Of course the jury then acquitted him. But 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 marvelous 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 her
mistress's bedroom and carved the lady literally to pieces with 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 those men had murdered her mistress! Afterward, by her own
confession and other testimony, it was proved that the mistress had
always been kind to the girl, consequently there was no revenge in the
murder; and it was also shown that the girl took nothing away from the
burning house, not even her own shoes, and consequently robbery was not
the motive.
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