Foot-curving, knee-nailing, eye-screwing, and lobster-cracking – all in the troubled mind of James Tilly Matthews
JOHN Haslam’s Illustrations of Madness of 1810, the first book-length account of a single psychiatric case and a classic of the early literature in this field, was inspired by the case of James Tilly Matthews, a London tea merchant who undertook a self-styled peace mission between France and England in 1793.
After the spell in prison that he earned for his troubles, returned to England to warn the Prime Min…