The Jailhouse Performance of an Insanity Faker
A man accused of horse theft attempts a desperate, bumbling ruse to avoid trial by feigning madness, only to be caught plotting his escape with stolen keys.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Henry Martin, who with Ernest Henry Schultze, stole M. Baur’s horse and afterwards feigned insanity so successfully that he fooled the doctors and probate court into committing him to the insane asylum on August 5, was brought back from Steilacoom by Deputy Sheriff Z. T. Holden and thrown into a cell in the county jail to await trial for his crime. The authorities at the asylum suspected that Martin was shamming from the first and they kept him under close surveillance. They were soon confirmed in their suspicions, for a look of cunning always took the place of that of insanity on the horse-thief’s countenance whenever he thought no one was watching, and his guardians saw from his behavior that he was meditating an escape. He was searched and two keys and a piece of wire were found on his person. One of these keys opened the door of the ward in which he was confined, and the other turned the lock of the window grating. A man who was in possession of keys and tools for making his escape was deemed by Superintendent Waughop unfit for any treatment, and they at once sent for Sheriff McGraw to take him away. Martin now makes little or no pretense of insanity. He sees that the ‘jig is up’ and that he will have to submit to the fate to which his partner, Schultze, is doomed. Schultze’s defense was that Martin was the thief and that he (Schultze) had been inveigled into going with him. Martin will now have a chance to retaliate by accusing Schultze of being the thief and posing himself as the innocent party.
“A look of cunning always took the place of that of insanity on the horse-thief’s countenance whenever he thought no one was watching.”
Long before the modern complications of the state’s forensic mental health system, small-town law enforcement in 1889 had to rely on observation and suspicion to manage those attempting to game the judicial system. The story captures a moment where the asylum was treated as a holding pen, illustrating an era of limited psychiatric resources.
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