tion in the ideas, sometimes a passing delirium and a tendency to idiotism; 60 were without any derangement of intellect, but possessed of great susceptibility, irascible, obstinate, difficiles a vivre, capricious and eccentric.*

It may be asked what testimony was adduced to determine the Court to declare this wretched creature sane, in the face of all this demonstration of his insanity. To our grief and surprise, we find nothing which does not carry its own refutation. A physician "saw nothing in the prisoner's appearance which indicated any tendency to epilepsy, and said that the skull showed no deformity, and did not indicate any species of mental derangement." Every person inform ed on the subject will at once condemn this witness as having given a very loose and ignorant evidence. It is possible that he may have meant to convey only the impression made on his own mind by the outward appearance of Lecouffe; but if the Court and Jury regarded his words as expressing his deliberate opinion of the mental state of the accused, then he has much with which to reproach himself, for it is notoriously impossible to tell from the external appearance that a person is subject to epilepsy, and equally absurd to say that the form of the skull indicates the existence of mental derangement.

The case of Feldtmann is one of unusual horror. This wretched man stabbed his own daughter with a knife, after several years, resistance by her to an incestuous passion which he had conceived for her. He at once gave himself up to justice, glorying in the deed. His wife spoke to his having often shown derangement, "la téte perdue." He had had his skull fractured in his youth, and had been mad in consequence. He entered a Protestant church one day, covered with mud, sat down, talked incoherently, and wept without ceasing, There was rather a lack of evidence of similar eccentricities, which generally weigh so much with courts and juries. Feldtmann was condemned and executed. The question of the existence of insanity may, in his case, be regarded as much more difficult of solution than in the case of Lecouffe, and yet many circumstances concur to prove that the disease actually existed. M. Georget, who was on the spot, gives it as his opinion, that Feldtmann was not insane in all his faculties; but he thinks that the passion which led to the crime had aggravated into a disease, requiring for its cure seclusion from society; and his opinion is greatly confirmed by the declaration of the excellent and experienced anatomist M. Breschet, who examined the brain, and who did not think it presented the appearance of health. The very existence, for so many years, of such an unnatural passion as that of Feldtmann's is itself disease, and will require but little aid from other indicia to warrant preventive measures for the safety of society, instead of vindictive, when the passion has broken out into some horrible act. In the sequel I shall add a few words upon the signs of that madness which is real, although the inexperienced eye does not mark it; at present I am only enumerating some cases where the alleged maniacs were put to death,

The case of Papavoin, had it occurred in Scotland, at least now, could not have been treated as a case of sanity or responsibility. This

* Dictionnaire de Medecine, Art, Epilepsie,

man was executed at Paris, for the murder of two children previously unknown to him, and whom he accidentally saw, accompanied by their mother, in the wood of Vincennes. The very absence of all conceivable motive to such an act, forces us to take refuge, for the sake of humanity, in the belief of insanity, even had there been no other indicia. But even these last were numerous. It was proved at the trial that the prisoner's father had been subject to mental aberrations,-to fits of fury, during which he broke and smashed every thing. That the son had been marked as a solitary being, shunning society, fleeing from his companions, and always sombre and melancholy, walking often alone in solitary places. Nobody ever knew him intimately, and he never communicated his thoughts to others. In 1823, the utter ruin of his father increased the prisoner's melancholy and irritability. He had besides an attack of mental alienation, which lasted ten days, and two witnesses deponed to it as follows: "He was," said a person employed in the Marine at Brest, where the prisoner had a clerkship," in a state of fever; he said that a man beset him, that he saw him, and wished to have a pistol to defend himself with." An officer of health, under whose care the prisoner had been, deposed that he was sombre, suspicious, believing always that people were occupied about him, fleeing the society of women, and often of men; his temper was exasperated; he saw a secret enemy who appeared to him as a ghost, and attempted his life. The witness believed the prisoner melancholy and hypochondriac. After his father's death he became worse; gave up his employment at Brest, when he only the more required it for a livelihood, and returned home, where he insisted with his mother that his father was not dead, but had been buried alive. He went to visit a friend for some days, who thought him "physically and morally changed;" he would often cry out with the accent of despair, "What! not an instant of happiness! I believe in truth that I am mad!" A paper was one day in his friend's hand, on which he remarked the letters O N. "What is the meaning of that?" said Papavoin. "Nothing," said the witness. “I know what it means ; it means they drown people here!" (on noye ici.) Several other strange fancies were proved, such as, horror of a razor, when they proposed to shave him, and such like. He came to Paris to settle accounts with his banker, still indulging in solitary walks, one of which happened to be in the wood of Vincennes. There he saw a lady walking with two young children. He returned to the village and bought a knife, came back immediately, accosted the lady with a pale look and troubled voice, and stooping as if to embrace one of the children, plunged the knife into its heart, and while the astonished mother was engaged with the first victim, he killed the other in the same manner; he then fled with a hurried step and buried himself in the wood. The jailor of the prison of La Force, in which Papavoin was confined before his condemnation, deposed that he was sometimes in a most terrified state: that he had moments of fury, when his hair bristled up,-the only time he, the jailor, ever saw the hair so affected, his countenance became of a lively red, and he terrified the very soldiers that surrounded him. All these facts are to be found in the process against the wretched Papavoin; they did not save him, but they are quite sufficient to establish the conclusion that

