BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//InvisionCommunity Events 5.0.18//EN METHOD:PUBLISH CALSCALE:GREGORIAN REFRESH-INTERVAL:PT15M X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT15M X-WR-CALNAME:RMCommunityCalendar NAME:RMCommunityCalendar BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London TZURL:https://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20250330T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20251026T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Madness of King George from Lucy Worsley  05/22/2025 DTSTAMP:20250522T163357Z SEQUENCE:0 UID:277-7-c3fe8195a3dde498d013e477e2142422@aalbc.com ORGANIZER;CN="richardmurray":noreply@aalbc.com DESCRIPTION:\n Madness of King George from Lucy Worsley \n\n https://ww w.pbs.org/video/madness-of-king-george-jpamkt/\n\n\n\n VIDEO\n\n\n\n \n\n\ n\n PREVIEW\n\n\n\n https://www.pbs.org/video/episode-2-preview-madness-ki ng-george-wdz8ar/\n\n\n\n TRANSCRIPT full review\n\n\n\n [ Suspenseful mus ic plays ] -Winter\, 1788.\n\nThe British king\, George III\, is hallucina ting\, violent\, and abusive.\n\n-Out of my sight!\n\n♪♪ -He's losing control -- of himself and the country.\n\nAt a time of upheaval\, Britain can't have a mentally ill king.\n\n♪♪ As a last resort\, a medical mav erick\, who runs an asylum\, is summoned.\n\n♪♪ Can he save the king?\ n\n-[ Shuddering ] ♪♪ In this series\, I'm reinvestigating some of the most dramatic and brutal chapters in British history.\n\n♪♪ It wasn't just one generation.\n\nIt was three generations losing their lives\, bam \, bam\, bam.\n\nThese stories are epic and legendary and they all have fa scinating mysteries at their heart.\n\nIt's chilling to think that this co uld actually be evidence in a murder investigation.\n\n♪♪ I want to lo ok at them from a fresh and modern perspective to try and unlock their sec rets.\n\n♪♪ It's a horrible psychosexual form of torture\, this\, isn' t it?\n\n-Absolutely.\n\n♪♪ -By uncovering forgotten witnesses\, reexa mining old evidence\, and following new clues\, can I get closer to the tr uth?\n\n-It is one of the great British mysteries.\n\n-It was one of those moments\, I'm afraid\, for a historian\, that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck.\n\n[ Cawing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -I'd say I know a fair bit about George III\, but\, I don't know nearly enough about his m ental health and now's the perfect time to take a look at it because new e vidence has come to light.\n\nJust a few years ago\, the royal family gran ted unprecedented access to his personal papers.\n\nThis treasure trove of documents is stored at Windsor Castle.\n\nA residence of the British roya l family for more than 1\,000 years.\n\nSo far\, 225\,000 documents -- dia ries\, letters\, medical notes -- have been published online.\n\nBut there are still more secrets to be revealed.\n\n♪♪ I've been here to the Ro yal Archives before\, but this is the first time I hope to get my hands on documents that will take me behind the scenes\, into 1788\, when the king fell ill.\n\nI've asked the royal archivist to bring out a unique private diary.\n\nIt's an eyewitness account of George III's illness as it escala ted.\n\n-There we are.\n\n-Thank you ever so much.\n\nThis is great\, than ks.\n\nThis is an amazing thing to get to see.\n\nIt's the diary of Robert Greville\, \"Journal of His Majesty's most serious and afflicting illness .\"\n\nHe was one of the king's equerries\, which means he spent a lot of time with the king.\n\nAnd\, on Sunday\, the 9th of November\, he's writin g about\, \"Great agitation &\; much incoherence in thought &\; expr essions.\"\n\nIt's fascinating that he's actually with the king.\n\nThis i s like a frontline report from the king's bedside.\n\nWhat else are we goi ng to learn?\n\nOh\, finally\, he goes to sleep\, after having \"talked fo r 19 hours without scarce any intermission.\"\n\n♪♪ Poor man.\n\nWhat' s happening on November the 24th?\n\n\"We found the king violently agitate d and very angry\, but more particularly with Dr Warren\,' one of the medi cal advisors.\n\n\"The king advanced up to him and pushed him.\"\n\n♪♪ So\, Greville's getting pretty upset\, actually.\n\nHe says that\, \"the general conduct of the physicians has not been...decided or firm.\"\n\nThe y simply don't know what to do.\n\n\"They appear to shrink from responsibi lity.\"\n\nGreville says here that\, \"a report has been sent to Mr Pitt\, \" the prime minister\, \"stating that [His Majesty] had passed a quiet ni ght\, but that he was entirely deranged.\"\n\n♪♪ George had at least f ive personal doctors and they were all mystified.\n\nIn the 1780s in Brita in\, the medical profession still clung to a centuries-old notion about me ntal illness.\n\n♪♪ When George fell ill in 1788\, his doctors\, at fi rst\, still believed they needed to get this disease out of his body.\n\nT hey gave him drugs to make him vomit.\n\nThey used blisters to draw out wh at they thought was bad blood from his body.\n\nAnd they used these little suckers.\n\nGot these off the Internet.\n\nI love the way they're actuall y called...\n\nThese are leeches!\n\nLook at them wiggle.\n\nThey're just like tiny\, little monsters.