The Lunatic Asylum Nightmare

Goya, Courtyard with Lunatics

Loretta reports:

The nightmare theme of a sane person being locked up in a lunatic asylum appears in fiction again and again. This is because it touched a chord. For all too many, especially women, this was a grim reality.

My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum, which I came upon via the Public Domain Review, describes in disturbing detail a man’s experience in the Victorian era. For a woman’s point of view, you might want to look at Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in a Mad-House.

In the fictional world, the theme is prominent in Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White.

"I suppose that we most of us...quietly comforted ourselves with the reflection that 'in the nineteenth century' (an expression which is used as a sort of talisman, apparently, like the 'Briton' of Palmerston's day) such things are impossible.  It requires a personal experience of their amenities, such as fell to my lot, seriously to believe that the adventures of a novel may be transferred to the pages of an 'article," and be as strange--and true. Villainous conspiracies, for personal motive, to set the lunacy law in motion, are rare enough, I do not doubt. But the law favours them. What is not rare, I doubt even less, is the imprisonment in these fearful places of people who are perfectly sane, but suffering from some temporary disorder of the brain, the most delicate and intricate part of all the mechanism, and the least understood; and if asylums are a sad necessity for the really mad,—and even that I cannot help doubting; for from what I have seen I believe that they require a much more loving and more direction personal supervision than they can get, poor people,--for the nervous sufferers who are not mad they are terrible."—My experiences in a Lunatic Asylum, by a Sane Patient (1879)

Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum

Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on a caption link will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed. And, just so you know, if you order a book through one of my posts, I might get a small share of the sale.

Newgate Prison and the Old Old Bailey

Loretta reports:

In June 2017, I sat in two different visitors’ galleries, in two different courtrooms of the Old Bailey,  the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, and watched the proceedings. This is not the same Old Bailey I wrote about in Dukes Prefer Blondes, though I noticed similarities in the way the courtroom was laid out, which will be useful the next time I bring criminals into my fiction.

Part of the present building stands where Newgate Prison once did, on the street named Old Bailey. Not many traces of the old building remain. There's a door in the Museum of London, and other bits in the U.S. Since the previous building wasn’t demolished until 1902, though, quite a few photographs are available, along with the Regency-era images by George Shepherd, Thomas Rowlandson, and the like. It took a bit of puzzling to determine from pictures, descriptions, and maps, which was the prison and which was the courtroom, but that might just be my brain malfunction. If you’re looking at an old map, the latter appears as “Session House,” and it ought to be perfectly clear to normal people.

I knew a gloomy walkway connected them. I’d read descriptions, which helped me visualize scenes in the book. But at the time I was writing the story, I couldn’t find images of this passageway. Recently, though, my trusty tome, The Queen’s London, provided the image you see below.

In case one doesn't already feel sufficiently low-spirited at the prospect of being hanged, the passageway will do the trick. It’s the English version of the Bridge of Sighs—that last walk from freedom, possibly from life. Please do read the cheery description under the photo.

You can read the description that accompanies the Ackermann plate (above left) here. Note that this image was done from the other end of Old Bailey, with the Sessions House in front.

Black & white photographs are from my copy of The Queen's London.



Please click on images to enlarge.

Lord Rivers Drowns in the Serpentine—Was It an Accident?

Lord Rivers as a boy

Loretta reports:

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, was addicted to gambling. The first Lord Holland’s sons ran up enormous gambling debts. Beau Brummell fled England to escape his. A lot of that going around.

The third Baron Rivers is another example I happened on. The trail started with the following in La Belle Assemblée for March 1831:

“The first act of the Duke of Sussex, on being appointed to the Rangership of Hyde-park, has been to give directions for the placing an adequate protection against the spot where the late Lord Rivers lost his life."

This was intriguing. Who was Lord Rivers and how did he die?

Wikipedia’s short entry only tantalized, sending me to the 1 April 1831 Gentleman’s Magazine obituary.

LORD RIVERS.
Jan. 23 Drowned in the Serpentine river, aged 53, the Right Hon. Horace William Pitt, third Baron Rivers, of Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire (1802).
 ... As Mr. Horace Beckford he was for many years a distinguished member of the haut ton; and it was only after his succeeding to the title on the death of his maternal uncle, July 20, 1828, that he took the name of Pitt ... .

