SOMNAMBULIST MURDERERS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 286, 25 October 1878, Page 9

SOMNAMBULIST MURDERERS.

According to the daily papprs, a prisoner was recently convicted at lidmburgh of having, while in a state of somnambulism, murdered his child, and has since been set at liberty. Cases of this kind are very rare, but, assuming the somnambulism to be clearly proved, there can be little question of the correctness of the course thus adopted. Dornbluth, the German psychologist, tells, of a young woman who, inconsequence of a fright occasioned by an attack of robbers, was seized with epilepsy and became subject to somnambulism. While m that condition she was in the habit of stealing articles, and was charged with theft, but on the advice of Dornbluth was released and eventually cured. Sleltzcr (cited in Wbarton and Stille) gives an account of a somnambulist who clambered out of a gairet window, descended into the next house, and killed a young girl who was asleep there. And the same learned writers quote from Savarin an account of a somnarnbulibt monk (related to Savarin by the prior o the convent where the incident happened);— " The somnambulist entered the chamber of the prior ; his eyes were opened but fixed ; the light of two lamps made no impression upon him, his features were contracted and he carried in his hand a large knife. Going straight to the bed, he had fir&t the appearance of examining if the prior was there. He then struck three blows which pierced the coverings and even a mat which sarved the purpose of a mattress. In returning his countenance was unbent, and was marked by an air of satisfaction. The next day the prior asked the somnambulist what he had dreamt of the preceding night, and the latter answered that he had dreamt that his mother had been killed by the prior, and that her ghost had appeared to him demanding vengeance ; that at this sight he was so transported by rage that he had immediately run to slab the assassin of his mother." Savarin adds that if the prior had been killed the monk could not possibly, under these circumstances, have been punished.— Solicitors' 1 Journal.