\n\nOoh!\n\nHe's sucking the side there.\n\nAn d the idea was that these would be applied to George's temples and that th ey would suck the madness out of his brain.\n\n♪♪ The king is bled\, b listered\, and purged.\n\nNothing works.\n\n♪♪ His baffling illness co uld not have struck at a worse time.\n\n♪♪ In the 1780s\, Europe is a tinderbox.\n\nPeter III of Russia has been murdered\, France is on the bri nk of revolution\, and the American colonies have all but won the war for independence.\n\n[ Thud ] ♪♪ George was ill at such a crucial time in history.\n\nThen\, and since\, there's been a keen interest in working out what was wrong with him.\n\n♪♪ And it seems to me that George's illne ss wasn't just misunderstood in his own lifetime.\n\n♪♪ This essay was published in the British Medical Journal in 1966.\n\nIt's by a couple of psychiatrists\, Macalpine and Hunter.\n\nThey looked at George's medical r ecords and argued that he had a rare genetic blood disorder called porphyr ia.\n\nThis idea really stuck\, notably\, in the stage play by Alan Bennet t.\n\nWhen this was turned into a film\, there was actually a caption onsc reen suggesting that George had porphyria.\n\nBut\, historians have been d ivided about this and now\, there's a rival diagnosis.\n\n♪♪ I'm going to speak to one of the UK's most eminent psychiatrists\, to see if he can shed some light.\n\nHe's also been examining the papers from the Royal Ar chives.\n\n♪♪ Can the new evidence settle the question of what was wro ng with George\, once and for all?\n\n♪♪ Simon\, how do you feel about \"diagnosing\" dead people?\n\nThere are some concerns here\, aren't ther e?\n\n-Oh yeah\, very much so.\n\nIn medicine\, in general\, and psychiatr y\, it's a very dangerous thing to do.\n\nThe only reason that we can do t his with George is because the documentation's so extraordinary.\n\n-Why d o you think that porphyria was so warmly welcomed as a theory in the 1960s ?\n\n-Macalpine and Hunter were\, it now turns out\, ardent monarchists\, and they wanted\, really\, to remove the taint and the stigma of mental il lness from the royal family.\n\nAnd porphyria did run in the royal houses of Europe\, by the way\, it just didn't affect George.\n\nBut they wanted to kind of help the queen out by taking away the taint of mental illness.\ n\n-What was really the king's condition\, do you think?\n\n-The best evid ence we have from George is the observations of his behavior.\n\nWe've had \, for some time now\, what we call diagnostic criteria\, in which you can fill in a computer program and that will then tell you what is the most l ikely diagnosis.\n\n-So\, you have your computer program and you can put G eorge into it and see what comes out?\n\n-You can\, indeed.\n\n-Employment : king.\n\n-Employment: king.\n\n[ Laughter ] Residence: Windsor Castle.\n \nGrandiosity.\n\nBit difficult\, in a king\, to diagnose that\, actually. \n\n-Excessive self-reproach.\n\nHe was a great one for beating himself up .\n\n-Poor sleep -- very\, very common.\n\nReduced need for sleep\, reduce d appetite.\n\n-He's having hallucinations.\n\n-Yes\, there we are\, he's having some hallucinations\, which is common in very severe mania\, the ti mes when he had to be restrained\, for example.\n\nThere was also a lot of violence and things like that.\n\nAnd so\, now\, they've ticked what the diagnosis is and it comes up as the most probable diagnosis is what we now call bipolar disorder.\n\n♪♪ Not a concept they had.\n\n-At the time. \n\n-No\, not at all.\n\nAny doctor reading that now\, it would just shout \"bipolar\" at you\, it really would.\n\n-I'm convinced.\n\n-[ Laughs ] Y es.\n\n-But can you tell me what causes it?\n\n-I wish I knew.\n\nI don't. \n\n-Yeah.\n\n-Nobody knows.\n\nWhat we do know is there's very compelling evidence that what we call life events\, major traumas in your life -- be reavement or being a victim of crime or\, you know\, divorcing\, something like that -- it doesn't cause bipolar disorder\, but what it does do\, it will then trigger an episode and you'll have a full-blown illness.\n\nSo\ , it's sensitive to what's going on in our environment.\n\n♪♪ -If epis odes of bipolar disorder can be triggered by traumatic events or extreme s tress\, what was happening in George's personal life in the run-up to '88? \n\n♪♪ There's something I want to see at the Royal Academy\, an art s chool and gallery founded by George III in London.\n\n♪♪ By 1783\, Geo rge had 15 children.\n\nThe older ones\, particularly\, the Prince of Wale s\, were causing him all sorts of trouble with their overspending and thei r womanizing\, but he really doted on the two littlest boys.\n\n[ Melancho ly tune plays ] Tragically\, George's toddler\, two-year-old Alfred\, died suddenly.\n\n♪♪ Then\, eight months later\, four-year-old Octavius di ed\, too.\n\n♪♪ Infant death was common\, so you might think parents w ere used to dealing with this kind of loss.\n\n♪♪ This is such a poign ant image.\n\n♪♪ It's an engraved copy of a painting George had done t o commemorate his two lost little boys.\n\nThis is Prince Alfred\, who die d first\, and he's in heaven already\, and he's welcoming in his brother P rince Octavius.