FIRSTS AND LASTS

FIRSTS

In the middle 1800’s Asa French moved to Chautauqua County from the Berkshire region of Massachusetts. He brought with him a son named George, and an undiagnosed mental disorder that gave him paranoid delusions. He was convinced that Tories and Catholic priests were stalking and plotting to kill him across England, though he’d never been to the country. He’d contacted police in Massachusetts begging for protection.

He moved his family to the town of Pomfret in Chautauqua County where he was eventually excommunication from The Fredonia Presbyterian Church for intemperance and misconduct, behavior considered “un‑Christian”.

Asa French Moved His Family to Chautauqua

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In January 1843, in London, England, a Scottish woodturner named Daniel M’Naghten shot and killed Edward Drummond, the private secretary to Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel. M’Naghten shot Drummond in the back, believing that he was the Prime Minister, serendipitous case of mistaken identity. In his defense a British barrister used a creative, developing legal argument called “the insanity defense” articulated as; “To not know the nature and quality of the act”, or “To know the act, but not know that it was wrong”, summarized as a legal precedent as “the right and wrong test”.

The M’Naghten Rule

Counsel argued that he was innocent of killing Drummond because he was actually trying to kill Peel, which, even for a precedent-setting case, was stretching the limits of the standards of the rule that would be named for M’Naghten (he certainly seemed to know the nature and quality of killing Peel, he just didn’t know precisely what his intended victim looked like).

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Joseph Damon was a stonecutter in rural Pomfret, Chautauqua County. The Damons were known locally as rough men who worked a quarry near the family home. Joseph was a heavy drinker who complained of frequent migraines, a condition for which a local physician prescribed an unusual remedy: Damon was told to carry port wine with him at all times and drink it as needed. Neighbors remarked that he drank constantly yet rarely appeared drunk.

The Damons Were Stonecutters

In 1834 he lost his mind, at least temporarily, and murdered his wife Almira with an iron fire poker. When discovered, Damon was bloodstained and dazed. He’d called out to his brother, “For God’s sake, come in, I am afraid I have killed my wife”

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George French, son of Asa, became one of northern Chautauqua County’s most promising legal minds, despite the instability in his family due to his father’s affliction. George built a reputation for discipline, and civic engagement. By the early 1830s he was practicing law in Fredonia, where he became known for a willingness to take on difficult or precedent‑setting cases.

In 1834, he served as defense counsel for Joseph Damon in what became Chautauqua County’s first recorded insanity plea (nearly nine years before the M’Naghten case that codified the “right and wrong test” into precedent-setting common law). French’s legal strategy was surely informed by his experiences with his father’s behavior, the same actions that got Asa excommunicated from the church. French’s arguments in defense of Damon were eloquent, and sophisticated, drawing on Damon’s long medical history and the questionable treatments he had endured. French bridged law and medical testimony, unusual for rural practices. He became known locally as an attorney willing to push the boundaries of legal reasoning in a rural court system.

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Five months after the death of his wife, Damon was brought before the Court of Oyer and Terminer – the high criminal court of the era and a direct predecessor to the modern New York State Supreme Court.

The Court of Oyer and Terminer, Fredonia, New York

But, without the “right and wrong test” standard from the M’Naghten Rule as a precedent, the jury returned a verdict of guilty, and the court ordered that Damon be “hung by the neck until he is dead”.

LASTS…to be continued.