Heir Conditioning
It seemed like such a good idea.
After the birth of his second daughter, Deborah, in 1944, B. F.Skinner came up with one of his most famous (or notorious according to some) inventions. To help his wife, Yvonne, Skinner devised a new labour-saving device for childcare. Originally dubbed the aircrib, Skinner's invention basically consisted of a temperature and humidity-controlled box with a clear glass screen in which babies could be placed for hours each day to sleep. In the aircrib, the baby could be kept without diapers or blankets (the mattress was designed for easy removal for cleaning). The idea was to permit greater freedom of movement for the baby and to encourage independence as well as reducing the need for washing diapers or bathing the infant. Yvonne Skinner provided her husband with ample input to help improve the aircrib. During the first two and a half years of Deborah Skinner's life, she spent most of her sleeping hours in the aircrib but, contrary to later reports, was never "raised in a box".
The trouble probably began when B.F, Skinner, inspired by his success, decided to write an article for the Ladies' Home Journal which he titled, "Baby Care Can Be Modernized". The fact that the editors changed the title to "Baby In A Box" should have warned him about what would come later. The article described the aircrib in detail and presented it as a way to relieve parents of some of the drudgery associated with baby care. Considering that the Baby Boom was underway, magazines were often presenting "better living" ideas. Numerous articles on the "baby box" were described in Life and Time magazine (among others) describing other babies who were being raised in the "modern" way. The Skinners were besieged with requests for instructions from parents wanting to build their own baby tenders and wrote enthusiastic letters about their experiences.
Unfortunately, the response wasn't completely positive. There was some confusion between Skinner's aircrib and the Skinner Box (the other invention for which he was well known). B.F. Skinner was subjected to numerous letters expressing outrage that he was raising his baby as an experiment. A letter was even sent to the local District Attorney's office demanding that the Skinners be prosecuted over how they were raising Deborah. One anonymous letter written in 1945 denounced the aircrib as "the most ridiculous, crazy invention ever heard of. Caging the baby up like an animal, just to relieve the Mother of a little work".
It probably didn't help that J.B. Watson (the other name most commonly associated with behaviourism) had written a book in 1928 titled Psychological Care of Infant and Child in which he urged parents to dispense with the coddling that prolonged the child's need for dependency and to treat children like small adults instead. The rise of a new generation of child-care experts who railed against behavourist theories of child-care (starting with Benjamin Spock) led to a backlash against "mechanical" approaches to child-care and the aircrib got an sinister reputation as a result.
Despite the opposition, there was enough interest in the aircrib for the Skinners to investigate its commercial possibilities. Shortly after his article came out, B.F. Skinner was approached by a Cleveland businessman named J. Weston Judd about launching a new business for manufacturing aircribs (it was Judd who suggested the "Heir Conditioner" brand name). Although Skinner signed a commercial agreement with Judd, he would quickly come to regret it. As more parents asked for instructions on making an aircrib, Skinner passed their names on to Judd who placed them on his mailing list and took their orders for the commercial baby tender (including advance payments).
And then the complaints began.
The very few aircribs that Judd ever built showed serious design flaws (Judd had apparently built them without without showing Skinner the plans first). Skinner also began receiving letters from angry parents demanding the aircribs for which they had paid. After months of delay, Skinner found out in 1946 that Judd had disappeared with all the money collected to date. When he went to Cleveland to investigate, he found Judd's shop in chaos (with no sign of the mass production that Judd had promised). While Skinner wasn't legally responsible, he felt guilty over referring so many customers to Judd in the first place and made what restitution he could. Although he didn't totally lose hope in his idea and later went into another aircrib business with engineerJohn Grey, whatever dreams B.F. Skinner had of "making it big" financially with his aircrib never materialized.
By the time the Aircrib Corporation (the new business Skinner started with Grey) went out of business in 1957, about one thousand aircribs had been sold although there are no available statistics on how many babies were successfully raised in them. Given that the aircrib is essentially an air-conditioned glass box, there is no way to protect the idea with patents and the plans are freely available to any interested parent. Even Deborah's older sister Julie raised her two children in aircribs and, along with most parents who used them, was enthused about the results.
