The Washington times., 1919-02-23

Showing Her Youthful Face,
Figure and Curls.
TOR the first time in legal history, a
- court of law has taken cognizance OF
- hypnotism as a defense against a
criminal charge and has released a pris-
Oner on the ground that in performing the
criminal act the accused was only a ma
chine, animated by and helplessly obeying
the will Of a master mind.
Thus in real life we have the exact sit
uation which made Du Maurier's famous
novel, "Trilby," classic of fiction.
Norma Mcleod is the name of this pres
ent day incarnation of the novelist's fancy.
Scarcely twenty-one, trembling, shaken
down TO the very depths of her soul by her
experiences-but once again mistress Of
that soul, her heart and her bOdy-she con-
vinced wise judge, skeptical lawyers and
medical experts of the truth Of her story,
forcing them to accept what to them
seemed at first and to many still may
SEEM the incredible.
And when she was finished Judge
Thomas C. Grain, of the Court of Special
Sessions, whose hair has grown white in
his service of justice, said to her:
The court releases you on a suspended
r. sentence Of five years because it believes
that you were not responsible for the act
you committed, but that you acted under
the control Of a will stronger than your
own
Harry Sanderson, a soldier Of fortune,
who, Norma Mcleod says, was the Sven
gall to her Trilby is missing-with the po-
lice seeking him so that he may be put in
a place where the uncanny force Of which
he seems to be a master may be exerted
against unimaginatiVe, wholly practical
jailers.
But unlike DuMaurier's Svengali, San
derson does not seem to have had to de-
pend upon the use of staring eyes, mystic
passes with the hands and all the other
tricks of the stage hypnOtist. Svengali's
methods were described by Du Maurier
thus:
But all at once-with one wave of his
hand over her-with one look of his eye
with a word-Svengali could turn her into
the other Trilby, his Trilby-and make her
do whatever he liked.
"He had but to say sleep and she sud
denly became an unconscious Trilby-who
could produce just the sounds he wanted
and nothing else-and think his thoughts
and wish his wishes-and love him at his
bidding with a strange, unreal love-just
his own love for himself turned inside
eUt-d TeHUers-and reflected back on him
as from a mirror"
Miss Mcleod says that her master was
always very gentle with her, but that what
he told her to do she had to do; that she
possessed no will, no thought except his
when he chose to exert his power over her.
And that, like Trilbys, her heart, her body
and her soul were at his mercy
The specific charges upon which Miss
Mcleod was arrested was the forgery on
a check Of the name of Louis Missi, the
landlord of the apartment house at 248
West FOrty-eighth street, where Sander
son and the girl lived. Sanderson had a
fancied grievance against Missi; he thought
the latter was Obstructing telephone mes
sages to him. The forged check was pun
ishment. To wreak this punishment he
used Miss Mcleod Just as he would have
used a pen or a pencil. Under his will she
was nothing more than one of these instru-
ments in the hand of the adventurer-and
no more to blame for what was written
than pen or pencil would have been. This,
in effect, was the opinion of the court that
freed her
What kind Of girl is Miss Mcleod that
all her consciousness, her will and consci-
ence could be so thrust out Of her. leaving
her body only e shell in which worked
another's will and consciousness? How
did she fall into the power of the master