Broadmoor Revealed: Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum (3 page)

The
most-quoted premise from McNaughten was that the defendant was
unable to reason right from wrong, and so did not understand the
nature or the quality of his or her actions. It was a fine judicial
statement, at once precise and yet still leaving plenty of room for
legal argument, so the lawyers undertook their increased scope for
discourse with enthusiasm. Various approaches became popular:
showing that your client suffered from particular delusions was
one, often linked to some sort of traumatic event, past or present.
A destitute man may believe his family better off in heaven, or a
new mother that her child was permanently blighted by sin.
Similarly, the insane actor may be driven to his crime by an
irresistible impulse, at the mercy of forces beyond his control.
Drink, if taken to addiction, could effectively cauterise
choice.

The casual
observer might well conclude that the law was drawn more generously
than it is today. An alcoholic is unlikely to be found not guilty,
and the perpetrator of crimes that we find it difficult to
understand is no longer likely to be given any benefit of mental
doubt. Yet many of the celebrated insanity cases concerned murder,
and the law of the Victorian court had a heavier weight to balance
on its scales of justices: that of the condemned’s feet upon the
gallows trapdoor. Perhaps the law is only human, after all.

***

Having been
defined by the courts, or a prison doctor, as suffering from one of
these diseases, a patient was transferred to Broadmoor to begin
their ‘moral treatment’. As mentioned before, the routine of
patient life was an integral part of their care, and it is worthy
of further exploration. Routine would be a feature of every life
within the institution, though the nature of the routine was itself
subdivided. This division began when a patient was assigned to one
of the Blocks, as each block was quite separate, and
segregated.

On the female
side, the initial Block housed all the patients. There was a divide
between three wards: one ward for the more aggressive or noisy
patients, one ward for those who were low risk, and one ward for
those in-between. When the further block was opened in 1867, the
more aggressive females were siphoned off into that.

This picture
was mirrored on the male side on a grander scale. By 1868, the full
complement of six blocks was complete. Blocks 1 and 6 were known as
the ‘back’ or ‘refractory’ blocks, for dangerous and violent
patients. The men here had their own separate airing courts,
bricked in and hidden from the rest of the site, and the attendants
who tended them wore uniforms with padding and with hidden buttons.
The name ‘back Blocks’ came from their position, which was on the
north side of the site and away from the beautiful views across the
southern Terrace.

The back
Blocks contrasted with those nearest to the terrace and the wider
grounds, which were Blocks 5 and 2. Patients in these blocks were
considered the lowest risk, and enjoyed greater access around the
site. Block 2 in particular became known as the privilege block,
where patients had the most freedom to plan their day. Their
insanity did not affect their daily lives, and they could be
trusted to spend their time fruitfully at work, in their rooms, in
the communal rooms in their block, or on the terrace. Block 2 was
where VIPs and the press were brought if a bit of Victorian PR work
was required. Oxford, Dadd and Minor were all sometime residents of
Block 2.

Block 3 housed
the infirmary, and Block 4 included the admissions ward, but both
these blocks also housed those in-between patients who did not fit
into the categories of being either dangerous or trustworthy. These
were the biggest blocks, housing one hundred patients each, and
also had the most communal dormitories on the site.

Dormitories
were gradually reduced in number during the Victorian period, with
the result that the majority of patients had a single room to
themselves. Such rooms measured twelve feet long by eight feet
wide, and were equipped with a single bed, or a mattress only in
the back blocks, and a desk. The linen was changed twice a week.
Patients were also allowed personal possessions if it was safe to
have them, which would vary from patient to patient and block to
block. A set of cufflinks proudly worn in Block 2 would become a
potential weapon in Block 1.

Once assigned
a block, a patient could settle into his or her routine. That would
mean a day which started at 6am (or 7am in the winter), when the
day shift attendants came on duty, and ended at 7 o’clock at night
when the night shift came on. In between those fixed hours, the day
was punctuated by segments of time filled by meals, work and
leisure.

