Inconvenient People (68 page)

Page 325
‘Being beautiful . . . looked like a washed Christy minstrel’:
Storm Bird: The Strange Life of Georgina Weldon
by Edward Grierson, 1959, pp. 52 and 163. All quotations from
Storm Bird
are reproduced courtesy of Mr Grierson’s daughter, Anne Monroe. •
Page 327
‘I suppose you think he had a soul!’:
The Times
, 17 July 1884. Quotations from this interview and subsequent events are from reports in
The Times
, 10, 17 and 29 July. •
Page 332
‘We never dared open our lips . . . snubbing us unmercifully’: Brian Thompson,
A Monkey among Crocodiles: The Life, Loves and Lawsuits of Mrs Georgina Weldon
, 2000, p. 65. •
Page 335
‘The dirty old Guv cut me off within 24 hours’: Grierson,
Storm Bird
, p. 29. • Papa’s death at Blandford’s Asylum: Thompson,
Monkey among Crocodiles
, p. 11. •
Page 336
‘Owing to his horrid ways . . . sensual habits’:
Social Salvation
, February 1884. These comments may have been prompted by the widely publicised action for divorce by Lady Campbell in 1884, who charged her husband with ‘cruelty’ as a result of his communicating venereal disease to her. Allegations of venereal infection feature in around 10 to 15 per cent of divorce or separation actions taken by wives in the final thirty years of the nineteenth century. (Gail Savage, ‘“The Wilful Communication of a Loathsome Disease”: Marital Conflict and Venereal Disease in Victorian England’,
Victorian Studies
, vol. 34, 1990.) In 1872, American physician Emil Noeggerath had attributed 90 per cent of sterility in wives to venereal infection by their husbands. This notion of the male body as the site of physical danger to mothers and children (rather than prostitutes infecting men) slowly began to gain momentum in Britain in the late 1880s. (
Feminizing Venereal Disease: The Body of the Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century Medical Discourse
by Mary Spongberg, New York, 1997, p. 148.) • ‘Theory of music education was years ahead of its time’: Grierson,
Storm Bird
, p. 52. •
Page 337
‘Dye your hair bright red . . . sad sea waves of an evening’:
The Ghastly Consequences of Living in Charles Dickens’ House
, 1880, reprinted in
Women, Madness and Spiritualism
, edited by Roy Porter, Helen Nicholson and Bridget Bennett, vol. 1:
Georgina Weldon and Louisa Lowe
, 2003, pp. 11–12. This volume also reprints
The History of My Orphanage; or, The Outpourings of an Alleged Lunatic
, 1878;
How I Escaped the Mad Doctors
, 1879; and
Death Blow to Spiritualism – Is It? Dr Slade, Messrs Maskelyne & Cooke and Mr W. Morton
, 1882, all by Georgina Weldon. • ‘Odious calumnies’: Georgina Weldon,
Musical Reform
, 1875, preface. • ‘A base soul . . . every woman he met’: George Moore quoted in Thompson,
Monkey among Crocodiles
, p. 104. •
Page 341
Dalrymple ‘the essence of a conceited prig’:
Social Salvation
, July–October 1884 combined issue, p. 4. • The friendship not ‘suspect’: Grierson,
Storm Bird
, p. 149. Molly Whittington-Egan, in her biography,
Doctor Forbes Winslow: Defender of the Insane
, 2000, reports that the sixty-five packing cases of Mrs Weldon’s papers have gone missing; fortunately this did not happen before Edward Grierson had a chance to read through most of the material. •
Page 342
‘Filthy allusions’:
Social Salvation
, February 1884, p. 3; ‘
apart
from her husband.’ ibid., April–May 1885 combined issue, p. 4. •
Page 344
‘Your letter coming like a clap of thunder . . . leaving your house at her behest’: Thompson,
Monkey among Crocodiles
, p. 170. • ‘Fat as a pig . . . greasy hair longer than ever’: Grierson,
Storm Bird
, p. 159. All quotations from this episode are taken from Grierson. •
Pages 346–7
‘The little gutter children . . . he was driven from room to room’:
Morning Post
, 28 November 1884. •
Page 347
‘The community of believers . . . to ripen into maturity’: Lyttleton Stewart Forbes Winslow,
Spiritualistic Madness
, 1877, p. 20. •
Page 348
‘It is not unreasonable to conjecture . . . aggregate delusions’: ibid., p. 36. •
Pages 349–50
‘I have this day . . . putting your wife in a lunatic asylum’:
