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William A. Hammond was an American doctor of "diseases of the mind." Here's a biographical sketch:
Appletons' Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events 1900 (New York: D. Appleton, 1901), Pages 477-478
Hammond, William Alexander, surgeon, born in Annapolis, Md., Aug. 28, 1828; died in Washington, D. C, Jan. 5, 1900. He was graduated at the medical department of the University of New York in 1848, after which he attended a course of clinics in the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. July 3, 1849. he entered the army of the United States as assistant surgeon general with the rank of lieutenant, which rank was raised to captain, June 29, 1854. He did duty at various forts and military posts, and acted as medical director of the Sioux expedition and as surgeon to the troops engaged in laying out a road through the Rocky mountains. Oct. 31, 1860, he resigned from the army to become Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in the University of Maryland. At the beginning of the civil war he resigned his chair and re-entered the army. He was appointed assistant surgeon May 28, 1861, and promoted April 25, 1862, to surgeon general with the rank of brigadier general. He instituted many reforms, but became involved in a controversy, was tried by court-martial, and was dismissed from the service Aug. 18, 1864. In 1868 he was appointed Professor of Diseases of the Mind and the Nervous System in the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City; subsequently he filled similar chairs in Bellevue Hospital Medical College and in the University of the City of New York. In 1882 he was one of the founders of the New York Post-Graduate Medical School, in which he held the professorship of Diseases of the Mind for years. In the meantime the President and the Secretary of War had been authorized to review the proceedings of the court-martial that had removed him from the army, and on Aug. 27. 1879, he was, after fifteen years of suspension, restored to his former place on the rolls of the army as surgeon general and brigadier general on the retired list. In February, 1888, he abandoned his practice in New York and removed to Washington. He wrote many books on nervous complaints and other medical topics, as well as some novels. His published works are Physiological Memoirs (Philadelphia, 1863); Treatise on Hygiene (1863); lectures on Venereal Diseases (1864); A Chapter on Sleep (1865); Insanitv in its Medico-Legal Relations (New York, 1866); Robert Severne: His Friends and his Enemies (Philadelphia. I860); Medico-Legal Study of the Case of Daniel McFarland (New York,' 1867); Sleep and its Derangements (Philadelphia, 1869); Physics and Physiology of Spiritualism (New York, 1S70); Clinical Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System (1871); Treatise on Diseases of the Nervous System (1871); Insanity in its Relation to Crime (1873); Spiritualism and Allied Causes and Conditions of Nervous Derangement (1870); Cerebral Hyperemia (1878) ; Fasting Girls (1879); Neurological Contributions of Studies and Case Records (1870); On Certain Conditions of Nervous Derangement: Somnambulism, Hypnotism, Hysteria, Hysteroid Affections (1881); Dr. Grattan (1884); Lai (1884); A Strong-minded Woman (1885); Mr. Oldmixon (1885); On the Susquehanna (1887); Sexual Impotence in the Male (18S(i); Sexual Impotence in Male and Female (Detroit, 1887); Spinal Irritation (1888); The Son of Perdition (Chicago, 1898); and with Clara Lanza, Tales of Eccentric Life (New York, 1886).
--end
Hammond was Surgeon General of the U.S. Army during the Civil War at the time Dr. Benjamin Howard was an Army surgeon. Later they served together on a committee in New York City.
Medical Record, Volume 8, July 15, 1873, Page 352
Life-saving Society Of New York.—A society of this character has recently been inaugurated in New York city, to promote the rescue of persons in peril from drowning, from fire, and from other accidents. The medical officers are as follows: Vice-President. Dr. E. R. Peaslee; Corresponding Secretary. Dr. Benjamin Howard; Executive Committee, Drs. Frank H. Hamilton and Alfred C. Post; Board of Directors, Drs. B. Howard, A. C. Post, T. G. Thomas, E. R. Peaslee, Marion Sims, C. R. Agnew, Wm. A. Hammond, A. Flint, Jr., F. H. Hamilton, and Fordyce Barker. Prof. Theo. W. Dwight, President.
