After my first glance at the assignments for ‘Telling True Stories’ I had one particularly chilling idea, but since then I have been bombarded with a variety of subjects upon which to research and write about.
Let's start with the my initial idea:
A murder by poison in The Priory - Balham, London 1876.
A few hours of research told me that this murder was an unsolved case, of which young Mr. Charles Bravo was the victim. There were only three suspects: his wife, the maid or the doctor.
Sounds like a game of cluedo, right?
This story made the papers in Victorian London and many of the public were outraged at the death of the Barrister, Mr Bravo.
Next came the incident of the ‘Bath Salts’
This incident took place just a few years ago in America. A new batch of narcotics named ‘Bath Salts’ had some very grotesque effects on its users. It's nickname is the ‘Zombie Drug’.
Why you ask? Well to put it simply, the users of this drug turned in to crazy cannibals. One particular incident involved a man eating another mans face! An obscene and gory subject, but something that is still interesting. The main question for this topic is ‘WHY?’
Why does the drug have this effect? Why do people take it, knowing what might happen?
Lastly is Emilie Autumn: Queen of the Plague Rats!
This woman has come a long way and experienced more in her 36 years of life than most have in 80 years.
She’s a famous musician who has suffered a lot since childhood and uses music and poetry to express her innermost thoughts. I may be bias, but she had a big influence on me as a teenager when I had severe depression.
She suffers from Bipolar Disorder, Insomnia and Auditory Hallucinations, but has not let that stop her and she's happy for people to see it as an encouragement for others with mental health problems.
She was hospitalised in a Psychiatric hospital for a time, and noted down her thoughts in red crayon on scraps of paper which became part of her book ‘The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls’ featuring both non-fiction and fiction it covers her stay in the Psychiatric unit in which she made up a Victorian character named ‘Emily’ who was in a similar situation as a coping method. Upon reading the book I noticed how very dark her mind must have been while in a place that is supposed to help. But as the saying goes ‘things get worse, before they get better’. Autumn claimed that ‘The One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ was an accurate presentation of a modern-day asylum.
My main focus for this would be her institutionalisation, as there plenty of people interested in the history of Psychiatric hospitals, but there have not been many, if any, accounts of what a present day institution is like.
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