The Sun.
London, England, 1854-08-12 00:00:00

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THE ESHER MURDERS.

Mr. Justice Erle, than whom a more intelligent and
upright judge does not sit upon the English bench,
must have been as much astonished as we were at the
verdict of the jury upon the Esher murderess on Wednes-
day last. That Anne Brough murdered her six children
, in the most pitiless and cold-blooded manner was a point
upon which there was no dispute. She made a frank
confession of her guilt to the superintendent of police
who had the charge of the case from the first, after she
had received the usual admonitions. The question for
first committeddivest
the the jury was simply as to her moral responsibility at the
tune she this moat
of alltawfuildesaeroifescoonf
continuous
must'We
nr etandef
du l o
ek deeds—she
Ginsanity. She was sane before the perpetration of these
id
uildfod the
was
sP
perfectly
dtlyasyteaawdh,easn swhee
tshtoinkod
will presently appear, she was sane enough when she
made her confession a few hours after she had carried
her purpose into effect. The question of her sanity
cannot be considered as solely resting upon what she
represented her state of mind to have been immediately
before she murdered her children. The inference must
be drawn from a larger field. We must take into ac-
count the antecedents of the act. Granted that a man
is beside himself—that he is not acting as a perfectly
sane person would act, when he draws the trigger of a
pistol against his fellow-man, or steals up to the side of
his bed at night and draws a razor across his throat
while he is asleep ; but such temporary frenzy is not a
sufficient palliation of his act in the eye of reason, noria
the contemplation of the English law. Nor will a de-
ranged act of the nervous system, nor even an organic
lesion of the brain, constitute insanity. Neither the
fretfulness of shaken health nor the dark broodings
of the vicious man over the consequences of his own acts
are madness. Still less would it be proper to argue in a
circle that because a man is a great crirninaltherefore he
is mad, and because mad, therefore a great criminal ;
for, in this case, the greatest monsters who have dis-
graced human nature would be rather objects of sym-
pathy and consideration than of abhorrence and pun-
ishment.
Now, the case of Anne Brough is this :—She was a
woman of evil life ; nor could she plead the strong pas-
sions and ill regulated mind of youth in palliation of her
disorders. She was forty-three years of age ; she was
the mother of six children ; her husband is living, and,
for all that has appeared, behaved himself with regard
to her and lo his family with all affection and propriety.
Despite of all these powerful inducements to respectable
and orderly life, the wretched woman gave herself up to
a course of intrigue and debauchery. Her husband at
length became aware of her misconduct, but wished to
obtain absolute proof of her guilt before separating frona
the mother of his six children. He caused her to be
watched when she went up to London a day or two before
the 9th ofJune last. The result of this proceeding was that
she was seen to enter a brothel with her paramour ; and
of her actual guilt there could, of course, remain no rea-
sonable doubt. When she returned to the quiet little
cottage at Esher where her six children were,.
she was met by her incensed husband, who reproached
her with her atrocious misconduct, and announced his
intention of separating from her fur ever. The poor
man quitted his home himself, instead of turning the
guilty wretch out of doors, and left her alone with the
children. What her thoughts must have been at that
dreadful moment it would be difficult to say who has
not been struck to the earth himself with all the over-
whelming consciousness of detected guilt ; but it is diffi-
cult to believe that she could have been much nearer
the borders of insanity than upon previous occasions,
when she had returned to her home rank with pollution,
and compelled to keep up the outward forms of inno-
cence before her deceived husband. At least, her
actions give no outward evidence of distraction. She
remained the next day in bed, and wished, as she said,
to obtain some medicine from the surgeon. In the
evening she walked about, and, having put the chil-
dren to bed about 9 o'clock, tried to go to sleep on the
chair downstairs. One of her little girls kept calling for
her mother to come to bed, and during the early part.
of the night some among the children continued asking
her to bring them some barleywater. This went on
until about twelve o'clock, when the tragedy began.
"Some of the children,"—we copy a few lines out of
her confession—" then went to sleep. I could not rest.
I had one candle lit on the chair. I could not see,
and I went and got another candle, but still
could not see." She could, however, see where to lay her
hand on, and where to get, the second candle. "There
was something like a cloud over my eyes. I thought I
would go down, get a knife, and cut my own throat,.
I could not find my way down. At last I found my
husband's keys, and then his razor." It then appears
that she straightway went to the bedside of her little
daughter Georgiana, and " cut" her, but without look-
ing at her. She next proceeded to Carry, and " cut"
her, and then to Henry. The poor little thing said,
"Don't, mother I" She simply answered, " I must,"
and cut Ins throat. She then killed her little boy Wil-
liam in the same way, but he was fast asleep. She was
obliged to turn him over that she might-execute her
purpose. The two remaining children, Harriet and
George, were awake, but they seem to have offered no
resistance to the murderess. "When all was over the
fiendish wretch turned the razor against herself, but her
hand was not so sure at suicide as at murder. Whey.
she came to herself the " nasty great
,black cloud was
gone !"

