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old age or disease’, came under the legal sense of lunacy; additionally, ‘weak-mindedness’, ‘imbecility’ and ‘idiocy’ could all render one unable to manage one’s affairs – intellectual derangement was just one of the conditions recognised as ‘unsoundness’. The jury need not worry about fine distinctions, Phillimore told them, but were solely to examine Mr Davies’s ability to manage his property and himself. The Commissioner also expressedthe wish that there would be no personal attacks upon Mrs Bywater during the hearing; clearer evidence of popular ill feeling against her has not survived, but Phillimore’s request indicates that strong support for Edward had come to his notice. Various newspapers and journals had alluded to the ‘excitement in the popular mind’ and ‘public dissatisfaction’ since the seizure of Davies and the attempted seizure of Freeman Anderdon but had declined to go into detail, perhaps to avoid being accused of taking sides before the Davies hearing opened.
    The doctors who had been hired by Mrs Bywater presented the various incidents already described as clear proof that Edward was of unsound mind and unable to run a business. But William Low and others loyal to the tea dealer recast each incident of apparent insanity to reveal the ‘slant’ that was being given to Edward’s behaviour.
    Mrs Martha Ings, to whom Edward was planning to lend the £200 he had wanted to cash at Hankey’s, was the owner of a small brew-house at Mount Pleasant, Holborn. The doctors produced her in court to tell the tale of the July morning on which Edward had called upon her to settle up for the horse he had recently bought from her. He had appeared ‘extremely excited . . . [with] a wild and extravagant manner’. He had torn off his neckcloth, untied his shoes and begun jumping up and down on the sofa, she told the inquisition. But Henry Brougham drew from her the admission that, put another way, all he had done was to walk to her house on a very hot day in July, arrived sweating, taken off his neckcloth and shoes to cool down, and rather than jumping up and down on her sofa, had flung his long limbs across it as he felt comfortable in her company – so much so, in fact, that he proposed to lend her a vast sum of money. Brougham similarly befuddled Aunt Brookbank, who became flustered when the lawyer challenged her account of how Edward had behaved at Brixton Hill: ‘Don’t be excited, Ma’am,’ he told her, ‘don’t be “wild”, “boisterous”, “irritated”. It’s rather dangerous, you know – you see the consequences.’ The spectators were by now laughing openly and loudly at Edward’s accusers. Commissioner Phillimore was surprisingly lenient in his attempts to rein in the rowdy and partisan crowd. Despite outbreaks of foot-stamping or hissing when a doctor said something particularly detrimental about Edward’s sanity, Phillimore only occasionally threatened to adjourn proceedings if better behaviour was not shown.
    He instructed all the ladies to withdraw when * * * was to be discussed, and they made it very clear that they objected to this eviction. Eventually they complied, but not before each woman had reserved her place by putting her gloves or shawl on her seat. Later, when the subject of abortion came up, they simply refused to shift from the room; the Commissioner told them that he was no longer prepared to make any effort to spare their ‘feelings’, therefore they could stay if they insisted. So they were present when during a spat between the two medics, Dr Haslam accused Dr Blundell of ‘making slips for married men’, a term that had to be explained in court as procuring an abortion for a woman who had been made pregnant by an adulterer. As abortion was still on the statutes as a hangable offence, Dr Blundell was allowed to take time to clear himself of the charge.
    The superintendent of the Clapham Retreat, William Pollard, could hardly make