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
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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.

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    § 1319] PSYCHICAL INDICATIONS. [BOOK X. cunning running through her which enabled her to shelter herself from suspi- cion during two successive groups of poisonings. There were the same pre- cautions as taken by other criminals to deaden surprise by intimations of the ill health of her intended victims—the same assertions of constitutional ten- dency to these particular symptoms. And with this there was the same sub- sequent hovering of the mind over the scene of guilt. Thus, after the death of “Johnny,” one of the children whom she was employed to nurse, and whom she had poisoned, she was found “ excited and anxious if any two were talking, to get close to them, and to wish to know what they were saying.” And then came one of those strange convulsive confessions such as that in Robinson’s case—confessions in which the truth is thrown out as if it were too hot for the heart to hold, and yet at the same time put forth as if it were a joke, so as to relieve the mind of him that speaks from the solitude of this awful secret, and yet not too boldly proclaim guilt. Nancy told a witness, after the death of one of the children, “how lucky she was with sick folks; they all died in her hands.” The witness saying, “ May be you killed them ;” she said, “May be I did.” “ She seemed to be joking—seemed to be smiling —seemed to be very careless about it.”(/) § 1318. 4th. Permanent mental wretchedness.—We may pass the case of a tender conscience, which commits a heinous act inconsiderately, or under force of strong temptation, and then is stung by bitter and enduring remorse. These cases maybe said, to he exceptional. We maybe told, and perhaps truly, that the majority of great crimes are committed by men whose hearts are so rigid and callous as to give no sign of a troubled conscience. The sun, on the day after the crime, shines upon a face just as hard as that on which he shone the day before. Blood cannot stain a skin already black with guilt. No man is suddenly a great criminal. He becomes so, it is argued, by long and slow processes, during which all the impressible elements of the heart are hardened, and solidified. Now this may be all true, and yet common observation tells us that there are certain types of character among which a priori we are accustomed to look for the perpetrator of some great crime. And this rigidity of heart is one of these. This, in itself, may give a faint though definite psychological presumption. But it is questionable whether there are any characters in which this type is permanent:— “ The deepest ice that ever froze Can only over the surface close— The living stream lies quick below, And flows, and cannot cease to flow.” § 1319. “ Something was wrong with him. My suspicion was aroused by his troubled sleep.” This is the frequent answer to the question as to what put the witness first on the watch. Shakspeare makes Lady Macbeth’s great secret vent itself in this way, and to attract very much the same observation from by-standers. And this, in fact, is but in obedience to one of those divine sanctions by which crime is made in part its own avenger. “ There are violent and convulsive movements of self-reproach,” says Dr. McCosh, “which will (D Farrer v. State, 2 Ohio St. R. (N. S.) 64.