CJiapters in the English Law of Lunacy. course of brain disease. The verdict of acquittal in his case was therefore justified by the event. The case of Christiana Edmunds was one of great interest. This woman, who moved in a respectable sphere of society, was charged at the central crimi nal court in January, 1872, with the murder of a boy at Brighton. The deceased ate some sweets purchased in a confectioner's shop and died in a short time with the symptoms of poisoning by strychnine. Strychnine was found in his stomach. The prisoner had procured sweets from this shop by the agency of little boys, had deliberately poisoned them with strychnine, and had then returned them to the shop. She had herself on various occasions left poisoned sweets about in shops. She had previously attempted to poison the wife of a medical man, and she imputed the poisonings to the carelessness of the confectioner. Dr. Taylor gives the follow ing account of and verdict upon this case: "The confectioner was able to show that his sweets as purchased were wholesome, and by a chain of circumstances the crime of poisoning them was clearly fixed upon the prisoner. She had shown much cunning in her proceedings. She had procured strychnine on four different occasions under false pretenses, had borrowed the poison book of a druggist and torn out the leaves to conceal the fact that she had purchased the poison. The defense was insanity, but there was no proof of intellectual insanity about her. She had shown all the skill of an accomplished crimi nal in carrying out her plan of general poisoning, and in using the most artful means to conceal it, and to throw the imputation upon the confec tioner. Impulse could hardly be pleaded, for her criminal acts were extended over weeks and months. Edmunds was convicted. She then, with a view of averting or delaying punishment, put in a plea in bar of execution, but the capital sentence was afterwards remitted, and the prisoner was sent to Broadmoor Asylum on the statement that she was of unsound mind. It appears that her father had died in a lunatic asylum when of middle age, having suffered for years before his death from homicidal and suicidal mania. Her brother died at Earlswood Asylum an epileptic idiot; her grandfather was a subject of cerebral disease; her sister suffered from hysteria; other relations were afflicted with nervous diseases of some kind; and
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she herself appears to have exhibited, some eigh teen years before, symptoms of hysteria and hysterical paralysis. This proved hereditary tendency to insanity in her family, and was the main cause of the commutation of the capital sentence. If we except the nature of the crime, showing, as it did, an utter recklessness for human life, there was nothing to indicate unsoundness of mind, either in a medical or legal sense, in this woman." On our last visit to Broadmoor Asylum — on December 17, 1893 — we found her en gaged in fashioning out of wool the text, "Peace on earth and good-will to men," for the decoration of the chapel hall for the Christmas services. Another curious case was that of Reg. v. McKane. The prisoner was tried at Salis bury summer assizes for the murder of Mr. Lutwidge, a commissioner in lunacy. McKane had been confined in Fisherton House for many years and was anxious to be removed to Broadmoor. He had threatened to do something which would bring about his removal but was not treated as a dangerous lunatic. As Mr. Lutwidge was going round the asylum for purposes of inspection, McKane rushed at him and struck him violently on the temple with a nail wrapped in a cloth. It penetrated to the brain of Mr. Lutwidge and he died in a week. The prisoner was, of course, acquitted on the ground of insanity. A recent case which excited great interest in London was that of the Queen z>. Reginald Sanderson. The prisoner was the son of an Irish magistrate. His intellect was known to be weak, but he was never considered danger ous. Unfortunately, However, his disordered imagination was inflamed by reading the story of the South End murder and he stabbed a woman near Hyde Park. He escaped to Ire land but could not forbear from talking about the murder and was soon arrested. Of course he was found "guilty, but insane." When he was brought up before the magistrate he sud denly bolted out of the dock and endeavored to get away. There was no real doubt, how ever, as to his irresponsibility.
