A treatise on medical jurisprudence / by Francis Wharton and Moreton Stillé ; the medical part revised and corrected, with numerous additions, by Alfred Stillé.

Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on medical jurisprudence / by Francis Wharton and Moreton Stillé ; the medical part revised and corrected, with numerous additions, by Alfred Stillé. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    1023/1080 (page 981)
    BOOK X.] OVERACTING: INCOHERENCE. [§1285 policy be could not always conceal within himself the decrees of destiny with which he supposed himself charged. Thus the death of the Duke d’Enghien was muttered forth by him long before the fatal arrest; and so before sovereign houses ceased to I’eign came the intimations of this vice-regent of destiny that the decree was about to issue. It was not mere threats—it was not ambuscade —it was the involuntary witness born against itself by crime acting under the guise of fate. § 1283. Among the vulgar these intimations are not unfrequent. Mur- derers, especially in the lower walks of life, are frequently found busy for some time previous to the act in throwing out dark hints, spreading rumors, or uttering prophecies relative to the impending fate of their intended victims. Susannah Holroyd was convicted at the Lancaster assizes of 1816, for the murder of her husband, her son, and the child of another person. About a month before committing the crime, the prisoner told the mother of the child that she had had her fortune read, and that, within six weeks, three funerals would go from her door, namely, that of her husband, her son, and of the child of the person whom she was then addressing. And so, on the trial of Zephon, in Philadelphia, in 1845, it was shown that the prisoner, who was a negro, had got an old fortune-teller in the neighborhood, of great authority among the blacks, to prophesy the death of the deceased, (a) Where there is a family or local superstition, it may be invoked for the same purpose. Thus Miss Blandy, when her preparations for poisoning her father were in progress, threw out references to the supernatural music with which the house was preteuded to be pervaded; music which, according to tradition, betokened a death in twelve months. It is in these several classes of intimations, most of them involuntary, that we find another instance of the self-detective power of guilt. § 1284. 3d. Overacting.—Extraordinary affection is often simulated before a near relative is removed by poisoning. Thus, a husband is reconciled to and lives with his wife whom he intends to dispatch ; and a wife, as in Mrs. Chap- man’s case, becomes singularly demonstrative in her public attentions to her husband. Mary Blandy, at the time her father was writhing under poisons she had herself administered, garlanded him over with caresses so inappro- priate to his condition as to become the subject of suspicion then, and the items of proof afterwards. So industrious declarations of friendliness and fairness not unfrequently are thrown out prior to an assassination. § 1285. II. At crime. 1st. Incoherence.—“Providence,” said Mr. Web- ster’, in his speech iu Knapp’s case, “ hath so ordained, and doth so govern things, that those who break the great law of Heaven by shedding man’s blood, seldom succeed in avoiding discovery. Discovery must come, sooner or later. A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, everything, every circum- stance, connected with the time and place; a thousand ears catch every whis- per ; a thousand excited minds intensely dwell on the scene, shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery.” While there is on the one hand this concentration of observation, there is (a) Wh. Crim. Law, § 726.