The Cannock Chase Examiner. — 1876-12-15 (Cannock, Staffordshire, England)

THE MADMAN IN A RAILWAY TRAIN. At the Cheater Assizes, last week, before Mr. deities Mellor, Thomas Holmes, 27, a striker, was indicted for attempting to murder a Liverpool window ticket writer, named Ellie, in a railway carriage, between Liverpool and Chester, on the 24th of November, and with attempting to commit suicide by throwing himself in f rout of a train at Frodsham on the same date. The prosecutor was travelling in the same compartment with theprisoner and his f ether, when the younger Holmes, without any provocation, rushed at him with knife find said, "You —, this will have to go into von." He struggled to cut the prosecutor 's 'throat, but failed in this; he bit the flesh oil his right thumb, smashed the window with his head, bit the prosecutor'. left thumb, and attempted to throw him through the window. As he could not manage this he sprang through himself, and when the tra,n stooped he tried hard to commit euicide by putting his neck on the rails In front of the train. Ile was found to be mad, and on, medical man said that the madness was mused by delirium tremens. Witnesses were called, , who said his madness was the result of excessive drinking because of the loss of his wife and children week before.—The prisoner was acquitted on the ground of insanity.  THE LINCOLNSHIRE MURDERER, • (From the Daily News.) Mr. Cross bee acted with his usual discretion and sound judgment in ordering the respite of William Brant, who was lately convicted at the Lincolnshire Assizes of the murder of Thomas Gen. The evidence, especially that of the mother of Drank went to prove that he had always been a sufferer from epileptic fits, generally followed by an outbreak of violence. On the night of the murder he had been 111, and had suddenly leaped up out of a state of prostration and attacked his mother. Some of the neighbours crone to the rescue, and disarmed him, taking away a knife which he had seized. Unluckily they left in his hose sonic bars of wood with which they lied etriesk him la his lory, and with one of thesehe dashed in the he dot Golf, who had helped to rescue his mother. After he became quiet he showed unconsciousness of the murderous effect of his assault on (1011. . Dr. Maudeley has pointed out, in hie work on "Body and Mind." and elsewhere, the existence of a sudden homicidal Impulse, strictly comparable to an epileptic 'convulsion," and preceded by epileptic syptoms. Grant, there seems good reason to suspect, was under the influence of such an impulse. It needs no great subtlety to distinguish between the victims of a malady of this sort, and the characters who yield to temptation, and call it irresistible, because they have not resisted it. A motiveless murder, peeceded by epileptic symptoms, and followed by stupor, is a very different thing, morally, from a murder cow Witted in a moment of jealousy, auger, Or cupidity. If Dr. Maudsley be correct, there is no question here of fate and ree-will, and the cute becomes a medical, not a moral, problem. There is all the difference in the world between the moral impulse of a motive and the mechanical impulse of disease.