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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2958
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, September 05, 2004 - 7:35 pm: | 
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I found this surprising item in the "Washington Post" 4th Jan 1906.
Robert |
Christopher T George
Chief Inspector
Username: Chrisg
Post Number: 891
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, September 06, 2004 - 6:46 am: |
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Hi Robert
Many thanks for posting this useful and somewhat startling news report.
All the best
Chris
Christopher T. George
North American Editor
Ripperologist
http://www.ripperologist.info
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2959
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Monday, September 06, 2004 - 8:41 am: |
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Hi Chris
This excerpt from a long article in "Washington Post" 26 Sept 1915 shows another inmate being released. It's about a man who helped with Murray's Oxford Dictionary.
And this one's about a lunatic having a writ served on him!
("Washington Post" 5th Nov 1916)
Robert |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2960
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Monday, September 06, 2004 - 8:59 am: |
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Sorry that last item was "Nevada State Journal" 5th Nov 1916.
Robert |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1343
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, September 06, 2004 - 2:42 pm: |
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Great stuff, Robert.
All indeed useful food for thought.
Perhaps our Tom-Tom was already once in Broadmoor and recovered his sanity? I do wonder what happened to the dear little chap between 1888 and 1891.
Never the matter, a great find, and I am dwelling on similar things that I have discovered regarding the pardon in such circumstances, which I will no doubt post in the due course of time and brandy. |
Jeffrey Bloomfied
Inspector
Username: Mayerling
Post Number: 466
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, September 06, 2004 - 11:30 pm: |
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Hi all,
There was a notorious foul-up case in the 1950s when John Straffen was released from Broadmoor, where he had been sentenced after committing a murder. Within a month or so of his release, Straffen murdered a little girl. He was returned to Broadmoor.
Among others who ended in Broadmoor was the painter Richard Dadd (d. 1886), who murdered his father in 1844. Dadd's best work as a painter was done in Broadmoor. Richard Archer Prince, the assassin of the actor William Terriss, was sent to Broadmoor (Sir Henry Irving, a friend and co-star of Terriss's, was very bitter about the sentence, saying that because Terriss was an actor his killer was not executed). Prince "conducted" (if that is the word for it) the Broadmoor orchestra (made of the inmates) until he died. When he died in the 1930s, his role as maestro was given to Ronald True, who murdered a prostitute (I think her name was Olivia Young) in 1922, but was considered insane.
Another resident (I believe) was Christiana Edmunds, who poisoned a little boy with doctored chocolates in Brighton in 1871.
John George Haigh hoped to get into Broadmoor, even asking one of the arresting policemen what his chances were to get into it. In his case the chances were not as good as Straffen, Dadd, Prince, True, or Edmunds.
Jeff |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2966
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 07, 2004 - 12:46 pm: |
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Jeff, re Terriss, I found this on a theatre page :
Robert |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2968
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 07, 2004 - 5:07 pm: |
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AP, here's an example of previous mental illness counting against someone.
"Fort Wayne News" Feb 5th 1913.
Robert |
Nick Cook
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Monday, September 06, 2004 - 7:37 am: |
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I live just down the road from Broadmoor prison. Its in Crowthorne in Berkshire. Its In the middle of a forest and a housing estate is next door and of all things a primary school is right next door. They test the sirens ever monday and can be heard from miles around even into the next borough. There have been 2 or 3 escapes there while ive been living in those parts and just has police swarming everywhere, all schools shutting down and cars being stopped and checked. Helicopters flying around etc.
Me and friends when kids used to go up there at night, right up to the prison walls to scare each other! At night you can see the windows with lights on, quite spooky knowing there are phycotic murderers lookign out those windows.
The likes of hindley and one of the krays were in there.
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2975
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 08, 2004 - 4:42 pm: |
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Well Nick, here's something to cheer you up.
Robert |
Jeffrey Bloomfied
Inspector
Username: Mayerling
Post Number: 473
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 08, 2004 - 10:54 pm: |
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Hi Robert,
Just two small points. The actress Lillian McCarthy (who was threatened by the mad Collins) was the wife of the noted Edwardian playwrite Harley Granville-Barker, whose plays are still revived.
The notice about Captain Bower Colthurst is a scandal that is better remembered in Eire than in the rest of the British Isles. Keeping in mind how easy war attrocities happen in war zones, during the Easter Rebellion there were many claims and counter claims of undue brutality by both sides. Bower Colthurst was an army officer who had served at the front, and should have been invalided out with the equivalent of an American Section 8. Suffering from mental illness due to his war experiences, he was available to be sent to Dublin in the forces to put down the Rebellion in 1916. Had he been at the Post Office when the battle became hot, and helped end Peirce and Conolly's men from fighting all might have been well. But he was at a checkpoint, and seized several people. One was Francis Sheehy -Skeffington, a prominent editor, man of letters, and public figure in the city. Sheehy-Skeffington was not in on the planning of the Rebellion. But Bower Colthurst got it into his head that he was, and he ordered the man shot.
The British were rather embarrased by the entire
Rebellion - it had caught them by surprise, taken a week of heavy fighting to put down, and they got a great deal of criticism from the United States about how it was put down. Their series of twenty executions of Peirce and his brother,
Conolly, and other leading figures (De Valera just missed being executed) did not enhance their position. The incident with Bower Colthurst was buried, first by sending him to Broadmoor (as though to say his brutality was an insane man's actions), and then (within three years) releasing him and sending him to live on a pension in Canada. The Irish know these details, and deeply resent them. Francis Sheehy - Skeffington's widow became a prominent member of the Irish Parliament in the 1920s and 1930s.
Jeff |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 4556
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - 1:40 pm: |
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This case, from Dec 15th 1894, touched on an interesting legal point. Mr Searle was very persistent.
Robert |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 2200
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - 1:51 pm: |
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Yes, Robert, I saw this as well and tried to follow up the legal wrangling and due procedure but found myself in a flood tide of calamitious proportion where I drowned.
The whole lunacy thing was in a great state of flux, and I actually found cases where the judge was questioning his own legal ability to pass a fair and legal sentence in such cases.
Everyone seemed confused, me especially.
Thomas would have done well to have waited a few more years before going barmy.
He might have got away with it then. |
David Bullock
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Saturday, June 25, 2005 - 8:56 am: |
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Hi Robert & AP
I am currently trying to track down any mug-shots of broadmoor inmates which would have been taken during the Victorian period, and just wondered whether either of you could advise as of the best course of action. I have contacted a particular Web site who claim to have access to a number of archives from Broadmoor Hospital but am currently waiting on a response.
Any help would be much appreciated.
PS.
AP, I have just managed to buy a first edition of the 'Myth' and can't wait to read it again.
Regards
David |
C Jones
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Monday, December 19, 2005 - 8:21 am: |
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A couple of things (specifically relating to the post from Nick Cook)- Broadmoor is not a prison, and Hindley wasn't (as far as I'm aware) a patient in Broadmoor.
Interesting news articles though! |
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