Broadmoor Revealed: Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum (18 page)

Eighteen
seventy-three had been a bad year, the worst since Orange took
over. Brown’s case may have been dealt with, but the Medical
Superintendent held an internal enquiry at the Asylum, directed by
the Council of Supervision, to rake over the coals of Bisgrove and
Walker, and to conclude with a report to the Home Office. The
result was largely factual about the nature of each escape, and
Orange found little worthy of blame: the attendants in both cases
might perhaps have been more vigilant, but in neither case were
they negligent, and the principle that patients of good behaviour
should be allowed to go at large was not one that anyone who
understood the subject wished to change. Furthermore, Orange did
some research to show that the rate of escape at Broadmoor was
around seven times less than for that body of criminal lunatics
housed in county asylums.

Perhaps
predictably, in the light of his previous comments, Orange focused
his recommendations on the mixing of time and pleasure patients in
blocks together; suggesting implicitly (though none too subtly)
that the matter of escape was related. The pleasure man’s only
chance of discharge rested on his good behaviour, whereas the time
man’s reward for good behaviour was to end up back in prison, which
Orange considered to be a dubious incentive. He suggested that the
pleasure patients be allowed to continue as they were, and that
money be spent to provide a separate, more secure outdoors
environment for the convicts. There was no mention of any changes
to procedures that might have led his staff to improve their
performance.

Orange’s
argument found support from the Commissioners in Lunacy, who agreed
with Orange that his two classes of patient should be separated
wherever possible. Alternative accommodation was provided at Woking
Invalid Prison, Knaphill, and the next year saw an informal
moratorium on time patients admitted to Broadmoor, with a result
that their population diminished. Orange felt vindicated by the
comparatively quiet year he enjoyed. There was only one attempted
escape during 1874, right at the close of the year, and by the
standards of its predecessors, it used an entirely unique
method.

A storm was
raging around the Asylum on the night of 6th December 1874. The
wind was swirling in between the blocks, buffeting the buildings on
the forest ridge. The open gaps between the window frames and
wooden doors were howling lowly with each forceful gust. In Block
6, patient Thomas Hart was busy worrying away at the wall of his
room, inching ever closer to the other side. The catalyst for
Hart’s labours had been an unexpected discovery: that at the point
where his bedroom wall abutted the bricks of a chimney flue, there
was a much thinner skin of brick between him and the outside world,
only nine inches thick instead of eighteen. Furthermore, after a
little over a decade of weathering, the mortar joints had perished
in parts of the outer course. Lying in his room, Hart could see
daylight.

He was a
destructive patient, and his bedstead had been long removed from
his room. Instead, he slept on two mattresses, and it was this
arrangement that afforded him the chance to begin to deconstruct
the wall at its weakest point. Scraping away manually at the
mortar, he managed to work first one brick loose, and then another.
The noise of the gale ensured that no one heard Hart as he was
working during the night. By placing his mattresses in front of his
growing shaft, Hart could cover up his operations but also place
the bricks that he removed between the two pieces of bedding. At
the same time, throughout the night he listened out for the
attendants, for by now each room had an observation hole in the
door. He would be checked on roughly every hour; in between, he
could execute his plan.

The patient
was a twenty-two year old hawker, married with one child, who like
many Broadmoor convicts before had come from the central London
prison at Millbank. Hart was a thief who was serving seven years.
At Broadmoor he had been found to be difficult to employ, but had
taken to feeding the birds in the grounds of the Block 6 airing
court, and to flying a kite for exercise. As a result, Hart had
been allowed to keep both a bag in his room containing bird food
and a ball of twine for his kite wire. These items were about to be
put to alternative use.

Hart worked
throughout the night at his painstaking task. Then, shortly before
6am, he had pulled out enough bricks from the wall to create an
aperture large enough for him to squeeze through. He gathered up
all the pieces of discarded brick and put them into his bag of bird
food. He dressed in a jacket and trousers that he had previously
managed to secret in his room. He knotted his blankets together,
and moved his bedding away from the hole. Then he took up the
blanket rope, the twine and the bag and manoeuvred himself through
and down into the airing court.

If that was
not ingenious enough, Hart’s next moves were unsurpassed by
previous escape attempts. Pawing away at the ground of the airing
court, he scooped up earth and sand and added this to the contents
of his bag, which by now contained a considerable amount of weight.
He took a length of the kite twine and tied one end to the bag, and
the other to his plaited blankets. Then he took hold of the other
end of the blankets, picked up the bag, and swung the latter
backwards and forwards until he had gathered enough momentum to
throw it over the wall. It landed on the other side, still attached
to the kite twine. This produced a cantilever effect, using the
wall as the fulcrum. Hart had secured the heavy bag sufficiently to
bear his own weight as he began to climb the boundary wall,
gripping onto the blanket rope and easing himself one step at a
time to the top.

He was missed
at the hourly check at six, and search parties were immediately
dispatched. Hart had begun to walk south, towards Blackwater, and
he was spotted at half past nine in the morning begging for bread.
A local labourer raised three friends, including the Asylum’s coal
man, and the four of them detained Hart that evening on the road
from Blackwater to Fleet. The one item of clothing that Hart had
not been able to hide in his room were his shoes, and once chased,
the barefoot patient was soon caught. He was back in Block 6 again
by 11pm, asked to be returned to prison, and was removed to
Pentonville in September the following year.

Pleased with
the improved level of control subsequent to the decrease in number
of time patients, Orange continued the moratorium, and trimmed the
numbers further the following year. He also began purposefully to
divide each Block into wards which contained convicts, and wards
which did not. If nothing else, this efficiency does seem to have
made it easier for him to deploy staff resources where they were
more likely to be needed, and by 1876, he declared confidently that
the management of the time patients was no longer a problem.