The bulk of
the day would be spent at work, if a patient was able to do so. For
those capable of only basic labour, work consisted of ward
cleaning, the endless washing, scrubbing and polishing required to
keep the Asylum and its contents clean. For the more able, women
were employed as seamstresses or in the laundry, and men as
tailors, shoemakers, upholsterers, tinsmiths or carpenters, or on
the Asylum farm, garden or wider estate, tending crops in the
fields. Victorian Broadmoor was a largely self-sufficient
community, and much of the patients’ work benefited directly their
quality of life.

Such leisure
time as there was might be spent reading or playing games in the
day rooms in each block, walking in the airing court attached to
the block or, for the more trusted patients, playing outdoor sports
such as croquet or bowls or even walking (accompanied, of course)
around the local area. Evening entertainments were regular, though
not frequent, and cricket was played in the summer months. Special
interests were encouraged, such as Dadd’s painting or Minor’s
research work.

Despite these
spiritual comforts, physical comfort could be hard to come by. A
patient’s life could be cold and dark. At first there was no
heating in any of the bedrooms, with only open fires and hot air
grates in the day rooms to provide any warmth. Central heating was
slowly introduced to the blocks from 1884, first through solid fuel
and then by gas, though it was still a while before the individual
rooms all felt the benefit. Similarly, oil and gas lamps were used
for lighting the communal rooms and corridors until the end of the
nineteenth century, but there was no artificial lighting in the
patients’ bedrooms. In the winter months, patients spent half the
day in darkness.

Patients
changed their clothes at least twice a week, were washed daily, and
bathed once a week in the block’s bathroom, under the careful eye
of an attendant. The male patients were also shaved by an
attendant, if they wished to be. Such was the risk attached to this
operation that while one attendant worked the razor, another
attendant was always present to keep an eye on proceedings.

Patients were
fed four times a day. Everyone was returned to their block to be
fed, as each block had a dining room for its own use. Before each
meal, every item of cutlery was counted out by one of the
attendants, and then counted back again at the end of it. Although
diets varied, it is possible to describe a basic pattern of food.
For breakfast, patients generally had tea, and bread and butter.
Lunch was bread and cheese. In the early evening, a typical meal
would be mutton, beef or pork with potatoes (or vegetables if in
season), followed by a steamed pudding. Three-quarters of a pint of
weak beer might be given with the evening meal, though further
rations of beer were usually given to workers during the day, and
brandy or other fortified drinks might be offered to those
suffering from physical debility. The final meal was supper, which
saw the offer of a further helping of bread and butter with
tea.

***

Charged with
implementing this routine was a staff of around one hundred Asylum
employees. Two men were there at the start: Medical Superintendent
John Meyer, and his Deputy, William Orange. They recruited a third
doctor as well as the much greater number of male and female
attendants, who were the bulk of their employees, and provided the
nursing staff in Victorian Broadmoor.

The attendants
often had little or no previous medical background, and physical
presence was considered as important an attribute as any other.
Many of the male staff had either served in the forces or come from
the prison service to join Broadmoor’s establishment. The early
years, in particular, saw a mixed success with this recruitment
strategy, as in the 1860s the annual rate of turnover approached
50%. It was expected that female attendants would resign upon
marriage, but discipline was also a significant problem. The Asylum
archive includes staff ‘defaulters’ books’ that list dishonesty,
incompetence and drunkenness amongst the attendants’ sins.

It would be
wrong though, to conclude that this was an inhumane regime, where
brutality and immorality were commonplace. On the contrary, there
were a number of rules in place which provided attendants with both
a moral compass and with procedures for physical restraint. The
latter was seen as a last resort and all incidents tended to be
noted in one record or another. The large turnover of staff
gradually decreased as well in the period after 1870, when Orange
succeeded Meyer. The Asylum appears to have been a happier place
under Orange, and amongst other things he made small improvements
to the terms and conditions of the attendants’ employment. Perhaps
he also leant a different touch to recruitment.

