Pathology of Lying, Accusation, and Swindling: A Study in Forensic PsychologyHealy, William
Science
Pathology of Lying, Accusation, and Swindling: A Study in Forensic Psychology
Healy, William
Criminal psychology; Swindlers and swindling
The extensive information which we have received concerning the
later history of this remarkable case we can only take space to
give in summary. We know definitely that Inez has received
attention, during periods varying from a few days to six months,
in no less than 18 different hospitals. Besides this she has
been under the care of physicians at least a score of times. Her
swindling in this matter was so flagrant in one eastern city to
which she had journeyed that she was handled through the police
court and was sentenced to a state hospital for the insane for a
term of 6 months. The charge was that she was an idle person and
a beggar, and she was regarded as perhaps being unbalanced. The
report from this town is that she would be taken with ``spells of
apparent violent illness on the street, in the trolley cars, at
railroad stations, and so be carried to various hospitals and
doctors' homes.'' She has visited numerous cities, getting her
sustenance largely through hospitals and physicians.
After being admitted into one famous hospital and showing some of
her curious manifestations she was transferred to a state
institution in the vicinity to be studied for insanity.
Correspondence with one physician tells the story of how five
years ago he was called from a medical meeting to attend this
``girl'' who had been taken from a trolley car into his home.
She was apparently suffering great pain in the region of the old
appendicitis scar and she was conveyed in an ambulance to a
hospital. After investigation for a few days, it was decided she
was hysterical or a simulator.
On numerous occasions her feigned illness has been so apparently
overcoming that she has had to be transferred in an ambulance to
a hospital. One of her usual performances has been to get into
some home or institution and then keep others awake all night
with her signs of distress. It is interesting that she has used
the same methods over and over again, but has been adroit enough
to vary the illnesses which she has simulated. At one time
investigation in a hospital seemed to show that she was
neurasthenic. She has been given chances in homes for
convalescents, but has never maintained herself in such a place
for long. We note she was sent back from one of these to the
main hospital on account of having vomited the medicine she had
been given. In fact, she has repeatedly been found resisting the
treatment which had been prescribed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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