Inconvenient People (64 page)

Page 65
‘Very gentlemanly’ appearance and ‘The answers to the questions . . . possessed by the querist’:
The Times
, 25 August 1838. •
Page 66
‘To the blessings of a free press’: Richard Paternoster,
The Madhouse System
, 1841, p. 16. • ‘You have behaved like a mother to me’:
The Times
, 6 September 1838. • The alleged murder of John Milroy: Paternoster,
The Madhouse System
, p. 55. •
Page 67
‘A more heartless ruffian . . . speech and gesture’: diary entry dated 9 September 1838, quoted in
The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury
by Edwin Hodder, 3 vols, 1887, vol. 1, p. 105. Available online. •
Page 68
The William Bailey story is told in
A Letter to the Secretary of State for the Home Department Upon the Unjust and Pettifogging Conduct of the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy, in the Case of a Gentleman Lately under their Surveillance
by John Perceval, 1844. Mrs Bailey had used Dr John Haslam to find her husband insane – one of the men who swore to Edward Davies’s insanity, in Chapter One. The first certification of Mr Bailey, in 1835, cited the following as evidence of his insanity: that during a long business trip to France he showed no interest in his children (in fact, he asked Mrs Bailey to come to Boulogne with them, so they could spend family time together);
that he spent too much money on sending presents to his children, while in France; that he once used a ladder to get back into a house he had rented, when he had lost his key; that one night, finding he had no lucifers in his house, he walked to the nearest turnpike to obtain a light. The second certification, in 1839, stated that Mr Bailey had written an angry letter to an auctioneer with whom he was in dispute, in which Mr Bailey threatened to ‘horsewhip’ him. •
Page 69
‘A cold, forbidding reply . . . the imputation of lunacy’: Perceval,
A Letter
, p. 38. •
Page 71
The fullest account of the Lewis Phillips case is found in Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, 82, cols 410–413, 11 July 1845. Available online. •
Page 72
Gilbert Bolden: Bolden was also involved in the growing law-amendment movement, which sought to modernise, streamline and make less expensive the English legal system, not least the infamously cumbrous court of Chancery. What’s more, Perceval, Bailey and Saumarez also had roles in their local communities as Poor Law officers, attempting to permeate a system that they did not agree with, in order to mitigate its harshest operations. • ‘The privilege which belongs to every Englishman . . . or by attorney’:
Report of the Alleged Lunatics’ Friend Society
, 1851, p. 25. • ‘By such a provision . . . from its social peace’:
First Report of the Alleged Lunatics’ Friend Society
, 1846, p. 31. •
Page 73
‘It is known how much weakness and futility . . . generosity’:
A Letter
, p. 5. • ‘Void of the honest manliness . . . sham benevolence’: Thomas Mulock,
British Lunatic Asylums, Public and Private
, 1858, p. 33. Mulock had himself been confined in Stafford Asylum in 1830, on the word of a local bigwig who had taken against him. He is more famous for his campaigning against the Highland Clearances and for being the father of novelist Dinah Craik (1826–1887). • ‘Jesuitical old humbug’: Georgina Weldon in
Social Salvation
, April/May 1884 issue, p. 4. •
Page 74
‘[I] Did not wish . . . harmony to the heart’: diary entries for 24 September and 13 November 1828 (when he was a Metropolitan Commissioner), quoted in Hodder,
Life and Work
, vol. 1, pp. 104–6. •
Page 75
‘Scarcely believe that he is the man . . . public-spirited school’: letter from Perceval to the Home Secretary dated 9 May 1861, The National Archives, HO 45/7102, f.6. •
Page 76
‘Transmission of ideas’: Nicholas Hervey is the author of the first and most authoritative work on the Alleged Lunatics’ Friend Society, ‘Advocacy or Folly: The Alleged Lunatics’ Friend Society, 1845–1863’,
Medical History
, no. 30, 1986. Available online. My account of the Society in this chapter has been built upon the work done by Hervey and by Peter McCandless in his 1974 PhD, ‘Insanity and Society’. I am grateful to both for leads to original source material. Hervey spots that many of the Society’s concepts and suggestions exerted influence upon policymakers and lawmakers, but that this was never openly acknowledged at the time. • ‘Persons who are termed morally insane . . . in a decidedly sane state’:
Supplemental Report of the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy to
the Lord Chancellor, Relative to the General Condition of the Insane in Wales
, 1844, pp. 165 and 176. Available online. • Ferry told the court: ‘Sorry I am that I did it, and I never will forget it as long as I live, but I had not my senses about me at the time. I loved her too well. Sorry I am that I did it.’
