A NEW CRIME. 189 



teeth, rode into town, waited a couple of hours until he saw Feldner coming down 

 the street with his wife on his arm, and then, as the coufjle passed the doorway in 

 which he had partially concealed himself, he drove a knife into Feldner's neck, 

 killing him instantly. The widow caught the limp form and eased it to the earth. 

 Both were drenched with blood. Hackett jocosely remarked to her that as a 

 professional butcher's recent wife she could appreciate the artistic neatness of the 

 job that left her in condition to marry again, in case she wanted to. This remark, 

 and another which he made to a friend, that his position in society made the killing 

 of an obscure citizen simply an " eccentricity " instead of a crime, were shown to 

 be evidences of insanity, and so Hackett escaped punishment. The jury were 

 hardly inclined to accept these as proofs, at first, inasmuch as the prisoner ha:d 

 never been insane before the murder, and under the tranquilizing. effect of the 

 butchering had immediately regained his right mind ; but when the defence came 

 to show that a third cousin of Hackett's wife's Stepfather was insane, and not only 

 insane, but had a nose the very counterpart of Hackett's, it was plain that insanity 

 was hereditary in the family, and Hackett had come by it by legitimate inheritance. 

 Of course the jury then acquitted him. Btit it was a merciful providence that Mrs. 

 H.'s people had been afflicted as shown, else Hackett would certainly have been 

 hanged. 



However, it is not possible to recount all the marvellous cases of insanity that 

 have come under the public notice in the last thirty or forty years. There was the 

 Durgin case in New Jersey three years ago. The servant girl, Bridget Durgin, at 

 dead of night, invaded hermistress'bedroomandcarved the lady literally to pieces 

 vith a knife. Then she dragged the body to the middle of the floor, and beat and 

 banged it with chairs and such things. Next she opened the feather beds, and 

 strewed the contents around, saturated everything with kerosene, and set fire to the 

 general wreck. She now took up the young child of the murdered woman in her 

 blood-smeared hands, and walked off, through the snow, with no shoes on, to a 

 neighbor's house a quarter of a mile off, and told a string of wild, incoherent stories 

 about some men coming and setting fire to the house ; and then she cried piteously, 

 and without seeming to think there was anything suggestive about the blood upon her 

 hands, her clothing, and the baby, volunteered the remark that she was afraid thos^ 



