Early Life
He was one of 12 children, born in the Toxteth area of Liverpool, and spent most of his early years in Nazareth House (an orphanage run by nuns) in Crosby, Liverpool. At the age of eight, he was retrieved by his parents and beaten regularly until he was eventually removed from their care by social services. During the late 1960s, as a teenager, Maudsley was a rent boy in London to support his drug addiction. He was finally forced to seek psychiatric help after several suicide attempts. It was during his talk with doctors that he claimed to hear voices telling him to kill his parents. Maudsley claimed that he was raped as a child, and such early abuse would have left deep psychological scars. He is quoted as saying, 'If I had killed my parents in 1970, none of these people need have died.'
Read more about this topic: Robert Maudsley
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich mans abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“What is the life of man! Is it not to shift from side to side?from sorrow to sorrow?to button up one cause of vexation!and unbutton another!”
—Laurence Sterne (17131768)