Free Broadmoor Revealed: Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum by Mark Stevens

was all sensational stuff, and while
some of these ideas were purely supposition, the notion of
Edmunds’s unrequited love driving her to murder was one all too
eagerly consumed by the press.
    The case was
scheduled to be heard at the Lewes Assizes, close to Brighton,
until it was felt impossible to find a jury who would not be
prejudiced by what they had read in the newspapers. Instead,
Edmunds was taken by train to Newgate Prison in London, and her
case was heard at the Old Bailey on the 15th and 16th January 1872.
She was placed on trial for the murder of Sidney Barker.
    The
circumstances of the case had set tongues wagging all over the
metropolis, and it was not surprising to find the court room full
of journalists and other onlookers. Christiana did not disappoint
them, appearing once more before the court resplendent in black,
this time of velvet with a fur trim. She was bareheaded, and though
her age was stated to be thirty-five, for the first time her
audience could see that she might be older than those stated years.
Her black hair was parted centrally and plaited, so that it was
drawn back and down the back of her head. The Times reporter was
rather uncomplimentary, suggesting that she had a ‘long and cruel’
chin, her lower jaw ‘massive, and animal in its development’.
Despite that, he was prepared to concede that ‘the profile is
irregular, but not unpleasing’, and that there was ‘considerable
character in its upper features’. Her lips occasionally pressed
together in a look of ‘comeliness’ that turned to ‘absolute
grimness’. The portrait was painted: a woman who thought herself
more than she was, an amatory, predatory woman. It is this
caricature that has stayed with her.
    She took
copious notes of proceedings, her dark eyes flashing up and down as
she dipped her pen into the inkwell. The evidence from the earlier
hearings was repeated, of poisons purchased and of love gone bad.
There were more witnesses by now, various people had come forward
to say that Edmunds sent boys to buy sweets for her from Maynard’s
shop. Shortly after, she would return the sweets, indicating that
the wrong ones had been purchased in the first place. These sweets
would then be returned to their jar for resale, and alternatives
purchased in their stead. There were also witnesses who had seen
her leave bags of Maynard’s sweets lying around in other shops and
public places. Gradually, the events of the last eighteen months
came to light.
    Her barrister
set up the defence of insanity. Several well-known authorities
testified on her behalf. Dr William Wood argued that she satisfied
the principal MacNaughten Rule – she could not distinguish right
from wrong. He had worked previously at Bethlem, and now ran
private asylums in London. He was also a regular expert witness in
insanity cases. Drs Charles Lockhart Robertson and Henry Maudsley,
the famous psychologist, argued that Edmunds belonged to the
‘morally defective’ group of lunatics – a Victorian precursor to
the later term of psychopath. Robertson was a friend of Maudsley’s,
and the Superintendent of the Sussex County Asylum. He was
particularly interested in women’s mental health, and had pioneered
the use of Turkish baths to calm female patients. Between the three
of them they offered a heavy tilt towards a verdict of not guilty,
but insane.
    Then Edmunds’s
mother took the stand to deliver a long tale of family madness,
which had eventually trapped her surviving daughter. Edmunds, for
the only time in court, reacted to proceedings. Contemplating her
mother laying bear the family soul, she cried out: ‘This is more
than I can bear’. In the end, it was futile testimony anyway. As
her counsel moved on, Christiana’s defence unravelled. There was
evidence of hereditary insanity, to be sure, but there was nothing
else to offer to back up the opinions of the medical men. There was
nothing obviously insane about Edmunds’s own life. Any sympathy