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

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.

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$BOOK X.] INCOHERENCE AT CRIME. [§ 1287 able except on the hypothesis of the innate inability of the mind to act out with perfection any fabricated part—of keeping a private diary of his guilt, and executing a paper, signed with his name, and carefully put away among his vouchers, in which he expressly declared that guilt. Richard Crowninshield, of Salem, Massachusetts, was, in 1830, a young man of family and education. Of dark and reserved deportment, subtle and self- possessed, he united a depravity and malignity of heart which made crime natural and normal to him, with a courage of purpose, a temperance in sensual indulgence, and a sagacity and adroitness in the choice and in the use of means, which made crime easy. His tastes and temperament were such as to cover his tracks with almost impenetrable darkness. “Although he was often spoken of as a dangerous man, his person was known to few, for he never walked the streets by daylight. Among his few associates he was a leader and a despot.” Joseph White, a wealthy merchant, eighty-two years of age, was found mur- dered in his bed, in his mansion house, on the morning of the 7th of April, 1830. His servant man rose that morning at six o’clock, aud on going down into the kitchen and opening the shutters of the window, saw that the back window of the east parlor was open, and that a plank was raised to the win- dow from the back yard; he then went into the parlor, but saw no trace of any person having been there. He went to the apartment of the maid-ser- vant, and told her, and then went into Mr. White's chamber by its back door, and saw that the door of his chamber leading into the front entry was open. On approaching the bed he found the bedclothes turned down, aud Mr. White dead ; his countenance pallid, and his night-clothes and bed drenched in blood. He hastened to the neighboring houses to make known the event. He and the maid-servant were the only persons who slept in the house that night, except Mr. White himself, whose niece Mrs. Beckford, his housekeeper, was then absent on a visit to her daughter, at Wenham. The physicians and the coroner’s jury, who were called to examine the body, found on it thirteen deep stabs, made as if by a sharp dirk or poniard, and the appearance of a heavy blow on the left temple, which had fractured the skull, but not broken the skin. The body was cold, and appeared to have been lifeless many hours. On examining the apartments of the house, it did uot appear that any valuable articles had been taken, or the house ransacked for them; there was a package of doubloons in an iron chest in his chamber, aud costly plate in other apartments, none of which was missing. The first clue obtained to the murder was by the arrest, at New Bedford, of a man named Hatch, who stated, when under examination for another offence, that he had heard Crowninshield mutter intimations of violence towards Mr. White. Soon another thread was found. Mr. White was childless, and left as his legal representatives Mrs. Beckford his housekeeper, the only child of a deceased sister, aud four nephews and nieces, the children of a deceased brother. He had executed, as was known in the family, a will by which he left by far the larger portion of his estate to Stephen White, one of the few children of the testa- tor’s brother, reserving but a small legacy to Mrs. Beckford. A daughter of Mrs. Beckford married Joseph J. Knapp, Jr., who, with his brother, John$