On May 4, 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. The battle, as the name suggests, was not fought on scenic horizon-hugging farmland but in the dense, tangled undergrowth of a Virginia forest. Soldiers did more than bleed there-they burned. The Battle of the Wilderness may not have been the most famous or decisive battle of the war, but it was one of the most haunting to witness. That began to change, however, in 1864, when he visited the front lines of the American Civil War. He had been a promising Yale-trained surgeon who loved to read, paint watercolors, and play the flute. Minor did not see phantoms lurking in his bedroom, a time when he did not soothe his paranoia with the reassurance of a loaded pistol. From the solitude of his cell in Broadmoor’s Cell Block Two, he’d become one of the most important outside contributors to the most comprehensive reference book in the English language: The Oxford English Dictionary. the “Chocolate Cream Killer”-a 19th century sweet-toothed spinoff of the Unabomber who, instead of packing up explosives, mailed her victims poisoned fruits and baked goods.įor many patients, getting institutionalized at an asylum such as Broadmoor marked the end of their useful lives. One of England’s newest asylums, Broadmoor had already held a crew of tragically deluded criminal figures: There was Edward Oxford, who had attempted to shoot a pregnant Queen Victoria Richard Dadd, a talented painter who had committed parricide, wanted to murder Pope Gregory XVI, and only consumed eggs and beer and Christiana Edmunds-a.k.a. Wellcome Images, Wikimedia Commons // CC BY 4.0 He was sentenced to the Asylum for the Criminally Insane, Broadmoor.Īn 1867 illustration of the "Asylum for Criminal Lunatics, Broadmoor." / Wellcome Library, London. Once a respected army surgeon who saved lives, he had suddenly been rejected as a deluded lunatic who took lives. Minor, 37, not guilty on the grounds of insanity. Seven weeks later, a court found William C. George Merrett, however, was very much real. The Irishmen, the plots, the poison-all of it had been imagined none of it was real. Nobody had ever broken into his rooms or hidden in his ceilings or under his bed. He did not know that, despite his sincerely-held beliefs, there had never been any intruders. Minor explained to the cops that he had done nothing illegal: Somebody had broken into his room and he merely defended himself from an attack. Moments after police arrived at the scene, Merrett was a corpse and William Minor a murderer. His name was George Merrett he was a father and a husband, and he had been walking to work at the Red Lion Brewery, where he stoked coal every night. The man whose neck gushed with blood was not Minor’s intruder. Blood pooled across the Lambeth cobblestones. Three or four gunshots broke the night’s silence. Minor looked down the road and saw a man walking. Minor threw off his blankets and sprinted outside with his weapon. He reached for his gun and watched the man bolt for the door. On February 17, 1872, Minor woke to see the shadow of a man standing in his bedroom. The detectives would politely nod and scribble something down, but when nothing changed, Minor decided to handle the problem himself: He tucked a loaded pistol, a Colt. On multiple occasions, Minor visited Scotland Yard to report the break-ins to the police. Minor envisioned these Irish rebels huddling under the cover of gaslit streets, whispering plans of torture and poisoning. Most, if not all, of the trespassers had been Irishmen, members of an Irish nationalist group called the Fenian Brotherhood that was not only hell-bent on ending British rule, but was equally hell-bent on exacting revenge on Minor. In fact, moving to England only placed Minor closer to his tormentors. He left his lodgings in Connecticut and sailed for London in search of peace of mind and a good night’s sleep. Each night, Minor laid in his bed frozen with fright.īy 1871, Minor needed a vacation. He checked his closet and crawled on his knees to look under his bed. The next morning, Minor woke up unscathed and found no trace of the intruder’s shenanigans. In his hands, the faceless man held metal biscuits slathered in poison. The intruder, who had been hiding in Minor’s attic during daylight, had slithered from the rafters, crept into the bedroom, and now, under the dark of night, was watching Minor as he dreamed. William Chester Minor opened his eyes and gazed sleepily at the figure of a man looming over the foot of his bed.
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