Sketches New and Old

  A NEW CRIME

  LEGISLATION NEEDED

  This country, during the last thirty or forty years, has produced some ofthe most remarkable cases of insanity of which there is any mention inhistory. For instance, there was the Baldwin case, in Ohio, twenty-twoyears ago. Baldwin, from his boyhood up, had been of a vindictive,malignant, quarrelsome nature. He put a boy's eye out once, and neverwas heard upon any occasion to utter a regret for it. He did many suchthings. But at last he did something that was serious. He called at ahouse just after dark one evening, knocked, and when the occupant came tothe door, shot him dead, and then tried to escape, but was captured.Two days before, he had wantonly insulted a helpless cripple, and the manhe afterward took swift vengeance upon with an assassin bullet hadknocked him down. Such was the Baldwin case. The trial was long andexciting; the community was fearfully wrought up. Men said thisspiteful, bad-hearted villain had caused grief enough in his time, andnow he should satisfy the law. But they were mistaken; Baldwin wasinsane when he did the deed--they had not thought of that. By theargument of counsel it was shown that at half past ten in the morning onthe day of the murder, Baldwin became insane, and remained so for elevenhours and a half exactly. This just covered the case comfortably, and hewas acquitted. Thus, if an unthinking and excited community had beenlistened to instead of the arguments of counsel, a poor crazy creaturewould have been held to a fearful responsibility for a mere freak ofmadness. Baldwin went clear, and although his relatives and friends werenaturally incensed against the community for their injurious suspicionsand remarks, they said let it go for this time, and did not prosecute.The Baldwins were very wealthy. This same Baldwin had momentary fits ofinsanity twice afterward, and on both occasions killed people he hadgrudges against. And on both these occasions the circumstances of thekilling were so aggravated, and the murders so seemingly heartless andtreacherous, that if Baldwin had not been insane he would have beenhanged without the shadow of a doubt. As it was, it required all hispolitical and family influence to get him clear in one of the cases, andcost him not less than ten thousand dollars to get clear in the other.One of these men he had notoriously been threatening to kill for twelveyears. The poor creature happened, by the merest piece of ill fortune,to come along a dark alley at the very moment that Baldwin's insanitycame upon him, and so he was shot in the back with a gun loaded withslugs.

  Take the case of Lynch Hackett, of Pennsylvania. Twice, in public, heattacked a German butcher by the name of Bemis Feldner, with a cane, andboth times Feldner whipped him with his fists. Hackett was a vain,wealthy, violent gentleman, who held his blood and family in high esteem,and believed that a reverent respect was due to his great riches. Hebrooded over the shame of his chastisement for two weeks, and then, in amomentary fit of insanity, armed himself to the teeth, rode into town,waited a couple of hours until he saw Feldner coming down the street withhis wife on his arm, and then, as the couple passed the doorway in whichhe had partially concealed himself, he drove a knife into Feldner's neck,killing him instantly. The widow caught the limp form and eased it tothe earth. Both were drenched with blood. Hackett jocosely remarked toher that as a professional butcher's recent wife she could appreciate theartistic neatness of the job that left her in condition to marry again,in case she wanted to. This remark, and another which he made to afriend, that his position in society made the killing of an obscurecitizen simply an "eccentricity" instead of a crime, were shown to beevidences of insanity, and so Hackett escaped punishment. The jury werehardly inclined to accept these as proofs at first, inasmuch as theprisoner had never been insane before the murder, and under thetranquilizing effect of the butchering had immediately regained his rightmind; but when the defense came to show that a third cousin of Hackett'swife's stepfather was insane, and not only insane, but had a nose thevery counterpart of Hackett's, it was plain that insanity was hereditaryin the family, and Hackett had come by it by legitimate inheritance.

  Of course the jury then acquitted him. But it was a merciful providencethat Mrs. H.'s people had been afflicted as shown, else Hackett wouldcertainly have been hanged.

  However, it is not possible to recount all the marvelous cases ofinsanity that have come under the public notice in the last thirty orforty years. There was the Durgin case in New Jersey three years ago.The servant girl, Bridget Durgin, at dead of night, invaded hermistress'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 bangedit with chairs and such things. Next she opened the feather beds, andstrewed the contents around, saturated everything with kerosene, and setfire to the general wreck. She now took up the young child of themurdered woman in her blood smeared hands and walked off, through thesnow, 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 andsetting fire to the house; and then she cried piteously, and withoutseeming to think there was anything suggestive about the blood upon herhands, her clothing, and the baby, volunteered the remark that she wasafraid those men had murdered her mistress! Afterward, by her ownconfession and other testimony, it was proved that the mistress hadalways been kind to the girl, consequently there was no revenge in themurder; and it was also shown that the girl took nothing away from theburning house, not even her own shoes, and consequently robbery was notthe 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 offeredin her defense. The judge sentenced her, nobody persecuted the governorwith petitions for her pardon, and she was promptly hanged.

  There was that youth in Pennsylvania, whose curious confession waspublished some years ago. It was simply a conglomeration of incoherentdrivel from beginning to end, and so was his lengthy speech on thescaffold afterward. For a whole year he was haunted with a desire todisfigure a certain young woman, so that no one would marry her. He didnot love her himself, and did not want to marry her, but he did not wantanybody else to do it. He would not go anywhere with her, and yet wasopposed to anybody else's escorting her. Upon one occasion he declinedto go to a wedding with her, and when she got other company, lay in waitfor the couple by the road, intending to make them go back or kill theescort. After spending sleepless nights over his ruling desire for afull year, he at last attempted its execution--that is, attempted todisfigure the young woman. It was a success. It was permanent. Intrying to shoot her cheek (as she sat at the supper-table with herparents and brothers and sisters) in such a manner as to mar itscomeliness, one of his bullets wandered a little out of the course, andshe dropped dead. To the very last moment of his life he bewailed theill luck that made her move her face just at the critical moment. And sohe died, apparently about half persuaded that somehow it was chiefly herown fault that she got killed. This idiot was hanged. The plea ofinsanity was not offered.

  Insanity certainly is on the increase in the world, and crime is dyingout. There are no longer any murders--none worth mentioning, at anyrate. Formerly, if you killed a man, it was possible that you wereinsane--but now, if you, having friends and money, kill a man, it isevidence that you are a lunatic. In these days, too, if a person of goodfamily and high social standing steals anything, they call itkleptomania, and send him to the lunatic asylum. If a person of highstanding squanders his fortune in dissipation, and closes his career withstrychnine or a bullet, "Temporary Aberration" is what was the troublewith him.

  Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so commonthat the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminalcase that comes before the courts? And is it not so cheap, and socommon, and often so trivial, that the reader smiles in derision when thenewspaper mentions it? And is it not curious to note how very often it winsacquittal for the prisoner? Of late years it does not seem possible for a manto so conduct himself, before killing another man, as not to be manifestlyinsane. If he talks about the stars, he
is insane. If he appearsnervous and uneasy an hour before the killing, he is insane. If he weepsover 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 againstinsanity. There is where the true evil lies.