In 1786 a deranged woman, Margaret Nicholson, tried to stab the king of England outside St. James's Palace. Fortunately the king escaped injury and Nicholson was captured. As she was taken away, King George was heard to exclaim, "Pray do not harm the poor woman!"
As the king had wished, Nicholson was shown a certain amount of mercy. In an age when a child could be hung for stealing a spoon, the life of this would-be royal assassin was spared. She was sent to a mental institution, Bethlem Royal Hospital, better known as Bedlam. She became something of a celebrity, even "writing" a bestselling book (it was actually ghostwritten).
It's not surprising that King George showed compassion toward "the poor woman" who had tried to kill him. He was a kind-hearted man, and he knew first hand what it was like to be mentally ill. In 1765 he had suffered a breakdown. He was depressed, then cheerful, then depressed again. At first his doctors attributed his distress to a violent cold, which they treated by bleeding him. Weeks passed, and the king remained "sulky" and "agitated;" eventually, however, he seemed to recover.
There is dispute today about the cause of this illness and whether it was related to King George's later madness. His wife, Queen Charlotte, felt that he was overly stressed by the duties of kingship, and certainly that was a difficult time for George, who was struggling to hang on to the rebellious American colonies.
In 1788, two years after Margaret Nicholson's assassination attempt, King George had another breakdown. He suffered fits of gloom alternating with excited spells during which he talked incessantly and behaved oddly -- for instance, he presented a visitor to the palace with a blank sheet of paper for no apparent reason.
Again his physician, Sir George Baker, tried to cure him by bleeding him. When this failed, Baker concluded that the king's problem was more than physical. He later commented, "Nothing is more embarrassing to families as well as physicians than the condition of persons half-disordered, whom the law will not confine, though they ought not to be at liberty. Such appeared to me to have been His Majesty's case."
Not wanting to call public attention to the king's problem, Baker did little to treat it. But King George's madness could not be kept secret for long, and although he was never committed to an asylum, the "treatment" he received was no better than he could have expected within the walls of Bedlam.
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