When walking round the Branch area the past is often very evident, famous buildings abound, but not all the history is quite so obvious, and there can be some odd, but interesting, obscure historical links. Neither should all the information you find be, necessarily, interpreted in terms of today’s values, or even language.
The Lion that now stands at the approach to Westminster Bridge has previously featured in an article in Crosstalk; originally it graced the Red Lion Brewery situated on Belvedere Road not far from Waterloo station. In Victorian times Lambeth was not a fashionable area.
The great landowners south of the Thames, the Duchy of Cornwall and the Archbishop of Canterbury left Lambeth to industrialisation, questionable entertainment and slums. The area often featured in stories from the likes of Dickens. But real people lived real lives there, one such was George Merrit. George lived at 24 Cornwall Cottages on Cornwall Road with his pregnant wife Eliza and their six children.
One Saturday morning in February 1872, shortly after two o’clock in the morning, he was on his way to work as a stoker at the Red Lion Brewery when, as he approached Belvedere Road, a number of gun shots rang out. On arrival at St Thomas’ Hospital it was found that two large-calibre bullets had severed George’s carotid artery and severed his spine, he did not survive in spite of the quick response of the police. On hearing the shots the beat officer, PC Henry Tarrent blew his whistle to summon help, two other constables heard the summons and rushed to assist Tarrent – the sort of response that one could hope for, but not expect, even in today’s age of radio.
This was an unusual crime even in the violent Victorian society, for guns had not become fashionable amongst criminals. Not until after the First World War when millions of soldiers returned to civilian life trained in their use did the prevalence of guns in crime begin to increase.
George’s murderer it turned out was mentally unstable. At his trial he was found “Not Guilty” due to his insanity, detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure and committed to an asylum.
The most famous asylum in London if not the country was St Mary’s of Bethlem founded in 1247. In 1815, after a number of moves Bethlam Hospital relocated from London Wall to the building that now houses the Imperial War Museum in what is now known as Geraldine Mary Hamsworth Gardens, though formally known as Bedlam Park. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines bedlam as a scene of uproar and confusion. It is often said Bedlam is a corruption of the name Bethlam, personally I think it has more to do with the building being built by James Bedlam between 1812 and 1821. (Sydney Smirke added the dome later in 1846.) By 1863 the building was no longer suitable and the criminally insane patients were transferred to Broadmoor. This is where the murderer of George Merrit was incarcerated. Bethlem now forms part of a NHS trust based near Croydon with a unit on Denmark Hill. Broadmoor is now considered to be a hospital rather than an asylum.
Other local examples of asylums in a traditional sense of the word from a time before the welfare state are: an asylum for the blind, which was situated just along from the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth Road. Today a brick wall surrounds much of the site, behind which is a large excavated pit, containing the sidings for the Bakerloo Line.
Towards the New Cross end of Old Kent Road is Asylum Road named for a large complex, a building built in the classical style.
This building used to house the Licensed Victualler’s Asylum. I have often wondered what the criteria were for admittance.The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines asylum as sanctuary; protection – any of various kinds of institution offering shelter a place of refuge to distressed or destitute individuals. But language is not fixed and changes over time. When Shakespeare wrote for the theatres on the Southbank dictionaries had not been invented and he even spelt his name in various ways during his life. The tabloid press today often distorts the meaning of language, often not in a pleasant, useful way but to make political mischief. They have coupled the word asylum with the idea of people seeking economic advantage, and to perpetrate benefit fraud, rather than those seeking refuge from persecution.
What was to become the OED was first published in 1928. It took more than seventy years to complete and consisted of twelve large volumes. (The second edition was published in twenty volumes!)
The compilation of the OED was thorough and meticulous; volunteers were sought, sent reading lists and books. The volunteers were asked to read through the selected works compiling on slips of paper quotations that defined key words, words both new and obsolete, from living authors and from those long since dead.
One volunteer that contributed more than any other, both in terms of quantity and quality, to the dictionary over many years was Dr W C Minor of Crowthorne, Berkshire. The strange thing was that he never attended any meeting or dinner of the organisers of the dictionary, and depending upon which account you believe, Dr Minor’s circumstances were not known to them for some years.
It was not until the Editor of the dictionary arranged to call on Dr Minor after twenty years of correspondence that Dr Minor’s circumstances became more widely known. Crowthorne is the village where Broadmoor Asylum is located and Dr Minor was a long term resident there, a resident because of his murder of George Merrit.
Dr Minor was a surgeon who had served as such on the Northern side in the American Civil War. One account suggests that it was his experiences in that war that triggered his mental illness though another account suggests that his illness arose from the effects of a very promiscuous life style. Today he would probably described as schizophrenic and one of the few who are violent.
The OED, the American Civil War, a forgotten murder in our Branch’s area, a Minor connection? Absolutely, but an interesting one.
John Clarke
