madhouse place which is busy and disorganised These people would do fine in a normal workplace , but the BBC today is a kind of madhouse . `` It's going to be a madhouse , '' he said , waving his arm toward the two tents he has erected outside his bar to handle the expected overflow crowds . ` It's a madhouse in here , ' he said . This was the usual madhouse performance the Italians always seemed to put on -- a real World War I-style dogfight . Out on the ramp beneath the lights and the arrows of rain and the madhouse tannoy squawking links and rechts : fathers , mothers , children , the old , scattered like leaves in the wind . hospital for people who are mentally ill In 1678 he was confined in a madhouse in Finsbury . `` In 10 years , even five , we could be looking back on the past three decades of gun violence in America the way one once looked back upon 18th century madhouses . ''