Perhaps the real issue, said Mr. McClure, is not so much whose hand caused their death as the state of mind of the man at the time.
A note in Goodchild's handwriting read, Please forgive me. My brain has been gone a long time.
Mr. McClure added that in a state" ment Goodchild said that he started arguing with Mrs. Whybrow about money, lost his temper, and hit her with a hammer. The girl came in, and he tied her hands and a pinafore round her throat and stabbed her with a poker.
Mrs. Goodchild, the defendant's mother, replying to Mr. Linton Thorp, K. C. (defending), said that her son had been "rather funny" lately. He would get into a temper when spoken to and his eyes glar His grandmother died in an asylum Dr. Grierson, medical officer of Brixton Prison, said that he thought Goodchild was now sane. He could not say whether he was sane or insane at the time of the alleged offence.
Goodchild did not give evidence.
Dr. Denis Carroll, director of the Institute for the Treatment of Delinquency, called for the defence, expressed an opinion similar to that of Dr. Grierson.
Replying to Mr. Levy, also for the defence, Dr. Carroll said that from his observation it was his impression that Goodchild would be certifiably insane in about a year.
The Law Clear Lord Hewart, summing up, said: After a good di 1 of experience of the practice and administration of the criminal law, few things surprise me more than the apparent levity with which juries are sometimes asked to find a fellow-creature insane, with all the consequences which being found to be a criminal lunatic involved."
The law was clear on the point. It must be proved that the accused person was labouring under such a defect of reason from disease of the mind as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or, if he did, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong. What evidence was there in the case to prove these things? If they took away all the trimmings and reduced the words to their meaning, all Dr. Carroll said was that Goodchild was sane when he saw him, and that he could not say whether or not he was at the material time.
The question I have asked myself, added Lord Hewart, is whether I should allow this suggested defence of insanity to go to the jury, but here are certain features in the case and I let it go to you.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.