Reports of the superintendent and chaplain of Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum for the year 1866.

  • Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Reports of the superintendent and chaplain of Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum for the year 1866. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    No serious injury resulted in any case though the risk was considerable. Attendants Hampton, Iviely, Godard, and Jas. Taylor were struck by patients at different times, but also without serious injury. On Sunday, 18th March, an attack was made upon me by a patient in the chapel; he had armed himself with a flint pebble slung in a handkerchief Attendant Woodhouse reached my pew at the same time as the patient, and by his promptness saved me from the full force of the blow. The patient acted with the greatest cunning and had been watch¬ ing his opportunity for some days ; he was not known at the time to be dangerous to others, nor had any change been observed in his general conduct. Two cases of suicide have to be recorded. On the morning of the 22nd March, Mary Ann Crisp cut her throat with a piece of glass; on the following morning the nurse in special charge of the patient left the room for a minute at her instiga¬ tion, on returning she found Crisp inflicting further injury upon herself with a knife which had been most reprehensibly left within her reach. She died almost immediately. William Smith, employed in the shoemaker's shop, was found dead in the vratercloset on the morning of the 23rd •May; he had cut his throat with a shoemaker's knife. Smith’s history gives no intimation of a suicidal tendency. No change had been observed in the man. The master shoemaker states that shortly before his death he swept out the shop and talked to him about a play performed on the previous evening by patients and at which he, Smith, had been present Escapes. Four attempts at escape were made during the year, but all unsuccessful. Mortality. The mortality is 3*6 per cent, upon the average daily number of males, and 6T per cent, upon the average daily number of females resident. Inquests were held in every case and the following verdicts returned :—