_THE CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE SERIES._
EDITED BY HAVELOCK ELLIS.
THE CRIMINAL.
_By the same Author._
THE NEW SPIRIT.
LONDON: G. BELL & SONS.
[Illustration: _Frontispiece._]
THE CRIMINAL.
BY HAVELOCK ELLIS.
_ILLUSTRATED._
SCRIBNER & WELFORD,
743 & 745 BROADWAY,
NEW YORK.
1890.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER II.
THE STUDY OF THE CRIMINAL 26
CHAPTER III.
CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY (PHYSICAL)--
§ 1. CRANIAL AND CEREBRAL CHARACTERISTICS 49
§ 2. THE FACE 63
§ 3. ANOMALIES OF THE HAIR 72
§ 4. CRIMINAL PHYSIOGNOMY 78
§ 5. THE BODY AND VISCERA 88
§ 6. HEREDITY 90
§ 7. TATTOOING 102
§ 8. MOTOR ACTIVITY 108
§ 9. PHYSICAL SENSIBILITY 112
CHAPTER IV.
CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY (PSYCHICAL)--
§ 1. MORAL INSENSIBILITY 124
§ 2. INTELLIGENCE 133
§ 3. VANITY 139
§ 4. EMOTIONAL INSTABILITY 142
§ 5. SENTIMENT 152
§ 6. RELIGION 156
§ 7. THIEVES’ SLANG 161
§ 8. PRISON INSCRIPTIONS 169
§ 9. CRIMINAL LITERATURE AND ART 176
§ 10. CRIMINAL PHILOSOPHY 193
CHAPTER V.
THE RESULTS OF CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY 202
CHAPTER VI.
THE TREATMENT OF THE CRIMINAL 233
CHAPTER VII.
CONCLUSIONS 283
APPENDIX--
A. EXPLANATION OF PLATES 303
B. THE CONGRESS OF CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY AT PARIS 307
C. THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF PENAL LAW 316
D. SOME CASES OF CRIMINALITY 318
E. ELMIRA 329
INDEX 335
PREFACE.
This little book is an attempt to present to the English reader a critical
summary of the results of the science now commonly called criminal
anthropology. In other words, it deals briefly with the problems connected
with the criminal as he is in himself and as he becomes in contact with
society; it also tries to indicate some of the practical social bearings
of such studies.
During the last fifteen years these studies have been carried on with
great activity. It seemed, therefore, that the time had come for a short
and comprehensive review of their present condition. Such a review of a
young and rapidly growing science cannot be expected to reveal any final
conclusions; yet by bringing together very various material from many
lands, it serves to show us how we stand, to indicate the progress already
made, and the nature of the path ahead. In these matters we in England
have of recent years fallen far behind; no book, scarcely a solitary
magazine article, dealing with this matter has appeared among us. It
seemed worth while to arouse interest in problems which are of personal
concern to every citizen, problems which are indeed the concern of every
person who cares about the reasonable organisation of social life.
I would willingly have given the task to abler hands. But I found no one
in England who was acquainted with the present aspects of these questions,
and was compelled, therefore, after considerable hesitation, to undertake
a task which had long appealed to me from various sides, medical,
anthropological, and social.
There is, I believe, nothing original in this book. It simply represents a
very large body of intelligent opinion in many countries. I have to
acknowledge with gratitude the assistance, always ungrudgingly rendered,
which I have received from very many directions. I would specially mention
those medical officers of prisons in Great Britain who answered my
Questions issued at the beginning of 1889, Dr. Hamilton Wey of the Elmira
Reformatory, Dr. Vans Clark, formerly Governor of Woking Prison, Professor
Lombroso of Turin, Dr. Antonio Marro, the Rev. J. W. Horsley, Dr. Langdon
Down, Dr. Hack Tuke, Dr. Francis Warner, etc. It would, however, be
impossible to enumerate all those to whom I am indebted. In such a task as
this the writer himself has the smallest part; the chief shares belong to
an innumerable company of workers, known and unknown.
H. E.
THE CRIMINAL.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
Of criminals, actual or nominal, there are many kinds. It is necessary,
first of all, to enumerate the chief varieties.
There is the _political criminal_. By this term is meant the victim of an
attempt by a more or less despotic Government to preserve its own
stability. The word “criminal” in this expression is usually a euphemism
to express the suppression of a small minority by the majority. The aims
of the “political criminal” may be anti-social, and in that case he is
simply an ordinary criminal, but he is not necessarily guilty of any
anti-social offence; he simply tries to overturn a certain political order
which may itself be anti-social. Consequently the “political criminal” of
our time or place may be the hero, martyr, saint, of another land or age.
