LIEUTENANT (LATER CAPTAIN) F.L. FITZGERALD, 63RD (WEST SUFFOLK) REGIMENT (the post 1880 1st Battalion The Manchester Regiment) AND PRINCE REGENTS ROYAL AYRSHIRE RIFLES, WHO WAS STRUCK DOWN BY POST-TRAUMATIC STREES DISORDER FOLLOWING THE END

LIEUTENANT (LATER CAPTAIN) F.L. FITZGERALD, 63RD (WEST SUFFOLK) REGIMENT (the post 1880 1st Battalion The Manchester Regiment) AND PRINCE REGENTS ROYAL AYRSHIRE RIFLES, WHO WAS STRUCK DOWN BY POST-TRAUMATIC STREES DISORDER FOLLOWING THE END OF THE CRIMEAN WAR. Crimea Medal 1854-56, 4 clasps, Alma, Balaklava, Inkermann, Sebastopol (officially impressed: LIEUt. F.L. FITZGERALD, 63rd. FOOT) scattered minor rim nicks and edge bruises, otherwise generally Good Very Fine.

Frederick Lattin Fitzgerald, a member of the Fitzgerald family of Laccagh, Co. Kidare and Rathgar, Co. Dublin, Ireland, was born 19.6.1832. He was the son of Charles Fitzgerald (1787-1861), who claimed descent from the Earls of Kildare.

Fitzgerald was commissioned Ensign (by purchase), 63rd Foot, 14.6.1850, and was promoted Lieutenant (by purchase), 4.11.1853. He retired by the sale of his commission in 1855 (sale announced in 1856 Hart’s Army List). On retirement from the regular army Fitzgerald obtained a commission in the militia, being appointed Captain, the Prince Regent’s Royal Ayreshire Rifles, 15/9/1855.

The family archive of the Fitzgerald family of Laccagh and Rathgar is housed in the archives of the National Library of Ireland (reference Ms.10729), the archive includes a number of letters and papers written by or relating to Frederick Lattin Fitzgerald. The National Library’s archive also holds a memo book compiled by Frederick Lattin Fitzgerald during the period 1856-57 (reference Ms UR 012386). Some of the correspondence in the archive relates to a bitter dispute between Frederick Lattin Fitzgerald and his father shortly before his father’s death in 1861. Frederick Lattin Fitzgerald succeeded to the family estates on the death of his father.

The earliest evidence that Captain Fitzgerald was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder appeared in an article in the Dublin evening Mail of Wednesday 14/2/1866, reporting on a Tribunal of Enquiry by the Lunacy Commission inot Frederick Lattin Fitzgerald, held on that day.The article notes that Fitzgerald was a supposed lunaticand that the allegations in the petition upon which the Commission de Lunatico Inquerendo issued were, that the supposed lunatic was subject to various delusions. He complained that the cap-drivers in Dublin conspire against him, and that in consequence of the annoyances received from them he was obliged to leave the Shelbourne Hotel. He also wrote letters to the Lord Chancellor, the Commissioners of Peace and other parties, stating that he was persecuted by the cabmen who followed him to London and Paris. It was also alleged that he sat at the window of his house in Harcourt Street (Dublin), armed with a revolver to defend himself from the mobs, who, he imagined, were about to assassinate him. Speaking on behalf of Captain Fitzgerald, a Mr Brady, Q.C. before the jury retired, said, that Captain Fitzgerald had been treated very well by his family and noted that when an person suffered from mental infirmity he should be at once taken to an establishment devoted to the cure of that disease. After retiring, the jury returned with the following finding We find Captain Frederick Lattin Fitzgerald to be of unsound mind and to be incapable of managing his own affairs from the 1st December last. The hearing before the Lunacy Commission was additionally reported on in The Medical Press and Circular of 28/2/1866, which noted that Captain Fitzgerald was in possession of lands yielding a rent of about £1,000 in the counties of Dublin, Kildare and Longford. The Medical Press and Circular also reported Captain Fitzgerald as having been an inmate of Dr Eustaces Private Asylum in Dublin since 3/12/1865. After finding that Captain Fitzgerald was mentally ill, his estates were placed in the hands of a Board of Guardians. Captain Fitzgerald eventually recovered his senses and regained possession of his estates. He died on 10/3/1908.

Dr Eustaces Hospital for the Mentally Infirm, Hampstead Hospital, was established in Dublin in 1825 by John Eustace, a Quaker. The hospital is still in existence today, and since 1825 down to the present day successive generations of the Eustace family have been continuously connected with and employed by the hospital.

There is a reference to Dr Eustaces Hospital in James Joyces Ulysses, wherein the central character Leopold Bloom is recorded as also having been an inmate of the hospital. The reference appears in chapter 15 Circe, where Dr Mulligan in motor jerkin, green motor goggles on his brow states Dr Bloom is bi-sexually abnormal. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustaces asylum for demented gentlemen. Born out of wedlock, hereditary epilepsy is present, the consequence of unbridled lust. Traces of elephantiasis have been discovered among his ascendents. There are marked symptoms of chronic exhibitionism. Ambidexterity is also latent. etc. There is also a reference in Ulysses to the Lunacy Commission court, chapter 10, where an elderly female, no longer young is recorded as exiting the court after hearing the case in the lunacy of Potterton.

The Fitzgerald archive in the National Library of Ireland contains a 3 page manuscript note tracing the ancestry of the Fitzgerald family of Laccagh and Rathgar back to the hills of Kildare. A copy of this document accompanies Captain Fitzgeralds medal.

Medal also accompanied by copied extracts from Burke’s “Landed Gentry of Ireland” re. the Fitzgerald family, copied extracts from Army Lists of the period and copied medal rolls, confirming medal and clasps.