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(historical) A charitable house to receive and care for sick people, later distinguished from a hospital as being especially for those of a low class or meagre financial means.
1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy:, 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition II, section 1, member 3:
Put up a supplication to him in the name of a thousand orphans, an hospital, a spital, a prison, as he goes by, they cry out to him for aid, ride on, surdo narras, he cares not […]