Those classed as defective could include vagrants, inebriates, drug addicts, prostitutes, perverts, imbeciles, deaf-mutes, the blind, the insane and epileptics — totaling, in one estimate, 9.5 million people, almost one-quarter of Britain's population.
In the second act, they are joined by Genevieve (Lois Smith), Mertis's blind and occasionally insane friend.
"None does offend, none, I say none" as the king, the beggar, the outcast, the fool, the blind man, the insane huddle together in an abating storm and in defiance of "the gilded butterflies" who seize the power, the money and the authority ("the laws are mine, not thine").
Then his friend was blinded and driven insane by a bullet be hind his eyes.
Exemptions were made for clergymen, students and those certified as insane or blind.
("This being the state capital, we had all the state institutions in Jackson — blind, deaf and dumb, insane," Eudora Welty said in praise of her Mississippi hometown in a 1999 profile by Willie Morris. "Made for good characters"). As it happens, many of those writers turn out also to be good material themselves.
"Brokerage and stock exchange executives, men of patrician backgrounds, who held chop house brokers in contempt, turned a blind eye to the insane overhyping of stocks by analysts, and the web of conflicts of interest that would become a full-blown scandal in 2002," he writes.
"You can't pretend to be tough and strong on safety, yet turn a blind eye to this insane AR-15 Groundhog Day".
The court's critics claim that, in reality, it has often turned a blind eye to the execution of the insane simply by refusing to hear their appeals.
This chilling account tells of a lawyer who murdered his wife and children (among them a son born blind, deaf and brain-damaged), was found insane and began a new life when he was released from custody two years later.
