Madness on trial

A transatlantic history of English civil law and lunacy

James Moran

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781526133038
• eBook ISBN: 9781526133052
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book examines the powerful influence of civil law on understandings and responses to madness in England and in New Jersey. The influence of civil law on the history of madness has not hitherto been of major academic investigation. This body of law, established and developed over a five hundred year period, greatly influenced how those from England's propertied classes understood and responded to madness. Moreover, the civil law governing the response to madness in England was successfully exported into several of its colonies, including New Jersey. Drawing on a well-preserved and rare collection of trials in lunacy in New Jersey, this book reveals the important ties of civil law, local custom and perceptions of madness in transatlantic perspectives. This book will be highly relevant to scholars interested in law, medicine, psychiatry and madness studies, as well as contemporary issues in mental capacity and guardianship.

1
Introduction: civil law and madness in transatlantic context

The madness of James B.

From the early modern period to the First World War the importance of the civil law in the history of madness was dramatically played out in the life experiences of countless English and American subjects and citizens. In the case of James B., the entanglements of civil law and madness began with his first major employment with his uncle's diamond import company. In 1875, by the age of twenty-two, James B. had sufficiently impressed his uncle to be put in charge of the company's office in London, England. Just before he moved to London, he was married to Carrie B. Soon afterwards the couple had their first and only child. At a certain point in London, perhaps from the pressures of a new family and from being in charge of the London branch of his uncle's diamond import business, James B. began to drink heavily. According to James B., he was recalled to New Jersey from London in 1891 after correspondence between his wife and his uncle in which Carrie stated that she could no longer live with James on account of his heavy drinking. James B. freely admitted that he was also suffering from ‘nervous depression’, and that he had consented, at the request of his uncle, ‘to go to a retreat, and remain until [he] was better’.¹ However, the next five years of James B.'s engagement with mental health institutions, and with the New Jersey civil courts, were marked by controversy and acrimony.

The details of James B.'s life, and the context of his mental troubles, are made available through civil legal documents of the New Jersey Court of Chancery. A lunacy trial was filed against him in July 1893. This civil trial in lunacy, launched against James B. by his wife, found him to be non compos mentis – mentally incapable of governing himself or his property. James B. fought back against the decision of the civil court by attempting to traverse, or overturn, the verdict of non compos mentis. Together, these legal proceedings created over six hundred pages of documentary evidence. The verdict of the twelve ‘good and lawful men’ summoned as jurors to the trial was that James B. was ‘of unsound mind’ with ‘no lucid intervals’. The proceedings of the trial were transmitted to the Orphans Court, whereupon guardianship arrangements were made, placing James B.'s wife in charge of his person and of his considerable income, valued at $200 per year, and fixed property of about $28,000.

One year and one month after this verdict, in August 1894, James B. filed for a traverse (a new trial to re-examine his mental state) in an attempt to regain his legal status as a sane man and to take back control of his property. At this trial, James B. claimed that, upon returning from London, he had taken the ‘Keeley cure’ in Philadelphia, which cured him of his drinking habit. However, still suffering from a ‘nervous depression’, James B. had consulted Dr Banker, who recommended that he start taking ‘bromide of soda or sodium’ to help him sleep. Despite James B.'s concerns about becoming addicted to this new substance, his doctor reassured him that the chances of this happening were remote. Shortly thereafter, he became addicted to bromides, and it was at this point that he agreed to his uncle's request that he find a retreat in which to recover. But, James B. claimed, ‘I was decoyed to [an] asylum after I had consented to go to a retreat, had consulted with a doctor about it; under the pretext of taking me to such a place for inspection, he landed me like a felon into the asylum.’² The asylum, to which James B. was committed on 7 May 1893, was the publicly funded New Jersey Morris Plains Lunatic Asylum. It was during James B.'s five-month stay at the Morris Plains asylum that his wife launched the lunacy trial against him. In his trial of traverse, James B. testified that he had not been made aware of the original lunacy trial proceedings and thus had had no ability to defend himself against the accusation or the verdict. Upon his release from the Morris Plains asylum, James B. was admitted to the private Long Island Home at Amityville.

The trial of traverse was largely a consideration of whether or not James B., who was originally diagnosed with paresis when he was committed to the Morris Plains asylum, could have sufficiently recovered from this condition to take back control of his person and property. Opinion on this matter was divided among medical professionals, and these divisions were further exacerbated by the tough questioning of well-paid lawyers acting on behalf of James B. and on behalf of his wife. For instance, Dr Orville Wilsey, the physician in charge of the Long Island Home at Amityville, argued that ‘no case of paresis ever recovered yet. Once to have paresis is always to have it until you die, although perhaps frequently there are remissions when the disease is not as marked or is not making rapid progress as it did before … I think [James B.'s] is a case of paresis passing through a remission where the mental symptoms of dementia and loss of will power are most marked.’³ Mr Hardwicke, James B.'s lawyer, was so aggressive in his questioning of Dr Wilsey's expertise in the mental condition of paresis that the Master in Court intervened to caution the lawyer. Hardwicke countered that he wanted ‘simply to show by this witness that he keeps an asylum where patients are put by relatives in order to get their money and by wives to get rid of their husbands’.⁴

