Monday, February 21, 2011

BROADMOOR: FORTRESS HOSPITAL FOR THE CRIMINALLY INSANE


The forbidding fortress above is Broadmoor Mental Hospital, where the most dangerous criminals in Britain are kept. Every man in there is not only a murderer, but he's also clinically insane. There are only 250 or so inmates, but it takes a facility this big to handle them securely.


Above, the hospital walls.



The four surrounding towns all have sirens mounted on towers to give warning if an inmate escapes.  The sirens are turned on at a fixed time every week for two minutes to be sure they're in good working order.  School children are drilled in what to do if the siren goes off any other time.


This (above) was one resident of Broadmoor: Graham Young, a serial poisoner. Prevented by his incarceration from murdering more family members, he devoted himself to poisoning other inmates.  He learned how to do it from medical books he found in the hospital library. He figured he had to experiment on other inmates so he'd do a good job on the general public when he was released....which he was after only nine years. Horrors ensued.



Here's another Broadmoor guest: Robert Maudsley, called "Britain's Hannibal Lecter." Killing a truck  driver got him sent to Broadmoor where, like Graham Young,  he turned his attention to other inmates.  He killed several. In one instance he forced another patient into his cell, and he...he....Aaaargh! It's too horrible to talk about.  Suffice it to say that he was nicknamed "The Spoon" after that.

Now they keep him in a glass cage, something like the one that housed Lecter in "Silence of the Lambs." His furniture has to be made of compressed cardboard. When he's taken out to exercise he's  accompanied by six guards. He's reputed to have attempted to bite his mother's face when she came to visit him.

Had enough? Me too! This is giving me the creeps!

9 comments:

Josh said...

Yikes!

Allen said...

And that is why they are called criminally insane.

Smackmonkey said...

I knew food in the British Isles was bad but is cannibalism the only other option?

Makes you wonder who your next door neighbor really is. Sleep tight, little ones.

Brubaker said...

You know, you can probably write a horror film based on that prison...maybe there already is...

Vincent said...

Great post Eddie.

Pseudonym said...

Interestingly, I visited J Ward over Summer. You'd think that a place like this is creepy, but it actually isn't. It's more sad than anything else.

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Pseudonym: Interesting pictures. I think I know how you must have felt. I came across an old electroshock therapy device in a junk yard. Holding it, I wondered what stories it could tell if it could speak. I was sad for days after.

Anonymous said...

Graham Young didn't escape from Broadmoor, he was released as a model prisoner after only 9 years, "cured" (although he had been sentenced to at least double that). He was still young(24), apparently he did experiment with poisons in prison on other inmates and he did study up in the prison library.
Once paroled he went to work in a laboratory where he poisoned many, killing 3.
He was rearrested, convicted and died in prison at age 42.

BTW Broadmoor isn't a prison only for murderers, but for all "criminally insane" prisoners-it's effectively a prison-hospital. And Young was first imprisoned for attempted murder on his father and sister, as there wasn't proof that his stepmother had died from his poisoning(although she most probably did).

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Anonymous: Thanks for the correction! I added it to the post!