Broadmoor Revealed: Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum (6 page)

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 women (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.

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.