The political criminal is, as Lombroso calls him, “the true precursor of
the progressive movement of humanity;” or, as Benedikt calls him, the
_homo nobilis_ of whom the highest type is Christ. From any scientific
point of view the use of the word crime, to express a difference of
national feeling or of political opinion, is an abuse of language. Such a
conception may be necessary to ensure the supremacy of a Government, just
as the conception of heresy is necessary to ensure the supremacy of a
Church; the prison for political dissentients corresponds to the stake for
religious dissentients. A criminality which is regulated partly by
chronology, partly by longitude, does not easily admit of scientific
discussion.
We have, again, the _criminal by passion_. He is usually a man of
wholesome birth and of honest life, possessed of keen, even exaggerated
sensibilities, who, under the stress of some great, unmerited wrong, has
wrought justice for himself. Stung to sudden madness by some gross insult
to his wife or wrong to his daughter, he makes an attempt on the life of
the offender. The criminal by passion never becomes a recidivist; it is
the social, not the anti-social, instincts that are strong within him; his
crime is a solitary event in his life. Therefore he cannot figure as a
serious danger to society; in some respects he serves even to quicken the
social conscience and to check anti-social instincts. At the same time it
is not to the advantage of society that a private individual should in a
moment of passion even wreak justice; and the criminal by passion cannot
complain that he in his turn becomes the victim of a social reaction.
We have also the _insane criminal_; that is to say, the person who, being
already in a condition of recognisable mental alienation, performs some
flagrantly anti-social act. A very large number of crimes are committed by
persons who are impelled by delusions, or who have, before the commission
of the crime, been in a condition of mental alienation. Nearly a hundred
persons every year in this country are sent to prison to be found insane
on admission. The hanging of persons who are afterwards generally regarded
as insane has always, and is still, frequently carried on. In Germany Dr.
Richter has shown that out of 144 lunatics who were, as was afterwards
shown, at the date of their crimes in the highest degree insane, only 38
were recognised as insane before the judge--_i.e._, 106 madmen were, on
account of their madness, condemned to severe punishment. Out of 100
insane persons brought to the bar of justice only 26 to 28 are recognised
as insane.[1] The insane criminal is clearly in a category of his own. He
is only a criminal in the same sense as an infant or an animal who
performs some noxious act. The lunatic may be influenced by the same
motives that influence the sane person, but he is at the same time
impelled by other motives peculiar to himself, and to which we may have no
means of access. To bring all the solemn formalities of law to bear
against a madman, and to condemn him to severe punishment, is in a
civilised country unreasonable.
The political criminal may usually be recognised without difficulty when
we lay aside political prejudice; the criminal by passion can be
recognised at once when we know his history. There is not usually much
difficulty in ascertaining the insanity of the criminal who is insane in
the strict and perhaps the only legitimate sense of the word--_i.e._,
intellectually insane. But at this point we are no longer able to proceed
with quite the same clearness and certainty. We are approaching the
criminal in the proper sense, the criminal with whom we shall be chiefly
concerned.
The uncertainty on this borderland may be illustrated by the following
case. W. T. is a boy of fifteen, a very small ugly-looking lad, with a
small head, low in the forehead, larger in the back, high narrow palate,
heavy sullen aspect, and slight external squint of left eye. His father
and mother are healthy and sober people; one of the father’s uncles died
in an asylum, and one of his aunts committed suicide. The boy had
convulsions at the age of eighteen months, and was very backward in
walking and speaking; at the age of twelve he could not dress himself. At
school he was very dull, apt to strike his companions if roused, solitary,
fond of reading, but not remembering what he had read. His schoolmaster,
an experienced teacher, had never known so peculiar a boy. But he was not
a bad or untruthful lad, and had no vices. When he left school his father
tried to teach him his own trade of shoemaking; but, though he had no
special distaste for the work, he could not learn even the most elementary
part of the trade. Other boys made fun of him, and he complained of his
little sister, ten years of age, doing the same. One day, when he had been
left quietly sitting alone with this sister, he took up his father’s
hammer, which was at his feet, and struck her, smashing in her skull. Then
he locked the back door, as he always did on leaving home, and went out,
closing the front door after him. He returned in an hour, wet from the
rain which had begun to fall. He was taken to prison, and from the first
displayed no emotion; he ate and slept well, and was a good, docile boy.
