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By Root 172 0

had argued a few years before that shooting at the Master of the Rolls was the only way to draw attention to the injustices of a legal action he was pursuing. Orange’s successor, David Nicolson, was similarly attacked by Henry Forrester in 1884 while employed as Deputy Super. Nicolson was well enough to return to work and take promotion in due course, though he was also the only Superintendent to suffer two attacks, after James Lyons went on to throw a stone at his head in 1889. Despite these twin assaults, Nicolson might still consider his to be a more fortunate outcome than that of the Deputy he had in turn succeeded: William Douglas lasted all of four months at Broadmoor in 1871 before patient Henry Leest injured him so badly that he never returned to work.

When Meyer died suddenly in Exeter in May 1870, while returning from a visit to his dying brother-in-law, it was his thirty-seven year-old assistant who succeeded him, and spent the next sixteen years in charge. William Orange is a fascinating character, and worthy of the fine portrait of him that Dadd painted, and which hung in the Superintendent’s office at Broadmoor until the turn of the twenty-first century. In terms of this brief introduction to Broadmoor, Orange’s importance is the cultural mark that he imprinted onto the Asylum, echoes of which are still apparent today in the twin pillars of rehabilitation and public protection that Broadmoor represents. In that any long-running institution bears a received memory and received values from those who have trod its corridors along the years, it is to Orange, and to Nicolson, that I feel the modern hospital still owes a debt. Orange’s care for his staff has been mentioned; from his patients, comes testimony of genuine warmth that still litters the archive. Two personal items might serve to illustrate that: that he received spontaneous letters of goodwill after Dodwell’s attack on him; and that Henry Leest, the beater of poor Dr Douglas, felt able to write asking Orange for a little money many years after his discharge. Orange usually obliged his ex-charges with a small sum to tide them over, and there is no reason to suppose that Leest was an exception.

Orange was severely incapacitated after Dodwell’s attack, with the result that Nicolson gradually assumed more control after summer 1882. When Orange finally retired in 1886, as for the end of Meyer’s reign in 1870, it was his Deputy who took over. The third Medical Superintendent had been on the staff since 1876, and remained a personal friend of Orange as the latter enjoyed a long retirement. Indeed, Orange even returned to the Asylum as a member of its scrutiny body, the Council of Supervision. Nicolson provided continuity, as well as a more strategic approach to management than Orange, only ever criticising his friend and former boss for his micro-management, feeling that at times Orange’s attention to detail was not appropriate.

However, although my impression of the Orange and Nicolson years is one of great success in their enterprise, when the time came for Nicolson to retire in 1895, his Deputy was not selected to succeed him. The doctor in question, John Isaac, was as old as Nicolson and not quite the high-flyer that his bosses had been, having pre-dated Nicolson at Broadmoor. Instead, the post was given to the suitably-named Richard Brayn, the last of the Victorian Superintendents. Brayn came from the prison service, rather than a medical background, and despite his popularity with the politicians outside the walls (he gained the knighthood which would never come to Nicolson), his period in charge was one of greater tension inside them. Brayn was a great believer in running a tight, disciplinary ship, which occasionally put him in conflict with other professionals around him. The result was that the pillar of rehabilitation was perhaps slightly shorter than the pillar of public protection during Brayn’s time in charge: the positives in the lopsided emphasis being a lack of successful escapes, coupled with Brayn’s success in becoming the first Superintendent