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Overview
In this sadly terrifying, emotionally moving, and occasionally hilarious book, twelve cases of contested lunacy are offered as examples of the shifting arguments regarding what constituted sanity and insanity. They offer unique insight into the fears of sexuality, inherited madness, greed and fraud, until public feeling shifted and turned against the rising alienists who would challenge liberty and freedom of people who were perhaps simply "difficult," but were turned into victims of this unscrupulous trade.
This fascinating book is filled with stories almost impossible to believe but wildly engaging, a book one will not soon forget.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781619022201 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Catapult |
| Publication date: | 06/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | Penguin Random House Publisher Services |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 480 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
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Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Being 'Burrowsed'
They burned the effigy on the Thursday night, after a huge public supper at the Castle Inn. This was the fourth successive day of celebration in the Welsh border town of Newtown, Montgomeryshire, and the crowd roared its pleasure as a passable replica of Catherine Bywater went up in flames. The letter telling a local resident of the news from London, that Bywater had failed in her attempt to have her son, Edward Davies, declared a lunatic, was received on the Sunday night; on Monday morning all the bells of the town rang out the general joy. Sheep were roasted in the marketplace and distributed to the poor – the result of a generous response to a subscription set up by Edward's friends and well-wishers in the town. This was a celebration of 'triumph over oppression and cruelty', as local newspapers put it.
Mrs Bywater hadn't been unpopular in Newtown until then. If anything, she was mildly approved of for her rise in the world from servant/cook to being a local small-landowner with a significant stake in a successful business. Her first husband, Mr Davies, had been a warehouse porter and became a publican when they married. He died in 1802, leaving her with two small children, another Catherine and one-year-old Edward. She remarried sixteen years later – to Mr Bywater – but they had only three years together before he, too, died. In 1820 she received a large legacy from a Montgomeryshire relative. Meanwhile, following a move to London, her son Edward had been apprenticed to a grocer and tea dealer in Walbrook, in the City. He had proved so excellent a protégé that, when he came of age, he and his mother used the inheritance to buy an established tea firm, Hodgson of Philpot Lane – the little byway that runs between Eastcheap and Fenchurch Street – which they renamed Hodgson & Davies in 1823.
Mrs Bywater installed herself in the shop area of the building, which, like most City of London merchant premises, also contained living quarters for the family and the domestic servants, as well as warehousing and a counting house. Edward made the major decisions of Hodgson & Davies, most notably in its bulk tea buying, blending and resale. He had developed an exquisite sense of smell and taste, and made brilliant business choices, every one of which he discussed fully with his mother. By the late 1820s, he was known in the City as one of the best dealers in the highly lucrative tea trade, and was employing fifteen staff in the Philpot Lane premises, all of whom respected and felt affection for their unusual boss. He was tall, thin and long-limbed, and prone, since childhood (as his schoolfriends would confirm), to extravagant gesticulation. His face was highly expressive, with an earnest, penetrating gaze, and revealed his tendency to sardonic humour and ironic observations. 'I cannot help being witty, even if I were standing at the mouth of a cannon,' he proclaimed. His voice was expressive too, swooping excitedly when he was discussing a subject of interest to him. While not exactly having a stutter, he would often open his mouth and stare for a short time before the speech came out. All agreed that he was habitually highly strung, quick to take offence, funny, honourable, decent, shy (or at least, wrapped up in himself), whimsical, and that he had a dislike of any conversation he considered improper. He was also a notably submissive son. The Philpot Lane staff observed that this, however, was not enough for Mrs Bywater. She was regularly to be seen with her ear jammed up against doors, trying to listen in on Edward's conversations; senior clerk William Low more than once tripped over her in the gloom as she knelt to gaze through a keyhole.
