Dr Belcombe’s Private Asylum at Clifton Green: How Jane Was Taken to the Asylum
Cath Naylor
Cath tells us more about how Jane was taken to the asylum, once Mr Matterson had reluctantly signed the certificate stating that Jane was ‘insane’.
The certificate now signed by Mr Matterson, albeit reluctantly, they set forth to the Poppleton house, arriving at around midnight. Jane was in bed, Francis was in the parlour and Jane’s cousin, Fanny Bulmer, was also present. Jane’s mother had been taken out of the property at 10pm that evening. Fanny asked Jane to get up: ‘Do get up cousin, if you do not get up we shall have to use force which is a very unpleasant thing’.1 Francis was in the parlour below asked if she had got up, when told that she had not, he said ‘Then I must go up and if she does not get up we must use force’.2 Again Jane was told to get up from the bed and to go with Mr Matterson, without telling her where she would be going. Jane refused and was naturally very alarmed and upset. Again she was requested to go with them and again Mr Matterson questioned his doubt into Jane’s supposed insanity. Francis said then that if Jane consented would Mr Matterson be satisfied, and stated to Jane that if she did not consent to come with them there was a man there that would make her come. The man was one of Dr Belcombe’s men from the asylum, who had a ‘straight waistcoat’ under his arm and, having shown this to Jane, she reluctantly agreed to go with them.3
Mr Fraser, A Full and Impartial Report of the Cause of Jane Horsman v Francis Bulmer The Elder, The Rev Wm Bulmer. Alexander Mather, Wm Matterson, Wm Belcombe M.D. and Helen Scott (York: Thomas Wilson and Sons: 1819), 4.
Fraser, A Full and Impartial Report of the Cause of Jane Horsman, 11.
Fraser, A Full and Impartial Report of the Cause of Jane Horsman, 12.