A CLEVER LUNATIC.

Southland Times, Issue 1165, 15 November 1869, Page 3

A CLEVER LUNATIC.

The intellectual activity of a certain class of lunatics is curiously illustrated in the report on the lunatic asylums in Ireland, which has lately been printed and laid before Parliament. A man named Joseph Langfrey escaped from the Central Asylum with two other patients, none of the party being looked upon as lunatics by the medical officers, although confined there as criminal lunatics. Mr Langfrey was the leader of the fugitives, and is described as being of an extraordinarily clever and ingenious mind. He could do things quite beyond wliat men in general can perform, and his cleverness was even exceeded by his versatility. He was a good shoemaker, a tailor, a weaver. He made from a scrap of iron, a key, by which he could open the door of hia division. He put together a wooden sewing machine of his own contrivance, with which he made clothes for himself; and his mind, just before his escape, seemed so intent on improving this machine that there was ! little apprehension of bis attempting to escape. His career, it is stated, before be came to the asylum was most extraordinary. He had been in the British army, in the French array, and in the French navy ; and had been in British, German, and Bussian prisons. He had a fair grammatical knowledge of French, knew something of German, and was completely self-taught; his age, although he had gassed the various phases of existence above described, was only twenty-seven. He spoke well and reasonably, the great defect in his character being a fickleness of purpose. He had that rambling disposition that is never sated with adventure ; and if his principles were good and upright he would in all probability have had |ajdistinguished career in life. Langfrey was is fact not unlike one of Ouida's heroes. No trace of him has yet been iound. — Pall Mall Gazette. t