Morning Post
, 3 August 1843. •
Page 77
‘They follow and persecute me . . . to murder me’:
The Times
, 4 March 1843. •
Page 78
‘Friend’ in the Alleged Lunatics’ Friend Society. This worked on several levels: the confined patient was often unable to raise the alarm with an outsider in order to contest their incarceration; in such isolation, they became ‘friendless’. What’s more, the legal disabilities suffered by married women, who could not bring civil cases, could be surmounted if they were able to enjoin what the law called ‘a next friend’ to take the action on their behalf, so ‘Friend’ conveys the sense of a body that would fight a lawsuit for someone. Finally, the Society was offering companionship for those who had been emotionally shattered by being accused of insanity by relatives or associates. • ‘The railway speed and confusing commotion . . . steaming hot-headedly on their course’: Luke James Hansard,
What Are To Be the Tendencies of the Community of the British Nation? To Sanity? or To Insanity? A Question
, 1845, p. 9. Available online. • The make-up and likely number of members of the Society: Hervey’s ‘Advocacy or Folly’, p. 254. •
Page 80
Procter and Lutwidge as drafters of the lunacy legislation: Nicholas Hervey, ‘A Slavish Bowing Down: The Lunacy Commission and the Psychiatric Profession, 1845–1860’, in W. F. Bynum, Roy Porter and Michael Shepherd (eds),
The Anatomy of Madness
, vol. 2, 1985, p. 103. • ‘Uncle Skeffington’: Judy Miller and E. Fuller Torrey, in the interesting essay ‘The Capture of the Snark’ (
Richmond Review
, 2001, available online), identify the Lunacy Commissioners as the characters in
The Hunting of the Snark
. Lewis Carroll appears to have been in error when he stated that his beloved uncle had been universally popular, as surviving letters show the irritation and dislike he aroused in a number of his Commission colleagues. Commissioner Bryan Waller Procter wrote in 1867, ‘Poor Wilkes is going to travel with Lutwidge. He does not like it, and I quite feel his distaste for his colleague.’ (Letter from Procter to John Forster, dated 22 April 1867, quoted in
Barry Cornwall: A Biography of Bryan Waller Procter
by Richard Willard Armour, 1935, p. 317.) •
Page 82
Statistics on the rate of county asylum-building: Scull,
Museums of Madness
, p. 136. Scull notes that Cambridge, Sussex, London and Norfolk remained the most stubborn administrations regarding the statutory requirement. • ‘Odious defects’:
Report of the Alleged Lunatics’ Friend Society
, 1851, p. 5. • ‘A blot upon our legislature’:
First Report of the Alleged Lunatics’ Friend Society
, p. 25. Full details of the Society’s successes and failures regarding the 1845 legislation are found in this report. •
Page 83
949 institutions to be inspected nationwide: D. J. Mellett, ‘Bureaucracy and Mental Illness: The Commissioners in Lunacy 1845–90’,
Medical History
, no. 25, 1981, p. 230.