\n\nOctavius dies\, and this angel's here to look after the m both.\n\nGeorge had the original of this on the wall of his bedchamber\, so that\, when he woke up in the morning\, the first thing he'd see were his lost sons.\n\nThat\, alone\, I think\, speaks volumes about what this loss meant to him.\n\n♪♪ ♪♪ It seems to me that this could have be en a trigger for his breakdown in 1788\, but to prove it\, I need a window into George's mind.\n\n[ Suspenseful music plays ] ♪♪ You might think that's impossible\, but I've come to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew\, w here Octavius and Alfred once played\, to meet a professor who's doing som ething unique -- he's examining George's hallucinations and delusions.\n\n How do you know what the king's delusions were?\n\n-Well\, we have very fe w direct records of what the king said\, but we do have what the pages\, t he attendants\, who were looking after the king when he was asleep or in t he night told the doctors the next morning.\n\nFrom those\, you get these often very brief references to things that he is said to have believed or imagined\, but which\, when you put them all together\, is quite a substan tial body of material that just lets you see inside the king's mind\, real ly.\n\n-And do you think you can see evidence of specific trauma\, bad thi ngs that happened to him in his life\, that you see sort of being processe d through these delusions?\n\n-Well\, there are particular instances relat ing to his children.\n\nHe was a very devoted father and\, when they were lost\, at different stages of his life\, they then reappear to him in his delusions\, in\, really\, very moving ways\, actually.\n\n-What sort of de lusions is he having about his lost children?\n\n-There's a very particula rly moving instant that takes place on Christmas Eve 1788.\n\nOn this part icular night\, what the king records is thinking that the pillow of his be d is Octavius\, -Oh!\n\n-who's come back and... -This is so awfully sad.\n \n-...it's all then described here.\n\n-It says\, \"He had the pillow in t he bed with him\, which he called Prince Octavius\, who he said was to be new born this day.\"\n\nThe reason this is so upsetting is because you jus t have the image of him holding the pillow like it was the baby.\n\nOh.\n\ n-That's the recurring trope\, actually\, for the king because\, when his daughter Amelia dies from TB\, after she's dead\, he begins to imagine hav ing conversations with her and that she's had holes drilled in her coffin and\, in fact\, survived burial and has come back to talk to him after tha t.\n\nThat's a very strange delusion\, which\, again\, echoes this earlier incident with Octavius.\n\nThe fact that this comes up in his delusions\, not only in this illness\, but in his later illness\, too\, suggests that that's the trigger.\n\n-Arthur\, do you feel that this research is giving you a really extraordinary insight into the mind of a king?\n\n-There's a sense in which one of the things that's happening to him in his illness i s he becomes disinhibited and will actually\, perhaps\, articulate things that he otherwise has been suppressing or repressing in his mind.\n\n-And\ , in a way\, it's his illness\, it's his so-called madness\, that allows u s to know him.\n\n-Absolutely.\n\nWe don't get to those bits of his mind o therwise.\n\n-Hm.\n\n♪♪ I've been left feeling really sad about what A rthur had to say about George's love for his children and his grief for th eir loss.\n\nIt's easy to forget that he wasn't just a king\, he was also a human being.\n\n♪♪ Because the children were so young\, their deaths weren't marked in the formal way a royal death normally would be\, so\, G eorge doesn't have these rituals to help him deal with his loss.\n\nI thin k he must have repressed his grief and it burst out during episodes of man ia.\n\n♪♪ [ Suspenseful music plays ] It's clear to me there's concret e evidence of personal trauma which could've triggered a bipolar episode.. . ♪♪ ...but I also want to look at the political pressures on George\, too.\n\nI know it was a tricky time to be the British king.\n\nGeorge was facing problems at home and abroad.\n\n♪♪ \"An account of the rise an d progress of the late tumults.\"\n\n♪♪ Dead bodies in the streets of London.\n\nThis is serious stuff.\n\n♪♪ Newspaper headlines from the 1 780s reveal a time of huge turmoil.\n\n♪♪ George decided to grant some new rights to Catholics.\n\nIt seemed like a generous and liberal thing t o do\, but it went horribly wrong.\n\nThere were anti-Catholic riots and s ectarian violence on the street.\n\nThis newspaper article here describes a Roman Catholic chapel being set fire to.\n\nWhat they call the mob are o ut on the streets.\n\nThey're waving revolutionary flags\, actually.\n\nTh ings are on the brink of enormous trouble.\n\nThis era was marked by revol ution\, and it wasn't just Britain on the brink.\n\nThe French king faced an assassination attempt and the bloody American War of Independence was a bout to end almost two centuries of British rule.\n\nHere's Cornwallis\, d efeated at Yorktown\, doing the walk of shame.\n\nThey're taking down the British flag and they're putting up the American flag in its place.