D. Heron 
381 
The eldest child remained normal till the age of 34 and although both his 
parents became insane Dr Mott apparently would not have objected to his marrying. 
He did so and one of his children became insane and eight out of nine are said to 
be paupers. These nine children are apparently still young so that their ultimate 
fate is still uncertain. 
The second pedigree I shall quote was given as Fig. 28, p. 33 of Dr Mott's 
lecture, and appears here as Fig. 15. 
A man who had an insane father and an insane grandfather became insane at 
the age of 55. He was therefore normal at the age of 25* and Dr Mott would 
have sanctioned marriage in his case. He actually married twice. His first wife 
was tuberculous but not insane ; they had two children, both insane. His second 
wife was normal and it is definitely stated that there was no insanity in her 
family; they had five children and one of these became insane. Yet Dr Mott 
would permit the children of insane parents to marry if only they are normal 
at the age of 25 ! 
Again, Dr Mott has stated that it is useless to attempt to limit the fertility of 
the insane since most of their children are born before the onset of insanity, 
and therefore before any action can be taken. From his statistics of relatives in 
L.C.C. Asylums, Dr Mott has calculated the proportion of offspring wlio were born 
after the first attack of insanity in the parent and found that "Forty-six offspring 
out of 581 were born after the first attack of insanity in the parent, i.e., 7'9°/^. 
That is to say in the case of 529 insane parents, the birth of only one-twelfth of 
their 581 insane children would have been prevented by sterilisation or life segregation 
of the parent after the first attack of insanity. These figures refer to the offspring 
which become insane, but there are a large number of offspring luhich do not become 
insane and these would be cut off' if life segregation or sterilisation were adopted^." 
But here again Dr Mott is using the data obtained from his index of relatives 
which shows a greatly exaggerated number of cases at the earlier ages among the 
offspring, and he thus greatly exaggerates the number of cases in which the children 
were born before the onset of insanity. No conclusion can be drawn from any but 
complete records of families. But apart altogether from this, many of these parents 
are themselves the children of the insane and much could be done to discourage 
such marriages. Unfortunately as we have seen Dr Mott directly sanctions 
marriage to those who remain normal till the age of 25. 
In further support of his view Dr Mott has stated that out of 642 females 
admitted to three London County Asylums in 1911, 148 were recurrent cases and 
of these 32 (21°/^) had children between their respective dates of admission. 
" The inference that can be drawn," he says, " is that about one-fifth of the 
recurrent cases, or approximately one-twentieth of the female admissions have 
* If the term "age at onset" has any real meaning, 
t The italics are Dr Mott's. 
Biometrika x 49 
