You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Broadmoor. Few place names in the world have such chilling resonance. For over 150 years, it has contained the UK's most violent, dangerous and psychopathic. Since opening as an asylum for the criminally insane in 1863 it has housed the perpetrators of many of the most shocking and appalling crimes in history; including Jack the Ripper suspect James Kelly, serial killers Peter Sutcliffe, John Straffen and Kenneth Erskine, murderer and rapist Robert Napper, the teacup poisoner Graham Young, armed robber Charles Bronson, East End gangster Ronnie Kray, child killer Ian Brady, London nail bomber David Copeland and cannibal Peter Bryan. The truth about what goes on behind the Victorian walls of t...
“A fascinating insight into the country’s most famous asylum for criminals” which reveals Victorian England’s care and management of the mentally ill (Your Family Tree). On 27 May 1863, three coaches pulled up at the gates of a new asylum, built amongst the tall, dense pines of Windsor Forest. Broadmoor’s first patients had arrived. In Broadmoor Revealed, Mark Stevens writes about what life was like for the criminally insane, over one hundred years ago. From fresh research into the Broadmoor archives, Mark has uncovered the lost lives of patients whose mental illnesses led them to become involved in crime. Discover the five women who went on to become mothers in Broadmoor, giving b...
THE CLOSEST PLACE ON EARTH THAT YOU WILL GET TO HELL - Charlie Bronson Broadmoor: My Journey Into Hell documents the story of long-term prisoner Charlie Bronson and his five-year stay at Britain's most notorious mental hospital, Broadmoor. His journey has, until now, never been told.In the winter of 1979, aged just twenty-seven, the inmate who would come to be known as 'Charlie Bronson' was considered uncontrollable by the prison system. Certified insane, he was transferred from Parkhurst Prison to the most infamous high-security psychiatric hospital in England, Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane. There he embarked on a one-man campaign to retain his sanity, and to fight against the ...
Serial homicide. Stalking. Arson. Gang crime. Who are the people behind these acts of terrible violence? What are their stories? And what is it like to sit opposite them? Dr Gwen Adshead is one of Britain's leading forensic psychiatrists, and she has spent thirty years providing therapy inside secure hospitals and prisons. Whatever her patient's crime she aims to help them to better know their minds by helping them to articulate their life experience. This book contains fascinating, unflinching portraits of individuals who newspaper headlines, TV dramas and crime fiction label 'monsters'. Case by case, Adshead takes us into the treatment room and reveals these men and women in all their complexity and vulnerability. She sheds new light on the unpredictable nature of the therapeutic process as doctor and patient try to find words for the unspeakable. These are stories of cruelty and despair but also of change and recovery. In a time of increasing polarisation, in the face of overcrowded prisons and devastating cuts to mental health care, Adshead speaks to our shared humanity and makes the case for compassion over condemnation, empathy over fear.
Between 1989 and 1991 several of Shakespeare's tragedies were performed in the central hall of Broadmoor Hospital. This book sets these important events on record. It offers insights into the impact of such drama, in such a setting, upon actors and audience. It includes interviews with the directors and the actors playing the title roles, as well as a description of the hospital and its community of patients and staff. The performances were given by actors from The Royal Shakespeare Company (Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet), The Royal National Theatre (King Lear) and the Wilde Community Theatre Company, a local amateur drama group (Measure for Measure). An account is given of `workshops' which took place after the performances. And a collage of comment, by actors and audience, is presented as a stream of corporate consciousness. The final section of the book has a more academic timbre, including chapters on performance and projective possibilities, the nature and scope of dramatherapy, and contributions on the place of drama in custodial settings by specialists from a variety of disciplines.
From two bestselling authors comes intrigue and romance set in the opulent Thousand Islands resort area at the turn of the century.
This Sunday Times bestseller is a shocking and at times darkly funny account of life as a prison officer in one of the country's most notorious jails. Neil Samworth's Strangeways reveals the stark reality behind HMP Manchester's notorious prison walls with an astonishing blend of audacity, humour, and empathy. A seasoned prison officer, Samworth weaves a gripping tale of endurance, underscoring the finesse necessary to navigate a world awash with formidable criminals and the tragically misunderstood. From tense face-offs with hardened gangsters and psychopaths to encounters with cell fires and rampant drug problems, Samworth opens a window into Britain's penal system. It's an intrepid journe...
When cholera strikes Rochester, NY, most of the members of the Broadmoor family flee to their castle home in the Thousand Islands. But Amanda Broadmoor resolves to remain in Rochester to help control the spread of the dreaded disease. However, much more than Amanda's health hangs in the balance. Mishandling of the family fortune threatens to leave the Broadmoor family penniless and scorned by society unless Amanda is willing to sacrifice her future. Will she be forced to marry a man she disdains in order to save the Broadmoor legacy?
Cousins Amanda, Sophie, and Fanny Broadmoor are as close as sisters, but when their grandfather dies, the inheritance he bestows threatens to tear them apart. With their families as different as can be, the influx of wealth and power impacts each girl differently. Is this the end of the cousins' close relationship? Will the girls choose the path high society has deemed or forge their own ways? Using as a backdrop the unique setting of the Thousand Islands located in the St. Lawrence Seaway between New York and Ontario The Broadmoor Legacycombines the writing talents of bestselling authors Tracie Peterson and Judith Miller for a heart-stirring series featuring three young women searching for love and a legacy the 1890s.
JOHN THOMAS STRAFFEN – Britain’s longest-serving prisoner – was the first patient to escape from Broadmoor Hospital and be prosecuted for a crime committed on the run. He killed within hours. Prior to this, at his home in Bath, he was dismissed as a loner, an imbecile, a ‘child trapped in an adult’s body’. On the afternoon of Sunday 15 July 1951, John Straffen strangled 8-year-old Brenda Goddard as she picked flowers. Three weeks later, he committed a similar murder before inadvertently confessing to the police.Faced with a serial killer with a mental age of 10, whose motive apparently was nothing more than to annoy the police, the court sent Straffen to Broadmoor Institute, as i...