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Feature of the month - January 2009

John Clare (1793 – 1864)

John Care

In July 1837 the poet John Clare was admitted to the private lunatic asylum, at Fair Mead House, High Beech, in the centre of Epping Forest run by Dr Matthew Allen. In July 1841 Clare left the asylum and walked 80 miles to his former home at Helpston and Northborough. His journey took him three days during which he sustained himself by eating grass. In December 1841 Clare was certified insane and was admitted to St Andrews County Lunatic Asylum in Northampton, where he stayed until his death in 1864 aged 71.

Clare, who worked as a farm labourer and gardener, had his first book, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life, published in 1820 and became celebrated in London literary society as the 'peasant poet'. The Village Minstrel followed in 1821, and the Shepherd's Calendar in 1827, but neither book achieved the success of his first collection. The Rural Muse, published in 1835, scarcely sold at all, and his declining mental health, exacerbated by alcoholism, led to his hospitalisation.

The relatively liberal regime at Dr Allen's asylum allowed Clare to work in the surrounding fields and gardens and he was encouraged to continue with his writing. Allen reported that Clare's mental health had been made worse by "extreme poverty and over-exertion of body and mind" and helped to raise money for an annuity for Clare.

In the manuscript collection at the RSM Library is a copy of Matthew Allen's Cases of insanity, with medical, moral and philosophical observations upon them: Part 1, Vol.1. Atmospheric: the seasons; diurnal, lunar and planetary influence, with an inquiry into the cause of epidemics, and of cholera morbus in particular, published in 1831. The RSM's copy is interleaved with pages containing Allen's manuscript annotations regarding the text possibly with a view to a revised and expanded edition of his original work.

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