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II. CASES AND FACTS.

I. Three Cases of Homicidal Insanity.

1. Case communicated by Dr OTTO, Professor of Forensic Medicine in the University of Copenhagen.-On the 21st of March 1843, K. J., a country woman in Zealand, 42 years old, who of late had manifested some confusion of mind, called her husband in to dinner. On entering, he immediately perceived blood on her fingers, and asked her whence it came. She answered quietly, that she did not know; but on his repeating the question, she pointed to the cradle in which their youngest child (a girl one year old) used to sleep, and said"You may look there." The child was then found dead from having been cut in the throat with a razor, which the mother had found in a drawer. The husband and the other children complaining and reproaching her, she behaved very oddly, saying that she did not know what was the matter; but, on the servant maid charging her with the crime, she replied, "Yes! and what then? I have cut the throat of Dorothea!" The husband now questioning her what had actuated her to take the razor and kill the child, she answered," She did not know; it occurred to her she was to do it." In the prison to which she was brought, she tried the next day to hang herself with a handkerchief, but was taken down in time, and restored to consciousness. Thenceforward she was alternately quiet and confused, until the middle of May, when she recovered her reason, but without being able to know or remember what she had done, when not informed of it.

She had, when 12 years old, by a fall down a garret stair, hurt her head and chest considerably; and, although cured, was three months after attacked by cramps and mental derangement, which, however, likewise yielded to medical treatment. She subsequently enjoyed several years unbroken health, manifesting neither perturbation of mind nor any other disease and gave birth to four children, to whom she always was a careful and loving mother. In June 1842, a fire consumed their house, and deprived them of all their furniture. This depressed her spirits very much; but, although melancholy, she was not at all deranged in her intellect, and attended carefully to her domestic duties. From January 1843 she had always sleepless nights, talked confusedly, and was uncommonly passionate towards her husband and children, but only in the forenoon, until 1 o'clock; the rest of the day she was quite reasonable and gentle. In such a fit as the above-mentioned,

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she twice tried to kill the youngest child-the first time with a knife, and the next with a cord round her neck; but was both times prevented from doing it. Six weeks before she succeeded in the murder, her state was altered in such a manner, that she slept well at night, but began in the morning to talk incoherently, and continued so the whole day, but in other respects was more quiet. The last ten days, however, she had been much better. Her physician had given her some medicine, and declared her so well that she did not require his farther attendance. The day on which she committed the murder she rose at 7 o'clock, but as she appeared a little confused in mind, she was prevailed upon by her husband again to go to bed. The child had likewise as early been taken up from the cradle, but, as it became sleepy, the maid would, as usual, lay it into the bed with the mother; who, however, remarked that it was better to put the child into the cradle. This was done, and at 10 o'clock the mother rose, apparently not suffering from any mental derangement, and occupied herself with mending the clothes of the children. At 12 o'clock she took a razor and cut the throat of the child. It is clear that, in this criminal case, there could be no question about imputability; and the Danish College of Health, before which it was laid, declared, of course, the murder to be an act of insanity. But can any other existing philosophy of mind explain it but the phrenological? And will every other murder in consequence of a morbidly excited Destructiveness, be seen in its true light by any other but by a phrenologist?

2. Case reported by Dr Amariah Brigham, Medical Superintendent of the Retreat for the Insane at Hartford, Connecticut. -A case of insanity, once under my care, was preceded by a homicidal propensity, and its bearing is so direct upon the Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity, that I will briefly relate it. It was that of a lady, the mother of three children, one of whom she suddenly killed by repeated wounds with a hatchet. She had not been considered insane previously, though she had for some time been unwell, and low spirited. Soon after the act, she endeavoured to kill herself, and was brought to the Retreat a decided and wretched maniac. For several weeks, she remained without much change, rather stupid, as if she had no recollection of the past. After this, her bodily health began to improve, when suddenly the memory of what she had done seemed to return, and the agony she was then in for a few hours, until her feelings were overcome by opium, was indescribable, and most painful to witness. She, however, recovered, after various changes and symptoms, among the most VOL. XVII.-N. S. NO. XXV.-JAN. 1844.

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striking of which was violent palpitation of the heart. This lady has now been well for nearly one year, and had the care of her family as usual. She has visited us since her recovery, and has often assured me that she could recollect no motive whatever that induced her to commit the act, and does not believe that she thought of it till she saw the hatchet.

This case I consider important in reference to the Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity. It seems to have been an instance of that singular form of mental disease, mentioned by Esquirol and others, which suddenly impels a person who has previously exhibited no disorder of the intellectual or moral powers, to take the life of another without motive-without passion or interest, but apparently from a sudden and irresistible impulse. Had this amiable lady and affectionate mother killed a neighbour or domestic, I fear there would have been difficulty of convincing a jury that the act was the consequence of insanity.

The administrators of justice often have great difficulty in distinguishing crimes from the result of insane impulse. Murder and other crimes are occasionally committed, apparently without motive, accompanied by circumstances that induce many of the most experienced medical and legal jurists to believe them the result of insane impulse or delusion.

