Epitaph of my poor Jack, SQUIRREL. … Died Sunday Morning, July 23rd, 1826.

A$1,500 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

[Bethlem Hospital, London, before 1841]. Manuscript in brown ink with calligraphic title in blue and decoration in black, yellow and magenta inks, 230 x 185 mm (sheet); written entirely in the hand of criminally insane inmate James Hadfield, and signed by him in full at the foot, followed by Bethlem Hospital in sanguine ink; mounted recto of a nineteenth-century album page, inscribed in another hand in the upper margin: This was given to me by Hadfield himself at Bethlem Hospital. Hadfield had shot at George the Third. ; very well preserved. Autograph manuscript poem by James Hadfield, would-be assassin of George III, written in Bethlem Hospital, London, and obtained directly from him by a hospital visitor. James Hadfield (1771/2-1841) was a soldier who in 1793 had received severe head wounds and been taken prisoner by the French at the Battle of Lincelles. After his return to England he was discharged from the army and granted a small pension on the grounds of insanity. He began to suffer religious delusions and became convinced that his being executed by the British government would lead to the Second Coming of Christ. To that end, he made an (unsuccessful) attempt to assassinate George III by firing a pistol at the royal box in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on 15 May 1800. He was charged with high treason, but acquitted of attempted murder by reason of insanity after a brilliant legal defense by a leading barrister of the day, Thomas Erskine. However, the trial directly r

• Binding: Hardcover

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