He gained the trust of the French government for a short time. Williams made efforts at mediation which failed, whereupon Matthews took the lead. In the early 1790s, concerned at the likelihood of war between Britain and France, Matthews travelled to France with the radical David Williams who was acquainted with such Girondists as Jacques Pierre Brissot and Le Brun. His is considered to be the first fully documented case of paranoid schizophrenia. His delusions were documented in the 1810 book Illustrations of Madness, including his belief that a gang of spies were using an "air loom" to invisibly torment him at a distance. James Tilly Matthews (1770 – 10 January 1815) was a London tea broker, originally of Welsh and Huguenot descent, who was committed to Bethlem (colloquially Bedlam) in 1797 after his politically charged delusions drove him to disrupt debate in the House of Commons. London activist and paranoid schizophrenic
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