The Bethesda Female Orphan School at 77 then 23 Upper Dorset Street was affiliated to the Chapel from 1787.

The penitentiary or asylum was funded by benefactors and by church collections; also its inmates made a living washing and mangling clothes.

The founder of Methodism, John Wesley, preached at the chapel on a number of occasions in April 1787, during his tour of Ireland.

[7] Following the death of William Smyth, the control of the Chapel was passed in 1794 to a board of five trustees, all members of the clergy.

Benjamin Williams Mathias (pastor from 1805 until 1835), John Gregg (future Bishop of Cork; chaplain from 1835 until 1839), the noted preacher Rev.

The evangelical hymn-writer Thomas Kelly was a trustee and preached at Bethesda.

[12] It got a major facelift in the 1960s and in 1981 it closed as a cinema and was later reopened as the National Waxworks Museum, owned by former TD and Senator Donie Cassidy.