The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1868-12-26 00:00:00

ACTION FOR ASSAULT.

The case of "Gent r. Rae" occupied the Court
of Common Pleas several days last week. It was an
action to recover damages for an assault and false im-
prisonment, the plaintiff being a gentleman farmer
at Padbury, Bucks. The defendant, Glennie, was
his brother-in-law, and the other defendant was a
policeman. For fourteen years the plaintiff had
lived a widower, but in November of last year he
married Mrs. Harris, his house-keeper, and this no
doubt excited ill-feeling in some members of his family.
The plaintiff was, on the 3rd of July, seized in the
town of Buckinghani and taken to Dr. Arinserong's
asylum for lunatics at Peckham-house, where he re-
mained until the Ist of October.
The plaintiff's case was that, although he might
have shown some eccentricities, and although he hail
given way to habits of drinking, still he was perfectly

sane.
He was severely cross-examined as to his alleged
drinking habits, and asked whether he never sent for
as much as bair gallons of gin in the week. Here-
plied—" Good Lord deliver us from all our sins.
Never; we never drank a bottle full before dinner. I
was sometimes irritable, but not violent. I never
tried to strangle my first wife. I decline to say
whether I ever beat her. She ran away from home
,on several occasions when she was mad. She came of
' a mad family. She did not leave through my
violence. I did not on any occasion follow her
with a gun. I could not live with her for the last
three or four years of her life. My eldest son was lame
and walked with sticks. I never broke those sticks
over him. I struck at him with one of them, and it
broke against the door. I never fired at him, nor
threatened to shoot the lot of my children. I never
threatened to cut my son William's throat. I struck
him with a gun barrel because he called me a liar. I ,
never used to &wish a sword about and terrify people.
I never run one into one of my son's legs. I never
walked about the premises naked. I never said that I
was the Marquis of Anglesea. I gave directions that
I should be buried under a particular apple tree in my
military cloak, with my gun on one side and my sword
on the other. I ha. e a hawk which we call Rishop.
When Mr. Glennie Caine to me the last tine before I
was confined I did not i randish my sword in his face.
I did not take him by th- thrust and may that was the
way in which I should list, to throw some farmers I
had quarrelled with into the river.
Miss Rosetta Gent deposed that her father was sonic- I
times violent and sometimes silly, that lie had struck
her, and that she thought he found fault with her with-
out a cause. He used had language and practised the
sword exercise to frighten his neighbours. He told the
servants not to mind what his (blank) son said.
In cross-examination it was elicited that the young
lady had been charged by her father with stopping out
late, and that she and other of Ids relatives opposed a
marriage upon which he hail set his heart.
The jury gave a verdict for the defendant.

The Daily S ewe, in commenting upon the case, re-
marks:—

Many questiona are raised by such a case as this. It
is entirely evident that there can be no hard and fast
line laid down, on one side of which persons are to be
considered sane, on the other side if which they are
to be treated as insane. 'The plaintiff in this case
seems to have been sane abroad and insane at
home. Ile was probably one of those persona
whom drink maddens, but who, when perfectly
sober, are tiilerably harmless and inoffensive.
The conflict of evidence--if conflict it can be called
where both sides spoke the truth - -is easily ac-
counted for by the fact that one side spoke of Philip
drunk, the other of Philip sober. In such eases the
insanity is fitful and temporary, but it is insanity
nevertheless. Mr. Gent was about three months in
the asylum, and, as during that time he %valid be under
regimen, he seems to have recovered quickly and
completely. But it would have been very unsatisfac-
tory had a family which had so evidently soffered
severely from 1118 insane mood* been held liable for
damages because of his rapid recovery. We are only
beginning to recognise that the insanity produced
by drink is as real, though it may wit be as incur-
able, as that which arises from more occult causes.
Habitual drunkenness is itself a form of insanity,
and is beginning to be treated as sock Inebriate
asilurns are already in full and beneficent operation
in the United States, and are beginning to be estab-
fished in ties coontry. The action of whida we have
been speaking was evidently brought under the im-
pression that the law drew a distinction between in-
sanity produced by drink and other forms of the disease.
But the clear ruling of Mr. Justice Smith set that
question at rest. If it if, dangerous for a man to be at
large the law allows his friends, on scientific. testimony