She was last seen at one in the morning.  Three hours later her hat and jacket were found on the towing path by the Regent’s Canal, and later her body was fished from the water. Verdict:  Suicide during temporary insanity.

Such verdicts are crimes against truth.  The Law is a lie, and through it men lie most shamelessly.  For instance, a disgraced woman, forsaken and spat upon by kith and kin, doses herself and her baby with laudanum.  The baby dies; but she pulls through after a few weeks in hospital, is charged with murder, convicted, and sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude.  Recovering, the Law holds her responsible for her actions; yet, had she died, the same Law would have rendered a verdict of temporary insanity.

Now, considering the case of Ellen Hughes Hunt, it is as fair and logical to say that her husband was suffering from temporary insanity when he went into the Islington Workhouse, as it is to say that she was suffering from temporary insanity when she went into the Regent’s Canal.  As to which is the preferable sojourning place is a matter of opinion, of intellectual judgment.  I, for one, from what I know of canals and workhouses, should choose the canal, were I in a similar position.  And I make bold to contend that I am no more insane than Ellen Hughes Hunt, her husband, and the rest of the human herd.

Man no longer follows instinct with the old natural fidelity.  He has developed into a reasoning creature, and can intellectually cling to life or discard life just as life happens to promise great pleasure or pain.  I dare to assert that Ellen Hughes Hunt, defrauded and bilked of all the joys of life which fifty-two years’ service in the world has earned, with nothing but the horrors of the workhouse before her, was very rational and level-headed when she elected to jump into the canal.  And I dare to assert, further, that the jury had done a wiser thing to bring in a verdict charging society with temporary insanity for allowing Ellen Hughes Hunt to be defrauded and bilked of all the joys of life which fifty-two years’ service in the world had earned.

Temporary insanity!  Oh, these cursed phrases, these lies of language, under which people with meat in their bellies and whole shirts on their backs shelter themselves, and evade the responsibility of their brothers and sisters, empty of belly and without whole shirts on their backs.

From one issue of the Observer, an East End paper, I quote the following commonplace events:-

A ship’s fireman, named Johnny King, was charged with attempting to commit suicide.  On Wednesday defendant went to Bow Police Station and stated that he had swallowed a quantity of phosphor paste, as he was hard up and unable to obtain work.  King was taken inside and an emetic administered, when he vomited up a quantity of the poison.  Defendant now said he was very sorry.  Although he had sixteen years’ good character,