Broadmoor Revealed: Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum (19 page)

Later in 2011,
Harvey Gordon’s Broadmoor: An Inside Story will be published. This
is set to become the new standard history of the Hospital.

Edward
Oxford

Notes about
Oxford at Broadmoor were taken from the relevant case book
(D/H14/D2/1/1/1), and his case file (D/H14/D2/2/1/96) at the
Berkshire Record Office. The correspondence about Oxford’s
discharge can be found in D/H14/A1/2/4/1. Haydon’s letter to
Nicolson is within a file of newspaper cuttings D/H14/A5/1/3.

You can read
the transcript of Oxford’s trial on the Old Bailey website at
http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=def1-1877-18400706&div=t18400706-1877#highlight
.
Oxford also has a brief Wikipedia entry at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Oxford
.

Richard
Dadd

Notes about
Dadd at Broadmoor were taken from the relevant case books
(D/H14/D2/1/1/1 and D2/1/3/1), and his case file (D/H14/D2/2/1/130)
at the Berkshire Record Office. Entries for purchases made by Dadd
can be found in the patients’ account book (D/H14/D3/3/1/1).

There are
various books available about Dadd. The two which brought him back
to attention are:

Richard Dadd,
by Patricia Allderidge, Academy, 1974

Richard Dadd:
the Rock and Castle of Seclusion, by David Greysmith, Macmillan,
1973.

Another book
about Dadd, Richard Dadd: The Artist and the Asylum, will be
published in summer 2011, written by Nick Tromans.

There are also
various sources of information about Dadd online. If you want to
jump straight to his wikipedia entry then it is at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dadd
.
The collection of Dadd art held at Bethlem Royal Hospital Museum
can be viewed at
http://www.bethlemheritage.org.uk/gallery/pages/LDB867-1.asp
.

William
Chester Minor

From Broadmoor,
information about Minor comes from the relevant case books
(D/H14/D2/1/1/3 and D2/1/3/1), and his case file (D/H14/D2/2/1/742)
at the Berkshire Record Office. Entries for purchases made by Minor
can be found in the patients’ account book (D/H14/D3/3/1/1).

The principal
work on Minor in print is Simon Winchester’s The Surgeon of
Crowthorne, (The Professor and The Madman in the US), a bestseller
and well worth a read to anyone interested in Minor’s story. It is
not an authoritative biography, but contains the results of far
more research on Minor than the short piece I have written.

Online, Minor’s
wikipedia entry is at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Chester_Minor
, and there’s a BBC article at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/legacies/myths_legends/england/berkshire/article_1.shtml
.

Christiana
Edmunds

Edmunds’s
Broadmoor notes can be found in D/H14/D2/2/2/204 and
D/H14/D2/1/2/1.

Many newspapers
carried updates of Christiana’s trial in excited detail, and a lot
of this chapter has been taken both from The Times and regional
newspapers on pay-per-view websites. There are, however, some
accounts of her trial available free online via the New York Times.
These are:

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9A01E1DD113EEE34BC4B53DFBF66838A669FDE

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=980CE6DC113EEE34BC4053DFBF66838A669FDE

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9B00E2D71739E43BBC4951DFBF66838A669FDE

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9A06E3D9113EEE34BC4E52DFB4668389669FDE

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9C00E0DB113EEE34BC4B53DFB4668389669FDE

The official
proceedings of the Old Bailey provide little detail about the
case.

There is a
wikipedia entry for Edmunds, though it is fairly basic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiana_Edmunds

Broadmoor
Babies

The Broadmoor
case file references for each of the patients at the Berkshire
Record Office are as follows:

D/H14/D2/2/2/113: Catherine Dawson

D/H14/D2/2/2/146: Mary Ann Meller

D/H14/D2/2/2/177: Margaret Crimmings

D/H14/D2/2/2/212: Margaret Davenport

D/H14/D2/2/2/280: Catherine Jones

And their case
notes can be found in D/H14/D2/1/2/1.

Correspondence
about some of the cases can be found in the Superintendent’s letter
book D/H14/A2/1/4/1.

None of these
patients are yet well known, so although other sources, such as
trial reports, are available locally, the only one freely available
online is that of Mary Ann Meller. Misspelt Miller, her trial
transcript is at

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=def1-105-18671216&div=t18671216-105#highlight
.

Escape from
Broadmoor

There are lots
of places to look for information about these escapes in the
Broadmoor archive at the BRO. The following items all contain
relevant information for the first half of the chapter, detailing
escape attempts under Meyer’s leadership:

Council of
Supervision minutes (D/H14/A1/2/1/1-2)

The Council’s
Chairman’s letter books (D/H14/A1/2/4/1-2)

Letters from
Whitehall (D/H14/A1/2/5/1)

Annual reports
(D/H14/A2/1/1/1)

Meyer’s journal
(D/H14/A2/1/3/1)

Superintendent’s letter book (D/H14/A2/1/4/1)

Staff
defaulter’s books (D/H14/B1/3/1/1-3)

Case files do
not survive for every patient in this first part of the story. The
ones that do are:

D/H14/D2/2/1/40: Richard Elcombe

D/H14/D2/2/1/179: Peter Waldie

D/H14/D2/2/1/186: Timothy Grundy

D/H14/D2/2/1/232: Patrick Lyndon

D/H14/D2/2/1/260: Richard or Thomas Walker

D/H14/D2/2/1/294: Peter O’Donnell

D/H14/D2/2/1/388: Cuthbert Rodham Carr

D/H14/D2/2/1/600: George Turner

D/H14/D2/2/1/617: James Bennett

D/H14/D2/2/1/791: John Thompson (1871 admission only)

D/H14/D2/2/1/1058: Thomas Douglas (1881 admission only)

D/H14/D2/2/2/65: Mary McBride

D/H14/D2/2/2/148: Alice Kaye

Patient case
notes can be found in D/H14/D2/1/1-4 and D/H14/D2/1/2/1.

It is a similar
position for the second part of the story, that connected with
Orange’s time in charge. Here, the relevant references are:

Council of
Supervision minutes (D/H14/A1/2/1/1-2)

The Council’s
Chairman’s letter books (D/H14/A1/2/4/1-3)

Letters from
Whitehall (D/H14/A1/2/5/1)

Annual reports
(D/H14/A2/1/1/1)

Meyer’s journal
(D/H14/A2/1/3/1)

Superintendents’ letter book (D/H14/A2/1/4/1)

Staff
defaulters’ books (D/H14/B1/3/1/1-3)

The case files
that survive are:

D/H14/D2/2/1/67: Thomas Cathie Wheeler

D/H14/D2/1/1/268: William Watkinson

D/H14/D2/2/1/404: John Batts

D/H14/D2/2/1/614: William Bisgrove

D/H14/D2/2/1/638: Henry Leest

D/H14/D2/2/1/640: Patrick Burke

D/H14/D2/2/1/659: Isaac Finch

D/H14/D2/2/1/747: Thomas Hart

D/H14/D2/2/1/1363: William Heaps alias Walter Arthurs

And patient
case notes can be found in the same references as for part one
above.

About the
author

Mark Stevens is
a professional archivist, currently working at the Berkshire Record
Office in Reading.

He has been
looking after the Broadmoor Hospital archive since 2004, and
regularly speaks and writes about the subject.

Visit Mark’s
Smashwords page at
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/markstevens
.