Broadmoor Revealed: Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum

by Mark Stevens

  As a patient in Block 2, Minor enjoyed a reasonable degree of freedom within the Hospital routine. He had his own clothes, his art materials, and a regular income from his family which allowed him, like Dadd, to ask the Hospital to purchase things for him. Examples of things Minor bought include: beef, haddock, poultry, game, steak, bacon, salmon, as well as biscuits, coffee and lots of eggs. Once he bought himself a macaroni cheese. He also regularly purchased newspapers and a number of engineering journals (quite possibly for advice about solid building construction, which might prevent his nightly suffering).

  He experienced as comfortable an existence as would be possible for any Broadmoor patient. At some point, he was allowed a separate day room as well as his bedroom, where he presumably kept his books, and by 1901 if not before he employed another patient as his servant (occasionally having to change his domestic staff if they were discharged). Winchester suggests that Minor’s two rooms were interconnecting, but this is unlikely as he was a tenant rather than a freeholder, and more probably they were either next door to each other or close together in Block 2. The exact date from when the extra room was granted is not clear, though it is likely that it postdates 1876, when Orange succeeded in having most of the convict patients transferred to Woking Prison. Certainly, Minor must have enjoyed the privilege for most of his stay, as a note in his file from 1887 suggests that Minor could not get into his day room one morning as the lock was faulty (which no doubt provided him with further evidence of the conspiracy against him), until the attendants had removed an obstruction from it.

  Much of the anecdotal evidence for Minor’s comfort comes from a 1958 letter written by Dr Patrick McGrath, then the Superintendent, in response to an academic enquiry. He reported on a conversation with the daughter of David Nicolson, Superintendent 1886-1895, who confirmed most of the details above. Miss Nicolson also reported that as well as his own library, music and paints, Minor had a private stock of wines and spirits, played the flute, and would from time to time dine with the Superintendent’s family in the latter’s home.

  Minor was obviously cared about by his family and friends, and received regular visits as well as money and luxuries. With cash to spend and time to kill, he began to amass books and read voraciously. After Sir James Murray published his ‘appeal to English speakers and the English reading public’ in 1879 for help with what became the Oxford English Dictionary, Minor must have come across it in his newspapers and felt a call. He began immediately to send in to the dictionary staff what became thousands of examples of word use from his book collection to assist them with their Herculean labours.

  Books would come to play a part in the refinement of his delusion. In his early years in Broadmoor, he was convinced that poison was administered to him at night. Usually chloroform was used to render him helpless to abuse and humiliation. By 1877, this had changed to his being subject to torture by electricity, and by 1878 he was being secretly removed from the asylum at night and abused. All these actions were evidently attacks upon his free will. Once they had his body, the next sacred thing in line were his books, and the first evidence that the criminal agents had moved on to these dates from 1884, when he wrote to the Superintendent alleging that items in his library were defaced at night.

  Minor must have found the approach of night a very frightening thing, as it brought with it the certainty of pain and degradation. Immediately that he arrived in Broadmoor, he would barricade his room every night by placing furniture across the door of it. Only very occasionally would the attendants reported that his nights had not been restless; usually, the morning brought fresh reports of his sordid trials. He expended much effort on trying to remedy the situation through practical means such as the barricade, asking the Superintendent to keep a close watch on the attendants and so on. He was also always open to offering other solutions. The letter below was sent to Orange on 6th October 1884:

  Dear Sir

  Let me mention one fact that falls in with my hypothesis. So many fires have occurred in the US originating quite inexplicably in the interspace of ceiling and floor; that I learn now Insurance Companies refuse to insure large buildings – mills, factories etc – which have the usual hollow spacing under the floor. They insist upon solid floors. All this has come to notice within ten years; but no one suggests any explanation.