The judge who tried him (Lord Coleridge) was evidently in favour of a
verdict of manslaughter. The jury fell in with this suggestion, although
the authority of Dr. Savage was in favour of insanity, and the boy was
condemned to ten years’ penal servitude.[2] Such a case shows very well
the inaccuracy of our hard and fast lines of demarcation. Here was a
person clearly of abnormal or degenerate character, and liable to sudden
violent impulses; he would nowhere be popularly recognised as insane, and
possibly it is not desirable that he should be so recognised. On the other
hand, he cannot correctly be termed an instinctive criminal; he is on the
borderland between the two groups, and a touch may send him in either
direction.
Let us take another illustration. Miss B., nineteen years of age, the
daughter of a captain in the army, is described as a tall robust-looking
girl of lively temperament. When a few months old she had an attack of
meningitis. As a child she was always wilful and troublesome. When she was
eighteen years old she developed new instincts of mischief. She would
sometimes take off her clothes, stuff them up the chimney, and set fire to
them. When the servants rushed in she would be sitting on the hearth
clapping her hands: “What a fine blaze!” She had frequently destroyed
furniture, clothing, and books; she liked to cut carefully the strings
binding a book, so that it would fall to pieces in the hands of the
unsuspecting person who took it up. She drenched a baby, and frequently
her own room, with water, without any reason. She once attempted to
throttle the attendant in whose care she was put. She was backward for her
age, though her education had not been neglected; she could not keep
accounts, and was fond of reading children’s books. There was a history of
bad sexual habits, and she had a propensity to fall in love with every man
she saw. She was perfectly coherent and rational, and accused others of
doing the mischievous acts attributed to her. After being sent to a
clergyman’s house for some months she eventually recovered.[3] Here there
was, strictly speaking, no insanity; there were vicious and criminal
instincts which would no doubt have developed had the girl been sent to
prison instead of to a comfortable home, and there was (as there very
frequently is among instinctive criminals) a history of brain mischief.
How shall we classify her?
Let us take another example--this time from France--in which the
pathological element does not clearly appear. A gentleman named X., the
French paper informs us, has been passing the summer at his country house
with his daughter, aged twenty-two, and his son, aged twenty. From the
moment of his arrival devastations occurred everywhere on his property.
The shrubs were cut; garden plants and large branches of the birch trees
removed; the doors and walls of the house were soiled. The grounds and
dwellings of other persons in the neighbourhood were similarly treated.
Windows were broken; the emblems of religion were outrageously insulted;
the walls and doors of the church, the priest’s house, and even the altar,
were soiled with ordure. A drawing of the priest administering the
sacrament to a cow was found on the walls, and obscene letters,
containing also menaces of death and incendiarism, were received by M. X.,
the priest, and others. Terror overspread the parish, and no one dared to
go out by night. At last M. X.’s son and daughter were discovered in the
act. Alexis, the least guilty, having been drawn on by his sister,
confessed his part in what had been done; he was the accomplice and
confidant of his sister. She denied everything, even that she had aided
her brother. There was no motive for these acts, save the pleasure of
spreading terror through the country; they had had no intention of
accomplishing their threats. The girl carried her impudence and imprudence
so far as to send an insulting letter to the magistrate who was
investigating her misdeeds, and to break windows, unperceived, in his
presence.[4] This is an example of moral perversity, showing itself in
malevolent and unsocial acts. Possibly, if we possessed a scientific
history of the case, we might find a pathological element in it, but as it
stands it is but an extravagant example of anti-social instincts, on the
borderland of crime, which in a minor degree are far from uncommon.
