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.

    263/340 (page 253)
    20th of April, 1836, between nine and ten o'clock at night, a fire broke out in the house of an inn-keeper in the ham- let of le petit St. Georges, Commune of Valiant. The whole of the building, and a great part of the furniture were consumed. During the same night, Adele Mathey, a young Swiss girl of sixteen, was arrested in the neigh t bouring Commune of Granges. She was in a deep sleep when arrested. In her bed were found a steel, two flints, and a small quantity of tinder. She immediately confessed her guilt. She had been wandwing about for two months, having left her home in consequence of a violent quarrel between her and a man to whom her mother was about to be married. She was in a starving condition, and almost naked: perishing with cold and hunger, she said she had asked charity at tM'o houses without success. Seated at a short distance from a thatched barn, she pulled from her pocket a steel and tinder which she had carried for some time; she threw the ignited tinder upon the thatch, and then removed to Granges, where she ^ound shelter, and where she was arrested. She returned several times to watch the progress which the flames were making. When questioned as to her motives, she said, that she had not re- flected,—that she did not know what to say,—that it was a bad thought which had come to her mind,—that she had lost her reason,—that she did not know why she had done so, but that she knew she did it. It is deserving of notice, that when arrested, she accused one of two men, in whose company she had travelled some distance, as having in- duced her to set fire to the house, to screen herself no doubt; but this, by her own account, was suggested to her by a question put by the officer who arrested her, who, be- lieving that she was a mere instrument in the ha^ds of others, urged her to name her confederates. Was it not one of the men with whom you were in company? he