The Virginia Gazette

The following were the principal facts that came out in evidence on the trial of a keeper of a private mad house, in the court of King's Bench: The prosecutrix in this cause had, it seems, for many years, lived upon very indifferent terms with her husband; in June 1770, she swore the peace against him, quitted his house, went to that of a friend, and took her child with her: she had not, however, been many days absent, before her husband (from whom it does not appear she concealed the place of her residence) fetched the child away. About three weeks after a neighbour informed her that her husband was on the point of breaking up house. Alarmed on account of her child, as well as for her own future support, she prevailed upon an attorney to accompany her to her late dwelling-house, in order to enter into some agreement with her husband relative to both: but as soon as he got her in his power, he dismissed the attorney, and detaining her till the next day, conveyed her (with the assistance of some friend, and the keeper's servants) to a private mad house, on pretence of taking her to see the child; here she remained a year and nine months, till a woman, applied to a friend of the plaintiff, who, representing the affair to Sir John Fielding, that Gentleman wrote a letter to a justice in the neighbourhood of the mad house, and the plaintiff, through the interposition of his Magistrate, immediately obtained her liberty, without the least difficulty. These were the circumstances relative to her confinement and release. As to her real sanity or insanity, the reasons for one or the other were supported on the following grounds: For the former it was alleged, by many witnesses, one in particular who had known her for eight years preceding her marriage, and to the very day of her confinement) that she was an industrious, sober, charitable good woman; that they had frequently, during the period here adverted to, seen her, and had numberless opportunities of being perfectly acquainted with her deportment and state of mind; that she appeared to them always sane and sound, nor had they ever observed any thing like frenzy or madness, on all occasions.
She never betrayed one single symptom more, than she did at present, of any state of lunacy, idiocy, or want of sound understanding. The justice and the woman who made the discovery, deposed to the same effect, as far as fell within their knowledge. On the other hand, above a dozen witnesses positively swore that they always looked upon her as a mad woman; some of them, when interrogated by the opposite council, what they meant by this general description, answered, she was mad or worse, or was such a person as no honest man would live with, while others insisted positively on her insanity, and assigned some one or all of these reasons: that she was indiscriminately jealous of every woman with whom her husband had any intercourse in the way of business, &c. that she refused to eat with her husband, though he kept an extreme good table for one in his circumstances, yet pretended to be starved; that her fits of jealousy, rage, and madness, were continued without interval; that whatever woman came in her way was sure to suffer from her the most reproachful language, if not to be beaten or assaulted by her; that she frequently insisted that her husband was married to two or three other men's wives; that she charged him publicly with the commission of the most atrocious crimes, improbable in their nature, and of notorious falsity; that she went in all her neighbourhood under the appellation of the mad woman; and, that she frequently came home surrounded by crowds of boys, whom her unaccountable behaviour had collected as she passed along the streets.

After the evidence was finally closed, the jury found the husband and the keeper of the madhouse guilty, and the court is to pass judgment on them the beginning of next term.