MEN OBSESSED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 4, 6 January 1933, Page 12

MEN OBSESSED.

INSANITY AND CRIME. SYDNEY MURDER CASES. FATHER'S TERRIBI/E DEED. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, December 30. Nowadays alienists and psychologists »ro fond of diagnosing criminal cases, »nd the complaint is sometimes made that they are too fond of ascribing crimes to mental derangement and pleading for alleviation of judicial penalties on this ground. They may be right in tome cases, but within the past week a connection has, been established . here between crime and insanity in two cases In which the argument is hardly open to discussion. I referred SQme time ago to the murder of young Philip Govett, the son ©f a wealthy retired schoolmaster at Bellevue Hill. At the time there was lome talk of a suspicious character lurking about that vicinity, and it was suspected that this crime, with others resembling it, might be the work of some homicidal lunatic. But the arrest of old "Nathaniel Govett, the boy's father, Shortly afterwards put an end to this rumour, and the condition in which the old man has remained ever since has confirmed the conclusion of the police that he was the perpetrator of this terrible deed. ... Evil Transformation . Old Govett was well over 60 when Philip, his illegitimate son, was born. He always professed great affection for the mother and the child, and as he subsequently recognised the boy as his heir, and brought him up.h.luxury, he.cannot be said to have neglected his responsibilities in this respect. Now he is over 80, pathetically withered,. bent and aged," tire victim of senile decay; and pathologists tell us that in the.la.ter stages of mental collapse due to . the": ravages of age the victim will often.- believe that * those nearest and dearest to him are converted into deadly, enemies, and he will turn upon thein with* unrestrained ferocity. Some such evil transformation must have beeh'at work .tb : change Nathaniel Govett, the conscientious business man, the affectionate guardian of a well-loved child, into a pitiless murderer. To-day' he seems.bar-mless. . His- brain is barely awake, and" his speech has -degenerated' into "unintelligible mutterings*." No doubt he is mad, and senije dementia," without" any rational and conscious pur-, pose behind it, was the source and origin of this ghastly crime. feared Wife's influence. ' The other recent case which is clearly susceptible of a similar explanation was the murder of Lily Bent by her husband, a returned soldier, -who also~.attemptedto commit suicide. When the two were found —and Bent had made a halfhearted attempt to kill one of his little sons—he made some rambling statement in which he tried to explain to the police that he suffered from epilepsy, that his wife had contracted it from him, that he knew this because her complexion was changing and she was "going black," and he thought that they would both be better "out of the way." He was committed to the Long .Bay Infirmary for observation, and the medical report is to the effect that 'Tie is afflicted by auditory hallucinations." He hears voices and sees visions of his dead wife. "He is quite incapable of caring for himself," it is stated, "and at large would be a menace to humanity." In this case it is possible to trace the mental displacement to physical causes, for Bent had been badly "gassed" in the ■war.,--Up-to .a.fortnight. -.■ before--this, tragedy he had seemed affectionate and cheerful, and then suddenly this idea of a mysterious transformation .through which his wife was passing, and a malign influence 'that "she exercised over him, became "a maddening obsession, urging him insistently" to violence and destruction. ' - T' . "■' There is little room left for doubt that the murder of Mrs. Bent was not the outcome of, any sanguinary and ferocious predisposition to crime, but the fruit of madness alone; —