BOOK EXTRACT
Introduction.
'Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all
Voltaire: letter, 1962.
Why is one of the most publicaly-funded mental institutions in world history so shrouded in secrecy? What sick secrets hide behind the grim walls, and who are these highly-paid pen-pushing tax-paid folk trying to protect? Their negligence. utter incompetence..or, in some cases their own reputations, all the way up to High Government.
At the time of writing, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is mired neck deep in scandals, as bent as a Micky Mouse watch, yet he still he cannot be held to account. 'Wallpaper Gate, 'Covid Party Gate' - WE have elected a charlatan to run OUR beautiful county but, like our cousins across the pond, we have not got the moral guts to kick either man out of office.
No one in this totally-screwed upside-down world is held responsible for errors. From the Social Services who ignore pleas from people that a child is being molested ...then killed.. yet no one is held to account. Instead they shuffled to some other Dept... and promoted just to keep things sweet - to the man we elect as the Leader of OUR country.
This book, as difficult it may be to swallow, contains a chapter on why this has come to pass. The Lefties rule with commonsense shit-canned and sent in a handbasket to Hell. at the expense of your hard-earned taxes too.
So..
a BIG welcome guys and gals. Fasten your seat belts for I am about to take you on a journey; not altogether a pleasant one to be sure, but a road trip into the minds of some of the most mentally unstable and twisted criminal psychopaths in the UK's history.
Like all journeys there has to be a starting point, so here we are at perhaps one of the most famous, some say infamous, high security mental hospitals in Great Britain - it being Broadmoor, of course it is. Set deep into the County of Berkshire is the village of Crowthorne. It is a typical English village to be sure... with its high street, post office, a couple of public houses, barber's and a cluster of other shops, but some say that Crowthome hides a dark history dating back to the mid 1880's.
With one-hundred-and thirty hectares of what was bleak moorland, in 1883 works began on a psychiatric hospital. Designed by Sir Joshua Jebb, KCB (1793-1863) he was a Royal Engineer and the British Surveyor-General of convict prisons. He had participated in the Battle of Plattsburg on Lake Champlain during the war of 1812; had surveyed a route between Ottawa River and Kingston where Lake Ontario flows into Saint Lawrence River, however amongst his many other notable achievements this distinguished looking man was involved in designing prisons and related buildings. Therefore, you can believe it when I say this was certainly the guy to build a secure mental asylum for he also designed Pentonville Prison in London, Woking Convict Invalid Prison and Mountjoy Prison in Belfast, added to which he knew a lot about sieges and wrote quite a few major works: A Practical Treatise on Strengthening and Defending Outposts, Villages, Houses, Bridges, Chatham (1836); Modern Prisons: their Construction and Ventilation, with plates, London (1844). and Notes on the Theory and Practice of Sinking Artesian Wells (1844).
Next came the somewhat longwinded titled Manual for the Militia, of Fighting made Easy: a Practical Treatise on Strengthening and Defending Military Posts in reference to the Duties of a Force engaged in Disputing the Advance of an Enemy, London, 1853), and if one could wade through that lot you would not have been disappointed to get one's hands on a copy of, 4 Flying Shot at Fergusson and his "Perils of Portsmouth, Invasion of England, " pamphlet, London (1953).
Whether any military generals or admirals read these published works is unknown, but if they had had their wits about them they would have surely known all about the content of. A practical treatise on the Duties to be performed..at a siege, 3rd Edition, London, William Clowes and Son, 1860, London, or, Observations on the Defence of London, with Suggestions respecting necessary Works, London, (1860). Nevertheless his, Reports and Observations on the Discipline and Management of Convict Prisons, edited by the Earl of Chichester, London (1863) was a must-read for anyone with convict supervision in mind, so, without doubt Sir Joshua was the go-to guy when someone cooked up the idea to build a place to house the seriously bouncing off-the-wall, as mad as a hatters, stark raving bonkers insane. I mean he had all the experience, right? He knew how to keep people inside a building, keep other people out of a building, micro-manage anyone within and fight off anyone trying to enter the building from without or stopping anyone exiting. He was into digging artesian wells to extract the groundwater for bathing and drinking, moreover, even how to ventilate the places so everyone could breathe. C'mon guys let's give Sir Joshua a 'First Prize, and as for the Woking Convict Invalid Prison, its history makes for a fascinating read and can be found on Wikipedia.
Straying a little but from his usual construction works, the original design for Broadmoor was more of a contemporary medical building rather than a prison per se. The prevailing Victorian attitude was one of strict moral rectitude heavily laced with a lot of Bible thumping, furthermore the approach to mental health was one of locking people away so as not to be seen nor heard of - often ever again - and to be left with their keepers well out of harm's way.
Of note, one of the earliest asylums was 'Bethlem in Beckenham, London. This place dates back to 1247 as a priory then opened in 1330 as a hospital. 'In every society there are those tortured by their own mind
- individuals born mentally ill or afflicted by mental illness after suffering a grave misfortune, as Steven Casale writes in Huffpost March 2016, adding, * but there was once an insane asylum so notorious that its very name entered the English language as words for chaos, mayhem and confusion.' Casale is, of course, referring to Bethlem Royal Hospital aka 'Bedlam: and the more one studies the histories of these 'nut houses! the more fascinating it becomes and we haven't even started meeting some of Broadmoor's murderous crackpots vet - so enjoy the trip.
John Thomas Straffen.
STRAFFEN -Verb:
Punish to cause to suffer for a crime of fault
Punish to give punishment for Discipline to punish.
Cambridge Dictionary.
Sirens, sirens, sirens were the wailing alerts Broadmoor Hospital used to broadcast at 10am sharp every Monday morning. They were like a two-tone air raid racket, not quite the same as used in London in WWII but enough to sound throughout the counties of Berkshire and Surrey, and it went like this: The first two minutes of two-tone was followed by a two-minute continuous 'All Clear'. Hear these sirens at any other time of the week and one knew that a "patient' had escaped - a lunatic was on the loose. Schools went into lockdown with parents ordered to collect their children after classes. Police set up roadblocks, cop-copters whirled overhead, search dogs were sent a-sniffing and even the Army might be called in to search for the escapee. And here is the reason why the sirens were initially installed at Broadmoor - John Thomas Straffen.
Sir James "Jimmy' Wilson Vincent Savile OBE KCSG - The King of Perverts.
*We [Savile]were close friends for more than 20 years, we used to pop into the Palace after the London Marathon.'
Former Broadmoor Superintendent Alan Franey 2011.
'I never knew Savile very well.'
Former Broadmoor Superintendent Alan Franey 2012.
Source: Jimmy Savile and the Entrance to the Rabbit Hole.
Allegedly six cases of sexual abuse against patients undertaken by Savile were thought to have happened including one female under sixteen years of age. The excuses, various reports would come up with in the early years, are risible. Looking at the numbers of patients Broadmoor was housing, these ranged from 850 down to 380, during 1970 up to 2001 and numbers of staff were approximately 800. It's fairly easy to see how some events went unnoticed. Female wards throughout had access by a secure area, clearly not the case