“Lord Rivers was first missed on the evening of Sunday Jan. 23 ... On Tuesday the Serpentine river was dragged, and in the afternoon his Lordship's body was found at the east end, near the waterfall.”

At the inquest, his steward and a footman insisted he’d been in good spirits: He was nearsighted and must have fallen into the river by accident. The superintendent of the Humane Society's Receiving House said the footpath there was so dangerous that ten people fell into the river on a recent foggy night.

“The Jury returned this verdict: ‘Found drowned near the public path at the head of the Serpentine River, considered very dangerous for want of a rail or fence, where many persons have lately fallen in.’—The rail has been since erected by direction of the Duke of Sussex, the new Ranger of Hyde Park.

Subsequently to the inquest ..., there has been considerable discussion in the newspapers regarding the cause of the occurrence; and it has been stated, with what truth we cannot say, that when the body was taken out of the water, his Lordship's hat was secured with a handkerchief under his chin, and that his umbrella was found on the bank, both which circumstances are considered indicative that his immersion was intentional; and it is added that on the Saturday night he had lost considerable sums at a gaming-house; and that this passion for play had for some years so far possessed him, that his uncle bequeathed to him only 4000l. a year, leaving the bulk of his property, amounting to 40,000l a year, to trustees for the benefit of his son, the present Peer.”

Nigel Cox, Serpentine Waterfall

It’s important to remember that suicide, being self-murder, was a capital offense. One could be tried and hanged for the attempt, and a suicide’s property was forfeit to the Crown. Up to a certain point in the early 19th C, those who’d committed suicide were buried at midnight at a crossroads without the offices of clergy. This is why coroner’s juries tended to find the deaths accidental or, when this was impossible, the victim of unsound mind.

Image: A print of the “youthful portrait of Mr. Horace Beckford, at full length in a Vandyke costume, painted by R. Cosway, R.A. and engraved in stipple by John Conde, 1792", courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Photo of Serpentine Waterfall by Nigel Cox. Another image here.

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The Execution Bell at St. Sepulchre-Without-Newgate

Loretta reports:

Though my book Dukes Prefer Blondes, with its barrister hero, was published last year, my interest in the 19th C English criminal justice system has by no means diminished. During my stay in London, I’d planned to visit many of the sites mentioned in the story and look for inspiration for a future story. My husband and I started the investigation with a London Walk titled “Crime and Punishment.” Our guide on this occasion was Richard III (no, not that one: this was not a ghost walk).

Along with many other crime-associated sites, some of which I’ll write about eventually, Richard III took us to the Church of St. Sepulchre Without Newgate.

Standing so close to Newgate Prison and the Old Bailey, the church featured in public executions, and its bells tolled on the fatal day.

The night before was rather more macabre. Round about midnight, the St. Sephulchre’s clerk would travel across the street through a tunnel, to stand outside the condemned prisoner’s cell. There the clerk would ring the handbell pictured here, and recite to the prisoner the following comforting ditty:

All you that in the condemned hold do lie,
Prepare you, for to-morrow you shall die;
Watch all, and pray, the hour is drawing near
That you before the Almighty must appear;
Examine well yourselves, in time repent,
That you may not to eternal flames be sent.
And when St. Sepulchre's bell to-morrow tolls,
The Lord above have mercy on your souls.
Past twelve o'clock!

St. Sepulchre Watch-House

There seems to be some disagreement about when this practice ended. The plaque in the church says it “died out in the early part of the 19th Century.” The London Encyclopedia tells us it ended in 1744.

The church was deemed to need a watch-house, to deter grave-robbing and, possibly, escapes. What we see today is a complete rebuild of the original 18th century structure, which was destroyed in WWII.

You can read more about the church here at the London Historians blog.

All images: Photo copyright © 2017 Walter M. Henritze III

Wills and Married Women in the 1800s

Loretta reports:

Certain of my early 1800s characters—the heroines, usually—will refer in some way to their lack of legal power. Yes, we know they couldn’t vote. But it’s hard for us to grasp just how little control they had over their lives. This excerpt from Tomlins’s Law Dictionary, 1835 edition, dealing with wills, is only one of many I could present. A glance at Caroline Norton’s situation offers several examples of the difficulties women faced.