I will now give, in some detail, the history of a more decisive and
significant example of this same moral insensibility. It is in a child,
and I take it from German records. Marie Schneider, a school-girl, twelve
years of age, was brought before the Berlin Criminal Court in 1886. She
was well developed for her age, of ordinary facial expression, not pretty,
nor yet ugly. Her head was round, the forehead receding slightly, the nose
rather small, the eyes brown and lively, the smooth, rather fair hair
combed back. With an intellectual clearness and precision very remarkable
for her age, she answered all the searching questions put by the President
of the Court without hesitation or shrinking. There was not the slightest
trace of any inner emotion or deep excitement. She spoke in the same quiet
equable tone in which a school-girl speaks to her teacher or repeats her
lesson. And when the questions put to her became of so serious a character
that the judge himself involuntarily altered his voice and tone, the
little girl still remained self-possessed, lucid, childlike. She was by no
means bold, but she knew that she had to answer as when her teacher spoke
to her, and what she said bore the impress of perfect truth, and agreed at
every point with the evidence already placed before the court. Her
statement was substantially as follows:--“My name is Marie Schneider. I
was born on the 1st of May 1874, in Berlin. My father died long ago, I do
not know when; I never knew him. My mother is still living; she is a
machinist. I also have a younger brother. I lost a sister a year ago. I
did not much like her, because she was better than I, and my mother
treated her better. My mother has several times whipped me for
naughtiness, and it is right that I should take away the stick with which
she beat me, and to beat her. I have gone to school since I was six years
old. I have been in the third class for two years. I stayed there from
idleness. I have been taught reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and
history, and also religion. I know the ten commandments. I know the sixth:
it is, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ I have some playfellows at school and in the
neighbourhood, and I am often with a young lady [believed to be of immoral
life] who is twenty years old and lives in the same house. She has told
me about her childhood, and that she was just as naughty as I am, and that
she struck the teacher who was going to punish her. Some time ago, in
playing in the yard, I came behind a child, held his eyes, and asked him
who I was. I pressed my thumbs deep in his eyes, so that he cried out and
had inflamed eyes. I knew that I hurt him, and, in spite of his crying, I
did not let go until I was made to. It did not give me special pleasure,
but I have not felt sorry. When I was a little child I have stuck forks in
the eyes of rabbits, and afterwards slit open the belly. At least so my
mother has often said; I do not remember it. I know that Conrad murdered
his wife and children, and that his head was cut off. I have heard my aunt
read the newspapers. I am very fond of sweets, and have several times
tried to get money to buy myself sweets. I told people the money was for
some one else who had no small change. I know that that was deceit. I know
too what theft is. Any one who kills is a murderer, and I am a murderess.
Murder is punished with death; the murderer is executed; his head is cut
off. My head will not be cut off, because I am still too young. On the 7th
of July my mother sent me on an errand. Then I met little Margarete
Dietrich, who was three and a half years old, and whom I had known since
March. I said to her that she must come with me, and I took her hand. I
wanted to take away her ear-rings. They were little gold ear-rings with a
coloured stone. I did not want the ear-rings for myself, but to sell at a
second-hand shop in the neighbourhood, to get money to buy some cakes.
When I reached the yard I wanted to go somewhere, and I called to my
mother to throw me down the key. She did so, and threw me down some money
too, for the errand that I was to go on. I left little Margarete on the
stairs, and there I found her again. From the yard I saw that the
second-floor window was half open. I went with her up the stairs to the
second floor to take away the ear-rings, and then to throw her out of the
window. I wanted to kill her, because I was afraid that she would betray
me. She could not talk very well, but she could point to me; and if it
came out, my mother would have beaten me. I went with her to the window,
opened it wide, and set her on the ledge. Then I heard some one coming
down. I quickly put the child on the ground and shut the window. The man
went by without noticing us. Then I opened the window and put the child on
the ledge, with her feet hanging out, and her face turned away from me. I
did that because I did not want to look in her face, and because I could
push her easier. I pulled the ear-rings out. Grete began to cry because I
hurt her. When I threatened to throw her out of the window she became
quiet. I took the ear-rings and put them in my pocket. Then I gave the
child a shove, and heard her strike the lamp and then the pavement. Then I
quickly ran downstairs to go on the errand my mother had sent me. I knew
that I should kill the child. I did not reflect that little Grete’s
parents would be sorry. It did not hurt me; I was not sorry; I was not
sorry all the time I was in prison; I am not sorry now. The next day a
policeman came to us and asked if I had thrown the child out of the
window. I said no, I knew nothing about it. Then I threw away the
ear-rings that I had kept hid; I was afraid they would search my pockets
and find them. Then there came another policeman, and I told him the
truth, because he said he would box my ears if I did not tell the truth.
Then I was taken away, and had to tell people how it happened. I was taken
in a cab to the mortuary. I ate a piece of bread they gave me with a good
appetite. I saw little Grete’s body, undressed, on a bed. I did not feel
any pain and was not sorry. They put me with four women, and I told them
the story. I laughed while I was telling it because they asked me such
curious questions. I wrote to my mother from prison, and asked her to send
me some money to buy some dripping, for we had dry bread.” That was what
little Marie Schneider told the judge, without either hesitation or
impudence, in a completely childlike manner, like a school-girl at
examination; and she seemed to find a certain satisfaction in being able
to answer long questions so nicely. Only once her eyes gleamed, and that
was when she told how in the prison they had given her dry bread to eat.