Despite these kinds of contentious comments, characteristic of most of the trial proceedings, most medical witnesses agreed that James B. suffered from paresis. What was not so clear about James B.'s condition, until Dr Edward Spitzka gave his testimony towards the end of the trial, was that James B.'s paresis was brought on by syphilis. When asked by Mr Guild, the lawyer acting on behalf of Carrie B., ‘what the supposed or claimed nature of [James B.'s] malady’ was, Spitzka replied, ‘I found out’.⁵ When pressed by the lawyer about what Spitzka had found out, the doctor replied, ‘There is a lady present [in the court room]; of course it was aggravated by intoxicants.’⁶ Like most of the other medical experts on the witness stand, Spitzka concluded: ‘I should think [James B.] was able to mind his own affairs. I might not counsel him to rush into feverish activity, but in regard to the ordinary every-day affairs of business, I see nothing at all objectionable to his entering into them.’⁷

Yet, the weight of the long and drawn-out testimony of the trial of traverse did not convince the Special Master in Chancery, Frank Bergen, that James B. had ‘sufficiently recovered to make it proper to give him complete control’ of himself and property. On 18 August 1894 the Master declined James B.'s attempt at traverse. For James B., this was clearly not acceptable because, in his opinion, ‘my wife is … a very strong-minded woman, and I have always had a great respect for her, but she is very determined, and I am very determined, and we neither of us like to yield, and, under such circumstances there will be times when there is friction when neither of us wants to give in’.⁸ True to his remarks, through repeated appeals to the Special Master in Chancery, by 12 March 1898, James B. finally regained full control over his property and person.

In many respects, the civil trials of James B. relating to his mental state encapsulate key aspects of this book. His increasing mental trouble in London, and his return to the town of Elizabeth, New Jersey, underline the transatlantic nature of lunacy investigation law. This body of law that encompassed trials in lunacy, chancery court proceedings, proceedings in guardianship and trials of traverse had its origins in fourteenth-century England. Its development in England included its successful migration across imperial pathways to several colonial and post-colonial contexts, including New Jersey. James B.'s five-year engagement with lunacy investigation law, from 1893 to 1898, came towards the end of the real influence both in England and in New Jersey of this legal response to madness – a period that marks the end point of this study. His trials also highlighted the melding of lunacy investigation law with various medical responses, including those from physicians, asylums and specialty institutions for the mentally unwell. The ability of James B. to use traverse proceedings to challenge the verdict of non compos mentis also bore witness to the enduring legal principle, grounded in the civil law of lunacy, that those considered insane had the potential to recover their mental faculties and to regain control over themselves and their property. Finally, the detail provided by evidence from legal investigations into the madness of individuals like James B., both in England and in transatlantic settings like New Jersey, allows for a close reading of the importance of civil law in the response to madness, and of the complex dynamics of family and community in this civil legal process.

This book examines civil law responses to madness in England and in the North American territory of New Jersey. In England, by the eighteenth century, the law governing trials in lunacy had become a sophisticated legal response to those among the propertied classes who suffered from madness. This response included the famous writs de lunatico inquirendo, the investigations into the mental state of individuals by trial (often with a full jury), the participation of lawyers, judges and witnesses in these trials and the establishment of a tradition of precedent which Lord Chancellors drew upon in their considerations of what madness was and how it should be dealt with. A trial verdict of non compos mentis resulted in the establishment of guardianship both for the individual deemed legally mad and for his/her property.

As Akihito Suzuki has pointed out, there were over three thousand lunacy trials in England between 1660 and 1853.⁹ This bears some statistical testimony to their importance but does not, as Suzuki notes, address how these trials also permeated English society's understanding of the problem of mental breakdown.¹⁰ This book shows that the development of this body of law was central to understandings of and responses to madness in England over several centuries, before, during and after the emergence of the large public asylums of the nineteenth century. Lunacy investigation law helped to structure approaches to madness among England's elite, but its reach was broader than that. By investigating the evidentiary fragments of this legal process that have been left behind, largely through a study of case reports, a sense is gained of English familial and community approaches to madness, especially for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. So too is the extent to which familial and community understandings of madness were structured around the civil law in England over a considerable period of time.

Next, the book considers how lunacy investigation law was transplanted into the colonial and post-revolutionary context of New Jersey. Like other English institutional and cultural imports, the law of lunacy investigation was successfully adopted into the colonial contexts of North America and elsewhere.¹¹ Drawing on a large evidentiary base of lunacy trials and other legal documents for New Jersey, it is possible to study in detail the development of this law. Luna...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Note on sources
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: civil law and madness in transatlantic context
• 2 Suing for a lunatic: lunacy investigation law, 1320–1890
• 3 Indefinite mental states: negotiating the legal definition of madness
• 4 Trials of madness: family struggles over property in England
• 5 Care and protection: managing madness in England
• 6 Atlantic crossing: lunacy law as colonial inheritance
• 7 Family, friends and neighbours: localising madness in New Jersey
• 8 Asylum in the community: managing madness in New Jersey
• 9 Orders of insanity: lunacy investigation law and the asylum reconsidered
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index