cold, reserved and silent exterior, Selby Watson concealed a
violence of temper which he sought diligently to repress. His
wife's temper was none of the best. Worried, depressed, hopeless
of his future, he in all probability killed his wife in a sudden
access of rage, provoked by some taunt or reproach on her part,
and then, instead of calling in a policeman and telling him what
he had done, made clumsy and ineffectual efforts to conceal his
crime. Medical opinion was divided as to his mental condition.
Those doctors called for the prosecution could find no trace of
insanity about him, those called for the defence said that he was
suffering from melancholia. The unhappy man would appear hardly
to have realised the gravity of his situation. To a friend who
visited him in prison he said: "Here's a man who can write
Latin, which the Bishop of Winchester would commend, shut up in a
place like this." Coming from a man who had spent all his life
buried in books and knowing little of the world the remark is not
so greatly to be wondered at. Profound scholars are apt to be
impatient of mundane things. Professor Webster showed a similar
want of appreciation of the circumstances of a person charged
with wilful murder. Selby Watson was convicted of murder and
sentenced to death. The sentence was afterwards commuted to
one of penal servitude for life, the Home Secretary of the day
showing by his decision that, though not satisfied of the
prisoner's insanity, he recognised certain extenuating
circumstances in his guilt.[2]


[2] Selby Watson was tried at the Central Criminal Court January,
1872.