\n\nSo\ , George would've hoped to have added to his empire\, but\, instead\, he m ust've felt that he had\, effectively\, lost America.\n\n♪♪ These cris es coincided with the start of the mass news era.\n\nGeorge had nowhere to hide.\n\nHe was exposed.\n\n♪♪ And I've found an extraordinary letter which suggests George was afraid he was failing as a king.\n\nNow\, this is just the most fascinating document from the Royal Archives of 1782.\n\n It's a letter that George III has drafted\, saying that he's going to hand in his resignation.\n\n\"I am therefore resolved to resign My Crown.\"\n\ nExtraordinary.\n\nNo king had abdicated for a thousand years.\n\nAnd just think of the huge stink that there was when Edward VIII abdicated in the 20th century\, at a point when the monarchy was much less politically sign ificant than it was here in the 18th century.\n\nGeorge has clearly agoniz ed over his decision.\n\nThere's all sorts of crossings out and underlinin gs in his letter.\n\nAnd there's a real sense of alienation here\, and dis illusionment.\n\nNow\, he never actually sent his letter of resignation to parliament\, but it shows the mind of a king in turmoil.\n\n♪♪ George is under extreme pressure to make monarchy work in this new era.\n\nHe mu st evolve or perish.\n\n♪♪ George styled himself as a new\, slightly m ore accessible\, kind of a king.\n\nHis line was that he was going to list en to people's grievances and respond to them.\n\nNow\, ordinary working p eople didn't have the vote\, but they could make political points through giving the king petitions.\n\nThey were able to take their problems straig ht to the top.\n\n♪♪ Crowds gathered at the gates of the royal palace of St James\, waving their petitions\, begging the king for help.\n\nAnd\, in August 1786\, something happened that I think must've increased the pr essure on his already vulnerable mind.\n\nAs it says in the newspaper\, \" His Majesty was stepping out of his post-chariot at the garden entrance to St James's\,' just over there\, \"when the attack was made upon his life. \n\nThe woman by whom the desperate attempt was made\, had been observed w aiting the King's arrival for some time.\"\n\n♪♪ -The woman advanced f rom the crowd and presented a paper folded in the form of a petition.\n\nT he woman aimed a blow with a knife... -...at his majesty's breast with a k nife concealed in a piece of paper.\n\nThe knife cut the king's waistcoat. \n\nAccounts -- The knife was instantly wrested from the woman.\n\n-And he hastened into the palace.\n\n-The woman was immediately taken into custod y and\, on examination\, appears to be insane.\n\n♪♪ I'm fascinated by this assassination attempt\, when a mentally ill woman and a soon-to-be m entally ill king came face-to-face.\n\nWho was she\, and how did George re act?\n\n♪♪ -This is a woman called Margaret Nicholson.\n\nShe's a 36-y ear-old spinster and needlewoman and she felt that something needed to be done to improve her life.\n\nSo\, she petitions the king\, so -- -So\, she 's writing him letters\, saying\, \"Dear King\, I want you to do this for me.\"\n\n-Well\, yeah\, well\, you know\, if only it was that clear.\n\nSh e wrote a -- [ Laughs ] -What sort of things?\n\n-So\, here's one of Marga ret's petitions.\n\nShe thought she was due a property settlement of some sort.\n\nShe thought she was due a decent marriage\, possibly to the king himself\, if only he'd rid himself of his ghastly foreign wife.\n\n-Do you think that she was suffering from some sort of mental health issue?\n\n-W ell\, that's an interesting question.\n\nShe petitions the king something like twenty times\, just between April and August of 1786\, by her own tes timony.\n\nOn the 2nd of August 1786\, she's clearly had enough\, so she t urns up one more time.\n\nThe king gets down out of his carriage.\n\nShe's ushered towards the king.\n\nI expect they've all seen her before\, they know who she is\, and she's got her little piece of paper again\, but the piece of paper\, this time\, conceals a dagger.\n\n-Yeah.\n\n-And then\, i mmediately -- this is the interesting thing\, I think -- he immediately sa ys\, \"The poor woman is mad.\n\nDo not hurt her.\"\n\nAnd we know he said that straightaway because\, just about two hours later\, one of the young pages who'd been attending the king testifies these were the words the ki ng used.\n\n-Do you think that\, when he gave this compassionate reaction towards Margaret Nicholson\, \"Don't hurt her\,\" do you think that he saw a fellow sufferer?\n\n-He immediately identifies what's wrong with her\, so\, whether or not\, yeah\, it's a little bit close to home for him or he recognizes a fellow sufferer\, the incident provoked a huge public conver sation\, in the newspaper press and elsewhere\, about whether or not Marga ret Nicholson was mad.\n\nBecause\, if she's going to be put before a law court\, it's going to have to be on a charge of high treason.\n\n♪♪ -G eorge's words\, \"Do not hurt her\,\" became iconic.\n\nThey were in newsp apers\, in prints.\n\nIt was wonderful PR for the king.\n\nHis compassion towards Margaret brought mental illness into the open.\n\nBut what happene d to her?\n\nWas she treated kindly\, as he'd asked?