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

one's own property was even less comprehensible, and, as Macdonald has admirably described,
full of dangerous signification. Macdonald quite rightly emphasised the importance of dress in
this period as a symbol of social status and civilisation; how profound and irrational an ab-
negation of that status and civilisation was conveyed by those who tore or cast off their own
clothing; how deeply nakedness and dishevelled attire was associated with lunacy 226. Widow
Davies was deemed dangerously insane and transferred from Bridewell to Bethlem in 1638 be-
cause she 'doth teare her cloathes off her backe and soc misuse those that come about her that
none will take upon them to keepe her since Elizabeth Pinfold was taken from her' 227. For the
poor, of course, clothing was a valuable resource of subsistence, preserving them from the winter
cold and illness, and a commodity that might be bartered or exchanged, regularly being pawned
in situations of necessity. Its destruction could be seen as little more than a senseless waste.
Madmen or mad-women who destroyed or threw away their clothing, were conceived as aban-
doning all distinction from the beast; indeed, lunacy was often depicted as blending with wanton
sexuality. In denying their covering, the mad were seen to have denied the distinguishing cloak
of reason; and their mental disorder was often spoken of in metaphors of material deprivation, as
a denuding of intellect, a stripping of their mental faculties. Yet nakedness was also a powerful
and damaging affront, provoking embarrassment and shock to both family and strangers, an
outward manifestation of infirmity that could not easily be hidden, and contemporaries often
deeply lamented the embarrassment their insane kith and kin caused them in terms of their
'exposing themselves' and the family to others 228 . Patients were occasionally those who had
damaged or destroyed the property in which they had previously been lodged, while Bethiem
had lost this shop, & was lodging with a Thomas Martin, in St. Mary Woolnoth, whose churchwarden attempted
to procure employment for him by obtaining hi! admission to the Society of Porters. In 1692, however, he was
passed to St. Botoiph Billingagate (a year prior to hi. admission to the Sodety), where he fell behind in his rent
of a lodging house in Botolph Lane. Bates & his family had, in fact, been passed to Bishopsgate subsequently,
from Billingegate, while he was still in prison for this debt, & after these parishes & St. George Botolph Lane,
had disputed over his settlement, the Bates's being once again a burden on the parish rates. He was admitted
to Bethiem c9 Aug. 1693, but may have had a previous spell in Bethlem a decade earlier, a Henry Bates being
discharged on 4 May 1683. See Gidhall MSS 4525/14, fols 98-101, 133-5; 4525/15, fols 91, 94-100, 128 & 198;
951/2, 1692-4 churchwardens' accounts; & 2836,12, 19 March 1693; London Sessions Minstea GLRO MS SM63,
5 May 1693, & London Sessions Papers, for 1693; BAR, fol. 4.
226 Macdonald, 'Popular beliefs about mental disorder', 154-5.
227 BCGM, 22 Aug. 1638, fol. 193. See, also, case of Joseph Read, a 9 year old boy, described as 'very
mischievous will not wear any Cloaths', & admitted to Bethiem at the request of his lather in 1776; i&id, 12 Dec.
1776, fol. 545.
228 See e.g. Andrewe, 'In her vapours', IIsst. Psp., 135 & 141, note 82.
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