Even Queen Victoria believed she ought to submit to her husband’s will…to a point. (For an eye-opening, beautifully written exploration of that marriage, I recommend Gillian Gill’s We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals).

Married women & wills

Married women & wills

Image: Rowlandson, “The Wedding,” from The English Dance of Death 1815

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Forged Banknotes in the Regency Era

£1 Bank Note 1814

Loretta reports:

In researching Dukes Prefer Blondes, I spent some time looking up criminal cases. I was struck by the number of prosecutions for coining and forgery. That was why the short entry (shown below) in Hone’s Every-day Book about forged notes caught my attention.

I found an explanation at The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913.

Forgeries 1818

“Between 1797 and 1821, the period known as the ‘restriction’, new, primarily copper coins and, most importantly, inexpensively produced £1 and £2 notes were brought into circulation. The poor quality of these notes led to a spate of forgeries, which in turn led to a high number of prosecutions led by the Bank [of England] itself, for both forgery and uttering forged notes.”

If you’re curious about what old bank notes looked like, you can scroll down this page.

Bank of England 1809

You can look at a forged note from 1936 here.

And the Old Bailey website also offers a history of money & what it bought.

Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Newgate Prison and Its Inmates in September 1819

Newgate Prison—west view

Loretta reports:

My recent book, Dukes Prefer Blondes, features a barrister (trial lawyer) who’s familiar with Newgate Prison and the Old Bailey. As I researched the book, I was already aware that, during the Regency era (some years before my story) England had an extremely high number of capital offenses. According to Albion’s Fatal Tree, “The most recent account suggests that the number of capital statutes grew from about 50 to over 200 between the years 1688 and 1820.”*

As a consequence, we tend to believe that people were being hanged by the droves. What I learned was, people were hanged, yes, including children, but more often, mercy was sought and granted, and the sentence changed to transportation or prison. This may explain the rather shocking nil in the category “Convicts under sentence of death.” You will notice that, even though more men than women were convicted of crimes, more women were sentenced to transportation. At the moment, I can’t explain that one.

*Figures based on Sir Leon Radzinowicz, A History of English Criminal Law and its Administration from 1750.

Newgate Statistics 1819

Newgate Statistics 1819

An 1828 Guide to London Pitfalls & Scams

Doctor Syntax Overboard

Loretta reports:

In my Endnotes to Dukes Prefer Blondes, I quote from John Bee’s A Living Picture of London, 1828, which is well worth exploring.

To begin with, there’s the full title:

A LIVING PICTURE OF LONDON FOR 1828 

AND

STRANGER’S GUIDE

THROUGH THE STREETS OF THE METROPOLIS;

SHEWING THE FRAUDS, THE ARTS, THE SNARES AND WILES OF ALL 

DESCRIPTIONS OF ROGUES, THAT EVERY

WHERE ABOUND; 

WITH

SUITABLE ADMONITIONS, PRECAUTIONS, AND ADVICE HOW TO 

AVOID OR DEFEAT THEIR ATTEMPTS; 

Interspersed with 

SKETCHES OF COCKNEY MANNERS, LIFE, SOCIETY,

AND CUSTOMS;

And supported throughout by numerous

CASES, ANECDOTES, AND PERSONAL ADVENTURES. 

By JON BEE, Esq.

AUTHOR OF A DICTIONARY OF THE VARIETIES OF LIFE, &c. 

~

To which is appended, the Author's former 

“HINTS FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE POLICE;”

WITH FURTHER SUGGESTIONS, FACTS, AND REMEDIES.

The short excerpt below, from the chapter about what to expect when you get off the boat, is a fine example. You can find the “regulated fares of watermen” here.

Out-door Delinquencies

Jon Bee, A Living Picture of London, for 1828, and Stranger's Guide.

Image, possibly by Robert Cruikshank, from Doctor Syntax Through London, “Doctor Syntax Shoots London Bridge & Pops Overboard.”

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The Old Bailey

Rowlandson, “The Old Bailey”

Loretta reports:

Several scenes in Dukes Prefer Blondes occur in or around the Old Bailey. Since it’s rather different now from what it was in the early 1800s, I highly recommend that Nerdy History Persons visit the Proceedings of the Old Bailey online, where I researched not only the building and environs, but my criminals and court cases.