--end
The North American Review, Volume 147, December, 1888, Page 626-637
Madness and Murder
by William A. Hammond
Pages 633-637
[...]
A few months ago a murder of a peculiarly atrocious character was committed in the district known as Whitechapel, London. The victim was a woman of the lowest class of that particularly low section of the metropolis. Not content with simply killing the woman, the murderer had mutilated the corpse and had inflicted wounds altogether unnecessary for the accomplishment of his object. Three or four months afterwards another woman of the same class was found dead with over thirty stab wounds in her body, and in quick succession other similar crimes were committed, until now the number amounts to nine. The efforts of the police to discover the perpetrator or perpetrators have up to this time been utterly fruitless, and every supposed clew that has been followed up has proved to be without foundation. All kinds of theories have been indulged in by the police, professional and amateur, and by legal and medical experts, who appear to have exhausted their ingenuity in devising the most strained hypotheses in their attempts to account for these murderous crimes. In the foregoing remarks relative to madness and murder I have brought forward examples in illustration of several forms of mental derangement, any one of which may have been the predominating motive which has been the starting point of the crimes in question.
Thus they may have been committed by a person who kills merely for the love of killing, and who has selected a particular class from which to choose his victims, for the reason that being of very little importance in the social world, they could be killed with a minimum amount of risk of detection. The fact that unnecessary wounds and mutilation were inflicted gives additional support to this theory. The more hacking and cutting the more delight would be experienced.
They may be the result of a morbid impulse which the perpetrator feels himself unable to resist, and which, after he had yielded to its power, is followed by the most acute anguish of mind. It may be said against this view that if such were the fact the murderer would, in his moments of mental agony and. repentance, surrender himself to the authorities; but in answer I think it may be properly alleged that fear for his own safety would prevent him doing an act which he might feel to be right, but which he would know would lead to his speedy execution. To test the correctness of this hypothesis it would be necessary to offer him free and unconditional pardon. If he is the subject of a morbid impulse which he cannot resist, he will give himself up if immunity be promised him.
The murders may have been committed by one who is acting under the principle of suggestion. He may have recently heard or read of similar crimes (for such murders have been committed before) and has been impelled thereby to go and do likewise, until after the first two or three murders he has acquired a love for the act of killing, and for the excitement attendant on the risk which he runs. This last incentive is a very powerful one, with certain morbidly constituted minds, and has apparently been the chief motive in some notable series of crimes.
Again, they may have been committed by several persons acting under the influence of the power of imitation. This force, owing to the extensive publication of reports of crimes through the newspapers, is much more influential at present than at any other period in the history of the world. The more ferocious the murder the more likelihood that it will be imitated. It is not at all unreasonable to suppose that there may have been as many murderers of these women as there are murders.
I am inclined, however, to think that the perpetrator is a reasoning maniac, one who has received or imagines he has received some injury from the class of women upon which his crimes are committed, or who has assumed the role of the reformer, and who thinks he can annihilate them one by one or strike such terror into those that remain that they will hasten to abandon their vicious mode of life. He is probably a person whose insanity is not suspected even by those who are in constant association with him. He may be a clergyman, a lawyer, a physician, or even a member of the titled aristocracy; a cashier in a bank, a shopkeeper, an officer of the army or navy. All apparently motiveless crimes are exceedingly difficult of detection. It is quite conceivable that this man may leave the dinner-table or the ball-room and pass a dozen policemen on his way towards the accomplishment of his purpose. The higher he appeared to be in the social scale the less he would be liable to suspicion. He may be for a man some such person as Hélène Jégado was for a woman. This wretch, between the years of 1853 and 1857, killed twenty-eight persons by poison, besides making several unsuccessful attempts. In none of her murders was any cause alleged or discovered, though undoubtedly the pleasure derived from the perpetration of crime was the chief factor. Her victims were her masters and mistresses, her fellow servants, her friends, and several nuns, for whom in their lest moments she displayed the utmost tenderness and care. The plea of monomania was set up in her defense, but no evidence of insanity was brought forward by her counsel save the apparent want of motive for her crimes. It was shown, however, that she had begun her career when only seventeen years old by attempting to poison her confessor; that she had, while perpetrating her wholesale murders, affected the greatest piety and was for a time an inmate of a convent; that she had committed over thirty thefts; that she had maliciously cut and burned various articles of clothing placed in her charge; that when asked why she had stolen things that were of no use to her she had replied: "I always steal when I am angry;" that she was subject to alternate periods of great mental depression, and excessive and unreasonable gaiety; that she was affected with pains in the head and vertigo; that when she was angry she vomited blood; and that while in prison awaiting trial she was constantly laughing and joking about indifferent subjects. She was found guilty, and on being asked if she had anything to say why sentence of death should not be pronounced, made answer, "No, your Honor, I am innocent. I am resigned to all that may happen. I would rather die innocent than live guilty. You have judged me, but God will judge you." Her last words on the scaffold were directed to accusing a woman as her instigator and accomplice, whose name was not even mentioned during the trial, and who, upon inquiry, was found to be an old paralytic whose whole life had been of the most exemplary character.