Such instances might well be adduced by those who are in favour of abolishing all capital punishment. I know it is a common, but frequently, I suspect, a careless remark, that the plea of insanity is too often successfully adduced as an excuse for crime. So far as I have any knowledge, this is not the case. I do not know of a single instance, where the insanity of an individual has been certified to by those well informed and well qualified, by experience with the insane, to judge on such a subject, that time and public opinion has decided to be incorrect, while I know many instances where the plea has been disregarded, which time has shewn ought not to have been. I have seen several kept in prisons for crime, where their appearance and conduct convinced all that they were insane, and insane when brought to the prison. One, happily now in the Lunatic Hospital in Worcester, Mass., was kept several years in the prison of our State, for an act committed when he was as insane as he now is, and of his insanity at the present time there is no question. It might be well for those who, in halls of legislation, or in courts of justice, confidently assert that insanity is frequently feigned, so as to deceive those well informed on the subject, to adduce instances of the fact. In a case where the life of an individual is concerned, it is especially important that remarks of this kind should be supported by facts.-Eighteenth Report on Hartford Retreat, 1842.

3. Case of Mattos Lobo, a Portuguese.-Mattos Lobo, twentysix years of age, a member of a respectable family at Amieira in Portugal, had distinguished himself at college, and was destined for the church; but all on a sudden he changed his mind, and went to Lisbon to attend the polytechnic school there. Among other houses which he visited, was that of his aunt, Donna da Costa, with whom lived a son, daughter, and female servant. As Lobo lived in a distant quarter of the city, he visited his family but seldom; but on the 23d July last, he called and requested to be allowed to take his meals with his aunt until the 26th inst., when he proposed to leave Lisbon for the vacation—a request which was accorded. On the 25th, after having spent a part of the day in music with his cousin Julia, he went away saying that he should return on the next day and take leave. But on the same night about eleven o'clock, a neighbour, who had noticed the outer door of Donna da Costa's house left open, mentioned the fact to the police, and an officer with several men, on arriving at the house, found the dead bodies of Madame da Costa, her son, and her servant, all three recently assassinated. Julia was still alive, but she had received several wounds in the neck and chest with a dagger, the blade of which was found remaining in the chest; and she lived only long enough to declare that the murderer had been her cousin. Lobo was arrested at his own lodgings. In the lining of a hat were found three cheques on the bank of Oporto, drawn in favour of Madame da Costa, though all the plate and other valuables belonging to that lady had been left untouched. Having been found guilty by a jury, Lobo afterwards confessed in full. After protesting that he had not been urged to the crime by the hope of plunder, he declared that he had committed the murders without any other aid, that the thing was inexplicable to himself, but that he had felt himself driven involuntarily to the act by a momentary impulse, and by a paroxysm of a monomania which had for many years been growing on him.

A man in the French army, who had served with distinction in the African war, and been promoted to be a sergeant, but was afterwards degraded to the ranks, was threatened with punishment by his sergeant for some misdemeanour, and the same punishment was afterwards inflicted by order of a superior officer, though for another cause. At night he was missing at roll-call, and did not enter his barrack till a late hour, when he undressed, and lay down without attracting notice. Suddenly some of his comrades, who were playing at loto, were surprised by his approaching them with a musket in his hand, demanding, "Who is ready to die?"

The ser

geant entered the barrack-room shortly afterwards, on seeing whom the private levelled his gun, and fired at him, saying that such was in return for what he had said in the morning. The sergeant fell and died; and the assassin approaching him, and ascertaining that life was extinct, ironically apostrophized the body. He, however, opposed no resistance to being arrested, and even took off a decoration he wore, saying that he had no longer a right to wear it; but he declared, that" if the time were to come over again, he should act in the same way."

These two cases present a wide contrast. None of the hardihood exhibited by the actor in the latter was manifested by that in the former. The Portuguese had no motives for revenge,―no obvious premeditation of his acts; and he shewed no pleasure afterwards at what he had done, to which, indeed, he spoke of himself as having been impelled. The circumstances in the latter case were altogether different. The former may have been a case of homicidal monomania; caprice and sudden determinations, such as manifested by the assassin, are justly enough considered symptoms of imperfect or unsound mind.* The latter case was clearly one of murder by premeditation. The law, however, regarded the acts in the same light; both men were executed.+

* "We are told that the cranium and brain of the Portuguese was examined by some surgeons skilled in Practical Phrenology, and that the convolution in which the organ of Destructiveness is situated was found very largely developed." -Lancet, 10th June 1843, p. 377; from which we have transferred these two cases to our pages. The writer in the Lancet does not say whether any report of them had previously been published.

† The following observations are extracted from the Tenth Annual Report of the Trustees of the State Lunatic Asylum at Worcester, Massachusetts, December 1842. They are from the pen of Dr Samuel B. Woodward, the experienced and enlightened medical superintendent of that institution.

"In general, homicidal insanity is impulsive; in a few cases only, so far as I have known, has there been any considerable premeditation of the act, even in cases of supposed command from powers which the insane individual felt bound to obey. The command, and the execution of it, are both impulsive, and generally follow one another in such quick succession, that the opposing influences are supposed to interfere and prevent the deed."

"Seven of the fifteen cases of homicide that have been in the hospital, were not considered insane before they committed the act. They were at work at their several employments, were not observed by those associated with them to have any evidence of alienation of mind, knew as well as others right from wrong, how to manage their affairs, and conduct their business well. The first overt act of insanity was the homicidal act, and that was impulsive. Yet in all these cases, the symptoms of insanity have been clear and decisive since the patients came to the hospital. "In this connexion it may not be improper to say, that of all the cases that have come to my knowledge-and I have examined the subject with interest for many years-I have known but a single instance in which an individual, arraigned for murder, and found not guilty by reason of insanity, has not afterwards shewn unequivocal symptoms of insanity in the jails or hospitals where he has been confined; and I regret to say, that quite a number who have been executed have shewn

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