From the intro to the building's history:

“The Old Bailey, also known as Justice Hall, the Sessions House, and the Central Criminal Court, was named after the street in which it was located, just off Newgate Street and next to Newgate Prison, in the western part of the City of London. Over the centuries the building has been periodically remodelled and rebuilt in ways which both reflected and influenced the changing ways trials were carried out and reported.”

You can read more about its evolution here, as well as pinpoint the Sessions House (where trials were held) and Newgate Prison, conveniently located next door.

The color image above of an Old Bailey trial is a couple of decades before the time of the story, but according to the website, the “basic design of the courtroom remained the same.”

Here’s an interesting historical detail from the Old Bailey site:

“Before the introduction of gas lighting in the early nineteenth century a mirrored reflector was placed above the bar, in order to reflect light from the windows onto the faces of the accused. This allowed the court to examine their facial expressions assess the validity of their testimony. In addition, a sounding board was placed over their heads in order to amplify their voices.”

By the time of the George Cruikshank illustration of 1848, the gas lights were in and the reflector was gone—although I’d think they could still use the sounding board.

Images:
Thomas Rowlandson, “The Old Bailey,” from Ackermann’s Microcosm of London, Vol 2, courtesy Internet Archive.

George Cruikshank, “From the bar of the gin shop to the bar of the Old Bailey it is but one step,” from The Drunkard’s Children (1848), Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

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Highway Robbery in Kent, 1811

Dr Syntax Stopt by Highwaymen

Loretta reports:

The way this is written, the robbery seems to have been a relatively civilized encounter. The robber, for instance, did not shoot his victim upon learning he had an undesirable watch and insufficient money. And nobody bothered Mrs. Atkins.

~~~

 Kent

     As Mr. and Mrs. Atkins, of Maidstone, were returning from London, on Thursday, Nov. 14, in their single horse chaise, just as they had reached the 15th mile-stone, corner of Birch Wood, about half past one o’clock in the afternoon, a man came out of a gap-way on the left-hand side of the road from London, and without saying a word, seized the horse by the head. Mr. Atkins immediately stood up in the chaise, and said he would not be robbed, and began to flog the man with his chaise-whip, in hopes of making him let go his horse’s head, upon which he drew his right hand from behind him and presented a horse-pistol. At that instant a companion of his (whom Mr. Atkins had not seen before) made his appearance, and going round the horse to Mr. Atkins’s side, demanded his money. Mr. A. finding his resistance useless, gave him four guineas; not satisfied with that, the robber said you have more. Mr. A. replied, yes, I have a little silver, and gave him to the amount of 10 s. The robber afterwards demanded his watch, which being in a tortoise-shell case, said he would be d—d if he would have, and repeatedly questioned him as to his having more money; but on Mr. A. assuring him he had not, he was suffered to proceed. The man who seized the horse never spoke a word all the time, but held the horse with his left hand and the pistol with his right; the other, who took the money, said, it was distress drove them to it. Neither of them attempted to rob Mrs. Atkins, nor did they say any thing to her. —La Belle Assemblée, Volume 2

Image: Thomas Rowlandson, "Dr. Syntax Stopt by Highwaymen," from The Tour of Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque.

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From the archives: The Bridewell Pass-Room

Loretta reports:

In connection with the release of the audio edition of The Last Hellion, I'm offering a slightly revised version of an early blog post. The Bridewell Pass-Room plays an important role in the story.

~~~

This illustration of the Bridewell (one of London’s prisons) Pass-Room comes from Rudolph Ackermann’s The Microcosm of London, which was printed in three volumes from 1808 to 1810.  You can read about this splendid publication at the University of London’s Senate House Library site and at the Eighteenth Century Reading Room.  Wikimedia Commons has all or most of the illustrations posted and the Internet Archive has Vol 1, Vol 2, and Vol 3), but my favorites are the large-scale, very sharp images at Spitalfields Life.

Many of you will recognize immediately the work of Thomas Rowlandson.  His collaborator Augustus Pugin drew the building interiors and exteriors and Rowlandson, basically, put the people in them.  I used this print of the Bridewell Pass-Room,* as I so often use Rowlandson and his contemporaries, to create a scene in a book.  In this case, I sent the heroine of The Last Hellion to Bridewell on a rescue mission. 