\n\n♪♪ There's no evidence of a public trial\, but there is a folder in The National Archive s with her name on it.\n\nMargaret's case went right to the top.\n\nIt was the Privy Council\, the king's advisors\, who decided her fate.\n\n♪♪ Oh\, yes!\n\n♪♪ Look at all of this!\n\nSo\, it's clear that they've done a pretty thorough job.\n\nThey've examined Margaret herself.\n\nShe h as -- Oh!\n\nShe said here that she never meant to kill the king\, but jus t wanted to get his attention.\n\nAnd they've also talked to her brother.\ n\nHe says that she came to London twenty years ago and that she'd worked as a housemaid\, but she'd been sacked from that job and she had been ill. \n\nHe says that she's been \"breaking out into fits of laughter in the ni ght.\"\n\nAnd the brother also says this.\n\nIt's extraordinary.\n\nHe say s that\, \"reading Milton's Paradise Lost and such high style Books... had contributed to turn her Brain.\"\n\nThat's such an 18th-century thing\, i sn't it\, to imagine that reading fancy books can make a woman mad?\n\nSo\ , what are the Privy Council going to do?\n\nWhat she'd done\, an assassin ation attempt\, was treason.\n\nShe could've faced the death penalty.\n\nB ut they didn't go down that route.\n\nSo\, instead\, they turned to the Va grancy Act and they used that to have her shut up in Bethlem\, better know n as Bedlam.\n\nThis is Georgian England's most notorious madhouse.\n\nThe y get her assessed by one of the doctors from Bedlam.\n\nThis is Dr. John Monro and he says that never in his life had he seen a person more disorde red.\n\nBut that's really quite a strong statement\, isn't it\, from the m an who runs England's most notorious madhouse\, that he'd never seen a mad der person than Margaret?\n\nMakes you wonder if he's overstating the case \, so that they can all\, with good conscience\, lock her up.\n\n♪♪ [ Clang\, keys jingling ] And she's not the only one.\n\n♪♪ In November 1788\, George succumbs to all the political and personal pressure and beco mes seriously ill. ♪♪ After weeks of failed treatment\, his doctors ta ke an unprecedented step and secure him.\n\nNot in Bedlam\, of course\, bu t in Kew Palace\, just outside London.\n\n♪♪ The king's eldest son sen ses an opportunity.\n\nHe tells everyone his father is unfit to rule and p ositions himself to seize power.\n\n♪♪ Daily bulletins are tied to the gates of Kew Palace\, but they are heavily censored and don't explicitly mention madness.\n\nSpeculation runs rife.\n\n♪♪ So\, here we have two infamous so-called mad people\, a seamstress and a king\, tied together b y this assassination attempt.\n\nI'm so intrigued!\n\nAnd it was the same with the public back then -- they couldn't get enough of the story.\n\ n♪♪ -These are just a small snapshot of the many\, many different imag es that were being produced.\n\nA lot of the facts were few and far betwee n and a lot of embellishment was going on.\n\nSo\, here we have Margaret i n Bethlem.\n\n-Oh\, my goodness!\n\nIs that her there?\n\n-That's supposed to be her -Oh wow.\n\n-and this image is kind of extraordinary.\n\nIt sho ws this violent\, strange\, terrifying figure.\n\nShe's clutching straw.\n \nStraw was used as bedding in asylums.\n\n-Ah!\n\n-She's kind of involved with these two figures\, two of the leading revolutionaries of the day.\n \n-So\, here we've got rational masculinity -Mm!\n\n-and here she is looki ng -- well\, this is the archetype of the madwoman\, having crazy hair.\n\ n-Exactly\, kind of Medusa-style.\n\n-Yeah.\n\nClearly\, people are making money out of Margaret Nicholson.\n\nWas there a real market for this?\n\n -Absolutely.\n\nWaxworks were being made.\n\nPeople would pay to see waxwo rks and her lodgings were described as being besieged.\n\n-When the king h imself became ill\, how was he treated by this sort of media of the 18th c entury?\n\n-I think one of the really striking and surprising things is th at there was very little cultural treatment of the king.\n\nSo\, one of th e very few images we have of the king when he went mad is this one\, Filia l Piety\, and it shows the king looking\, perhaps\, ill\, but none of the kind of typical iconography about madness is being applied to him.\n\nOn t he left-hand side\, we have the Prince of Wales\, who's sort of obviously drunk.\n\nWe've got the kind of political backdrop of the regency crisis i n 1788.\n\n-I suppose here\, what's really going on is that they're using the situation to make the Prince of Wales look bad.\n\n-Exactly.\n\nThe ma dness of the king is being downplayed.\n\nI think it's a bit of a no-go ar ea.\n\n♪♪ -The press show some respect when reporting the king's illne ss.\n\nBut for Margaret\, not only poor\, but also a woman\, they show no such restraint.\n\n[ Creaking ] She even became a spectacle.\n\nThe upper classes could go and ogle her in her cell at Bethlem.\n\nIt all smacks of double standards.\n\nI think\, if I really want to get a full picture of m ental illness at this time\, I need to investigate Margaret's experience\, too.\n\n♪♪ ♪♪ These two statues are the very last surviving bits of the Bethlem Hospital\, where Margaret was incarcerated.\n\nIt was demol ished in 1815.\n\nThey represent the different types of madness that peopl e believed existed in the 18th century.