The medical officer of the prison, who had watched her carefully, declared
that he could find nothing intellectually wrong in her. She was
intelligent beyond her years, but had no sense of what she had done, and
was morally an idiot. And this was the opinion of the other medical men
who were called to examine her. The Court, bearing in mind that she was
perfectly able to understand the nature of the action she had committed,
condemned Marie Schneider to imprisonment for eight years. The question of
heredity was not raised. Nothing is known of the father except that he is
dead.[5]
Marie Schneider differs from the previous cases, not merely by her
apparent freedom from pathological elements, but by her rational motives
and her intelligence. The young French woman intended nothing very serious
by her brutal and unfeeling practical jokes. Marie Schneider was as
thorough and as relentless in the satisfaction of her personal desires as
the Marquise de Brinvilliers. But she was a child, and she would very
generally be described as an example of “moral insanity.” It is still
necessary to take a further step, although a very slight one, to reach
what every one would be willing to accept as an instinctive criminal. The
example I will select is an Englishman, Thomas Wainewright, well known in
his time as an essayist, much better known as a forger and a murderer. R.
Griffiths, L.L.D., Wainewright’s maternal grandfather--to take his history
as far back as possible--was an energetic literary man and journalist,
whose daughter, Ann, born of a young second wife when he was well past
middle life, “is supposed to have understood the writings of Mr. Locke as
well as perhaps any person of either sex now living” (said the
_Gentleman’s Magazine_) and who married one Thomas Wainewright, and died
in child-bed at the age of twenty-one, the last survivor, even at that
age, of the second family. Thomas Wainewright, the father, himself died
very soon afterwards. Of him nothing is known, though there is some reason
to think that Dr. Griffiths regarded him with dislike or suspicion.
The child seems then to have been born of a failing and degenerating
stock. He was clever, possessed of some means, and grew up in a literary
and artistic circle; but he was vain and unstable, “ever to be wiled
away,” as he says himself, “by new and flashy gauds.” When still a lad, he
went into the army for a time. Then, after a while, being idle in town,
“my blessed Art touched her renegade; by her pure and high influences the
noisome mists were purged,” and he wept tears of happiness and gratitude
over Wordsworth’s poems. “But this serene state was broken,” he wrote,
several years before his career of crime had commenced, “like a vessel of
clay, by acute disease, succeeded by a relaxation of the muscles and
nerves, which depressed me
--‘low
As through the abysses of a joyless heart
The heaviest plummet of despair could go,’--
hypochondriasis! ever shuddering on the horrible abyss of mere insanity!
But two excellent secondary agents--a kind and skilful physician, and a
most delicately affectionate and unwearied (though young and fragile)
nurse--brought me at length out of those dead black waters, nearly
exhausted with so sore a struggle. Steady pursuit was debarred me, and
varied amusement deemed essential to my complete revivification.” Then he
began to write his essays and criticisms, dealing chiefly with the later
Italian and the French artists, under the name of Janus Weathercock. He
was a man of many sentimentalities and super-refinements; he hated all
vulgarity and “sordid instincts.” His tastes were sensual in every
respect. Notwithstanding his means, they were not sufficient to satisfy
his desires for luxurious foods and drinks, for fine perfumes, for large
jewels to wear. He could not live without luxuries, just as little Marie
Schneider could not live without sweets. At about the date that his chief
literary activities ceased, and when he was about thirty years of age, he
forged a power of attorney with the names of his trustees, assigning to
himself the principal of £5000, of which he was enjoying the interest.
This was then a capital offence; it remained undetected for twelve years.
He is described at this time as “a smart, lively, clever, heartless,
voluptuous coxcomb.” He was tall, stooping slightly, of dark hair and
complexion, deeply set eyes, stealthy but fascinating, a large and massive
head. He married a young lady who was poor, but a gay and brilliant
person, and she had a widowed mother and two half-sisters. The young
couple lived improvidently, and an uncle, Mr. G. E. Griffiths, who was
well off, offered them a home in his own house. This welcome offer was
accepted. A year after, Mr. G. E. Griffiths, after a short illness, died
very unexpectedly, leaving his mansion and property to his nephew and
niece. This money, however, also went rather fast; and now too there were
no longer any expectations from relatives. The stepmother and her
daughters, the Abercrombies, were poor, and their schemes to make a living
were not successful. The Abercrombies were obliged to come and live with
the Wainewrights in the large mansion they had inherited, and a very few
months after this Mrs. Abercrombie died, like old Mr. Griffiths, very
suddenly, in a fit of convulsions. No benefits, however, followed this
death; affairs continued to grow worse, and soon the bailiffs were in the
house, and there was a bill of sale on the furniture. The Wainewrights and
Abercrombies migrated to handsome lodgings in Conduit Street, near Regent
Street. They frequently went to the play, and one night, very soon after
their arrival, Helen Abercrombie, who wore the thin shoes that women then
always wore, got her feet wet, became ill, and was assiduously attended by
Wainewright and his wife, who held frequent consultations as to her
treatment by means of certain powders; in a few days she was dead, with
the same symptoms as her mother, the same symptoms as Mr.
