“The poor creature is mad”

What did Rebecca O’Hara, Margaret Nicholson, John Frith, James Hadfield, Catherine Kirby, and Urban Metcalf have in common?

They all attacked King George III, and all were deemed mentally ill.

Rebecca O’Hara came at the king as he was stepping out of his sedan chair on 2 Jan 1778. Newspapers reported that she was “going to lay hold on him, but he with difficulty avoided her.”

After guards seized O’Hara, she declared that she was “Queen Beck,” rightful ruler of Britain, or perhaps royal consort. Then she identified herself as Rebecca O’Hara, born in Ireland, living at a particular address—but the authorities couldn’t confirm any of that. O’Hara was committed to the Bethlem Royal Hospital, or Bedlam.

Eight years later, on 2 Aug 1786, another woman attacked George III as he was exiting his carriage. Holding up a petition (actually a blank piece of paper), Margaret Nicholson suddenly lunged at the king with an ivory-handled dessert knife. Guards arrested her and later searched her lodgings. There they found letters in which Nicholson claimed to be the rightful monarch, a virgin, mother of Lord Mansfield, and more.

As his men grabbed Nicholson, George III called out, “The poor creature is mad; do not hurt her, she has not hurt me.” This was widely reported as a sign of royal mercy. There was much more public discussion about Nicholson than about O’Hara, perhaps because the first incident happened in wartime, perhaps because the second involved a knife. The picture shown above, by Carington Bowles, is one of several prints depicting Nicholson with the king.

The press blamed an unhappy love affair for driving Nicholson insane. Radicals objected to her being confined in a mental hospital without trial, conservatives to her not being punished as an assassin. As late as 1810 Percy Shelley co-wrote a book of satirical verse in Nicholson’s name. She died, still confined in Bedlam, in 1828.

Ironically, in 1788 George III himself started to show signs of serious mental illness. By that fall he was speaking at extraordinary length in manic fits. Though the young king appears to have suffered a debilitating depression in early 1765, he had recovered quickly, so people assumed that was a one-time problem. By early 1789, with the king still not well, the younger William Pitt’s ministry prepared a law to establish a regency.

But then King George recovered. Just in time for another assault.

TOMORROW: An army veteran with a complaint.