The Sun.
London, England, 1862-01-31 00:00:00

711 E WINDII.4II CASE.

The adjourned inquiry into the state of mind of
Mr. W. F. Windham, of Felbrigg-hall, Norfolk,
was resumed and concluded yesterday in the -West-
minster Sessions House, before Mr. Warren, Q.C.,
one of the Masters in Lunacy, and a special jury.

Previous to the examination of gr. Windham,
which had been appointed to take place in private
at 11 o'clock, there was a little formal business done
in open court. As soon as the Master had taken
his seat on the bench Sir H. Cairns renewed his
protest against a private interview with his client,
and again expressed his wish for a public examina-
tion. The Master recorded his protest, and said
that, in deciding that the examination of the alleged
lunatic should be conducted with closed doors, he
was simply following the example set by the late
Lord Campbell in the Armstrong case. Sir H. Cairns
remarked rather curtly that he had no desire to
discuss the Armstrong case, which had frequently
been mentioned, but which had no bearing upon the
case of Mr. Windham. He added that ho hoped it
would he understood that in the approaching inter-
view the jury would not be allowed to address
questions directly to Mr. Windham, but would be
required to put their interrogations through the
presiding judge. In reply to the last observation
the Master stated that, as the interview was intended
to be one of a friendly character, he had intimated
to the jury that they would be permitted to put
any questions they pleased to the alleged lunatic,
and he saw no reason to alter his determination in
that respect. The upshot was that Sir H. Cairns
formally protested against the course pursued by
the Master. We are afraid to any how many Pro-
tests have been entered 6:nring the course of these
proceedings, but happily it will not be necessary to
take further proceedings upon any one of them.
Shortly after 11 o'clock strangers were ordered
to withdraw, and the Master and the jury pro-
ceeded with the examination of Mr. Windham in
the presence of counsel alone. It is understood,
though we cannot vouch for the accuracy of the
statement, that the examination embraced all the
topics of which the public have recently heard
so much, and was of a very trying and search-
ing character. There is also a rumour to the
effect that Mr. Windham acquitted himself in a ,
highly creditable manner, and that the readiness '
and intelligence with which he answered a multi-
tude of questions upon a great variety of subjects,
some of them of a rather difficult and delicate na-
ture, astonished every one who heard him. So
favourable, indeed, was the impression which he
produced that the opinion formed and expressed by
more than one gentleman who witnessed the exa-
mination was that if it had taken place at the close
of the case for the petitioners neither the Master
nor the jury would have thought it necessary to
subject Mr. Windham to the expense of adducing
evidence in his defence. That the examination was
a rigorous and exhausting one may be judged from
the fact that it lasted between three and four
hours ; and yet, when the doors were thrown open,
Mr. Windham appeared to be the least wearied
person in court. While the jury were considering
their verdict in an adjoining room, to which they
had withdrawn immediately after the examination,
he chatted and laughed with his counsel and solici-
tors as freely and gaily :as if he had no concern in
the result. The fact is, however, we believe, that,
like everybody else in court, he was convinced that
the verdict would be in his favour, and therefore
neither he nor his advisers were at any pains to
conceal the joy and exultation which they felt.
The jury returned into court at 25 minutes to 4
o'clock, after an absence of little more than half an
hour. When they had taken their seats and their
names had been called over,

The Master said—Are there 12 of you, gentle-
men, agreed upon a verdict ?
Sir G. Armitage—There are,
The Master—What is the verdict ?

Sir G. Armitage—lt is, " That the said Mr. W.
F. Windham, at the time of taking this inquisition,
was a person of sound mind, so as to be sufficient
for the government of himself, his manners, his
messages, his lands, his tenements, his goods, and
his chattels."