If this woman had stopped after killing twenty-seven persons she would probably never have been detected. If the perpetrator of the so-called Whitechapel murders were to cease now his career of crime, there is no reason to suppose that he would ever be discovered. But it is not at all likely that he will fail to go on in the course which has now become second nature to him. His love for murder has become overpowering, and immunity has rendered him bold. Little by little he will become less cautious, and eventually he will be caught.
When arrested the question of how to dispose of him will arise. In what I have said I have assumed him to be a lunatic of some kind. If a certain degree of maudlin sentimentality should prevail he will be placed in a lunatic asylum and in the course of a few years may be discharged as cured. But such insanity as his is never cured. Doubtless while an inmate of the asylum his conduct will be of the most exemplary character. He will dissemble for years and will deceive the very elect among experts in insanity. Superintendents and clergymen and various other high personages will unite in testifying to his thorough change of heart and Christian bearing, and when he is discharged with the blessings of all with whom he has been associated he will begin to commit another series of murders fully as atrocious as those for which he has been sequestrated.
There is but one way to deal with a person like this Whitechapel murderer, and that is, to hang him as soon as he is caught. He is an enemy of society and is entitled to no more consideration than a wild beast which follows his instinct to kill. Laws are not made for the purpose of enforcing the principles of abstract justice; they are enacted solely for the protection of society. Some fifteen years ago, in a little book entitled "Insanity in its Relations to Crime," I urged that certain of the insane are properly as much amenable to punishment as though in full possession of all their mental faculties unimpaired. In a paper published in the North American Review for November, 1882, entitled "A Problem for Sociologists," I said:
"A man with murderous tendencies which he is unable to restrain is as much an enemy to society as a ferocious tiger or a mad dog, and ought to be dealt with in quite as summary a manner as we deal with these animals. It is all very well to talk of the inhumanity of such a proceeding, and to urge sequestration in a lunatic asylum as amply meeting the requirements of the case. But experience teaches us that, though it may be very difficult for a sane person improperly committed to get out of an asylum, it is the easiest thing in the world for a lunatic who has committed a crime to walk out of its doors with the full consent of the superintendent. Till these things are changed, the law, as recently laid down by Judge Noah Davis, of the Supreme Court of this State, and by Judge Cox, of the District of Columbia, and as almost universally held by the English judges, that every one is responsible who knows the nature and consequence of his act, is no more than sufficient for protection, the prime object of every law.
