PRIVATE BEDLAMS.
“Where the noble mind’s o’erthrown.”
How true is the remark that “the history of the Red and White Houses,” like that of the Red and White Roses, would afford many interesting though appalling particulars were they collected in a detailable form.
“For who to that dread spot consigned,
Amid the maniac’s horrid yell
Has liv’d, and in that den confined,
Could not some secrets of the madhouse tell.”
“Yes! there still live some few who have escaped perpetual torture and confinement, which the soothing care of disinterested friends would have buried alive in those inquisitorial receptacles, but for the acute discernment of the eye of humanity, which accident or curiosity had directed to the spot.
“Of private madhouses there has long been but one prevailing opinion. The generality of them are instituted as a medium of existence by talentless and avaricious individuals, who are better, by far, adapted for the office of turnkeys to Newgate, than for the exercise of such moral and physical means as would appear calculated to restore lost reason. They manage these things much better in Paris; but it is not our intention to enter into particulars as regards the management of these licensed houses of correction in the home department, where every fibre of humanity appears paralysed, where victims are left to linger out their miserable and wretched existence, and to perish by means we know nothing of.” Instances innumerable are on record of the improper treatment of the unhappy persons immured in these dreary abodes; the inquest that sat at the Elephant and Castle, Pancras Road, on the body of a poor woman named Ann Goldstock, alias Coldstock, in the month of August, 1828, who came by her death, under singular circumstances, in the madhouse, otherwise yclep’d the White House at Bethnal Green, kept by one Warburton, cannot have slipped the recollection of all my readers. The case of an unfortunate man of the name of Parker confined in that place for alleged insanity, is also too remarkable to be passed over in silence. My man-servant importuned me to see the poor fellow. I accordingly went to him, and must acknowledge, that after a long interview in which I closely cross-examined him, he gave a statement of his life and transactions, distinguished for its accuracy, minuteness, and consistency. I wish the parties concerned in that affair to recollect, though I have been refused admittance to the unhappy man by one of the understrappers of that place, that I will not let this affair pass unheeded, as I have very little doubt but that I shall be able to bring to justice the knaves who have stripped the poor fellow and his injured family of their property, and who, to screen their villany, have consigned him to a madhouse.
THE END.
LONDON:
MARCHANT, PRINTER, INGRAM-COURT.