ABSTRACT
Thomas Bakewell was a lecturer and published poet and author; Thomas Mulock, father of the celebrated children’s writer Dinah Craik, was a public speaker and prodigious author of poetry and prose. Bakewell’s concern about the lack of public understanding of mental health issues had been simmering for some time before Spring Vale was purchased. In 1805, he published anonymouslye Domestic Guide, in Cases of Insanity. A year Spring Vale was purchased and adapted to Bakewell’s family home and business, a second edition of Domestic Guide was published with an advertisement. One hundred years before Hard Cash was published, a Select Committee was convened ‘to inquire into the State of private Madhouses in this Kingdom’. Just as the 1807 Select Committee was taking evidence, Bakewell’s preoccupation resurfaced in the publication of two volumes of poetry, partly titled his alter ego, Moorland Bard.
