A very remarkable case, involving subtle questions as to the
limits of insanity, was decided by Sir J. Wilde on Tuesday. A very remarkable case, involving subtle questions as to the limits of insanity, was decided by Sir J. Wilde on Tuesday.
Mrs. Ann Thwaytes, a person of little education and originally low origin, inherited 400,000/. from her husband. At her death it was found that she had made a will leaving the property away from her relatives to two persons to whom she had taken a great fancy, and her sister contested the will. Avoiding a mass of details, the pith of the claimant's case came to this. Mrs. Thwaytes was under the delusion that she was one of the Persons in the Trinity, or occasionally that she was about to bring forth the Savicur, and fitted up a room at the cost of 15,0001., expressly to be worthy of the Last Judgment which would take place. The evidence as to the delusions was clear, and the circumstances preclude the idea of wilful imposture, though we wonder the counsel did not start that point, making the legatee a colleague ; and the Foint was, is such a delusion compatible with legal sanity ? Sir James Wilde held that it was not, these delusions passing the point, far off as it is, reached by religious frenzies. The writer once knew a man who made his income by calculating eclipses, but who firmly believed eclipses to be caused by a dog biting the moon, that is, he believed two mutually destructive theories. He was as sane as a Hindoo can be ; but if he had believed that eclipses were caused by his biting the moon himself, he clearly must have been pronounced insane. That, apart from all other evidence, was Mrs. Thwaytes' position, and the decision may yet have a most important bearing on the rights of meu like the late Mr. Prince.
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