Griffiths--“brain mischief,” the doctor called it. She died on the very
day on which the bill of sale became due, and after her death it was found
that her life had, during the same year, been insured, in various offices,
for £18,000. Helen Abercrombie was a beautiful and very healthy girl, and
her death led to suspicions, and gave rise to law-suits, which on the
slighter but definite ground of misrepresentation were in favour of the
companies. In the meanwhile Wainewright found it convenient to leave
England (he had separated from his wife after the death of Helen
Abercrombie), and took refuge with a rather impecunious gentleman who
lived with his daughter at Boulogne. He persuaded this gentleman to obtain
money to effect a loan by insuring his life. One night, after the policy
had been effected, this gentleman suddenly died. We next hear of
Wainewright travelling in France, doubtless for excellent reasons, under
an assumed name. He fell into the hands of the police, and not being able
to give a good account of himself, was imprisoned for six months. The
French police found that he carried about with him a certain powder, at
that time little known, called strychnine; this was put down to English
eccentricity. At this time there was a warrant out against Wainewright for
forgery; he was lured over to England by a detective, with the aid of a
woman, and arrested. He was tried for forgery, and condemned to
transportation for life. At the same time the suspicions of the doctor
who attended Helen Abercrombie were roused, and Wainewright himself, after
his condemnation, admitted to visitors, with extraordinary vanity and
audacity, his achievements in poisoning, and elucidated his methods. It is
also said that he kept a diary in which he recorded his operations with
much complacency. The one thing that hurt little Marie Schneider was the
dry bread; the one thing that moved Wainewright was being placed in irons
in the hold of the ship. “They think me a desperado! Me! the companion of
poets, philosophers, artists, and musicians, a desperado! You will smile
at this--no, I think you will feel for the man, educated and reared as a
gentleman; now the mate of vulgar ruffians and country bumpkins.” At
Hobart Town on two occasions he endeavoured to remove by poison persons
who had excited his animosity. He is described at this time by one who
knew him well as “a man with a massive head, in which the animal
propensities were largely developed. His eyes were deeply set in his head;
he had a square solid jaw; he wore his hair long, stooped somewhat, and
had a snake-like expression which was at once repulsive and fascinating.
He rarely looked you in the face. His conversation and manner were winning
in the extreme; he was never intemperate, but nevertheless of grossly
sensual habits, and an opium-eater. As to moral character, he was a man of
the very lowest stamp. He seemed to be possessed by an ingrained malignity
of disposition which kept him constantly on the very confines of murder,
and he took a perverse pleasure in traducing persons who had befriended
him. He was a marked man in Hobart Town--dreaded, disliked, and shunned
by everybody. His sole living companion was a cat, for which he evinced an
extraordinary affection.” He died of apoplexy in 1852, at the age of
fifty-eight.[6] Wainewright presents to us a perfect picture of the
instinctive criminal in his most highly developed shape, fortunately a
rare phenomenon. It is this instinctive propensity to crime which is
sometimes called “moral insanity.” This is, however, by no means a happy
phrase, since it leads to much fruitless disputation. It is wiser at
present to apply to such an individual the more simple term, _instinctive
criminal_.[7] There is, however, distinct interest in noting that at one
period of his life Wainewright was on the verge of insanity, if not, as is
more likely, actually insane; it is extremely probable that he never
recovered from the effects of that illness. It may well be that if we
possessed a full knowledge of every instinctive criminal we should always
be able to put our hands on some definite organically morbid spot.
The instinctive criminal, in his fully developed form, is a moral monster.
