Sleepwalker murder: is he responsible?

I did not study sleepwalking during my university studies and haven’t seen it since.  The medical definition of sleep walking/somnambulism is: purposeful moving while in a deep stage of sleep. Sleep-walking occurs most frequently in children, particularly boys. Sedatives tend to exacerbate rather than cure sleep-walking. The best measures are preventive: ensure that the sleepwalker is in a safe room for walking and cannot accidentally fall downstairs.

Stab in the dark: can people kill without being conscious? by Eleanor Shakespeare
The Guardian

Some types of sleepwalking are related to seizure disorders & other neurological conditions; most cases are transitory. Parasomnias/involuntary behaviours during sleep are usually harmless. But some lead to reckless or violent actions.

Law Here are some criminal cases in which the sleep­walking defence was invoked, reported in Psychology Today; Stacks Law Firm and USNews.

In 1846, Albert Tirrell cut the throat of a Boston prostitute, set fire to the brothel, then fled to New Orleans, where he was arrested. Tirrell said he was a chronic sleepwalker and perhaps committed the crime while asleep. Strangely the jury agreed and found him not guilty. Would he have been guilty if the victim  wasn't a prostitute?

In Glasgow in the 1870s Simon Fraser, disoriented from a nightmare about beasts, dashed his son’s head on the family’s bedroom floor. He was acquitted for the murder, since it was so clear to the jury that he had no desire to kill his child. The episode had probably been a night terror, with or without sleepwalking.

The Boston Tragedy referred to the murder of Maria Bickford, 1846;
Tirrell was acquitted because of sleepwalking.
National Police Gazette, 1846

Texan man Isom Bradley testified in the 1920s that he and his mistress were in bed when he heard a dangerous enemy. Fearing a secret attack, he went put a pistol under his pillow. Later he jumped up and fired shots, woke up and found his girl­friend dead in bed. Bradley was convicted of murder, but the convict­ion was reversed on appeal; he had been acting in a somnambulistic state.

In 1950 Melbourne mother Ivy Cogdon axed her only child to death; Patricia was found early in the morning, in her bed, with the bloodstained axe near her body. The mother had long been prone to psychological cond­itions which had been treated by several doctors. Cogdon’s defence was that she was sleep­walking when she killed Patricia, “protecting” her girl from invading Korean soldiers in Carnegie. She was acquitted due to sleep­walking.

In 1987, Kenneth Parks sleep-drove in Ontario to his mother-in-law’s house, stabbed her to death and strangled his father-in-law almost to death. He got back in his car, drove to a police station with blood on his hands but had no memory of the murder. Parks had a strong family history of parasom­nias (sleepwalking, enuresis and night terrors), and he was stressed, depressed and insomniac. These factors combined to make sense of his sleepwalking behaviours. No intent, not guilty of murder!

In 1994 Michael Ricksgers accidentally murdered his wife in Pennsylvania during a sleepwalking ep­is­ode, provoked by a medical condition, sleep apnoea. Ricksgers told police that he awoke to find a gun in his hand and his wife bleed­ing in bed beside him. He apparently dreamt about an intruder breaking in! But pros­ec­utors said Ricksgers was furious that his wife was leaving him, so he was sentenced to life in prison, without parole

A devout Mormon, Scott Falater stabbed his wife 44 times with a hunting knife, then dragged her into a backyard pool and drowned her in Arizona in 1997. Falater, who had no apparent motive, said he had a history of sleepwalking, was sleep-deprived and was uncon­sc­ious during his attack. Yet Falater had tried to conceal the knife and bloody clothes in his car. A jury found Falater guilty of first-degree murder!

In 2001 Stephen Reitz killed his married lover, Eva Weinfurtner, during a romantic island holiday. He smashed her head, disloc­at­ed her arm, fractured her wrist, ribs, jaw and skull, and stabbed her neck. Reitz told Californian police that he remembered nothing, though through flash-backs he recalled “fighting a male intruder”. At trial, his parents testified that their son had sleep­walked since childhood. However due to the defendant's past history of violence towards Weinfurtner, Reitz got first-degree murder.