•
Page 84
‘The alter ego to the Lunacy Commission’: Hervey, ‘Advocacy or Folly’, p. 246. • The Anne Tottenham story is found in
Report from the 1859 Select Committee on Lunatics
, Session 1, pp. 13–15, and Richard Saumarez,
The Laws of Lunacy, Especially as they Affect the Lunatic Wards of Chancery
, 1858, p. 25. • ‘I would rather see the Devil in my asylum than you’: quoted in McCandless, ‘Insanity and Society,’ p. 210. •
Page 86
The Purnell table is displayed prominently on the Museum’s first floor and a picture of it is to be found on the V&A website. • Messrs Pulverstoft and Dixon: Hervey, ‘Advocacy or Folly’, p. 263. • ‘The members of this Society . . . domestic calamity’:
Medical Times
, 4 January 1851. •
Page 87
‘His sympathies with the insane . . . feeble and weak’: letter to the
Northampton Herald
, dated 4 September 1858, quoted in Hervey, ‘Advocacy or Folly’, p. 270. • ‘I have heard from two or three quarters . . . the late Mr Drummond’: letter dated 14 July 1854, The National Archives, HO 45/5542. • Mr Perceval thought Royal Bethlehem Hospital should be abolished and the buildings bought by the state to refashion into a gallery; today, the building’s surviving sections house the Imperial War Museum. •
Page 88
‘Uncouth . . . propensities’: Peithman’s casebook, Bethlem Art and History Collections Trust. •
Page 89
‘My heart bled . . . so elegant a mind’: John Perceval,
The Case of Dr Peithman LLD
, 1855, p. 25. • ‘A certain eccentricity . . . proverbially eccentric’: ibid., p. 26. •
Page 90
‘No answer, he is half crazy himself’: letter dated 5 July 1854, The National Archives, HO 45/5542. • ‘What on Earth Has He Done?’:
Punch
, 23 September 1854. •
Page 91
‘His simplicity of character . . . the glory of England to maintain’: letter dated 21 August 1854, quoted in Perceval,
Case of Dr Peithman
, pp. 8–9. •
Page 92
‘Hideous “Holy Office” . . .’:
Letters to the Rt Hon Sir James Graham, Bt
 . . . , p. 7. ‘Restoring us to the cruelty of the Inquisition’: letter to the Home Office, dated 5 April 1861, The National Archives, HO 45/7102. ‘That monstrous tribunal’: letter to George Grey, Home Secretary, dated 16 December 1848, The National Archives, HO 44/52. ‘The general servility of mind . . . admitted of’: letter to the Home Office, dated 27 May 1861, The National Archives, HO 45/7102. • ‘The sobriety and severity . . . to give females every protection’: letter to the Home Secretary, dated 5 April 1840, The National Archives, HO 44/36 f.229. •
Page 93
‘A perfect illustration . . . abuses of our present laws’: letter to the
Morning Post
, 12 July 1849.

Page 95
‘I sent for them from Brighton . . . “the will of God”’:
Bridgwater Times
, 28 June 1849. Except where stated otherwise below, all direct quotations are taken from
The
Times
’s extensive coverage of the ensuing court case, on 25, 26 and 27 June 1849, or from the
Bridgwater Times
’s coverage of the same on 28 June 1849. •
Page 96
Howard and Grey correspondence cited
in Joshua John Schweiso, ‘Deluded Inmates, Frantic Ravers and Communists: A Sociological Study of the Agapemone, a Sect of Victorian Apocalyptic Millenarians,’ PhD thesis, University of Reading, 1994, p. 117. •
Page 97
‘An estimated one in ten marriages . . . property settlements’: Lee Holcombe,
Wives and Property: Reform of the Married Women’s Property Law in Nineteenth-Century England
, Oxford, 1983, p. 46, quoting Hansard, 3rd series, 142, col. 410, 20 May 1856. • William Cobbe was the brother of Victorian feminist Frances Power Cobbe. Sally Mitchell, in
Frances Power Cobbe: Victorian Feminist, Journalist, Reformer
, 2004, p. 215, notes that references to Prince ‘appeared not infrequently, and always pejoratively,’ in Frances’s journalism. So complete was William’s separation from his family that he was the only Cobbe family member not to return home for his parents’ funerals. •
Page 102
Moorcroft House: ‘Moorcroft: The History of a House and Its Inhabitants’ by Ian C. Davis (unpublished),
c
.1993, Hillingdon Local Studies Library. Moorcroft House usually accommodated thirty to fifty patients in these years; by 1861, all of Moorcroft’s patients were male, the females having been moved to another nearby asylum. Davis’s pamphlet provides a glimpse of some of the patients at Moorcroft in the Edwardian years: the Indian prince who regularly ordered a gold pipe from Dunhill’s, only to throw it in the fire upon its arrival. The quiet barrister who would occasionally, after reading the
