“TWILIGHT OF MIND”

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 July 1936, Page 10

“TWILIGHT OF MIND”

| JUDGE ON MURDER CASE. That there is “a twilight of the mind just as there is twilight between night and day” was pointed out by Mr Justice Hanna when summing up at the trial in which Edward Ball was found guilty of killing his mother, but insane, says the ‘‘Sunday Times.” The jury was absent for five hours .and once returned for instructions on certain points of evidence. When they gave their verdict a girl friend of Ball collapsed and was assisted from the court. Ball was ordered to be detained during the pleasure of the Governor-General. According to a police statement,

> which Ball, the 21-year-old <on of a prominent local doctor,, is alleged to ■ have made, he found his mother lying ■ dead oil her bed with a safety razor ■ blade nearby. He placed Her body in th© sea' to hide the fact that she had committed suicide. j The body has not been recovered. ' Earlier, Ball’s father declared that his wife was neurotic, while' liiedical evidence has been giveii that Ball was “a definite case of disordered adolescent insanity.” Mr Justice Hanna said that the motive suggested was that the boy had been suffering for months, even years, under the disposition of his I mother towards him, and that finally I he it intolerable and gave way to tlie passion which surged inside G hiiji. r It might be that, having; regard to hia. mbritgl instability, this- gathering I„ storm applied great mental pressure’" upon him, and that suddenly something snapped.

The Judge observed that' there were many people who were very different outside their homes from wllat they wcic inside. There were men who were ideal fathers, yet who outside their homes were cross-grained. |On the conn ay, there were men who were bears in their own, homes, but the best of company at the golf' chib. It might be said that Mrs Ball outside her own homie was bright, cheery and charming, and that she was not the same inside her home. Pointing out that adolescent insanity was a rare disorder, the Judge said that he disliked very much using the word “insanity.” The terms “sane” and “insane” were relics of the time when people thought that the sane and the insane were like black and white in two separate compartments. Modern science had shown that that was not so. There I

was a twilight of the mind just as there was twilight between day and I night, he added. , Ball received the verdict quite unmoved. He stood erect facing the Judge. His father, who had been in court during the day, was not there when the verdict was returned. A