No. 82.
John

Perth, Sept. 17,

1867.

LORD NEAVES, in charging the jury, laid it down that McRae. insolvency did not consist exclusively in absolute inability to pay debts; but existed where a man was unable to pay his debts at the time when they fell due Fraud, &c. and ought to be paid; and that where a man has acknowledged, by granting a trust-deed for behoof of his creditors that his circumstances are such as to require him, in duty to his creditors, to put his estate under management, he may be said to be insolvent.

The case resulted in a verdict of not proven.

ALEXANDER DING WALL-Dean of Faculty Moncreiff-Watson-Asher.

MURDER-CULPABLE HOMICIDE-PROOF-INSANITY-(1.) Circumstances in which, the panel objecting, the Court declined to sanction the presence of the medical witnesses to hear the evidence. (2.) Objection repelled that medical witnesses only could be examined as to insanity. (3.) Question disallowed whether an uncle and granduncle and two aunts of the panel, whose names were specified, had been insane. (4.) Definition of insanity as a defence against a charge of murder or culpable homicide. (5.) The state of a panel's mind may be an element in the question between murder and culpable homicide where not warranting acquittal on the ground of insanity.

ALEXANDER DINGWALL, proprietor of Rannieston and Midmuir, in Aberdeenshire, was indicted for the murder of his wife, Grace Knox, by stabbing her with a carvingknife early in the morning of 1st January 1867, in consequence of which she died in about a fortnight there

Dingwall

Sep. 19-20,

1867.

Murder.

after. A special defence was lodged to the effect that, No. 83. at the time of the alleged act, the accused was insane. The accused was 45 years of age, and his late wife Aberdeen. ten or fifteen years older. He had been at one time in the Indian Army, but for the last twenty years, or thereby, he had lived in Aberdeenshire on the proceeds of his property. He had been married to the deceased for eighteen years. There were no children of the marriage. She had issue by a previous marriage, but no one lived in family with the accused except his wife. He was habitually and irreclaimably addicted to drink. ing. Having got into debt, he was induced, in 1855, to execute a trust deed in favour of Mr. James Edmond, Advocate in Aberdeen, and Mr Edmond was empowered. to fix his residence and to limit his allowance, which was chiefly disbursed through his wife and others, a certain sum being allowed for drink, but which he frequently exceeded by obtaining credit or selling or pawning articles from the house. When not under drink he was kind to his wife, but the reverse when he had been drinking and the means of getting more drink were withheld from him. About November 1846 he went voluntarily for about six months to what was called Dr. Poole's Retreat,' intended, apparently, for the reformation of drunken patients, but where he was received as what was called a free boarder,' and was consequently allowed to go out and in at pleasure, no means being taken to prevent him obtaining drink if he chose. He had occasional attacks of delirium tremens, particularly in and after 1851; and, in that year, by instruction of his agents, a medical report was obtained as to whether he could be placed in a lunatic asylum; but the report negatived insanity, and the opinions of his medical attendants continued all along to be adverse to granting the necessary certificate. It was said he had had a stroke of the sun in India, and that after his return to this country he had had convulsions which might have been epileptic, but no medical

Alexander

No. 83. witness confirmed this. Different medical men, in the
Dingwall. different places where he, from time to time, resided
Aberdeen after 1855, had been instructed by Mr. Edmond to look
Sep. 19-20.
1867. after his health. These gentlemen considered him
Murder. weak-minded, wayward, and eccentric, but none of

them thought him insane. Neither did any of the
medical gentlemen who saw him in custody after his
apprehension on the present charge, with the exception
of Dr. Howden, superintendent of Montrose Lunatic
Asylum, who thought him insane even while being
tried, (although this was not pleaded for him); but it
appeared that Dr. Howden proceeded upon information
as to matters in the accused's history which were not
consistent with the evidence adduced. Some of the
non-medical witnesses who had been acquainted with
the accused thought him not only sane, but very intel-
ligent when sober-some thought him not quite right-
while others again considered him to have been, when
they knew him, unsound in his mind, and it appeared
that in one district where he had lived for some time,
he had been designated as the' wud (i.e. mad) Laird.'
Mr. Edmond stated, that up to the time when the ac-
cused was apprehended he had always consulted with
him and taken his instructions as to the leases of his
lands and the management of his affairs, and it had not
then occurred to him that the accused was insane; but
that, subsequent to this charge, he had gone over all
their correspondence, and had come to the conclusion
that, at times, the accused had not been quite sane. All
the witnesses agreed that the accused's manners and
habits were very peculiar. He was in the practice of
kindling his own fire in the mornings, and kept a large
knife for cutting and preparing the firewood. This
knife had been rounded at the point, at his own request,
to render its use more safe. It was not, however, with
this knife, but with a large carving-knife, which lay in
the sitting apartment, that the deceased was stabbed.
At the time of the occurrence, the accused and his wife

