Aged forty-two, admitted in 1817. This unfortunate woman is a German,
was of a respectable family, and well brought up: but, whatever were
the motives of her friends for consigning her to a public asylum of
this nature, she carries with her, even under her derangement, all the
pride of exalted rank, and a sovereign contempt for supposed inferiors.
Disappointed love is said to be the source of her disorder.
She imagines New Bethlem to be the Queen’s Palace, and to be her own
property, with every thing that belongs to it. All the nurses in the
house she considers to be her domestic servants, and all the patients
her slaves, whom she speaks of with high contempt, as mere scum of the
earth. Indeed she speaks of both nurses and patients as a low, vulgar
class of wretches, unworthy to attend on a lady of her high rank and
consequence; that they have been brought up like coal-heavers, and
several times cast for death, and this, as she believes, for cutting up
young children, and bringing parts of them to her for supper. She is
extremely fond of amusing herself with singing, and is generally high,
and in a state of excitement: her malady is deemed incurable.