Inebriety and criminal responsibility : a presidential address / by Norman Kerr.

  • Kerr, Norman, 1834-1899.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Inebriety and criminal responsibility : a presidential address / by Norman Kerr. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    fell to the ground on expert medical evidence, based on a post¬ mortem examination, and on a medical history of the deceased, that the man was so poisoned by alcohol that his life was not worth a day’s purchase. Yet all the witnesses testified that though he drank, he was never seen to be drunk. He “took his drops,” as did Kitchen. Herein is a distinct recognition, in the one instance of death, in the other instance of mental confusion brain disease and instability accompanied by testamentary incapacity, of physical and mental morbid conditions dependent not on drunkenness, but on frequent steady drinking in appar¬ ently moderate quantities. I cannot but regard this as a valu¬ able legal application of the results of modern medical research in inebriety. Acquittal on a Murder Charge.—The Perils of Inebriety. Mr. Justice Hawkins presided over the trial, on March 21st, 1891, at the Central Criminal Court, London, of C. L., who, though unqualified, practised as a medical man, for the wilful murder of his brother, a qualified medical practitioner. It was sought to be established that the prisoner had administered a fatal dose of morphine to the deceased, no one else having access to the room in which the deceased died, in which he was shut up by his brother, it being admitted that deceased died from a poisonous dose of morphine. Deceased and his brother had both been intemperate, and the deceased was a morphine inebriate. The prisoner had tried to break his brother of the habit of taking alcohol and morphine. A verdict was given of “ not guilty.” In this case, which happily ended in an acquittal, we have a striking illustration of the risk run by the inebriate and his friends, under the present law of Britain. Not only does the diseased inebriate, by his morbid craving for morphine and alcohol, and his inability to resist that craving, prematurely terminate his existence, but he also places those about him in peril of their lives through the risk of a criminal charge. The unhappy deceased really slowly killed himself and could not help doing so, and died under such circumstances as threw strong suspicion on the brother who had tried to cure him of his malady. Why should this have been ? If the legislature had made due provision, as it ought to have done, in the interest alike of the victim his friends and the community, for compulsory reception and detention (for curative pur¬ poses) in an institution for the treatment of the disease of inebriety, this medical man, who was doing what he could to help his brother, would have been spared the humiliation of