STRUGGLE WITH MADNESS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 11, 29 August 1911, Page 8

STRUGGLE WITH MADNESS.

A terrible story of a man’s life-long fight with madness was told at. tho Old Bailey when George Douglas Hay, tho cyclist who “held up” and shot a. motor-cyclist named Splitter near Barnet, was found to be insane, and ordered to be detained during his Majesty’s pleasure. Dr. Dyer, medical officer of Brixton prison, said the prisoner was exceptionally well educated and of refined tastes. ; The witness then read extracts from an autobiography written by Hay while ho was in prison. This remarkable document contains a most extraordinary solf-analysis by tho prisoner. Hay began to suspect that insanity was growing on him, and fought desperately to retain his reason. The following is a passage from his autobiography:—“it was necessary for me in the conflict of personality, absolutely to dominate one—that was the only tost of whether I was succeeding in killing my psychic enemies in the internal struggle, and I instinctively felt that if I stayed in the presence of any one, the conflict, at first subconscious, would inevitably end in his killing me or my Idling him. During these terrible months I spent hours daily in tho innermost self-dis-section and self-suggestion, lying for hours in my bedroom with every faculty suspended save my thoughts, with which I wrestled until I seemed to agonise.”