The judge decided he was unfit to stand trial and sent him to Broadmoor, where Straffen decided to reduce his average stay from six years to six months by jumping over the wall and running for it.
The truth was it had proved embarrassingly easy for a dangerous patient to escape, and the ageing staff member who was in charge of Straffen at the time probably was past his sell-by date professionally and like the rest of his colleagues was not overpaid for doing a demanding job. Clearly changes had to be made, including the installation of a warning siren to give local residents a chance to protect themselves in the event of an escape. Further major changes are now due at Broadmoor, with a new hospital complex being built next to the old and the old being converted into private housing.
So there will be the chance, if you fancy it, to live in rooms once occupied by the poisoner Graham Young, the Kray brothers, the Yorkshire Ripper or, of course, John Straffen himself during his brief but not uneventful stay in Broadmoor. Escape from Broadmoor. The hospital celebrated its th anniversary in and remains a tribute to Victorian enlightenment as to the treatment of the criminally insane.
By Gordon Lowe. Broadmoor in , when it was known as Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Broadmoor as it looked in Sign up for our newsletter Enter your email address below to get the latest news and exclusive content from The History Press delivered straight to your inbox.
Sign up. Incredible as it may seem in this day and age, but France still retains the siren system in remote areas and it is often possible to hear one as I did in Britanny a couple of years ago. Peter Summerton concurs with the description of the alarm and recalls that " Welton whose wife was a teacher at Bagshot Secondary School. Tilbury and Mr. Welton both worked at Underwoods hardware store. The alarm was tested on Saturday lunch time at 1pm.. Mick Topping adds to the history of the fire station.
The station officer way back in the 's was Tommy Woodham who happened to be the foreman at Bagshot dump. He also was the proud owner of a BSA motorcycle and side car outfit which had a hand change gearbox. Tommy lived above the fire station and was responsible for setting off the fire siren at 10am every Monday morning.
Another member of the fire crew was Roy Lamb who owned Bagshot Radiator Service who also resided in the village. I can still visualise the fire engine driving at high speed to attend the bush fires that somehow occured up at High Curly. Now sooner had one fire been extinguished when mysteriously another one started. Fun and games for all of us youngsters at that time.
Please note: postings about the Broadmoor siren and about escapees are now closed. Message pad to send us a message. Data provided only for personal background information.
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Check any facts you wish to rely upon. Broadmoor Sirens Andrew wrote: I've always been interested in the Broadmoor sirens and I'd be interested to know if anyone has any information about them. The present Bagshot one is on the A30 opposite the Cricketers pub but I remember there used to be one at the top of Freemantle Road about 20 or so years ago. I'd also be interested if anyone has any recollection of any air raid sirens in Bagshot during WWII or afterwards. Dave replied: In answer to Broadmoor Sirens.
I lived in Bagshot during the war, there was a siren, I believe, on the roof of the council offices, I lived just round the corner in Half Moon Street, I think there were three sirens in the Bagshot area, one near the Cricketers pub, and one in Church Lane somewhere. Another Dave, Dave Harrison, wrote about his memories, and provides some details about the sirens themselves Although I now live in North Staffordshire, My Grandparents lived in Sandhurst, and one of my earliest memories of staying there, is that eerie low wail of the Broadmoor siren being tested at each Monday.
As the years went on, I too became interested in the siren system, and thru persistence and patience have amassed some info and hope I can help your enquirer. The system became active in , after an escape which involved the murder of a young girl in Arborfield.
A main siren was installed at the complex, followed by several repeaters from Bagshot to Wokingham easily viewed opposite the church at the junction with Holt Lane in the latter case and Bracknell. I think that during the 70's an experiment was carried out with another type of signal, involving a more "electronic" sounding "Beep-Beep" but his later reverted to the original. Can anyone shed light on this? Andrew added: I have a little more information to add myself - I've now come across 10 sirens in the area: 1 in Bagshot opposite The Cricketers 2 in Bracknell one at the station and one just off the IDR 1 in Camberley on top of the Main Square car park - you can't see it but you can certainly hear it!
But having been interested in them myself I asked my partner about them who works in Broadmoor Hospital and I even found out that he presses the button to do the tests sometimes! It is done at 10am every Monday morning. There is a first alarm which would be the escape alarm if someone did escape and then a second alarm which is the ''all clear''. They are all on 'high masts' around the area and I think there is a 25 mile radius!
Having seen a few of them they look a lot like mobile phone masts. Any other stuff anyone is interested in about just ask and I'll try to find out! Rob writes from Northamptonshire I lived my early days in Crowthorne and later Bracknell. I too remember the sirens, something we took for granted, never knowing any better. Jon has written I know of two further Broadmoor repeater sirens. One in Ascot Chavey Down at what I think is, or was, a council depot on Longhill Road - there is now a skate park there.
Also another in Wokingham, on a tower hidden in the trees just off Reading Road. I discovered this one by chance as I was once stuck in a traffic jam adjacent to it when it went off!! Dan asks , Does anyone in the area have or able to get a recording of the Sirens doing the alert signal? I am not local and am interested in what the Sirens look and sound like. Please see here for the sound. Rupert Butcher tells us: It seems to have been standard practise for psychiatric hospitals to test the sirens every week or morning.
