Broadmoor Revealed: Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum (5 page)

Queen Victoria
suffered several other assassination attempts during her reign,
mostly from subjects who, if not legally insane, were certainly
considered by the general population to be mad. One of those was
another Broadmoor patient, Roderick MacLean, who shot at her at
Windsor Railway Station on 2nd March 1882. MacLean was sent to
Broadmoor after his trial, but unlike Oxford he did not recover,
and remained there until his death in 1921. It was MacLean’s case
that resulted in a change in sentence for those found to be
criminal lunatics, from the traditional ‘not guilty by reason of
insanity’, to the more condemnatory ‘guilty, but insane’. The
motivation for the law change is always levelled at the Queen’s
response to MacLean’s not guilty verdict: ‘Insane he may have been,
but not guilty he most certainly was not, as I saw him fire the
pistol myself.’ This is not entirely true: the Queen did not see
MacLean shoot, though she did hear the report of his pistol.
However, her displeasure at MacLean’s innocence was real, and she
pressurised Prime Minister Gladstone to change the law. It is
unclear exactly what Victoria hoped to achieve by this, though she
alluded to the view that if Edward Oxford had been hanged all those
years ago, it might have deterred those potential regicides who
came after him. Forty years of being shot at had not mellowed Her
Majesty.

For many
years, Dadd has been perhaps the most celebrated Victorian resident
of Broadmoor. An artist of some repute, the quality of his fairy
paintings was acknowledged during his lifetime, and he continued to
paint remarkable works during his time in asylums. Many of these
works survive, and quite apart from any sensational interest in
Dadd’s circumstances, it is acknowledged that Dadd possessed a rare
talent.

His artistic
endeavours had benefitted from conducive surroundings. Dadd’s
father, Robert, was an intellectual man, a chemist and the first
curator of the Chatham and Rochester Literary and Philosophical
Institution’s museum, and Dadd himself attended The King’s School
at Rochester. When he was seventeen, the family moved to London,
and at nineteen he was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools where
he completed his training as an artist.

Dadd had been
born on 1st August 1817 in Chatham. He was the fourth of seven
children borne by his mother Mary, a total of four of whom would
eventually die insane. The young Dadd was influenced by both
literary and classical themes, and by the early 1840s had begun to
create the fairy paintings for which he would become best known. In
due course, his work attracted the patronage of Sir Thomas
Phillips, a solicitor from South Wales who had been knighted for
his part in ending a Chartist riot, and who had money to burn.
Phillips decided that he wished to undertake the Grand Tour of
classical sites across Europe, and he recruited Dadd to accompany
him as his personal artist, and draw what they saw.

They began
their journey in July 1842, travelling first through Belgium,
Germany and Switzerland before reaching Italy, then moving on to
Greece, Turkey and Palestine. Dadd seemed to enjoy the tour, and
wrote various letters home detailing his wonderful experiences. He
was fascinated both by the scenery he encountered and the people he
met, and an internal record of these compositions appears to have
remained locked within him during his years of treatment. Decades
later he would bring it out to influence the works he completed in
Bethlem and Broadmoor.

Although the
tour itself was meeting expectations, by the time they reached
Egypt Dadd had begun to exhibit signs of mental illness. His mind
had been untethered and was running free across a new spiritual
landscape. He was soaking up the culture of ancient Egypt, and this
was to influence his belief structure for the rest of his life.
Dadd appears to have been aware of his increasingly weak grip on
reality, and some of his letters hint at an effort to try and
rationalise the source of his feelings. His health seems to have
deteriorated very quickly from this point. He and Phillips crossed
to Malta and then to Italy again, and by now he was reporting
regular delusions. He would later describe his first irrational
impulse to the staff at Bethlem and Broadmoor - his desire to kill
the Pope at a public appearance in Rome, an impulse he resisted as
he felt the Pope was too well protected.

