The Case of the Defaulting Bank Accountant
Conclusion
The accused would have “signed a paper to the effect that he had murdered his wife, if asked to do so, he was in such a state of mental imbecility.”–Dr. Trimble
I’m taking this long to tell the story of George Cruickshank being charged with stealing $5000 in American gold pieces from the safe of the bank where he was employed as accountant because of the story’s curious twists.
And the fact that from the start his lawyer R.B. Ring raised the issue of Cruickshank’s mental state at the time of the alleged theft, in 1863, and his signing a confession in 1865. This was almost virgin ground for colonial Victoria. Insanity was a rare defence in criminal trials, one not to be applied frivolously before the reserved magistrates in an age when criminal sentences were often harsh.
We’ve seen how Cruickshank signed a notarized confession to the theft then, upon being formally charged, recanted in a second statement. Which is where we left off, with Att.-Gen. George Cary prosecuting for the Crown and D.B. Ring acting as Cruickshank’s defence counsel before Chief Justice David Cameron. Cary wanted to produce the first statement in court; Ring objected, insisting that Cruickshank’s mental state at the time of signing be established, and citing two precedents.
Cary said the only issue was whether the confession was voluntary but Ring wanted to introduce medical evidence of his client’s mental state. Justice Cameron agreed to hear medical evidence as to Cruickshank’s mental competence when he signed the confession and Dr. Trimble, who’d been allowed to observe from the gallery, took the stand.
He testified that he’d attended the accused “the first night he took sick, sometime...in January [six months before]. I continued to attend him...to the period of his recovery. He suffered from compression of the brain. It had an effect on his mental faculties. It affected his mind to such an extent at first that he did not know what he was saying; he was insane, in fact. For a long time, two or three months, he answered in monosyllables, and sometimes he would not answer at all. He said he had committed murder and had also committed forgery. He said he was a very bad man generally, and various other things.
“One of the symptoms of his state of mind was that he was quite indifferent about his child, and did not care about seeing his wife. He made many foolish statements that were sometimes rather amusing. Mr. Cruickshank was a monomaniac.”
As for criminal responsibility, Trimble thought there was “a distinction between insanity and moral insanity. On several points he was insane, but principally on those of murder and forgery. Persons labouring under insanity are capable of carrying on argument and in some madmen it is almost impossible to trace any delusion...”
Cruickshank’s mental illness had been so extreme that he’d stopped eating and he’d lost so much weight that his life “was almost despaired of. The brain was inactive and he remained in bed for some time without any appetite.”
Part of Trimble’s treatment program had involved his taking Cruickshank on short excursions to try to interest him in his natural surroundings, but he’d been indifferent. His professional opinion was that Cruickshank, even at the time of his arrest, was insane.
When court resumed a week later, Drs. Helmcken and Powell were present as Trimble continued his testimony. He thought, at the time that Cruickshank appeared before Magistrate Pemberton, he was so ill that he’d have “signed a paper to the effect that he had murdered his wife, if asked to do so, he was in such a state of mental imbecility.” Only two days later, he’d been “much recovered,” his sudden improvement, thought Trimble, the result of the shock of his being criminally charged having “rous[ed] his faculties and restor[ed] him to a partial recovery...”
Then it was Crown’s turn to question him. Trimble to Cary:
What he’d seen in Cruickshank was monomania, “one of the features of insanity,” not signs of delirium tremens. “I attribute his illness to an affusion of blood in the brain,” likely brought on by anxiety from his having suffered personal business losses. Sufferers of the DTs, on the other hand, “do not become monomaniacs but maniacs; when their liquor is stopped they become delirious...”
He said that after discussing Cruickshank’s condition with druggist Lang he’d prescribed “a certain supply of brandy as a stimulant to the brain;” in extreme cases of alcohol consumption he prescribed total abstinence. Cruickshank had been fired by the brewery which had employed him after his banking position because he was “so troublesome, snappish and ill-tempered,” a time when he’d complained of “severe pains in his head”.
Cary: “Was he responsible for his actions after he returned from the brewery?”
Ring: “Objection.”
Cary: “Would it be safe to leave Cruickshank without restraint at that time?”
Trimble: “You may infer from what I say.”
Cary: “I do not want to infer anything. I want a direct, straightforward answer, and I must have it.”
Trimble: “I don’t understand the question.”
Cary: “Oh, yes! you do.”
Trimble: “Well, I don’t believe he would commit suicide, or shoot anyone down.”
Cary: “Was he safe to go about?”
Trimble: “Safe from what? From drowning himself?’
Cary: “Come now, Dr. Trimble, give me a straightforward answer.”