  Very sincerely yours

  WC Minor

  Amongst the more interesting discoveries in Winchester’s book is the suggestion that Minor also met regularly with Eliza Merritt, the widow of the man he shot. Unfortunately nothing has yet surfaced in the Broadmoor archives to verify this. However, we do know that through Minor’s work on the Dictionary, he met with Sir James Murray. Indeed an apocryphal account of the meeting has been around for some time, the story being that Murray was received into Dr Nicolson’s office, then the Medical Superintendent, whereupon Murray thanked Nicolson for his contribution to the dictionary. Nicolson corrected Murray and assured him that it was not he that should be thanked, and then walked him to Block 2, through the corridors of howling lunatics (or at least, painting and reading lunatics) and introduced him to Minor. Murray’s reaction was to gasp through his generous beard in amazement.

  In reality, Murray knew who and what he was visiting before he made the journey down from Oxford. Beyond that, the extent of the relationship between the two men is open to conjecture. Evidence from Minor’s file suggests that they met sporadically. The first letter from Murray in Minor’s file is dated 3rd January 1891. It refers to Thomas Brushfield, a former Superintendent of Brookwood Asylum in Woking and probably a contemporary of Dr Nicolson. Murray wrote that he was currently working on ‘do’ for the Dictionary, and wished to make arrangements to visit Minor for the first time. Whether or not he became a regular visitor is not evidenced in Minor’s file, though the next letter in the file from Murray, which is dated 21st August 1901, says that Murray had not seen Minor since just before Dr Nicolson left as Super. That places their last previous meeting as towards the end of 1895, and implies that at the time of writing, Murray had not visited Minor for six years.

  Despite the therapeutic effects of his work on the dictionary, Minor’s condition deteriorated over the years. The delusions and frustrations never left him. Reading his notes gives a sense that sometimes he probably internalised them, and that when it all got too much he would suddenly explode, making an accusatory outburst to the attendants or to the Super. Eventually he took matters into his own hands, and on the morning of 3rd December 1902 he tied a tourniquet around the base of his penis and sliced off the offending organ. He was 68 years old, and had never been able to come to terms with his own sexual urges. Asked why he had done it, he replied: ‘In the interests of morality’. He testified that for a long time previously he had been taken out of the asylum at night and forced to fornicate with between fifty and one hundred women ‘from Reading to Land’s End.’ He spent time in the infirmary but was discharged after four months back to Block 2. Sadly of course, his retaliatory act did not defeat his delusions, which remained as before. In his last letter to Dr Brayn, shortly before his discharge, Minor was complaining still of ‘these nightly sensual uses of my body that I experience and struggle against.’

  As indicated earlier, the nature of these ‘sensual uses’ may provide some help in understanding Minor and his mental illness. Winchester’s book suggests various hypotheses about Minor’s own sexual motivations, from dusky eastern maidens with pert breasts to disease and prostitution in New York’s metropolis, and to guilt about his feelings for Eliza Merritt. However, Minor’s early delusions at Broadmoor all seem to relate to his body being used by men, and it is only in the later years that women play the more significant part. To the modern reader, Minor may be repressing homosexual, or even paedophiliac tendencies as much as heterosexual ones. Plenty of things may have happened to Minor before he came to the attention of the authorities, though we may never know exactly what Minor’s own sexual experiences were, and how his o
bsessions led him to such a dramatic conclusion. What is beyond doubt is that Minor was able to concoct outrageous tales of depravity, experienced with a multitude of other bodies, of both sexes and all ages, and that his mutilation of his own body was a direct result of his discomfort with that fact.

  Still riddled with fear and hampered by his lifelong burdens, Minor was also becoming a very old and frail man, which brought on additional problems. In December 1907, he neglected to check the water temperature and severely scalded himself when bathing in his room. In 1908, he suffered from a serious bout of flu. The facts of his advancing years and ill health was not lost on his family and friends, who remained in constant touch with the hospital. The first formal petition for Minor’s release was delivered to the Home Office in 1899, who rejected it quickly. But by 1903, Dr Brayn was suggesting to Minor’s step-brother that a proposal to remove Minor to America might be received favourably, providing suitable care could be found for him.