In him the absence of guiding or inhibiting social instincts is
accompanied by unusual development of the sensual and self-seeking
impulses. The _occasional criminal_, as he is usually called, is a much
commoner and more normally constituted person. In him the sensual
instincts need not be stronger than usual, and the social elements, though
weaker than usual, need not be absent. Weakness is the chief
characteristic of the occasional criminal; when circumstances are not
quite favourable he succumbs to temptation. Occasional crime is one of the
commonest forms of crime; it is also that for whose existence and
development society is most directly responsible; very often it might
equally well be called social crime. Here is an example. Two lads of
honest life, the sons of agricultural labourers, being unable to obtain a
scanty subsistence at home, start one day in a fit of desperation for a
distant town in search of work. Without food or shelter, sleeping under a
hedge, they reach a farm-house. Looking through a window they see a
plum-pudding; they open the window, seize the pudding, and go a few yards
off to devour it. In a few hours they are on the way to the lock-up, to
receive, later on, a sentence of six months’ imprisonment. “At the close
of it they were provided with an outfit and an introduction to an employer
of labour in Canada; and when we last heard of them they were doing
extremely well, with excellent prospects before them.”[8] This sequel
(which would have been better had it come before the seizure of the
plum-pudding) proves that we are not dealing with instinctive criminals.
Take another case mentioned by the same writer. A woman with a drunken
husband who spends his last penny in the public-house, is driven by actual
starvation to commit her first crime. She steals a small piece of meat to
feed her hungry children. She is sent to prison. “We heard of her
afterwards leading a most consistent and almost saintly life.” These
persons, it is clear, were not the criminals but the victims; society was
the criminal. Now and then, as in the cases just cited, it happens that
the occasional criminal who is thus recklessly flung into prison is
assisted to live a human life. In the great majority of cases he is ruined
for life, familiarised with the prison, introduced to bad company. We
have, as well as we are able, manufactured him into what is called the
_habitual criminal_.
The steps by which the occasional criminal, aided on the one hand by
neglect, on the other by the hot-bed of the prison, develops into the
habitual criminal are slow and subtle; that is one of the tragedies of
life. M. Joly has recorded the experiences of the police concerning the
thefts that take place at the great Parisian shops, the Louvre, and the
Bon-Marché. “This is the beginning. From a gallery one sees a woman--rich
or well-to-do-who buys a certain number of objects and pays for them; but
without asking permission she takes some little, almost insignificant
object--a little ribbon to fasten a parcel, a more commodious paper-bag.
No one will say that she is stealing; no one will think of speaking to her
or disturbing her. But she is observed and even watched, for one expects
to see her again some time after taking, as she walks along, say, a flower
worth twenty-five centimes. A little later she will appropriate an article
of greater value, and henceforth she will take for the pleasure of taking.
The inclination, which at the beginning had in it nothing instinctive or
fatal, will grow as all habits grow. Another time a woman who had no
intention of stealing, but whose conscience is probably elastic, grows
impatient at the delay in attending to her wants. It is, let us suppose, a
purse worth ninety-five centimes, and the shopman is busy with purchasers
of more expensive objects. Suddenly the woman nervously yields to a swift
temptation; she does not wish to wait longer, but instead of replacing the
purse on the counter she slips it into her pocket and turns on her heels
without paying. ‘From that moment,’ said the inspector, ‘_she is lost_;
she will come back to steal, but she will steal intentionally and
deliberately.’”[9]
The world and the criminal’s friends are startled some day by a great
crime, but that crime is linked on to a chain of slight, occasional,
sporadic vices and offences. Sometimes we can trace out these links. Barré
and Lebiez were two young French criminals who attracted attention some
years ago. They were both of good family, both very intelligent, the
former about to enter on a commercial life, the latter on the eve of
becoming a doctor of medicine. At this point they murdered an old woman to
rob her, and cut up the body to dispose of it. The crime was deliberate
and carefully prepared; there was nothing romantic or obviously morbid
about it, and a few days after the crime Lebiez delivered an able and
eloquent lecture on Darwinism and the Church. In each of these young men
there were, M. Joly observes, nine stages in the path of crime. Let us
first note those of Barré:--1. His employer is obliged to dismiss him on
account of misconduct with a servant girl. 2. He writes untruthful letters
to his family, describing habits of work which do not exist. 3. He
acquires an extravagant taste for speculation on the Stock Exchange. So
far his course, though not exemplary, was one that has often enough been
traversed by persons who have never reached the scaffold. 4. He
speculates with the savings which two girls had entrusted to him for
investment. 5. To obtain money from his father, to whom he talks of
establishing himself, he forges letters. 6. He embezzles various sums of
money by an aggravated form of the same process. 7. He steals a watch from
a prostitute’s rooms. 8. He steals eight francs from the same. 9. He
decides on the murder of the old milk-woman with whom he has had business
relations, and whose savings, as he knows, are considerable. Lebiez went
through the following stages:--1. His violent language to his mother is
remarked. 2. He is, notwithstanding very small means, known to be living
with a mistress, and he procures obscene photographs. 3. On account of
irregularity he is sent away from an institution where he gave lessons. 4.