Low had been a schoolfriend of Edward's and had been recruited to a responsible position in Hodgson & Davies. From his desk in the counting house, he could see most of what went on in the shop, and watched how his friend tolerated behaviour that, Low thought, few grown-up sons would accept. Whenever he wanted spending money, Edward had to ask his mother, who would unlock the till and present him with a pitifully small sum, then follow him upstairs to demand to know what he intended to do with it. If he ventured behind the counter during shop hours, she would shoo him out, in front of customers and staff, sometimes smacking him as though he were a small child. Mrs Bywater also interfered in the running of Philpot Lane. She constantly criticised how the clerks and warehousemen behaved, and she began to sack domestic servants without consulting her son.
Edward had developed a love of the theatre, but each time he wanted to head to the West End of town to see a play, his mother would allow him to go only if his sister (now married to a Mr Pugh) or another relative or close associate went with him. Strolling back from Astley's Amphitheatre in the Westminster Bridge Road one evening, William Low (whom Mrs Bywater had designated Edward's companion for this night out) listened as Edward told him how unhappy he was. While he had always dreaded doing anything that might make his mother angry, Edward said he had been reduced to stealing from his own funds in order to have some pocket money. Trying to reason with her was like trying to get a river to change its course, he told Low, but he intended to free himself in one way or another.
Catherine Pugh gave birth to a son in 1828, to whom Edward gave £300, settling £1,000 on his sister. Mrs Bywater seemed to dote on the baby, and Edward hoped this diversion of attention might herald greater personal freedom for himself. In the meantime, he seemed unable to stop making money, and colossal profits of £3,000–£4,000 a year were rolling in.* Edward had left school at fourteen to begin his apprenticeship. Now, as his wealth and renown were established, he felt it was time to acquire the learning and leisure pursuits that a gentleman in the late Regency ought to be in possession of. He was the son of a servant and a publican, but only the very spiteful would point out his humble birth; however, he himself felt that it rendered him vulnerable. He saw that his mother's 'coarseness' had been noted by some of his customers, and he worried that this could be detrimental to Hodgson & Davies. So he set about refurbishing himself for his swiftly rising station in life: he applied himself to conquering English literature, and committed to memory vast tracts of poetry; he took up fencing; he bought a horse, a hunting dog and a Newfoundland (angering his mother with this outlay). He pored over the daily newspapers to make himself master of current affairs, and he spotted in one of the journals that the Duc de Chartres was taking boxing lessons from the celebrated Tom Belcher (brother of the even more famous boxer, Jem), and so Edward enrolled too. Belcher bred fancy fowls and rabbits as a sideline, and reading of the popularity among gentlemen of leisure of keeping bantams as a hobby, Edward bought some fowls at 10s a bird; Belcher also agreed to sell him the next batch of rabbits that was born.
A gentleman needed to take care of his health, and the naturally cautious Edward began to develop what one of the several physicians he consulted termed 'hypochondriasis'. He turned up at his doctors' premises fearing lumps in his throat, chest and arms; there were none. However, a non-imaginary abscess in his mouth put him in bed for eight days and affected his tea-tasting abilities longer than he cared for.
His success had provoked jealousy in the small world of City tea dealers, and his theatricality, eccentricity, youth and emulation of the ways of gentlefolk made him a very easy target. Rival dealer Mr Delafosse repeatedly called him 'The Lad from the Lane', implying callowness and lack of breeding, and there was general mirth at the dandyish white trousers that Edward now affected. Four times a year huge, fortnight-long auctions of tea took place at East India House in Leadenhall Street, with as much as a million pounds of tea changing hands and vast sums of money being spent by the thirty or so firms who sent their brokers along. The tea sales were well known to be a bear-pit, with between 300 and 400 men in attendance, all joshing, jesting, swapping scandal and making gibes – mostly good-humoured, but not always so. When bidding was fierce, the noise of howling and yelling carried for hundreds of yards outside the building, as though a riotous mob was making its way through the warren of City lanes.
