Note 93 — Chapter IV · (continued 5)

In his comments on this extraordinary case, Mr. Justice Stephen—after noting Dove’s predisposition to madness in his infancy; the fact that the symptoms of the disease exhibited themselves at frequent intervals, yet never reached such a pitch as to induce his friends to treat him as a madman; the prurience with which he dwelt on the prospect of his wife’s death; the forming of the design of putting her to death, and the deliberate contrivance and precaution with which he carried it out—says:—“In this state of things can he be said to have known, in the wider sense of the words, that his act was wrong? He obviously knew that it was wrong in the sense that people generally consider it so; but was he capable of thinking, like an ordinary man, of the reasons why murder is wrong, and of applying these reasons to his conduct? There was evidence both ways. His irrationality, however, was occasional, and he appears to have acted rationally enough as a rule, and to have transacted all the common affairs of life. Did, then, this act belong to the rational or irrational part of his conduct? Every circumstance connected with it referred it to the former. It was a continued series of deliberate and repeated attempts, fully completed at last.”—History of the Criminal Law. Vol. III., pp. 435-6.