In 2009 Brian Thomas appeared in a South Wales court on a murder charge, after strangling his wife as they slept in their camp­er van. Psychiatrists testified that locking him up would not be helpful as he had had a genuine sleep disorder, suffering night terrors for c50 years, and thus bore no responsibility for his actions.

 

Scott Falater's case

The Index-Journal, Greenwood South Carolina,
June 1999

Science  Ursula Voss’ team at Bonn University reported that even during lucid dreaming (a state in which some people can control their dreams), some areas of the brain associated with intent stayed Offline, while other areas associated with consciousness were On.

Similarly a study by Claudio Bassetti at the University of Zurich manoeuvred a sleep­walker into a brain scanner during a sleep­walking episode. He showed no activation in the areas of the brain associated with intent, though emotional areas and movement areas were active. So while judgement was Off, the ability to act out emotionally was On.

Antonio Zadra at the University of Montreal measured the brain activity of 10 sleepwalkers and 10 control subjects to det­ermine what stage of sleep they were in. Their results might event­ual­ly enable a test for genuine sleepwalkers, a big break-through.

Conclusion
When the accused was sleep-deprived, under stress or had a history of sleepwalking, he was more likely to experience para­somnia behav­iours. If he'd also been using alcohol or drugs, more so! But it's more difficult to explain away any behaviours as strictly biological in origin. Legal systems need to take science more seriously, finding explanations for the biol­og­ical and social bases of sleep behaviours, establishing who has a genuine sleep disorder and who is faking.

In Australia, a person cannot be guilty of an offence if they were unconscious or asleep when the act was committed. Courts throughout Australia have often confirmed that finding a defendant’s actions must be voluntary for a finding of guilt. If a person is asleep and therefore not conscious, they cannot have acted voluntarily.

Boston Massacre 1770 -> revolution

Puritanism was a British Christian faith originating in the early C17th. The ideals which separated Puritans from other Christ­ians in­cluded their strict belief in predestination i.e that God already chose those who would be saved, or not. When William Laud became the Archbishop of Canter­bury in 1633, the new beliefs he brought were unacceptable to Purit­ans who sought to purify the Church from all Catholic influence. Laud’s new beliefs included individual acceptance or rej­ection of God's grace, tol­eration for many religious beliefs, and the incorpor­ation of High Church symbols.

Early in the C17th, Puritans were leaving Europe for the Am­erican colonies, centred in New England and soon the Puritans were able to control most of the colonies' activity there. Each war or colonial expansion left Britain’s finances struggling, so new taxes were levied to bolster the treasury. Alas for Boston, British King George III and Parliam­ent taxed the col­onies with­out repr­es­ent­ation. So when res­is­t­ance emer­g­ed, locals gat­hered at Bos­ton’s Old Meeting House to chal­len­ge British rule.

  British infantry men

The British needed facilities. Boston Common was bought in 1634 as a militia training field and later British soldiers used the Boston Common as their camp. And a brick, two storey Faneuil Hall was rebuilt in Georgian style in 1763. Its first floor served as a market place and the second floor contained a large hall used for meetings.

   

Regiments of British troops occupied Boston in Sept 1768, aft­er citizens had resisted British taxes levied on goods like tea and paper to pay for the costly French and Indian War. Sent to enforce these taxes and keep the peace, the 1000 soldiers were heav­ily resented by Bostonians as an affront to their local aut­onomy. From the beginning of the occupation, conflicts periodically flared up between British soldiers and townspeople, and by early 1770, fights had become regul­ar. The presence of Irish and black British soldiers occupying Boston further inflamed white, Prot­estant Boston­ians, many of whom held slaves and had fought against French Cathol­ics in the French and Indian War.

