The Crown vs. George Cruickshank

Some months ago I told you the story of one of Victoria’s most enduring mysteries, the robbery of Macdonald’s Bank. It has never been solved, at least not officially.

It was Victoria’s first bank robbery but certainly not its last.

If there were suspicions that Macdonald’s was an inside job, there never was any doubt whatsoever that the theft of $5000 in American gold coins from the Bank of British Columbia in 1865 was the work of an employee.

He’d admitted it without even being asked!

So the real question was not who or why, but was he sane at the time?

Today, mental illness is recognized as just that—an illness that, like most organic diseases, is usually treatable. In a courtroom, particularly in cases of murder, sanity can determine a defendant’s sentencing to a prison or a hospital, even acquittal.

But this is all new ground even though Victoria established its own ‘lunatic asylum’ as early as 1876. (It was an abysmal failure: instead of helping its patients, the so-called asylum became the subject of public scandal when the public learned that patients had been verbally and physically abused, and robbed of their few possessions by its director and staff!)

What makes this week’s story bank robbery fascinating is that, during the subsequent trial, defence counsel based his case entirely upon the accused’s state of mind at the time of the theft. In short, his guilt wasn’t the issue but his sanity.

Consequently, the case of the Crown vs. George Cruickshank is almost precedent-setting in the British justice system as it was practised in the Crown Colony of Vancouver Island 150 years ago.

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Photo caption: Victoria, 1862, as it was at the time of George Cruickshank's trial for bank theft. --Wikipedia photo