Each word of the verdict as it dropped slowly
from the lips of the foreman of the jury was lis-
tened to with breathless attention by a crowded
court, and the moment the last was uttered a loud
and enthusiastic cheer, which must have been
heard outside, arose from the audience, and was
repeated again and again. The like of it has seldom
been heard in a court of justice. An attempt was
made by the Master to restore order, but in vain,
and " one cheer more," louder and more deafening
than any that had preceded it, made the Westminster
Sessions-house ring like an alehouse. Meanwhile,
everybody who could get near him was shaking
hands with Mr. Windham, and congratulating him
upon the result of the inquiry. His face glowed
with delight, and upon being introduced to Sir
George Armitage he thanked that gentleman for
the verdict he bad delivered as foreman of the
jury. When he left the court he was received
outside with an enthusiastic shout, and the ad-
miring crowd almost carried him to the cab in which
he drove away amid a thundering cheer.
Inside the court-room, after the verdict had been
recorded, Master Warren closed the proceedings by
expressing his deep appreciation of the admirable
manner in which the jury had discharged their
duties.

I So ended an inquiry unprecedented for its dura-
tion, for the inexpressible filthiness of its details. It
has extended over 34 days, of which between eight
and nine have been devoted exclusively to oratory ;
and no fewer than 140 witnesses have been ex-
amined-50 for the petitioners and 90 for Mr. Wind-
ham. The bill of costs must be something frightful.
It has been our disagreeable duty, during the course
of the inquiry, to publish evidence of a very dis-
gusting character; but the public may be assured
that our reports have been purity itself compared
with the horrible mass of nastiness laid before the
jury. While enumerating the more striking fea-
tures of an inquiry which may be the last of its kind,
we cannot but notice the temper in which it was
conducted by counsel on both sides. These gentle-
men have displayed great ability and eloquence, but
they have wasted much precious time in useless and
irritating altercations, while in their set speeches
they have abused and vilified one another in lan-
guage rarely heard in our courts of justice. 1

(From the Times) •
The Jury have at last found that Mr. Windham is of
sound mind, and capable of taking care of himself and his
affairs. They must have been as insane as Mr. Windham
himself was asserted to be if they had come to any other
conclusion. Yet for the next few years this Mr. Windham
will, in all probability, be a pauper. We say in all proba-
bility, for human nature is so fitful and inconsistent that it
is by no means impossible he may live a pattern to middle-
aged gentlemen, have a virtuous wife and half a score of
children, and finish up a parsimonious old ago by dying
with large mortgages upon some of his neighbours' estates
in Norfolk, The present chances, however, 'are all the
other way. When Henry St. John was made a Minister
of State the gossip ran that an elderly woman of evil fame
exclaimed in delight, " Cinq mills livres de rents, snes
etfans, et tout pour nous!" This verdict will be received
in many similar quarters with an equal joy. The sharks
of society, the borrowers and the usurers, the toadies and
the swaggerers, the procuresses and the courtesans, the
keepers of dens of infamy, and all the parasites which feed
upon the corrupt parts of the social body, have their prey
marked out to them. The law itself has been their pilot
fish. If this man be not changed throughout by his recent
peril, ho will probably run for a short time a career of folly,
prodigality, and vice, will decline through a stage of brutal
dissipation and unpitied beggary, and will die neglected
and forgotten.
And yet this verdict was emphatically right. Society
cannot undertake to protect men against the consequences
of their own. vices. Crimes and offences are repressed by
punishment in society's own defence ; but mere vice in
adult men and women must be left to the Nemesis which
itself invokes. Once or twice in our history, when it has
been thought a national object that a great name should
not go down into the dirt, the Legislature has interfered
to make a territorial Possession inseparably appurtenant
to a great descent; but what interest has society that this
prodigal Mr. Windham' should retain all his life

