Notes and News. 481

would sooner divest themselves; and the best way to encourage
crime of the worst character in the reading ranks of life is to
promulgate the " couldn't help it " doctrine, taking care to invest
it with the authority of science. Constance Kent's confession
completely brushes away all the fine-spun cobwebs which pseudo-
philanthropists and philosophers have been spinning about her
case. The culprit owns her motive—the old-fashioned one of
jealousy and revenge—and describes the consummate craft, subtlety,
and cruelty with which she accomplished her purpose—a purpose
which she had nursed for a long period, and which she would
never have confessed had not her dormant better nature—of
which no human being is utterly destitute—been awakened by the
teachings of religion.

Dr. Bucknill, whilst he throws any suspicion of insanity iu
the case to the winds, yet thinks* " that, owing to the peculiarities
of her constitution, it is probable that under prolonged solitary
confinement she would become insane." He goes on to say that
" the validity of this opinion is of importance now that the sen
tence of death has been commuted to penal servitude for life ;
for no one could desire that the punishment of the criminal
should be so carried out as to cause danger of a further and
greater punishment not contemplated by law." We are quite
ready to concede to Dr. Buckuill that Miss Constance Kent's
history shows that she has "a peculiarity of disposition" which
seems to us, however, to be peculiar only in strength of will and
depravity ; but that, because her early girlhood was blackened by
a great crime, conspicuous for the coolness, determination, and
circumspection with which it was executed, she is more likely
to go mad than other criminals, we do not see. AYe sincerely
hope that the accounts we have heard of Constance Kent's peni
tence may be true, but we should be sorry to see her let loose on
society on the ground that insanity might be produced by pro
longed confinement. There is really but one party to be con
sidered in the matter. Public safety and public justice require that
such criminals as Miss Kent should not only be punished, but
restrained from committing further crimes. Although in the course
of their punishment insanity should arise, the infliction of a just
sentence is not to be suspended or relaxed on such a possibility.
We may also remind Dr. Bucknill that penal servitude and
solitary confinement for life are by no means one and the same
thing.—Medical Times and Gazelle, Sept. 2nd.

Justice to Criminal Lunatics.

On the 29th July, we commented on the case of George Broom-
field, who had been tried for murder and left for execution—the



432 Notes and News.

man being a manifest lunatic. Notwithstanding his trial by judge
and jury, the man has since been reprieved and converted into a
criminal lunatic. Again, on August 3rd, a man was tried for
murder of his wife. The crime of murder, and the responsibility
of the murderer, according to law, were as certain and clear in this
case as in the case of Broomfield ; but Mr. Justice Montague
Smith saw the case in a different light from the judge who tried
Broomfield, and actually stopped the trial ; and the man was ac
quitted on the ground of insanity.

We venture to think that, in both these cases, there is a
grievous miscarriage of justice ; and that the conclusions arrived
at in both cases must tend to bring judge and jury and criminal
law into disrepute. In the case of Broomfield, the man, after being
tried by judge and jury, is again tried by a Government expert
(whose name even does not appear) ; and by the sentence of this
expert is upset the solemn verdict of the jury.

This sort of upsetting of justice is becoming an everyday oc
currence ; and it will continue to be so, until Government has the
good sense to send an expert in lunacy to examine and give evi
dence in court concerning the mental condition of criminals, who
are supposed to be, or who are, lunatic. What can be more
outrageous to reason and justice—more brutal, we might say—than
to throw upon a lunatic the onus probandi his lunatic state of mind ?
What, again, can be more dissonant from our English idea of
administering justice, than that the verdict of the jury should be
reconsidered and settled after trial by an unknown and irresponsible
lunacy expert ? What can more tend to throw the opinions of
judges and the verdict of juries into disrepute—to render justice
uncertain—than the fact that, after the solemn judicial trial of a
criminal, he is to be tried again in private by an individual who is
responsible to no court of law ? Is it not a scandal to our laws that
cases of such kind should be now of constant occurrence?
Smethurst, for example, was condemned to death by judge and jury ;
but his fate was finally decided by a report of the late Sir B. Brodie,
who thus revised the jury's verdict ! Consider, again, the scandal
of Townley's case. He is first made a lunatic by the jury and sent
to a lunatic asylum ; and afterwards declared sane by Government
experts, and sent from the lunatic asylum into penal servitude for
life.

All such constantly recurring scandals to justice can be prevented
by making the impartial Government expert give his evidence in
court during the trial, and, therefore, of course, before the jury
deliver their verdict. Such a course of proceeding is demanded by
humanity as well as by justice. Humanity requires that a skilled
and impartial inquirer should investigate and report upon the con
dition of supposed criminal lunatics; and save them—if they be



Notes and News. 433
really lunatic in the eyes of science—from the hangman's hands.
Why should a poverty-stricken wretch be put in a worse position
than the rich criminal who is able to fee heavily some high authority
in lunacy ? And again, justice demands, on the other side, that
criminals who have the means of paying heavy fees in order to bring
witnesses with high names into court, should not thereby escape the
just reward of their crimes. Justice demands that, in suoli cases
also, an impartial Government expert should be there to counteract
the evidence of the authoritative names; i.e., if the evidence be
guided by party considerations rather than by the actual facts of the
case.—British Medical Journal, Sept. 2nd.

The Legal View of Insanity.
To the Editor of ' The Lancet.'

SIR,—At Winchester, on July 16th, George Broomfield was
found guilty of murder. He was ably defended by Mr. Coleridge,
Q.C., on the ground of insanity. It was proved in evidence that
two years previously he had been shot in the head, and had since
been a "changed man;" that he had delusions and suicidal im
pulses ; and that at this moment he is half dead from the effects of
a shot-wound inflicted upon himself. The counsel for the crown
made no attempt to rebut the evidence of Dr. Tweed, and that of a
crowd of other witnesses who deposed to the insanity of the prisoner;
nevertheless the learned judge, in his summing-up, told the jury that
" it was not every aberration of mind that would free the prisoner—
it must be such an aberration of intellect as to disable him from
distinguishing between right and wrong." Under this ruling
the jury returned a verdict of " guilty," and the poor, lunatic cri
minal, whose own only plea was, " I wish to die," is duly sentenced
to be hanged.

The same eloquent counsel, before the same judge, will, on
Saturday, plead in behalf of Miss Constance Kent. It is possible
that in her case the defence of insanity may be set up, and may be
equally justified ; nevertheless it is clear that, whether insane or not,
she must be condemned to death on her own confession, by making
which she herself shows her full appreciation and knowledge of the
difference between right and wrong. Surely there must be some
grave mistake as to the value of a test that inevitably sends the
possibly insane daughter of an insane mother to die upon the
scaffold. That it is practically fallacious must be shown by the fact
that, standing by her side, condemned in the same week by the same
judge, will be found another unhappy homicide, admittedly suffering
under mental disease arising from physical injury to the brain,