POOR BICKERTON:

The life story of John Bickerton was revealed at his inquest in 1833, opening up to subsequent historians the grim underside of the elegant world of Jane Austen, where there was no state intervention to prevent people falling victim to poverty, mental illness and crime. Born in 1755 into a Shropshire farming family, Bickerton died starved and neglected 78 years later, having attended both Oxford and Cambridge and been incarcerated in an asylum, even at one time describing himself as a "Reverend". Bickerton's death made news because when he died, deprived of basic medical attention by the Poor Relief Board, he was found to be carrying two letters from ex-prime ministers. His lifetime coincided with the notorious period when there were 220 offences that were punishable by death, and the treatment of the insane, into which category Bickerton was relegated by his contemporaries, was wilfully cruel. At the age of 31 the young Bickerton was hoping to be ordained and enrolled himself at Magdalene College Cambridge, but leaving without a degree he went on to St Edmund Hall in Oxford, where the vice-principal refused to pass him for ordination. Apparently mentally disturbed by this development, Bickerton attempted to break through the cordon surrounding the King in 1803 and was taken into custody at Bow Street Magistrates' Court, diagnosed as delusional and committed to preventive detention in the House of Correction at Coldbath Fields, an institution mismanaged by the brutal Thomas Aris. The author's research on the prison system is fascinating, as is the discussion of whether Bickerton fell under the category of lunatic, pauper or both. Finally released as not posing a threat, he enrolled as a lawyer in the Middle Temple and then, under bizarre circumstances, seems to have appointed himself as principal of the derelict Hertford College, Oxford, where his horse was seen looking out of a second floor window. Debtor's prison and steady decline soon followed. 240pp, photos.