The Forest of Dean Examiner : — 1877-02-16 (Blakeney, Gloucestershire, England)

THE PIMLICO MURDERER. (From. the Standard.)  The cam of Frederick Treadaway, who has been sentenced to death for the murder of Mr. Ocßins in In December last, presents some points worth consideration. Among the chief of these we may note the apparent absence of motive for the crime, and the excuse of insanity which was offered in defence of the prisoner. It Is clear that the one suggested the other. Mr. Besley, in defending Treadaway, pleaded that he wee not insane either before or after the act, but insane at the time of its committal, on account of an epileptic seizure; and he stated further that there was insanity in the prisoner's family. This, then, is not a plea of homicidal mania, pure and simple, though Mr. Besley might have been reminiscent of the laws said to govern it when he spoke as he did. For there were several features in this murder which might have been explained by the rules whioh 11. Esquire!, a high authority on the subject, lays down regarding homicidal mania, or—as it has been called, from the sudden impulse to kill—impulsive or rrovenial mania. Esouirol says that the homicidal maniac disdains accomplices—so did Treadaway. The sane criminal has always a motive, and assuredly no motive was discernible, though no doubt the convict isould enlighten us on that paint. To quote the same authority, the sane prisoner endeavours to conceal his crime, and Treadeway appears to have been in many ways reckless after the commission of the murder. We must add that even if Mr. Besley had urged such points, the existence of this epecies of madness—mor..l insanity as it is designated—has been severely milled In question. An has been often pointed out, there is no evidence of overwhelming impulse, of mania transitoria, but the act itself, and no wonder, therefore, that, as Dr. Taylor says, "Ito existence as a state independent of the reason or intellect is denied by the great majority of lawyers as well as by some eminent medical authorities." Mr. Begley, however, did not base his defence on these lines: but went farther, and pleaded that Treadaway's crime wasi committed during an epileptic seizure, and that he was not conscious of what he was doing. With no desire to press hardly upon the criminal, whose case may safely be left in the hands of the Home Secretary, no one can be surprised that such a defence failed. Persons suffering from mania may he epileptic, and the latter disease may bring on brain lesions which produce mental derangement, but in such cases there are evidence' of that disturbance, and it does not break out suddenly. The question for the jury was the responsibility of the prisoner, and that, as Mr. Justice Lush very properly pointed out, depended upon the view they took of the condition of Treadaway's mind at the time. The plea of Insanity must always render the work of a jury exceptionally hard. If, as a sound authority tells us, it is improperly admitted, punishment falls unequally on offendere ; if improperly rejected, punishment is administered with undue severity. We have discussed the case in its medico-legal bearings, and from that point of view it is impossible, after a careful perusal of the report of the trial, not to agree with the verdict.