Trimble: “I do not think it was safe to let him go about. He acted very strangely, talked in monosyllables, gave ludicrous answers during the first part of his illness and for months he talked about murder and forgery. He would shed tears and say he was a lost man. [He] never said anything to me about the bank affair...”
Cary: “If he had a hallucination of this kind on the first day of his attack would he have repeated it during the rest of his illness?”
Trimble: “Very likely he would. I was in close attendance on him during the first part of his illness, and never heard him allude to this hallucination. It is generally supposed that if a person is insane on one point he is a little insane on all... The mental condition of Mr. Cruickshank varied very little...”
Re-examined by defence counsel Ring: “Mr. Cruickshank did not tell me any secrets. When he was talking about the forgery, he said he had destroyed the firm of Guild, David & Co. I do not know whether that firm is still alive and flourishing.”
Then Charles Bacon, a neighbour of Cruickshank, took the stand. He said that he’d sat up with him a good many nights over two months and he didn’t think Cruickshank was in full possession of his senses. “On one occasion I heard him say that he had committed forgery... I remember one night when Mrs. Cruickshank ran over to my house and asked me to come and prevent him from going down town.”
When Cary declined to cross-examine, Walter Edwards took the stand. He, too, had served as a companion to Cruickshank, both nights and days, and had heard him rave of committing forgery and that his wife and servant wanted to poison him. Once, in the early morning hours, he’d had to restrain him from going to town. To Edwards Cruickshank had confessed stealing from the bank: “This was about three weeks after he was taken ill. I treated this in the same way as the other accusations he had made against himself. I told him if he talked this way I would not sit with him...
“He attempted violence towards his wife, he chased his wife and servant from the bedroom into the kitchen with a chair. I was in a constant state of uneasiness about him...”
ll this was in stark contrast to the George Cruickshank he’d known for four years, a man whose demeanour had always been that of “an affectionate and attached husband and father.”
When it was Cary’s turn to question Edwards it came out that, besides confessing to forgery and murder, threatening his wife and servant, he’d also removed all his clothes at one point. His mental state had become so bad, said Edwards, that Mrs. Cruickshank had been urged to leave the house for her own safety.
Cary confined his examination to establishing that Cruickshank had never discussed the bank affair with Edwards. Then Dr. Davie stated that he’d attended to Cruickshank once at the request of Dr. Trimble; the accountant, he said, was “suffering from hallucinations, misconceptions [and] self-accusations” but hadn’t mentioned the bank embezzlement specifically.
Cary: “His mind and brain were effected [sic] by his illness; a person so suffering cannot be depended upon. If the statements made by the patient were proved by subsequent evidence, I would not call them hallucinations.”
Mrs. King, the Cruickshanks’ servant, then testified that her employer had accused her of having tried to poison him, “of wanting to roast his wife alive, and that I was constantly tipsy. He frequently got up at night and went into the other room. He accused himself of murder and forgery and all kinds of things. He appeared to hate his wife and often shook his fist at her. He was not very violent. One day, [he] waved a box of lit fuses over his head. He was very ill when I left on March 16th.”
Cary established that the fuses incident occurred a fortnight before she quit.
Dr. Powell had also attended Cruickshank in consultation with Dr. Trimble, a week after the preliminary hearing. “I have heard Dr. Trimble’s evidence and quite agree with it.” In answer to Cary: “Mr. Cruickshank might recover his mind in three days,” he’d heard of other such cases.
Dr. Helmcken had found Cruickshank “labouring from congestion of the brain” and he concurred with the medical evidence presented in court. He believed Cruickshank to be “more or less insane”.
This concluded the defence. Cary proposed to call contradictory medical testimony. Ring: “Pray don’t let indiscretion overrule your judgment.” Cary: “Oh, but I will, though. I will prove it [the medical testimony] to be incorrect.”
Apothecary David Lang: “I frequently had interviews with Dr. Trimble after the first illness of Mr. Cruickshank; he told me what was the matter with Mr. Cruickhsank.”
When Ring interjected, Cary said he wanted to explore “a point upon which Dr. Trimble was unable to speak positively, and to explain a fact that he could not remember”. When Chief Justice Cameron ruled this to be immaterial, Cary tacked by having Lang describe his own dealings with Cruickshank. At least once, the druggist said, “He was in a state of complete composure, not in any way excited. I had several interviews with him. The first time I saw him was on the morning after his illness at the Colonial Hotel [the first reference to this–TW]; he was then composed. I conversed with him but not on the subject of his confession. He spoke very earnestly and naturally on matters of business. He said these things [sic] were pressing strongly on his mind... He spoke to me several times afterwards on business matters. I saw him nearly every day, sometimes oftener,” once at Cruickshank’s home; he was composed and they’d discussed the bank affair.