\n\nThis one is melancholy madness. \n\nHe's calm and still.\n\nAnd this one is a raving madness.\n\nHe's tryi ng to burst out of his chains.\n\n♪♪ These two were over the entrance when Margaret arrived.\n\nNot exactly a warm welcome.\n\n♪♪ In the 178 0s\, doctors still thought they could treat people with mental illness by purging it from the body.\n\nI'm hoping that Bethlem's archivist can help me uncover the details of Margaret's treatment.\n\n[ Rattling ] -We actual ly have her admission record here\, which would've been created when she f irst came in to the hospital.\n\nWe can see Margaret's name.\n\n-Margaret Nicholson\, there she is.\n\nDo you know how they would've diagnosed her\, what sort of an illness they thought she had?\n\n-The hospital would've b een split into male and female wings and it would've been split into melan cholics and ravers.\n\n-And where do you think she fitted into that?\n\n-I mean\, I think\, generally\, she's described as quite a quiet... -She's q uiet.\n\n-...withdrawn patient\, I think\, a lot of the time\, so I'd be s urprised if she was moved apart from the melancholy patients.\n\n-These ca tegories are not super subtle\, are they?\n\n[ Laughs ] -No\, they really aren't.\n\n-What were the conditions like in the hospital?\n\n-They were p robably not very good.\n\nSo\, people were bled\, people were given medica tion that would make them vomit or purge themselves in other ways.\n\n-Mm. \n\n-It was known -- round about this sort of time there's a new strain of thought that's saying this isn't working\, but Bethlem is still persistin g in this.\n\n-So\, is there some information about what happened next to Margaret?\n\nDoes she appear again?\n\n-Yes\, so we will see her again in the incurable admission register.\n\nSo\, the incurable ward would've been the long-stay section of Bethlem.\n\n-You say that\, but the name\, it's a very depressing thought\, isn't it?\n\n-It is\, yes.\n\nYou know\, these are people who were -A long stay.\n\n-probably lifers... -Mm.\n\n-...by t his point.\n\nNote says a motion was made \"that Margaret Nicholson be no longer confined in her cell by a chain.\"\n\n-Oh!\n\nSo\, what year is thi s?\n\n-This is 1791\, so this is four years.\n\n-So\, she's been in chains for four years?\n\n-She is regularly clapped in irons\, yes.\n\n-Goodness me.\n\nI'm thinking what this means.\n\nDoes this mean that the hospital committee have decided that she's so peaceful and not hurting herself that they don't need to bother doing that?\n\n-Yes\, yes\, but what is also in teresting in this is the implication that she is well enough to be unchain ed\, but she's still in the incurable wing.\n\n-And that might be because she's this special patient.\n\nWhat she did received national attention\, therefore\, the bar for her recovery is higher than it is for anybody else .\n\n-It also\, perhaps\, implies that the hospital has been told not to r elease her -Not to release her.\n\n-in any circumstance.\n\n-Oof.\n\n-Mm.\ n\nShe has been\, if you like\, disposed of by the state.\n\n♪♪ ♪♪ -It's pretty clear that\, at Bethlem\, they were still committed to doing things the old way -- patients in cells\, chains.\n\nAnd it's rather deva stating to think of Margaret being written off\, almost\, with that word - - incurable.\n\n♪♪ In 18th century Britain\, madhouses\, or asylums\, were a law unto themselves.\n\nBethlem hadn't updated its treatment plan i n 100 years.\n\nBut there was a new school of thought that mental illness was an illness of the brain\, that needed to be treated in its own way.\n\ n♪♪ Some of these new ideas were to be found in this book.\n\nIt's the first proper book about madness as a mental illness.\n\nIt's called \"A T reatise on Madness\,\" by Dr. William Battie.\n\nThis was really radical s tuff and he suggested that it was wrong to chain up mentally ill people.\n \nNor was he in favor of shock treatments\, things like making people vomi t.\n\nInstead\, he proposed quiet\, and fresh air and exercise\, which sou nds extraordinarily modern\, doesn't it?\n\nThat's what people are still r ecommended to do to this day.\n\nBattie's book was published in 1758\, so that's 30 years before the king got ill\, but it was George's illness\, an d Margaret's\, too\, that raised the profile of his work.\n\nIt went mains tream and people started to implement it.\n\n♪♪ So\, while Margaret wa s written off as incurable\, did these new ideas reach George?\n\n♪♪ I n winter 1788\, George is delusional\, aggressive\, sleepless\, and time i s running out.\n\n♪♪ A regency bill has been prepared.\n\nIf the king is not better in three months\, his son will take over.\n\n♪♪ In Decem ber 1788\, the royal family make a bold decision.\n\nThey summon a man cal led Francis Willis\, who runs a madhouse in rural Lincolnshire\, to come h ere to Kew.\n\n♪♪ Private madhouses begin to spring up from the 1750s onwards\, as new treatments are pioneered.\n\nWillis is one of a band of s o-called mad doctors\, or\, to you and me\, early psychiatrists.\n\nLet me introduce you to Dr. Francis Willis.\n\nI'm calling him Dr. Willis\, but\ , I do know that his contemporaries might not have agreed with me in doing that because they didn't yet have the idea of a doctor of the mind.