page_title: Asylum confinement of Christopher Smart
section_title: St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics
hierarchical_section_title: Asylum confinement of Christopher Smart / Asylum / St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics
caption_attribution_description: English: Christopher Smart's Jubilate Agno "Let" verse.
context_page_description: The English poet Christopher Smart was confined to mental asylums from May 1757 until January 1763. Smart was admitted into St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics, Upper Moorfields, London, on 6 May 1757. He was taken there by his father-in-law, John Newbery, although he may have been confined in a private madhouse before then. While in St Luke's he wrote Jubilate Agno and A Song to David, the poems considered to be his greatest works. Although many of his contemporaries agreed that Smart was "mad", accounts of his condition and its ramifications varied, and some felt that he had been committed unfairly.
  Smart was diagnosed as "incurable" while at St Luke's, and when they ran out of funds for his care he was moved to Mr. Potter's asylum, Bethnal Green. All that is known of his years of confinement is that he wrote poetry. Smart's isolation led him to abandon the poetic genres of the 18th century that had marked his earlier work and to write religious poetry such as Jubilate Agno. His asylum poetry reveals a desire for "unmediated revelation", and it is possible that the self-evaluation found in his poetry represents an expression of evangelical Christianity.
context_section_description: Few details are known about Smart's time at St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics. He was admitted to St Luke's on 6 May 1757 as a "Curable Patient". It is possible that Smart was confined at Newbery's behest over old debts and a poor relationship that existed between the two; Newbery had previously mocked Smart's immorality in A Collection of Pretty Poems for the Amusement of Children six Foot High. Regardless of Newbery's exact reasons, there is evidence suggesting that Newbery's admittance of Smart into the mental asylum was not based on madness. To have Smart admitted, Newbery probably provided a small bribe, although bribes were against St Luke's policy.
  There is little information about Smart's condition during his stay at St Luke's, possibly because Battie's denied his patients from being visited, including by their own family members. One of the few records that survive of Smart's time at St Luke's was an entry in St Luke's Minute Book, which read:
  12 May 1758
  Dr. Battie having acquainted this Committee that Christopher Smart (who was admitted on the 6th day of May 1757) continues disordered in his Senses notwithstanding he has been admitted into this Hospital above 12 Calendar Months and from the present Circumstances of his Case there is not Suffit. reason to expect his speedy Recovery And he being brought up and examined. Ordered. That he be discharged and that Notice be sent to his Securities to take him away.
  During Smart's confinement at St Luke's, not even other doctors were allowed to see Smart unless they had received personal permission from Battie. It was improbable that Smart could have left the asylum without being released by Battie. Even if Smart would have attempted to obtain release via legal means, the rules for subpoenaing release would have been almost impossible to follow based on the system that Battie had in place, which isolated the individual from all contact. Eventually, Smart was deemed "incurable" and would not have been released by the hospital but for its lack of funds.
caption: A page from Jubilate Agno written while in asylum
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