Incognito - But Not Through Choice

[Daft Bat]

Back in the day, folk who were patients in asylums were usually recorded in censuses just by their initials.

Such was the case in the 1861 census for the poet, John Clare, who was born today, 13th July in 1793. The census record for the Priory of St Andrew, Northampton (aka the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum) shows John aged 67 – the giveaway for this being him was that his birthplace was recorded: Helpston(e), which is just north of Peterborough.

John spent the last 23 years of his life in the asylum under the care of Thomas Octavius Pritchard, who encouraged and helped him to write – including Clare’s most well-known poem “I am”.

I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes—
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed …

Sad reflections on his life.

 

[TonyV]

My research into my paternal family uncovered a sad story about a great great uncle (as I thought at the time) who was sent to Northampton General Lunatic Asylum from the workhouse at Wellingborough after a life of frequent petty crime resulting in sentences to hard labour in various jails in the East Midlands. While in the workhouse he was described as 'epileptic', which may have been caused by severe beatings by his father as a child (and for which the father was jailed). His extreme childhood poverty meant that he was a very small man but he was often in fights with other inmates and staff where he usually ended up on the losing end. The Asylum was converted to a general hospital for wounded soldiers during WWI and he and the other inmates were transferred to other asylums -in his case to one near Nottingham. He contracted TB there; quite common I believe, and died in 1917.