Mind and its disorders : a text-book for students and practitioners / by W.H.B. Stoddart.

  • W.H.B. Stoddart
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Mind and its disorders : a text-book for students and practitioners / by W.H.B. Stoddart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    on their friends and, as a natural result, did not receive visits themselves. Then they felt neglected, thought that their friends wished to have nothing to do with them, that some scandal concerning them was rife, that they were being persecuted and that they should come to some harm. At this stage they drew up the following document: ' September 25, 1905. ' I, A. B. C, and I, D. E. C, do swear that the statement written below is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If anything happens to us by violence, it will be by the instigation of the Rev. F. G. H., through his agents and the Secret Society to which he belongs. We have been hunted do^vn since the year the Queen died by the aforesaid agents systematic- ally day after day, week after week, taking our name away and shutting all doors on us. The reason of this is that his methods and their methods are criminal, and they have used them on us uselessly until to-day, when I called at Vicarage, and now the verdict has gone forth to two next door neighbours: the I. J.'s and their servant K. L., who are in their pay, given to them by old M., who, I conjecture, is one of their chief agents, and who I only imagine is largely responsible for the N. suicide— their aim is money and power ; they have marked all the rich families in England with XX to my knowledge, to marry crooked-mined [? minded] women to straight men running to kill them, then the money falls into their hands. I have been told to emigrate for a year to South Africa and then return, but there would be no return. ' M.'s son set off a raid against us last Tuesday to Q [a neighbouring suburb]. ' The murder in to-day's paper was no suicide on the Brighton line.' Matters were brought to a climax when on a certain day these patients expected their house to be attacked. At i a.m. they heard a noise, threw up their windows and shouted for the police. The police arrived and tried to force an entrance, but the two sisters kept them at bay for two days with a couple of ancestral cavalry swords. The police were ultimately successful and the patients were placed under care. They were put into separate wards, but lor many months were so reticent about the whole affair that it was impossible