“Dr. Smith, medical officer at Stafford Prison, confirmed Sir Richard Brayn’s evidence.
“The Judge: ‘I suppose you both looked carefully to see if the prisoner was shamming?’ ‘Oh, yes, I am entirely of the opinion that he was not shamming.’
“Kramer was found to be insane, and was ordered to be detained during his Majesty’s Pleasure.”
In addition to epileptics and the insane there exists a number of people, male and female, who present to those who know them a more pitiful and hopeless problem than the altogether mad, for the altogether mad are at any rate restrained and protected.
The men and women of whom I now speak suffer from some kind of mental disease that has not yet been classified, but which prevails to a much larger extent than the public is aware.
This disease does not prevent them following their ordinary occupations. Indeed, many of them are regular and indomitable workers, and it is probable that the great interest they have in their occupations prevents them becoming certifiably insane. Such men and women continue for years at their places of business or in their situations, conducting their affairs in an efficient manner; to their companions they appear quiet and decent people, though a little sombre.
But very different is the impression produced on those who unfortunately know them at home! Released from the engrossing interest of business, their mental and moral condition becomes apparent. Of all the sorrow and misery that I have seen in the sorrowful world in which I have lived and moved, I have seen no more woeful spectacle than the sight they present—objects at once pathetic, terrifying and hopeless. While all sorts of imaginings occupy their minds, some great delusion seems to dominate them and to destroy every atom of home comfort. Place them under authority, surround them with medical officers, question them and cross-question them, examine them and re-examine them, watch them unceasingly and they defy every member of the faculty to find traces of insanity.
Under such circumstances they can control their thoughts and speech; to a certain extent they can make the worst appear the better reason.
Only at liberty, when free of all control, is their condition made manifest. Sometimes they appear to have a feeling that mentally all is not quite right with them, but this feeling is but momentary, and soon disappears in the overmastering belief in the altogether imaginary wrongs they suffer at the hands of their friends.