James Tilly Matthews (original) (raw)

James Tilly Matthews (1770 – 10 January 1815) was a London tea broker, originally of Welsh and Huguenot descent, who was committed to Bethlem (colloquially Bedlam) in 1797 after his politically charged delusions drove him to disrupt debate in the House of Commons.His delusions were documented in the 1810 book Illustrations of Madness, including his belief that a gang of spies were using an "air loom" to invisibly torment him at a distance. His is considered to be the first fully documented case of paranoid schizophrenia.