Customers and Patrons of the Mad-Trade: The Management of Lunacy in Eighteenth-Century London

PART I. Managing Lunacy in Eighteenth-Century London

Part One Managing Lunacy in Eighteenth-Century London This page intentionally left blank Goodwife Jackson, aged 39, of a burnt high-coloured sanguine Complexion, black Hair, 12 Years since fell mad, ran up and down the Streets, bare footed, Cloaths torn, Hair loose, was ready to lye down and pull up her Cloaths to every one, pretended Love to one Mr Holland her Master, then a Prisoner in the King’s Bench; at last she tore all things, and struck every one, and was raving mad; being poor, I have her a Glass of Antimony a Scruple in Beer, each other Morning for 14 Days . . . sometimes of Scamony in Beer or Ale . . . not omitting Bleeding and Sleepers; and . . . Broth and Posset-Drink, with much Plantaine boiled in it, and thus cured her, and she is well to this Day, having been half a Year mad to a high Degree. Daniel Oxenbridge, General Observations of the Practice of Physick (1715; quoted in Roy Porter [ed.]), The Faber Book of Madness, p. 241) I was desired to visit a woman who resided at no great distance from the man whose case has just been described [that of a respectable farmer, in the country]. I found her sitting up in the bed—she was wrapped about the head, neck and shoulders with cloaks and flannels—she received me with a smiling countenance, and when I enquired into her complaints, she laughed, and enumerated a great variety of symptoms; but I could not really discover that she had any bodily indisposition, except what was occasioned by laying in bed. In a chair at the bed-side, were, Wesley’s Journal, Watt’s Hymns, the Pilgrim’s Progress, and the Fiery Furnace of Affliction. I prescribed according to the usual form, but could do her no good; and I was afterwards informed, that she became so mad as to require confinement. I was told by her husband, that there was not the least pre-disposition to Madness before this attack [but] . . . a Methodist preacher, who had much infested the parish, was frequently in her company, and they were perpetually conversing on religious topics. Reverend William Pargeter, Observations on Maniacal Disorders (1792, pp. 32–33) . . . should every one who displayed the smallest symptoms of insanity be immediately deprived of his liberty, and treated as a madman, nobody can tell where the spirit of confinement might end. . . . If it be true, as some Moralists have ventured to assert, that every person is to be considered insane who submits his reason to the dominion of any ruling passion . . . it would be difficult, perhaps, to fix upon any one person who ought to be indulged with the privilege of walking through the world without a keeper. Thomas Monro [of Magdalen College], “Vicious and Foolish People Considered Insane,” Essays on Various Subjects (1790, p. 69) ...