Also 7 spitall, 8 spittal. [Late respelling of SPITTLE sb.1 after HOSPITAL.]
1. = SPITTLE sb.1 1. Also in phr. to rob the spital.
1634. Younger Brother’s Apol., 50. Bryand Lyle,… hauing two sonnes, both leprous, built for them a Lazaretto or Spitall.
1648. Hexham, II. App., Spitael, a Spitall, or Hospitall.
1737. J. Chamberlayne, St. Gt. Brit. (ed. 12), I. III. x. 226. This house has been a Religious house, time out of mind, sometimes under the Denomination of a Priory or College, sometimes under that of a Spittal [earlier edd. Spittle] or Hospital.
1749. Fielding, Tom Jones, XII. i. Defrauding the Poor,… or, to see it under the most opprobrious Colours, robbing the Spittal.
1764. Churchill, Poems, Independence, 19. They rob the very Spital, and make free With those alas who’ve least to spare.
1830. Scott, Demonol., iv. 132. A witch from the spital or almshouse.
1865. Daily Tel., 26 Oct., 5/2. ‘Every inch a Queen’ was Eugénie when she drove from cholera-infected spital to spital.
1884. Tennyson, Becket, I. iv. I ha’ nine darters i’ the spital.
b. Spital sermon: see SPITTLE sb.1 5 c.
1755. Johnson, Spittal.… In use only in the phrases, a spittal sermon, and rob not the spittal.
1827. De Quincey, Murder, Wks. 1862, IV. 25. One good horse-shoe is worth about two and a quarter Spital sermons.
1863. Robinson, in Macm. Mag., March, 412/1. When Barrow preached a spital-sermon before the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London.
2. fig. A foul or loathsome place.
1771. Smollett, Humph. Cl., To Sir W. Phillips 10 May. He declares he will sooner visit a house infected with the plague, than trust himself in such a nauseous spital for the future.
3. A shelter for travellers.
1794. Wordsw., Guilt & Sorrow, xvii. Kind pious hands did to the Virgin build A lonely Spital, the belated swain From the night terrors of that waste to shield.
