Broadmoor Revealed_ Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum - Mark Stevens [21]
After thirty-eight years in Broadmoor, Minor arrived back in America to return to the Government Hospital for the Insane in Washington. There he swapped one similar regime for another: a private room, certain privileges, and nightly torments. Though the Broadmoor authorities had thought he was nearing the end of his life, he did in fact keep going for a further decade, reading, writing, and making the occasional outburst. He remained in Washington until November 1919, when he was compassionately released to be nearer his family, at the Retreat for the Elderly Insane in Hartford, Connecticut. He died there on 26th March 1920.
Inevitably for Minor there has to be a postscript, because unlike Dadd, whose work was acknowledged during his life, Minor’s place in history has only really been secured after his death. Hayden Church, an American journalist and author of the imagined Minor/Murray first meeting, published one romantic piece about Minor in 1915, and another in 1944. He intended to write a book about Minor – there is a relevant letter in Minor’s file stating this intention – but eventually did not. Little more happened until the 1980s, when the Oxford University Press was becoming aware of its own history and Minor’s place in it, and a more scholarly article about the American in Crowthorne was published. Then came Simon Winchester, a full biography and worldwide recognition. Once it happened, it seemed like it was an obvious conclusion: Minor’s story is ultimately one of triumph in adversity, and that always makes for a good read. Revisiting Minor’s life for this short piece has made me realise how much might still be written about him, for while aspects of the man might have become obscured by the clouds of myth, there is a man to be discovered, all the same.
Christiana Edmunds:
The Venus of Broadmoor
The most celebrated Victorian female patient at Broadmoor has been remembered for the cause of her admission rather than any wider social impact. This is perhaps a reflection on how scandalous women fulfilled the voyeuristic delight of Victorian society. For Christiana was a woman who satisfied certain stereotypes, and her story included sex and murder. The tabloids christened Christiana ‘The Chocolate Cream Poisoner’.
Born in Margate, Kent, the daughter of a local architect, and sent to private school, Christiana grew up in a household already touched by insanity. For the Victorians, the mental illness found in Christiana’s close family would prove to be a strong factor in her own diagnosis. Hereditary insanity was marked: her father had apparently gone mad before his early death, and two of her siblings died in adulthood, a brother in Earlsfield Asylum in London, and a sister allegedly by her own hand. Nevertheless, she came from a very comfortable, middle class background, and was described at her first trial as ‘a lady of fortune, tall, fair, handsome and extremely prepossessing in demeanour’. From the age of around fourteen, she lived alone with her sister and their mother, an aging landlady..
Little is known about her early adult life, except that as a party to an independent income, she did not need to work. The family moved to Brighton in the mid 1860s. Her recorded history properly begins when in the middle of 1869 she first met, then fell in love with a Dr Charles Beard who lived nearby. She sent him love letters, and, to begin with he reciprocated her friendship. In such times, any form of intimacy was significant, and it appears that they carried on some level of romantic relationship for the next few months. The nature of this level has to remain a matter of conjecture, and the extent of the relationship may have been greater in Christiana’s mind than in reality. Dr Beard