Inconvenient People (63 page)

Industrial-scale wrong-headedness towards the mentally ill and the mentally disabled flourished throughout the twentieth century – though happily, Britain avoided the excesses of America, Canada, Scandinavia and, worst of all, Nazi Germany. However, this country did permit the use of insulin comas, lobotomy, chemical sedation and electro-convulsion to treat the mentally ill; and lifetime detention
without appeal for those labelled mentally disabled. These would have been considered scandalous and outrageous intrusions in both Victorian public and government opinion; but they went largely uncondemned until the 1960s. Which is another book altogether.

Oakfield House (p. 6) Bruce Castle Museum (Haringey Culture, Libraries and Learning); Furnival’s Inn Coffee House (p. 12) Look and Learn Ltd; Clapham Retreat (p. 20) reproduced from the 1870 Ordnance Survey map; Trophimus Fulljames at Brislington (p. 38–9) The National Archives; the assassination of Spencer Perceval (p. 40) Mary Evans Picture Library; Brislington House Asylum from the back (p. 46), Edward Long Fox (p. 48) and the Brislington gatepost (p. 53) all reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; Kensington House Asylum (p. 67) Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, Family & Children’s Service; Commissioner Bryan Waller Procter (p. 81) Cambridge University Library; Effra Hall Asylum (p. 85) London Borough of Lambeth Archives; Purnell B. Purnell (p. 85) Gloucestershire Archives; Moorcroft House (p. 102) English Heritage; Prince rides out from the Agapemone (p. 110)
Illustrated London News
; the Agapemone chapel (p. 124) and lawns (p. 126) both Rod and Celia Fitzhugh/from the Rod Fitzhugh Collection; York House Asylum (p. 136) Getty Pictures; Dr Millingen (p. 139) courtesy of
The Dickensian
magazine; Walter Hartright and Anne Catherick in
The Woman in White
(Harper’s Weekly edition) (p. 149) courtesy of Paul Lewis/
www.wilkiecollins.com
; Edward Lancey (p. 191) Cambridge University Library; Rosina Bulwer-Lytton (p. 210), Lord Lytton (p. 212), Emily (p. 214), ‘Extraordinary Narrative’ pamphlet (p. 239) and Robert Lytton (p. 243), all Knebworth Estates/
www.knebworthhouse.com
; Wyke House (p. 229) © The Georgian Group Pardoe Collection; Inverness Lodge (p. 231) Local Studies Collection, Chiswick Public Library; John Forster portrait (p. 246) © Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Acomb House (p. 256) Imagine York/City of York Libraries, Archives & Local History Department; Sussex House Asylum (p. 279) © London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham Local Studies Library/London Metropolitan
Archives; Brislington House Asylum (p. 297) Cambridge University Library; Lawn House Asylum (p. 304) London Borough of Ealing Local Studies Centre;
Punch
planchette cartoon (p. 307); Marian waiting by the asylum wall from
The Woman in White
(Harper’s Weekly edition) (p. 312) courtesy of Paul Lewis/
www.wilkiecollins.com
; Tavistock House (p. 329) London Borough of Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre; Georgina Weldon painted by Watts (p. 333), Harry Weldon (p. 335), sketch of the orphans (p. 340), Georgina with Angèle (p. 343), ‘Be Sure You Don’t Fall, Georgie!’ cartoon (p. 361), Georgina as Sergeant Buzfuz (p. 367) and on her deathbed (p. 373), all courtesy of Anne Monroe/estate of Edward Grierson.

The page references in this notes correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the notes, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.

Inconvenient People
: Andrew Scull’s 1980 essay, ‘A Convenient Place to Get Rid of Inconvenient People: The Victorian Lunatic Asylum’ inspired my title. Scull quotes Victorian alienist Andrew Wynter’s 1870
Edinburgh Review
article, ‘Non-Restraint in the Treatment of the Insane’, in which Wynter writes of lunatic asylums: ‘If we make a convenient lumber room, we all know how speedily it becomes filled up with lumber.’

