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

her rouged cheeks, a wig (‘a large amount of false hair’) and
had false teeth. ‘She is very vain’, wrote Dr Orange at the time.
The surgeon at Lewes Prison who signed her transfer documents had
obviously done so reluctantly. He was most unimpressed with the
diagnosis of insanity, writing that after ten months of supervision
he could not be satisfied either that Edmunds was insane, or that
she was not responsible for her actions. He did, however, say that
she was of a delicate constitution, and prone to being
hysterical.
    Dr Orange was
nevertheless convinced that he had made the correct diagnosis.
Edmunds’s behaviour in his charge did not conform to social norms.
When her surviving brother died shortly after her admission, she
showed no grief, and appeared to be completely unmoved by the loss.
She was also deceitful. As soon as she was transferred, she
immediately began to try and smuggle in clothes or beauty aids. Her
younger sister, Mary, was complicit in this. One letter asked for
clothing; another talked about ways to find and apply make-up while
in the Asylum. Orange attempted to reason with Mary, insisting that
Christiana was able to partake of any comfort that she required. It
was to no avail. Mary began to send Christiana gifts too, and it
was the gifts that caused great irritation to the matron of
Broadmoor’s female wing. Inside every parcel was some sort of
contraband, hidden within another item. Each one needed time and
attention to search. It appeared to be attention-seeking on the
part of both of the Edmunds women, and it was more than the matron
could bear. The final straw was the receipt of a cushion stuffed
with false hair during 1874. The matron complained to Orange that
Edmunds was amassing and hoarding hair in her room, and that no
further gifts should be allowed. The Superintendent was initially
reluctant to interfere with behaviour which he saw as
self-indulgent, but largely harmless. The matron, however, put her
foot down.
    Also in 1874,
Broadmoor intercepted clandestine correspondence sent to the
chaplain at Lewes Prison, with whom Christiana had struck up a bond
during her time in custody. Dr Orange noted that he had no
objection at all to Edmunds corresponding with the chaplain, but
her decision to do so secretly was ‘in conformity with her state of
mind to prefer mystery and concealment’. Presumably the chaplain
was intended to become a Dr Beard substitute. Still, Christiana’s
webs of intrigue continued. In 1875 her room was twice searched and
various concealed articles were recovered on each occasion. Dr
Orange wrote that ‘she deceives for the pure love of
deception’.
    Edmunds was a
patient who required micro-management. She was a bundle of
contradictions. Generally quiet and biddable, she joined the ranks
of the more trusted patients in the original female Block. She had
access to the Terrace and the gardens, and probably delighted in
causing mischief through playing croquet and other games with her
fellow patients. For she was certainly disruptive, as a note of
1876 indicates: ‘her delight and amusement seem[s] to be in
practising the art of ingeniously tormenting several of the more
irritable patients so that she could always complain of their
language to her whilst it was difficult to bring any overt act home
to herself’. The same note suggests that her room is still being
regularly searched, and that when her mother visited, she would
omit her make up and try to look as desperate as possible.
    The subject of
Christiana’s make-up appears often in her notes. She was evidently
perceived by the male doctors as Broadmoor’s painted lady, and as a
creature motivated by romantic desire. They were the sole males in
regular contact with her, and she appears to have been determined
to maximise their attention to her. A note made in 1877 by David
Nicolson, as Edmunds approached the age of fifty, related her daily
life as one of embroidery and etching; but also maintained that