I grew up very close to Banstead Hospital in Surrey and the siren, yes it was the same as an old air raid one, was tested every morning. I was never sure whether this was to be used in case someone went missing or as a fire warning. Later when at college, I worked during the summer at the hospital closed in '87 and now the site of Downview and Highdown Prisons as a nursing assistant, I was a man in a white coat, and was told that the siren was used in case of a fire, but may have been used in the past as an alert to missing patients.
Although Banstead was not a special or secure hospital like Broadmoor, it did have a series of locked and secure wards so this may indeed have been true. From former Sandhurst resident Barry When I went to the old Scotland Hill Primary school between Little Sandhurst and Sandhurst there was a siren situated in the corner of our playground. This was back in , the school is no longer there but the siren still is as I saw it a few weeks ago but it is fairly hidden by shrubbery.
From Danny : I think there could be a siren at Ascot station also. I seem to remember, when I was a kid in the 70's quite a few escapes, but for some reason they always got caught drinking in pubs in Aldershot. So if you hear the sirens never go drinking in Aldershot. Dr Gosseyn points out that many people are unaware of the sirens: I live in Bracknell and it is striking how many people I speak to about the siren who don't know what it is for.
Despite Broadmoor's exceptional precautions, madmen still find ways of hurting themselves or others. Daniel Gonzales, 26, who arrived at Broadmoor after a homicidal spree over three days in - in which he stabbed to death four people and tried to kill two others with a carving knife - will not quickly be forgotten. Regarded as one of Broadmoor's most dangerous patients, Gonzales told the police he wanted to be like the character Freddy Krueger from the horror film Nightmare On Elm Street and kill as many people as possible.
A psychiatric consultant described him as a schizophrenic capable of 'extreme, unprovoked and unpremeditated violence'. Gonzales was placed on hour observation by nursing staff, with a minimum of two people sitting within arm's length of him. Unable to kill others, he turned his rage upon himself. On three occasions, in a clear attempt at suicide, he bit himself with a ferocity none of them had witnessed before.
Finally, last year, he succeeded. He was found by Broadmoor staff lying dead in a pool of blood, having used a broken CD to cut his wrists. Despite the many famous patients held at the hospital in recent times - the Krays, Ian Brady and the Yorkshire Ripper - perhaps the most notorious is one who few of Broadmoor's residents ever saw, the original Hannibal Lecter. Robert Maudsley was in Broadmoor for three years in the Seventies.
Born in , he was the son of a Liverpool lorry-driver who beat him mercilessly whenever he came home from the orphanage which had taken him into its care.
Britain's Hannibal Lecter, Robert Maudsley, killed four people, one of whom he ate. He drifted through foster homes and psychiatric hospitals. By he was a rent boy. Picked up by a labourer who showed him pictures of abused boys, Maudsley garrotted him and was sent to Broadmoor with a new nickname - Blue, the colour of the labourer's face as he was slowly choked to death. His next and most lasting nickname was Spoons.
In , Maudsley and another psychopath took a third patient, a paedophile, and barricaded themselves into a cell with him. The paedophile was tortured for nine hours before Maudsley garrotted him and held up his body so that the staff could see him through the spy hatch. Strangely, Maudsley was deemed fit to stand trial after this crime. Despite his pleas to be sent back to Broadmoor, he was committed to Wakefield prison. After several more killings, Maudsley now lives in solitary confinement in a two-cell glass cage, very like the one pictured in The Silence Of The Lambs.
His furniture is made of compressed cardboard; on his one daily hour of exercise, six prison officers escort him. But thuggish serial killers make up a small proportion of Broadmoor's residents. I discovered the high intelligence of many of the patients when lecturing there - one of those present was a gentle academic man, his room stacked to the ceiling with classical CDs.
I found out later that he had committed horrendous crimes. Broadmoor has recently had to upgrade its security as it continues to provide the finest psychiatric care. Having emigrated to Britain, one day in , after suffering paranoid delusions brought on by his terrible experiences in the American Civil War, Minor produced a revolver and shot dead a boiler stoker from the Red Lion Brewery in London.
He remained in Broadmoor for 38 years, building up a library from which he volunteered thousands of citations for words appearing in the Oxford English Dictionary. Broadmoor, with its dark red brick, its towers, heavily barred windows, gaunt cell-blocks and long corridors, was an intimidating place.
But Minor, engaged on his great enterprise, seemed hardly to notice. So industrious was he that the editor of the OED, James Murray, arrived in person to visit him and became a firm friend. Murray was not present when Minor, demented by sexual longings, sawed off his penis with a pen-knife, tied a ligature of string over the stump and threw the rest of the offending organ into the fire.
In a steady voice he called for the Medical Officer, and survived. Every patient in Broadmoor has a story. From Chalk Pit Murderer Thomas Ley - who tortured and murdered the man he suspected to be his wife's lover - to Antony Baekeland, great-grandson of the founder of Bakelite, who murdered his mother before ordering a Chinese takeaway.
She was alleged to have coerced her homosexual son into sexual intercourse after a succession of prostitutes had failed to inspire him. He was released after eight years at Broadmoor, only to stab his grandmother in New York City. He was institutionalised again, before, in , being found suffocated with a plastic bag.
The hospital, very well run and providing the finest psychiatric care, has nevertheless recently had to upgrade its security. Razor wire has been strung around the perimeter. Healthcare may improve, but human nature, in the last resort, remains as ungovernable as ever. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. Argos AO.
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