On 5th March 1770, clashes between locals and soldiers broke out across Boston. This Boston Massac­re was a turning-point in relations between Americans and British authorit­ies. British Capt Thomas Preston soon arrived at the scene with six grenadiers and formed a semicircle in front of the square, fully armed. And as the church bells pealed, more citizens filled the streets to join in and hurled rubbish at the British. Suddenly a projectile hit the rifle of one grenadier Private Hugh White, causing him to mis­takenly discharge his musk­et. As a crowd began to gather, shouting insults and throwing snowballs, White called for reinforcements. Other grenadiers shot into the crowd as people ran for cover but 5 towns­­people were killed.

  

The Boston Massacre
Old State House in the background.
Engraved by Paul Revere and published in 1770

After the shooting, Capt Preston ordered his soldiers to re­treat, fearing retribution. The crowd continued to grow, with some Bostonians attending to the wounded and others brought muskets antic­ipating a wider fight. Preston soon ord­ered much of the 29th Regiment to the Custom House.

Gov Thomas Hutchinson, senior British administ­rator in Mass­ach­usetts Bay, feared that endless thousands of colon­ists would flood into Bos­ton to expel the British regiments from town. Indeed import­ant Bos­tonians demanded the troops’ removal immediately. Seeking to pacify the locals, Hutchinson arrest­ed Capt Preston and the grenadiers, and demanded a trial.

 \

Old State House, Boston

The cobblestone ring in front marks the site of the massacre

In the days after the event, 5,000+ people were led by Samuel Adams, leader of the fight against British colonial rule, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and cousin of  later President John Adams. Each year from 1771-5, large meet­ings were held at Old South to com­m­emorate the Massacre, with rousing patriotic speeches. Samuel Adams and other revol­ut­ionary colonists protested in particular in the Taxation without Represent­at­ion debate.  And the site of the massacre was marked by a cobblestone ring on the traffic island in front of the Old State House (see photo). Visitor centres in Concord and Lexington explain where the Brit­ish re­treated under the fire of col­onial militiamen. 

Word of the massacre was unhappily received in Lon­don. Am­er­ica-sup­port­ers in Parliament expres­sed a minority view when they urged the with­drawal of soldiers from Bos­t­on, but the oppos­ite occurred - more sold­iers were sent to the mutinous colonies. Parliament hoped that more British aggression would succeed.

  

Paul Revere silversmith, engraver, industrialist and patriot
Painted by John Singleton Copley, 1768

When the fin­al negotiations failed, Samuel Adams gave the signal that start­ed the Boston Tea Party Dec 1773. The Sons of Lib­erty led the way, dump­ing hundreds of chests of tea into Griff­in's Wharf harb­our. To punish the locals for the Tea Party, Br­it­ish soldiers destroyed the pews and pulpit in Old South. When tensions began to rise again in 1773 and 1774, Bostonians responded more forcibly than in 1770.

Paul Revere’s wooden house, where he lived from 1770-1800, was built in North Square Boston. Here he did his famous pat­riotic night ride, to warn the Lexington and Concord residents of the Brit­ish Red­coats. Pat­riot's Day is cele­brated in the state to remember those events. With its huge front gate, the Granary Burying Ground was the site for notable Revolut­ion­ary people, including 3 signers of the Declaration of Independence: John Han­c­ock, Robert Treat Paine and Samuel Adams. Also Paul Revere, Peter Fan­euil and the Boston Massacre victims.

The grenadiers stood trial in Boston, well defended by future Pres John Adams. Only two of the soldiers were found guilty, and both eventually received light punishments. Thus the Boston Massacre and Boston Tea Party prov­ided two of the issues that sparked revolut­ion­ary feelings and solidified the threat of British military occ­upat­ion in Bostonians’ minds.

British forc­es actually arrived in Boston in May 1775. In June, col­onial sold­iers were sent onto the Charlestown Peninsula to oc­cupy Bun­ker Hill. This became the first major battle of the American Rev­olut­ion (1775–1783), reinforcing local desire for indep­endence from the British crown.