he committed the dreadful deed, for which he suffered, in a fit of insanity. A case so extreme has done good in France. It was too much even for the present lights. It divided the country into two parties, one of whom pertinaciously defended the judgment, while the other loudly denounced it as a murder by the arm of the law. The effect, however, has been seen in a more recent case in the Parisian courts, in which a patient like Papavoin was rescued from the executioner, and given over to a keeper ;—an homage to truth and justice, when pride was no longer assailed.

A case occurred in the court of Assizes at Paris of simulated madness, that of Jean Pierre, which tended to show how easy the detection of this attempt is. This man's crime, in the first place, was forgery, which is essentially simulation, and is rarely the result of insanity. There was no evidence of insanity or any thing like it, till after his apprehension; whereas the history of Lecouffe and Feldtman went back for years. He was sent to the Bicêtre Hospital for the insane, to be observed. He contrived to raise a fire and escape, and during his freedom, for he was again apprehended, he proceeded to the despatch of business, for he was proved to have written, in the interval, a perfectly sensible letter to a correspondent, and completely to have recovered his reason. His mania returned with his reimprisonment; and, naturally led by the vulgar notion that madness is violence, he behaved furiously, when he thought himself seen, and remarkably so on his trial. It was observed that in an examination which he underwent, not one of his answers would have been given by an insane person. For example, Q. Have you ever had any business with Messrs. Fellene and Desgranger? two of his dupes. A. "I don't know them. Q. Do you acknowledge the pretended notarial deed which you gave this witness? A. I don't understand this. Q. You acknowledged this deed before the Commissary of Police? A. It is possible. Q. Why, on the day of your arrest, did you tear the bill for 3800 francs? A. I don't recollect. Q. You stated, in your preceding examination, that it was because the bill had been paid? A. It is possible."-To others of his own previous declara. tions the answers were, that he recollected nothing about them. M. Esquirol, one of the highest French authorities, was examined, and stated that simulation of madness was easily detected, and that this was a case of it.

We cannot have a more instructive example of the imperfection which yet attaches to this important and interesting subject of judicial practice in our own Courts, than the case of John Howison, lately executed for the murder of Widow Geddes, at King's Cramond. My own humble opinion agrees with that which is now very prevalent, namely, that that wretched man was not a responsible agent: and as I mean very freely to state the grounds of this opinion, for the sake of truth and justice, and with the humble hope of pointing out sounder views for future cases, I disclaim all reflections on the prosecution, court, or jury, for their part, in what I consider a painful matter, and to give them that credit which is their due, for having unwillingly but conscientiously drawn conclusions, which the degree of light that has yet entered Courts of Law, and even generally guides medical practice, appeared to them to permit.

John Howison entered the cottage of an aged woman, whose good dispositions were proved by her popularity with her neighbours, and without any motive that appeared, for he took nothing away, in a very short time fled from the house, having first cleft, with the sharp edge of a spade, the head of its defenceless inmate almost in two, the spade having entered in an oblique direction above one eye, and sloped to below the other. The horrible act was proved by the most conclusive evidence; but insanity was pleaded, to account for what it was a moral impossibility that any sane human being could, in the circumstances, have perpetrated.

