EBENEZER ELLIOTT
(1781 - 1849)

Condemned to a Madhouse - the Fate of a Friend of Elliott

        Two newspaper cuttings are used in this article. One is a brief notice which appeared in a Sheffield Newspaper; the notice refers to the second item which is a newly discovered letter by Ebenezer Elliott. The letter makes interesting reading & sets up a mystery as well!

        Elliott’s letter below is about the sad fate of a highly respected figure in Sheffield it is a concerned & reasoned attempt to draw attention to a possible injustice. Ebenezer was ever a hater of injustice, & such things normally prompted a rant. Here we see a different side to the Corn Law Rhymer: sober & rational.  His letter to the press is quite persuasive & would very likely have prompted some discussion among the good citizens of Sheffield. Elliott sensibly pinpoints the need for reform of the law in cases where individuals are carried off to the madhouse.

        Note that the bard in discreet in concealing the name of the unfortunate man who was locked away. This is unusual behaviour for the poet who was exceptionally outspoken. Perhaps this reticence hints at the influential nature of those who were powerful enough to commit a well-known person to the madhouse. We note here that Elliott takes care not to offend when he says the prime movers may be “the best and wisest of human beings.” This is not spoken sarcastically, but because the poet was being cautious.

        As Ebenezer wrote his letter towards the end of 1834 & refers to “the election of the high hearted man,” it would appear the reference is to the MPs who first represented Sheffield in Parliament at the 1832 election, namely John Parker & James Silk Buckingham.  The second election in Sheffield came in 1835 – only three years after the 1832 one. Sheffield needing to have a sudden election points to one of the two MPs as the person committed to the asylum. This would colour Elliott’s caution in his letter to the Sheffield & Rotherham Independent – he was writing about very powerful people. This speculation must be regarded with great care, since the election referred to may not have been a parliamentary election.

        Turning to the newspaper cuttings: one was a brief notice in the paper; the other a longish letter by Elliott. The following announcement was made in October 1834 in the Sheffield & Rotherham Independent newspaper:-

We received last night, when our columns were quite full, a letter from Mr. Elliott, pointing out, in a most powerful and eloquent manner, the abuses which may be perpetrated under the present laws relative to the insane. The occasion of the letter is the case of a gentleman who has recently been sent to an asylum on the grounds of real or supposed insanity. We regret that it is impossible to publish the letter this week. If there had been time to make room for it, even by omitting matter already in type, we would gladly have done so.

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TO THE EDITOR OF THE SHEFFIELD INDEPENDENT.

        SIR, - As you have always been willing to promote discussion on matters of great interest, I will make no apology for troubling you with this letter; the intention of which is to cause enquiry to be made into the laws relative to insanity, which laws enable gaolers and their employers to commit to prison, perhaps for life, and certainly without trial, persons not only crimeless, but unaccused.

        A few short weeks ago – weeks which to many a poor prisoner may have seemed an eternity - I attended a meeting at the Tontine Inn, where I met, among other persons, many of our most talented merchants, and a great manufacturer resident a few miles from Sheffield, whose name I scarcely feel myself at liberty to mention, or it would not be necessary for me to add, that he is a great gentleman of high talent, of large fortune, of unimpeachable integrity, and of almost unexampled kindness and nobility of soul. On the occasion alluded to, he conducted himself in the most sane, intellectual manner. He was calm, collected, deliberate; every word he uttered, seemed to be dictated by the joint inspiration of liberality and prudence. Certainly no other person present displayed any thing like equal ability. Yet, only a few days afterwards, was this clever man of business, this warm-hearted friend, this patriotic citizen, this too true Christian, forced, dragged, torn from his home, and plunged (not into a public prison, which magistrates and others might visit and examine, but) into a private madhouse; and I need not say, that prisons which no one can visit and examine, ought to be of all prisons, the most suspected. – In vain did the most manly of men weep like a child; in vain did he protest that he was not insane; in vain did he implore the shuddering crowd, and his astonished servants, by the respect and gratitude which they owed the best of neighbours and masters, to protect him. “It was the will of God,” he was told, “that he should go to a madhouse.” “To the will of God,” said he, “I submit.”  And the place that knew him once, knows him no more.

        Among the symptoms adduced of his insanity, it is said, that he had of late “prayed much and fervently;” “expressed great disapprobation of certain doings of the Methodist Conference;” “offered to build the ranters a chapel;” “and paid unusual attention to business!” What other insane symptoms he displayed, I am not informed. But I was told he has addressed from his prison-house, several letters to an eminent solicitor in the neighbourhood, not one of which has been received by that gentleman. Why have they been suppressed? Who shall dare to say that any one of them, if published, would not convince every reader of the sanity of the writer?  Surely if a sane man, supposed mad, and confined as a madman, could so far conquer his feelings as to write a letter bearing the impression of sanity, such a letter ought, at once, to throw open his prison doors. Then, talk not of delicacy, and the feelings of friends! The suppression of such letters ought to be made penal; and punishable with death.

        In what office shall we seek a copy of the evidence on which this unfortunate man has been sent to that gaol which is called an asylum? To what court shall we apply for this Habeas Corpus? Who can reply to the voice which prison walls intercept? Who read the mournful epistles, which might as well have remained unwritten? The power which can “waft a sigh from Indus to the pole,” exists not for him. He is, indeed, “from the cheerful ways of men cut off,” and presented – not with blank, but a blot; he is not imprisoned, but interred.

        Mind, I do not say that the unhappy gentleman is not insane, or that he has been sent to a mad-house inconsiderately. The parties by whom, or with whose consent, he has been so confined, may be, and probably are, the best and wisest of human beings. But what has all that to do with public safety? In the present state of the law, any sane man may be sent to a mad-house, and kept there for life! Say not, then, that this is a private matter, to interfere with which is delicate. No; it is an affair which full nearly concerns every man, woman and child in the three Kingdoms, and especially such of them as have friends and property.

        The power of inflicting, without trial, on a crimeless and unaccused individual, a heavier punishment than, in this country, has ever been inflicted on the most guilty of criminals; the power of burying such an individual alive, or of cutting him off from society as completely as if he were in the grave, is a power denied to the crown, and not possessed by any branch of the legislature. On whom, then, is this tremendous power conferred? Why, on a surgeon and physician, who may both be mad doctors, and both proprietors of mad-houses! and on friends of the victim, who may have powerful reasons for wishing to see his face no more.

        Surely there are members of Mr. Ward’s* committee, and other patriotic men of Sheffield, who remember the noble and generous conduct during the election of the high hearted man, a chapter of whose history I have here written, and who will not fail to call a meeting to petition Parliament, when it assembles, that the laws relative to insanity may be examined, and that no person be in future sent to a mad house without an open examination or trial by jury, in the presence of the faculty and the reporters of the press, and with all other possible means of publicity.

I am, Sir,

                                Respectfully, your obedient Servant,

EBENEZER  ELLIOTT.

Sheffield, 7^th November, 1834.

The newspaper cuttings used in this article were collected by Diane Gascoyne while she was carrying out her own research in the Local Studies section of Sheffield Central Library. The writer of these pages is grateful to Diane for spotting the two items & for passing them on.

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