When they
reached Paris again in May 1843, Sir Thomas sent for a doctor to
examine his travelling companion, and Dadd was duly sent home.
Phillips wrote to the family that Dadd’s character had completely
changed to becoming that of a suspicious and withdrawn man. Over
the summer, friends and family became increasingly worried about
and wary of him. A doctor consulted by the family recommended that
Dadd was committed to a private asylum and put under immediate
restraint. His father was reluctant to agree. This was to be the
last act before Dadd took matters into his own hands. On 28th
August 1843, Dadd asked his father to accompany him to an inn at
Cobham, near Gravesend in Kent. After enjoying a meal together,
they walked to nearby Cobham Park, where Dadd attacked and killed
his father, first trying to cut his throat with a razor, and
finally stabbing him with a knife.

Dadd was aware
that he had done something wrong, even if he was not exactly sure
who or what it was that he had killed. He fled to France. He later
stated that he was on his way to kill the Emperor of Austria, but
whatever the truth in that, only two days after killing his father
he attacked a complete stranger who was his travelling companion,
while riding in a carriage through a French forest. He was arrested
by the French authorities and identified himself as a wanted man
for the Cobham killing.

Initially,
Dadd was sent to a succession of French asylums, having been
certified insane, before he was extradited to England in July 1844.
He never stood trial for the murder of his father, and was found
insane when he came to plead. He was duly given the HMP order - to
be detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure - and sent to the criminal
lunatic ward at Bethlem on 22nd August 1844. Like for Oxford,
records of Dadd’s time at Bethlem are available at the Bethlem
Royal Hospital archives.

It was only
after he had been received into custody that some explanation came
as to Dadd’s motive for his acts. When he was arrested in France,
the police had found on him a list of ‘people who must die’, with
his father’s name at the top. A search of his lodgings in England
had uncovered various portraits of his friends, all with a bloody
slash from the artist added across their throats. Notes from his
stay at Clermont Asylum in France indicated that Dadd believed that
his father was the devil, and that the son had been commanded by
the Egyptian god Osiris to kill both Robert Dadd and other people.
This was a delusion that Dadd maintained once he was in Bethlem. He
remained convinced that he was on a mission to battle the devil,
who could take many forms, including that of Dadd senior, and that
the artist formerly known as Richard Dadd was in fact descended
from Osiris.

Almost
immediately that he was confined to Bethlem, Dadd began to paint
again, something that, happily, he would continue to do for the
next forty years. He appears to have been very insular during his
time at Bethlem, and did not associate much with other patients.
However, he formed a close bond with the man who was both his and
Edward Oxford’s doctor, Charles Hood, the superintendent of
Bethlem, and also with steward George Haydon, the same steward that
Oxford had apparently communicated with years after his own
discharge. Hood was a reformer who sought to create Bethlem as a
refuge for its patients, in the modern Victorian fashion. Haydon
was a writer and artist as well as being a steward of lunatic
asylums. It seems reasonable to assume that Dadd found some
encouragement from them both.

As in Oxford’s
case, the Broadmoor case notes repeat some observations on the
patient made at Bethlem in 1854: ‘For some years after his
admission he was considered a violent and dangerous patient for he
would jump up and strike a violent blow without any aggravation and
then beg pardon for the deed. This arose from some vague idea that
filled his mind, and still does so to a certain extent, that
certain spirits have the power of possessing a mans body and
compelling him to adopt a particular course whether he will or no.’
He was reported to binge eat until he vomited, and otherwise behave
eccentrically, believing that he was possessed of special
powers.

Also like
Oxford, Dadd was amongst the tranche of Bethlem patients who were
transferred to Broadmoor when the latter opened. Dadd made the
great trek to the Berkshire countryside on 23rd July 1864, a few
days short of his 47th birthday. At the prescribed initial
examination of a new patient, his tongue was recorded as being
‘broad and flabby’. He was also still convinced of his delusions,
believing himself to be a marked man ‘under the influence of an
evil spirit’: ‘Makes laboured attempts at justification of the two
criminal assaults saying it was in “justification of the
Deity”.’

He settled in
to his new accommodation quickly, and soon began painting again. By
November 1864 his case notes record that he was engaged in a
detailed fairy painting. He received money from his family
regularly, and in the patients’ account books kept by the Hospital
his careful signature records his receipt of brushes and board that
he purchased for his work. These accounts also record many
purchases of foods with strong flavours, such as herrings,
gingerbread and peppermints. Patients were allowed to maintain
funds for their own use, and trusted patients such as Dadd made
good use of this concession.

