| This thesis examines the history of the insanity defence in Victorian Ontario. Its main sources are the criminal justice records in the cases of over two hundred individuals, mostly men, many charged with murder, in which the defendants were alleged to be insane. By English common law on which Ontario law was based, insanity could excuse crime: the person who committed an illegal act was to be acquitted of all guilt if he or she were legally insane at the time of its commission. The problem, of course, was in the definition of legal insanity, a definition that was decided afresh in each trial.; By examining the outcomes of trials, we can see the broad shifts in authority over the century, from local community to central state, from lay to professional, and from medical to legal. But this thesis is concerned as much with the perspectives of the less important as with the elite. It addresses, for instance, how families of the defendants made moral meaning of acts of violence by disturbed relatives, and in the process shows that the family remained central to the prosecution and disposition of offenders. It argues that local jail doctors were more important witnesses in many trials than were early psychiatrists. It focuses on the experience and attitudes of defendants, victims, and families of the accused, as well as on medical men, lawyers, judges, and jurors. This thesis, therefore, addresses issues in the history of crime in addition to criminal justice, and mental illness as well as psychiatry. |
