Crime & criminals : being the jurisprudence of crime, medical biological, and psycological / by Charles Mercier... with an introduction by Sir Bryan Donkin.

  • Mercier, Charles Arthur, 1852-1919.
Date:
1918
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Crime & criminals : being the jurisprudence of crime, medical biological, and psycological / by Charles Mercier... with an introduction by Sir Bryan Donkin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/334 (page 10)
    partly because I think that a display of learning made by constant references to authorities is dearly bought by the interruption they cause to the attention of the reader. My acquaintance with criminals and their doings is of long standing. As medical officer of lunatic asylums I have had criminals under my charge ; as surgeon to the police and as consulting physician I have conducted many personal examinations of the mental constitution of criminals, both sane and insane, have attended many trials, and given evidence in many cases ; and consider¬ ing the notorious reputation of expert witnesses, I may record with satisfaction that I have been complimented by three judges of the High Court on the fairness of my evidence. My study of conduct in general, as embodied in my book Conduct and its Disorders, stands alone as the only study in existence of the subject; and of conduct in general criminal conduct is a part. The study of the human mind, including the criminal mind, has been the chief study of my life. Although, there¬ fore, I am neither a police official, a criminal lawyer, nor a prison official, I can claim to have some first-hand acquaintance with the subject ; and although my know¬ ledge of any one department of it must be less than that of a person directly engaged in that department, it is perhaps on that very account less one-sided, and may enable me to take a more comprehensive view, less trammelled by precedent and deference to authority. The fact that to my book on Criminal Responsibility was awarded the Swiney Prize, on the adjudication of, among others, the then Lord Chief Justice, shows that the view of an outsider may sometimes deserve con¬ sideration. Sir James FitzJames Stephen, the most clear-headed jurisprudent that this country has produced, says in his