The
personality of Broadmoor’s chief doctors was bound to leave an
impression on the institution that they ran. There is a little more
about Meyer and Orange in the Escape from Broadmoor chapter to give
you an outline of each doctor’s character. It is possible to cast
Meyer in a slightly more villainous role: a man who seems to have
fought with most of his senior staff at one time or another; a man
who had the most violent male patients segregated in caged areas of
their blocks; a man who perhaps was not the most enlightened brain
doctor of the Victorian age. Nevertheless, Meyer had the unenviable
task of trying to find a blueprint for a new type of institution,
and also dealing with the inevitable flaws in the design and fabric
of the building he inherited. He was nearly fifty when he took
charge of Broadmoor, having previously run the Convict Lunatic
Asylum in Tasmania, served in the battle hospitals of the Crimea,
and then led the Surrey County Asylum for a period before he was
charged with mastering Broadmoor. He also suffered from ill health.
He was attacked by a patient called John Hughes in the Asylum
Chapel in March 1866, struck a severe blow on the temple by a large
stone, and never fully recovered. Hughes, a despoiler of holy
images in a north London church, stated that Meyer had accused him
of ‘murdering the Queen of Heaven’, and that he was obliged to
avenge that insult. He was put in solitary confinement for his
trouble.

Attacks would
form a part of each of the first three Medical Superintendents’
careers, and were an occupational hazard. Orange was attacked by an
insane cleric called Henry Dodwell in 1882, who argued that
attacking the Superintendent was the only way to draw attention to
his wrongful detention, much like he had argued a few years before
that shooting at the Master of the Rolls was the only way to draw
attention to the injustices of a legal action he was pursuing.
Orange’s successor, David Nicolson, was similarly attacked by Henry
Forrester in 1884 while employed as Deputy Super. Nicolson was well
enough to return to work and take promotion in due course, though
he was also the only Superintendent to suffer two attacks, after
James Lyons went on to throw a stone at his head in 1889. Despite
these twin assaults, Nicolson might still consider his to be a more
fortunate outcome than that of the Deputy he had in turn succeeded:
William Douglas lasted all of four months at Broadmoor in 1871
before patient Henry Leest injured him so badly that he never
returned to work.

When Meyer
died suddenly in Exeter in May 1870, while returning from a visit
to his dying brother-in-law, it was his thirty-seven year-old
assistant who succeeded him, and spent the next sixteen years in
charge. William Orange is a fascinating character, and worthy of
the fine portrait of him that Dadd painted, and which hung in the
Superintendent’s office at Broadmoor until the turn of the
twenty-first century. In terms of this brief introduction to
Broadmoor, Orange’s importance is the cultural mark that he
imprinted onto the Asylum, echoes of which are still apparent today
in the twin pillars of rehabilitation and public protection that
Broadmoor represents. In that any long-running institution bears a
received memory and received values from those who have trod its
corridors along the years, it is to Orange, and to Nicolson, that I
feel the modern hospital still owes a debt. Orange’s care for his
staff has been mentioned; from his patients, comes testimony of
genuine warmth that still litters the archive. Two personal items
might serve to illustrate that: that he received spontaneous
letters of goodwill after Dodwell’s attack on him; and that Henry
Leest, the beater of poor Dr Douglas, felt able to write asking
Orange for a little money many years after his discharge. Orange
usually obliged his ex-charges with a small sum to tide them over,
and there is no reason to suppose that Leest was an exception.

Orange was
severely incapacitated after Dodwell’s attack, with the result that
Nicolson gradually assumed more control after summer 1882. When
Orange finally retired in 1886, as for the end of Meyer’s reign in
1870, it was his Deputy who took over. The third Medical
Superintendent had been on the staff since 1876, and remained a
personal friend of Orange as the latter enjoyed a long retirement.
Indeed, Orange even returned to the Asylum as a member of its
scrutiny body, the Council of Supervision. Nicolson provided
continuity, as well as a more strategic approach to management than
Orange, only ever criticising his friend and former boss for his
micro-management, feeling that at times Orange’s attention to
detail was not appropriate.