Tom O' Bedlam

Tom O' Bedlam

"Tom O' Bedlam" is the name of a critically acclaimed anonymous poem written circa 1600 (it can be definitely dated back to 1634) about a Bedlamite.

The term "Tom O' Bedlam" was used in Early Modern Britain and later to describe beggars and vagrants who had or feigned mental illness (see also Abraham-men). They claimed, or were assumed, to have been former inmates at the Bethlem Royal Hospital (Bedlam). It was commonly thought that inmates were released with authority to make their way by begging, though this is probably untrue. If it happened at all the numbers were certainly small, though there were probably large numbers of mentally ill travellers who turned to begging, but had never been near Bedlam. It was adopted as a technique of begging, or a character. For example, Edgar in King Lear disguises himself as mad "Tom O'Bedlam".

It was a popular enough ballad that another poem was written in reply, "Mad Maudlin's Search" or "Mad Maudlin's Search for Her Tom of Bedlam" (the same Maud who was mentioned in the verse "With a thought I took for Maudlin / And a cruise of cockle pottage / With a thing thus tall, Sky bless you all / I befell into this dotage." which apparently records Tom going mad, "dotage") or "Bedlam Boys" (from the chorus, "Still I sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys / Bedlam boys are bonny / For they all go bare and they live by the air / And they want no drink or money."), whose first stanza was:

For to see Mad Tom of Bedlam,

Ten thousand miles I've traveled.

Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes,

For to save her shoes from gravel

The remaining stanzas include:

I went down to Satan's kitchen

To break my fast one morning

And there I got souls piping hot

All on the spit a-turning.

There I took a cauldron

Where boiled ten thousand harlots

Though full of flame I drank the same

To the health of all such varlets.

My staff has murdered giants

My bag a long knife carries

To cut mince pies from children's thighs

For which to feed the fairies.

No gypsy, slut or doxy

Shall win my mad Tom from me

I'll weep all night, with stars I'll fight

The fray shall well become me.

It was apparently first published in 1720 by mrs price in her Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy. "Maudlin" was a form of Mary Magdalene.