  It took seven years before matters reached a resolution. In 1909 and 1910, Dr Brayn felt compelled from time to time to remove Minor to the infirmary, not thinking it safe to leave Minor alone in his room day after day, as he was no longer capable of looking after himself. Laid up, and deprived of his books and his art materials, Minor was increasingly miserable, as well as increasingly harmless. Finally, in April 1910 a conditional discharge was granted for his release. Both Sir James and Lady Murray visited him one last time before he was escorted to the Tilbury Docks on 15th April (via Bracknell, Waterloo and St Pancras), where he was put on board a steamer and handed over to the care of his step-brother for the journey back across the Atlantic.

  After thirty-eight years in Broadmoor, Minor arrived back in America to return to the Government Hospital for the Insane in Washington. There he swapped one similar regime for another: a private room, certain privileges, and nightly torments. Though the Broadmoor authorities had thought he was nearing the end of his life, he did in fact keep going for a further decade, reading, writing, and making the occasional outburst. He remained in Washington until November 1919, when he was compassionately released to be nearer his family, at the Retreat for the Elderly Insane in Hartford, Connecticut. He died there on 26th March 1920.

  Inevitably for Minor there has to be a postscript, because unlike Dadd, whose work was acknowledged during his life, Minor’s place in history has only really been secured after his death. Hayden Church, an American journalist and author of the imagined Minor/Murray first meeting, published one romantic piece about Minor in 1915, and another in 1944. He intended to write a book about Minor – there is a relevant letter in Minor’s file stating this intention – but eventually did not. Little more happened until the 1980s, when the Oxford University Press was becoming aware of its own history and Minor’s place in it, and a more scholarly article about the American in Crowthorne was published. Then came Simon Winchester, a full biography and worldwide recognition. Once it happened, it seemed like it was an obvious conclusion: Minor’s story is ultimately one of triumph in adversity, and that always makes for a good read. Revisiting Minor’s life for this short piece has made me realise how much might still be written about him, for while aspects of the man might have become obscured by the clouds of myth, there is a man to be discovered, all the same.

  Christiana Edmunds:

  The Venus of Broadmoor

  The most celebrated Victorian female patient at Broadmoor has been remembered for the cause of her admission rather than any wider social impact. This is perhaps a reflection on how scandalous women fulfilled the voyeuristic delight of Victorian society. For Christiana was a woman who satisfied certain stereotypes, and her story included sex and murder. The tabloids christened Christiana ‘The Chocolate Cream Poisoner’.

  Born in Margate, Kent, the daughter of a local architect, and sent to private school, Christiana grew up in a household already touched by insanity. For the Victorians, the mental illness found in Christiana’s close family would prove to be a strong factor in her own diagnosis. Hereditary insanity was marked: her father had apparently gone mad before his early death, and two of her siblings died in adulthood, a brother in Earlsfield Asylum in London, and a sister allegedly by her own hand. Nevertheless, she came from a very comfortable, middle class background, and was described at her first trial as ‘a lady of fortune, tall, fair, handsome and extremely prepossessing in demeanour’. From the age of around fourteen, she lived alone with her sister and their mother, an aging landlady..

  Little is known about her early adult life, except that as a party to an independent income, she did not need to work. The family moved to Brighton in the mid 1860s. Her recorded history properly begins when in the middle of 1869 she first met, then fell in love with a Dr Charles Beard who lived nearby. She sent him love letters, and, to begin with he reciprocated her friendship. In such times, any form of intimacy was significant, and it appears that they carried on some level of romantic relationship for the next few months. The nature of this level has to remain a matter of conjecture, and the extent of the relationship may have been greater in Christiana’s mind than in reality. Dr Beard always maintained that there had been no affair in a physical sense, but even if it was purely an emotional affair, some sort of connection had been made.

