An illustrated poem eulogizing a deceased squirrel written by James Hadfield, imprisoned in Bethlem psychiatric hospital after attempting to assassinate King George III, has gone on public display for the first time. Hadfield’s epitaph for his squirrel friend Jack is being shown alongside other previously unseen works from the Bedlam archives at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind.
Epitaph of my poor Jack. SQUIRREL.
Here are the remains of my poor little Jack
Who, with a little fall, almost broke his back
And I myself was the occasion of that
By letting him be, frigthen’d, by a Cat
I then picked him up, from off the floor;
But he, alas “Never danced a hornpipe more;
And many a time have I laugh’d, to see him so cunningl
To sit and crack the nuts I gave him so funny;
Now in remembrance of his pretty tricks
I have had him stuff’d, that I might not him forget;
And so he is gone; and I must go, as well as him;
And pray God, send I may go, but with little sin;
So here is an end, to my little dancing Jack
That will never more be, frighten’d, by a Cat.
Died Sunday Morning, July 23, 1826.
James Hadfield was a dragoon serving in the infantry Guards under Frederick Augustus, Duke of York and Albany, the second son of King George III, when he was severely wounded fighting against Revolutionary France at the Battle of Lincelles in Flanders in 1793. His suffered eight blows to the head and was soon discharged from the army for insanity, but received a pension. He managed to hold down a job at a silversmith shop, but he increasingly lost his grip on reality and by 1800 he was convinced the end of the world was nigh and he was chosen by God to die for the salvation of mankind.
Not able to kill himself, he decided to do something sure to get him killed: assassinate the King of Great Britain. On May 15th, 1800, he fired his pistol at the King in the Royal Box at the Drury Lane Theatre. He missed. He was immediately tackled and disarmed. When he saw the Duke of York, his former boss, before being dragged off he told him: “God bless your royal highness; I like you very well; you are a good fellow.”
He was tried for treason, and while there was no question he had in fact done the crime, his barrister Thomas Erskine successfully argued that Hadfield was afflicted with religious mania and incurably insane. Even though he was generally well-behaved and capable of clear thinking, a doctor testified to his constant delusions, likely caused by his war wounds. So Hadfield was acquitted on the grounds of insanity. This prompted Parliament to quickly scare up the Criminal Lunatics Act which passed on July 23rd, 1800. The new law, specifically made retroactive so that Hadfield couldn’t just walk away from having shot at the king, required that anyone acquitted of “Treason, Murder, Felony” on the grounds of having been “‘insane at the Time of the Commission of such Offence” shall be “kept in strict custody, in such Place and in such Manner as to the Court shall seem fit, until His Majesty’s Pleasure shall be known.”
The court saw fit to imprison Hadfield in Bethlem Royal Hospital. He spent 14 years at Newgate Prison after a brief escape in 1802, but then returned to Bedlam until his death in 1841. By all accounts he lived a fairly stable life there. He was allowed to keep pets (cats, dog and birds, not just squirrels) and became something of an asylum celebrity. He traded his poems and drawings to his many visitors in exchange for snuff and tobacco. Doctors’ notes that have survived described him as being calm and steady in person, with his old delusions manifesting themselves in his writing instead.
Hadfield’s assassination attempt would have long-ranging effects on the way insanity was defined legally. Before the passage of the Criminal Lunatics Act, people who pleaded not guilty on the grounds of insanity had to prove conclusively that they could not tell good from evil, that they were devoid of all understanding of their crime. This was very difficult to prove and there were only 100 insanity pleas between 1740 and 1800, half of which resulted in acquittals. The acquitted were handled in different ways — sometimes released to family, sometimes locked up in mental hospitals — but by strict point of law, anyone acquitted could not be detained for a determined length of time or indefinitely, no matter how much a threat they might be to themselves or others, or even to His Majesty the King.
Hadfield’s sentence caused the first state funding of a “criminal lunatic” facility at Bedlam, and when Bethlem opened a new facility at Southwark in 1814, they expanded the state-supported criminal lunatic wards into dedicated male and female criminal lunatic wings. Other hospitals and asylums also got funding for housing criminal lunatics.
James Hadfield made several copies of his lament for Jack that are preserved in the Bedlam archives. One copy is on regular display at the museum, but this second version, which he illustrated beautifully with a portrait of Jack eating a nut next to a palatial cage full of canaries, has never been shown before. It can now be seen Between Sleeping and Waking: Hospital Dreams and Visions, which features works by former patients from the hospital archives.
* This article was originally published here
