Skip to content

Surgeon Of Crowthorne Traditional Cache

This cache has been archived.

Heffalump007: sadly alas its time to say goodbye [:(][:(]

More
Hidden : 1/10/2007
Difficulty:
1.5 out of 5
Terrain:
3 out of 5

Size: Size:   regular (regular)

Join now to view geocache location details. It's free!

Watch

How Geocaching Works

Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions in our disclaimer.

Geocache Description:


You advised to park at the followering corinates N 51.22.328 W 47.126 this will lead you to a small car parking area is a nice short walk to the cache, when walking boots adviced. Here is just a little information about were the cache is near & the Surgeon of Crowthorne. The Cache is in part of Swinley Forest.

Broadmoor Hospital is a secure mental hospital in Crowthorne in Berkshire. It is one of the best known of the three high-security psychiatric hospitals in England, the other two being Ashworth and Rampton. The complex houses 326 patients – of whom about 49 are women, although work is currently under way to expand capacity elsewhere so that women no longer need be admitted to Broadmoor. At any one time there are also approximately 36 patients on trial leave at other units. Many of the patients have personality disorders, and/or have previously been convicted of serious crimes. The average stay is about 8 years.

Previously known as the Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane, the change of name reflects a change in attitude to mental illness and criminals, and usage of the word "asylum".

The hospital was built in 1863, to a design by Sir Joshua Jebb, and covers 210,000 square metres (53 acres) within its secure perimeter.

Broadmoor Hospital is now part of the West London Mental Health NHS Trust. In 2002 the Trust expanded to include mental health provision in Hounslow. The Trust reports to the NHS Executive through the North-West London Strategic Health Authority.

It provides not only patient care but is also a centre for training and research.

A new unit called the Paddock was opened on the 3rd April 2005 to treat patients with a dangerous severe personality disorder (DSPD).[1] This is a new and much debated diagnosis or label, but can be defined as any of the following:

1. A diagnosis of two or more personality disorders that meet the criteria as laid out in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM IV –TR.

2. A significant score on the Hare Psychopathy Check list – Revised (PCL-R)

3. A slightly lower score on the Hare Psychopathy Check list and with one or more personality disorders but not including an Antisocial personality disorder diagnosis.

Overall, they will be those individuals that are considered to be or represent a 'Grave and Immediate Danger' to the general public. It has been suggested that the threshold for admittance to be set at a greater than 50% chance of the individual committing serious harm upon another.

Rather than create a new mental health act it may now only require the existing laws to be updated in order that people can be assessed for this condition before they have been committed to the forensic services by another route. Also, this will be limited to males, as it is not yet scientifically agreed as to whether any women meet this criterion. Individuals who do meet this criterion will be admitted to the new Paddock unit only as and when sufficient staff have been trained, to be able to provide and maintain the right therapeutic programs and environment. The Paddock Unit is designed to eventually house 70 patients and is just one of four units being set up in England and Wales. As the West London Mental Health NHS Trust already carries out research, the Trust hopes that Broadmoor will become a centre of learning for this new type of therapy. The ultimate aim of this work is to reduce the cost to society that would accrue if no treatment was provided.

Due to the potentially violent nature of some of the patients, the hospital has an alarm system to alert nearby institutions in the surrounding towns of Wokingham and Bracknell if any dangerous patient escapes. This alarm system is based on World War II air-raid sirens, and a two-tone alarm sounds across the whole area in the event of an escape. The system is tested every Monday morning at 10:00 GMT for 2 minutes, after which a single tone 'all-clear' is sounded for a further 2 minutes. During the early 1990s at least one nearby school maintained, and on occasion used, procedures designed to ensure, in the event of a Broadmoor escape, that no child was ever out of the direct supervision of a member of staff.
Following the Peter Fallon QC inquiry into Ashworth Special Hospital which found (amongst other things) serious concerns about security and abuses that came about from poor management, it was decided to review the security at all three special hospitals. This review was made the personal responsibility of Sir Alan Langlands, who at the time was Chief Executive of the National Health Service. Up until this time, each special hospital was responsible for drawing up its own security policies. The report which came out of the review initiated a new partnership to be formed whereby the Department of Health sets out a policy of safety and security directions that all three special hospitals need to adhere to. These directions are then updated or modified when it is seen fit to do so. This has resulted in a costly upgrade in the physical security at Broadmoor from what was approximately category 'C' to category 'B' prison standards. Higher levels of security than this is then place around certain buildings. Up until then, it had been anathema to think of enclosing the mental ill behind razor wire and thereby reinforce the stigma against them still further. Also, new standards have been formulated to increase procedural security and safety for the staff and other patients, this includes procedures and equipment for reducing the amount of contraband smuggled into the hospital.

