Joel Peter Eigen tackles this very question by examining Old Bailey cases between 1843 and 1876. In this period, he argues, a new someone or “something” had wandered into the Victorian courtroom. Eigen is particularly well-versed on the context of the legal conundrums these trials represented, having contributed much of the study for the preceding period. The notion of insanity in the post-McNaughtan era, though still not clearly defined, had some legal underpinning. Insanity pleas were considered on the ability of experts to show the accused were suffering from delusions that rendered them unable to know right from wrong. However, in the cases examined by Eigen, the perpetrators were not merely delusional, they were “absent”. Eigen's study leads the reader into a fascinating examination of the pre-Freudian unconscious.
Eigen selected five trials for close examination—intertwined with others that contextualize and expand their findings—to illustrate the dilemma of how to adjudicate in cases where the defendant was controlled by an unknown part of self responsible for actions uncharacteristic of the known self. In mental medicine, descriptions of unconscious states were plentiful—sleepwalking, epilepsy and periods of absence—and well documented in Victorian attempts to elucidate the mechanisms of self control. Eigen demonstrates that there was a “ghost in the sleepwalker”. In 1855, Hugh Pollard Willoughby shot barrister Hardinge Stanley Giffard in the cheek. At the trial, two Willoughbys presented themselves alternately to the jury, apparently sharing the same body. One was poised, gentlemanly, intelligent, articulate, and able to elicit opinion from medical experts to aid his defence, the other a “religiously obsessed, bible-thumping ranter”. Willoughby's defence counsel pleaded that he was thoroughly delusional. Two distinguishable personae in one body had appeared in medical lore and folk myth, but never, until this point, at the Old Bailey.
Confusingly, Mary Ann Hunt entered the Old Bailey in the previous decade, but her trial provides the basis for Eigen's next chapter. Initially, the evidence and guidance of the judge pointed to a woman of sound mind who had wittingly committed a brutal murder. However, testimony was introduced that questioned her presence at the crime, suggesting she suffered cyclical periods of absence, and thus challenging the existence of human agency. The defence was that her actions were convulsive, automated and not committed by Hunt. Whether or not she was present at “her” crime, she was certainly expected to be present at her execution. Hunt's case was unique, in that she was the only woman after 1843 not to be acquitted when mental absence was claimed.
The key witness in Samuel Hill's trial was a lunatic (and his 20,000 accompanying spirits). Richard Donelly, a private asylum resident, witnessed the asylum attendant, Hill, beating to death a fellow inmate. The asylum's medical superintendent—Joseph Stuart Burton—informed the court that he considered Donelly, though a certified lunatic, to be a credible witness. Apart from the spirits and associated delusions, Burton took the peculiar stance of describing Donelly as perfectly rational. The prosecutor attempted to elicit from Donelly how much his spirits falsified his recollections or jolted his memory: “the spirits assist me in talking of the date, I thought it was Monday, and they told me it was Christmas Eve, Tuesday, but I was an eyewitness, an ocular witness, to the fall on the ground.” The defence called no witnesses, arguing that the prosecution's case, being reliant on a delusional lunatic, was unsound. Despite this, Hill was convicted of manslaughter, prompting debates as to the credibility of a lunatic witness. How this case fits within the stated remit of Eigen's book is not obvious. However, his subsequent examination of the medico-psychological interpretation of spirits, double-consciousness, possession and amnesia, goes some way to bringing the chapter back into the fold.
The fourth of Eigen's main cases involves twelve-year-old William Newton Allnutt placing arsenic in a sugar bowl, in order that he might dispatch his grandfather and steal his gold. At Allnutt's trial his defence attorneys argued that his conscience was diseased and that he lacked the moral sense to distinguish right from wrong. Much was also made of the presence of voices, upon whose instruction Allnutt acted. In this case in particular, Eigen shows the difficulties of delineating mental disease within narrow legal frameworks. The judge, in summing up, circumscribed the medical testimony suggesting that the delusional Allnutt was responsible for his own condition. Though this case may appear as an exemplar of the antagonism between medicine and the law, Eigen deftly draws out the deeper complexities of this particular clash and Victorian resistance to endorsing any form of moral relativism or dereliction of individual responsibility.
The final case studied is that of sleepwalking nursemaid Sarah Minchin who feloniously wounded her charge. This case of absence is perhaps easier to understand for the modern reader, as it was to the contemporaries who were familiar with such events in popular culture and lore. The jury's decision suggests sympathy with Minchin's “condition” not evident in the trial of Allnutt. It also serves Eigen with the greatest opportunity to investigate the aforementioned “ghost in the sleepwalker”, that is, the criminal other that exists in the unconscious.
As stated on the dust jacket, Eigen “provocatively” suggests that these trials represent early incarnations of the multiple personality disorder. The reader should caution that this is not the only diagnosis that was yet to appear in the court system. You get the sense that Eigen had so much fun researching this book, that his choice of cases had more to do with what excited him, rather than what fitted neatly together, or that stood to support his final bold hypothesis. The chronology is often hard to follow. Further, more could have been made of the wider implications of the machinations and posturing of those claiming expertise in these cases. The stand alone chapters make it ideal for course reading. Eigen has accomplished the rare mix of combining academic rigour with a colourfully written, thumping good read.