and leave to certain des*nated persons at his death
a certain amount of money and a given number of acres ?
Let him waste and squander as he may, the gold will not
be annihilated, the, acres will not disappear from the county
map, The estate will thrive much better in the hands of
the man who will buy it, and the gold will circulate through
channels where it may chance to do good. What society
has an interest in is, that the absolute dominion of property
should be secure in the person of its lawful possesscr. This
is the very pivot of all society, and to weaken this would
be to throw our whole system out of gear. "Nemo ot heres
viventis." While a man lives he has the entire disposal of
all his property, according to our law, and according to the
spirit of our law. In some continental countries this is
different, but we have never envied them their limitation
upon the absolute disposal of property. It is unpleasant,
no doubt, to next of kin to see money wasted which might
possibly come to them, but it is unpleasant also to a nephew
when an old uncle marries and a son is born, or when any
other ordinary event happens by which the nephew's hopes
are disappointed. The law cannot help a prodigal against
himself, or his relations against his prodigality, without
violating all the securities of property in the attempt to de-
fine what is a prodigal. Every one of us can look around
and see some one or more persona of whom we can predict
the ultimate ruin as clearly as we can that of this Mr.
Windham. There is a middle-aged man who has made a
fortune by trade, who has just invested all his money in
horse racing ;—can you doubt what his end will be ? Yet
he has been a prudent, saving man, and no one doubted his
judgment in his own business. Would you have ajury sit
upon him ? There is a young professional man who has a
wife and children, but who neglects his profession to sit up
card-playing all night. He will be ruined as certainly as
Windham could be, and his wife and children will be beg-
gars; shall we lock him up and let him out only during his
working hours? There is a rich old man about to marry a girl
of the same age as his granddaughter. We all say he is an
old fool, and predict for him that he will have a few years
of disquiet, fall under the influence of mercenary people,
and die doing some frightful injustice to the children of his
youth. It is very hard, but shall we summon a jury ?
Where are we to stop if we allow a jury to take away a
man's property whenever those who think they have a
chance of inheriting it are dissatisfied with the manner in
which is using or abusing it ? Life would not be worth
having if a man could be tracked by spies, all his follies
noted down, all his bargains criticized, all his vices regis-
tered, and if the whole accumulplidne exaggerated, perhaps,
by some spice nf rua ward at any
moment and placed before a jury by persons interested in
depriving him of his property and his liberty.
It cannot be. The system of the Roman law and the
testamentary limitations of the French law are abhorrent
to all our ideas of property and liberty. Unless a man is
an idiot or a madman—a human creature entirely without
reason, or labouring under delusions which entirely refract
his reason,—we must leave him in possession of his own
money, to save it or to waste it. There is nothing wrong
in the principle of our law. The great scandal is in the
ministerial part of our law. There was no prima facie case
in favour of the lunacy of Mr. Windham. If there had
been even a prima facie case it never could have become
such a monster process, We do not consider a few ex parte
affidavits to amount to a prima facie case, whatever they
affirm. It is notorious that any quantity of affidavits may
be obtained at any time and against any person. If any dis-
interested men of skill and experience in such examinatioAs
had been sent by the Court of Chancery to investigate this
case in the first instance, this great opprobrium to our juris-
prudence could never have been set before Europe. Any
such men—and the Chancellor has such men specially
attached to his office—must have reported at once that Mr.
Windham was not an idiot, and had no delusions. They
must have reported that he was a foolish, vicious profligate,
and nothing more. We do not say that a man ought
to be deprived of his libel ty and his property without a
right to call for a jury—although hundreds are so—but we
asses t without hesitation that no man ought to be forced
into such a battle for his prerogatives of manhood as Mr.
Windham has fought through without a previous medical
investigation, conducted by official disinterested persons.
As to the dreary process itself, we are glad to forget it, for
it is not very creditable to any One concerned ; and as to
the conduct of the moving parties, perhaps it is premature
to speak, for the topic must arise hereafter, when the ques-
tion of " Costs" comes to be discussed in court, We may
hope, however, that such a mammoth cause as this will
never again disgrace our judicature, and that some means
worthy of rational beings may be devised for discovering
whether a sane man is sane. Perhaps it is a sentence
quite thrown away ; but still we will add a hope that the
long-lasting peril may have stirred the depths of that foul
young mind, and may have purged away enough vice to
leave space for some particles of shame, and thus to afford
some possibility of repentance.

,ATTE2UP7 OF A POLICEMAN 20
MURDER EIS WIFE.

