SHELL-SHOCK SOLDIERS.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 March 1922, Page 7

SHELL-SHOCK SOLDIERS.

INADEQUATE TREATMENT. “WASTING THEIR UTILITIES.” Mr. Justice Stringer adversely criticised the present system of treatment of shell-shock patients in a case in the Supreme Court at Hamilton, in which a young man named Samuel Arthur Pudney was charged with getting £5 by misrepresenting himself to be his brother-in-law, Ronald Harry* Knapp. Mr. E. H. Northcroft represented cusedMr. Gillies, for the Crown, said prisoner had seen considerable war service and had suffered, and probably was at present suffering, from shell-shock. In October of last year he left the military hospital at Rotorua and went to stay with his married sister at Putaruru. The evidence would show that when he left his sister’s house he took away his brother-in-law’s bankbook, containing a credit of £lO. Some days later prisoner presented the bankbook to Mr. jury, asking him for an advance of £5, pointing out that the bank was closed, and offering to give Jury the book as security for the return of the money. Jury lent the prisoner £5 on the Saturday, ahd on the Monday prisoner called again and asked for the book in order to draw the money from the bank. Jury gave him the book back, but instead of going to the post office prisoner went to the Hamilton Hotel. Prisoner had already pleaded guilty to forging Knapp’s name to a receipt for £lO on q post office withdrawal slip. It would also bo shown that he had represented himself to be Knapp on several occasions. Detective-Sergeant Sweeney put in a signed statement by accused that the signature to the withdrawal slip was his, but said he had no knowledge of having written it. He had no knowledge, he also stated, of visiting Hamilton. I A good deal of evidence was taken on the subject of shell-shock as affecting the accused’s culpability. His Honor, in his address, said it would be absurd to say that because a man was suffering from shell-shock he was to be excused as a matter of course from the consequences of his actions. There would be just as much justification to say a man was to be excused because he was drunk. There was no doubt prisoner had had a profound shock to his nerves. It seemed an unfortunate system of treatment that such men should be allowed at large before they had properly recovered their self-control. It. seemed to His Honor a ridiculous way of treating these men, and it appeared to him that the institutions at which they attended were wasting'their utilities if they permitted men to be at large in such circumstances that they could get drink in unlimited quantities in order to relieve their depressed condition, but which really aggravated their already unbalanced state. If these institutions had not the power to detain these men until they had regained their self-control they should get it. Tt had not yet been established what the ultimate effect of shell-shock was on a man’s mind, and the question was as to whether prisoner’s condition in this case brought him within the definition of an irresponsible person. The acts certainly savoured of deliberate acts of fraud, but two medical men had declared that he did come within the definition of an irresponsible person. The jury must, therefore, either find him guilty on the facts, or not guilty on the grounds of insanity.

A verdict of guilty was returned, with u strong recommendation to mercy.