Something an academic might experience
Michael Neve, 26 September 1991
The Faber Book of Madness
edited by Roy Porter.
Faber, 572 pp., £14.99, September 1991,0 571 14387 3 Show More
edited by Roy Porter.
Faber, 572 pp., £14.99, September 1991,
“... A small news item with a large history behind it: John Sylvester, an inhabitant of Lancashire, was released last month from a life spent in mental hospitals and institutions, aged 81. He had been incarcerated when he was six years old, and his offence had been the stealing of an apple. His mother had died soon after this first confinement, and so when declared ‘mentally fit’ in 1929, he became the responsibility of his father, who was disabled and could not take up his case ... ”