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Apr 15, 2013 · However, a new research project based at St George's, University of London, has concluded that George III did actually suffer from mental illness after all. Using the evidence of...
- Violent Mania
- ‘A Raving Lunatic’
- Confined to Kew Palace
- ‘Wrongheads’
- Harsh Treatments
- Recovery
- Relapse
- Death
- What Was Wrong with King George III?
- The Legacy of A Popular King
George’s second bout of illness in 1788 was far worse than the first. Whereas before George had displayed mild mental distress, this time around he was struck down with full-blown mania. Residing in Windsor Castle at the time, the king’s behaviour quickly spiralled out of control. He became extremely rude to everyone around him, he suffered from ha...
George’s family and staff were mystified. This amiable, polite family man had turned into a raving lunatic. A visitor to Windsorwas astonished to witness George burying a steak in the grounds of the castle, believing it would grow into a beef tree; another saw the king trying to shake hands with an oak tree, believing it to be the King of Prussia. ...
George was moved from his apartments at Windsor to Dutch House in the grounds of the long-since demolished Kew Palace in London. There, his physicians tried and failed to cure him of his insanity with several treatments we would now consider a form of torture. These included applying arsenic-laden powders to the king’s skin to make it burn and blis...
Beside herself with worry, Queen Charlotteturned to Francis Willis. Willis was a provincial physician and clergyman who had come to national attention after successfully treating what were then known as ‘wrongheads’ in his own private asylum in Lincolnshire. Willis believed that the root cause of mental illness was over-excitement. He intended to c...
When George ranted and raved and attacked those attending him, Willis ordered the king’s servants to gag him and place him in a straitjacket. He was left that way, thrashing around and making incomprehensible noises until he tired himself out and calmed down. When the king behaved himself, he was rewarded by being allowed to see members of his fami...
The king slowly began to recover under Willis’s care, though it is debatable whether the physician’s methods contributed to his recovery. By 1789, George was completely back to normal. His recovery was a blessed relief to the prime minister, William Pitt the Younger, who feared a regency of George’s son - who favoured Pitt’s rival, Charles James Fo...
Alas, the king’s recovery was not to last. In 1801 and again in 1804 he suffered further relapses and was again confined to Dutch House. He recovered from both relapses, but it was clear that the king’s mental and physical health was deteriorating. The final blow came in 1810. Already almost totally blind due to cataracts, the king suffered a final...
King George III died on the 29th of January 1820 at the age of eighty-one. He had reigned for sixty years and remains to this day the longest-serving male monarch in British history. Only his niece Victoria and his descendant Elizabeth II would go on to reign for longer.
King George III reigned for almost 60 years, the third longest in British history. He was not only a respected and diligent monarch but one immensely popular amongst the general populace, as well as in the political establishment. However, rather unfairly, he’s now mostly remembered as the king who lost America and went mad. Interest in his madness...
Whatever was at the root of George’s madness, he was in his lifetime a very popular king. Far from the mad monarch and tyrant of the American imagination, George was a wise, fair and popular monarch whose support for and promotion of Britain and the arts and sciences during his reign made him amongst the most enlightened and forward-thinking kings ...
Sep 14, 2024 · George III, the controversial British monarch known for his long reign and struggles with mental illness, played a pivotal role in shaping Britain’s political landscape during a time of significant global change.
- John Steven Watson
- His Birth Was Alarming. When the future King George III came into the world, it caused a flurry of terror and panic. He was the firstborn son to Frederick, Prince of Wales, the heir to the British throne, and his wife Augusta of Saxe-Gotha—and he was two months premature.
- They Didn’t Know If He’d Make It. Since infant mortality was extremely high back then, George’s parents feared for his life—and for his soul. They brought in the Bishop of Oxford to baptize him on the very same day of his birth, worrying that he may not even make it through the night.
- His Family Hated His Parents. George’s survival seemed like nothing short of a miracle—and it came at a time when his father Frederick definitely needed one.
- His Childhood Was Briefly Idyllic. Despite his family’s low opinion of him, Prince Frederick was a pretty good dad to George III, and made sure he had a high-quality and well-rounded education.
Jan 30, 2017 · There, a small army of researchers is orchestrating a revolution in archival access—one focused on George III, the monarch whose supposed tyranny sparked a revolution in the American colonies...
- Sara Georgini
George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 1738 – 29 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 25 October 1760 until his death in 1820. The Acts of Union 1800 unified Great Britain and Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with George as its king.
Revealing that George III had a network of private agents. One, code-named Aristarchus, a 'Georgian James Bond', asking for payment for the intelligence that the French were plotting to assassinate the King as he walked at night in The Queen's Garden.
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