Page xvii
‘The fear that the English were sleepwalking . . . curb individual freedom’:
Inconvenient People
does not explore the Scottish or Irish lunacy systems – the former often referred to by campaigners as far superior to the English. For further reading on Scotland:
‘They’re in the Trade of Lunacy’: The Scottish Lunacy Commissioners and Lunacy Reform in Nineteenth-Century Scotland
by Jonathan Andrews, 1998. For the liberty issue in Ireland:
Fools and Mad: A History of the Insane in Ireland
by Joseph Robins, Dublin, 1986, pp. 80–87; and
Insanity and the Insane in Post-Famine Ireland
by Mark Finnane, 1981, pp. 113–22. •
Page xviii
‘For the poor . . . their retention’: Purnell B. Purnell,
Report of the County Chairman to the Gloucestershire Epiphany Court of Quarter Sessions
, 1849, p. 4. • Gender not an obvious factor: Elaine Showalter’s
The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830–1980
(1985) was part of the wave of academic work that rightly refocused historical studies on to the female experience.
Inconvenient People
is not a backlash, but an attempt to reposition the discussion. •
Page xix
‘A Case Humbly Offered’: published in the
Gentleman’s Magazine
. Peter McCandless, ‘Insanity and Society: A Study of the English Lunacy Reform Movement, 1815–1870’, University of Wisconsin PhD, 1974, p. 37, alerted me to the 1763 article as a watershed in concerns about the unregulated madhouse trade and to the eleven-year wait for the
first Act. •
Page xx
‘H Broadway A Potcarey . . . to be Don at Home’:
Report from the Select Committee on the Provisions for Better Regulation of Madhouses in England, 1814–15
, p. 51.

Page 1
‘Triumph over oppression and cruelty’: the
Carmarthen Journal
and the
Chester Courant
, quoted in
The Times
, 30 January 1830. •
Page 2
‘I cannot help being witty . . . a cannon’:
Morning Chronicle
, 18 December 1829; no image of Edward Davies appears to have survived. •
Page 5
Oakfield Court, off Haslemere Road, marks the site of Oakfield House. • ‘I’ll make you repent this before the end of the year!’:
Quarterly Review
, March 1830. •
Page 8
James Brookbank laughed ‘until his sides shook’:
Morning Post
, 28 December 1829. •
Page 9
Dr Blundell ‘a dirty filthy fellow’:
Morning Chronicle
, 28 December 1829. •
Page 10
‘Sir, it is beneath the dignity . . . do you see this?’: ibid., 16 December 1829. •
Page 11
‘Well calculated to inspire respect in the class of patients under his care’: ‘Memoir of the Late Dr George Man Burrows’,
London Medical Gazette
, 11 December 1846. •
Page 16
The figure of 373 inquisitions between 1820 and 1830: Akihito Suzuki,
Madness at Home: The Psychiatrist, the Patient and the Family in England, 1820–1860
, 2006, Table 1. •
Page 18
Portland Terrace was at the southern end of today’s St John’s Wood High Street. • ‘Oh God! . . . confined rooms’:
Morning Chronicle
, 15 December 1829. • The Clapham Retreat was close to Union Road. •
Page 19
‘Addicted to unnatural offences’ and ‘The British public . . . success of my cause’:
The Times
, 22 December 1829. •
Page 20
The
Anderdon
v.
