The medical jurisprudence of insanity / J.M. Pagan.

  • Pagan, J. M. (John MacMichan), 1802-1868.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medical jurisprudence of insanity / J.M. Pagan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    mendicant and the old woman, wliich he had terminated by murdering her. But such a motive, independent of its inadequacy, is discredited by facts which were stated in evidence upon the trial, by the daughter of the murdered woman, who had been absent only a few minutes from the house, upon an errand to the well near the cottage, and who stated that the cakes were untouched, not a single article had been removed, and by the minute but import- ant fact, that she left her mother knitting a stocking, and that upon her return she found her lying dead, with the worsted thread unbroken, wound round her fingers, which is altogether inconsistent with the idea of a personal strug- gle having taken place between her and her murderer. The Jury, it seemed, were more disposed to believe in the existence of such an inadequate motive for murder than in the proof of insanity, which it appears to me was com- plete. Howieson was proved to have been a solitary, silent, moody, wandering creature, long before the date of the murder. His only friends in his lodgings were a cat and a child, both of which he was in the habit of feeding before he ate his own meals. He was highly superstitious, lived under the dread of supernatural enemies, and prac- tised absurd ceremonies to protect himself against witches, such as throwing salt on his head and bed, wearing around his neck and attached to his wrist a Bible which he never read, pinning folded papers to his clothes, and attaching them to the crown of his head, without which, he said, he should have been dead. He had a fancy to become a Quaker, and attended the meetings of that society for several months, though he paid no attention to the devotion, but continued muttering to himself, smelling the Bible and pricking him- self with pins and needles to the effusion of his blood. It was known that he had more than once gone early in the morning to the meeting-house, and was seen to kneel