The Times
, 17 March 1884. •
Page 350
‘I always prefer the patient’s friends . . . not from me’: Winslow interviewed in the
Pall Mall Gazette
, 24 September 1884, ‘Topics of the Day, The Lunacy Laws: A Visit to Dr Forbes Winslow’s Asylum’. I am grateful to Molly Whittington-Egan’s biography of Winslow for alerting me to this report, which is likely to have been a public relations exercise, in response to the Weldon trials and the problems being caused by Winslow’s brother-in-law. •
Page 351
Dr Lockhart Robertson’s criticisms of Sussex House: Select Committee, 1877, pp. 50 and 71; Winslow Jnr’s rebuttal of these charges, pp. 200–202. •
Pages 351–2
‘I really must kill you, Doctor . . . as quick as you can’:
Pall Mall Gazette
, 24 September 1884. •
Page 353
‘You will repent this, both of you’: Grierson,
Storm Bird
, p. 172. ‘May God . . . to ruin them’: ibid. • Even Lord Tennyson had to battle his way to a seat: over forty years earlier, Alfred Tennyson had stayed at Dr Matthew Allen’s High Beach Asylum, during a bout of what we call depression. • Bemused approval: Roy Porter, in his introduction to
Women, Madness and Spiritualism
, p. 20, suggests that Mrs Weldon was indulged to some extent by senior legal figures because she represented more of a curio than a serious threat to male exclusivity in the legal profession; by comparison, the rising number of female doctors faced genuine hostility, as they were a perceived danger to the gender status quo in medicine. • ‘Second-favourite martyr’: Grierson,
Storm Bird
, p. 174. •
Page 354
The Magna Chartists and Father Meyrick:
The Englishman
, 25 March 1876 and 12 June 1880. I am grateful for these references to Rowan McWilliam, whose 2006 book
The Tichborne Claimant: A Victorian Sensation
examines in depth the various cross-currents of popular radicalism in the 1870s and 1880s. • ‘We will all have our throats cut . . . so afraid?’:
Social Salvation
, July–October 1884 combined issue, p. 5. • ‘Overpaid set of sinecurists’:
Social Salvation
, September 1883. •
Page 355
Shaftesbury did ‘not wish . . . countless myrmidons’: ibid., April–May combined issue, p.4. • ‘Justice is the daughter of publicity’: visitors’ book for Tavistock House, 1871–1913, National Art Library, MSL/1952/1618. Reade here has adapted Jeremy Bentham’s ‘Publicity is the soul of justice’. • ‘Old intriguant’:
Social Salvation
, September 1883. • ‘I no longer hesitate . . . to have been created differently’: Preface to
The History of My Orphanage
. • ‘She has a pleasing manner . . . “they will say you are ‘excitable’”’:
Illustrated Police News
, 16 November 1878. •
Page 356
‘I know, although I am not a Pharisee . . . I myself got the writing inside them’:
Death Blow to Spiritualism – Is It?
pp. 9–10. •
Pages 356–7
Extracts from letters sent to Mrs Weldon: Grierson,
Storm Bird
, pp. 174 and 133. •
Page 357
‘The lady smiled . . . and retired’:
Weekly Dispatch
, 7 July 1878. •
Page 358
‘I had not been with her one hour . . . dangerous person’:
Social Salvation
, July–October 1884 combined issue, p. 6. • ‘No Valentine for me . . . against the
Figaro
’: Philip Treherne,
A Plaintiff in Person: The Life of Mrs Weldon
, 1923, p. 78. •
Page 359
‘I maintain that “auricular delirium” . . . mental disorder’:
British Medical Journal
, 25 January 1879. • ‘Juggled into Newgate’:
Social Salvation
, February 1884. • ‘I have made up my mind . . . anxious a husband’:
Ghastly Consequences
, p. 5. • ‘I wonder women can endure men’: Grierson,
Storm Bird
, p. 192. •
Page 362
Huddleston ‘regretted to think . . . to which she had been put’:
The Times
, 19 March 1884. • ‘It is revolting to one’s sense of right . . . shut up for life’:
The Times
, 9 April 1884. •
Page 363
‘I don’t understand how anybody with blood in their veins . . . those who have great ideas, &c.’:
The Times
, 14 July 1884. •
Page 365
‘All persons are . . . rubbing my eyes’: the testimony of Drs Edmunds and Wylde was reported in
The Times
, 11 July 1884. • ‘Alone in my own room, and not from courting spiritualistic seances’:
Death Blow to Spiritualism – Is It?
