Aged forty-three, admitted 28th November 1822. This is a married man,
with several children; was a hatter by trade, and is in a high state
of derangement. He became so from some unaccountable cause, and was
at first sent to a private mad-house, at Somers Town; where, having
some altercation with his keeper, he attacked the man with great fury,
got him down, and nearly strangled him with his own neckerchief,
which was drawn so tight, that it became necessary to cut it from his
neck, to save his life. It then became requisite to restrain him by
handcuffs; but, notwithstanding this restriction, he made his escape
through the roof of a summer-house in the garden, proceeded to the next
coach-stand, and hired two hackney-coaches, telling the drivers “he had
a party to take up:” and, by his order, they drove from place to place
until quite tired; when, becoming doubtful of their fare, and observing
his handcuffs, they took him before a police magistrate, when he was
found to be insane, and was secured. He was shortly after brought here
from the White-house, Bethnal Green; but with two black eyes, received
during the struggle with his keeper at Somers Town.
He is always noisy, wild, and incoherent, and wears, even in his
insanity, all the characters of having been a disorderly and dissolute
man. It is highly probable that excessive drinking of ardent spirits
was the cause of his derangement; for he frequently boasts of having
drank the greater part of twenty glasses of brandy and water after
business-hours, and a bottle of cogniac in a morning, before business
commenced. But this, he says, was done to relieve him of spasms, with
which he is much afflicted.
The first symptoms of his derangement was an aerial speculation
for building churches all over Derbyshire, of which he is a native;
and this he proposed to do on a scale much higher, longer, broader,
handsomer, more commodious and ornamental, than any other churches in
England, in half the time, and for one-quarter the expense that other
builders have charged.
As to his hat-making trade, he affects to despise it; although he
considers himself the first maker in Europe.
He believes another patient, William Collison, to be his father; abuses
him grossly, asks him numberless questions about his money, and his
business, and inquires of him about persons whom poor Collison never
before heard of. Collison is a mild, harmless poor fellow, and is often
alarmed at him, and assures him he is not his father, for he never had
a son or a daughter in all his life.
Redfern insists that old Groves, another patient, was the Bishop of
London, but was deprived for practices similar to those of a late
Irish Bishop. He affects to know every body, and all their private
affairs, and is familiarly acquainted, he says, with every part of
England; and that, while he remains here, he is making more money
than all the hatters in the trade together. His skill and dexterity
in this art is his favourite hobby-horse, and most frequent topic of
discourse. He can make hats much better than those usually sold, out
of any stuff: a pair of old bellows, matting, blankets, old carpets,
rugs, mops, old wigs--in short, any thing, no matter what. He is
extremely deep and knowing in his own opinion, and sets all others down
as flats and greenhorns. But as he is very noisy, quarrelsome, and
violent, he frequently gets into scrapes with the more sturdy of his
fellow-patients.