WILLIAM A. HAMMOND
Appletons' Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events 1900 (New York: D. Appleton, 1901), Pages 477-478
Hammond, William Alexander, surgeon, born in Annapolis, Md., Aug. 28, 1828; died in Washington, D. C, Jan. 5, 1900. He was graduated at the medical department of the University of New York in 1848, after which he attended a course of clinics in the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. July 3, 1849. he entered the army of the United States as assistant surgeon general with the rank of lieutenant, which rank was raised to captain, June 29, 1854. He did duty at various forts and military posts, and acted as medical director of the Sioux expedition and as surgeon to the troops engaged in laying out a road through the Rocky mountains. Oct. 31, 1860, he resigned from the army to become Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in the University of Maryland. At the beginning of the civil war he resigned his chair and re-entered the army. He was appointed assistant surgeon May 28, 1861, and promoted April 25, 1862, to surgeon general with the rank of brigadier general. He instituted many reforms, but became involved in a controversy, was tried by court-martial, and was dismissed from the service Aug. 18, 1864. In 1868 he was appointed Professor of Diseases of the Mind and the Nervous System in the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City; subsequently he filled similar chairs in Bellevue Hospital Medical College and in the University of the City of New York. In 1882 he was one of the founders of the New York Post-Graduate Medical School, in which he held the professorship of Diseases of the Mind for years. In the meantime the President and the Secretary of War had been authorized to review the proceedings of the court-martial that had removed him from the army, and on Aug. 27. 1879, he was, after fifteen years of suspension, restored to his former place on the rolls of the army as surgeon general and brigadier general on the retired list. In February, 1888, he abandoned his practice in New York and removed to Washington. He wrote many books on nervous complaints and other medical topics, as well as some novels. His published works are Physiological Memoirs (Philadelphia, 1863); Treatise on Hygiene (1863); lectures on Venereal Diseases (1864); A Chapter on Sleep (1865); Insanitv in its Medico-Legal Relations (New York, 1866); Robert Severne: His Friends and his Enemies (Philadelphia. I860); Medico-Legal Study of the Case of Daniel McFarland (New York,' 1867); Sleep and its Derangements (Philadelphia, 1869); Physics and Physiology of Spiritualism (New York, 1S70); Clinical Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System (1871); Treatise on Diseases of the Nervous System (1871); Insanity in its Relation to Crime (1873); Spiritualism and Allied Causes and Conditions of Nervous Derangement (1870); Cerebral Hyperemia (1878) ; Fasting Girls (1879); Neurological Contributions of Studies and Case Records (1870); On Certain Conditions of Nervous Derangement: Somnambulism, Hypnotism, Hysteria, Hysteroid Affections (1881); Dr. Grattan (1884); Lai (1884); A Strong-minded Woman (1885); Mr. Oldmixon (1885); On the Susquehanna (1887); Sexual Impotence in the Male (18S(i); Sexual Impotence in Male and Female (Detroit, 1887); Spinal Irritation (1888); The Son of Perdition (Chicago, 1898); and with Clara Lanza, Tales of Eccentric Life (New York, 1886).
--end
Hammond was Surgeon General of the U.S. Army during the Civil War at the time Dr. Benjamin Howard was an Army surgeon. Later they served together on a committee in New York City.
Medical Record, Volume 8, July 15, 1873, Page 352
Life-saving Society Of New York.—A society of this character has recently been inaugurated in New York city, to promote the rescue of persons in peril from drowning, from fire, and from other accidents. The medical officers are as follows: Vice-President. Dr. E. R. Peaslee; Corresponding Secretary. Dr. Benjamin Howard; Executive Committee, Drs. Frank H. Hamilton and Alfred C. Post; Board of Directors, Drs. B. Howard, A. C. Post, T. G. Thomas, E. R. Peaslee, Marion Sims, C. R. Agnew, Wm. A. Hammond, A. Flint, Jr., F. H. Hamilton, and Fordyce Barker. Prof. Theo. W. Dwight, President.
--end
The North American Review, Volume 147, December, 1888, Page 626-637
Madness and Murder
by William A. Hammond
Pages 633-637
[...]
A few months ago a murder of a peculiarly atrocious character was committed in the district known as Whitechapel, London. The victim was a woman of the lowest class of that particularly low section of the metropolis. Not content with simply killing the woman, the murderer had mutilated the corpse and had inflicted wounds altogether unnecessary for the accomplishment of his object. Three or four months afterwards another woman of the same class was found dead with over thirty stab wounds in her body, and in quick succession other similar crimes were committed, until now the number amounts to nine. The efforts of the police to discover the perpetrator or perpetrators have up to this time been utterly fruitless, and every supposed clew that has been followed up has proved to be without foundation. All kinds of theories have been indulged in by the police, professional and amateur, and by legal and medical experts, who appear to have exhausted their ingenuity in devising the most strained hypotheses in their attempts to account for these murderous crimes. In the foregoing remarks relative to madness and murder I have brought forward examples in illustration of several forms of mental derangement, any one of which may have been the predominating motive which has been the starting point of the crimes in question.
