Broadmoor alerts

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Broadmoor Hospital is one of three NHS high security psychiatric hospitals in the UK. We live half a mile away from it. It houses about 230 men, aged eighteen and above. Not all the inmates are criminals. Some are hospitalised under the Mental Health Act because of mental illness or personality disorders which, untreated, could lead to them harming themselves or others.

In 1952, following a breakout by a dangerous individual who then murdered a young girl, a network of thirteen sirens was established to warn residents of nearby towns and villages in case of further escapes.

The sirens used to be sounded every Monday morning at 10.00 and could be heard across a radius of two miles. People would set their clocks by them. One Monday, when they went off, people realised their timepieces were slow. They muttered and reset their watches only to discover later that an escape had been effected, just moments before the alarm was due to be tested.

If the sirens sounded while children were at school, the doors were locked and the children retained until their parents or carers could come to collect them. Once, an inmate escaped and was so terrified by the noise and freedom that he went into a police station and gave himself up. Another time, the escapee hid in a local resident’s shed.

Overall, there have been few escapes.

In 2018, the wailing sirens were decommissioned, to be replaced by a digital alert system, which can relay through television, social media, and messaging services. The hospital, now in new premises, relies on double perimeter fencing, more than three hundred cameras and special coordination with Thames Valley Police.

Occasionally, we meet some of the staff when we’re out with the dogs. They are tough, interesting individuals with many a tale to tell. Broadmoor is not a workplace for the inattentive or faint of heart.

My daughter-in-law’s mother was a psychiatric social worker who used to visit Broadmoor from time to time.

I miss the sirens.