, p. 9. • ‘No right to the position you hold!’:
The Times
, 12 July 1884. •
Page 366
The Semple trial: Mrs Weldon brought up in court Dr Semple’s own father’s disastrous career. In 1862, Semple Snr, also an alienist, had been prosecuted and fined £150 for mis-certifying Richard Hall, a wealthy china dealer of Tottenham Court Road. Hall’s wife had told Dr Semple Snr that her husband of fifty years was a violent madman, and the doctor wrote this straight on to the certificate, using ‘sham scientific balderdash’, according to the
Political Examiner
newspaper. Hall, sane, was swiftly freed from Munster House in Fulham, and mounted his successful suit for false imprisonment. Hall’s case had been extraordinary in that it had been the Commissioners in Lunacy who, for once, had acted without reference to the order signer (Mrs Hall) and had liberated the patient. Their statutory visit to Munster House had occurred, coincidentally, two days after Hall’s admission, and on interviewing him, they were convinced of his sanity. •
Page 367
‘Of the play, it is difficult to speak seriously . . . its conclusion’:
Morning Post
, 15 October 1885. • ‘It would be idle to say . . . real histrionic ability’:
The Era
, 17 October 1885. •
Page 369
‘Dear Loonie’ and the other correspondence between Winslow and Mrs Weldon: Whittington-Egan,
Doctor Forbes Winslow
, pp. 143–5. Edward Grierson read the correspondence before it was lost. • ‘Reckless kite-flying’: ibid., p. 117. Whittington-Egan’s is a generous and fair-minded account of the man. •
Pages 369–70
Mrs Lascelles case:
The Times
, 9 March 1908. •
Page 371
The Forbes Winslow Memorial Hospital: ‘Avoiding the Asylum: Pioneering Work in Mental Health Care, 1890–1939’ by Louise Westwood, PhD thesis, University of Sussex, 1999, p. 42. ‘These poor people . . . deprived of diversion, give way’: ibid., p. 47. Donations in boxes in various pubs in London: Whittington-Egan, p. 246.
• ‘Cat’s paw’: Winslow,
Recollections of Forty Years
 . . . , 1910, p. 23. Available online. •
Page 372
‘Well I must be an ugly old frump’: Grierson,
Storm Bird
, p. 278.

Page 375
‘Motives of that kind . . . in real life’:
Morning Post
, 5 May 1884. •
Page 377
‘Hopelessly effete’:
The Times
, 8 May 1890. • ‘She says she is going to live . . . unfit to take care of herself’:
British Medical Journal
, 2 November 1895. •
Page 378
‘I should like . . . ceremony?’: the
Standard
, 9 January 1896. •
Page 380
Elderly women at a Doncaster mental hospital:
The Times
22 and 25 May 1972. •
Page 382
‘It would be very difficult . . . wholesale detention of feeble-minded persons’:
Report of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded
, 1908, testimony of Dr Arthur Downes, senior medical officer of the Local Government Board, p. 102. • ‘The unnatural and increasingly rapid . . . another year has passed’: quoted on Andrew Roberts’s studymore website. •
Page 383
‘About the most abominable thing . . . dictum of the specialist’: Hansard, 5th Series, 41, cols 710 and 714, 19 July 1912. • ‘Defective released on licence’: in
Outside the Walls of the Asylum: Community Care and Mental Deficiency, 1913 to 1945,
Dorothy Atkinson, Sheena Rolph and Jan Walmsley reveal that reasons why Somerset ‘defectives’ out on licence were returned to the institution from community life included ‘homosexual practices’, ‘associating with the opposite sex’, ‘seen talking to a schoolgirl’, ‘an incestuous relationship with her father’, ‘associating with undesirable men’ and ‘interfering with little girls’ (pp. 195–6). •
Page 384
‘The convenience of society . . . the British citizen first’: quoted in
The Borderland of Imbecility: Medicine, Society and the Fabrication of the Feeble Mind in Late-Victorian and Edwardian England
by Mark Jackson, Manchester, 2000, p. 215. Jackson’s book alerted me to the Strange Death link.

I am extremely grateful to David Tuke, great-grandson of Dr Thomas Harrington Tuke (1826–1888), who told me the hearsay evidence of letters between his ancestor and Charles Dickens, regarding the novelist’s wife. Many thanks also to Pamela Bater for putting me in contact with Mr Tuke and for alerting me to this previously unrecognised aspect of Boz’s life.