Richard Dadd (1817-1886): painter and patient.

Tim nineteenth-century artist Richard Dadd, who spent most of his working life confined in the Criminal Lunatic Asylums at Bethlem and Broadmoor, is quite well known, and ever increasingly so, to the art world; his name is less well known, perhaps, in the sphere of psychiatric history. Dadd was born at Chatham in 1817, the third son and fourth child of Robert Dadd, who owned a chemist's business in the High Street, and his wife Mary Ann (n6e Martin). His paternal grandfather had been timber-master at the dockyard. He was educated at Rochester Grammar School, and is said to have begun drawing at the age of about thirteen; though what sort of early artistic training he received, if any, is unknown. When the family moved to London in 1837 Richard Dadd entered the Academy Schools, where he gained three medals and was regarded as a student of great promise and exceptional industry. His contemporaries, including Frith, Egg, O'Neil, and John 'Spanish' Phillip (who married Dadd's sister), thought highly of his talents as an artist, and his qualities as an agreeable and lively companion. He exhibited works at the Academy and the Suffolk Street Galleries, sold some, and received one or two commissions including a series of woodcuts to illustrate the Book of British Ballads. His work from this period is mainly imaginative, and he had a special liking, which was to remain with him, for subjects from Shakespeare and those which included fairies. In 1842, when he was nearly twenty-five, Dadd was introduced to Sir Thomas Phillips, who had recently attracted attention and a knighthood for his part in putting down the Chartist riots during his mayoralty of Newport. Phillips was planning a protracted tour of the Middle East on which he wished to take an artist to make sketches, and Dadd's inclusion was at the recommendation of their mutual friend David Roberts, R.A. It was towards the end of this journey that Dadd first began to show alarming symptoms which, at the time, his friends put down to the effects of sunstroke. Details of his behaviour have not been recorded, but later he was to show an intense dislike for Sir Thomas and probably this, amongst other things, was already expressing itself. It is also clear from later evidence that he had begun to feel himself haunted by the spirits, or fiends as he then saw them, which subsequently came to dominate his actions. Early in 1843 in Paris, when Phillips had finally decided to seek medical advice, Dadd left the party abruptly and posted home to London. Here the news soon circulated amongst his close friends that he had 'returned home -Mad' (in the words of W. P. Frith), though some found it difficult to believe when in conversation with him. He became increasingly reserved and suspicious, and 'flighty' in his manner, spoke to a few intimates of the fiends which he felt to be about him, and gave way to occasional outbursts of violence; but for much of the time his behaviour appeared normal to the casual observer, and he continued working with enthusiasm. One of the eccentricities recorded from the later stages of his illness was the decision to live on new-laid eggs and ale, and vast quantities of eggs and ale were found in his lodgings after he had left. * Based on a paper read to the Osler Club of London, 16 October 1969.