James Tilly Matthews

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James Tilly Matthews was a London tea merchant with republican sympathies who became embroiled in a self-styled peace mission between France and England in 1793. He became ignored, then jailed, by the French. He returned to England to warn the Prime Minister that teams of "magnetic spies" had infiltrated England and were preparing to use 'air looms' (a type of mind control machine that used "animal magnetism" and mesmerism) to overthrow the government.

Matthews also believed he was subject to control by the air loom, which he believed was operated by the sinister 'air loom gang' consisting of seven members led by a man called "Bill, or the King". He was convinced that the gang were trying to destroy him by using "torture-at-a-distance" which included torments such as "foot-curving, lethargy-making, spark-exploding, knee-nailing, burning out, eye-screwing" and other fantastical effects.

John Haslam's illustration of James Tilly Matthews' Air Loom

After shouting 'treason' at the Home Office minister Lord Liverpool, in the House of Commons, he was arrested. By now a pauper and apparently unreasonably claiming to have been involved in high level affairs of the state, he was admitted to Bedlam psychiatric hospital in 1797. His family argued for many years for his release. Two distinguished physicians, Drs Birkbeck and Clutterbuck, subsequently declared him completely sane, in opposition to the opinion of the doctors in Bedlam. Family and friends took the case to court, whereupon it became unclear whether Matthews was in fact being held at the personal request of the Home Office minister, Lord Liverpool, rather than due to his mental condition. In some ways it could be argued that Matthews could have been an early political prisoner.

In 1810 John Haslam, the apothecary at Bedlam, decided to publish a book entitled Illustrations of Madness: Exhibiting a Singular Case of Insanity, And a No Less Remarkable Difference in Medical Opinions: Developing the Nature of An Assailment, And the Manner of Working Events; with a Description of Tortures Experienced by Bomb-Bursting, Lobster-Cracking and Lengthening the Brain. Embellished with a Curious Plate. Haslam believed his book would demonstrate both Matthews' insanity and the laughable state of medical understanding of madness.

The book was the first full-length study of a single psychiatric patient in medical history and has become a classic in the medical literature.

Matthews was also important in the history of psychiatry for more practical reasons. During his involuntary confinement he took part in a competition to draw plans for the rebuilding of the new Bethlem hospital. The drawings used to build the new hospital show some features proposed by Matthews.

James Tilly Matthews was eventually released from Bedlam and transferred to a private asylum run by a Mr Fox, in Hackney, where he died in 1815.

Although it is impossible to make a unequivocal diagnosis of a long-dead person, Matthews' description of his torment by the "Air Loom Gang" reads as a classic example of paranoid delusions brought on as part of a psychotic episode. From this, it can be concluded that his disorder was most likely schizophrenia, although all retrospective diagnosises should be treated with caution.

It should also be noted that while Haslam kept notes on Matthews, Matthews kept notes on Haslam and his treatment in Bethlem. This formed part of the evidence looked at by a Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1815. The findings of this committee led to the dismissal of Haslam and reform of the treatment of patients in the Bethlem Hospital.

Fictional representations of Matthews

Greg Hollingshead's 2004 novel, Bedlam concerns the changing relationship between John Haslam and Matthews and is narrated in first-person from the perspective of Haslam, Matthews and Matthews's wife.

Alex Varley Winter's theatrical adaptation of Haslam's Illustrations of Madness presents James's life history through the perspective of the "Air Loom Gang" and focuses primarily on the justifications and problems with compromising state security for liberty of the individual.

See also

External links and references

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