Pleading "lunacy"

[snopes]

Comment: Is is true that in 18th century England you could plead "lunacy"
and get a lighter sentence when convicted of a crime?

[Embra]

Is the questioner looking for something other than a history of the defence of insanity?

Wikipedia has a summary (haven't read it in full, am not an expert on criminal legal history etc etc...)

[JoeBentley]

I believe the person in the OP is referring to the term "Lunacy" and "Lunatic" which were used as legal term in England and Wales under the, I'm not kidding, Lunacy Act of 1890-1922. The Mental Treatment Act of 1930 officially changed the term to "Person of Unsound Mind" which was then replaced by the modern term "Mental Illness" by the Mental Health Act of 1959.

So yes you could in 18th century England plead "lunacy" in much the same way you can plead mental illness today.

[Dr. Dave]

Various terms that today are used only as slang or vague or insults, etc. were at one time used officially in laws or medical writings. Examples: "feeble-minded" and "idiot."

[Embra]

Originally Posted by JoeBentley

I believe the person in the OP is referring to the term "Lunacy" and "Lunatic" which were used as legal term in England and Wales under the, I'm not kidding, Lunacy Act of 1890-1922. The Mental Treatment Act of 1930 officially changed the term to "Person of Unsound Mind" which was then replaced by the modern term "Mental Illness" by the Mental Health Act of 1959.

So yes you could in 18th century England plead "lunacy" in much the same way you can plead mental illness today.

I know that "lunacy" was the favoured term for mental illness in former times. I just wondered if the OP was trying to draw some distinction between that and insanity. I was also confused by the references to the "18th century" as the only legislative references to lunacy I could see were from the 19th.

But now I have found this, so I'm happy :

An extract from Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England 1765-1769

Book Four, Chapter 2: Of the persons capable of committing crimes...

The second case of a deficiency in will, which excuses from the guilt of crimes, arises also a defective or vitiated understanding, viz. in an idiot or a lunatic. For the rule of law as to the latter, which may easily be adapted also to the former, is, that "furiosus furore solum punitur".

In criminal cases therefore idiots and lunatics are not chargeable for their own acts, if committed when under these incapacities: no, not even for treason itself...

[Don Enrico]

Embra's quote does seem to distinquish between "idiots" and "lunatics". Does anybody know whether that is similar to todays difference between "not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing" and "if he did know it, that he did not know what he was doing was wrong"?

Don Enrico

[Embra]

The source I found does discuss the distinction between "idiocy" and "lunacy", but they seem very close, and do not quite match the definitions Don Enrico suggests:

An idiot, or natural fool, is one that has had no understanding from his nativity; and therefore is by law presumed never likely to attain any.

A man is not an idiot, if he has any glimmering of reason, so that he can tell his parents, his age, or the like common matters. But a man who is born deaf, dumb, and blind, is looked upon by the law as in the same state with an idiot; he being supposed incapable of understanding, as wanting those senses which furnish the human mind with ideas.

A lunatic, or non compos mentis, is one who has had understanding, but by disease, grief, or other accident has lost the use of his reason. A lunatic is indeed properly one that has lucid intervals; sometimes enjoying his senses, and sometimes not, and that frequently depending upon the change of the moon. But under the general name of non compos mentis (which Sir Edward Coke says is the most legal name) are comprised not only lunatics, but persons under frenzies; or who lose their intellects by disease; those that grow deaf, dumb, and blind, not being born so; or such, in short, as are by any means rendered incapable of conducting their own affairs.

The distinction has more to do with the cause of the person's state of mind: both would seem to fall under acts where the perpetrator "did not know what he was doing was wrong".

The state of not knowing "the nature and quality of the act he was doing" seems more akin to acting under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or acting during sleepwalking (i.e. intoxication or automatism). These are treated differently from involuntary mental incapacity:

English Legal System: Intoxication in Criminal Law Defences for Offences Against the Person.