The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-25 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.

Sir,—There are so many circumstances of a doubtful na
ture which surround the case of the unhappy Townley, who
now lies under sentence of death in Derby Gaol, that it
behoves the Government to institute a further investigation
before it allows the extreme penalty of the law to be inflicted
upon him. To persons unacquainted with insanity in its
different forms, and who judge from their own point of view
of the act of the unhappy man who killed Miss Goodwin,
the verdict at which the jury arrived will appear to be the
only just and proper one to which the evidence could lead,
But to medical men, whose duty it is to study insanity, and
who know the various forms under which that disease ma-
nifests itself, as also the many difficulties of diagnosis which
occasionally surround some of these forms, the verdict of
jury will be by no means so satisfactory. According to the
light which they had upon the subject their verdict was true
and honest ; but it appears to me that the light was insuffi-
cient to guide them to a proper knowledge of the state of
Townley's mind at the moment he inflicted the wounds
which led to Miss Goodwin's death. For the just and proper
appreciation of his state of mind at the moment in quoti°l
not only were the facts of the case, as detailed by
wit-
nesses, necessary, but it was required of the counsetlhfeor the
e
prosecution that he should not mislead the jury upon
question of the influence of the hereditary taintinofg insanity,
3 a too ex-
and of the judge that he should not, by
elusive definition of insanity in his charg©
and ig-
nore one form of that disease which frequentlyPtiothe jury,
That the counsel for
irresis-
tibly leady to the destruction of life.
influence of the
the prosecution did notunderstandt_own_ey is afflicted, and
here-
ditarye
taint of insanity with which "-t
that he therefore misled the jury upon this very important
question, is evident from the following remarks
in his reply
es for the defence :
esscalled were to show that the
to the evidence of the wan
insanity,
" The first two witnessessubject to hereditary_
family of the prisoner were
was a victim
to that alit f
and that the prisoner
himselfat certain persons, not lineal ion.
ances-
tors,But they only proved t
had been under but collateral relatives,lt the influence
waa not his father or mother,or
of insanity more or leas.
er or grandmother, but a sister of his grand-
his grandfather
d cousin. That
mother and a second proved nothing,because
that insanity, so far from being hereditary, was not in the
family at all. To produce hereditary insanity it must be
clear that the lineal ancestors were afflicted."
Now, the doctrine laid down in the above quotation from
the counsel's speech for the prosecution is utterly inconsis-
tent with known facts, and with the universally received
opinion of the medical profession. If Townley's grand-
mother's sister was affected with hereditary insanity, his
grandmother, too, inherited the same taint, although she
might never have manifested any symptoms whatever of
insanity. If, then, the grandmother inherited this heredi
tary predisposition, Townley himself would, through his
own mother, be certain to inherit the same predisposition,
although in a less degree, in consequence of the influence of
that parent who was not thus predisposed to insanity. Once
in the constitut ion,the hereditary predisposition to insanity,
like that of tubercle, of cancer, and of other hereditary dis-
eases, is invariably and in every instance transmitted to the
i
offspring. The hereditary predisposition may, and does in
thousands of instances, lie dormant in the system for
want of sufficiently exciting causes to call it manifestintoa.nt
existence. In Townley's grandmother the hereditary t
g causes
existed, but, owing to the absence
of
exciting
itself in
suffi-
ciently strong to call it forth, it never manifested
d iraenction of the jury
confirmed insanity, It was, then, a
.ninisora
the influence of
on the part of the prosecution toTig
That taint is strongly in-
hereditary taint in the prisoner.
is proved beyond ques-
tion from his maternal side, a,
cases
0,,
insanity
nave
oe.
tion or doubt, by the fact that 11 c I
curred in his mother's
,
As to the definition of the learned judge, in
charging the jury, said ;
"That which the law called an insane mind was a mind
which was under delusions—that was,a person whose mind
was diseased, and who supposed a state of things to exist
which does not exist, and whose diseased mind was in such