The Sun. — 1864-02-03 (London, England)

WADDINGTON.  To T. W. Evans, Esq., M.P., and W. Mundy, Esq., M.P.  Bethlem Royal Hospital, Jane 28, 1864, We, the undersigned, having been requested by Secretary Sir George Grey to examine into the state of mind of George Victor Townley, a prisoner under sentence of death in Bethlem Hospital, and to report our opinion as to whether he is of unsound mind, report as follows :  a have carefully considered the copies of papers supplied to us, and on the 26th and 27th days of this month we have had two lengthened interviews with the prisoner; and the conclusion at which we have unanimously arrived is that George Victor Townley is of sound mind. The demeanour of the prisoner during each interview was calm and self-possessed, with the exception that at the commencement of the second interview ho displayed and expressed annoyance at the repeated examinations to which he was being subjected, Neither in mood of speech nor in look and conduct was there any sign of insanity observable in him. His prompt apprehension of the purport of our questions, and the manner in which he replied to them, indicated the possession of good intellectual capacity. The opinions which he avows, that men, as the creatures of circumstances, are not justly responsible for their actions, are opinions at which he appears to have arrived by ordinary processes of reasoning. That he knows that he is responsible for the commission of crime is made clear by his own words used to us—" I expected to be hanged because I killed her, and am not such a fool as not to know that the law hangs for murder. I did not think of it at the time, or I should not have done it." We think that his statement, that he killed Miss Goodwin to repossess himself of her as his property was an afterthought adopted to justify his crime. He acknowledged to us that he had come to this opinion after the deed was done. The supposition that he killed Miss Goodwin under the influence of the opinion that in so doing he was repossessing himself of her as his property is inconsistent with his own repeated statement to us that, without forethought of any kind, he killed her under the influence of sudden impulse. He explained to us'that by killing Miss Goodwin to repossess himself of her as his property, he simply meant that he took her out of the hands of his enemies, and placed her in a position wile/ e she would wait, and where he would rejoin her when he died. The prisoner endeavoured to represent the catastrophe to us as due to the influence of sudden impulse, but the details which we elicited from him show that ho used threats of murder for some time before he struck the blow. We think that his clear memory of the events attending the crime, and also the state of his te attempts which he has made to misrepresent mind and m emery at the time of these events are evidence of his sanity, We are of opinion that ho does not entertain ralpos delusion on the subject of a conspiracy against theinst hi real apposition pyin tio m, but that he flees the term conspiracy to ex prealso e x Goroe dss which ho has met with from the members win's family to his engagement With her, andoalfo 1 to express the feeling that they aro hostile to him. We have considered the evidence of hereditary r o disposition to insanity given in the papers supplied to us, and our opinion of the state of the prisoner's state of mind has not been altered thereby.  Wo examined the apothecary, and also the chief attendant of Bethlem as to the conduct of Townley since he has been in detention at the hospital—both of them have had him under daily end special observatien—and they assure us tylt neither in conduct, manner, nor conversation had