Ahead of these crucial auctions Edward would become even more nervous and on edge, endlessly revising his calculations and his buying strategy and failing to get much sleep. He was, of late, additionally perturbed by the gossip, whispering and sometimes outright insults, and he wondered whether if he became a practised swordsman and pugilist he might feel more confident. But what would really make a man of him, he decided, was a wife. He had two particular ladies in mind, and before going down on one knee to either, in the spring of 1829 he spent £7,000 on a country seat –Oakfield House at Crouch Hill, Crouch End, to the north of London. He announced his intention to marry, his purchase of Oakfield House, and that he was planning to draft his will; and that's when his real trouble began. 'I'll make you repent this before the end of the year!' his mother declared.
The June tea sale at East India House was imminent, and Edward tried to compose his mind. He planned to buy 790 chests of tea, for about £15,000. But he also decided to use the event to expose to the wider world a practice that was bilking the Exchequer of tax revenue. Tea was heavily taxed, and the old East India House custom of selling off the first lots – known traditionally in the trade as 'Directors' Presents' tea – at a deliberately low price was a mechanism for defrauding the Revenue. Edward planned to bid an outrageously high price for the Presents tea and to blow the gaff on the whole operation. Hatching this incendiary plan, together with his annoyance at his rivals' spite towards him and his growing terror of his mother, played on his naturally frayed nerves, as the date of the auction approached.
William Low had noticed that Edward was becoming even more diligent in his attempts not to be overheard in Philpot Lane. Edward had always opened doors to check for an eavesdropper before starting any conversation with Low; now he did this several times during an exchange. He dropped his voice to a whisper, too – though a somewhat melodramatic whisper.
At least he had Crouch End. He escaped there as often as he could and his mother deigned to visit only on Sunday mornings. But he became alarmed by the darkness of the roads north out of the City and near his new home, in particular Hornsey Lane, where he knew that travellers had been robbed, and where he believed resurrection men carted their unhallowed loads. Many a North London village churchyard was being ransacked for corpses at the time, and the trial of Burke and Hare – who had killed instead of resurrecting – had ended in Edinburgh only five months earlier. Edward bought two pistols, to make himself feel safer as he travelled back and forth between Philpot Lane and Crouch End, in case any London-based 'burkers' should wish to make a fresh specimen of him. But, as he later admitted, he also sensed that he would feel safer in the tea world if he had a pistol in his pocket – not to fire, just to know that it was there.
The morning of the start of the June sale found him jumpy. His trousers were being jeered at as he marched into the East India House saleroom, approached the auctioneer and announced that he planned to start his bids for the Directors' Presents tea at 5s per lb (it customarily went for 3s 1d). This was a flouting of House etiquette, and some men present shouted out, 'Shame! Shame!' Edward retired to the back of the hall where various dealers and brokers saw him striding up and down and looking highly agitated. Two of them, Mr Gibbs and Mr Varnham (who had both been interested in buying into Hodgson & Davies), later claimed to have noticed that even by Edward's standards, his nerviness was out of the ordinary on this day.
After Edward had made his expensive purchases he announced that he planned to tell the Duke of Wellington how he had stepped in to prevent the defrauding of the Treasury; who knows, Edward proclaimed to anyone within earshot, the Duke might reward him with a title and public honours. When he later repeated this to his maternal uncle by marriage, James Brookbank, his uncle laughed 'until his sides shook', knowing that his nephew blended ludicrous pretentiousness with an ironic, oblique sense of humour.
Three weeks after the saleroom drama, on 27 June, the staff and servants at Philpot Lane heard a pistol shot in one of the first-floor rooms, where Edward and his mother were conferring. On entering, they were told that in being pulled from Edward's pocket, the weapon had gone off accidentally. Mrs Bywater didn't seem particularly shaken, and wherever the shot had ended up, it wasn't embedded in her.
