The proffered evidence not only covered the whole of Lamson’s life from the days of his medical pupilage at Paris till his trial, but sought to establish “a marked hereditary tendency to insanity,” from the fact that his grandmother had been in the New York Bloomingdale Asylum from the age of seventy-six till her death four years after, and had been previously suffering from “senile dementia,” the apparent cause of which was entered in the Hospital Register as “predisposing;”—that her brother, a sea captain, at the age of eighty, was in the same asylum, having been suffering for two years from “dementia,” also entered as “predisposing;” and that her daughter, a Mrs. McGregor, at the age of thirty-one, was a patient until her death about three years after—her mania “puerperal,” and also entered as “predisposing.”[215] No evidence, however, was offered of the mental condition of any less remote ancestors.
As a Medical Student in Paris in 1869-70, Lamson is described as suffering from cerebral anæmia with a tendency to melancholia, given to imaginary complaints about the surgical theatre, apt to take offence, with a passion for chemical experiments of a morbid character, generally genial in manner, and taciturn of speech. When employed in the American Ambulance during the siege of Paris in 1870-71, “his behaviour was so wild, erratic, and bad, that his associate aids were not prepared to say whether it was that of an idiot or the result of special wickedness—his mind so disordered that he could not be entrusted to administer medicines, as to the effects of which he seemed to be utterly destitute of judgment and common sense—just as likely to give a large and dangerous dose as a smaller and safe one, no matter how particularly instructed, and seemed to be utterly reckless of results.”[216]
From this date to the year 1877, no evidence was offered of his conduct or state of mind. In that year he acted as a surgeon for the Red Cross Society at Bucharest, in the Servian War. Whilst there “he exhibited a mania for the administration of aconitia in almost every case, using it in season and out of season, and in such quantities as to alarm the medical staff and render his recall to England necessary. Here, too, he appears to have commenced on himself the extravagant use of hypodermic injections of morphia, to which he subsequently became so notoriously addicted, on the plea that he was in constant pain and misery,” and to have been constantly under the influence of some anæsthetic. He was also habitually incoherent and inconsistent in his way of talking, boasting of adventures in the American Civil War, when he could have been only twelve years of age. His father, who was with him, seemed to keep a constant watch over his son, and frequently expressed his wish that some other surgeon should be associated with him.[217]
In 1879 Lamson purchased a medical practice at Bournemouth, and during the two years that he remained there, according to the testimony of friends and servants, behaved in a most erratic and strange manner. Whilst there his habit of injecting morphia under his skin increased in a most extraordinary degree, one witness saying that “he was hardly ever in his company for more than an hour that he did not use the hypodermic syringe.” When visiting patients he seemed not to know why he had come, or what he ought to do, behaving so strangely that his services were eventually dispensed with. His habit of telling extravagant stories grew rapidly upon him. His eyes had a fitful and nervous look as if afraid of phantoms. He seemed to be perpetually trying to look sane, and the witness (Warren, an artist) who spoke to these symptoms said “he had frequently seen him walking along quickly, his head hanging down, when he would stop suddenly, turn back, and branch off in some other direction, crossing backwards and forwards over the road without rhyme or reason.” Mr. Radcliffe Hall, of Welbeck-street, to whom Lamson had made in writing a perfectly baseless statement about Mrs. Hall’s antecedents, and afterwards could remember nothing about it, had seen him inject morphia twenty times a day. His servants thought him mad, and humoured him accordingly, and the patients who attended at the dispensary which with another medical man he managed, with only one or two exceptions, refused to be attended by him.[218]
From April to May, 1881, Lamson was staying at Rouse’s Point, New York, with the Rev. Irving McElroy, the rector of Christ Church, during which period his habit of injecting morphia was continued, and, according to the testimony of the rector and his wife, Dr. Winston, the Medical Director of the New York Mutual Life Assurance Company, Dr. Murray, Physician of Rouse’s Point, Dr. Hall, and others who knew him, it was seriously affecting his brain. On one occasion he was found in the public street with no coat on, and his left arm bared. He had a syringe in one hand, and with the thumb of the other was pressing down the place where the injection had been made.[219] At his friend’s house he passed the greater part of the day on the lounge, either dozing or attempting to read. He was then using a mixture apparently of morphia and atropine, but told them he preferred aconitine, but could not procure it in that section of the county. To one of the witnesses he admitted that his whole existence depended on the constant use of morphia. The marks of these repeated injections were detected by Dr. Williamson of Edinburgh whom Lamson consulted in New York in October, 1881, who marked the serious change that had taken place in his health, and urged his discontinuance of this baneful practice. Dr. Hall considered Lamson “not a perfectly sane man,” Dr. Winston considered that he “had become a helpless victim of the habit (of injecting morphia) which had seriously impaired his mental powers and destroyed his moral responsibility,” and in Dr. Murray’s opinion “he was utterly irresponsible for his acts.” It is admitted, however, that at intervals his conversation was perfectly clear and lucid, and to none of the medical men appears to have been put the legal test question, “did he know the difference between right and wrong, at the time wherein he committed the crime?”[220]
