ONE BODY-TWO MINDS.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 24 April 1914, Page 7

ONE BODY-TWO MINDS.

MODERN INSTANCES OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDB.

"In that dock is a body, and in that body is a brain which, in some mysterious way, controls the actions of the body, and which possesses a power of determining right from wrong." So spoke Mr. Justice Scrutton at the Derby Assizes recently, referring to the case of an engineer who was charged with the theft of a motorcar. A doctor stated that he believed the prisoner to be suffering from automatism, and that when he committed the offence he was not responsible for his actions. Another expert expressed similar views, but the plea that the accused possessed two distinct personalities in one body brought forth the above comment from the judge, and the jury eventually delivered the verdict of "Guilty." MEN WITH DUAL NATURES. Automatism—viz., the possession of two mental beings by one person— has never before been advanced as a plea in a British court of law ; but in the case of Professor Guthrie, head of a department in the Lane Technical School, Chicago, scientist by day and cracksman by night, recalls the memory to other instances in real life of men whose dual natures were as much contrasted as that of the sedate physician in Sterenson's story, now frequenting the houses of the learned and reputed in the character of Dr. Jekyll, now haunting the scenes of vice and crime in the person of Mr. Hyde. Fifty years ago, another American professor—Webster — startled Boston society by exchanging the role of chemistry lecturer for that of murderer, the remains of his colleague, Dr. Parkman, being found destroyed almost beyond recognition in Webster's laboratory. Webster, a charming conversationalist, and the authoi of several works, paid with his life for his assumption of the character of Hyde. QUIET SCHOLAR AND CRIMINAL. A very few years later Edward Howard Ruloff, recalled to mind by Professor Goodwin Smith, in his recent reminiscences, set all America wondering over the strange career of a man who deliberately threw away the prospects of a successful career to indulge in a taste for burglary, paying the forfeit on the gallows in Binghampton Gaol, New York. Educated for the Canadian Bar, Ruloff rapidly mastered the intricacies of the law, and the highest position seemed open to him, when he risked all for a petty theft. A legal career thus blighted, Ruloff changed his name, and studied medicine. He qualified and practised, but criminal propensities again asserting themselves, he murdered his wife and child, escaping the scaffold through his cunning in sinking the. bodies in an undredgeable lake. Continuing his studies, he mastered botany, mineralogy, and many languages, and was about to take up a lucrative post in ! a college, when the Mr. Hyde in him thwarted all by plunging the quiet scholar into crime again. Ten years of prison followed, dur- \ ing which Ruloff, "the man of blood," las the "New York Tribune" said, "became an amiable and patient bookworm." His great ability showed itself in designing carpets, whereby he earned £1,000 a year for the prison, as well as by his pen. NUMBERED AMONG THE GREAT. [ The last years' of his life were spent in preparing a great work on philology, "Method in the Formation of Language," by day, and in burglary by night. This latter occupation resulting in his shooting, a store clerk, Ruloff was executed, Jekyll protesting against the iniquity of cutting off so great a scholar before he had completed his task —for the wretched indiscretion of Hyde. Stranger still was the case of Thomas Griffith Wamewright, the brilliant artist and man of letters, the friemd of the most eminent men of the day, such as Sir David Wilkie, Charles Lamb, Hood, De Quincey, an<l Dickens. How horrified were these men to find one day that the witty man of the world, whose/ essays they read and whose drawings—one still a«iong the treasures of the British Museum —they admired', had committed murder for insurance money, to say nothing of forgery. It was the Hyde that lnrked In them that brought the Rev. Dr. Dodd fashionable preacher and erstwhile chaplain to George 111., and Henry Fauntleroy, the well-known banker, reputed for his philanthropy and his splendid ' hospitality, to tl|e gallows at last. —"Answers."