Queen Mary and Westfield College London University PhD Thesis ...

Although the 8taff knew 'nothing about him', von Uffenbach found ample satisfaction for his
disappointment in a patient known as 'the Captain', whom he recommended as:
'the most foolish and ludicrous of aH...because he imagined that lie was a Captain and wore
a wooden sword at his side and had severall cock's feathers stuck into his hat. lie wanted to
command the others and did all kinds of tomfoolery...'15t.
This captain seems to be one of the patients depicted in a largely fanciful engraving of the
same year (1710), by Bernard Lens and John Sturt, for the fifth edition of Swift's Tale of a
Tub 152 . Yet the model is so close to the proverbial 'mad-cap' and to that of Ward's 'merry
fellow in a straw cap', who claimed to have 'an army of eagles at his command', that, like most
of the caricatures visitors drew, one doubts its authenticity' 53 . Other notorious curiosities,
like Cromwell's Porter, Daniel; the playwright, Nathaniel Lee; the Cambridge organist, John
Thamar; the naval office clerk, James Carkesse; and the attempted regicide, Margaret Nicholson;
all seem to have been star attractions and to have enticed extra custom to the hospital 154 . The
& Margaret Mare (London, Faber & Faber, 1934), 51. For another instance of patients making the noises of
animals and birds, see The Changeling, iii, iii, Is 190-98, 54.
151 Von Uffenbach, op. cit., 51. Altick gives the erroneous impression that von Uffenbach actually saw this
patient. Altick, Show,, 45.
152 See Byrd, Visits, Plate 61, 53.
see Ward, London Spy, 52. The character probably owes more to a satirical intent to mock the vain
ambitions of the Archduke Charles, later to be the Emperor Charles VI. See John Arbuthnot, The History of
John Ball (London, 1712) (ad.), Alan W. Bower & Robert A. Erickson (Oxford, Clarendon, 1976), ref. 72, 218.
154 For Daniel, see preface of Thomas D'Urfey's, Sir Barnaby Wh,gg (London, 1681); A Satyr in Answer to
the Satyr Against Man in Poetical Recreations (London, 1688), part II, 1.82; Visits from the Shades (London,
1705), part II, 129-41; Matthew Prior, A Dialogae letween Oliver Cromwell and his Porter (London, 1721), in
The Literary works of Matthew Prior, (eds) H. Bunker Wright & Monroe K. Spears (Oxford, Clarendon Press,
1971), vol. I, 655-65 & vol. Ii, 1020-21; Reverend C. Leslie, The Snake in the Grass: or, Satan Transform'd
into an Angel of Light Discovering the Deep and Onsaspected Saltilty which is Coached ander the Pretended
Simplicity of many of the Principal Leaders oJ those People call'd Qaakers (London, 1696), lxxiv, lxxxviii-xcii;
Yonge, Joarnal, 158; O'Donoghue, Bethlehem, 185-7. Daniel was alleged to be 7 feet 6 inches tall, and the model
for Cibber's statue 'raving madness'. Even when visited by Yonge in 1678, he was still 'the most remarkable'
sight amongst the patients. Yonge 'looked into a hole of hi door and beard him pray extempore'; i.e. in the
standard canting style for which the Puritans were renowned. For Lee, see William Wycherley, To NA TH. LEE,
in Bethiem, (who was at once Poet and Actor) complaining, in His Intervals, of the Sense of his Condition; and
that He oaght no more to 6e in Bethlem for Want of Sense, than other Mad Liberlines and Poets abroad, or any
Soler Fools whatever, in The Complete Works of William Wycherley (ad.), Montague Summers (London, The
Nonesuch Press, 1924) vol. III, 233-7; Letter, of Sir George Etherege (ed), Frederick Bracher (Berkeley, Lo
Angeles & London, University of California Press, 1974), ltr to Earl of Dorset, 4 August 1687, 135; Roawell Cray
Ham, Otway and Lee. Biography from a Baroqae Age (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1931), asp. 207-20,
241-2; Brown, Works, 11, ii, 78; Bowman, MS notes to Langbaine; Satyr against the Poets, BM. MS. 162 B. 8
(7317). For Thamar, see Ward, London Spy, 51; Brown, Amasements, 36. For Carkesse, see James Carkesse,
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