canonical oversight and, eventually, the equity jurisdiction of Chancery under the Statute of Charitable Uses (1601). The legal disputes that generated case law involved not just the identity of the institution but questions of who held enforceable duties over the endowment, what happened when revenues were diverted, and whether cy-près could redirect funds when the original charitable purpose became impossible. Burrill's entry does not reach any of this.
No significant divergence exists between historical legal dictionaries on this term — the coverage is too thin to generate disagreement. The entry in Burrill represents the outer boundary of historical legal lexicography on the point.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is essentially English in legal usage. Scottish sources use "spittal" with overlapping but not identical meaning, encompassing roadside refuges that may or may not have had formal charitable endowments. Irish and American legal materials do not carry the term; institutions serving equivalent functions in those jurisdictions were designated "hospital," "almshouse," or "poorhouse" from the outset of their legal histories.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Charitable Institutions
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Poor Relief
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Charitable Uses and the Statute of Elizabeth