For Dadd was a
tranquil patient, whose madness only became apparent during
conversation. His notes regularly state his seeming contentment, as
well as the continuation of his delusions. One conversation with
Dadd written up by William Orange was on the subject of chess, and
how some people possessed a spirit that allowed them to play chess
‘without the board’. Dadd further mused that chess pieces could be
unfriendly towards some players due to the ‘antiquity of the game’.
Evidently nothing could escape the ancient pull of Osiris.

Dadd suffered
from gout from time to time, though was also able to keep up an
intake of wine and spirits, and suffered a prolonged bout of
illness during 1868-1870. By 1870, he was recorded as having lost
three stone over the past two years. However, he had recovered
sufficiently by 1872 to begin to paint decorations around the stage
in Broadmoor’s Central Hall, which he continued for several years.
Dr Orange’s son also remembered Dadd painting a mural along one
wall in the Medical Superintendent’s house, work which, like most
of the Hall decorations, is now lost.

In 1877, there
is the only note made at Broadmoor relating to Dadd’s reason for
admission. David Nicolson recorded a detailed conversation that he
had had with Dadd about the murder of Dadd’s father. Dadd stated
that he was not convinced that the man he killed was his father,
presumably clinging to the belief that he had instead attacked the
Devil. Rather, Dadd had been convinced at the time of the killing
that the ‘gods and spirits above’ required him to make a sacrifice.
Dadd was able to describe the murder scene, and his reaction when
his father fell. Nicolson wrote: ‘Dadd (posing himself with
upstretched arm), thus apostrophised the starry bodies “Go,” said
he “and tell the great god Osiris that I have done the deed which
is to set him free.”’ Dadd also stated that the attack in France
had been brought about by his observation that two stars in the
constellation of ursa major were moving closer together, thus
convincing him that a further sacrifice was demanded by the ancient
gods.

Despite his
continuing delusions, Dadd was evidently no bother to the medical
authorities. He remained insane, but in other respects simply
became another old man, occasionally wandering about the grounds to
watch the other patients playing cricket. His disappearance
underneath the Asylum radar is evidenced by the fact that no
entries were made on his case for a whole seven years, from 1878
until 1885, at which point he was removed to the infirmary in
Broadmoor’s Block 3 with what proved to be his final illness. It
was back to where Dadd had spent his first years in Broadmoor.
There is evidence to suggest that he was later moved to Block 2,
the ‘privilege’ block, where the better behaved patients were
allowed more freedom, as he appears to have been observed in a room
there by a journalist touring the Asylum in the early 1880s.

Wherever he
spent most of his days, he stayed in the infirmary from June 1885
until his death on the evening of 8th January 1886, aged 68, from
tuberculosis. The end had been quite quick, with Dadd still getting
up and about until a week before he died. He was buried at
Broadmoor. In common with a significant proportion of Asylum
patients, he had outlived most of his immediate family, and there
were no immediate relatives left to mourn his passing. There are a
few papers in his Broadmoor file which relate to the dispersal of
his estate, though the file adds that various letters from
solicitors had been taken from it by the Broadmoor steward, sadly
never to be returned.

Dadd’s
reputation was recognised during his lifetime, though due to his
situation he was not particularly celebrated and only rarely
exhibited. His passing was not noted at the time of his death, and
it was only in 1974 that the first major exhibition of his work was
curated, at The Tate. A substantial collection of his work is held
at the Bethlem Royal Hospital Museum in south east London, which
includes a number of paintings that remained at Broadmoor after
Dadd’s death. One of his most significant works from Bethlem, The
Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke, is now on permanent display at Tate
Britain in London. A lost work, The Artists’ Halt in the Desert,
was discovered in 1987 during filming for the BBC’s Antiques
Roadshow and is now in The British Museum. Interest in Dadd’s work
only appears to deepen with time, and there seems little chance
that this particular Victorian artist will ever be forgotten.