The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-21 00:00:00

George Townley's Alleged Insanity.

(From the Lancet of this day.)

The act was not accordant with the expressions
in his letters, nor was his habitual disposition. His
conduct at the time of its commission was altogether
different from that usually exhibited on such occa-
sions. His bearing when he brought the bleeding
body of his victim into the presence of her aged
uncle has no parallel in the history of the course
pursued by mere criminals. He avowed himself
as the " murderer ;" said he knew "he should be
hanged ;" and at the same time declared, "She has
deceived me, and the woman who deceives me dies."
This occurred on the 21st of August. For three
months he`
.had been under confinement ; for three
months the terrible crime he had committed, in all
its horrible reality, had been present to his mind.
Who can tell the nature of those struggles of self
against self which in that term had wearied and
worn a brain predisposed to yield to such pernicious
influences ? It is not until efforts are made for his
defence that Dr. Forbes Winslow's experience is
brought to the examination of the condition of a
mind which for so long a period had been subjected
to the influences of prison confinement; recollections
of her whose life he had taken, morbid discipline of
the reason for its own justification, a determined
resistance of the recognition of the fairness of the
law which had been violated, and a resolve to defy
its commands. The train of thought thus induced
is further complicated by the conviction that there
were six conspirators plotting against him with a
view to his destruction, and a chief conspirator at
their head. These mental conditions, accompanied
by an avowed disregard for all moral and reli-
gious observances or obligations, Dr. Winslow por-
trayed as forming the elements of a condition on
which his opinion was asked and given. He affirmed
that at the time of such visit, after the lapse of
three months from the commission of the crime,
the prisoner was a man whom it would then be
dangerous to permit to be at large. Dr. Wins-
low abstained from committing himself to thestate-
ment that the prisoner was irresponsible for his
crime at the date of its perpetration. When pressed
on the point he put the case hypothetically, and we
apprehend that few will dissent from his conclusions.
In reply to Mr. Macaulay's question, " If the pre-
sent state of mental derangement existed on Aug.
21, would it be likely to lead to the commission of
the act then committed ?" Dr. Winslow said,
" Most undoubtedly ;" and proceeded, " Assuming
him to have been on Aug. 21 as he was on Nov. 18
and yesterday, Ido not believe that he was in a con-
dition of mind to estimate like a sane man the
nature of his act and his legal liability ;" and also
added, in cross-examination, " that the condition
the prisoner presented then, so far as mental excite-
ment went, might not have existed at the time of
the commission of the act." We are particular in
pointing out the guarded nature of this opinion, in-
asmuch as it has been urged by some contemporaries
that the plea of insanity has been unduly raised in
the present case. So far at least as the principal
medical testimony goes, it amounts to this—that a
man labouring under a delusion that he is the object
of a conspiracy, with a chief at its head ; that he is
himself a free agent, not to be controlled by either
divine or human law ; that the life of a fellow
creature is of little consequence in comparison with
a personal wrong—such peculiarities manifesting
themselves in an individual with an hereditary
disposition to insanity, is a man dangerous to him-
self and to society—one likely to commit crimes,
and one whose responsibility for acts so committed
ought not to be estimated by the standard usually
applied to sane men.