Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/528

 Chapters in the EnglisJi Law of Lunacy.

487

be released — to commit, it is to be feared, more "Recognizing the gravity of his offense, he es caped to the woods, where he remained in con crimes. "Dr. Clarke, the assistant medical officer at the cealment until circumstances enabled him to Kingston Asylum, writes to me that the trial seems commit another and still graver crime. Observ ing a young girl approaching the wood, he waited to have been conducted in a very remarkable man until she came near to his hiding-place, when he ner, and that the question of the prisoner's sanity rushed out, seized her, and committed a criminal or insanity was not gone into. ' Poor B. was brought in " guilty," and the judge sentenced him assault on her; for this last crime he was con to six months' han/ labor in gaol, stating that he demned to be hanged, but the sentence was com muted to imprisonment for life. While serving must l>c lenient undfr the circumstances. What sentence he was again the circumstances were, transferred to the prisonthe asylum authorities asylum. After serving have not yet discovered, about ten years of his but we may expect very sentence he was par interesting develop doned; why he was par ments at the end of six months. We should doned remains a mys tery. On his way home not blame a foreigner if from prison, and when he asked the question, within a short distance "You have a Criminal Asylum — why do you of his father's house, he punish criminals who are went into a pasture, caught a horse, tied it insane?" ' to a telegraph pole, ana "His grave offenses mutilated it in a shock have been enumerated in the preceding state ing manner, cutting a terrible gash in its neck, ment, but, besides these, B. was guilty of very another in its abdomen, and a piece off the end many minor offenses, of its tongue. For this both while at home and while in the prison and act of atrocity he was asylum. While in the tried, and though there Criminal Asylum he at was no doubt of his tempted to castrate a guilt, he was acquitted GUILLAUME-MARIE-ANDRÉ FERRUS. poor imbecile inmate on the ground of insan with an old shoe knife, ity and, by warrant of the lieutenant-governor, transferred to Kingston vhich he had obtained in some unknown way. Asylum. He was received at the asylum on the Another helpless imbecile he punctured in the 29th of September, 1879, and placed under abdomen with a table fork until the omentum protruded; not satisfied with this, he bit the careful supervision. "On the igth of August, 1884, he made his poor fellow, who had not even sense enough to escape while attending a patients' picnic. He cry out, in many places over the abdomen and had only been absent from the asylum about chest. "He killed many small animals and birds, such an hour, and while almost in sight of pursu ing attendants, overtook a young girl whom he as dogs, cats, doves, fowls, etc. He taught many attempted to outrage. Her cries, however, innocent patients to masturbate, and introduced brought help, and his designs were frustrated. even more vicious habits. "He is a great coward, and was never known For this offense he was handed over to the civil authorities, tried, convicted, and sentenced to to attack any person or thing that would be likely six months in gaol. He is now serving out this to offer resistance. "Young girls, children, helpless lunatics, sentence, and on its expiration will, no doubt,