  There was a small problem, however: Dr Beard was already married. He now found himself a respected member of the local community who was being disloyal to his wife. Whatever he was up to, it was unwise. During the summer of 1870, the burden of deceit became too much, and Dr Beard asked Edmunds to stop writing to him: ‘This correspondence must cease, it is no good for either of us’. Edmunds did not stop. By now, she was used to calling on the Beards from time to time, and she used this familiarity to take additional action. One day in September 1870, Edmunds visited Mrs Emily Beard, the good doctor’s wife, with a gift of chocolate creams for her. Mrs Beard ate some of the chocolate, and was promptly, and violently sick afterwards. Dr Beard accused Edmunds of poisoning his wife, although Edmunds refuted the allegation. Instead, Christiana complained that she was as much a victim as Mrs Beard, for the same chocolates had made her sick too. Beard withdrew his accusation, but Edmunds was banished from the Beard household, after a last, climactic meeting in January 1871. Dr Beard also wished to banish Edmunds from his life, but in this respect he was not successful. The letters continued to arrive at his offices, sometimes forwarded to him from home, two or three times every week. He ignored them.

  This might have just become another case of a spurned lover, except that over the next few months there were many further cases of people falling ill in Brighton after eating sweets and chocolates. None of these cases was newsworthy on its own, despite their personal drama. All of them featured a violent sickness, which passed quickly and without lingering harm. Consequently, stories of them spread by word of mouth rather than through the local media. Then on 12th June 1871, a man called Charles Miller, on holiday in Brighton with his brother’s family, bought some chocolate creams from a sweet shop called J.G.Maynard’s, ate a few, and gave one to his four year-old nephew, Sidney Barker. Miller became ill but recovered. Barker died.

  This was altogether a more serious episode. It was necessary to hold an inquiry into the tragic event. Amongst those who came forward to give evidence at the inquest was Christiana, who claimed that she and her friends had also become ill after eating sweets from Maynard’s store. She blamed Mr Maynard for some personal discomfort caused the previous year, when the wife of a good friend had suffered a similar event. There was evidence to back this up, because tests before the inquest discovered strychnine in the chocolates sold by Maynard’s. What was not resolved at this inquiry was how the strychnine had come to be within the chocolates. As a consequence, a verdict of accidental death was recorded on the boy, and the shop owner John Maynard exonerated of any intentional poisoning. He destroyed all his stock.

  If, at the time, Barker’s death was considered to be an unfortunate accident, there followed a series of occur
rences to arouse suspicions of foul play. Shortly after the inquest on Sidney Barker, three anonymous letters were sent to the boy’s father urging him to sue Maynard for his son’s death. All the letters suggested that the ‘young lady’ who spoke to the inquest would be prepared to help in further proceedings. Did someone know more than had been discovered at the inquest? Also, the poisonings continued. A palpable sense of fear crept through the streets of the seaside town: where and who would the poisoner strike at next? The Police had no leads, and no obvious way of protecting the local population. They decided to make a public appeal. Brighton’s chief constable placed an advertisement in the local newspaper offering a reward for any information which led to the arrest of the poisoner.

  That action became part of the endgame. Another element was the imminent departure of the Beards from Brighton to a new life in Scotland. The intrigue culminated on Thursday 10th August 1871, when six prominent local men and women, including Mrs Emily Beard, received parcels of poisoned fruits and cakes, couriered on a train to Brighton from Victoria Station. This time, two of Mrs Beard’s servants had been invited to taste her gift; they had duly eaten a poisoned plum cake and fallen ill. Mrs Beard’s household was not alone: one of the Beard’s neighbours had also been poisoned, along with the editor of the local newspaper. And, once again, Christiana Edmunds had received one of the poisoner’s parcels. When the Police arrived to remove her parcel, she told them that that she feared for her safety, as it seemed impossible that the culprit could ever be found. ‘How very strange’, she said, ‘I feel certain that you’ll never find it out’. After she had shut the door on the local boys in blue, she took up her pen and paper, and wrote her latest letter to Dr Beard, drawing much attention both to Mrs Beard’s near miss, and to the Barker inquest earlier in the summer.