A Visionary Madness: The Case of James Tilly Matthews and the Influencing Machine

by Mike Jay

Book Overview

Confined in Bedlam in 1797 as an incurable lunatic, James Tilly Matthews is one of the most bizarre case studies in the annals of psychiatry. Often cited as the first thorough case study of what we would today call paranoid schizophrenia, Matthews drew intricate diagrams of the "influencing machine" that he believed to be reading and controlling his mind. But his case was even stranger than his doctors realized: many of the incredible conspiracies...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1583947175
• ISBN13: 9781583947173
• Release Date: January 2014
• Publisher: North Atlantic Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

An intriguing true 'whodunnit' mystery

James Tilly Matthews lived in London in the late 1700s and was a respected Welsh tea merchant who intended to preserve the peace of an increasingly dangerous city out of control in its conflicts with Paris. Arrested and sent to a mental hospital for his accusation of a lord, Matthews became convinced his mind was being controlled by a secret machine called an 'air loom' hidden in a London basement and run by a gang of revolutionaries: Air Loom Gang sets out to pinpoint the political foundations of his 'madness' in an intriguing true 'whodunnit' mystery

Most Fascinating History

The Air-Loom Gang by Mike Jay is a book about the most incredible events. It is about one James Tilly Matthews who was declared insane for his beliefs about treason at the highest levels of the British Government during the French Revolutionary/Napoleonic period. As it turns out, Matthews was actually right to some extent and as a former spy, was in a good position to be able to determine if there really was treasonous activities in the British government at the time. Matthews's case became a cause clebre and he was eventually released from the insane asylum and eventually started an architecture magazine and even submitted plans for an insane asylum. This is an excellent book dealing with a most fascinating episode in British history.

Madness with Meaning

Any psychiatrist has treated patients who thought their minds and wills were being controlled from the outside, perhaps from mysterious rays or hidden machines. This cannot sound so strange now as it must have a couple of centuries ago. We may not be used to mind control of that type, but we live in a world powered by invisible rays and hidden machines. When James Tilly Matthews entered the famous hospital for the insane, London's Bedlam in 1797, his complaints must have sounded bizarre indeed. He told his doctor that he, and many of the powerful in England and France, were being manipulated by a mysterious gang who were using invisible gases and rays from an unimaginably complex machine called an air loom, and that his thoughts were being altered and controlled and his body was being painfully punished. Matthews's bizarre story is the subject of a surprising and novel-like history, _The Air Loom Gang: The Strange and True Story of James Tilly Matthews and his Visionary Madness_ (Four Walls Eight Windows) by Mike Jay. What is especially peculiar is that although Matthew's ideas were clearly delusional, his complaints stemmed from real persecutions he was made to undergo. As the old joke says, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.Matthews was a wholesale tea dealer who wound up shuttling between Britain and revolutionary France with a peace proposal. It is not surprising that Matthews had little effect; but it is surprising that at the time of the Terror, all he had to endure on the French side was a spell in a French Revolutionary prison. In 1796, after his return to England, he entered the public viewing area of the House of Commons, and yelled "Treason!" into the hall. This got him into Bedlam, and he was to be incarcerated for the rest of his life. His rooms were unheated, he would have straw to sleep on, and for some years he would be chained to his bed. It is quite possible that pummeled first by peculiarities of world events and then by the cruelties of incarceration as a lunatic that he began weaving contemporary ideas about pneumatics, electricity, and Mesmer's animal magnetism into a widespread delusional explanation of just how he got persecuted into such a position. We know about his delusions in detail because in charge of him was the apothecary John Haslam, and Matthews was Haslam's star patient. Jay shows that the delusions can possibly be seen as Matthews's response to persecution, with Haslam as co-creator.This is a tangled tale, expertly told. There are parts of it that are deeply mysterious, and for which there is no documentation, only speculation; how Matthews came to be running secret diplomacy, and who was paying him to do so, and what he really was doing, can only be guessed at. The gripping story of Matthews coming to delusional terms with his predicament is actually moving, and his eventual (if posthumous) triumph over Haslam is convincing. Best of all Jay has gone a long way in