EDGEWARE, THURSDAY.
Yesterday afternoon the greatest excitement pre-
vailed in this village from the fact becoming known
that a police-constable of the S division was to be
brought before J. S. Tanqueray, Esq., charged with
brutally attempting to murder his wife. Long be-
fore the hour appointed for the examination the
court and its avenues were crowded to excess, and a
large number of persons could not gain admission.
After the disposal of the ordinary charges,
James Hamshar, a police-constable, stationed at
Hendon, was charged, on remand, with violently
assaulting and wounding with a poker, his wife, at
the Burroughs, Hendon.
Mrs. Hamshar, rather a showily dressed, good-
looking young woman, who was allowed to be
seated while giving her evidence, deposed—The
prisoner is my husband. About half-past 1 o'clock
in the day on Thursday last, the 23d inst., he came
home. When he had been in the house about 10
minutes, he asked me if any one was coming to
fetch my things away, or if I was going away with
any one. I said decidedly no; no one. He then
asked me if " I would stay with him." I said,
" How can I, when you have ill-used me as you
have ?" I referred to his constant ill usage for five
years and a half, especially the last 18 months.
I went on cutting out some work I was doing,
when I felt a tremendous blow on my head.
The blow was from behind. I bad a second blow
in front. I turned round, and saw the prisoner had
a poker in his hand, and as I ran round the room
from him he followed, striking me. I put my hand
up to save my head, and received a blow which
disabled my hand. I then fell, and either as I was
falling, or after I was down, he struck me, and
broke my finger. When I was down I held my
breath to make him believe I was dead, so as to pre-
vent him further beating me. I did not lose my
consciousness. I saw him put the poker down. He
then took hold of my injured hand, lifted it up, and
let it fall, saying, "I have killed you." He then
went out. I recovered myself as well as I could,
and staggered after him, as I thought he would
escape, and, feeling I was dying, I did not wish
him to. When I got up I found clots of blood on
the floor. I went out of the door into the road.
My husband was then going down the road. A
man who was passing in a cart said I ought to have
a policeman. I said no. My husband came back,
and said to the man, "I have done it—l have done
it." He then went away. I sat down on the door-
step, and Mrs. Mason, who lives opposite me, and
Mr. Southy came and assisted me indoor. The
poker now produced is the one I was struck with,
and the hair-net is the one I had on at the time.
In answer to the magistrate, prisoner said he had
no questions to ask his wife.
Mr. John Growse, surgeon, Brent-street, Hendon,
said—On Thursday last prisoner came to me at my
house, about ten minutes to two o'clock, and said,
"I think I have murdered my wife; and I wish you
to go up and see her." I said, " What has made
you do that, Hamshar 9" He said, " She has dis-
honoured me, Sir." I told him I would go directly.
He said, " I shall go and give myself up." I went
to prisoner's house and found his wife, the com-
plainant, sitting by the fire. I examined her head,
and found five contused wounds, a severe bruise on
the left forearm, and the little finger of the left
hand fractured. I dressed the wounds, and have
since attended her. The poker now produced I saw
at the house, and such a weapon would have caused
the injuries I have described.
Sergeant Hughes, 3 S, gave confirmatory evidence
and added that he conveyed prisoner to the station.
Mr. Inspector Webb, S division, said—Prisoner
is one of my constables. On Thursday last I was
at Hampstead station when he was brought there
by last witness. I told him the offence he was
charged with was a very serious one, and it was
my duty, although he knew it, to caution him that
what he said would have to be stated before the
magistrate and given in evidence against him. He
said " I know it will, sir," and then added, " Yes-
terday morning, after coming off duty at 6 o'clock,
I returned home. I went upstairs and went to
bed. Joseph Collier, who is a lodger of mine, was
in bed. He stopped in bed about a quarter of an
hour. When he got up my wife, who was sleeping
in an adjoining room with her mother, got up about
the same time. My wife and Collier went down-
stairs. I got out of bed and went to the top of the
lending. I heard some whispering. I heard Col-
lier say to my wife You go down home for a week
and I will send for you.' I heard other whispering,
but I could not hear what it was about. Collier
and my wife went into the middle room together;
'hey were in the room a minute or two. I went
doN7nstairs. I saw my wife lying on the floor with
him in an indecent position. I ordered Collier to
leave the house, which he did." Subsequently pri-
soner told me that he had been dishonest to his
wife, and when he found her with Collier, being
very fond of her, he said, " Now, Sophy, you are as
bad as me ; let us forget what has passed, and try
and live happy together. She said ' No, I shall not
stop with you. I intended after leaving you to
have written and told you of this, but you have
found it out, and perhaps it is as well you should.'