Lastly, we are offered testimony as to the condition of Lamson’s mind for a few days immediately preceding the fatal occurrence, and that of his father and wife as to his strange conduct for some time previous. All, however, that this evidence amounts to is, that he was so strange and extravagant in his manner and conduct, that he was spoken of by friends and acquaintance as a lunatic, that “for a year past his wife’s fears and anxieties had been greatly and increasingly aroused for the soundness of his mind—that his brain, predisposed to weakness, or constitutionally liable to disturbance, was unsettled by ill-health and trouble, and its disease aggravated by the use of morphia.” His father spoke to the wild and fanciful delusions in which his son indulged—the whole being myths, and believed “that for at least eighteen months he had been in an unsound state of mind, steadily increasing in its character and blinding him to the natural and inevitable effects of his acts; and that the balance of his mind had been quite destroyed.” His solicitor deposed that “he could obtain no assistance from him in the preparation of his defence—that he appeared to have no memory and to be incapable of appreciating the bearing of any of the facts of his case, or the gravity of his position; that he laboured under extravagant hallucination, whilst his statements were either incoherent, inconsistent, or manifestly the creations of a disordered brain.”
Three medical men of experience speak to the effects almost certain to be produced by such an habitually excessive use of morphia or opium, as that of which Dr. Lamson was the victim. Dr. Coghill, of the Ventnor Consumptive Hospital, and for eight years municipal medical officer and consulting physician to a general hospital in China, where he had unusual facilities for becoming familiar with the effects of opium smoking and eating, has no hesitation in saying that “anyone in the habit of using opium to such an extent would be incapable of self-control, and have his moral senses and powers of judgment deteriorated to a degree rendering him incapable of resisting morbid influences.” Dr. H. H. Kane, of Fort Washington, New York, who had written on the effects of “these drugs that enslave,” and on the “Hypodermic Injection of Morphia,” and was then in charge of a hospital devoted to the treatment of opium smokers and eaters and the like habits, admits that “as regards the question of insanity from the habitual use of opium or its alkaloids, more especially morphia, but little definite is known. Insane Asylum reports,” he adds, “record every year from six to eight cases of insanity attributed to the prolonged use of opiates; and physicians in general practice recognise it as a rare, though well-established, form of insanity. A person with an hereditary tendency to insanity, or with a mind weakened from any combination of circumstances, or from bodily disease, using this drug in large amount for a considerable time, could hardly escape some unsettling of his mental and moral powers. Actual mania, melancholia, and dementia are probably rare, but have undoubtedly occurred from this cause. Of all the forms of the opium habit that by hypodermic injection, as a rule, works the most harm in the shortest time.”
Dr. R. M. Miller, of Norwood, who saw Lamson professionally in July, 1881, when his friends were alarmed at his condition, is of opinion “that morphia and atropia, taken in such quantities, would gradually ruin the powers of the nervous system and also the powers of self-control.”
Such is the substance of the testimony of the cloud of witnesses proffered in support of the appeal for a scientific investigation into the mental state of Lamson at the time when he committed the act for which he was arraigned. To what does it amount? Even if it goes beyond proof that he was occasionally nervous, disconnected in his ideas, aimlessly untruthful, and with a hobby for the administration of aconitia as a panacea for all diseases, and a loss of vital nerve and energy, there is no evidence to suggest that these eccentricities were dangerous or ever assumed the form of homicidal mania. “If,” said a contemporary writer, “Lamson could appreciate the pecuniary benefit he would derive from Percy John’s death—and why else should he have selected his victim?—he could realise the wickedness of his act. A symptom of dangerous madness is that it acts without apparent motive—the immediate circumstances of the murder pointed to the exercise of a crafty deliberation, which, though not in itself inconsistent with homicidal mania, was not as aimless as homicidal mania.” Is it not a parallel case to that of Dove, a weak and erratic mind, in that case further weakened and unhinged by drink, in this case by the vicious use of morphia? Are not the words of Baron Bramwell in Dove’s case strictly applicable to this? “The rules of law,” said that judge, “are that it must be clearly proved that, at the time of committing the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; and if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing wrong.” Until the law is altered it is impossible to doubt that the Home Secretary was right, “that he could find in the affidavits and statutory declarations no sufficient grounds for advising an interference with the sentence of the law.”