Ivor Weiss: talented UK artist.

 The Waiting Room, 1964

The Discussion, 1968 

Spitalfields Life introduced Ivor Weiss (1919-86) who was born in Stepney in the East End of London near Cable St, son of Romanian Jewish immigrants who came from Bucharest. Ivor’s talent for draw­ing was apparent from an early age and en­couraged by his parents. 

His studies at the Northampton Rd Polytechnic London, were cut sh­ort by the outbreak of WW2. He ended up in the Royal Corps of Signals and was posted to the North African campaign in Egypt. He then spent most of the war with the Brit­ish 8th Army in Malta where he was all­owed to study at the Malta School of Art in Valetta. There his tal­ents were first recognised at a serious level. 

When demobbed in 1946, he enrolled at Heatherley’s School of Fine Art in Chelsea, where he gained a diploma in painting. It was his time there and its long tradition of figurative art that had the greatest imp­act on his art. And then St Martin’s School of Art in Charing Cross Rd, where he studied paint­ing and art history, like many other Eastern European artists. And he met his future wife, Joan Dare, also an art student and painter.

Ivor’s brother was a pilot in the RAF who had been seconded to Mont­gomery USA. After graduating in 1950, Ivor and Joan in­vited to Al­ab­ama to live. There they set up an art school called the Weiss Gall­ery. And he had 3 exh­ibitions in the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art. To supplement their income they undertook commissions from commerc­ial clients, creating large murals and mosaics. And two of the child­ren were born in US. Unfortunately the normal family practice of holding multi-racial classes was at odds with Alabama’s segregated society. But only by 1955 had they saved up enough money to return.

On returning home, Ivor Weiss designed glass windows for the Stock Ex­ch­ange in Johannesburg S.Africa and a large mosaic in Maid­st­one. Ivor was offered a locum art teacher position at Lanc­ing Coll­ege near Brighton for six months. Then he and his family decided to move to Brightlingsea Essex, a sea­side town where he taught art at the local high school. In 1958 they had their third child.

To supplement his income, he moved into teaching evening classes and into art dealing from the Brightlingsea home. By 1965 they’d made enough money to buy a big house in Colchester Essex. Ivor con­tinued as the art dealer, while Joan did the restoration. Weiss was a mem­b­er of Colchester Art Society in the 1950s and again later on.

In the 1960s Weiss’ mature work came to the attention of the prest­igious Mayfair Gallery in Carlos Place, near Lon­­don’s Conn­aught Hotel. There he exhibited several times, plus in Cambridge, Harlow and at Ben Uri Gallery London.

Four Drinkers, 1968

The Onlooker, 1968 

Stylistically Weiss’s paintings provide an evident love for the feel and texture of the paint itself . The black lines, which form a st­ructure to contain the paint, have soft contours softened by square brush strokes. Line and colour merge together with dramatic effects.

Note his most powerful works, of Jew­ish rituals and traditions, con­veying streng­th of faith. These works showed the importance of family and communal ties. They were characters who, alth­ough grouped in social acts like eating and drinking, often appear isolated. Their eyes disappeared into the black lines, a metaphor for avoidance of eye contact and distance. For a non-religious man, Weiss was prod­ucing an impressive body of works of orth­od­ox Jewish men at prayer eg he had a solo ex­hib­ition at the Colch­est­er Art Society called Rabbi and Ritual in 1971. More recently one of Ivor Weiss’ rabbinic paintings was hung Sandys Row Synag­ogue, Spitalfields.

Ivor was multi-talented: he taught pottery and made enamel jewell­ery, text­iles and fur­n­iture. His work was exhibited at the R.A and the White­chapel Gallery as well as inter­nat­ionally, and some pictures are in the collections of Cambridge Uni and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art. In the last decade of his life he became ins­pired by Judaic scenes probably influenced by Mark Gertler (1891-1939). 

