Broadmoor Revealed_ Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum - Mark Stevens [20]
Despite the therapeutic effects of his work on the dictionary, Minor’s condition deteriorated over the years. The delusions and frustrations never left him. Reading his notes gives a sense that sometimes he probably internalised them, and that when it all got too much he would suddenly explode, making an accusatory outburst to the attendants or to the Super. Eventually he took matters into his own hands, and on the morning of 3rd December 1902 he tied a tourniquet around the base of his penis and sliced off the offending organ. He was 68 years old, and had never been able to come to terms with his own sexual urges. Asked why he had done it, he replied: ‘In the interests of morality’. He testified that for a long time previously he had been taken out of the asylum at night and forced to fornicate with between fifty and one hundred women ‘from Reading to Land’s End.’ He spent time in the infirmary but was discharged after four months back to Block 2. Sadly of course, his retaliatory act did not defeat his delusions, which remained as before. In his last letter to Dr Brayn, shortly before his discharge, Minor was complaining still of ‘these nightly sensual uses of my body that I experience and struggle against.’
As indicated earlier, the nature of these ‘sensual uses’ may provide some help in understanding Minor and his mental illness. Winchester’s book suggests various hypotheses about Minor’s own sexual motivations, from dusky eastern maidens with pert breasts to disease and prostitution in New York’s metropolis, and to guilt about his feelings for Eliza Merritt. However, Minor’s early delusions at Broadmoor all seem to relate to his body being used by men, and it is only in the later years that women play the more significant part. To the modern reader, Minor may be repressing homosexual, or even paedophiliac tendencies as much as heterosexual ones. Plenty of things may have happened to Minor before he came to the attention of the authorities, though we may never know exactly what Minor’s own sexual experiences were, and how his obsessions led him to such a dramatic conclusion. What is beyond doubt is that Minor was able to concoct outrageous tales of depravity, experienced with a multitude of other bodies, of both sexes and all ages, and that his mutilation of his own body was a direct result of his discomfort with that fact.
Still riddled with fear and hampered by his lifelong burdens, Minor was also becoming a very old and frail man, which brought on additional problems. In December 1907, he neglected to check the water temperature and severely scalded himself when bathing in his room. In 1908, he suffered from a serious bout of flu. The facts of his advancing years and ill health was not lost on his family and friends, who remained in constant touch with the hospital. The first formal petition for Minor’s release was delivered to the Home Office in 1899, who rejected it quickly. But by 1903, Dr Brayn was suggesting to Minor’s step-brother that a proposal to remove Minor to America might be received favourably, providing suitable care could be found for him.
It took seven years before matters reached a resolution. In 1909 and 1910, Dr Brayn felt compelled from time to time to remove Minor to the infirmary, not thinking it safe to leave Minor alone in his room day after day, as he was no longer capable of looking after himself. Laid up, and deprived of his books and his art materials, Minor was increasingly miserable, as well as increasingly harmless. Finally, in April 1910 a conditional