The Feilding Star. TUESDAY, MAY 8, 1883. Crime or Mania—Which?

Feilding Star, Volume III, Issue 101, 8 May 1883, Page 2

The Feilding Star. TUESDAY, MAY 8, 1883. Crime or Mania— Which?

» The distinction between crime and mania, considered from an abstract point of view, is fur too abstruse and disputed a matter to be discussed in these columns. So far as the community at large are concerned, they have more to do with concrete instances than abstract theories, and as a matter of everyday common sense it is no more the practice to enquire with nicety into the mental or moral mainsprings of an offender against the laws which govern society, than it is to ascertain the state of mind of a tiger before you shoot it, or to debate the exact causes which led a mosquito to leave its sting behind it. Civilized man is content to accept the dictionary defin.-* ition of crime as a violation of law, either human or divine ; and mania as any unreasonable or inordinate desire or propensity, excessive or insane notion, or passion. Whether, on the prin iple of the greater including the less, mania does not embrace crime, or, if not so, the precise point at which (for example) inordinate desire for your neighbor's property ends and deliberate larceny begins, are mattors commonly regarded as belonging rather to the province of a mad doctor than a Supreme Court Judge. Bearing in mind, however, the standard definitions of crime and mania, which we have just quoted, their application to certain notorious crimes which have been recently tried in the Wanganui Supreme Court presents a fertile field for study. Several of these cases are so familiar to Manawatu people that. we in Feilding cannot but take a special interest in them, and now that the functions of a judge j and jury have been performed over the j offenders, the lay intellect is at liberty to calmly discuss their offences, and ask, j with not unnatural bewilderment whether J they were ■ begotten of crime or mania: That crime is a species of disease, illustrative of the fact that the body acts so strongly on the mind that, scientifically I speaking, no certain border lino can be drawn between their functions, is_ beyond question ; but it is equally certain that there are forms of mental disease which society has to punish and restrain as well I as to cure. At the same time, it must be evident that, as the exact responsibility of a man for his actions is ;ii Lhe root of the administration '•?? / j-iuiiue,- the consideration of indivlmukl instances of crime or mania is of the highest practical importance. We will, therefore, feluice briefly at a few recent cases tried in Wanganui. Take, for instance, the child-mnrder, about which the general opinion is that .Phoebe Veitck is a hardened criminal of the deepest dye. Even with regard to this woman, the absence of any distinct or proved motive leads us to enquire whether she might not have been as much a maniac as a criminal. The woman herself, albeit an abandoned character (without, as her counsel said, any " sweetness or light"), possessed a singularly erratic temperament, and seems to hare been aotuated greatly by uncontrolled impulse, and by ideas which, in the case of a woman in a different sphere, might almost have been termed romantic. She writes to her friend, Mrs Wohsfold, of this town, a rambling letter, and subscribes herself "your poor silly Phgebe Veitch" ; and a more graphic, well-woven, pathetic and internally consistent story than that detailed by her at the inquest was never given in a court of justice. The strong probabilities in this woman's case are that she went to Wanganui from Feilding, half starved, and afflicted with a shocking and miserable disease; that she had two children, whom she found it difficult to keep; that there was the unhappy prospeects of her again becoming a mother ; and that the poor little girl, whose life was afterwards taken, bore in her very face and blood palpable evidences of its mother's shame. From an intimate knowledge of this strange case from its commencement, we should say that Phcebe Veitch was far more likely to have acted upon sudden impulse than upon cold-blooded premeditation. Here, therefore, (without disputing the justice of the verdict or even of the sentence), we may well a«k — crime or mania, which P In other cases tried at the Supreme Court the appearance of settled mania was more clearly defined. John O'Donnell, a hobble-de-hoy, well fed and capable of doing a hard day's work, appears to have possessed an intellect which wpuMbe'jbetter defined as the low cunniDg.of a magpie/ He breaks into a whare at/Otaki,>tealsji watch and chain; and, evidently without any conception of tlie value, gives the watch to a Maori to mind for him, and "swops" the chain away for a gaudy and worthless trinket. Here , the lad had the faculties of. acquisitiver ness and secretion (common jo the young • of all Species)- highly developed, but, dangerous as the offence is, he clearly had no sense of moral responsibility, and the jury had no difficulty in acquitting him on that accounl, though it is only of late years that the progress of mental pathology has allowed people like John O'Donnell to escape. We pass over the case of Foharama, the Maori afflicted with hereditary insanity o£ a violent type,

who, spurred on by the pakeha's fire water, ran a-niuck amongst his own peop'e, and stabbed his wife. Perfectly sane and collected as the man was when in the prisoner's dock, there was no doubt that he had been as mad as a March hare. The other Maori, Hemi, who " wont through" a half-cast inebriate at Tawhiao's banquet in Foxton, and then hid the stolen watch in a hole, and pounded it to pieces in order to conceal his guilt, presents a case that might fairly be debated on the crime or mania theory. Perhaps the saddest of all the cases recently under our notice was that of Elizabeth Jacks, a girl of 16, who stole two watches and chains from an hotelkeeper who had taken her in off the streets as a matter of pure charity. It was clear from the evidence that the girl had little conception of the value of the property she had stolen, for she had it concealed in hr bosom for several days, made no attempt to dispose of it or even to leave the premises, and gave it up the moment she was threatened with, unpleasant consequences. Yet the girl seems to have been respectably brought up. and fairly educated, though neglected or incurable nuntal propensities made her a silly, purposeless thief, and a thoroughly helpless member of society. Elizabeth Jacks was dirty, destructive, larcenous, and lazy, with a tendency, however, to a nomadic life, a propensity more congenital than acquired, and it is a wonder that she was not worse. In her case, as in those of O'Donnell and Hemi, the existence of moral responsibility is so questionable that, however dangerous it was formerly considered to admit the excuse of kleptomania, all three prisoners seem to have suffered from an acute variety of the complaint. The whole of the cases we have been discussing present so much material for earnest thought and so deeply affect the welfare of society, that the lessons they suggest, especially to persons responsible for the care and training of the rising generation, are 100 obvious to need further remark.