He speculates on the Stock Exchange, which, being poor, he could only do
by accepting profit and refusing to meet loss. 5. He steals books from his
friends and sells them. 6. He several times leaves his lodgings
clandestinely, without paying the rent. 7. He participates in the theft of
the watch by Barré. 8. He shares the profits of the second theft. 9. They
decide on the murder together. Such are the slow steps by which the
occasional criminal becomes the _habitual criminal_ or the _professional
criminal_. It must be remembered that the lines which separate these from
each other, and both from the instinctive criminal, are often faint or
imperceptible. “Natural groups,” as Mr. Galton remarks, “have nuclei but
no outlines.” In the habitual criminal, who is usually unintelligent, the
conservative forces of habit predominate; the professional criminal, who
is usually intelligent, is guided by rational motives, and voluntarily
takes the chances of his mode of life; while in the instinctive criminal
the impulses usually appear so strong, and the moral element so
conspicuously absent, that we feel we are in the presence of a natural
monster. It is not, however, always possible to make these distinctions.
The professional criminal, though not of modern development, adapts
himself to modern conditions. In intelligence, and in anthropological rank
generally, he represents the criminal aristocracy. He has deliberately
chosen a certain method of earning his living. It is a profession which
requires great skill, and in which, though the risks are great, the prizes
are equally great.[10]
Lacenaire, a famous criminal of the beginning of the century, has
sometimes been regarded as the type of the professional criminal, and to
complete this classificatory outline it may be well to sketch his career.
He was born at Lyons about the beginning of the century, received a good
average education, and was very intelligent, though not distinguishing
himself at college. He was ambitious and, at the same time, incapable of
sustained work. He came to Paris to study law; but his father’s resources
were inadequate, and he became a clerk, frequently changing his situation,
growing tired of work at length, and engaging as a soldier. So far no
offence is recorded. When he returned to France his father, become
bankrupt, had fled. Some friends came to the young man’s help, and gave
him 500 francs. He hastened to Paris and spent it in enjoyment. Then he
entered the literary Bohemia, and wrote verses and political articles,
fighting a duel with a nephew of Benjamin Constant and killing him. He
said, later on, that the sight of his victim’s agony had caused him no
emotion. Soon his love of enjoyment outran his means of getting money,
though these might have been considerable had he cared to work steadily,
and he obtained money by theft and swindling. Condemned to prison, he soon
formed connections with professional criminals, and associated them in his
schemes and joined them in their orgies. He adopted false names,
multiplied forgeries and disguises, and preyed actively on society. After
an orgy at this time he committed a murder, and he attempted to murder a
man who had won a large sum from him in gambling. The crime and the
attempt both remained unpunished. Gifted with intelligence, and still more
with vanity and audacity, Lacenaire continued his career of systematic
crime until finally he met the guillotine. He was a professional criminal,
but also, it will be seen, he was something of an habitual, something of
an instinctive criminal.[11]
We have glanced briefly at the circles of crime--circles that extend from
heaven to very murky depths of hell, and that yet are not far from any one
of us. It is still necessary to touch on the various ways in which the
causes and nature of this vast field of crime may be approached.
There are, first, the _cosmic_ causes of crime; that is to say, all the
influences of the external inorganic world, the influence of temperature
on crime, the increase of crimes of violence in hot weather, the
periodicity of other kinds of crime, the influence of climate, the
influence of diet.
Then there is the _biological_ factor. Under this head we include the
consideration of all the personal peculiarities of the individual,
anatomical, physiological, psychological. These peculiarities may be
atavistic, atypic, or morbid.
Lastly, there is the _social_ factor in crime. Criminal sociology deals
with the production of crime by social influences, and by economic
perturbations. Infanticide is nearly always related to the social factor;
and the study of the various social influences which promote or hinder
infanticide is extremely instructive. The relations between crimes against
the person and the price of alcohol, and between crimes against property
and the price of wheat, also belong to this department of the study of
crime. Society prepares crimes, as Quetelet said; the criminal is the
instrument that executes them. “The social environment,” Lacassagne has
well said, “is the cultivation medium of criminality; the criminal is the
microbe, an element which only becomes important when it finds the medium
which causes it to ferment: _every society has the criminals that it
deserves_.”
It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of the social factor in
crime. To some extent it even embraces the others, and can be made to
regulate and neutralise them. But we cannot deal wisely with the social
factor of crime, nor estimate the vast importance of social influences in
the production or prevention of crime, unless we know something of the
biology of crime, of the criminal’s anatomical, physiological, and
psychological nature. This book is concerned with the study of the
criminal man.