Rensselaer Journal, Volume 10, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 March 1901 — Decries Woman as Witness. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Decries Woman as Witness.

Seldom has an attempt to kill been made the subject of such widespread scientific discussion as the case of the assault upon the life of the Rev. John Keller, the pastor of a New Jersey village church. The affair has attracted the attention of neurologists and of those learned in medical jurisprudence. While as yet the facts of the case are all unknown, the circumstances of it have brought out many opinions and much data in regard to hysteria. It has started a most interesting discussion, whatever the outcome of the approaching trial may be. Science for a long time has been studying that complex being, woman. Whether science has learned anything definite or is still groping in the dark, as Adam groped when he first tried to understand the vagaries of Eve, is another question. The case has brought up the question of woman’s credibility as a witness, her physical, mental and nervous characteristics and various other questions. Dr. Allan McLane Hamilton, well known everywhere as a neurologist, has made the assertion that a woman is not a credible witness in a court of law when her testimony is unsupported, thereby confirming the opinion of Judge A. N. Waterman of Chicago. Dr. Hamilton has given the following interesting review of the subject: "The credence which is given to the word of a woman when that word and the word of a man are the only two things upon which the Jury has to decide, is a remnant left to us by the socalled age of chivalry. There is something in us remaining of the old feudal spirit which makes a man ashamed of himself if he does not give more credence to a woman’s word than a man’s word. It is a remnant of the

old type of days, which are called chivalrous and were not. Woman never occupied such a place in the world as she does now. Those old knights went into the clanging lists and fought for their women as they fought for their horses and cattle. “As to that shooting scrape over in New Jersey, I know nothing, and it would be absurd for me to give an expert opinion upon a case which I have not investigated thoroughly. But I do not know that in my practice I have—not every day, but many times a year—cases where a woman has made charges against men which were proved afterward to be absolutely unfounded. The woman’s pastor is the man who is pretty sure to be the ac-

cused one. An unmarried pastor runs great risks. Did you ever see an unmarried pastor in a country village; how the married women, old and young, incense him with the coffee pot and fling tea leaves around him? I believe in defending woman to the last gasp, but not in taking her testimony in a court of law as equal to the testimony of a man. God moves ln a mysterious way his wonders to perform, and He has in His infinite wisdom made both male and female, and the female is of a different nervous mentality from the male. I do not want to stir up all the women of the country against me, but I say what I say from a knowledge acquired through a long practice in the specialty of nervous diseases.” In Dr. Hamilton’s work on medical jurisprudence he cites several cases of women who have made false charges and born false testimony because of hysteria. Among them the following: “A young girl in Richmond caused a sensation by declaring that in the previous night she had been assaulted by burglars, who had entered the house. Her story, says Dr. Hamilton, was palpably false, and her state of mind grew out of a general feeling of alarm which attended the commission of several burglaries in the neighborhood.”

DR. HAMILTON