John Thomas Perceval

John Thomas Perceval (14 February 1803 – 28 February 1876) was a British army officer who was confined in lunatic asylums for three years and spent the rest of his life campaigning for reform of the lunacy laws and for better treatment of asylum inmates. He was one of the founders of the Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society and acted as their honorary secretary for about twenty years. Perceval's two books about his experience in asylums were republished by anthropologist Gregory Bateson in 1962, and in recent years he has been hailed as a pioneer of the mental health advocacy movement. Early life Perceval was born into the ruling elite of the United Kingdom in 1803. His father Spencer Perceval, a son of the 2nd Earl of Egmont, was a lawyer and politician who became prime minister in 1809. Perceval was the tenth of thirteen children (of whom twelve survived infancy). When Perceval was nine his father was shot dead in the lobby of the House of Commons. The assassin, John Bellingham, was a merchant with a grievance against the government and was widely believed to be insane (although at his trial he pleaded injustice rather than insanity and was executed). Press reports described how one of the Perceval boys had been in Parliament and had seen his father's body moments after the shooting, and a psychoanalyst has suggested that this child was Perceval and that witnessing the scene may have been the cause of his subsequent regressive experience. Perceval himself recognised the loss of his father - along with mercury poisoning and over-study of religion - as a contributory factor in his breakdown. Perceval attended Harrow School and spent a year with a private tutor before obtaining an army commission, first in a cavalry regiment and then as a captain in the First Foot or Grenadier Guards. Much of his army career was spent on tours of duty in Portugal and Ireland; he did not see combat. A sober and religious man, Perceval felt increasingly out of place in the army and, in 1830, sold his commission and enrolled at Hertford College, Oxford. Although he found university life more to his liking than the army, Perceval did not return for a second term in the autumn of 1830. Instead he embarked on a spiritual journey to Scotland, visiting a radical evangelical sect at Row who spoke in tongues and were said to perform miracles. Perceval came to believe he was guided by the holy spirit.