Burrows and Others
case was reported in full in
The Times,
27 April 1830. •
Page 21
‘Private arrangement . . . delicacy of the investigation’ and ‘to emancipate himself from the thraldom of his mother’:
Morning Chronicle
, 26 October 1829. •
Page 22
‘Unsoundness of mind . . . declaration of lunacy’: ibid., 15 December 1829. •
Page 23
‘Extremely excited . . . manner’: ibid., 26 October 1829. • ‘Don’t be excited, Ma’am . . . you see the consequences’:
The Times
, 17 December 1829. •
Page 25
‘A delusion of manner about him . . . Nonsense!’: the
Standard
, 18 December 1829. • ‘Was difficult to suppress’ and ‘Mr Davies had not only thought himself a Pitt in finance . . . for His Majesty’s subjects’:
Morning Chronicle
, 28 December 1829. •
Page 26
‘Dr Burrows is cautioned . . . by BLOOD only’:
A Letter to Sir Henry Halford, Bt, KCH, President of the Royal College of Physicians &c, Touching Some Points of the Evidence, and Observations of Counsel, on a Commission of Lunacy on Mr Edward Davies
by George Man Burrows, MD, 1830, p. 3. • ‘The effervescence . . . animadversions on my character’: ibid. • ‘Persecution . . . unsettle the steadiest intellect’:
The Times
, 28 December 1829. • ‘The extraordinary case of
Mr Davies . . . to be prosecuted at the public expense’:
Quarterly Review
, March 1830. •
Page 27
‘This perverse concealment . . . baneful effect’:
Commentaries on the Causes, Forms, Symptoms and Treatment, Moral and Medical of Insanity
by George Man Burrows MD, 1828, p. 103. Available online. • ‘Malady appeared to be progressive’: Burrows,
A Letter to Sir Henry Halford
, p. 12. Akihito Suzuki’s illuminating study,
Madness at Home
, explores in depth the role that family testimony played in lunacy diagnosis in nineteenth-century England. I am indebted to
Madness at Home
for leads to further reading on the Edward Davies story. • ‘Eccentricity itself is a link in the catenation . . . ripen into perfect insanity’: Burrows,
Commentaries
, p. 130. •
Page 28
‘I consider the maniacal odour . . . no other proof of it’: ibid., p. 297. Dr Forbes Benignus Winslow claimed some eighteen years later that he, too, could smell insanity: ‘The skin [of a lunatic] gives evidence of disease. It has an appearance of having been rubbed over by some greasy substance; this is accompanied by a peculiar fetid or cutaneous exhalation, which symptom is very perceptible when the disease is in its advanced stage, and is generally indicative of organic and hopeless disease of the brain’:
On the Incubation of Insanity
, 1846, p. 19. •
Page 29
The Lancet
’s Witchfinder-General comparison is referred to in Suzuki,
Madness at Home
, p. 70. Alienist Dr John Conolly claimed that the alleged smell of a lunatic was nothing more than the stink of the asylum. • ‘The infancy of our knowledge’: Burrows,
Commentaries
, p. 159. • ‘As to the evidence of the medical witnesses . . . pompous, vulgar and absurd’: ‘Law Versus Physic’,
London Medical Gazette
, 2 January 1830. ‘There is nothing of which the public . . . they should be so’: ibid., 3 December 1829. • ‘Suffering from functional disorder . . . bordering upon delirium’:
London Medical Gazette
, 9 January 1830. • ‘The physician’s own mind . . . any other person’: Haslam quoted in
Quarterly Review
, March 1830. •
Page 30
‘The majority of the insane are men’: Burrows,
Commentaries
, pp. 240–1. •
Page 31
‘It frequently happens . . . the production of it [the note]’: Burrows,
A Letter to Sir Henry Halford
, pp. 9–10. • ‘What a revolution! . . . encouraging them’: ibid., p. 22. • The dissolution of Hodgson & Davies,
London Gazette
, 1 September 1843.

