A PEMBROKESHIRE author has written a new book detailing the lives of some of the UK’s most ‘insane’ criminals.

Nicola Sly has had her new book – Broadmoor Inmates: True Crime Tales of Life and Death in the Asylum – published by Pen and Sword.

In the book, Nicola looks at the men and women who were judged to be criminally insane, their circumstances, lives, crimes, trials and eventual deaths at Broadmoor, the leading treatment facility for those who are mentally ill and convicted in the UK.

Broadmoor has, across the years, been the home for alcoholics, the mentally deranged, tragic women suffering from postpartum psychosis, the chronically depressed, those to be pitied and those whose madness led them to be reviled and feared and were all judged to have been criminally insane after committing a crime, with their confinement in Broadmoor being for their own protection as well as that of the public, with many being often as much victims of their own internal demons as those who were harmed.

Historically, the patients were treated with work, leisure activities and plenty of fresh air, whilst today, the staff have a wide range of therapeutic tools to use.

Western Telegraph: Broadmoor Inmates is out now.

The book will cover a range of inmates such as James Potter and Peter Whittle who killed their wives, Heny Dommett, James Senior and Mary Ann Parr who all killed their own children, and Christiana Edmunds who poisoned a number of people in Brighton to divert suspicion from herself after trying to murder her love rival.

The stories or arsonist John Green, counterfeiter Emma Jackson and two men – James Stevenson and Roderick Edward McClean – who took exception to the ascension of Queen Victoria, with the latter attempting to assassinate her.

There will also be the story of Daniel McNaughten whose case led to a new standard for the legal definition of insanity. McNaughten had become so paranoid about ‘Tory’ spies he believed were constantly following him and killed a civil servant in 1843 who he mistook for prime minister Sir Robert Peel.

Nicola has had a lifelong interest in crime and criminality and studied for a masters degree in forensic and legal psychology in her 40s. She then went on to work as a criminology and psychology tutor in adult education and wrote a number of true crime books for The History Press including a number of their Grim Almanac series and titles focusing on local historical murders.

She has also appeared on TV documentaries about historical crime.

Broadmoor Inmates: True Crime Tales of Life and Death in the Asylum is available on Amazon.