Three days later Edward consulted Sir William Lawrence, one of the most eminent and fashionable surgeons of the day, at his home, just off Whitehall. This was another maternally unauthorised expenditure. Edward wanted Lawrence to look at his throat, which felt sore and constricted – he was always worried that his celebrated palate would begin to let him down. Edward explained to Lawrence that he thought he might have damaged his throat during ferocious rows with rivals at the June tea sale, and from there went on to tell Lawrence the whole story – his brave stand against the Customs fraud, the opprobrium of the tea trade, the insults, sneers and grimaces in the street. Lawrence found it hard to keep up as Edward veered from subject to subject, speaking rapidly and with an intensity that the topics did not seem to warrant. There was nothing wrong with Edward's throat, Lawrence decided, but he agreed to call in at Philpot Lane a few days later. When Lawrence turned up, Mrs Bywater nobbled him, before he had the chance to see his patient, and told him her own version of events. When Edward was at last alone with the surgeon, he repeated his complaints and asked Lawrence to listen as he grabbed various books and declaimed page after page of poetry to the bemused surgeon, often interrupting himself to open the door to check if there was anyone there.
Edward was in despair. His mother had decided to take back some of the property in Montgomeryshire that she had signed over to him, comprising a number of buildings in the parish of Kerry, near Newtown. Her solicitor was now asking questions about Hodgson & Davies that Edward found impertinent. He also discovered that his mother had contacted Dr Thomas Blundell, one of the various physicians Edward had previously consulted. She told Dr Blundell she was worried about her son's behaviour, and when Blundell turned up at Philpot Lane, he asked Edward if he had ever been guilty of * * *, as the newspapers of the day infuriatingly put it. Later in the Davies case, * * * would be used to refer to both sodomy and masturbation, but it is not known which of the two Blundell was alluding to during this encounter. Sodomy was illegal (in fact, it was still on the statute book as a capital offence); and masturbation was severely censured. Edward was shocked and would later say that he thought Blundell 'a dirty filthy fellow'. Blundell told Mrs Bywater her son had 'a screw loose' but later (unconvincingly) protested that in saying this he had not been referring to his head but his thorax, affecting his lungs and throat.
At last, the dam of Edward's fury burst and he shouted at his mother for having arranged the consultation without asking him first. It was probably then that Edward had an inkling of what she had in store for him.
In July he made a series of panicked visits to friends, relatives and professionals in a wild search for advice, assistance and sympathy. He fled to his aunt and uncle Brookbank in Brixton Hill. Edward had previously written to his aunt that he believed himself protected by a supernatural power, which was always hovering at his shoulder and had informed him that he was destined to be a great man. He was very 'boisterous' the night he arrived, his aunt noted, and when he wandered down to the field at the end of her garden, he became alarmed that passers-by returning from the Epsom Races were staring at him. She also claimed that Edward had told her that his mother wanted to murder him. When Mrs Bywater arrived at her sister's house, he fled.
He turned up at the lodgings of his friend, George Griffiths, a bank clerk, in Margaret Street, north of Oxford Street, apologising for not having seen him for some time, but saying that he had been ill. He pointed to his forehead, explaining that it felt hot inside. When the two men subsequently bickered about who had been the more negligent in keeping in touch, Edward declaimed haughtily: 'Sir, it is beneath the dignity of a citizen to visit anyone in furnished apartments.' 'Nonsense, Davies,' said Griffiths, 'how can you talk so silly?' Whereupon Edward drew his pistol and said, 'Nonsense, sir, nonsense? By God, sir, do you see this?' Griffiths later said this had made him afraid, but that Edward had swiftly put the weapon away and they had chatted for a short time more. Much later – suspiciously later, in fact – Griffiths reported the incident to Mrs Bywater, who insisted that he sign an affidavit stating what had transpired on that evening.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Inconvenient People"
by .
Copyright © 2012 Sarah Wise.
Excerpted by permission of Counterpoint.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements,
A Note on Terminology,
Preface,
1 Being 'Burrowsed',
2 The Attorney-General of all Her Majesty's Madmen,
3 The Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society,
4' Oh Hail, Holy Love!',
5' If I had been poor, they would have left me alone',
6' Gaskell is Single-Patient Hunting',
7 The Woman in Yellow,
8 Juries in Revolt,
9 Dialoguing with the Unseen,
10 'Be sure you don't fall, Georgie!',
Epilogue: The Savage New Century,
Appendices,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Picture Credits,
Index,