See also:

• Ashworth Hospital
• Rampton Secure Hospital
• Lunacy Commission
• Forensic psychiatry

Notable patients of Broadmoor Hospital

• Richard Dadd
• Kenneth Erskine
• June and Jennifer Gibbons
• Thomas John Ley
• Robert Mawdsley
• William Chester Minor
• Daniel M'Naghten
• John Straffen
• Peter Sutcliffe
• Ian Brady
• Graham Frederick Young
• Ronald Kray
• Roderick Maclean

William Chester Minor (W. C. Minor) (June 1834–March 26, 1920) was an American surgeon who made many scholarly contributions to the Oxford English Dictionary while confined to a lunatic asylum. Minor's tale is told in Simon Winchester's 1998 book The Surgeon of Crowthorne
Early life and work

Minor was born on the island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the son of Congregationalist Church missionaries from New England. As a teenager, he is known to have been infatuated with the young Ceylonese girls around him and to have had lascivious thoughts which plagued his conscience. At 14 he was sent back to the United States by steamship, finishing his education as a surgeon at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut in 1863.

He was accepted by the Union Army as a surgeon and served at the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864, which was notable for the horrible casualties suffered. According to modern historians, he was ordered to brand the face of an Irish deserter. Paranoid delusions about the Fenian Brotherhood, a group of Irish revolutionaries, were part of his later madness.

Illness and incarceration

After the end of the American Civil War Minor saw duty in New York City. He was strongly attracted to the fleshpots of the city and devoted much of his off-duty time to going with prostitutes. By 1867, his behavior (then viewed as bizarre) had come to the attention of the Army and he was transferred to a remote post in the Florida Panhandle. By 1868 his disease had progressed to the point that he was admitted to St. Elizabeths Hospital, a lunatic asylum in Washington, DC. After eighteen months he showed no improvement. He was allowed to resign his commission and take retirement pay.

In 1871 he went to the UK settling in the slum of Lambeth, in London where once again he took up a dissolute life. Haunted by his paranoia he fatally shot a man named George Merrett, whom Minor believed had broken into his room, on February 17, 1872. Merrett had been on his way to work to support his family of six children, himself, and his pregnant wife, Eliza. Minor was found not guilty by reason of insanity and incarcerated in the asylum at Broadmoor in the village of Crowthorne, Berkshire. As he had his army pension and was not judged dangerous, he was given rather comfortable quarters and was able to buy and read books.

Later life and OED contributions

It was probably through his correspondence with the London booksellers that he heard of the call for volunteers from what was to become the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). He devoted most of the remainder of his life to that work.
He proved to be one of the most effective of the volunteers, systematically reading through his library, and compiling lists of the occurrence of words. These he kept current with the words needed in the volume currently being worked on. As his lists grew, he was able to supply quotations on demand for a particular word. Eventually he became well acquainted with the editor of the OED, Dr. James Murray, who visited him at the asylum and befriended him.

Minor's condition deteriorated and in 1902 he cut off his own penis. His health failed and he was permitted to return to the United States and St. Elizabeths Hospital. The science of psychiatry had progressed in the meantime and Dr. Minor was diagnosed as suffering from dementia praecox or schizophrenia. He died in 1920 in New Haven, Connecticut.

About the Cache

Looking for a small plastic box contents:

£20 rubber
Neck holder for a phone
Log Book

Please take something to write with as I was unable to find something small enough to put in.

Good Luck & Enjoy the cache !!

Additional Hints (No hints available.)