John Selby Watson
The Reverend John Selby Watson (April 1804M'Naghten."[3]
Career
Watson was born at
Bohn's Classical Library that subsequently became volumes in the popular Everyman's Library
series. He also wrote biographies, religious books, and a volume Reasoning Power in Animals. Still with all his learning and activities he made a very small income. When the Board of the Stockwell School fired him, they refused to give him any pension.
Crime
A few weeks after finishing his four-volume History of the Papacy to the Reformation,prussic acid. Two notes were found: one addressed to Pyne contained her wages. The other was to his doctor. It said "I have killed my wife in a fit of rage to which she provoked me".[3] His wife's body was found in a bedroom, having been battered to death with the butt of his pistol[7] two days earlier.[3]
Trial
Watson recovered and stood trial at the
provocation. Instead, he pleaded insanity, as his counsel put it: "an antecedent improbability in the deed which would lead everyone in the first instance to seek an explanation in insanity."[3] The judge, Mr Justice Byles, opposed this excuse strongly in his summing-up.[3] After deliberating for an hour and a half, the jury found him guilty of murder but with a recommendation that mercy be shown because of his age and previous character.[3] Byles however sentenced him to death.[3]
After the trial many
Parkhurst prison where he died twelve years later, aged 80, on 6 July 1884.[7] His death was due to falling out of his hammock at the prison.[9] In the words of Martin J. Wiener, "the incongruity of the offense and the lack of any lesser defense pushed the system to a controversial finding of "temporary" insanity to prevent the unedifying spectacle of the hanging of a clergyman of the Church of England. In a sense, in Watson's case, provocation (by his wife, under the stress of his forced retirement) had been reconceived as temporary insanity."[3]
The crime became the basis for the 1984 speculative historical book Watson's Apology by Beryl Bainbridge.[3]
Original works
- The Life of George Fox, the Founder of the Quakers[10]
- Biographies of John Wilkes and William Cobbett
- The Reasoning Power in Animals, 1867
Translations
- Anabasis by Xenophon
- Xenophon's Minor Works: Literally Translated from the Greed with Notes and Illustrations
- Conspiracy of Catiline and the Jugurthine War by Sallust
- On the Nature of Things by Lucretius Carus
- Lives of Eminent Commanders by Cornelius Nepos
- Historia Philippicae et Totius Mundi Origines et Terrae Situs by Justin, 1853
- Cicero on Oratory and Orators by Marcus Tullius Cicero, 1855
- Institutes of Oratory by Quintilian, 1856
References
- ^ The South London Press, 12 July 1884, p.6 column b
- ^ Courtney WP. (revd Matthew HCG). "Watson, John Selby (bap. 1804, d. 1884)" in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press; 2004)
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Wiener MJ. (1999) Judges v. Jurors: Courtroom Tensions in Murder Trials and the Law of Criminal Responsibility in Nineteenth-Century England. Law and History Review 17(3): 467 Archived 9 July 2008 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Wilson, Colin; Pitan, Patricia. (1962). Encyclopedia of Murder. G.P. Putnam's Sons. p. 546
- ^ a b Wilson and Pitman, p. 546.
- ^ Wilson and Pitman, p.546.
- ^ a b c d e "Real Crime.co.uk". Archived from the original on 19 January 2009. Retrieved 5 January 2009.
- ^ Stockwell Park
- ^ Simpson, Cannibalism and the Common Law, p.96.
- ^ List of works
External links
- Works by John Selby Watson at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about John Selby Watson at Internet Archive
- Works by John Selby Watson at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Simpson, A. W. Brian Cannibalism and the Common Law: The Story of the Strange Last Voyage of the Mignonette and the Strange Legal Proceedings to Which it Gave Rise Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1984, p. 96. ISBN 0-226-75942-3.
- Wilson, Colin and Pitman, Pat Encyclopedia of Murder New York: G. P. Putman's Sons, 1961, 1962, p. 546–548.
- Illustrated Police News" engraving of Watson and the murder of his wife (on page 281)
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