The Lunacy Commission

You may remember that after he was forced into the marriage with Lady Hannah Hay, Johnny Tharp was trapped between the competing schemes of his wife and mother (Lady Susan) and ended up suffering a mental breakdown. His uncle rescued him from his in-laws in Scotland and took him back to Lady Susan. She was so relived to have him back that she pressured him into signing a bond for £2000 (about £1.8m today, relative to average wages) to cover the cost of his care.

In January 1816, Lady Hannah requested an enquiry into her husband’s mental health by the Court of Chancery. Her doctors reported that he ‘was then a lunatic … and that he had been in the same state of lunacy from the 9th day of July last’.* If he'd been insane eight days earlier, their marriage would have been invalid, so the timing was crucial.

John Scott, Lord Eldon
by William Owen
Source: Wikipedia

Lord Eldon, the Lord Chancellor (shown here), confirmed that Johnny was now insane, though he'd been sane when he married, making him legally incompetent to manage his own affairs. The next task, therefore, was to appoint a ‘committee’ to manage for him. Sometimes a single person took care of everything, overseen by the Chancery Court, but sometimes a wife would be appointed as the committee for her husband's personal care while a male relative was committee for the estate.

Naturally, Lady Hannah and Uncle John both asked to be appointed manager of Johnny’s estate. They each had a strong case -- he as the heir and she as the wife -- but Lord Eldon heard conflicting opinions from their doctors about whether Lady Hannah's care ‘would frustrate his recovery’* or ‘be the means of assisting'* it. The hearing was delayed pending further medical reports to determine ‘the degree of irritation likely to be produced in the mind of Mr Tharp by the presence of his wife’.*

The Court of Chancery at Lincoln's Inn
Source: Wikimedia

A meeting between them was reported to have been ‘highly satisfactory and consolatory to [Johnny's] feelings’,* but it was followed by a period of greater than usual agitation and a refusal to see Lady Hannah again. Even so, whenever he was asked, Johnny said he wanted her to be responsible for his care. Uncle John considered it illogical to consult a lunatic's wishes and noted darkly that Johnny's attachment to his wife was 'purely sensual'.*

With a studied air of impartiality, Uncle John explained that his father (the slave-owner) had set Johnny's coming of age at 24 because of his ‘knowledge of the weakness of his … grandson’s intellects’.* In the meantime, he'd wanted his son (Uncle John) to ‘derive and enjoy every comfort and advantage that he … was capable of conferring upon him so far as the same did not interrupt or interfere with the personal comforts of the said lunatic’.* Chippenham Park and the plantations in Jamaica were entailed on Uncle John if Johnny died without an heir, and Uncle John argued that it made sense for him to manage the estate in the meantime.

In the event, Uncle John was awarded responsibility for Johnny’s estate, while Lady Hannah was given responsibility for his personal care, though Lord Eldon was openly critical of her motivations:

The obvious and declared imbecility, as well as the deranged health of the lunatic previous to the marriage induced his Lordship to animadvert strongly on the transaction, adding that the petitioner must have been aware on the day of her marriage that she could only have expected to stand in the relation of nurse to a person under such circumstances.*



Although they'd succeeded in wresting the estate from Lady Hannah's sticky fingers, Uncle John and Lady Susan were both worried about her continued access. Knowing that Lady Hannah had every incentive to produce an heir and that 'personal intercourse did occur between them occasionally since his undoubted lunacy',* Uncle John argued strongly that she was ‘the most unfit person in the world to be allowed any interference with the lunatic’.* Lady Susan agreed, and begged the Lord Chancellor to put Johnny in the care of his birth family. 

As a result of their representations, John Campbell, the Master of Chancery, was appointed to oversee both of Johnny’s committees. He would decide where Johnny would live and who would treat him, leaving Lady Hannah with no authority to make decisions on Johnny’s behalf or even to visit him without his doctor's approval. A note in Lord Eldon’s hand explains why:

It is not possible to refuse her the committee of his person, but I shall refer to the master to approve of a proper medical person who may … regulate the access of said wife.*

Johnny was committed to the Bishop's Palace in Much Hadham, Hertfordshire, a grand private asylum which is now Grade II listed. The proprietor, Dr Jacob, believed that kindness and a regulated life would produce better results than the traditional treatments of bleeding and physical restraint, and it does seem that Johnny lived happily in the asylum. He had his own suite of rooms, enjoyed the society of Dr Jacob's musical family, and was free to ride, hunt, play cricket and socialise in the neighbourhood. His cousin and his old tutor both visited him, and perhaps other family members did too, but Johnny outlived them all, dying in Much Hadham in 1883, at the age of 88.

* These quotes are from legal documents and letters preserved among Tharp family papers in the Cambridgeshire County Archives and from contemporary newspaper reports.

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