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that he wished to undertake the Grand Tour of
classical sites across Europe, and he recruited Dadd to accompany
him as his personal artist, and draw what they saw.
    They began
their journey in July 1842, travelling first through Belgium,
Germany and Switzerland before reaching Italy, then moving on to
Greece, Turkey and Palestine. Dadd seemed to enjoy the tour, and
wrote various letters home detailing his wonderful experiences. He
was fascinated both by the scenery he encountered and the people he
met, and an internal record of these compositions appears to have
remained locked within him during his years of treatment. Decades
later he would bring it out to influence the works he completed in
Bethlem and Broadmoor.
    Although the
tour itself was meeting expectations, by the time they reached
Egypt Dadd had begun to exhibit signs of mental illness. His mind
had been untethered and was running free across a new spiritual
landscape. He was soaking up the culture of ancient Egypt, and this
was to influence his belief structure for the rest of his life.
Dadd appears to have been aware of his increasingly weak grip on
reality, and some of his letters hint at an effort to try and
rationalise the source of his feelings. His health seems to have
deteriorated very quickly from this point. He and Phillips crossed
to Malta and then to Italy again, and by now he was reporting
regular delusions. He would later describe his first irrational
impulse to the staff at Bethlem and Broadmoor - his desire to kill
the Pope at a public appearance in Rome, an impulse he resisted as
he felt the Pope was too well protected.
    When they
reached Paris again in May 1843, Sir Thomas sent for a doctor to
examine his travelling companion, and Dadd was duly sent home.
Phillips wrote to the family that Dadd’s character had completely
changed to becoming that of a suspicious and withdrawn man. Over
the summer, friends and family became increasingly worried about
and wary of him. A doctor consulted by the family recommended that
Dadd was committed to a private asylum and put under immediate
restraint. His father was reluctant to agree. This was to be the
last act before Dadd took matters into his own hands. On 28th
August 1843, Dadd asked his father to accompany him to an inn at
Cobham, near Gravesend in Kent. After enjoying a meal together,
they walked to nearby Cobham Park, where Dadd attacked and killed
his father, first trying to cut his throat with a razor, and
finally stabbing him with a knife.
    Dadd was aware
that he had done something wrong, even if he was not exactly sure
who or what it was that he had killed. He fled to France. He later
stated that he was on his way to kill the Emperor of Austria, but
whatever the truth in that, only two days after killing his father
he attacked a complete stranger who was his travelling companion,
while riding in a carriage through a French forest. He was arrested
by the French authorities and identified himself as a wanted man
for the Cobham killing.
    Initially,
Dadd was sent to a succession of French asylums, having been
certified insane, before he was extradited to England in July 1844.
He never stood trial for the murder of his father, and was found
insane when he came to plead. He was duly given the HMP order - to
be detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure - and sent to the criminal
lunatic ward at Bethlem on 22nd August 1844. Like for Oxford,
records of Dadd’s time at Bethlem are available at the Bethlem
Royal Hospital archives.
    It was only
after he had been received into custody that some explanation came
as to Dadd’s motive for his acts. When he was arrested in France,
the police had found on him a list of ‘people who must die’, with
his father’s name at the top. A search of his lodgings in England
had uncovered various portraits of his friends, all with a bloody
slash from the artist added across their throats. Notes from his
stay at Clermont Asylum in France indicated that Dadd believed that
his