Unless otherwise stated below, all descriptions and direct quotations regarding John Perceval’s illness and recovery, and his time at Brislington House and Ticehurst, are taken from
A Narrative of the Treatment Experienced by a Gentleman during a State of Mental Derangement
, 1838, published anonymously, and his enlarged reprise of the subject, with the same title, printed in 1840 under his own name, as Volume 2. This second volume is available to read
online. •
Page 36
Trophimus Fulljames’s allegations of cruelty at Brislington are in The National Archives, HO 44/12, ff.124, 198, 214, 403, 420, 431 and 432 (the illustrations); and HO 44/13, ff.2, 7, 23, 46. HO 44/12 f.31 is an amazing little dossier compiled by Fulljames of many cases of alleged wrongful incarceration and asylum cruelty, 1820–23 – one of the earliest of such endeavours. In HO 44/13, f.7 Dr Edward Long Fox writes that Fulljames, who had a ‘cunning, specious manner’, was a bankrupt London stockbroker who had fired a pistol at the Prince Regent in St James’s Park, and had once come into the House of Lords with a basket of medicinal herbs to distribute, Ophelia-style. Trophimus’s brother, Thomas, a well-known land surveyor, had taken him into his home, along with Trophimus’s wife and nine children, but his behaviour became increasingly erratic, following the death of his wife in 1820. He lived to the age of eighty-four, dying in Wells, Somerset, in 1864. He appears to have taken no further part in lunacy care campaigning, though he suffered periodic breakdowns, and was in Kensington House Asylum in London for a spell in 1855. •
Page 40
John Bellingham had been imprisoned for debt while in Russia on business and his appeals for British government assistance and compensation for this had been ignored. He festered, and plotted murderous revenge. He was executed seven days after the killing – his long and coherent testimony in court undermining any attempt to have the sentence commuted by reason of criminal lunacy. However, Andro Linklater, in his 2012 book
Why Spencer Perceval Had to Die
, alleges that Bellingham, far from being a deranged grudge-holder, was part of an elaborate plot to punish Perceval for his assaults upon the slave trade. Legend has it that when the dying prime minister was moved from the lobby into the Speaker’s drawing room, one of his sons, ‘a fine boy of about thirteen years of age happened accidentally to come down [from Downing Street, where the family lived] a few moments after the assassination took place . . . The unhappy child’s distress is beyond description.’ (Reported in
The Globe
, 12 May 1812 and
Freeman’s Journal
, 16 May 1812.) John’s brothers Henry and Dudley Montague were nearest to the age of thirteen in 1812, but both were away at Harrow; John was nine years old and was in London, and it may be that it was he who saw his newly dead father. He never, though, in his writings, alluded to this. When John’s sister Frederica died in 1900, aged eighty-eight, among her belongings was the Speaker’s bloodstained rug on to which the dying prime minister had been moved. (
The Assassination of the Prime Minister: John Bellingham and the Murder of Spencer Perceval
by David C. Hanrahan, Stroud, 2008, p. 173.) •
Page 45
Andrew Roberts’s website
www.studymore.org.uk
alerted me to Spencer Perceval Jnr’s role as a Metropolitan Commissioner. •
Page 46
Sadly, despite Dr Fox’s precautions, one of his sons, aged five, died in a bedroom fire on the premises. A maid managed to rescue two other Fox children. (Annie Fox,
Brislington House
Quarterly News, Centenary Number
, Bristol, 1904.) Annie Fox’s commemorative pamphlet also reveals that Mrs Edward Long Fox was once chased by a patient with a meat knife and had to lock herself in a kitchen cupboard pending rescue. • ‘A hospital for the curable . . . incurable’: Francis Ker and Charles Fox,
The History and Present State of Brislington House near Bristol
, Bristol, 1836. •
Page 47