Alexander

Sep. 19-20

occupied two apartments as lodgers in the house of Mr. No. 83. John Fyffe, in Stonehaven. Mr. Edmond paid for the Dingwall. lodgings, and authorized Mrs. Fyffe to allow the accused Aberdeen. five bottles of whisky per month; but he frequently got 1867. more by pawning his clothes, and otherwise. Prior to Murder. 31st December 1866, the accused had had no whisky for three days. On that day Mrs. Fyffe gave him three glasses of whisky-one before breakfast, i.e. before nine-one about 12-and another in the afternoon about four. He then went out and had about half-adozen additional glasses of whisky at different houses and places, of which he gave a distinct and (as the evidence shewed) an accurate narrative in his declaration, which was emitted about one o'clock on the afternoon of the 1st January, at which time he appeared to the official gentlemen concerned to be in his sound and sober senses. It was late on the night of the 31st Dec. when he returned home, and Mr. Fyffe then gave him and the deceased (who was sober) a glass of whisky each, in their own house, apparently on the advent of the new year. Mr. Fyffe then went upstairs to his own room, and as his wife was out attending a neighbour's wife in childbed, he sat reading a newspaper till about two in the morning, when, hearing a faint cry, he went down stairs and found the accused sitting on a chair in his bedroom fully dressed, and the deceased in bed, apparently unconscious, bleeding from a wound in the chest. being asked what had happened, the accused said he had murdered his wife. Mr. Fyffe went for medical and other assistance, and, on returning, met the accused coming down the staircase, on the window-sole of which Mr. Fyffe immediately afterwards found the carvingknife with fresh blood on it. On being taken hold of, the accused said he did not mean to go away-that he was sorry he had missed his mark; and afterwards he said that he wished to become another Rush.' He farther said that the only thing he regretted was that he had done it in Fyffe's house, because this would injure the

On

Alexander

Sep. 19-20,

No. 83. house afterwards for lodgers. He appeared to be quite Dingwall. cool, and remained so when taken into custody about Aberdeen. two in the morning of the 1st. Shortly before this, 1867. when Mrs. Fyffe came in and asked what he had done, Murder. he said, 'Its murder, Mrs. Fyffe,' upon which she remarked, 'Certainly you've been a blackguard.' From what the deceased said to Mrs. Fyffe, in the course of the two weeks that the deceased survived her wound,it appeared that the accused had been displeased with the deceased for hiding a pint bottle of whisky and some money on the night in question, to prevent him from getting more drink. The deceased also pointed Mrs. Fyffe's attention to the bell-pull, which was thrown up on the top of the bed, as if to prevent the bell from being rung, and said she had felt for the bell-pull on being stabbed, but could not find it. In her dying declaration, taken on oath, she stated that she was in bed when her husband came in ; that he came to bed, but rose to take a smoke; that when she was dozing, but not sleeping, he flung the clothes off her, and struck her a blow with some sharp instrument on the side, upon which she screamed, but became sick and confused, and recollected nothing more till she found Dr. Martin and Mrs. Fyffe in the room; that her husband was always kind to her when not under drink; that drink threw him into a sad state of excitement, so that he did not know what he was saying or doing; that in these states he had often threatened to put an end to his own life and hers, but

these threats have never come to anything till this 'time;' that she blamed his reading dreadful stories in the newspapers for putting such ideas in his head; adding, 'I do believe that when my husband comes to his 'judgment he will be very grieved at what has happened. 'He was very kindly, and would do anything for me, such as nurse me if I was ill, when he is himself. Nobody could be kinder than he when he is all right. It

must just have been on the impulse of the moment 'that he had done it.'