"HYPNOTISED" CRIMINAL

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13396, 26 January 1907, Page 2 (Supplement)

"HYPNOTISED" CRIMINAL

DANGEROUS MAN'S ASTOUNDING DEFENCE. Arthur Bennett is either blessed with nil abnormally brilliant imagination or else is the helpless victim of some potent mysterious influence. This is the conclusion suggested by his defence at the Old Bailey to a charge of feloniously wounding Thomas. Smith, a retired bank manager of Crift'el Avenue, Streatham Hill. Bennett is a rough-looking man of 40. It was stated that on November 29 prisoner gave himself up at a police station for knocking a man on the head in Villiers-street, Charing Cross, adding that his only reason for doing it was that he was hungry and homeless, and felt desperate. Inquiries were instituted, and it was found that on the night of November 28 prosecutor had been assaulted in the manner described by prisoner. He was struck a violent blow on i'.ie head which partially stunned him, and had to he taken to Charing Cross Hospital. Prosecutor was still suffering from the effects of the injury. Prisoner said he did not wish to deny having committed an assault on a man who was quite unknown to him. He inflicted the blow with a bar of iron, which he afterwards threw into the Thames. A long list of previous convictions against prisoner was put in, dating from 1887. He had undergone several long periods of imprisonment with hard labour and one term of penal servitude. Whilst serving one of his sentences lie was sent to a lunatic asylum for a few months, at the expiration of which he was discharged as sane. Prisoner, addressing the court, made it, rambling statement to the effect that he was a victim of the scientific process known as hypnotism or mesmerism, under the influence of which '.. ha""? committed various rash acts at different times, 'instancing' <.]-. present a&L-ait and also a robbery he committed in the New Cut. when he broke into a jeweller's shop in sight of a policeman and threw some of the contents of the shop into the roadway. Whilst he was in prison he struck a person who had insulted him, and instead of being properly tried for that offence he was packed off to Canehill Lunatic Asylum, where the doctors subjected him to all kinds of scientific experiments in hypnotism and could MAKE i;;m no ANYTHING they LIKED. They could make him dream all kinds of thing.-—that dogs were biting him, and so on. One of the doctors asked him who it was that first hypnotised him, and he replied that he did not know, unless it was a certain foreigner or Jew. He was detained five months in the lunatic asylum, and was then sent back to prison to complete his sentence. While he was in the asylum he saw others besides himself undergoing the processes of hypnotism. One of the experiments they tried on him was to put him on a scaffold in his dreams and hang him. When he came out of prison he had to keep his mouth shut- about those things, because, if he talkc'd about them, people thought he Mas mad. Nobody would believe him except the doctors, who knew all about it The people who had still got him under the influence made him commit himself in all manner of ways, as in this case, and they also set thieves on him to rob and insult him. It was in his sleep that he was mostly hypnotised. When lie was awake they had no power over him except when he was foolish enough to give way to them. Dr. Scott, medical officer of Brixton Prison, was sent for at the request of the court. On his arrival he said prisoner had been under his observation since November 29. The Common Serjeant: Is lie lit to plead? Dr. Scott: I-consider he is. The Common Serjeant : Then his plea of guilty will stand. '(To Dr. Scott): He suggests that he is insane. Do you believe that he is sane, and knows the difference between right and wrong, and that he know what he, was doing when he, committed this assault? Dr. Scott : I believe he knows the difference between right and wrong. He has led a very irregular life for many years, and that may have weakened his mind, but T could not say he is irresponsible. I should say he is a man who gives way to drink when he can get it. He is certainly a dangerous man. apt to lose his self-control. The Common Serjeant remarked that prisoner had evidently on one occasion given those, in charge of him the, idea that he was irresponsible for his actions. He had been several times convicted and was a dangerous subject. Tf he was found to be insane after sentence he would, of course, be treated as such, In the meantime it must lie placed out of his power to commit violent assaults, such as that he had pleaded guilty to. for a long time. He ordered him to be kept in penal servitude for seven years.