The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-13 00:00:00

A Visit to the Criminal Lunatic Asylum.

We are all of us familiar with the verdicts, " ac-
quitted on the ground of insanity," and the invaria-
ble sentence which follows on them; 44 to be im-
prisoned during her Majesty's pleasure." These
two meagre scraps of information, if such they may
be called, are generally all that the public learn con-
cerning the career of criminal lunatics. What becomes
of them afterwards—where they are imprisoned, how
they live and die, whether - they become partially
cured or still more confirmed in their derangement,
and add to their first crime by fresh attempts upon
the lives of their keepers--none but their own
friends, if even they, ever know afterwards. The
criminal lunatic—and by this term we mean to refer
only to those of homicidal tendencies, persons never
dangerous to themselves, but always so to others—
is, when once acquitted of murder on the ground of
insanity, as dead to the world as if the earth had
already closed over him. For every other class of
criminal there is some chance of ultimate reprieve ;
for these dangerous madmen none whatever.
Two or three years ago there used to be wards
for these miserable homicides, men and women,
in most of the county asylums, while very
many, including Edward Oxford, who so nearly
killed the Queen, Macnaughten, who murdered Sir
Robert Peel's Secretary in Whitehall-place, and the
celebrated Captain Johnston, who under such ter-
rible circumstances killed all the crew of his ship,
the Tory, were kept at Bethlehem by a special ar-
rangement with the Home-office. This system, how-
ever, was full of inconveniences, and these inconve-
niences becoming aggravated as every year added to
the numbers of such prisoners, at least grew to such
a height that the Government determined to build
one large asylum capable of holding all the lunatic
murderers, men and women, of Great Britain.
This building is the Great Broadmoor Asylum.
It is distant about two miles from the Wellington
College Station of the South-Eastern Railway, and,
surrounded by pine woods, commands a magnificent
prospect. The building, or rather series of distinct
blocks of buildings which compose it are lofty and
handsome, and if, as Sydney Smith said, the
builder of a red brick house is a public benefactor,
then, indeed, the founders of Broadmoor deserve
no ordinary meed of gratitude, for a warmer and
more comfortable-looking structure was never erected
in a more wild though beautiful situation. Every part
of the buildings, and the long, steep, terraced slopes
which lead down the hill in front, and are to be here-
after usg as gardens, are surrounded with high walls,
for the place, as might be expected from the cha-
racter of its inmates, is not only an asylum, but, as
it should be, a strong house of detention also.
Beyond these walls, whether sane or insane, the
murderers once committed to Broadmoor never-pass
in life or death. In all that relates to diet, lodging,
and every other comfort, they are treated with almost
an excess of care. They can see their friends, can
write to whom they please, can take what exercise
they like in the spacious airing grounds, can, in
short, do anything but pass the boundaries which
shut them in for ever from the world be-
yond. Within these they live and die, and within
these are they buried in the little cemetery attached
to the asylum. It may at first seem hard that those
who are restored to comparative sanity should still
he condemned to the darkest and most terrible of
all dooms—that of perpetual incerceration in a mad-
house with the very worst class of -maniacs, those
whose homicidal frenzies no discipline can effectually
check nor medical attendance entirely mitigate. Yet
in reality this rule is a necessary even if a harsh one.

There are several now in Broadmoor who years ago
were only saved by accident from completing murder,
and who afterwards passed two or three years in
lunatic asylums. There in course of time the quiet,
healthy life, freedom from mental anxiety, and care-
ful medical treatment at last succeeded in restoring
them to apparent sanity, and they were set at liberty.
But the mind which seemed sane in the quiet good
order of a well-regulated asylum, and amid the more
marked mental derangements with which it was sur-
rounded, soon lost its feeble balance when returned
again to struggle with all the nervous excitements of
the world. Some such who have been once liberated
are now at Broadmoor—committed to its never-end-
ing confinement, not for having attempted, but this
time forhaving completed, sometimes one, sometimes
more murders under circumstances of peculiar cun-
ning and premeditation. Some of these are still as
bad as ever ; some the quiet of the asylum and
kindly care of Dr. Meyer have restored again to
almost sanity for the second time. But the result
will be the same in either case. Neither will ever
more he trusted at liberty. A committal to Broad-
moor for murderous madness is as final as regards
the chances of return to the world as death itself.
It is time, however, to speak of the interior of
Broadmoor and its inmates—of those whom a na-
turally defective mental organisation has brought to
its eternal seclusion, of those in whom morbid jea-
lousy, morbid love of notoriety, or morbid vanity—
for all these causes are sufficient to overturn
the weak balance of ill regulated minds—has
at last brought to hopeless insanity and detention.
Broadmoor now contains nearly 500 inmates, about
400 men and 50 or 60 women. With a few rare
exceptions, nearly all are homicides, and we are
probably much within the mark when we say that
the victims of their united crimes would amount to
nearly 1,000. Here one may occasionally see a
female croquet party on the lawn, the players
in which have been guilty in the aggregate of
some 30 murders ; or on the men's side, playing
at bagatelle, a little group, with each of whose
crimes all England at one time rung. Entering one
of the large blocks devoted to the men, the visitor
passes at once to the sitting, dining, and recreation
rooms, which are all on the ground floor, the dor-
mitories and infirmaries being above. In the sit-
ting-room, which is nearly always full, the first
thing which strikes him on entrance is, as a rule,
the criminal type of all the faces. Any who have
been in the habit of visiting our great convict prisons,
know what we mean by this expression. The low
mental organisation which one always finds asso-
ciated with crime in the common run of criminals,
the small head, narrow and receding forehead, and
restless furtive eyes, are at Broadmoor intensified, and
in most cases accompanied with a weakly, undersized
physical development. Small ill-formed heads, nar-
row stooping shoulders, weak limbs, and shuffling hesi-
tating gait, are the rule among them. These are the
occupants of a " block" of a hundred, and are what
they always call themselves, "her Majesty's pleasure
people," that is, people acquitted of murder on the
ground of insanity, and sentenced to imprisonment
during her Majesty's pleasure. Some are reading,
some writing, some playing draughts, a few sham-
bling to and fro in moody silence, like caged animals,
while some sit staring with blank intensity upon
the opposite wall from which they never move their
eyes. Here comes one who was, when at large, more
dangerous to her Majesty than Oxford himself,
hopelessly mad from a vain love of notoriety, which
he thinks he has attained, as the great strut with
which he enters the room shows clearly enough. The
once terrible
to a mild and inoffensive
Johnston is here now, cured
i idiotcy ; and here, too, is
Macnaughten, m really Drummond. aiu.Y mad as when he killed poor
a non-commissioned
officer, whose murdere' of
B
years ago shocked all Encria
nwdife and family some
now is about his good conduct His only anxiety
medal
are several whom we have al:d . Here, too,
having been in asylums
before for y alluded to as
attempted
murder, who have been discharged
having then perpetrated murder outrigleurhaevd,e beenand
committed to stay here for evermore. Asa rule
those reading are the half-cured, and those seldom
speak or are spoken to. Those writing so intensely are
generally preparing interminable memorials to the
Home Secretary, or keeping the most insane of
diaries to show the Commissioners in Lunacy as
proofs of their cure and reasons for their discharge.
The maddest of all are those who beset Dr. Meyer
and the governors with endless arguments on the ne-
cessity for their being set at liberty at once. " Mark
me," says one most solemnly, " I hold you now
responsible for my detention, for the jury them-
selves acquitted me." The same individual, as a
reason for not going to church, said, " Why, you
see, I cannot ; the presence of a sane man among
these lunatics always disturbs them. I have no-
ticed it myself, so for their sake I had better stay