Aged forty-seven, admitted 25th January 1819. From the conduct of this
woman, it would require no extraordinary effort of credulity to believe
her possessed by an evil spirit, or that the most furious of the furies
was her familiar. Her appearance carries her age much higher than it is
stated, but there is nothing in Billingsgate, St. Giles’s, or any other
school of ferocious rage, malice, or eloquence, that can afford even a
slight specimen of her pre-eminence in these points; and, when excited,
the gross indecency of her language, and the scurrilous volubility of
her tongue, cannot be described.
All persons in office here, and especially the physicians, are the
favourite objects of her talents, as probably they might be of her
talons also, but for the vigilance of the keepers; and any parties who
visit the female ward of this establishment rarely escape her abuse.
She imagines that Dr. Wright is the husband of the matron; that she
herself is immensely rich, and that the whole building, and all the
clothes, money, and other valuables in it, belong exclusively to her.
She thinks ill of all persons indiscriminately, and if she observes any
thing new in the dress of the nurses, she immediately tells them it was
obtained as the wages of prostitution.
Some time ago the matron inquired of this woman where the nurse was,
and she immediately answered, “Oh! she is gone up stairs to lay-in of
two young bears: she has been big with them for some time.” Her malady
has been long since deemed incurable.