From Wallingford, Berks, admitted 16th March 1820. This poor fellow
gives a curious account of his origin and progress. According to him,
he is a child of Apollo; for he was engendered by the sun shining upon
a dunghill, near his father’s door. He received his first existence
in the form of a flea; and in about two hours afterwards he was
transformed to a fine boy, of nine years old. He grew up, and was
apprenticed to a shoemaker; and after his time was served, he married a
beautiful wife, by whom he had two children; but she proved unfaithful.
Business became bad; distress followed; and it was necessary that both
should seek employment in London. A place was supposed to be obtained
for her: but alas! her infidelity to him soon appeared; for the very
stage-coachman who drove her to town, to her supposed service, was now
her lord and master, for she has been living with him ever since; and
poor Joe has been deserted and deranged from that time. His poor dear
infants, he says, are, with his father and himself, placed here at the
parish expense. Since he came in here he has imagined himself to be the
only true and real Son of God, both spiritually and bodily. He clearly
remembers having suffered on the cross. He remembers the countenances
of all present at the time, what was said to him, how he was treated
in his sufferings, and every circumstance of his bodily pain. He has
power to condemn all whom he pleases, and of saving and rendering happy
such as he thinks fit; and, in virtue of his power, he will, for the
most trivial offence, consign any offender to the bottomless pit of
fire and brimstone. He assigns a name of his own to every individual
around him. One is Judas, who betrayed him; another is one of the
thieves, who suffered with him at his crucifixion; a third is Peter,
who thrice denied him; a fourth is Thomas, who disbelieved him; a fifth
the Virgin Mary: one he saw hanged at Newgate for horse-stealing,
another at Exeter for some other crime; another is Bonaparte himself;
another is a common swindler, whom he knew very well, and who cheated
him of vast property; and so on in an hundred instances. He would
affect to know every body; and to every one (except his brother) he
assigns some new name or character: one is a shoeblack, another a
stocking-weaver, a waiter, a butcher, &c. &c.
He is himself a Pythagorean philosopher; firmly believes in the
Metempsychosis, and that the soul of man after his death descends
into a brute, and afterwards reverts into a man. Some months ago he
described the butcher’s horse that brings meat to the hospital as an
old friend of his named Thomas Holloway, who being hanged for coining,
was afterwards transformed into this horse. He knows the secrets of all
hearts, and cannot be deceived by any one.
In the summer he is employed in white-washing the house, for which he
is paid; generally conducts himself pretty quietly, and has committed
no violence, except now and then breaking a window, and occasionally
tearing his clothes, which he says he is obliged to do, “the time being
now come.” But he is extremely passionate, easily excited, and in that
state is terribly abusive: his tongue, however, is the only ill weapon
he uses.