Inebriety and imbecility : a medico-legal study / by T.D. Crtothers.

  • Crothers, T. D. (Thomas Davison), 1842-1918.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Inebriety and imbecility : a medico-legal study / by T.D. Crtothers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The following records of two cases brings into promi¬ nence again the old conception of inebriety, and the recent modern view accepted by the more intelligent courts and jurors. In March, 1894, John Cronin was tried and convicted for the murder of Albert Skinner. The facts relating to his crime are these : He was a farm laborer, thirty-seven years old, living about Hartford. He has been a periodic drinker since early life, and when sober is a quiet, peaceable man ; when drinking is excitable, irritable, abusive, and often quar¬ relsome. He has been arrested and confined in jail twice for intoxication. His drink periods have been growing longer, and the sober intervals shorter for the past few years. He has been growing more irritable and stupid when drunk lately. For at least two weeks before the crime was committed he was idle and drank continuously. He was intoxicated on the night before the murder. A few weeks before this time he had a drunken altercation with the man he shot, and at that time made a threat to shoot him. Amicable relations were re-established, and he seemed to be on good terms again with this man with whom he had formerly boarded and been very intimate. On the morning of Oct. 6, 1893, he went to the house of this man, Albert Skinner, and without a word of provocation shot him at the breakfast table. He was pushed and thrown out of the house twice in a few minutes, and stood round on the street near the house with a revolver in his pocket mak¬ ing no attempt to shoot again, and coolly boasting of what he had done ; submitting to restraint and expressing a wish to