The criminal responsibility of the insane : a lecture introductory to the session 1885-6 / by Charles J. Cullingworth.

  • Cullingworth, Charles J. (Charles James), 1841-1908.
Date:
1885
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The criminal responsibility of the insane : a lecture introductory to the session 1885-6 / by Charles J. Cullingworth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Object of the Address. Such a course was, in this instance, for obvious reasons, undesirable, and I felt very grateful to the Principal when, with characteristic consideration, he assured me that I should not be expected to adopt it. Being thus freed from the necessity of addressing you on my own special subject, and yet mindful of the injunction of Horace* which Prof. Wilkins quoted so aptly, and obeyed so suc- cessfully last year, I decided to offer some remarks on the Criminal Responsibility of the Insane, making my address a sort of last word on Medical Jurisprudence, with the teaching of which I have been entrusted during the past seven years, and to which, now that I am placed in charge of a more prominent branch of medical study, I, not without some feeling of regret, bid farewell. The object I have in view in this address is to draw public attention to the extremely unsatisfactory state of the law in this country with reference to the plea of in- sanity in criminal cases. For many years medical writers of eminence have been uttering their protest against a continuance of the present state of things, and recently one of our most experienced judges has declared a change to be necessary. The chapters in his History of the Criminal Law of England, in which Sir James Stephen deals with this subject, constitute one of the most valuable, and certainly one of the most temperate contributions yet made to the study of the question. Nevertheless, public opinion is not yet fully aroused, and, until it is, no alteration either in the law, or in the methods of procedure can be * “ Quam scit [quisque], libens, centcbo, exerceat artem. “ Let each one do the work he knows the best.”