VI.—The following report, by O. Hotzen (here abbreviated), appeared in the Vierteljahresschrift für gerichtliche Medicin, and in the Archivio di Psichiatria for 1889, fasc. 2.
Maria Köster died at the age of 22 of tuberculosis; at the age of 18 she had killed her mother with a hatchet; sixty wounds were found in the mother’s body, some of them penetrating the skull.
As until then the girl had always been of good character, quiet and hard-working, and on account of her youthful age, she was examined by medical experts in order to ascertain if any morbid conditions had limited her free will.
No mental alienation was recognised, especially at the time of the deed, but certain preceding morbid phenomena and other subsequent circumstances led the experts to an opinion which resulted in the commutation of the death penalty to which she had been condemned.
Among her maternal ancestors, and in the mother herself, there had been extreme avarice; they were most eager of money, and possessed by the fury of gain; it was proved that this impulse had in some members of the family paralysed the sentiments of equity and honesty.
The father was a drunkard.
The girl had a certain amount of education; she wrote, in an exact style, a diary of her impressions. She had acted as a servant, as an assistant in a printing-office, as a sempstress. She was thin, and slightly developed; menstruated at 19; had a very high opinion of herself.
Apparently of tranquil disposition, she was declared by some to be envious, a liar, and a thief.
Notwithstanding simulated indifference, she coveted the savings which her mother had scraped together; she cherished hatred against her parents; continual quarrels and unworthy calumnies revealed a heart apparently good, in reality selfish and depraved.
There was slight asymmetry of the face, due to flattening on the right side; there was no perceptible lack of cranial symmetry.