One unfortunate legacy of the aircrib remained with Deborah Skinner (now Deborah Buzan).Despite her extremely close relationship with her father (who died in 1990), Deborah has been dealing with lingering rumours about the effect that her experience with the aircrib supposedly had on her. According to the rumours, Deborah grew up psychologically damaged, sued her father for his cruelty, and eventually committed suicide. The rumours resurfaced in 2004 when Lauren Slater, in her book, Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments in the 20th Century, repeated many of the old stories about the aircrib's effect on Deborah.While Slater stressed that most of the rumors concerning Deborah and her father were untrue, Deborah Buzan was sufficiently enraged about Slater's book to write her own rebuttal in the Guardian. Titled, I Was Not A Lab Rat, Deborah Buzan takes Slater to task for raising the old rumours in her book and failing to interview her directly concerning some of her conclusions.
Whether or not the aircrib ever becomes popular, the legends surrounding its use have guaranteed that Skinner's attempt at modernizing childcare will forever be linked to his name.
Posted at 08:00 AM in Living History, Science | Permalink | Comments (3)
Physical Exercise and Your Brain
Accumulating evidence from animal and human research indicate that adult hippocampal neurogenesis plays a key role in cognition. Meanwhile, cognitive decline is well known to associate with ageing-related neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD). Therefore, prevention of hippocampal neurogenesis reduction should be critical for these diseases. Physical exercise, a potent enhancer of adult hippocampal neurogenesis, has emerged as a potential therapy or an adjunctive therapeutic strategy for cognitive decline. A review published in the journal Behavioral Brain Research discusses the recent findings on hippocampal neurogenesis and the incorporation of new born neurons into the neuronal network in humans and in rodents. By focusing on hippocampal neurogenesis, the authors illustrate the role and possible mechanisms of physical exercise in cognition preservation
Posted at 08:00 AM in Current Affairs, Health, Research in the News | Permalink | Comments (0)
Is There a Link Between Sleep and Obesity?
Is there a link between poor sleep and obesity?
Certainly people who are obese often develop problems with obstructive and central sleep apnea, the two most common sleep disorders, as well as related health problems such as Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and osteoarthritis. In fact, US health surveys indicate that 30 percent of employees report insufficient sleep with an equivalent number reporting problems with daytime sleepiness. Given that many of these same surveys show that 22 percent or more of employees are obese while and additional 36.8 percent are overweight, it’s hardly surprising that recent research does provide some support for a sleep-obesity link.
Unfortunately, while the link between poor sleep and obesity seems to exist, it’s still not clear how they can be related. One hypothesis suggests that impaired sleep can affect the hormones that regulate how energy levels are regulated in the body. Another hypothesis focuses on the impact that poor sleep can have on lifestyle behaviours such as diet and exercise, i.e., fatigue leading to less time spent exercising or eating sensibly. Considering the overall shift away from labour-intensive jobs towards more sedentary work, getting the minimum amount of moderate-intensity exercise needed to stay healthy (roughly 150 minutes per week according to health guidelines) is becoming increasingly difficult for most people. If you add in the fatigue that comes from inadequate sleep, along with the problems associated with carrying excess weight, it`s not surprising that poor sleep and obesity often go together.
Trial Underway in Islamic Exorcism Case
When Arfart Ali married Shugfta Nehar in 2015, he soon became disenchanted with the way his parents treated his new wife "like a slave." After announcing to his family that he and his wife would be moving out of their extended home in southwest Sydney, Australia, his entire family apparently became concerned that Ali had been cursed with "black magic" by his wife's family. To rid their son of this evil, they flew in preacher Riza Morinaj from his home in Melbourne to conduct an Islamic purification ritual. The 37-year-old Morinaj, whose day job involves running a date juice company, reportedly told the family that he could purify Ali in a ceremony that would be carried out in the family home.
On November 5,while the family was gathered for a birthday party, Morinaj and a second man, 44-year-old Ali Oulmakhzen, restrained Ali on a bed and applied suction cup to his back. After Ali struggled, Morinaj took a razor blade and made "five to six cuts" to Ali's back. He reportedly told Ali that "“I’m drawing out the blood and after I recite the Koran, black blood’s gonna come out and that’s the evil.” He then started reciting verses from the Koran and continued for fifteen minutes while keeping his fingers on Ali's eyes to hold them closed. Afterward, he removed the suction cups and wiped Ali down.
Morinaj and Oulmakhzen have both been charged with causing bodily harm and are being held without bail. They both face court in January.
