I Have Struck Mrs. Cochran with a Stake: Sleepwalking, Insanity, and the Trial of Abraham Prescott PDF Download
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Author: Leslie Lambert Rounds Publisher: True Crime History ISBN: 9781606354094 Category : True Crime Languages : en Pages : 244
Book Description
How the forgotten case of murder while sleepwalking changed history After creeping out of bed on a frigid January night in 1832, teenage farmhand Abraham Prescott took up an ax and thrashed his sleeping employers to the brink of death. He later explained that he'd attacked Sally and Chauncey Cochran in his sleep. The Cochrans eventually recovered but--to the astonishment of their neighbors--kept Prescott on, somehow accepting his strange story. This decision would come back to haunt them. While picking strawberries with Sally in an isolated field the following summer, Prescott used a fence post to violently kill the young mother. His explanation was again the same; he told Chauncey he'd fallen asleep and the next thing he knew, Sally was dead. Prescott's attorneys would use both a sleepwalking claim and an insanity plea in his defense, despite the historically dismal success rates of these arguments. In the two murder trials that followed, Prescott was convicted and sentenced to death both times. Prescott's crime has landmark significance, however, notably because many believed the boy was mentally ill and should never have been executed. The case also highlights the discriminatory role class plays in the American justice system. Using contemporaneous accounts as well as information from other insanity and sleepwalking defenses, author Leslie Lambert Rounds reconstructs the crime and raises important questions about privilege, societal discrimination against the mentally ill and the disadvantaged, and the unfortunate secondary role of women in history.
Author: Leslie Lambert Rounds Publisher: True Crime History ISBN: 9781606354094 Category : True Crime Languages : en Pages : 244
Book Description
How the forgotten case of murder while sleepwalking changed history After creeping out of bed on a frigid January night in 1832, teenage farmhand Abraham Prescott took up an ax and thrashed his sleeping employers to the brink of death. He later explained that he'd attacked Sally and Chauncey Cochran in his sleep. The Cochrans eventually recovered but--to the astonishment of their neighbors--kept Prescott on, somehow accepting his strange story. This decision would come back to haunt them. While picking strawberries with Sally in an isolated field the following summer, Prescott used a fence post to violently kill the young mother. His explanation was again the same; he told Chauncey he'd fallen asleep and the next thing he knew, Sally was dead. Prescott's attorneys would use both a sleepwalking claim and an insanity plea in his defense, despite the historically dismal success rates of these arguments. In the two murder trials that followed, Prescott was convicted and sentenced to death both times. Prescott's crime has landmark significance, however, notably because many believed the boy was mentally ill and should never have been executed. The case also highlights the discriminatory role class plays in the American justice system. Using contemporaneous accounts as well as information from other insanity and sleepwalking defenses, author Leslie Lambert Rounds reconstructs the crime and raises important questions about privilege, societal discrimination against the mentally ill and the disadvantaged, and the unfortunate secondary role of women in history.
Author: New Hampshire Court of Common Pleas Publisher: Forgotten Books ISBN: 9780282060695 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 52
Book Description
Excerpt from Report of the Trial of Abraham Prescott, for the Murder of Mrs. Sally Cochran, of Pembroke, June 23, 1833: Executed at Hopkinton, January 6, 1836 Within the memory of many people not yet very aged, there lived in the family of Chauncey Cochran, of Pembroke, a young man eighteen years of age, by the name of Abraham Prescott, who had been well treated by Mr. And Mrs. Cochran, and had appeared to be satisfied with his condition. He was not pos sessed of superior mental endowments, - indeed he was below the average standard of intellect, - but being of an obedient dispo sitiou he had the fullest confidence of the family. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.