The Air Loom Gang: The Strange and True Story of James Tilly Matthews and His Visionary Madness |
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| Title: | The Air Loom Gang: The Strange and True Story of James Tilly Matthews and His Visionary Madness |
| Author: | Mike Jay |
| Publisher: | Basic Books |
| Type: | Book / Hardcover |
| Publication Date: | 01 April, 2004 |
| ISBN / ISBN-13: | 1568582978 / 9781568582979 |
| List Price: | $24.00 |
| You Save: | $5.60 |
| Amazon Price: | $18.40 (via Amazon marketplace seller) |
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Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Product Description
Spy? Double agent? Madman? A rollicking true story of conspiracy, paranoia, and revolution—set in atmospheric eighteenth-century London London, the 1790s. Europe is in turmoil, and mysterious forces seem to be edging England into a disastrous war with France. Not quite at the center of the political maelstrom is James Tilly Matthews, a Welsh tea merchant and antiwar activist who holds covert meetings with the leaders of both countries. But Matthews also believes his mind is being controlled by a gang of revolutionary terrorists and their diabolical secret machine: the Air Loom. The only person aware of the Air Loom’s existence, Matthews is promptly declared mad and exiled to Bedlam, the world’s most notorious madhouse, where he is held against his will for the rest of his life. At Bedlam his "delusions" are celebrated as the most complex and bizarre ever recorded. He remains one of the most famous cases in psychiatric history—the first man to believe his mind was being controlled by a machine. The truth of his case, however, was even stranger than his doctors realized: many of the incredible political episodes in which he claimed to have been involved were entirely real. The Air Loom Gang is a vibrant, compulsively readable story of psychological aberration, international intrigue, and a man whose mind and body are both literally and figuratively on the run.
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Customer Reviews:
• An Intriguing True 'whodunnit' Mystery
08 November, 2004
James Tilly Matthews lived in London in the late 1700s and was a respected Welsh tea merchant who intended to preserve the peace of an increasingly dangerous city out of control in its conflicts with Paris. Arrested and sent to a mental hospital for his accusation of a lord, Matthews became convinced his mind was being controlled by a secret machine called an 'air loom' hidden in a London basement and run by a gang of revolutionaries: Air Loom Gang sets out to pinpoint the political foundations of his 'madness' in an intriguing true 'whodunnit' mystery
- Amazon Customer Review
• History By Layers
19 June, 2009
I stumbled on to this book, quite by accident in a discount catalogue, that you might enjoy. I am a life long student of history (I guess in an effort to understand the world). I especially think history viewed through the lens of intelligence operations often clarifies the picture. I also, at one time, spent a large part of my career caring for seriously mentally ill patients. This may explain my attraction to this book.
The Air Loom Gang by Mike Jay.
Reading this book is like approaching a large tapestry. From a distance the picture is of the French revolution, a concise and well drawn picture. As you step closer you begin to see the details of English politics and how the two regimes interacted, of course ending in the Napoleonic wars. Then on very close inspection you see the thread of one mans life. Perhaps a secret diplomat, a spy, a double agent, a provocateur, negotiating or spreading disinformation. The only thing for certain is that he, at some point,became a mad man as did many people directly involve in this period of terror. He was committed to Bethlem Hospital (Bedlam).
Was he committed because he was a mad man or was he a political prisoner? This leads into a slice of psychiatric history that is worth reading even if it stood alone. It continues into some observations of the mechanics of psychosis. The greatest surprise is at the end, there are some stunning insights into the human mind, society and the human condition. All of the above threads are woven into a stunning tapestry
Lloyd Mercer
- Amazon Customer Review
• Madness With Meaning
24 March, 2004
Any psychiatrist has treated patients who thought their minds and wills were being controlled from the outside, perhaps from mysterious rays or hidden machines. This cannot sound so strange now as it must have a couple of centuries ago. We may not be used to mind control of that type, but we live in a world powered by invisible rays and hidden machines. When James Tilly Matthews entered the famous hospital for the insane, London's Bedlam in 1797, his complaints must have sounded bizarre indeed. He told his doctor that he, and many of the powerful in England and France, were being manipulated by a mysterious gang who were using invisible gases and rays from an unimaginably complex machine called an air loom, and that his thoughts were being altered and controlled and his body was being painfully punished. Matthews's bizarre story is the subject of a surprising and novel-like history, _The Air Loom Gang: The Strange and True Story of James Tilly Matthews and his Visionary Madness_ (Four Walls Eight Windows) by Mike Jay. What is especially peculiar is that although Matthew's ideas were clearly delusional, his complaints stemmed from real persecutions he was made to undergo. As the old joke says, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.Matthews was a wholesale tea dealer who wound up shuttling between Britain and revolutionary France with a peace proposal. It is not surprising that Matthews had little effect; but it is surprising that at the time of the Terror, all he had to endure on the French side was a spell in a French Revolutionary prison. In 1796, after his return to England, he entered the public viewing area of the House of Commons, and yelled "Treason!" into the hall. This got him into Bedlam, and he was to be incarcerated for the rest of his life. His rooms were unheated, he would have straw to sleep on, and for some years he would be chained to his bed. It is quite possible that pummeled first by peculiarities of world events and then by the cruelties of incarceration as a lunatic that he began weaving contemporary ideas about pneumatics, electricity, and Mesmer's animal magnetism into a widespread delusional explanation of just how he got persecuted into such a position. We know about his delusions in detail because in charge of him was the apothecary John Haslam, and Matthews was Haslam's star patient. Jay shows that the delusions can possibly be seen as Matthews's response to persecution, with Haslam as co-creator.This is a tangled tale, expertly told. There are parts of it that are deeply mysterious, and for which there is no documentation, only speculation; how Matthews came to be running secret diplomacy, and who was paying him to do so, and what he really was doing, can only be guessed at. The gripping story of Matthews coming to delusional terms with his predicament is actually moving, and his eventual (if posthumous) triumph over Haslam is convincing. Best of all Jay has gone a long way in successfully trying to explain the politics, science, and history of the time. His picture of treatment of the insane in the crumbling Bedlam, at the cusp of instituting sympathetic "moral" treatments of Philippe Pinel, is unforgettable. There may not have been a real air loom, but that doesn't keep it from meaning something; and Matthews may have been an incarcerated schizophrenic, but that doesn't keep him from being a bit of a hero.
- Amazon Customer Review
• Most Fascinating History
18 June, 2004
The Air-Loom Gang by Mike Jay is a book about the most incredible events. It is about one James Tilly Matthews who was declared insane for his beliefs about treason at the highest levels of the British Government during the French Revolutionary/Napoleonic period. As it turns out, Matthews was actually right to some extent and as a former spy, was in a good position to be able to determine if there really was treasonous activities in the British government at the time. Matthews's case became a cause clebre and he was eventually released from the insane asylum and eventually started an architecture magazine and even submitted plans for an insane asylum. This is an excellent book dealing with a most fascinating episode in British history.
- Amazon Customer Review
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