\n\nMe mbers of the Royal College of Physicians\, for example\, would've said\, \ "No\, he's just the keeper of a madhouse.\n\nWe don't count him as one of us.\"\n\nSo\, I think it's quite an exciting decision that the royal famil y have called him in.\n\nIt's...a sign of how desperate they were\, I thin k.\n\nHe's a maverick.\n\n♪♪ This is a make-or-break moment\, for him and for his nascent profession.\n\nThere's no higher-profile patient than this.\n\nWhat on Earth is he going to do?\n\n♪♪ George was treated by Willis here at Kew.\n\nThe king's tin bath still survives.\n\n♪♪ This source is key to what happened to him.\n\nIt's a diary by Francis Willis a nd his son and they start off explaining what the previous doctors had giv en the king.\n\nThe answer is really powerful sedatives.\n\nHere\, he's be en prescribed 30 drops of laudanum.\n\nNow\, that is opium dissolved in al cohol.\n\nIt's not a sustainable strategy.\n\nIt's not going to make him b etter.\n\nIt might even get him addicted.\n\nIt's kind of like prescribing the king heroin.\n\n♪♪ Willis decides to put a stop to this and he ra dically reduces the dosage.\n\n♪♪ He also makes a bold decision -- to treat George just as he would any other patient in his asylum and bend the king to his will.\n\n♪♪ Oh\, wow!\n\n-I've got a straitjacket for you .\n\n-My goodness!\n\nWhat?!\n\n[ Laughs ] -It keeps on giving.\n\n-What i s with these arms?\n\nThey're so long.\n\nHow does it work?\n\n-Here's the back.\n\n-It buttons up the back\, so you put your arms in like that and it's done up.\n\nWhy are the sleeves so immensely long?\n\n-So\, you put y our arms in there and then you hug yourself and then you get tied round th e back.\n\n-Oh.\n\nSo\, it forces you to go like this\, to give yourself a hug?\n\n-Yes.\n\nOnce you've no longer got the use of your hands\, your f light-and-fight mode is turned off\, so that it could then support you to calm yourself down.\n\n-I was expecting something barbaric\, something tha t was to do with restraint.\n\n-Compared to the manacles\, which was what people were using before\, this was really soft -Oh!\n\n-and kind.\n\n-Thi s is a big step forward.\n\n-Certainly\, when I first looked at this\, I h ad the same feelings as yourself.\n\nIt's like really scary\, the idea of being\, you know\, tied up\, really\, but this is a treatment and most ill nesses\, you know\, most treatments are scary.\n\n-Let me show you some of the ways in which Dr. Willis used the straitjacket.\n\nWell\, he doesn't actually call it a straitjacket.\n\n\"The strait waistcoat was taken off f rom his majesty at morning yesterday\, but was put on again soon after two o'clock &\; was not taken off till nine this morning.\"\n\nGoodness me \, so he was kept in his strait waistcoat for the whole of this particular night.\n\n-Nowadays\, we use drugs\, and that's a chemical restraint.\n\n -Yeah.\n\n-Sometimes that's not appropriate\, either\, because it's just t reating the symptom.\n\nIt's not allowing your brain to rebalance and sort itself out.\n\n-That's really interesting\, that you're using the word re balance the brain.\n\nThat's the language that Francis Willis used in the 18th century.\n\nNow\, even if Francis Willis had the best intentions in t he world\, I do feel sorry for the poor king because it says here\, \"They beat me like a madman.\"\n\n♪♪ -The king doesn't escape the brutal re medies of purges and ice-cold baths\, but there were also new ideas at pla y.\n\nWillis is clearly picking up on the progressive approach of William Battie.\n\nWhile Margaret\, in Bethlem\, is chained and left to rot\, Will is is encouraging George\, at Kew\, to take the air.\n\n[ Birds chirping ] And even though George does try to scale the giant pagoda\, a 50-meter st ructure\, Willis is confident his strategy is having some success.\n\n ♪♪ If you leave it untreated\, an episode of mania can last between da ys or months and\, to this day\, doctors don't really know why they come t o an end.\n\nBut\, on the 26th of February 1789\, a bulletin appeared on t he gate of Kew Palace.\n\nThree months after he'd arrived\, Dr. Willis has able to announce the entire cessation of his majesty's illness.\n\n♪♪ Assuming he had bipolar disorder\, it could simply be that this episode h ad run its course.\n\nBut it appears that Dr. Willis has cured the king.\n \nAnd not a moment too soon.\n\nThe government bill that would hand power to his son is only days away.\n\nAfter months of political uncertainty\, G eorge is\, once again\, ready to be king.\n\n♪♪ [ Chorale plays ] ♪♪ On St George's Day\, there was a huge celebration of the king's rec overy\, here at St Paul's Cathedral in Central London.\n\nNow\, the Archbi shop of Canterbury recommended that George himself shouldn't attend.\n\nHe thought the excitement might bring on a relapse.\n\nBut George had other ideas.\n\nHe said\, \"No\, I'm going.\"\n\n\"My Lord\,\" he said to the Ar chbishop of Canterbury\, \"I have twice read over the evidence of the phys icians on my case and\, if I can stand that\, I can stand anything.\"\n\n[ Suspenseful music plays ] Thousands lined the route to St Paul's and meda ls were struck to commemorate the occasion.