Broadmoor Revealed_ Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum - Mark Stevens [58]
Brown was known as ‘a very powerful man’. Stout, twenty-six years old, and serving a fifteen year sentence for wounding, he had attacked both staff and patients at Broadmoor since his admission in April 1871. He was another convict who had outgrown the cells at Millbank, and he did not find the regime at Broadmoor to his liking: ‘I am weary of life in this cursed Bastille of misery and destruction’, he wrote. He was often secluded in the Block, and for the two months before his escape he had embarked on a daily destruction of both fixtures and fittings on his ward. His behaviour improved in the few days before he escaped, almost certainly because now he had his key and wished to make use of it, and as a consequence he had been allowed around the Block again.
Shortly before 6pm on the day in question, he made out of the scullery on his ward in Block 1, opened the door to the Block with his key and went outside. He unlocked the airing court door, walked onto the Terrace, through another door and then into the yard where the wood was stored. He took two sets of steps, and placed a trestle over them. Then he climbed up, and over the wall, and made his way to Bagshot, where he spent the night in a cattle shed.
The staff were lucky. The next day, Brown used his money to make for an obvious destination that was being watched. He bought a ticket from Bagshot to Waterloo Station, and was retaken as he stepped onto the concourse in London. Giving a detailed, if varied account of his actions, it soon became apparent that Phillips was indirectly responsible for Brown’s escape and the attendant was dismissed immediately. A little over five pounds of the stolen money was recovered from the inside of Brown’s backside, and the patient was moved onto Millbank again the following year.
Eighteen seventy-three had been a bad year, the worst since Orange took over. Brown’s case may have been dealt with, but the Medical Superintendent held an internal enquiry at the Asylum, directed by the Council of Supervision, to rake over the coals of Bisgrove and Walker, and to conclude with a report to the Home Office. The result was largely factual about the nature of each escape, and Orange found little worthy of blame: the attendants in both cases might perhaps have been more vigilant, but in neither case were they negligent, and the principle that patients of good behaviour should be allowed to go at large was not one that anyone who understood the subject wished to change. Furthermore, Orange did some research to show that the rate of escape at Broadmoor was around seven times less than for that body of criminal lunatics housed in county asylums.
Perhaps predictably, in the light of his previous comments, Orange focused his recommendations on the mixing of time and pleasure patients in blocks together; suggesting implicitly (though none too subtly) that the matter of escape was related. The pleasure man’s only chance of discharge rested on his good behaviour, whereas the time man’s reward for good behaviour was to end up back in prison, which Orange considered to be a dubious incentive. He suggested that the pleasure patients be allowed to continue as they were, and that money be spent to provide a separate, more secure outdoors environment for the convicts. There was no mention of any changes to procedures that might have led his staff to improve their performance.
Orange’s argument found support from the Commissioners in Lunacy, who agreed with Orange that his two classes of patient should be separated wherever possible. Alternative accommodation was provided at Woking Invalid Prison, Knaphill, and the next year saw an informal moratorium on time patients admitted to Broadmoor, with a result that their population diminished. Orange felt vindicated by the comparatively quiet year he enjoyed. There was only one attempted escape during 1874, right at the close of the year, and by the standards of its predecessors, it used an entirely unique method.
A storm was raging around the Asylum on the night of 6th