THE LAW AND MEDICINE [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—It has been sometimes remarked by judges and magistrates that the law takes no account of psychology, by which it would appear to be meant that the law persistently, ignores the advance of knowledge in the medical profession. Of all glaring cases of this, I am disposed to think few can equal the following :
In the year 1921 a young man of twenty-eight was fined fifty shillings as a suspected person. It, turned out that he had tried to cut off a girl's. hair. A month later he was fined ten shillings less, and this time he successfully completed the operation. Three years later he was again before the same court for a similar offence and was.sentenced to twenty- one days' imprisonment. Eight months after this he was sentenced to six months' hard labour at a London police court for another act of unsolicited haircutting. He next appeared in court in the spring of the following year, ,1925, when he received three sentences of two months' hard labour on three separate charges of haircutting. A year later. (1926) he received another sentence of six months' hard labour for two more similar assaults. On the day of his release from this last, sentence he robbed a person of ten shillings in order to buy a pair of scissors, with the result that he speedily received another six months with hard
labour for another successful clipping. .
On this, occasion a specialist pleaded with the magistrate to give the man the benefit of psychological treatment, giving many reasons why a penal sentence was unlikely to be of any service in his case. The magistrate replied to the prisoner, " The safest place for you is prison," adding, " I only wish I could give you more than six months." This happened in the year 1927.
The unfortunate man reappeared the other day at the Old Bailey on yet another similar charge. This time he asked whether he might be put under the care of a medical practitioner versed in the understanding of such curious impulses. He was sentenced to eleven, months' imprison- ment, the judge remarking that he would receive ample medical attention within the walls. The story will doubtless continue therefore. in eleven months' time.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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