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Richard Dadd

Notes about Dadd at Broadmoor were taken from the relevant case books (D/H14/D2/1/1/1 and D2/1/3/1), and his case file (D/H14/D2/2/1/130) at the Berkshire Record Office. Entries for purchases made by Dadd can be found in the patients’ account book (D/H14/D3/3/1/1).

There are various books available about Dadd. The two which brought him back to attention are:

Richard Dadd, by Patricia Allderidge, Academy, 1974

Richard Dadd: the Rock and Castle of Seclusion, by David Greysmith, Macmillan, 1973.

Another book about Dadd, Richard Dadd: The Artist and the Asylum, will be published in summer 2011, written by Nick Tromans.

There are also various sources of information about Dadd online. If you want to jump straight to his wikipedia entry then it is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dadd. The collection of Dadd art held at Bethlem Royal Hospital Museum can be viewed at http://www.bethlemheritage.org.uk/gallery/pages/LDB867-1.asp.

William Chester Minor

From Broadmoor, information about Minor comes from the relevant case books (D/H14/D2/1/1/3 and D2/1/3/1), and his case file (D/H14/D2/2/1/742) at the Berkshire Record Office. Entries for purchases made by Minor can be found in the patients’ account book (D/H14/D3/3/1/1).

The principal work on Minor in print is Simon Winchester’s The Surgeon of Crowthorne, (The Professor and The Madman in the US), a bestseller and well worth a read to anyone interested in Minor’s story. It is not an authoritative biography, but contains the results of far more research on Minor than the short piece I have written.

Online, Minor’s wikipedia entry is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Chester_Minor , and there’s a BBC article at http://www.bbc.co.uk/legacies/myths_legends/england/berkshire/article_1.shtml.

Christiana Edmunds

Edmunds’s Broadmoor notes can be found in D/H14/D2/2/2/204 and D/H14/D2/1/2/1.

Many newspapers carried updates of Christiana’s trial in excited detail, and a lot of this chapter has been taken both from The Times and regional newspapers on pay-per-view websites. There are, however, some accounts of her trial available free online via the New York Times. These are:

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9A01E1DD113EEE34BC4B53DFBF66838A669FDE

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=980CE6DC113EEE34BC4053DFBF66838A669FDE

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9B00E2D71739E43BBC4951DFBF66838A669FDE

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9A06E3D9113EEE34BC4E52DFB4668389669FDE

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9C00E0DB113EEE34BC4B53DFB4668389669FDE

The official proceedings of the Old Bailey provide little detail about the case.

There is a wikipedia entry for Edmunds, though it is fairly basic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiana_Edmunds

Broadmoor Babies

The Broadmoor case file references for each of the patients at the Berkshire Record Office are as follows:

D/H14/D2/2/2/113: Catherine Dawson

D/H14/D2/2/2/146: Mary Ann Meller

D/H14/D2/2/2/177: Margaret Crimmings

D/H14/D2/2/2/212: Margaret Davenport

D/H14/D2/2/2/280: Catherine Jones

And their case notes can be found in D/H14/D2/1/2/1.

Correspondence about some of the cases can be found in the Superintendent’s letter book D/H14/A2/1/4/1.

None of these patients are yet well known, so although other sources, such as trial reports, are available locally, the only one freely available online is that of Mary Ann Meller. Misspelt Miller, her trial transcript is at

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=def1-105-18671216&div=t18671216-105#highlight.

Escape from Broadmoor

There are lots of places to look for information about these escapes in the Broadmoor archive at the BRO. The following items all contain relevant information for the first half of the chapter, detailing escape attempts under Meyer’s leadership:

Council of Supervision minutes (D/H14/A1/2/1/1-2)