Note 511 — OF IDIOTS AND LUNATICS.

The case of Miss Butterfield, which we shall have other occasion to refer to, is somewhat similar in effect to this. Mr. Scawen had left Miss B. a considerable legacy; but being impressed by his surgeon with the idea that she had poisoned him with corrosive sublimate, he turned her out of his house and altered his will. Mr. S. died, and so evidently by mercurial poison, that Miss B. was tried for the murder, but was acquitted, there being no evidence that she was the person by whom the poison had been administered, and a considerable probability that it had been contained in some quack medicines which Mr. S. had taken. Under such circumstances a restoration of her legacy might have been expected either from the liberality of the next of kin, or from the interposition of a Court of Equity.