Broadmoor Revealed: Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum

by Mark Stevens

  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.

  William Chester Minor:

  Man of Words and Letters

  Probably Dadd’s rival for the crown of best-known Victorian Broadmoorite is Dr Minor, American medic, murderer and contributor to the first Oxford English Dictionary. Minor was the subject of Simon Winchester’s best-selling book The Surgeon of Crowthorne, which is an entertaining and thorough account of his life, and should be easily found by anyone wishing to explore Minor’s story in greater detail.

  Winchester records Minor’s birth as having been in June 1834 in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. He was the son of missionaries, and one of two children. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was three, and his father subsequently remarried and had a second family. Minor remained in the east with this extended brood until his father sent him to live with his uncle in New Haven, Connecticut, when Minor reached the age of fourteen.

  Once in the US, he attended Yale University, where he studied medicine. He graduated in 1863, and joined the Union Army as a surgeon in the middle of the American Civil War. Winchester says that Minor was sent into action at the awful and bloody Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864, and that this experience haunted him. At Minor’s trial, years later, his defence suggested that the horrors of war had caused his mental illness. Particularly, he had witnessed an execution, and had been required to brand an Irish deserter from the Union cause with a letter ‘D’. Whilst this theory will have to remain conjecture, it presents a powerful picture of a traumatised individual, which Minor certainly was.

  After the end of the civil war, Minor remained in the American army and indeed rose through the ranks. The pressures of his work continued, though without him showing any immediate signs of insanity. The only catalyst presented for the change in his behaviour is hearsay: that he had become engaged, but that the relationship ended. It is the earliest point in Minor’s story that sex enters the narrative, though it seems unlikely that Minor had not already been consumed by sexual thoughts before this point. What is known is that he was discovered frequenting brothels in New York, where he was stationed at the time. Such behaviour might be considered normal for a soldier, even tacitly encouraged, but instead there must have been something about Minor’s behaviour that was not normal. Bearing in mind his subsequent history, the possibility that Minor was engaging in either homosexual or bisexual acts might be one possible conclusion. A deliberate move was organised for Minor to Florida to remove him from a scene of temptation, but this failed when he began to exhibit delusions of persecution by his fellow officers. In 1868, the army diagnosed him as suffering from the mental illness of monomania, or an obsession with one subject, which gave rise to delusions. He was sent to the Government Hospital for the Insane in Washington DC (now St Elizabeth’s Hospital).

  Despite his obviously continuing illness, Minor was released from St Elizabeth’s in 1871, though now a man in enforced retirement from the army and also in receipt of his pension, which he could add an income from his well-to-do family. He travelled to London at the end of the year, ostensibly to spend time touring Europe. He did not make it any further. It appears that he first took up residence at Radley’s Hotel, in the West End, before moving to Lambeth after Christmas, where it seems likely he felt he would have easier access to the sex trade. It was in Lambeth that he shot and killed a stranger called George Merritt or Merrett on 17th February 1872. Minor had already approached Scotland Yard, reporting that he was being followed and otherwise persecuted by various nameless men. The warning was ignored. One night Minor woke, and saw a figure at the end of the bed which he reckoned to be one of his abusers. He pursued the phantom spirit into the street, where Minor chanced upon Merritt walking to work at a brewery near to Waterloo. Merritt, was married and had six children, with another on the way, and that night he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Minor chased him, pursued him as he ran, and then caught and shot at him several times before fatally wounding him in the neck.

  The scene of crime was very central, between Waterloo and Hungerford bridges, and Minor was apprehended on the spot. Minor said it was a case of mistaken identity, that he had thought Merritt was a person who had been breaking into his room. While the mistake was fleeting, the intention was permanent, and the delusion about needing to fight forced entry to both his room and his person would remain with Minor for the rest of his life.

  Minor was committed for trial, and this was held at the Surrey Assizes in Kingston upon Thames in April 1872. The nature of Minor’s enduring delusion was laid bare at the trial. A warder at the jail where Minor was on remand was also an employee at Bethlem, and he testified that every morning Minor would wake up and level the accusation that his guards had allowed him to be sexually abused during the night. His abusers hid in the voids of the room – under the bed, or in the walls or rafters. The abusers were always male, but both men and wome
n (and boys and girls) feature in Minor’s later descriptions of the sexual terrors that his abusers forced upon him. Minor’s step-brother attended the trial to confirm that this delusion could be dated back to at least his release from the Washington asylum. Minor would frequently report that people had been in his room at night. This was the subject of his monomania. His step-brother stated that apparently it was all punishment for an unspecified act that Minor had been forced to commit while in the Union Army.

  Whatever Minor’s confused reasoning for his actions, the jury were quite clear that he was not guilty by reason of insanity. He duly received the sentence of detention at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, and was sent on to Broadmoor.

  Minor arrived from the Surrey County Gaol on 17th April 1872. Unusually for a Broadmoor patient, he travelled with another patient being transferred from the same prison, a gentleman called Edmund Dainty, who had killed a fellow patient in the Surrey Asylum. Described on admission as ‘A thin, pale and sharp-featured man with light coloured sandy hair; deep-set eyes and prominent cheek bones’, Minor dutifully recounted his persistent nocturnal experiences, as well as giving an account of his current bodily health (gonorrhoea and possibly signs of tuberculosis, though none were found). Like Dadd, his delusions appeared to be self-contained and manageable, and he was obviously thought to be a low risk and was placed in Block 2, where privileges were greatest.

  Minor was one of a small band of foreign nationals in Broadmoor, though most of these had become naturalised even if they were not citizens, and they did not quite have the character of a tourist that Minor’s case suggested. As a result, almost as soon as he arrived in the Asylum, the American Consulate in London wrote to Dr Orange for permission to send various things to Minor – both his own possessions and ‘some comforts, such as Dunn’s Coffee, French Plums etc’. The Consulate sent on Minor’s retrieved possessions shortly after, including clothes, drawing equipment, his tobacco and his diary. They kept hold of his surgical instruments, which had also been found in his rooms.