From the Microcosm:  “The annexed print gives an accurate and interesting view of this abode of wretchedness, the PASS-ROOM.  It was provided by a late act of Parliament, that paupers, claiming settlements in distant parts of the kingdom, should be confined for seven days previous to their being sent of to their respective parishes; and this is the room appointed by the magistracy of the city for one class of miserable females.**  The characters are finely varied, the general effect broad and simple, and the perspective natural and easy.”

From the Introduction to Fiona St. Aubyn’s Ackermann’s Illustrated London (a modern, shorter edition which contains plates and excerpts from the Microcosm): “Ackermann kept a check on Rowlandson’s more outrageous drawings, and made him change an unmistakably pregnant woman in the preliminary drawing of the Bridewell print to a less obvious condition in the final version.”

*See pp 92-97 of the Microcosm online.
**single mothers

A London Policeman's Work in the 1830s

Peeler

Loretta reports:

We usually think of police as catching criminals, and certainly London in the 1830s had an ample supply of crime  But these statistics show another aspect of the work during the early days of the Metropolitan Police, very much in keeping with their mission at this time: preventing crime. And who knew they performed so many rescues?

Police Statistics

Police statistics

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Convict Ship Statistics 1826

The Discovery as a prison ship

Loretta reports:

Some months ago, I offered crime statistics for 1830s London.

One surprising statistic was the low number of executions.  If you look at the original sentences, you see that hundreds of people were sentenced to death, for small crimes like stealing a loaf of bread or a handkerchief.  However, very few of those convicted were hanged.  A number would be pardoned, but in the majority of cases, the sentences were reduced, sometimes to a prison term, and sometimes to transportation to Australia. 

But first the convicts would spend time on a prison hulk. If you’ve read Dickens’s Great Expectations, you’ve encountered the hulks and their denizens.  Here’s a set of statistics from the February 1826 Annual Register.

Image: The Discovery as a Prison Ship at Deptford.  Launched as a 10 gun sloop at Rotherhithe in 1789, it served as a convict hulk 1808-12 and 1820-34.

Stolen Bodies in 1826

Resurrectionists at work

Loretta reports:

In the days before x-rays (near the turn of the 20th century), the only way to see what was inside the human body was to cut it open and actually look inside, preferably after death.  As Judith Flanders points out in The Invention of Murder, “medical schools officially used only the corpses of executed criminals for dissection.”  The trouble was, there weren’t enough dead criminals to keep up with the demand.  Enterprising individuals started digging up the recently interred from graveyards and selling the bodies to anatomy lecturers.  Desperate for fresh corpses, the latter didn’t ask awkward questions.

What I didn’t realize until reading Ms. Flanders’s book was, this was only “semi-illegal (‘semi’ because dead bodies in law belonged to no one; resurrectionists could be charged only with stealing grave clothes).” The info comes as part of her introduction to the Burke and Hare case of the late 1820s.*

My excerpt from The Gentleman’s Magazine (Volume 96, Part 2; Volume 140, 1826) is shortly before Burke & Hare, and the “friend of anatomical pursuits" is a lot more finicky about how the bodies are obtained than medical schools were.

Resurrectionists

Image: Hablot Knight Browne, Resurrectionists at work, accompanying the story of John Holmes and Peter Williams, whipped for stealing dead bodies in 1777, from The chronicles of crime; or, The new Newgate calendar, being a series of memoirs and anecdotes of notorious characters who have outraged the laws of Great Britain from the earliest period to 1841 (later ed. 1887)

*More here.

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Crime in 1830s London

Oliver Twist scene

Loretta reports:

Isabella and I were talking recently about the differences in London crime fighting in the times of our respective books.   One of the things I’ve found so interesting about the mid-1830s is the evolution of London’s police.

The Metropolitan Police came into existence in 1829, in an unfriendly environment.  In 1830, when the first policeman was killed trying to break up a drunken fight, the coroner’s verdict was justifiable homicide.  The history of the force

Crime statistics 1838

is fascinating—and I’m likely to acquire way too many books on the subject—but for today, I only wanted to give you an idea of what they were dealing with. 

Crime statistics 1834-39

Some readers may be surprised at the number of executions.  Others may be unfamiliar with the name of the penal colony.  New South Wales I was aware of.  But I had to look up Norfolk Island.


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