\n\nAnd here is one of them.\n\ nThey're not actually that hard to find because so many of them were made. \n\nThis one came off eBay.\n\nAnd on one side we've got George's little f ace.\n\nThere he is\, looking alive and well.\n\nAnd\, on the back\, the e xciting story of what's happened.\n\nIt says\, \"Lost to Britannia's hope but to her prayers restor'd.\"\n\n♪♪ George's illness appears not to h ave destabilized the nation\, after all.\n\nIf anything\, it humanized him in the eyes of his people.\n\nThe irony is that King George III was virtu ally the only monarch left standing in Europe by the end of the 18th centu ry.\n\n♪♪ But the story doesn't end there.\n\nThere's another meda l.\n\n♪♪ Dr. Willis had his own medals struck.\n\nHe paid for these hi mself.\n\nThey're a different grade.\n\nThis is the cheaper\, copper\, ver sion and this is the deluxe\, shiny\, tin model.\n\nYou've got a picture o f Dr. Willis on the front and\, on the back\, it says\, \"Britons rejoice your king's restored.\"\n\nThe message is\, \"I'm Dr Willis.\n\nI restored him.\"\n\nIt's the most fantastic bit of self-promotion\, a bit like an a dvert\, really\, for this man you might almost call a psychiatrist.\n\nAnd I think the significance is that this profession of psychiatry is coming out of the shadows.\n\nIt's getting respectable.\n\nThis is its moment of triumph\, if you like\, captured in tin.\n\n♪♪ George may be restored to health\, but Margaret gets no medal and no redemption.\n\n♪♪ It wou ld be 25 years before the British government began to tackle the horrific conditions inside public asylums.\n\n♪♪ During that time\, the king ha d further episodes of illness\, both in 1801 and 1804.\n\n♪♪ He conval esced for a time in the home of a friend\, an MP\, called George Rose.\n\n ♪♪ Witnessing the king's illness gave Rose real insight and\, in 1815\ , he led a government investigation at the Bethlem asylum.\n\n♪♪ These are the minutes of this parliamentary committee that's looking into \"the Better Regulation of Madhouses in England.\"\n\nThey're calling all sorts of witnesses to give evidence and a very dark picture's being painted of existing conditions.\n\nThis part's really distressing.\n\nWe've got a wit ness who's seen unfortunate women locked up in their cells\, naked and cha ined on straw\, with just one blanket for a covering.\n\nNow\, George Rose clearly suspects that there have been male keepers looking after female p atients\, which is inappropriate.\n\nPower could've been abused here.\n\nA nd he's really going after Dr. Monro\, who's in charge of the Bethlem Hosp ital.\n\nDr. Monro says\, \"In Bethlem\, the restraint is by chains.\n\nTh ere is no such thing as chains in my private mental hospital.\"\n\nAnd he' s asked about this.\n\n\"Why?\n\nWhy the difference in standard?\"\n\nAnd Dr. Monro says\, \"Well\, it's because chains are fit only for pauper luna tics.\"\n\nIsn't that shocking?\n\nHe says\, \"If a gentleman was put in i rons\, he would not like it.\"\n\nToo right!\n\nI don't think Dr. Monro re alized how much he was going to damn himself by this statement.\n\nIt caus ed a scandal!\n\nPeople were offended by this idea of a double standard fo r rich and for poor.\n\nThe fallout of this was so bad that Dr. Monro had to resign.\n\n♪♪ This committee exposed the sexual abuse and excessive restraint that had been rife for decades.\n\nIt was a watershed moment.\n \nA process of reform had begun.\n\n♪♪ Fearing further censure\, Bethl em started keeping individual patient notes.\n\n♪♪ Now\, these books a re from after 1815\, when they had to keep fuller records\, so I'm really hoping these might shed some more light on Margaret.\n\n♪♪ Because of the king's illness and the reform that followed\, I can now\, at least\, f ind her in the records.\n\n♪♪ Oh\, look at this!\n\nIt's progress repo rts in 1816\, 1817\, 1819.\n\nBy this time\, she's been in the hospital fo r nearly 30 years.\n\nIt says here\, \"She is now in an advanced stage of her life and is perfectly deaf... She's decent in her appearance and quiet and civil in her demeanor.\"\n\nIt sounds to me like she's better.\n\nAnd then the records stop.\n\nIt's really fantastic to get a glimpse of a rea l person here.\n\nAnd she doesn't seem like either a criminal or a patient anymore.\n\nShe's just a quiet old lady.\n\nDo you know what?\n\nI've got a little tear in my eye.\n\n♪♪ Reform really came too late for Margar et Nicholson.\n\nShe was incarcerated in Bethlem for 42 years and died on the 14th of May 1828.\n\n♪♪ George III was suffering from chronic mani a and dementia when he died\, on the 29th of January 1820.\n\n♪♪ This encounter between George and Margaret happened at -- in fact\, it fed into -- this key moment of change for the science of psychiatry and for the re form of psychiatric asylums.\n\nThere's still so much more to learn about the complexities of mental illness\, but this was the starting point.\n\n- \"Lucy Worsley Investigates\" is available on am*zon Prime Video.\ n\n♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪\n\n\n\n  \n\n DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20250522 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR