Broadmoor Revealed: Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum by Mark Stevens Read Free Book Online

Central Hall, which he continued for several years.
Dr Orange’s son also remembered Dadd painting a mural along one
wall in the Medical Superintendent’s house, work which, like most
of the Hall decorations, is now lost.
    In 1877, there
is the only note made at Broadmoor relating to Dadd’s reason for
admission. David Nicolson recorded a detailed conversation that he
had had with Dadd about the murder of Dadd’s father. Dadd stated
that he was not convinced that the man he killed was his father,
presumably clinging to the belief that he had instead attacked the
Devil. Rather, Dadd had been convinced at the time of the killing
that the ‘gods and spirits above’ required him to make a sacrifice.
Dadd was able to describe the murder scene, and his reaction when
his father fell. Nicolson wrote: ‘Dadd (posing himself with
upstretched arm), thus apostrophised the starry bodies “Go,” said
he “and tell the great god Osiris that I have done the deed which
is to set him free.”’ Dadd also stated that the attack in France
had been brought about by his observation that two stars in the
constellation of ursa major were moving closer together, thus
convincing him that a further sacrifice was demanded by the ancient
gods.
    Despite his
continuing delusions, Dadd was evidently no bother to the medical
authorities. He remained insane, but in other respects simply
became another old man, occasionally wandering about the grounds to
watch the other patients playing cricket. His disappearance
underneath the Asylum radar is evidenced by the fact that no
entries were made on his case for a whole seven years, from 1878
until 1885, at which point he was removed to the infirmary in
Broadmoor’s Block 3 with what proved to be his final illness. It
was back to where Dadd had spent his first years in Broadmoor.
There is evidence to suggest that he was later moved to Block 2,
the ‘privilege’ block, where the better behaved patients were
allowed more freedom, as he appears to have been observed in a room
there by a journalist touring the Asylum in the early 1880s.
    Wherever he
spent most of his days, he stayed in the infirmary from June 1885
until his death on the evening of 8th January 1886, aged 68, from
tuberculosis. The end had been quite quick, with Dadd still getting
up and about until a week before he died. He was buried at
Broadmoor. In common with a significant proportion of Asylum
patients, he had outlived most of his immediate family, and there
were no immediate relatives left to mourn his passing. There are a
few papers in his Broadmoor file which relate to the dispersal of
his estate, though the file adds that various letters from
solicitors had been taken from it by the Broadmoor steward, sadly
never to be returned.
    Dadd’s
reputation was recognised during his lifetime, though due to his
situation he was not particularly celebrated and only rarely
exhibited. His passing was not noted at the time of his death, and
it was only in 1974 that the first major exhibition of his work was
curated, at The Tate. A substantial collection of his work is held
at the Bethlem Royal Hospital Museum in south east London, which
includes a number of paintings that remained at Broadmoor after
Dadd’s death. One of his most significant works from Bethlem, The
Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke, is now on permanent display at Tate
Britain in London. A lost work, The Artists’ Halt in the Desert,
was discovered in 1987 during filming for the BBC’s Antiques
Roadshow and is now in The British Museum. Interest in Dadd’s work
only appears to deepen with time, and there seems little chance
that this particular Victorian artist will ever be forgotten.
     
     
     

 
     
William Chester
Minor:
Man of Words and
Letters

     
    Probably
Dadd’s rival for the crown of best-known Victorian Broadmoorite is
Dr Minor, American medic, murderer and contributor to the first
Oxford English Dictionary. Minor was the subject of Simon
Winchester’s