The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1868-03-07 00:00:00

CONVICTION OF A SURGEON.

A very heavy sentence has just been passed on
Edward Charles James Shaw, a surgeon, who was
tried and convicted at Hertford, on Saturday, for
taking charge of an insane lady without the medical
certificates and orders required by the statute. Mr.
Shaw kept an asylum for invalids at Eistree, and he
had illagally received the patient without the needful
forms. Although the sum of sixty pounds a year was
Paid for her maintenance, she, a lady, was employed
' in the most menial offices about the house, such as
cleaning boots and knives, and working an oat-crushing
machine. The same person was then tried on a second
indictment, charging him with neglecting and ill-
treating another patient, a gentleman who had once
been Mayor of Windsor. When the visiting physicians
under the Commissioners of Lunacy went to Shaw's
house, they found the unhappy 'patient" in a most
wretched condition. He was lying on a straw mat-
tress in a back kitchen, with no other covering than
an old carpet, and in a most pitiful condition of neg-
lected imbecility. Sixty pounds a year had, in the
first instance, been paid for his support ; but, on repre-
sentations that his infantile habits rendered &deli.
tional attendance necessary, the allowance was
doubled. Yet no attendant was provided, and he was
suffered to he in his misery.

The Lord Chief Justice, an passing sentence, said
that he considered the inqniry of very great import-
ance, and it appeared to him that the offences he had
committed were of a very serious character. With
ref!ard to Mrs. Weston, he must have known perfectly
well that she was of unsound mind, and be had there-
fore, in her case, wilfully and deliberately broken the
law that was intended to protect unhappy persons in
her condition. He considered that his conduct
to this lady, who was a woman of educat on
and accomplishments, in employing her in menial
occupations was most disgraceful, and for the
indictment relating to herbs should order him to he
imprisoned for two months and to pap a fine of £3OO.
With regard to the second charge, he hardly knew
how to trust himself to speak of his conduct towards
this unhappy man. It was almost sickening to hear a
description of the state he was in when he was dis-
covered, and his conduct was deeply aggravated by ask-
ing for an additional amount and receiving double the
original sum under the pretence that he wanted more
attendance, and then leaving him in the same if not
a worse state than he was before. A point of law
had been raised in this case, and if that should be
decided in his favour he would have the benefit of it,
and would be released from the consequences of the
second conviction so far as the law was concerned. If
this nhould, however, turn out to be the case, he could
not help expressing a hope that his own conscience
would punish him for the conduct he had exhibited
towards this unhappy man. The treatment of the
poor creature—his suffering him to lie in the con-
dition in which he was found, with no covering but •

piece of old carpet, and un a mattress that was rotten
with filth, and only tit to be tlanwn k m a dunghill,
was a disgrace to anyone calling himself a Christian
man. He regarded it an a very bad case, and in the
event of the conviction being held good, he should
order him to undergo, upon the second indictment, an
additional imprisonment of six months, mid to pay a
second fine of DK and he should also direct that ne he
further into: Maned at the expiration of his sentence until
Loth lines be paid.
The wife of the defendant, who had been in court
during the trial, threw her arms round his neck and
kissed him ardently several timeo when the sentence
was pronounced, and he was then removed in custody,