Aged forty-four, admitted about four years since. This is another
Welchman. He was found guilty of murder, by killing a young woman with
a mattoc. But this shocking act was considered to be the result of
insanity, and he was sent to this hospital.
This Cambro-Briton stands very high in the list of his own admirers;
and brags much of his ancient and illustrious descent from the
Ap-Shenkins, Ap-Morgans, Ap-Maddocs, Ap-Jones’s, Ap-Gwillins, and all
the other Aps up to the first trunk, the aboriginal tree of Welch
genealogy. He speaks very bad English: a sort of piebald mixture, half
Welch and half Lancashire. But this he will not believe, and insists
that he speaks as well as any man in London; to prove which, his tongue
is everlastingly on the move, with due rapidity, and the true Shiboleth
of Glamorganshire. He is, however, generally quiet and harmless; and,
with his flat face, high cheek-bones, and dingy complexion, bears a
strong resemblance to a North-American Squaux.
His high blood, however, does not raise his notions above the humble
avocations of commerce; for he is the principal tobacco-merchant here,
and drives a brisk traffic in that article amongst his fellow-patients.
Although the sale of tobacco is discountenanced and forbidden by
the Board, yet, even with the utmost vigilance, it cannot be wholly
prevented, for there are constantly so many schemes on foot, so much
artifice used, and so many plans and contrivances in operation to
obtain it, as to baffle all exertions to put a stop to the trade.
There can be no question that the forbidding this article is founded
upon the best intentions; but there are many of the patients here
who, from habits of ten, twenty, thirty, and even forty years’ use of
tobacco, in some shape or other, have contracted such an insuperable
attachment to it, that they would much rather go without dinners than
their beloved quid. Others prefer snuff, and those patients who have
been long used to it are always discontented, fretful, and peevish, if
debarred this comfort, either through the want of money to purchase,
or the neglect of their friends to supply them with it. There seems to
exist in the use of tobacco, as well as in madness, a pleasure which
none but the infatuated know: and, trifling as the privation of those
little enjoyments seems, it revives in the memory of the patients a
sense of former grievances, gives them an idea that they are quite
forsaken, renders them irritable, and has sometimes very injurious
effects.
A trifling neglect will sometimes prey upon the weak sensibilities
even of convalescents; and when this original distraction is rapidly
subsiding, the privation of these little enjoyments will obviously
renew it; when perhaps a timely recourse to the tobacco or snuff-box
would divert the mind, and obviate such reflexions all together.
But it is not in the minds of the insane only that these habits take
root, and become secondary wants of nature. All habits, long indulged,
become inveterate, and are extremely difficult effectually to conquer,
even in the best-bred classes of life, as all must have felt: and such
particularly is the fascination of that nauseous and narcotic herb,
tobacco, on persons in the constant habit of using it in any given
form, that they become uneasy and fretful in the want of it. This is a
fact more intimately known to every observant person conversant in the
military and naval service, and who must have frequently seen that both
soldiers and seamen, on the hardest service, would sell the shirts from
their backs, or, what they value much more, their allowances of grog
or wine, to obtain a little tobacco or snuff, whichever their habits
led them to prefer. If such be the influence of those habits on men
in robust health and of sane mind, what must be the case with those
wretched maniacs, who have nothing to occupy or amuse them; and with
whom a quid of tobacco, a pinch of snuff, or the smoaking of a pipe
will do more to tranquilize and assuage irritation, than twenty-four
hours of the most judicious reasoning or soothing advice?
Hence it is that the Virginian commissary, John Ap-Williams, is a much
more favourite resident in this lunatic republic, than would be an
imperial ambassador without this favourite commodity.