From Fribourg, in Prussia, aged forty five, admitted November 15th,
1821. This poor Prussian tailor had been employed for fifteen years at
D’Oyley’s warehouse in the Strand, was an excellent workman, bore a
good character, and came here deranged from St. Clement’s workhouse.
The _green-eyed monster, Jealousy_, seems to be the familiar spirit
that rules his frenzied imagination, and a strong suspicion and a
fancied conviction of his wife’s inconstancy, was either the original
source, or the perpetual concomitants of his disorder; and the feats of
Messalina were nothing to the extent and variety of amours he imputed
to her, without the slightest foundation. He used to enumerate a French
Count, an English tailor, some publicans, besides other Englishmen, and
a long assortment of Germans, Russians, Prussians, Italians, Swedes,
Danes, Hanoverians, and Irish; these he would reckon on his fingers
until he worked himself up to a furious passion, and then exclaim in a
loud tone--“Yesh! by G--, all deir countries--and Greek and Turks has
she been wid--I will kill her, by G--, a plood b--h.”
He was continually amusing himself with working at his trade, and
spoiling every thing he attempted to repair. He padded his own coat
with flocks from his bed; he turned his pantaloons, and put the seams
outward. He was so enraged with his wife, that her life was endangered
whenever she came to see him; and his young child, which she brought
one day in her arms, he swore was a young baboon, and that its father
lives at Exeter Change. He was not generally violent here, though he
frequently evinced a strong disposition that way, when offended. He was
always anxious to get out, and was very importunate for his discharge
from Dr. Monro.
His manner of preparing his bed for his night’s repose was curious:
first he would throw bed and bedding upon the floor, then lay a large
blanket and one sheet on the sacking of the bedstead, afterward he
spread the second sheet and another blanket, third came the bed, and
over that a blanket and a rug; then, undressing, he would get in on the
undermost sheet, with the bed and other drapery over him, and thus he
lay snug in press until morning, and this was his regular habit.
He fancied himself immensely rich, and intended to pay off all the
debts of Government. He had the most confirmed opinion in all his
whims, and his eccentricities were beyond the ordinary class of madmen.
He was discharged paralytic, on the 4th of April 1822, and is again
extremely ill at his own home in Goswell-street.