The Air Loom Gang - Hardcover

Jay, Mike

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593049977 ISBN 13: 9780593049976

Publisher: Bantam Press, 2003

Synopsis

The year is 1796. The French Revolution has drawn to its bloody conclusion and now war is rampaging across Europe as Britain faces up to the aggression of the republican masses led by the young general, Napoleon Bonaparte. Against this dramatic backdrop a strange scene unfolds in the Houses of Parliament. Lord Liverpool, the Home Secretary, is addressing the House, calling for increased action against the upstart French. A man shakily rises to his feet in the public gallery. Looking faint and worried he pauses for breath before bellowing a single word: "Treason!" The man is James Tilly Matthews. Across the city in a dank cellar another extraordinary scene unfolds. A gang of anarchists are at work with their diabolical machine, the Air Loom. The machine works by animal magnetism, sending invisible rays to control the minds of its victims, forcing thoughts into their heads and tormenting them with unbearable agonies if they attempt to resist. The gang has control of the minds of politicians and generals and is determined to plunge England further into the war with France. The only man who knows of this fiendish plot and believes he can stop it is the same James Tilly Matthews. "The Air Loom Gang" recounts the remarkable true story of Matthews: a peace activist caught up in the war between England and France who becomes convinced of an elaborate conspiracy aimed at the very heart of power. It tells of his arrest after his outburst in Parliament; his incarceration in England's most notorious madhouse, the Bethlam Royal Hospital, "Bedlam", and his fateful meeting with the surgeon, Dr John Haslam. Haslam becomes obsessed with Matthews and his precise paranoid fantasy. The contest between the two men runs for 20 years and becomes the defining test case for the new science of psychiatry.

About this title

About the Author

Mike Jay is the author of EMPERORS OF DREAMS: DRUGS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, BLUE TIDE: THE SEARCH FOR SOMA and ARTIFICIAL PARADISES: A DRUGS READER and editor of 1900: A FIN-DE-SIECLE READER.

From the Back Cover

London, the 1790s. Europe has been turned upside down by the French Revolution and the bloody Terror that followed it. Plots, counterplots and conspiracies seem to be edging England into a disastrous war with France. Operating undercover across the city as a gang of revolutionary 'terrorists' armed with a machine unlike any the world has ever seen. They call it the Air Loom.

The Air Loom works by animal magnetism, sending invisible rays to control the minds of its victims, forcing thoughts into their heads and tormenting them with unbearable agonies if they resist. The gang has control of the minds of politicians and generals and is bent on plunging France and England into war. The only man aware of the Air Loom Gang and their diabolical machine is a tea merchant from Wales called James Tilly Matthews. But Matthews is a long-term resident of the Bethlem Royal Hospital - Bedlam.

The Air Loom Gang tells James Tilly Matthews' remarkable true story. Incarcerated in the world's most notorious madhouse, his delusions became celebrated as the most complex and bizarre ever recorded. He remains one of the most famous cases in psychiatric history - the first man to believe that his mind was being controlled by an 'influencing machine'. But the truth of his case was even stranger than his doctors realized: many of the incredible conspiracies in which he claimed to have been involved were entirely real.

The Air Loom Gang is a gripping detective story set in a world bedevilled by conspiracy and paranoia, war and revolution, which shines a light into the darkest recesses of Georgian England and witnesses the convulsive birth-pangs of modern psychiatry. More than just a fascinating and improbable tale and one of the most colourful case studies in the history of madness, The Air Loom Gang is a startling portrait of a society poised to break through into the modern age.

'I have never seen the logic of madness, of a particular delusion, presented so clearly and convincingly. The Air Loom Gang is a wonderful book to read, combining exceptional scholarship and psychological insight with deep empathy for the tormented but always gentle and dignified Matthews. And it is beautifully written, with all the drama, the rich characterization, the subtlety, of a fine novel.' Oliver Sacks

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593049977
• ISBN 13: 9780593049976
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320