Thus they may have been committed by a person who kills merely for the love of killing, and who has selected a particular class from which to choose his victims, for the reason that being of very little importance in the social world, they could be killed with a minimum amount of risk of detection. The fact that unnecessary wounds and mutilation were inflicted gives additional support to this theory. The more hacking and cutting the more delight would be experienced.
They may be the result of a morbid impulse which the perpetrator feels himself unable to resist, and which, after he had yielded to its power, is followed by the most acute anguish of mind. It may be said against this view that if such were the fact the murderer would, in his moments of mental agony and. repentance, surrender himself to the authorities; but in answer I think it may be properly alleged that fear for his own safety would prevent him doing an act which he might feel to be right, but which he would know would lead to his speedy execution. To test the correctness of this hypothesis it would be necessary to offer him free and unconditional pardon. If he is the subject of a morbid impulse which he cannot resist, he will give himself up if immunity be promised him.
The murders may have been committed by one who is acting under the principle of suggestion. He may have recently heard or read of similar crimes (for such murders have been committed before) and has been impelled thereby to go and do likewise, until after the first two or three murders he has acquired a love for the act of killing, and for the excitement attendant on the risk which he runs. This last incentive is a very powerful one, with certain morbidly constituted minds, and has apparently been the chief motive in some notable series of crimes.
Again, they may have been committed by several persons acting under the influence of the power of imitation. This force, owing to the extensive publication of reports of crimes through the newspapers, is much more influential at present than at any other period in the history of the world. The more ferocious the murder the more likelihood that it will be imitated. It is not at all unreasonable to suppose that there may have been as many murderers of these women as there are murders.
I am inclined, however, to think that the perpetrator is a reasoning maniac, one who has received or imagines he has received some injury from the class of women upon which his crimes are committed, or who has assumed the role of the reformer, and who thinks he can annihilate them one by one or strike such terror into those that remain that they will hasten to abandon their vicious mode of life. He is probably a person whose insanity is not suspected even by those who are in constant association with him. He may be a clergyman, a lawyer, a physician, or even a member of the titled aristocracy; a cashier in a bank, a shopkeeper, an officer of the army or navy. All apparently motiveless crimes are exceedingly difficult of detection. It is quite conceivable that this man may leave the dinner-table or the ball-room and pass a dozen policemen on his way towards the accomplishment of his purpose. The higher he appeared to be in the social scale the less he would be liable to suspicion. He may be for a man some such person as Hélène Jégado was for a woman. This wretch, between the years of 1853 and 1857, killed twenty-eight persons by poison, besides making several unsuccessful attempts. In none of her murders was any cause alleged or discovered, though undoubtedly the pleasure derived from the perpetration of crime was the chief factor. Her victims were her masters and mistresses, her fellow servants, her friends, and several nuns, for whom in their lest moments she displayed the utmost tenderness and care. The plea of monomania was set up in her defense, but no evidence of insanity was brought forward by her counsel save the apparent want of motive for her crimes. It was shown, however, that she had begun her career when only seventeen years old by attempting to poison her confessor; that she had, while perpetrating her wholesale murders, affected the greatest piety and was for a time an inmate of a convent; that she had committed over thirty thefts; that she had maliciously cut and burned various articles of clothing placed in her charge; that when asked why she had stolen things that were of no use to her she had replied: "I always steal when I am angry;" that she was subject to alternate periods of great mental depression, and excessive and unreasonable gaiety; that she was affected with pains in the head and vertigo; that when she was angry she vomited blood; and that while in prison awaiting trial she was constantly laughing and joking about indifferent subjects. She was found guilty, and on being asked if she had anything to say why sentence of death should not be pronounced, made answer, "No, your Honor, I am innocent. I am resigned to all that may happen. I would rather die innocent than live guilty. You have judged me, but God will judge you." Her last words on the scaffold were directed to accusing a woman as her instigator and accomplice, whose name was not even mentioned during the trial, and who, upon inquiry, was found to be an old paralytic whose whole life had been of the most exemplary character.
