In Haarlem the city council became responsible for acts of mercy on a grand scale when the leper colony was founded outside the city walls in the town of Schoten in 1393. For centuries from all over Holland, lepers had to come to Haarlem to get an "attestatie" or proof of leprosy, as a legal permit to beg. Similarly, the Haarlem "Beul", or city executioner, "freed" prisoners all over the country from Amsterdam to Ghent by chopping their heads off. This led to the Dutch saying "zo brutaal als de beul van Haarlem", meaning "as brutal as the Haarlem executioner". This morbid practise was only stopped in the beginning of the seventeenth century. The Haarlem leper colony, Het Dolhuys, still exists and is currently a museum.