Abstract
Thus we prattled away our time till we came in sight of a noble pile of building, which diverted us from our former discourse, and gave my friend the occasion of asking me my thoughts on this magnificent edifice. I told him, I conceived it to be my Lord Mayor’s Palace, for I could not imagine so stately a structure could be designed for any quality inferior. He smiled at my innocent conjecture, and informed me this was Bedlam, an hospital for mad folks. ‘In truth,’ said I, ‘I think they were mad that built so costly a college for such a crack-brained society,’ adding, it was pity so fine a building should not be possessed by such as had a sense of their happiness. ‘Sure,’ said I, ‘it was a mad age when this was raised, and the Chief of the City were in great danger of losing their senses, so contrived it the more noble for their own reception, or they would never have flung away so much money to so foolish a purpose.’ ‘You must consider,’ says my friend, ‘this stands upon the same foundation as the Monument, and the fortunes of a great many poor wretches lie buried in this ostentatious piece of vanity; and this, like the other, is but a monument of the City’s shame and dishonour, instead of its glory. Come let us take a walk in, and view its inside.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Pope, An Essay on Criticism, ll. 297–300, in The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt, London: Methuen, 1963, p. 153.
Fiona Haslam, From Hogarth to Rowlandson: Medicine in Art in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996, pp. 166–7. I am indebted to Dr Haslam’s book for drawing my attention to several of the illustrations discussed in this chapter.
Nikolaus Pevsner, An Outline of European Architecture, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1943 (1963 edn), p. 311.
John Evelyn, The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. William Bray, London: Dent Dutton, 1966, cited in John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century, London: Harper Collins, 1997, p. 10.
See Patricia Allderidge, The Bethlem Hospital Historical Museum: Catalogue, The Board and Governors of The Bethlem Royal Hosiptal and The Maudsley Hospital, 1976, pp. 5, 8.
César de Saussure, A Foreign View of England in the Reign of George I and George II, tr. and ed. Madame Van Muyden, London: John Murray, 1902, pp. 92–3, cited in Porter, Mind-Forg’d Manacles, p. 126.
See Patricia Allderidge, ‘Bedlam: fact or fantasy?’, in The Anatomy of Madness: Essays in the History of Psychiatry, Volume II: Institutions and Society, ed. W.F. Bynum, Roy Porter and Michael Shepherd, London: Tavistock, 1985, p. 23.
Jonathan Andrews and Andrew Scull, Undertaker of the Mind: John Monro and Mad-Doctoring in Eighteenth-Century England, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000, p. 22.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, II.i.78–80, ed. Harold Jenkins, London: Methuen, 1982, p. 234.
Peter Wagner, ‘Representation of Time in Hogarth’s Paintings and Engravings’, in Hogarth: Representing Nature’s Machines, eds David Bindman, Frédéric Ogée and Peter Wagner, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001, p. 104.
See for example Alexander Cruden, The Adventures of Alexander the Corrector, London: Richard Baldwin, for the Author, 1754, p. 23. As a former patient of both James and John Monro, we should, of course, be taking the word of a confined madman in accepting Cruden’s allegation.
Ronald Paulson, Rowlandson: A New Interpretation, London: Studio Vista, 1972, p. 29.
James Boswell, Boswell’s Column, 1777–1783, ed. Margery Bailey, London: William Kimber, 1951, p. 209.
John Woodward, Select Cases, and Consultations, in Physick, London: L. David and C. Reymers, 1757, pp. 242–3.
James Boswell, Boswell: The Ominous Years, 1774–1776, ed. Charles Ryskamp and F.A. Pottle, London: Heinemann, 1963, p. 252.
Peter Tomory, The Life and Art of Henry Fuseli, London: Thames and Hudson, 1972, p. 15.
Henry Fuseli, The Mind of Henry Fuseli: Selections from his Writings, ed. Eudo C. Mason, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1951, p. 69.
See, for example, Richard Reinagle’s The Fair Maria, engraved in 1797, reproduced in Tomory as Plate 193.
Draper Hill, Mr. Gillray the Caricaturist, London: Phaidon, 1965, p. 145.
Copyright information
© 2005 Allan Ingram
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ingram, A., Faubert, M. (2005). ‘The Image of Our Mind’: Seeing and Being Seen. In: Cultural Constructions of Madness in Eighteenth Century Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230510890_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230510890_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-52332-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-51089-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)