george edward bragg

find out more about george edward bragg

George Edward Bragg was born in around 1843 to parents Henry Joshua (born c.1812) and Mary Ann Bragg (born c.1815). He was baptised on 6 August 1843 in Worcester, and lived with his parents and 10 brothers and sisters until 1865, when he married Agnes Anderson in Birmingham. George worked as a figurine painter at Royal Worcester, and had nine children with his wife Agnes between 1865 and 1882, two of whom went on to be apprentices at the porcelain factory.

George and his family were featured in newspaper articles on occasion, particularly his father. George’s father was somewhat estranged from the family, and worked as a travelling salesman. Unfortunately, when George was around 30, his father Henry committed suicide in 1874. The Berrows Worcester Journal reported that Henry ‘was in a depressed state of mind’ and that he had tried to harm himself eight years before with poison.

George himself was featured in the Berrows Worcester Journal a decade later, and not for good reason. On 28 June 1884, Berrows reported that George had been charged with assaulting his wife, Agnes. A few months later, on 6 September, the Journal reported on the ‘sequel to the alleged attempt to shoot a wife’, in which one of George’s neighbours, a man named Henry James Blackwell, had heard Agnes screaming for help and physically accosted George to take possession of a pistol from him. Supposedly, earlier that day, Blackwell had ‘threatened that if [George] came out of the house, he and a man named Reynolds would pitch him into the canal’.

No more was heard of the family’s trouble, until George was admitted to Powick’s Asylum in February of 1886, for melancholia. The notes stated that:

‘This is his first attack of 18 months duration the supposed cause being Heredity (father shot himself) he is suicidal and dangerous to others but not epileptic. His certifier states that he wanders about and is dirty, untidy, and listless, his speech has gradually become affected, fancies his food is poisoned, and has threated to murder his family and do away with himself. A razor was found in his bed. When young patient is said to have led a gay life.’

His condition worsened, and George died around six months later, on 3 October 1888. Whilst not a happy story, George’s life was illuminated by newspapers and census records in a way that the patient case notes did not.  His wife Agnes went on to die just three years later, in Worcester.

Research by Maddie Hale, 2025.

To view George Edward’s patient records, click here.

Go back to find out about more people who were patients at the asylum.