Daily Telegraph
, shout a torrent of abuse out of the window. The American who would yell, ‘Get in the train, Maud!’ during billiard games (p. 24). The asylum buildings are still standing, in Harlington Road, Hillingdon. •
Page 104
Frederick Ripley’s interactions with the Commissioners in Lunacy: entries dated 3 December and 10 December 1846, in the Minute Book of the Commissioners in Lunacy, The National Archives, MH 50/2. • Thomas Cobbe’s activities: discussed in Joshua John Schweiso, ‘Religious Fanaticism and Wrongful Confinement in Victorian England’,
Social History of Medicine
, vol. 9, no. 2, August 1996, p. 173. •
Page 105
Monomania: Margaret Homberger’s PhD thesis, ‘Wrongful Confinement and Victorian Psychiatry, 1840–1880’, University of London, 2001, contains the fullest account of the monomaniac-theory dilemma, with particular reference to literary representations of the diagnosis. • John Perceval’s defence of Louisa’s religious beliefs:
Morning Post
, 12 July 1849. •
Pages 107–8
Emily and Edmund’s conversation with the Commissioners in Lunacy: The National Archives, MH 50/3, Minute Book of the Commissioners in Lunacy, entry dated 11 May 1848. •
Page 109
‘We have no business with the world . . . the devil’s kingdom’:
Spiritual Wives
by William Hepworth Dixon, 2 vols, 1868, p. 244. Available online. • Schweiso, ‘Deluded Inmates’, p. 130, reveals that there were five children under the age of twelve at the Agapemone itself in 1851, four more at one of the farms owned by the sect, and a further eight registered at the school in Four Forks. •
Page 111
Pollock (1783–1870) was a Tory member of parliament and former Attorney-General. His hands-off, laisser-aller approach to the issue of
lunacy contrasts with Conolly’s Benthamite Radicalism, advocating state-backed measures to bring about social ‘progress’. •
Page 115
‘. . . suggestions made by voices in the air . . . all sense of modesty’:
A Remonstrance with The Lord Chief Baron Touching the Case Nottidge versus Ripley
by John Conolly MD, 1849. •
Page 118
‘Conolly’s changing views . . . enlightenment to error’: Andrew Scull, ‘A Brilliant Career? John Conolly and Victorian Psychiatry’,
Victorian Studies
, vol. 27, Winter 1984. • ‘The public mind seems drunk . . . receptacles of their victims’: ‘The Lord Chief Baron and the Nottidge Case’ by Dr Forbes Benignus Winslow,
Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology
, vol. 2, October 1849. •
Pages 119–20
‘One is driven with shame . . . camp of gypsies’: Knight Bruce’s damning judgement on Brother Thomas,
The Times
, 23 May 1850. •
Page 120
George Thomas Nottidge custody case: Maeve E. Doggett, in
Marriage, Wife-Beating and the Law in Victorian England
, 1992, points out that Agnes’s victory happened in a court of equity, not of common law. Equity considered the child’s interest to be paramount; common law recognised no rights in the mother. • ‘I do not believe the reports . . . out of his bedroom’: The National Archives, MH 50/3, Minute Book of the Commissioners in Lunacy, entry dated 11 May 1848. •
Page 122
‘This is the day of judgement . . . relieved me’: the coroner’s hearing on the Mary Maber case is reported in the
Morning Chronicle
, 17 June 1856. •
Page 123
‘Prima facie grounds . . . something wrong in the establishment’: Coroner Munckton’s verdict and further allegations about life in the Agapemone,
The Times
, 9 June 1856. •
Page 124
‘I have never felt so strange a joy . . . in that hour’: Dixon,
Spiritual Wives
, p. 319, from which all details of The Great Manifestation are taken. •
Page 126
‘Intends to leave him . . . return to her husband’: quoted in Doggett,
Marriage, Wife-Beating
, p. 29. •
Page 127
‘Have erred . . . done His will upon them’: Dixon,
Spiritual Wives
, p. 251. • ‘The traces of much pain . . . hush about them’: ibid., pp. 233–4 and p. 241. •
Page 128
On Sunday 7 September 1902, Smyth-Pigott preached in north-east London, ‘I am the Son of Man’, claiming that he was the Second Coming. A riot ensued, and 5,000–6,000 people demonstrated against him in Clapton, shouting ‘Humbug!’, ‘Nonsense!’ and ‘Liar!’ •
Page 129
In
The Abode of Love: A Memoir
, Edinburgh, 2006, Kate Barlow writes a vivid account of growing up in the vast shadow of the Agapemonites. Barlow attempted as a child to piece together the mystery of the odd complex that had been run by her ‘dangerously charismatic’ grandfather, Prince’s successor.