Broadmoor Inmates: True Crime Tales of Life and Death in the Asylum

A history of the men and women whose acts of madness led them to be reviled, feared, and incarcerated in the 19th-century British psychiatric hospital. Broadmoor Inmates: True Crime Tales of Life and Death in the Asylum brings together the histories of people who died in Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, each having committed a crime that led to them being pronounced criminally insane, necessitating their confinement and containment for their own protection, as well as that of the public. As well as wife murderers James Potter and Peter Whittle, the characters within include Henry Dommett, James Senior and Mary Ann Parr, who each killed their own children and Christiana Edmunds, who poisoned several people in Brighton to divert suspicion from herself, after attempting to murder her love rival. Other vignettes include serial arsonist John Green, counterfeiter Emma Jackson and James Stevenson and Roderick Edward McClean, both of whom took exception to the accession of Her Majesty Queen Victoria to the throne, the latter attempting to assassinate her. Daniel McNaughten became so paranoid about the 'Tory' spies that he believed followed him constantly that he killed a civil servant in 1843, mistakenly believing his victim to be prime minister Sir Robert Peel. Such was McNaughten's derangement that his crime spawned a new standard for the legal definition of insanity. Generously illustrated throughout, this book will prove of interest to those with a fascination for historical true crime and the way its perpetrators were dealt with by society.

© 2023 Pen & Sword History (E-bog): 9781399048927

Udgivelsesdato

E-bog: 9. november 2023