e
prSoouecehdiiisigtsh? aacncdounutpotnhe
tmhiusrdaeuruesusungt_ivetshoef haeormonwnte,
namely, of a person who assumes to describe her own feel-
ings when labouring under a fit of insanity—the verdict
of the jury must in good measure be supposed to rest.
But let us pass over this point, and presume that the
jury heard this statement as though they had heard it
not, and that it counted for nothing in their decision.
\Vneu we come to seek for other evidence upon which
the verdict might have been based, we find that this
murderess, in the interval which elapsed between the
commission of the crime and her arraignment the other
day at Guildford, conducted herself in every respect
sanely and rationally—indeed, the artistic manner in
which the confession is worded would do credit to a
romance writer of the Victor Hugo school. It was cer-
tainly not the production of a maniac. The medical
testimony is the turning point of the case. Dr. Izod,
her habitual medical attendant, deposed that after her
croanrafillyiesmis,enatndin September,
lostthe nseoflBhse2, she was
rleftside attacked
. she bed
b gradu-
allyrai
nr_e c owvhear
te dt,h be
suet l isey observed suy,emr
ep t
do
omess ofn oat dai spopredaerr
is
ymon.otsiatoe
the report of the trial. He -saw her on the Wednesday
her any medicine, as ssytrmonpgtol
excite herself, tlhieersmeluf,rdebru't did not think it necessary to give
, always had about her " an ..kiniarent tendency of blood
to the head." Dr. Forbes Winslow was the great me-
dical authority in the case. He admitted that paralysis
may exist without disease in the brain,-although in this
case he was inclined to think such disease might
exist. During his interview with the prisoner in
the gaol he could observe no symptoms of insanity
about her. He had known cases of temporary insanity
in which the patient became suddenly under the influ-
genracteifoyfeavesntroantg
thhoem
expenseici d a l
emtihvmoeesorptfucslaopis
nffeurre
estcwhichu,thinoeDarn rt,
iaa.t
affectionate
ahetocerwskrbomheuoussgf
Wh sought
pare. onnm e.
bah
ena
esdnivfeionrr ntaioe
dr
gli ysuoelrisdvt
eieurden
dos nsftrtaohtmee
its)lt;oseiwss
iisentkaltbBe
beds
that
oafndh he
thatre
cbhetillhideery
feeande
tftoohrfe
watchhtehdabvy
aggravated the pre-existing tendency. Theinig "'lark
cloud," too, of which the prisoner spoke in her confes-
sion, was an ordinary accompaniment of the paroxysm
in the case of persons attacked with a temporary fit of
suicidal and homicidal mania in combination. No won-
der that Mr. Justice Erie, in his charge to the jury,
protested against the doctrine that, if it was presumed
that a crime had been committed under the influence of
th
we
ro having
ni prisoner'shs brain had
an uncontrollable impulse, therefore a prisoner was to
be excused on the ground of insanity. Well did the
learned judge observe—" Undoubtedly every crime is
committed under the influence of some impulse, and the
object of the law is to control impulses of that descrip-
tion, and so prevent crime." If the defence of insanity
could be made out in the case of Anne Brough, we know
not what murderer can henceforth be brought to justice
for his crimes. In ordinary cases it would have
_been
taken that, as there was no substantial evidence of neg;
disordered mind to be obtained from the testimony
her neighbours, the medical presumptions were a
insuffi-
cient to set aside the yet more violent presumption_ of
wilful murder—the act of a vindictive woman upon the
discovery of her enormous guilt.—Tintes.

THE BARNSTAPLE ELECTION.—Two gentlemen of ep.
posite politics have announced themselves as candidates
for the borough—Mr. R. S. Guinness, the well-known
porter brewer, who comes forward in the Conservative,
and Mr. Tite, the eminent architect, of London, ma
chairman of the North Devon Railway Company, in
the Liberal interest. It is rumoured thattahneotcheelr:mn:
servative gentleman will come forward to contest the.
HULL ELECTION.—There are two candidates for the
of
conscience,"rvative in
of whom hays
representation of this borough alrTeandeyiti
Dickson and Mr. W. H. Watson, both
issued addresses to the electors.
and determined to resist
announces himself " a true Conservative
an advocate of "perfect libertyformer gentleman
are now being made to secure
tuhnefii
insidiousoching o patptoonmeputtsotfhPaotpery,principle,"
but " an
for it a position in this co
member of the London
Tallhoenziti:ldioseguliziers bar, untry." Ai . Watson.l is a
IL)
_coraie principles."
palreal .u.a I<3 I freedom frog
Liberal and Reform . and comes forward on
Major-General
teed to him.