A long struggle against cor­onary disease evoked memories of Ivor’s youth. These scenes expressed a need for an identity. And his trip­le bypass strengthened ever further his need to go back to his Judaic heritage and his East End child­hood. 

Ivor’s eldest son Mark took on the family business and Ivor was able to spend more time paint­ing both at home and on Italian holidays. How­ever in 1986 he died, at 67. His emotive paint­ings remained hang­ing in the family houses in storage with Joan, until she died at 92. Weiss Gallery was filled large bold paintings that possessed a tender hum­an­ity. These pictures embodied the cultural memory of the Jewish East End, speaking movingly of a good life and a great tal­ent.

Albemarle Gallery, in London's West End, organised a post­humous exhibition of his work in 2005, accompanied by a richly il­l­ustrated catalogue by Julian and Debra Weiss: Memories of a Jewish Artist.

Mark moved the Weiss Gallery to 59 Jermyn St, one of the last truly grand gallery spaces in London, where the Ivor Weiss show opened on Oct 2017. This Portrait of an Artist: Ivor Weiss Exhibition showed 31 works, many of them featuring Jewish symbols. 

I enjoyed reading Ivor Weiss: Memories of a Jewish Artist exhibition catalogue.

 Ivor Weiss rabbinal painting,

 donated to Sandys Row Synagogue. Dec 2017

British Brothers' League 1901-5, London

Britain’s monarch could expel foreigners to protect the security of the realm in the late C19th, but free movement of labour was gener­al­ly unquestioned. Migration wasn’t an urgent issue until Conserv­ative politicians agitated in the 1880s-90s, and the media got on board. 

Migrants in a crowded Poplar market, 1904

The Guardian

The feared immigrants were mainly East Europ­ean Jews. In the Pale of Set­tlement, they were allowed to live on a permanent basis. From 1880s on, with the terrible anti-Semitic pogroms, many fled. 150,000 settled in the UK, including my Russian grandmother. Then there were other Russ­ians and Poles, Ital­ians and Ger­mans who moved to the East End, and were seen to lower living standards in the UK.

Emerging trade unions were worried that low-skilled migrants acc­epting long hours and low pay would undermine real English workers’ struggles. During the 1890s, the Trades Union Congress/TUC passed 3 resolutions calling for immigration controls.

Jewish trade unionists wrote the remarkable Voice from the Aliens to counter a nasty resolution at the 1895 cong­ress. They unionised themselves and made strenuous efforts to co­op­erate with existing labour bodies. Influential non-Jewish activ­ists in William Morris’ Soc­ial­ist League support­ed them, as did tailors’ leader George Mac­donald etc. But the dockers’ leader, Ben Tillett, described Jewish immigrants as the "scum of the contin­ent who made slums even more foetid and congested".

Maj Evans Gordon MP and Parliamentary colleagues

to address restricting further immigration of destitute foreigners

BBL Poster, 1902

The migrants organised their own public meetings to challenge BBL propag­anda through an ad-hoc Aliens Defence League, temporarily housed in Brick Lane. They proposed practical solutions: unionising migrant workers so they could fight alongside indigenous workers for better conditions for all, and creating fair rent courts to deal with landlords.

The Daily Mail continued its campaign against the arrival of Jews from Russia: "In Feb 1900, a British liner called the Cheshire moored at Southampton, carrying refugees from anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia. They had breakfasted on board, but they rushed as though starving at the food. These were the penniless refugees and when the relief committee passed by they hid their gold, and fawned and whined, and in broken English asked for money for their train fare."

In 1901, hatred continued. Bishop Cosmo Lang of Stepney in East London accused immigrants of swamping areas once populated by Eng­lishmen. Major Will­iam Evans-Gordon, Conservative MP for Stepney in 1900 elected on a strong anti-immigration platform, ag­reed. Along with neigh­bour­ing Conservative MP Samuel Forde-Ridley and Capt William Stan­ley Shaw of the Middlesex Regiment, Evans-Gordon forged a pop­ul­ist anti-immigrant movement called the British Brot­h­ers’ League/BBL. It was launched in the East End in May 1901.

