MADE CRIMINAL BY A FRACTURE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 231, 26 September 1908, Page 15

MADE CRIMINAL BY A FRACTURE.

MORAL PERVERT PARDONED BT PRESIDENT. President Roosevelt has given his assent to a pardon for James D. Eggleston, son of James Eggleston, president of the Pacific Express Company, and a widely known railroad man of wealth and position. Young Eggleston is an inmate of St. Elisabeth's Hospital for the insane, ln Washington. He was transferred to that Institution from the penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kas., to which he was sent after being convicted of counterfeiting. Eggleston will be released from custody under the pardon, which is conditional, and delivered into the care of his father. He will then be placed in a private sanatorium for treatment and observation. The case is one which is calculated to attract the attention of experts in the treatment of the insane and criminologists all over the world. It is established by medical observation at intervals during the last twenty years that Eggleston, while of a bright mind and capable of obtaining the degree of doctor of medicine from a leading university, is to an extent morally Irresponsible. This is attributed to an accident which occurred when he was 12 years old, in which he suffered a fraictore of the skull and lost his right leg. Bright and modest before this occurred, his physician noted as he recovered that the character of the boy had changed, and that he was morose, given to bragging about the things he could accomplish, and at times morally perverted. Everything was done to overcame the tendency. The young man travelled over the United States and Europe, and attempted the practice of medicine that he might cure the ills of his fellow-men, only to bring up in the penitentiary. , Throughout his life the boy's father has done everything which wealth and intelligence could suggest to overcome the effects lof his accident. It was through the efforts of his still loyal parent that Eggleston's case was brought to the attention of President Roosevelt, whose heart was toin_nl I by its histotg.