They all laughed when I said I'd become a comedian. Well, they're not laughing now.

It was Matthews, of course, for whom the verdict was the greatest disaster. Not only had he failed to escape from Bedlam — Mike Jay, A Visionary Madness: The Case of James Tilly Matthews and the Influencing Machine

The Bedlam that greeted James Tilly Matthews, then, was not so much a baroque spectacle of depravity as an exhausted and — Mike Jay, A Visionary Madness: The Case of James Tilly Matthews and the Influencing Machine

Up to this point, it was rare for the mad to be distinguished from the poor, the homeless, the indigent, beggars, vagabo — Mike Jay, A Visionary Madness: The Case of James Tilly Matthews and the Influencing Machine

$To look back before 1800 is to enter another world, one where the number of institutions for the mad was a tiny fraction — Mike Jay, A Visionary Madness: The Case of James Tilly Matthews and the Influencing Machine$

The Air Loom, if Matthews revealed its existence under questioning, would now be recognised immediately as a classic par — Mike Jay, A Visionary Madness: The Case of James Tilly Matthews and the Influencing Machine

As a pauper, the obvious destination for James Tilly Matthews was the Bethlem Hospital, already long known in popular sl — Mike Jay, A Visionary Madness: The Case of James Tilly Matthews and the Influencing Machine

Matthews' shout of treason in the House was no random outburst of lunacy, but the last act in an astonishing adventure: — Mike Jay, A Visionary Madness: The Case of James Tilly Matthews and the Influencing Machine

At Bow Street Magistrates' Court the essential facts were established. The man's name was James Tilly Matthews. He was a — Mike Jay, A Visionary Madness: The Case of James Tilly Matthews and the Influencing Machine

The Air Loom had been constructed by the Jacobins in Paris around the time of their coup d'etat in 1793. Just as they ha — Mike Jay, A Visionary Madness: The Case of James Tilly Matthews and the Influencing Machine

Many had suspected that the political disasters of the past few years had a hidden cause. The bloodiness of the French m — Mike Jay, A Visionary Madness: The Case of James Tilly Matthews and the Influencing Machine

Jenny slowly awoke on the sacrificial altar to an Ethereal Light that flamed through the east wall, a radiant aura of lo — Judy Byington, Twenty-Two Faces

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