The principles of forensic medicine : systematically arranged, and applied to British practice / John Gordon Smith.

John Gordon Smith

Date:: 1827

Credit: The principles of forensic medicine : systematically arranged, and applied to British practice / John Gordon Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

601/622 (page 569)

$How far such iinFortimate beings shonM be considered amenable to justice, has been matter of consideration; and I shaii supply any formal consideration of the subject, by the following account, which is of no littie interest, and may suggest all that is necessary to be added on the tojaic. Our assistance will never be called for, but in a case oi suspected or pretended desiineas or dumbness. Higli Court of Justiciary, Edinburgh, July, 1817. The court pro- ceeded to advise the information in the case of Jean Campbell, alias Bruce, a deaf and dumb woman, accused of drowning her child. The Judges delivered their opinions at considerable length. Lord Hermand was of opinion that the pannel [prisoner] was not a fit object of trial. She was deaf and dumb from her infancy—had had no instruction whatever—was unable to give information to her counsel —to communicate the names of her exculpatory witnesses, if she had any, and was unable to plead to the indictment in any way whatever, except by certain signs, which he considered in point of law to be no pleading whatever. Lords Justice Clerk, Gillies, Pitmilly and Reston, were of a diifeient opinion. From the evidence of Mr. Kinniburgh and Mr. Wood *, they w ere of opinion that the pannel was doli capax, quoad the actual crime she was charged >\ith. It was true that this was a new case in Scot- land, but in England a case of a similar nature had occurred. One Jones was arraigned at the Old Bailey in 1773, for stealing five guineas. He appeared to be deaf and dumb : a jury was impanelled to try whe- ther he wilfully stood mute, or from the visitation of God : they returned a verdict * from the visitation of God'—and it having appeared that the prisoner Lad been in the use of holding conversation, by means of signs, with a woman of the name of Fanny Lazarus, slie was sworn an inter- preter. He was tried, convicted, and transported. In the present case the pannel had described to Mr. Kinniburgh most minutely the manner in w hich the accident had happened to her child ; and from the indignant way in which she rejected the assertion that she had thrown it over the bridge, it was evident she was sensible that to murder it was a crime. Jt was also observed by Lord Reston, that it would be an act of justice towards the paijnel herself to bring her to trial; for if the court found she was a perfect non-entity, and could not be tried for a crime, it followed, as a natural consequence, that the unhappy woman would be confined for life; whereas if she was brought to trial, and it turned out that the accident occurred in the way she described it, she would immedialeiy be set at liberty. The court found her a fit object for trial. XXXIIL Page 502. The case here referred to, occurred in France in the prior part of last century ; and is narrated in the Causes Celebres—a work by the way that throws the respectability of the French Judicature deeply into the shade. Not only are there too many instances on record to prove the polluted state of the streams of justice; but also the shameless and open venality, or the imperturbable stupidity of many of the judges, or pro- bably both. I would recommend, as an amusing specimen of the con- temptible state of these matters, Fodere's short abstract of the case, given in his first volume, § 75. After a man bad been condemned 1o the gallics, and spent two ytars ' ''' fjt.iiftnicu craiiif ruvd Tviifi ili.f. Edialciurgh iKstHutioa for the ckaf and flam):.'$