Posted at 08:00 AM in Current Affairs, Forensic Matters, Religion | Permalink | Comments (0)
May the holiday season bring you glad tidings and hope for the coming year. Though recent events overshadow the happiness that we usually associate with this time of year, let us at least hope that things will improve as we move on with our lives.
The Virtuoso
He may have been one of the most promising musicians of the twentieth century. Fritz Kreisler reportedly said of him that, "a fidder such as [X] is born every one hundred years, one like [Josef] Hassid, every two centuries".
Born in the Polish town of Suwalki in 1923, Josef Hassid's mother died when he was an infant. After studying with a local violin teacher, Josef was taken by his father to Warsaw to extend his musical education. Beginning at the age of ten, he studied with Mieczyslaw Mihalowicz at the Chopin School of Music and, after only two years, went on to represent Poland at the 1935 Wienawski Competition. A shy, introverted child, Josef's memory failed him during his final performance at the competition and he failed to make it to the second round (he still managed to receive an honour diploma for his performance). The memory lapse devastated Josef who reportedly cried for more than an hour after leaving the concert hall.
In 1937, Josef's father took; his son to Spa, Belgium to study with the legendary Carl Flesch who quickly recognized Josef's talent and took over his musical education. During his time in Spa, Josef met and fell in love with a local girl but the relationship was forcibly terminated by their parents since she wasn't Jewish. Flesch later arranged for Josef to be brought to London in 1938 for a private recital at the house of Sir Philip Sassoon.; Josef's playing mesmerized his audience. Due to the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 and the Jewish persecution that followed, Josef and his father decided to stay in London where he continued his musical training with Flesch.
On April 4, 1940, Josef Hassid gave his first public performance at London's Wigmore Hall. Billed as the "Polish Boy Violinist", Josef played works by Bach, Schubert, and Paganini among others. Three weeks later, he premiered at the Queen's Hall in a performance with the London Philharmonic. His brilliant playing attracted the attention of record producer, Walter Legge, who arranged for Josef to give his first (and only) recording engagement. Josef recorded four RPM records at the HMV studios on Abbey Road. Those precious albums are the only surviving record of Josef Hassid's brilliant talent (most of his recorded pieces are available on Youtube).
Shortly after his recording session, Josef's father noticed that his son was becoming increasingly withdrawn and moody. While he had always been prone to episodes of depression and performance anxiety, Josef became even more erratic over time and often went for weeks without even touching his violin. He lashed out at his father and frequently insisted that he would be giving up his music. Worried about Josef's mental state, Flesch arranged for Josef to be assessed by Thomas Horder (Winston Churchill's personal physician) who arranged to him to be admitted to his private hospital. In informing the hospital of Josef's arrival, Horder told them: "I am sending you a genius". After several hospital stays, Josef Hassid was diagnosed with acute schizophrenia.
As Josef's condition worsened, he renounced music and denied ever having played the violin. Carl Flesch wrote numerous letters pleading for Josef to return to his performing. In one letter, he stated that:"I hope you will do everything within your will-power to get well again as soon as possible. A great artist like you owes it to the world to become active again". After a year in hospital, Josef Hassid returned home and tried to return to his music but he continued to find reasons against giving another performance. As his health worsened, Josef was later diagnosed as having a brain tumour. Following a dangerous and unsuccessful brain operation (not a lobotomy as some accounts stated), Josef Hassid died in 1950. He was twenty-seven years old.
While child prodigies such as Josef Hassid and Yehudi Menuhin routinely face years of gruelling training to develop their talent, we may never know why some musicians are able to succeed when others fail. Whether or not the pressure to perform played a role in Josef's mental illness, the few available recordings of his playing continue to serve as a testimony to an amazing talent that burned out too soon.
Can Blink Rate Measure Suicide Risk?
Lowered eye blink rate may be a clinically useful indicator of acute, imminent, and severe suicide risk. Diminished eye blink rates are often seen among individuals engaged in heightened concentration on a specific task that requires careful planning and attention. Indeed, overcoming one’s biological instinct for survival through suicide necessitates premeditation and concentration; thus, a diminished eye blink rate may signal imminent suicidality. A new article published in the journal Crisis aims to spur research and clinical inquiry into the role of eye blinks as an indicator of acute suicide risk. Literature relevant to the potential connection between eye blink rate and suicidality was reviewed and synthesized and results showed anecdotal, cognitive, neurological, and conceptual support for the relationship between decreased blink rate and suicide risk is outlined. Given that eye blinks are a highly observable behavior, the potential clinical utility of using eye blink rate as a marker of suicide risk is immense. Research is warranted to explore the association between eye blink rate and acute suicide risk.
