![]() On the whole his state of mind appeared stable, but in recognition of the very great mental strain he was under he was closely watched both night and day. He asked for books to be sent from 84 Connaught Terrace, and for three or four hours a day he would read, and write letters to his many relatives, some of whom came to visit him. The wound he had inflicted on himself with the knife gradually healed. ![]() In Newgate, as the weeks passed, Stanynought’s condition improved. The judge sentenced him to confinement “during his Majesty’s pleasure” in an asylum for the insane, but, acceding to the pleas of his friends, allowed him in the first instance to be sent to Newgate Prison. Two weeks after the inquest at the Masons’ Arms, on Monday the 21 st of September, a jury at the Old Bailey decided that Stanynought had indeed been in “a state of mental derangement” at the moment he acted. However, the coroner concluded that he had been guilty of wilful murder, and referred the case to the Central Criminal Court. The jury accepted the possibility that Henry Stanynought had been labouring under “temporary mental delusion” at the time of killing. He knew the family, so he was happy to affirm that the boy had been dearly loved by his father, whose calamitous loss of reason had been a thing of the moment, a sudden and inexplicable affliction. A third witness, a doctor by the name of Thomas France who had examined Stanynought in the aftermath of the assault, was convinced that he was insane, for no sane man would kill his own child. Finch opined that Stanynought had not displayed any symptoms of insanity in their last conversation, which had taken place on the Thursday evening only hours before he had fatally assaulted his son. They agreed that Stanynought had never recovered from the death of his daughter Ellen. The schoolmaster, John Finch, and the shopman, William Jerams, were called as witnesses. The implements with which death had been inflicted and suicide attempted-the boot-jack and the knife-were produced. We have a medical account of its condition, but there is nothing to be gained by recording the details here. Of course, as a necessary part of the procedure, the jury viewed the body of the dead child. Both Henrys-victim and perpetrator-were caught up in one and the same nightmare. But one cannot help feeling that the truth of matter is more complicated than the label suggests. At the time he was labelled-with grim precision-the very worst sort of murderer. You may have read the tragic story of his filicide in my previous posts-of his mental deterioration following the deaths of three of his children and the consequences of his faltering grip on reality. Stanynought, aged thirty-seven, was a bookseller with premises at 84 Connaught Terrace, just off the Edgware Road. Image in Gustave Doré and Blanchard Jerrold London: A Pilgrimage (1872) between pages 136 and 137.
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