of my grief to think that my poor wife was a-dying, at no great distance, and when she requested to see me, even in custody and in chains, the keeper was so unfeeling as to refuse her dying request. She afterwards sent my son (little more than seven years old), hoping that his youth, innocence, and distress might soften their hearts, but his appeal was unheeded. She sent him again with her dying love to me, and the keeper's wife shut the door in his face, and the child was suffered to return weeping to his mother. His supplication, as I afterwards heard, would have melted any heart, crying, 'What will become of me? My mother is dying, and my father is shut up in a mad-house, where I am not so much as allowed to see him.'"
It must be remembered that Martin's account of things is not to be trusted in all particulars. At the same time it is certain that asylums were not conducted at that period with humanity and judgment.
Mrs. Orton, the keeper's wife alluded to, was examined at the trial of Martin, ten years later. She said: "When Martin was with me I thought him a really insane person. He would sit on the floor with two cross-sticks as if he was fiddling, either singing hymns or whistling. He called his sticks an imitation of David's harp. I have known him fast four days—and say it was God Almighty's orders—in imitation of Christ fasting forty days on the Mount. He was often under restraint, and was bad to manage."
He succeeded in making his escape from the asylum[1] on the 17th of June, 1820, but was caught at Norton and brought back. On the 1st of July, 1820, he made his escape again by rubbing the rivets of his irons with free-
- ↑ Nicholson, the keeper of the Gateshead Asylum before the Ortons, said at the trial: "Martin was under my care eleven or twelve months. He conversed very rationally. I should not have thought him fit for a lunatic asylum."
