Tothill Fields Bridewell was a prison located in the Westminster area of central London between 1618 and 1884. It was named "Bridewell" after the Bridewell Palace, which during the 16th century had become one of the City of London's most important prisons. Tothill Fields later became the Westminster House of Correction.

James Tilly Matthews was a British merchant of Welsh and Huguenot descent who was committed to the Bethlem Royal Hospital in 1797 after developing politically charged delusions which led him to disrupt sessions of the House of Commons of Great Britain. These delusions were documented in an 1810 book titled Illustrations of Madness, including Matthews' belief that a group of spies were using an "air loom" to secretly torment him from a distance. Modern historians consider Matthews to be the first fully documented case of schizophrenia.