As some evidence was obtained after the trial, with which-however it might, and, I humbly think, should have influenced the royal mercy-the jury had nothing to do, I shall first state the substance of the judicial, and then that of the post-judicial, evidence of Howison's insanity. 1. He was proved to have been, what many of the insane are, as has been seen in the cases of Lecouffe, Feldtmann, and Papavoin, and will be seen in several others to be noticed, a solítary, silent, moody, wandering creature, and that long before the Cramond murder. His only friends in his lodgings were the cat and a child, and he fed both before eating his own meal. 2. He was miserably superstitious, feared supernatural enemies, and resorted to absurd ceremonies to protect himself against witches, salting his bed and head, wearing about his wrist, or round his neck, a Bible, which he never read, and folded papers attaching to his garments, and to the crown of his head, without which, he often said, he would long ago have been dead. He had a fancy to become a quaker, and attended the meetings of that persuasion some months, where he paid no attention to the worship, but muttered to himself, smelled his Bible, and pricked himself with pins or needles to the cffusion of his blood. He demanded instant admission to the society on one occasion, and with violence. He went more than once to the meeting-house early in the morning, and was seen to kneel, and heard to invoke the Virgin Mary, while he wounded himself on both hands, and smeared the doors with his blood. 3. He had false perceptions, for he used to sit brushing away the flies with his hand for hours together, when there were no flies, and his landlady told him so. He had struggles in the night with witches, and was sometimes noisy, and heard to cry out "haud aff." 4. He had an almost incredible appetite for food, usually devouring half a peck of potatoes at a meal, with one or two pounds of a bullock's liver, almost raw, and generally filthy, for he would never allow it to be cleaned. Immediately after this gross repast, he drank a quantity of coffee, and eat twopence or threepence worth of bread! He sometimes saved a few of his potatoes, and took them to bed with him to be eaten in the night. He habitually wounded his hands, wrists and arms with needles or pins, and if he went to bed without his weapons, he rose and came for them. The blood sometimes flowed copiously, dropping from his elbows when his arms were bare, and in this state he has sallied out into the lane where he lodged, brandishing a stick, and playing extravagant tricks, till the neighbours interfered and got the "daft creature," as they called him, taken care of. When asked why he ate his meat so raw and dirty, he said he liked the blood, and the meat with the suction in it. He farther sucked the blood from his

own wrist, after every two or three mouthfuls of his food. Lastly his landlady had known him some years before, when there was nothing in his appearance or manner differing from other men; but when he came to her house, a few months before the murder, he was so much altered in appearance and manner, and so squalid, dirty, and ragged, that she did not know him till he had been twenty-four hours in the house.

For a fortnight before the fatal act, Howison appears to have been wandering about the country, and no evidence of his state of mind during that period was obtained before the trial. The facts at Cramond were, that he entered the village with a black handkerchief covering the lower part of his face, which was otherwise proved to have been long his practice, and, therefore, nothing was founded upon it as a concealment, a stick in his hand, and a book hanging from his wrist. He asked alms from several persons in the row of houses, without success; was seen to enter Widow Geddes's cottage, and in a very brief space to come out hurriedly, shut the door after him, and run from the village, quickening his pace when he thought himself observed. One witness heard the sound of a blow, which he called a chap, to come from the cottage, when Howison was in it, and the moment before he came out. He was apprehended next morning some miles from King's Cramond; was quite composed, denied all knowledge of the murder, and even of having been at King's Cramond the day before. In this denial he persisted to the last, making one uniform answer, both before and after his trial, "Nobody saw me do it."

Upon these indicia the medical witnesses were called to give their opinions on the important question of the prisoner's sanity.* Dr. Spens and Mr. Watson were examined on the part of the prosecution. They were also called for the prisoner, who besides adduced Drs. Macintosh, John Scott, and W. P. Alison.

"Mr. ALEXANDER WATSON, surgeon, as a witness for the prosecution, reads and depones to a report on the body. Saw prisoner he answered questions correctly, and with consideration. Seemed to witness of sound mind, but of low and weak intellect, but showed no indication of insanity. His reason was, that on taxing the prisoner with the crime, he denied it, and said he knew nothing about it, which, if he is guilty, witness would consider an indication to sanity. Has had occasion to see a great variety of insane patients. Prisoner told him the pricking of his hands was for a complaint in his head; he said there was occasionally pain and uneasy feeling in his head. Witness examined his head; saw nothing wrong; saw the prisoner prick his hands with a pin or needle.

"Cross-examined.-There was no appearance whatever of the prisoner's simulating insanity. Thinks if he were guilty and insane, he would have confessed."

* The medical gentlemen were not permitted to remain in Court to hear the evidence for the prosecution, a course for which I am unable to conjecture a reason The facts were rend to each by the presiding judge, from his notes. The medical evidence given here is printed from very accurate notes, taken by Mr. Dun, W. S. the agent for the prisoner.