I saw at once what I had to deal with, and I listened with the greatest attention to the story my visitor had to tell. As he told it he worked himself up into a frenzy. His features became convulsed, and he struck my writing-table again and again with his clenched fist. I only got rid of him at last by recommending him to a firm of solicitors, who would take his case up and see that his enemy—a near relative—was legally restrained from conspiring with an oculist to put his eyes out.
Only once before have I conversed with a man who declaimed with such insane violence against an imagined enemy. I felt safer then, for the interview took place at Broadmoor, and two stalwart keepers stood by while the poor maniac foamed and raved.
A year after my visit to the Broadmoor patient—a gentleman whose case had excited a good deal of interest—there was a movement to obtain his release. His friends thought he was cured, and that it was quite safe for him to be restored to his family. Fortunately the authorities took a different view.
This gentleman had committed no actual crime. He had only pointed a pistol at the head of his "persecutor" and threatened to shoot him. Had he recovered in Broadmoor he would have been released. But his dementia had increased during his stay. The actual murderer who becomes sane leaves Broadmoor occasionally. It is not the King's pleasure to keep the sane in a lunatic asylum. In such cases every precaution is taken to insure control and comfort in the home to which the Broadmoor patient returns. The same care is not, unfortunately, always exercised by the authorities of non-criminal asylums, and every week scores of lunatics whose mental health has only been temporarily restored are discharged and return to the family and the home, and wander the streets of London at will.
The relative who is, or has been, in a lunatic asylum is the skeleton in many a family cupboard. In wealthy homes every care is taken to keep the mad member of the family under close observation, but among humble folks such care is impossible. The lunatic is left to look after himself.
There was a man hanged recently for murdering a relative. The murder was wanton and barbarous. The motive of it was a fancied grievance. No one came forward at the trial to save the murderer from the gallows. The barbarity of the crime had turned even his own relatives against him. But the accused had for ten years been looked upon as a madman in the neighbourhood in which he lived.
"He ought to be in an asylum," had been the criticism passed upon his conduct more than once.
Too late to save this man I ascertained the facts. "I've looked upon him as mad for years," said one of his neighbours to me, "and his people knew he was."
"Then why," I asked, "didn't they have him put under restraint?"
"Well, you see, he'd never murdered anybody before," was the reply.