Broadmoor Revealed_ Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum - Mark Stevens [14]
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 Phillips wrote to the family that Dadd’s character had completely changed to becoming that of a suspicious and withdrawn man.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