If this woman had stopped after killing twenty-seven persons she would probably never have been detected. If the perpetrator of the so-called Whitechapel murders were to cease now his career of crime, there is no reason to suppose that he would ever be discovered. But it is not at all likely that he will fail to go on in the course which has now become second nature to him. His love for murder has become overpowering, and immunity has rendered him bold. Little by little he will become less cautious, and eventually he will be caught.
When arrested the question of how to dispose of him will arise. In what I have said I have assumed him to be a lunatic of some kind. If a certain degree of maudlin sentimentality should prevail he will be placed in a lunatic asylum and in the course of a few years may be discharged as cured. But such insanity as his is never cured. Doubtless while an inmate of the asylum his conduct will be of the most exemplary character. He will dissemble for years and will deceive the very elect among experts in insanity. Superintendents and clergymen and various other high personages will unite in testifying to his thorough change of heart and Christian bearing, and when he is discharged with the blessings of all with whom he has been associated he will begin to commit another series of murders fully as atrocious as those for which he has been sequestrated.
There is but one way to deal with a person like this Whitechapel murderer, and that is, to hang him as soon as he is caught. He is an enemy of society and is entitled to no more consideration than a wild beast which follows his instinct to kill. Laws are not made for the purpose of enforcing the principles of abstract justice; they are enacted solely for the protection of society. Some fifteen years ago, in a little book entitled "Insanity in its Relations to Crime," I urged that certain of the insane are properly as much amenable to punishment as though in full possession of all their mental faculties unimpaired. In a paper published in the North American Review for November, 1882, entitled "A Problem for Sociologists," I said:
"A man with murderous tendencies which he is unable to restrain is as much an enemy to society as a ferocious tiger or a mad dog, and ought to be dealt with in quite as summary a manner as we deal with these animals. It is all very well to talk of the inhumanity of such a proceeding, and to urge sequestration in a lunatic asylum as amply meeting the requirements of the case. But experience teaches us that, though it may be very difficult for a sane person improperly committed to get out of an asylum, it is the easiest thing in the world for a lunatic who has committed a crime to walk out of its doors with the full consent of the superintendent. Till these things are changed, the law, as recently laid down by Judge Noah Davis, of the Supreme Court of this State, and by Judge Cox, of the District of Columbia, and as almost universally held by the English judges, that every one is responsible who knows the nature and consequence of his act, is no more than sufficient for protection, the prime object of every law.
WILLIAM A. HAMMOND
1) When Dr. Hammond refers to his November 1882 article ["A Problem for Sociologist" in the North American Review] he is referring in that article to the biggest case on the insanity defence then occupying the United States. That was the trial of Charles Julius Guiteau for the assassination of President James Garfield in the fall and winter of 1881, resulting in the verdict of guilty in the first degree, and Guiteau's hanging in late June 1882. The trial judge was Judge Cox in the District of Columbia. The fact that Guiteau was insane is now taken for granted, but he had shot Garfield for refusing to give him a political appointment (either Minister to Austria or Counsel at the Paris Embassy). His antics (and personal rejection of the insanity plea) basically told against him. At the time most of the U.S. would have supported Hammond's viewpoint that given the danger of possibly releasing a murderous lunatic to kill again meant that hanging the lunatic was a better course.
A good study on the insanity defence in 1882 is Charles Rosenberg's "The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau".
2) Personal note: My grandmother Anna Silverstein used Dr. Hammond's son as a physician in the 1930s, and on at least one occasion took my mother Jean with her. Dr. Hammond's son (after examining my grandmother) picked up my mother (she was about 8 at the time) and sitting her on his knee told her that when he was a boy he sat on the knee of President Abraham Lincoln in a carriage where he, the President, and his father (the Surgeon General, remember) watched the Army of the Potomac on parade. Dr. Hammond's son died in 1941.
Jeff
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