One more glimpse from the archives that confirms Mr Perceval’s portrait of Dr Fox Snr as a smug, religiose hypocrite is the latter’s Uriah Heep-ish replies to Whitehall’s queries, following Trophimus Fulljames’s allegations, found in The National Archives, HO 44/13, f.7. •
Page 50
Half of Chancery lunatics related to government officials:
The Laws of Lunacy and Their Crimes, as They Affect all Classes of Society
by Richard Saumarez, 1859, p. 36. • ‘Vulgar error’: letter dated 10 June 1839 to Baron Lyndhurst, published in
Letters to the Rt Hon Sir James Graham, Bt, and to Other Gentlemen upon the Reform of the Law affecting the Treatment of Persons Alleged to be of Unsound Mind
, 1846. • Lady Carr hadn’t always been so lacking in spirit. In 1790, she eloped and married Spencer Perceval in East Grinstead in so much haste that she was still wearing her riding gear. •
Page 52
The Bristol Riots: twelve rioters died and many more corpses were found in the burnt-out buildings; four alleged ringleaders were executed and the head of the local militia committed suicide during his court martial for failure to disperse the rioters. • Pay and staffing levels at Brislington: Leonard Smith, ‘A Gentleman’s Mad-Doctor in Georgian England: Edward Long Fox and Brislington House’,
History of Psychiatry
, 19, no. 2, June 2008, p. 173. •
Page 54
Delay of at least four months: Nicholas Hervey, ‘Advocacy or Folly: The Alleged Lunatics’ Friend Society, 1845–1863’,
Medical History
, no. 30, 1986, p. 250. • Metropolitan Commissioners’ dissatisfaction with provincial asylum visitation: letter dated 7 December 1841, The National Archives, HO 45/74. • Much of Ticehurst’s landscaped grounds has survived, together with the main building and Charles Newington’s own family home, Heathlands, close by the asylum building. •
Page 57
‘The glory of the old system . . . cudgelled him’: letter to the Home Office, dated 1 August 1845, printed in
Letters to the Rt Hon Sir James Graham, Bt
, p. 47. This is Foucault in a nutshell, 120 years before the French philosopher spotted the moral treatment fallacy. •
Page 58
‘The attorney-general of all Her Majesty’s madmen’:
Report from the 1859 Select Committee on Lunatics
, Session 2, p. 23. • Goldsmid’s family’s malpractice at the Exchequer Bill Office had contributed to one of the most embarrassing fiscal crises of Mr Perceval’s father’s government, though Mr Perceval never alluded to this in his writings. Goldsmid would be discharged from Ticehurst in 1842 as ‘not-cured’ and died the following year. Charlotte MacKenzie, ‘A Family Asylum: A History of the Private Madhouse at Ticehurst in Sussex, 1792–1917’, PhD thesis, University of London, 1986, pp. 103 and 156. •
Page 61
‘Lady Carr
thought proper . . . his station in life’: letter from Dr Robert Stedman to the Home Office, dated 20 June 1838, The National Archives, HO 40/40. I am grateful to Nicholas Hervey’s ‘Advocacy or Folly’ for alerting me to Stedman’s letter; and to MacKenzie’s ‘A Family Asylum’, p. 154, for confirmation of the date of Mr Perceval leaving Ticehurst. •
Page 62
‘Calculated to inflame the lower orders . . . I have written this’: The National Archives, HO 40/40. • ‘The infidel spirit of modern “liberality”’: Introduction to Perceval’s
Narrative
, vol. 2, 1840, p. xxii. •
Page 63
‘The chief branch of his complaint . . . well-informed person’:
The Examiner
, 9 August 1840. The review was anonymous, but the
Examiner
’s chief literary critic was John Forster, who in fifteen years’ time would become secretary to the Commissioners in Lunacy, and later, a Commissioner himself. He was a Liberal barrister and friend of Commissioner in Lunacy Bryan Waller Procter. Politically, Forster was very far removed from Mr Perceval, and, as later chapters will show, Forster continued in his certainty that ‘exaggeration’ was behind many lunatics’ complaints, particularly regarding wrongful incarceration. • ‘Details such as he has given . . . to the public’: ‘The Late Dr Cheyne’s Life and Essays’,
Dublin University Magazine
, October 1843. • Notting Hill Square is today’s Campden Hill Square. • ‘By a singular and providential occurrence’: quoted in Peter McCandless, ‘Insanity and Society’, p. 212.