This brought an objection from Mr. Ring “to this question at the present stage” and Justice Cameron concurred.
Cary: “What was your opinion of Mr. Cruickshank’s state of mind?”
Lang: “My opinion was that Mr. Cruickshank was labouring under some kind of depression, but his conversation was rational.”
To this point of the trial the bulk of the testimony has dealt with George Cruickshank’s sanity at the time of the alleged theft and, later, when he’d signed a second confession. The combined testimony of Dr.’s Trimble, Davie, Powell and Helmcken, that of his servant and the two men who’d watched over him, certainly painted a portrait of a man who’d had a nervous breakdown. Or monomania, as Dr. Trimble termed it.
The real issue for Att.-Gen. George Cary was that a crime had been committed and Cruickshank’s sanity at that time, not in the year and a-half following. Defence counsel D.B. Ring had done his best to show that his client was mentally unbalanced when he was alleged to have taken the gold and when he’d made two confessions, the latter before a Notary Public.
There are so many inconsistencies.
Manager Walker first testified that only he and Cruickshank, as the bank’s accountant, had access to the safe’s two locked compartments, one containing the daily cash, the other holding the longer term deposits such as the gold coin. Each had a key and the safe also required two combinations to open both compartments. But, as it turned out, once unlocked in the morning, the safe was fully accessible to all bank employees throughout the day. And, during Walker’s two-week absence, he’d given his key to Cruickshank who in turn gave his to a cashier so as to maintain the double-security system. Although Cruickshank had known both combinations, once the safe was opened any other staff member could have taken the coin.
In subsequent testimony, Walker even admitted that there were duplicate keys in existence!
Furthermore, all the testimony relating to Cruickshank’s apparent breakdown were post-robbery. Walker had had no reason to suspect his sanity at the time of his employment with the bank nor when he initially discovered the theft. Readers are reminded that there was a time-lag between because the coins were bagged and when balancing the books, short of a quarterly audit, the bags, as many as 20 of them, weren’t examined for their exact contents. In fact, he explained, the practice in most banks was to weigh, not count, the coins’ but because the Victoria branch lacked a scale big enough, counting was the rule. He also had to concede that the bank had once accredited $1000 to the wrong party, the mistake only being discovered when the recipient issued a receipt for the money.
He confirmed that he hadn’t suspected Cruickshank upon discovering that $5000 was missing, and had taken statements from all employees as the starting point of an investigation. Curiously, this signed statement was never produced at the preliminary hearing nor at the trial, having been sent to the bank’s head office in London, Eng. He denied ever having accessed the safe “alone under any circumstances” and, for the first time, he declared that he’d once had to suspend Cruickshank for drunkenness.
Cashier Henry Rushton described his accessing the safe in the morning when he had one of the keys, and upon locking up at day’s end: “It was only the cashier’s money that was [placed in the vault]... When I was cashier I handled the cashier’s money for which I was answerable, but never touched the reserve. I had no power to interfere with [Cruickshank] and did not watch him as that would imply suspicion. Had the reserve and the cashier’s money been mixed, I should probably have noticed it. I never knew both combinations. I never lent my key to Mr. Cruickshank while I was entrusted with it, and he could not therefore open the safe without another key.”
Mr. Ring began his closing address by describing the Crown’s case as “a heap of probabilities upon probabilities”.
Would jurors “upon simple probabilities brand as a felon, a man who until this alleged charge was brought [had] enjoyed an unblemished character for honour and integrity in his business transactions? Would they cause a hereditary blot to rest upon his child to descend to future generations?”
He reminded the jury that the cashiers (one of whom had since left town) had had access to the safe and dismissed his client’s ‘confession’ as that of a man who’d suffered a mental breakdown. In fact, he said, Manager Walker hadn’t even been able to prove the exact amount of missing coin.
Cruickshank didn’t take the stand and when Chief Justice Cameron briefly explained the nature of embezzlement and larceny as charged in the indictment, without mentioning the sanity issue, the jury filed out to begin deliberation. Five minutes later, they were back: Not Guilty.
Did George Cruickshank steal the gold? Who knows for sure? Did he suffer a mental breakdown? Most certainly. His trial is unique for its time for its emphasis on the mental state of an accused both when the crime was committed and, months later, when he ‘confessed.’
That said, however, it’s likely that his rapid acquittal was prompted by the manager’s conflicting testimony and what seems to have been a sloppy security system. It’s interesting to note, too, how George Cruickshank, because of his previous respectability, was treated so deferentially in court—seldom the case with others in the day and age when punishment could range from lengthy prison sentences with or without hard labour, flogging, bread and water fare and capital punishment.
Have a question, comment or suggestion for TW? Use our Contact Page.