Gay Parents and the Fight for Acceptance
While an estimated two to three million children are currently being raised by gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender parents in the United States alone, the issue of adoption by same-sex couples or single LGBT individuals continues to be a hot-button issue around the world. Though numerous studies show that children with sexual minority parents tend to be as well-adjusted as the children of opposite-sex parents, opponents continue to cite moral and religious objections concerning the fitness of LGBT parents as well as the prejudice that the adopted children can be expected to face.
Along with the bullying faced by many sexual minority children in schools, children raised by LGBT parents can experience harassment as well. A 2008 study looking at K-12 students in the United States found that 40 percent of children raised by sexual minority parents reported some form of harassment while 23 percent reported feeling unsafe at school due to their family structure. The majority however, did not report problems due to having LGBT parents. Even for students who deny overt bullying, there can still be more subtle examples of "microaggression," including verbal insults or social snubbing, that can be emotionally damaging as well.
There is also the question of how supportive schools are in general to students and their sexual minority parents. These parents can also find themselves being stressed over how they interact with teachers and school boards who may contribute to the negative environment students encounter. But what are the long-term outcomes of this kind of harassment? And how common is it in many schools?
Posted at 01:22 PM in Current Affairs, Research in the News, Sexology | Permalink | Comments (0)
Do Sex Offender Registries Actually Work?
Crime control theater (CCT) is a rather cynical term being used more and more by social science researchers examining how effective many policies intended to stop crime really are. There have been numerous examples given of ineffective policies that appear to fight crime but actually do very little. These include the AMBER alert system for notifying communities of missing children (which are generally ineffective and can even lead to copycat crimes) , "safe haven" laws allowing parents to abandon their children, TSA security policies, Scared Straight programs that are often counterproductive, and a host of other well-intended policies that look good on paper and are useful in securing the "tough on crime" vote despite being largely a waste of money.
But what about sex offender registries? Formed after the passage of Megan’s Law and the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Acts (among other acts), these registries are intended to monitor convicted sex offenders. Open to the public in virtually every U.S. state (linked by a national portal operated by the federal government), sex offender registries provide the names, current addresses, and offence history of any registered offender to anyone seeking that information online. Of the 800000 sex offenders current listed on registries, 75 percent have their information available to the pubic. The rationale behind these registries has been to warn the public of potential predators in their communities as well as recruiting members of the public and the media as an "electronic posse" to identify any registered offenders who might be living in areas where they could encounter children.
Unfortunately, there are a wide range of public misconceptions about the kind of people listed in the registries and how dangerous they really are. Given the different sex offender laws currently in place in many U.S. states, the reasons that a convicted offender may be placed on a registry can vary widely and often without any consideration of whether they actually pose a risk to the community. The stigma associated with being a registered sex offender can be extreme however and cases of vigilante violence, including homicide, are disturbingly common.
While public support for laws protecting the public against sexual offenders remains strong, actual evidence that the laws, and the severe penalties many states impose on convicted offenders, actually work to protect the public is mixed at best. Not only sexual offenders typically seen as posing a high risk to the community, they are also considered incapable of being rehabilitated, . There also seems to be frequent misconceptions about the kind of offenders placed on sex offender registries, only a small percentage of whom are repeat offenders or who have offended against child victims.
With this in mind, how effective are sex offender registries in actually preventing future crimes? It seems to depend on who you ask. Recent surveys of law enforcement professionals who actually work with sex offender registry information found that 66 percent believed that popular misconceptions about sex offenders can often lead to problems with publicly available information. Speaking as a forensic psychologist who has worked with thousands of sex offenders over the years, I tend to share that opinion as well. Part of the problem is that states can vary widely in terms of the kind of information that is made available. While some states only release information about high-risk offenders, other states release all information regardless of actual level of risk
In a study recently published in the journal Psychology, Public Policy and Law, Kelly Socia and Andrew J. Harris of the University of Massachusetts Lowell examined popular misconceptions about sex offenders and how it affects public confidence in sex offender registries. The study was part of a nationwide Web survey of 1000 U.S. adults matched to reflect the general U.S. population nationwide. All participants were asked questions estimating their beliefs about registered sex offenders in terms of risk of reoffending, their general beliefs about how sex offender registries were used, political orientation, religious beliefs, actual knowledge about the effectiveness of sex offender legislation, and whether or not they had ever used the registry themselves.