Init­ially the BBL was most int­erested in protectionism, although it soon emphasised more rabid anti-foreigner rhetoric. Henry Norman Wolverhampton MP publicly deplored the UK being made into the "dump­ing ground for the scum of Europe". He joined the campaign and advised other nations to "dis­in­fect their own sewage".

The Eastern Post and City Chronicle happily reported BBL activities and demanded that the government end the foreign flood which had submerged East London. Within months the league claimed 45,000 members, although a member was anyone who signed the BBL's petition. The League promoted its cause with large meetings, with guards whose role was to eject disruptive opponents.

The BBL’s East End strongholds in Shoreditch, Bethnal Green and Limehouse solidified around the immigrant ghetto of Aldgate and White­chapel. BBL members, mostly local factory workers or unempl­oyed, were convinced by BBL propaganda that their precarious work sit­uation (low pay, overcrowded housing, poor sanitation) was caused by immigrants. But Captain Shaw also boasted of his elite recr­uits: Oxford grad­uates, city merchants and 40 Tory MPs.

The league’s opening rally in 1901 drew opponents. BBL supporters wrote to the press about socialist foreig­ners upsetting the meeting. Local newspapers noted that 260 big brawny stewards roughly ej­ected foreigners. So when the BBL held another large rally at the People’s Pal­ace Mile End in Jan 1902, the 4,000 supporters were again protected by guards. [A technique later used by the British Fascists]

BBL supporters filled a petit­ion pressing MPs to halt immig­ration. When the government launch­ed a Royal Commission on Alien Immigration in 1903, Evans-Gordon chaired it and set the agenda. The Royal Commission inves­tigated the BBL’s own charges - that immigrants:
ar­rived destitute and dirty;
practised insanitary habits;
spread in­fectious diseases;
were a burden on the rates;
disposs­es­sed nat­ive dwellers;
caused native tradesmen to lose trade;
worked for rates below local workers;
included crim­in­als, prostitutes and anarch­is­ts; and
formed a non-assimilating commun­ity.

Britain is the Promised Land and immigrants are undesirable

The 1905 Aliens Act satirised

The Royal Commission struggled to back up its charges in its 1903 report. After all, the immigrants themselves lived in overcrowded conditions and mostly worked 12+ hours a day. Their dedication to educ­ation and self-improvement denied claims that the migrants low­ered living standards. 

Still the Tory government passed Br­itain’s first modern immigration law, 1905 Aliens Act. Alth­ough the word Jew did not appear in this Act, the legislation was large­ly seen as a success for the BBL, which could then close down.

This Act put an end to the Vict­or­ian Golden Age of migration which had benefited from cheaper trans­port costs and growing labour dem­ands. The Alien Act’s most important provision was that Leave to Land would be refused to those migrants who could not support them­selves. To screen the migrants properly, the Act allowed them to disembark only in app­roved ports where an Immig­ration and a Health Officer could in­spect them.

By the time the Act passed, the Tories had fallen to Lib­erals in a landslide. The discretionary powers were transfer­red to the new Home Secret­ary, Herbert Gladstone, who used them to instruct all members of the Immigration Board. From 1906 the press was allowed to attend board meetings and in 1910 im­m­igrants were permitted legal assist­ance. The refusal rate under the new Act was low alth­ough some groups, eg gypsies, were disprop­ort­ionally af­fect­ed. The act remained for eight years before being subsumed into the more stringent 1914 Alien Restriction Act.

Tailoring workshop, East End c1910

The Guardian

Nothing is new; the League left behind a legacy of support for far-right groups. Enoch Powell warned of rivers of blood, Oswald Mosley wanted forced repatriation of Caribbean immig­rants who flooded in, Margaret Thatcher spoke of Britain’s towns being swamp­ed and Nigel Farage said parts of Britain were like a horrid foreign land.