MADMEN MAKE MONEY.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 24 April 1914, Page 8

MADMEN MAKE MONEY.

"I am sure," said a well-known mind doctor to the writer, " you Would be amazed at the clever work that is done by hundreds of . mi;n and women who are hopelessly ins. ne ; some of it at least as good as that done by sane people who earn large incomes. ~ "Among my patients to-day is one man whose skill with the brush would almost qualify him for Ttoyal Academician rank if he were only ■in possession of his senses. There are few of the great exhibitions which do not contain one or more ;of his canvases, and he has often .received as much as £100 for a picture. And yet this man is as ' mad as a hatter/ the victim of terrible and subject to violent nomicidal attacks.

".Naturally his work is unreliable. One week he will produce a masterly picture, with genius in every line of it. The next he will paint the most weird picture, a perfect night- ! mare in colour, which, curiously I enough, he always considers a mas- \ terpiece. I MAD MUSICIANS. | "And this man is no exception, for there are scores of lunatics who are ' quite excellent artists, and many of j them make good incomes by their art. Some years ago an-.exhibition of pictures, the work of insane pa- j I tients of the Bethlem Royal Hospi'j tal, was opened to the public, and I I can assure you many of them are beautiful works of art. There is a rural painting of heroic size over j the main staircase in one asylum in which the subject of the Good Samaritan is magnificently treated, and I have seen a series of the Passions whifch surpasses anything I have ever seen at the Royal Academy. "There are hundreds of other lunatics who are just as skilful in music and literature. One of my own pa--1 tients, who is hopelessly mad on one subject and who is a perfect musical genius, has composed operas , and symphonies and scores of songs which have won fame for him all over Europe, and have brought him a small fortune. And I know of many other insane men and women who earn small and regular incomes in the same way. CRAZY FICTION WRITERS. " There axe, similarly, hundreds of the insane who make a hobby, and sometimes a very profitable one, of writing. Indeed, many of our asylums have magazines which are almost entirely fhe work of the patients. Seventy-five years ago the first number of the ' New Moon ' made its appearance at the Crichton Royal institute, Dumfries; seven years later the Royal Edinburgh Asylum followed with the ' Morningside Mirror,' and later came the quarterly ' Excelsior ' from Murray's Royal Asylum, Perth, ' Under the Dome,' the journal of the Bethlem Hospital, London, and so on —and full of bright and clever reading, often containing admirable drawings done by insane patients. "Of course, such work is not paid for, but both in and outside our asylums are many mad people who make a comfortable income from their pens. Indeed, I know of two —a man and a woman —whose incomes from fiction come to many hundreds a year. "Even in our s public asylums there are hundreds of patients who make money by skilled work of one sort or another. Thus in a county asylum I know well one man whc does the most exquisite water-color sketches, for which he receives from £.3 to £10 each, and he has a market for as many as he can produce. Unfortunately like so many mad artists, he is often Unable or unwilling to finish a picture, and thus four-fifths of his work is wasted. "Another patient, an ex-sea captain, spends his time in making the most perfect tiny models of ships, carved with infinite skill and pains from bone or ivory, for each of which he gets a pound or two. For one very elaborate and beautiful model of a cathedral he was paid as much as £30, and it was certainly very cheap at the price. A third patient in the same asylum earns a good many pounds a year by cutting the cleverest silhouettes out of coloured paper. For a small book of these cuttings his regular charge is a guinea. "Other patients are equally skilled in a very wide range of industries, from inventing toys and puzzles to making watches and picture-frames, and from breeding canaries and mice to raising flowers. One very ingenious man actually made a clock with no other material than pins, buttons, iron bed-laths, and pieces of knitting-needles. "The women, too, are just as clever as the men. I know one de--1 mented lady who writes the most charming books for children and verses for Christmas cards, another who makes a good income in her lucid hours by illustrating books, and a third who draw's some hundreds a year from royalties on her plays. And there are countless women in our public asylums who earn money in scores of ways, such as knitting, lace-making, straw-plait-j ing, and leather work."