The
presumption in favour of sending time patients to Woking Invalid
Prison would continue until 1886, the year of Orange’s retirement.
Never again would he have to deal with as many admissions from the
prison population. It was only when the decision was taken to close
that prison that Broadmoor became the principal recipient of such
patients once again. Orange’s successor, David Nicolson, was given
what Orange had asked for: funds to extend Blocks 2 and 5, and
undertake sundry other improvements for better security, before the
accumulation of convict lunatics in Woking made their way to
Crowthorne in autumn 1888.

In consequence
of Hart’s escape, the Office of Works was instructed to examine the
condition of all the other flues in the Asylum and rebuild them
where necessary. During 1875, Orange also began the task of raising
both the external and internal boundary walls, which divided the
airing courts, to a height of between fourteen and fifteen feet, a
protracted piece of work which continued into 1876. The inner
compound was now over-engineered for safety, and the staff enjoyed
a much higher level of confidence in the accommodation provided to
Her Majesty’s lunatics.

This was the
end of the great escape period in the Asylum’s history. It was not
the end of escapes: that day never came. The patients continued to
make efforts to remove themselves, but the successful conclusion of
such plans became a more rare thing. In the remaining period of
Orange’s leadership, only one further patient managed to escape
successfully, Charles Weldrick, in 1878, and even then he was
recaptured the next day.

Since 1863, a
total of eighteen patients had been able to help themselves to
forbidden liberty, mostly for just a few hours, though with three
evading re-admission in perpetuity. Most of these escapes had
resulted in some direct alteration being made to the Asylum or the
way it worked, and the level of public protection was increased
continuously. Both Meyer and Orange learnt from the eighteen
mishaps, and the result was, by 1875, a much more secure hospital.
It was now twelve years old, more adult and fully-formed than when
it had opened. Victorian Broadmoor was ready to receive greater
numbers of patients, and to ensure that their discharge came about
only via the due process of the law.

Broadmoor was
not what I expected. When I came to visit, I had prepared myself
for something fortified and frightening. Indeed, when you enter
into the reception block at the modern boundary to the Hospital,
this view is reinforced. Security is abundant and invasive before
you pass through it, to find yourself in an irregularly shaped and
anonymous waiting room, with various standard NHS notices fixed
upon the wall. Then you are collected and cross over to the other
side. Your host can only take you through each coming door once its
predecessor is locked behind you, and you begin to feel the
claustrophobic sense of what it must be like to experience this,
possibly forever.

The entrance
these days is different to that experienced by the Victorian
patients, and it is difficult to recreate the journey of their own
reception. The original Gatehouse sits marooned within the site,
bereft of its former function and now an exit to nowhere. But soon
after you are through the modern frontispiece, a sense of the
original Asylum does open up before you. There are the original
male blocks, for now at least before they too are redeveloped: the
blocks where Oxford, Dadd and Minor stayed; the blocks from which
all those escapes were launched so many years ago. And then before
you have digested that fact there is the Terrace, sweeping wide and
down before you, and it is glorious. Imagine the most fantastic
view of landscape that it is possible to have in South East
England, for this must be a contender. Can you imagine such a place
being built with such a view today? The designer of that view was
not afraid of tabloid censure. Where is the punishment in that
view, where is the retribution?

The first time
I visited, a colleague and I were there to scout out the archive,
which at the time was stored in the old Medical Superintendent’s
office in the original admin block. Here was the room where Meyer,
Orange and Nicolson sat, writing their draft reports and letters to
pass to the clerks to send to the Home Office. Here is where Meyer
received the warrant discharging Edward Oxford. Here is where
Nicolson presumably entertained Sir James Murray before leading him
off to Block 2 to see Minor. Here is probably not where Orange sat
while Dadd painted his portrait – Orange looks too young to be the
Superintendent in that artwork – though it is certainly the room
where Orange edited his and William Gull’s report on Christiana
Edmunds. All the furniture has gone from the room, of course, but
the panelling is still there, as well as the view out onto the
Terrace. Then along the corridor is the central hall, which Dadd
certainly painted in situ, and up from that is the chapel, where
Meyer was downed by John Hughes. The chapel is as calm and
spiritual a Victorian church as you might expect to find in any
nineteenth century parish. It offers a helping hand to
tranquillity, if you wish to take it.

That first
visit was seven years ago. Back then, I had only heard of Dadd and
Minor, and had not met any of the other characters in this book. My
curiosity was really so much fraud, as I was ignorant of the
privilege afforded me. I was just another voyeur who was passing
through, as so many have done before. What I have tried to do since
is repay the place by focusing on its humanity. My perception of
it, and my respect for it has only grown over time, as I have found
out more about it. It seems inevitable to me that this process will
continue. The more I read, the more I realise how little I know
about Broadmoor and its inhabitants. I think that it will always be
that way.

A Note on the
Broadmoor archive at the Berkshire Record Office

Some of the
sources listed here are still closed, as they contain records of
patients who lived well on into the twentieth century. In these
circumstances, the Hospital will allow Record Office staff to
extract information on otherwise ‘open’ patient histories. There is
a detailed access protocol that BRO has agreed with the Hospital,
which can be seen at:
http://www.berkshirerecordoffice.org.uk/albums/broadmoor/
.

All references
given in this section are from the Berkshire Record Office
catalogue of Broadmoor archives.

Books about
Broadmoor

The principal
history of Broadmoor was published in 1953. It is by Ralph
Partridge, and is entitled Broadmoor: A History of Criminal Lunacy
and its Problems. It is not always accurate, but is very readable.
There is a ‘sequel’, by D A Black, called Broadmoor Interacts,
though it is a different read to Partridge.