THE LEVIN TRAGEDY

Wairarapa Age, 9 February 1927, Page 5

THE LEVIN TRAGEDY

SLOMAN ACQUITTED. ON GROUNDS OF INSANITY. DETAINED IN CUSTODY. PALMERSTON NORTH, Feb. 8. William George Sloman, charged at the Supreme Court to-day with the murder of his wife and daughter at Levin on November 5 was acquitted on the grounds of insanity and ordered to be detained in strict custody at the pleasure of the Minister of Justice. Many witnesses were called in defence in support of the plea, including neighbours who testified to the prisoner’s ever-growing depression up to the time of the tragedy, the result of business worries. It was stated that Sloman expressed intentions of suicide previously. Henry John Tyzard, medical superintendent of Porirua Mental Hospital, said that he examined accused and found him. suffering from alternating or circular insanity. Sufferers of this type of insanity alternated from melancholia to mania, and melancholic patients, if no-t actually suicidal, were always potentially so. Sloman did not properly understand the nature of his act, the state of his health imparing his reasoning powers. Other medical evidence of a similar nature was also given.

His Honour, in summing up, said that it was abundantly plain that the deed was cither the act of a fiend or a madman. It had been shown that Sloman was not a fiend but a good husband and father. It was a singular thing that a text book by a well-known authority on mental diseases contained an almost parallel example with that before the Court. This authority pointed out that a suicidal melancholic, who kills his wife usually kills her as being a sharer in his own personality. When he is rational his impulses explains his conduct by saying that he could not leave one he loved to face the world alone, that his motive was to save his victim from suffering, to protect her against some more terrible affliction which threatened them jointly.—(P.A.)