Report of the trial of George Stephen for murder at Aberdeen, 18th and 19th April 1865 / by Alexander Silver.

  • Silver, Alexander.
Date:
[1865?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the trial of George Stephen for murder at Aberdeen, 18th and 19th April 1865 / by Alexander Silver. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    R E P 0 E T OF THE TRIAL OF GEORGE STEPHEN FOR MDRDER, At Aberdeen, l^th and \Wi April 1865. By ALEXANDER SILVER, M.A., M.D., ASSISTANT TO THE PROFESSORS OP MATERIA MEDICA, AND OF MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE, IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN. Reprinted from the Edinburgh Medical Journal for July 1865. On Tuesday the 18th, and Wednesday the 19th days of April 1865, George Stephen, wood“merchant. Port Elphinstone, Inverury, was tried at the Spring Circuit Court of Justiciary, held at Aberdeen, before the Lord Justice-Clerk and Lord Cowan, for the crime of murder, “ in so far as on the third day of December 1864, ... in or near the plantation on the north side of the avenue leading from the turnpike road to Thainstone House, ... he did wickedly and feloniously attack and assault the now deceased Ann Milne or Joss, or Forbes, . , . and did, with an axe or some other lethal weapon to the prosecutor unknown, strike her one or more blows on the head, whereby she was wounded on the head and her skull fractured, and she was mortally injured, and died within a few hours thereafter, and was thus murdered.” . . . The points on which this case chiefly depended for its interest were,—Is^, The completeness with which the murder was proved against Stephen; 2dly, The state of the prisoner’s mind at the time of the commission of the act; and, ^dly, The state of his mind when the sentence of death should have been carried into effect. The prisoner pled guilty to the charge of murder; but a special plea of insanity at the time of the alleged commission of the deed having been put in on his behalf, the trial proceeded. To take events in their proper sequence, it was proved that the prisoner had been long connected with this woman (twenty-seven years, as stated in one of her letters) ; that he had been accustomed to visit her at her own house; that she had frequently gone from Aberdeen to Thainstone, a distance of fourteen or fifteen miles, for the purpose of meeting him, and, according to her own account, of receiving money from him. Some of the letters found in his possession, and proved to have been written for her, contained threats of exposure if her demands were not complied with, and one, making an appoint¬ ment with him for the 3d of December, stated, that she did not want to come to his house (of which he appeared to have complained on a former occasion), but that she would not go home till she should have seen him. On the morning of the 3d of December 1864, Ann Forbes, after borrowing some clothes from a neighbour, set out from Aberdeen, intending to walk to Thainstone and back again. This was about 8 A.M., and nothing further is known of her movements until about 12 o’clock, when she called at an inn at Kintore, asked for half a gill of whisky, of which she drank the half, leaving the other half until her return, at which time she promised to pay for it as she had done on previous occasions. She was next seen a little beyond Thainstone seated on a heap of stones, and asked a boy passing if it was past one o’clock (the letter making the appointment had fixed the time between one and two