A description of the crimes and horrors in the interior of Warburton's private mad-house at Hoxton : commonly called Whitmore House.

  • Mitford, John, 1782-1831.
Date:
[1825?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A description of the crimes and horrors in the interior of Warburton's private mad-house at Hoxton : commonly called Whitmore House. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    I believe a man named Sutherland is now keeper to the Clerk of the Pells; whether he is a relation of the Sutherland, another private mad-house proprietor, I do not know, nor is it of any im- portance to the facts above stated. THE MARQUIS OF TULUBARDINE Is treated in the same way. It does not cost .flSO per annnm to keep him, and the Duke of Atholpays Tommy more than £1000; and thus it is that the plunderers of the public are, in thtir turn, plundered by Warburton and his myrmidons. To advert again to the ladies, for I profess no regularity in my account, giving what first springs to my recollection; in fact, all the cases are so bad, that it is impossible to select one less atrocious than another. The females, if there is a slight shade of difference, are worse used than the males ; they are treated, even if they were really insane, with unnecessary harshness, an in- judicious exercise of the strong arm of brutal authority, where the gentle voice of suggestion or request would have been cheer- fully obeyed. Mr. Warburton is the framer of this discipline, and if he is not fully aware of the vices of his servants, more shame for him ; but he was a keeper himself, and must know their proceedings, and has not ignorance to plead in extenuation of his faults; he may try to sneak into a little credit, by cringing and smirking on the side of power, at the Pitt Club, and elsewhere ; he may hug him- self in his own contemptible esteem—I care not for him—he knows that I possess the whole clue to the labyrinth of his iniquity, and he knows I have not written one word but what carries with it matter of fact. MRS. WAKEFIELD, The authoress of many good books for little children, is fre- quently an inmate of Whitmore House; when she recovers, and the paroxysm goes off, she returns to society, but wheu she is ill they (the keepers) rob her of all she possesses. I remember—can I ever forget it?—when they stripped her in the cellar of all her ap- parel, which was new, and sent her up naked, all but her shift, into the parlour, pretending she had thrown them down the ne- cessary; anew dress was ordered, and the keeperesses divided her garments amongst them. liiis brutal mode of robbery is frequently resorted to by those