1924 illustration by Albert Reid depicting the spirits of presidential assassins John Wilkes Booth and Charles Julius Guiteau. The tagline "they might have gone free with modern procedure" is a reference to the then-popular practice of determining mental illness via family history, informed by eugenic conceptions of heredity and degeneration. According to this logic, these two assassins would not have been executed in "modern times" because psychiatrists would have identified them as "insane" and therefore incapable of understanding the nature of their actions, becoming institutionalized in asylums instead of executed by the state.
"Legislation and Lunacy: We shut the sane man and let-the happy crank wander at large."
Illustration from Puck magazine discussing the contemporary non-specialist perpsective on the implications of the insanity defense - letting criminals get off lightly with an asylum sentance while also allowing the mentally ill to cause trouble in society.
Poem about Charles Julius Guiteau, assassin of President Garfield. The poem was written by Rev. James Ballard of Red Oak, IA, and sent to John K. Porter, prosecuting attorney in the trial of Guiteau.
Note fragment on insanity, possibly written by John K. Porter during the trial of Charles Julius Guiteau. Follows the M'Naghten Rule for determining insanity, whereby the accused needs to have been unable to tell the difference between right and wrong when committing a criminal act in order to be deemed insane under the law.
Fragment of W. W. Godding's Letter Submitted to President Arthur on June 22, 1882. This letter asked President Arthur to establish a Commission of Lunacy to determine Charles Julius Guiteau's insanity. The President rejected Godding's plea and Guiteau was executed 8 days later.
"A major influence on international civil rights, anticolonial, and black consciousness movement, Black Skin, White Masks is an unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, the book remains a vital force today from one of the most important thinkers on revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in human history." -Jacket
front and back cover of the July 1990 edition (the last issue) of 'Phoenix Rising: The Voice of the Psychiatrized', Vol. 8 No. 3/4: Mad, Gay, Proud, & Angry
page 342, 349, and title-page from 1888 book 'A practical treatise on the medical and surgical uses of electricity: including localized and general faradization ; localized and central galvanization ; electrolysis and galvano-cautery' by George M. Beard (6th edition)
cover of 1961 book 'Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la Folie à l'âge classique' (Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason) by Michel Foucault
four press materials reporting on the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry's Committee on Psychiatry and Law's report in the October 1969 issue of 'A Psychiatric View' (Vol VII, No. 75): "The Right to Abortion"