Broadmoor Revealed_ Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum - Mark Stevens [27]
Edmunds was a patient who required micro-management. She was a bundle of contradictions. Generally quiet and biddable, she joined the ranks of the more trusted patients in the original female Block. She had access to the Terrace and the gardens, and probably delighted in causing mischief through playing croquet and other games with her fellow patients. For she was certainly disruptive, as a note of 1876 indicates: ‘her delight and amusement seem[s] to be in practising the art of ingeniously tormenting several of the more irritable patients so that she could always complain of their language to her whilst it was difficult to bring any overt act home to herself’. The same note suggests that her room is still being regularly searched, and that when her mother visited, she would omit her make up and try to look as desperate as possible.
The subject of Christiana’s make-up appears often in her notes. She was evidently perceived by the male doctors as Broadmoor’s painted lady, and as a creature motivated by romantic desire. They were the sole males in regular contact with her, and she appears to have been determined to maximise their attention to her. A note made in 1877 by David Nicolson, as Edmunds approached the age of fifty, related her daily life as one of embroidery and etching; but also maintained that she ‘affects a youthful appearance’ and that ‘her manner and expression evidently lies towards sexual and amatory ideas’. It seems certain that at the annual Christmas dance for female patients, no doctor or male attendant could escape a dance with Christiana.
Her life at Broadmoor continued in this vein for another thirty years. She presented no danger to any staff or patients, and unlike some patients she showed no obvious signs of insanity. Many times her notes described her as being obsessed with her personal appearance. She won the battle to wear her own clothes eventually. We know this because she sent out a parcel of them to a Wokingham lady for repair in 1887, and the parcel was sent back to the Broadmoor steward, who made a fuss because he was not expecting it. Otherwise, she became less disruptive. She sewed, she painted, she made herself up and demanded acknowledgement from the male staff when she met them; she was quiet, she was well-behaved, and she showed no remorse for her crimes. And in doing all these things, she grew into an old woman.
Perhaps if she had been one of the Broadmoor women who had acted while suffering from post-natal depression, she might have been discharged. But there was no clamour for that, nor any regular petitions to the Home Office, letters in the newspapers or campaigning friends to ask questions on her behalf. Dr Orange even noted in 1884 that he did not actually have any paperwork authorising her detention, because the Treasury Solicitor had lost it all. It never seems to have crossed anyone’s mind that she might be discharged to rejoin society. As the years went by, her remaining family died, and she was left alone at Broadmoor.
Gradually her own health weakened. In 1900, she was bedridden for a while with flu. By 1901 her sight was fading badly, and she could barely see out of her right eye. She rallied in time to attend the Asylum’s annual ball in 1902, but her mobility decreased, and by 1906 she could hardly walk to go anywhere. As she entered the last year of her life, a final Christmas ball approached. Laid up in the infirmary, and closely observed by the medical staff, a snippet of conversation between her and another patient was entered into her case notes:
Edmunds: How am I looking?
A: Fairly well.
Edmunds: Are my eyebrows alright?
A: Yes.
Edmunds: I think I am improving. I hope I shall be better in a fortnight. If so, I shall astonish them;