London tea broker James Tilly Matthews (despite protesting his sanity) was diagnosed with schizophrenia after being institutionalized at the Bethlem Hospital in early 1797. The reason? Matthews had adopted strange, politically based views and theories, leading him to send unsolicited letters to Lord Liverpool that accused certain politicians of misapplying their power. Later, he disrupted the House of Commons to protest this supposed treason.
During his indefinite hospitalization, however, Matthews gravitated toward a separate fantasy involving a machine he called the “Air Loom.” A gang of diabolical criminals, headed by a man named Bill the King, supposedly had invented and controlled the machine near the London Wall — a landmark in close vicinity to Bethlem Hospital.
Through the controlled modulation of magnetic rays, Matthews claimed that the Air Loom could inflict physical harm, preventing the circulation of blood and inhibiting the mobility of certain body parts. This latter process Matthews called “lobster-cracking” or “sudden death-squeezing.” But he also affirmed that the device was capable of “thought-making” and “brain-saying,” functions that he claimed to have been subjected to. These involved the surveillance, extraction and replacement of Matthews’ thoughts with others.
