Ever since All Fools' Day, 1949, when it was taken away from prison authority and given to the Ministry of Health, the big, grim hospital has been known officially as the Broadmoor Institution. Many a Berkshire villager roundabout ardently wishes it would go back to its honest old name: Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Broadmoor's tenants, the villagers feel, are far too dangerous to be treated as mere hospital patients. Take, for example, young John Thomas Straffen.
John, 21, suffered from a childhood predilection for wringing the necks of chickens. Last year when two little...
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