Aged about forty-five: admitted about six years since. This is a
Norfolk man, and has been many years in a state of insanity: he was
a patient, for a considerable time, in the Norwich Lunatic Asylum,
where, having conceived an antipathy to the steward for some imaginary
cause, he one day by some means got possession of a scythe, and
actually murdered him. How such a man, in an asylum for lunatics,
should so far elude the vigilance of his keepers as to get possession
of so large and desperate a weapon is passing strange; but his
insanity, of course, exempted him from responsibility to law for the
deed, and he was sent hither as his ultimate destination.
But although his intellect be gone past all hope of restoration, his
bodily faculties seem to have sustained no deterioration. He is a
strong, healthy, active fellow, alert and supple in every species of
agility. He can wrestle, tumble, dance, throw somersets, walk on his
hands with his feet uppermost, and perform many other feats of the like
kind. He sings, and always appears cheerful, happy, exempt from care,
sorrow--and reflection.