However, it is not possible to recount all the marvelous cases of insanity that have come under the public notice in the last thirty or forty years.There was the Durgin case in New Jersey three years ago.
The servant girl, Bridget Durgin, at dead of night, invaded her mistress's bedroom and carved the lady literally to pieces with a knife.
Then she dragged the body to the middle of the floor, and beat and banged it with chairs and such things.Next she opened the feather beds, and strewed the contents around, saturated everything with kerosene, and set fire to the general wreck.She now took up the young child of the murdered woman in her blood smeared hands and walked off, through the snow, with no shoes on, to a neighbor's house a quarter of a mile off, and told a string of wild, incoherent stories about some men coming and setting fire to the house; and then she cried piteously, and without seeming to think there was anything suggestive about the blood upon her hands, her clothing, and the baby, volunteered the remark that she was afraid those men had murdered her mistress! Afterward, by her own confession and other testimony, it was proved that the mistress had always been kind to the girl, consequently there was no revenge in the murder; and it was also shown that the girl took nothing away from the burning house, not even her own shoes, and consequently robbery was not the motive.
Now, the reader says, "Here comes that same old plea of insanity again."But the reader has deceived himself this time.No such plea was offered in her defense.The judge sentenced her, nobody persecuted the governor with petitions for her pardon, and she was promptly hanged.
There was that youth in Pennsylvania, whose curious confession was published some years ago.It was simply a conglomeration of incoherent drivel from beginning to end; and so was his lengthy speech on the scaffold afterward.For a whole year he was haunted with a desire to disfigure a certain young woman, so that no one would marry her.He did not love her himself, and did not want to marry her, but he did not want anybody else to do it.He would not go anywhere with her, and yet was opposed to anybody else's escorting her.Upon one occasion he declined to go to a wedding with her, and when she got other company, lay in wait for the couple by the road, intending to make them go back or kill the escort.After spending sleepless nights over his ruling desire for a full year, he at last attempted its execution--that is, attempted to disfigure the young woman.It was a success.It was permanent.In trying to shoot her cheek (as she sat at the supper-table with her parents and brothers and sisters) in such a manner as to mar its comeliness, one of his bullets wandered a little out of the course, and she dropped dead.To the very last moment of his life he bewailed the ill luck that made her move her face just at the critical moment.And so he died, apparently about half persuaded that somehow it was chiefly her own fault that she got killed.This idiot was hanged.The plea, of insanity was not offered.
Insanity certainly is on the increase in the world, and crime is dying out.There are no longer any murders--none worth mentioning, at any rate.Formerly, if you killed a man, it was possible that you were insane--but now, if you, having friends and money, kill a mate, it is evidence that you are a lunatic.In these days, too, if a person of good family and high social standing steals anything, they call it kleptomania, and send him to the lunatic asylum.If a person of high standing squanders his fortune in dissipation, and closes his career with strychnine or a bullet, "Temporary Aberration" is what was the trouble with him.
Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal case that comes before the courts? And is it not so cheap, and so common, and often so trivial, that the reader smiles in derision when the newspaper mentions it?
And is it not curious to note how very often it wins acquittal for the prisoner? Of late years it does not seem possible for a man to so conduct himself, before killing another man, as not to be manifestly insane.If he talks about the stars, he is insane.If he appears nervous and uneasy an hour before the killing, he is insane.If he weeps over a great grief, his friends shake their heads, and fear that he is "not right." If, an hour after the murder, he seems ill at ease, preoccupied, and excited, he is, unquestionably insane.
Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity.There is where the true evil lies.