Results showed that about seven out of ten participants reported believing that 50 percent or more registered sex offenders were either pedophiles or else at high risk of committing future sex crimes. They were also more likely to believe that most sex offenders victimized strangers rather than those known to them. Belief in risk that sex offenders will reoffend seemed strongly linked to political orientation. Conservatives tended to be more likely to see offenders as high-risk than non-conservatives.
Overall, most respondents in the study tended to share certain popular perceptions about convicted sex offenders. Not only do they believe that convicted sex offenders are all dangerous predators who need to be kept locked up but also that sex crimes are on the increase (they aren't). These beliefs seem to be especially strong for respondents who have never actually used a sex offender registry and who feel that current legislation isn't tough enough to curb what they consider to be an epidemic.
As the number of registered sex offenders continues to grow, it's becoming more important than ever to find better ways of dealing with them. Though current get tough policies have been proven by research to be ineffective, they still have widespread support from policy makers and voters. While there policies are unlikely to change in the foreseeable future, it is probably more important than ever to find better safeguards for the information available on sex offender registries to ensure that they actually protect the public as they were originally intended.
So, are sex offender registries just another example of crime control theatre? You be the judge.
Posted at 08:00 AM in Current Affairs, Dealing With Stigma, Forensic Matters, Sexology, Skepticism | Permalink | Comments (0)
A Spy at Bedlam (Part Two)
As far as John Haslam was concerned, James Tilly Matthews was a lunatic and he didn't hesitate to say so. Within a year of Matthews' admission to Bethlem, Haslam and his immediate superior John Munro had him moved to the "incurable" ward. In writing about Matthews' condition, Haslam described him as "sometimes, an automaton moved by the agency of persons, hereafter to be introduced to the notice of the reader ; at others, the Emperor of the whole world, issuing proclamations to his disobedient subjects, and hurling from their thrones the usurpers of his dominions."
Despite Haslam's conclusions, James Matthews' family had other ideas. In 1809, they formally applied to Matthews' parish to have him released (it was the parish that given permission to detain him in the first place) and arranged for a sanity hearing. To bolster their case, they also arranged for two prominent physicians, Henry Clutterbuck and George Birkbeck, to assess Matthews and make their own conclusions about his mental state. In depositions submitted to the King's Bench, both doctors declared that they had interviewed Matthews on multiple occasions and couldn't find any evidence of the insanity that Haslam and Munro insisted he had.
What followed was a battle of competing experts with Haslam and Munro putting together their own panel of authorities to verify that their original assessment was correct. Haslam even argued that Clutterbuck and Birkbeck had been completely fooled by Matthews who had obviously been faking sanity for their benefit. Though the court ruled against the Matthews family,
Haslam wasn't satisfied and, in 1810, wrote a book about the case titled, Illustrations of Madness: Exhibiting a Singular Case of Insanity, And a No Less Remarkable Difference in Medical Opinions: Developing the Nature of An Assailment, And the Manner of Working Events; with a Description of Tortures Experienced by Bomb-Bursting, Lobster-Cracking and Lengthening the Brain. Embellished with a Curious Plate (or, just Illustrations of Madness for short). Still considered a psychiatric classic today, the book represents one of the first clinical descriptions of paranoid schizophrenia though Haslam was, ahem, less than impartial in his opinion of how the opposing experts could have ever considered James Matthews to be sane. Considering all the publicity over James Matthews' case, Haslam had no qualms about his referring to his patient by name in the book, probably as a way at getting back at the Matthews family as well.
In the book, Haslam wrote extensively about James Matthews and his bizarre persecution complex. According to Haslam, Matthews believed that he was being harassed by a gang living nearby but which terrorized all of London. The four men and three women who were part of this gang were basically spies and saboteurs dedicated to undermining the British Empire and "work events of the most atrocious nature." The leader of this gang was named Bill, or "the King" who was about 65 and who "exerts the most unrelenting and murderous villainy; and he has never been observed to smile." Other members of the gang boasted such sinister names as Jack the Schoolmaster, Sir Archy, the Middle Man, August, Charlotte, and the Glove Woman.
