Is legal responsibility acquired by educated imbeciles? / by G.E. Shuttleworth.

  • Shuttleworth, G. E. (George Edward), 1842-1928.
Date:
[1884]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Is legal responsibility acquired by educated imbeciles? / by G.E. Shuttleworth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    ing, as bee that is drunken.” The first two classes are indeed in old writers both described under the name of idiot ■ No. 1 being idiota a nativitate, and No. 2, idiota a causd et in- firmitate. I note in Paris and Fonblanque’s “ Medical Juris- prudence”* cases cited in which it had been stated “that an. inquisition finding that a person had not had any lucid inter- vals per spatium octo annorum, was a good finding of idiocy,” lunacy being evidently regarded as possessing different charac- teristics from idiocy. It was reserved for a later age legally to confound and confuse under the common designation of lunatic “ any person found by inquisition idiot, lunatic, or of unsound mind, and incapable of managing himself and his affairs ” (16 and 17 Viet., c. 70, and 25 and 26 Viet., c. 86). Henceforward the essential difference between the imperfect and ill-ordered mental action of idiocy and the deranged and disordered mental action of insanity seems to have been somewhat lost sight of in the course of legislation ; in some sense, indeed, idiocy may be likened to the Cinderella of the unhappy family under the jurisdiction of the Lunacy Com- missioners. Notwithstanding this confusion it would seem that there still lingers in legal authorities some notion of the idiot’s in- dividuality. Thus in a recent case of homicide, the proof of which, so far as eye-witness was concerned, depended upon the testimony of imbeciles,! “ Archbold’s Criminal Pleading ” was quoted to the effect that “ an idiot shall not be allowed to give evidence, but a lunatic during a lucid interval may.” The case referred to was that of an imbecile lad, an inmate of the Eoyal Albert Asylum, who, having been startled and provoked by a younger patient suddenly denuding him of his bedclothes, jumped out of bed, knocked down his assailant, and bumped his head against the floor with such effect as to cause death from fracture of the skull, which was abnormally thin. The attendant was temporarily absent from the dormitory on a necessary duty, but the affray was witnessed by several imbecile boys who were awake at the time, and, of these, three, who seemed best able to give an account of what they had seen, were tendered as witnesses at the coroner’s inquest. The Coroner (Lawrence Holden, Lsq.), in opening the enquiry, said : “ Some of the evidence would be peculiar in this respect—that they would have to rely on the evidence of boys who were imbecile if not idiotic. If the doctor, who would be called before them, * “ Medical Jurisprudence,’’Paris and Fonblanque (London, 1823), Yol. i., p.290. f “ Archbold, C. P.,” p. 288.