Along with being involved in virtually every plot or conspiracy Matthews could think of, he also accused the gang of regularly harassing him with a device referred to as an Air Loom. Though he was a bit vague on the inner workings of this machine, he referred to it as being a creation of the brilliant pneumatic chemistry skills of the gang members. Using different substances, including seminal fluid (male and female), vitriol and aqua fortis, poisons such as nightshade and hellebore, stinking human breath, gas from the anus of a horse, and various other compounds, the device could have differing effects on the human body depending on what the gang intended.
Among the afflictions that the Air Loom gang (for want of a better name) could produce were:
Fluid locking by which the fibres at the root of the tongue could be blocked (meaning that the victims were literally tongue-tied).
Cutting soul from sense to keep the heart from communicating with the brain
Stone-making, i.e., forming stones in the gall bladder, kidney, etc. Matthews identified various medical cases involving members of the government to prove the gang's effectiveness.
Sudden death-squeezing which produced instant death in anyone the gang wanted. According to Matthews, the gang's nickname for this was lobster-cracking. This name apparently came from the victim's sensation of feeling as if his head was caught between two lobster-crackers (or nutcrackers) and experiencing "the whole stress, torture, driving, oppressing, and crush all together."
Lengthening the brain, which literally stretched the brain causing ideas to become distorted and seemingly irrational to others.
Bomb-bursting in which the body's gases become inflammable and, while the victim is in agony, setting off a powerful electric charge which produces a "terrible explosion, and lacerates the whole system." If it isn't instantly fatal, the victim is left in shock at recovering.
Laugh-making in which the magnetic fluid is forced onto the vitals causing the muscles of the victim's face to twist into a laugh or grin.
and a whole host of other techniques, all designed to mimic just about any physical ailment imaginable.
To explain how he was able to learn so much about the gang's activities, Matthews described the different ways with which he and the gang members communicated. First, there were brain sayings, basically a form of telepathic communication caused by the sender and receiver being impregnated with magnetic fluid and constantly charged by the Air Loom. According to Matthews, he first learned about this form of communicating in France where Mesmerism was still popular. These brain sayings appear indistinguishable from ordinary thoughts and only someone "strong in intellect" coudl become aware of what was really happening.
The next form of silent communication Matthews described was voice-sayings. Using their device, the gang could project sounds directly to the auditory nerve of their target. This allowed them to relay their words in a way that no bystander could overhear. Even when he was sleeping, the gang continued to trouble him using what he called dream-workings. According to Matthews, the gang had a collection of grotesque puppets and, just by staring at them, could project their images directly into the sleeping brain and produce bizarre nightmares. While Matthews reportedly saw through these illusions and caught a glimpse of the gang members themselves, they "stepped back' by using a metal instrument attached to the Air Loom. This weakened the link and allowed them to hide once more.
Though his lengthy sessions with Matthews, John Haslam drew out numerous details about the Air Loom gang, how the Air Loom worked (complete with diagrams supplied by his patient), and revelations about all the other Air Loom gangs operating around London. Since the Air Loom only had an effective range of about a thousand feet, the gang relied on "pneumatic practitioners to "premagnetize" people to make them more vulnerable. Along with Matthews himself (the gang had an Air Loom stationed near Bethlem just for him), the gang also concentrated on leading members of the government to control their behaviour and leak their secrets to France. As proof, Matthews drew on news of recent calamities to show what the gang was doing while he was locked away in Bethlem and unable to stop them.
For John Haslam, the bizarre ramblings supplied by his patient represented absolute proof that he was a dangerous lunatic who needed to be kept locked up in Bethlem. Despite the lack of evidence that Matthews posed any risk of violence, his obsession with the government, not to mention recent incidents involving lunatics threatening to assassinate King George III, was enough to ensure that Matthews would remain a psychiatric patient for the rest of life.
Whatever sense of vindication Haslam felt would be short-lived however. Ultimately, it was James Tilly Matthews who had the last laugh.
Continue to Part Three
Posted at 08:00 AM in Current Affairs, Forensic Matters, Living History | Permalink | Comments (0)