THE CRIMINALS, INCAPABLES, AND THOSE IN DISTRESS.
We have seen in the last two chapters that there is every reason to
believe that, on account of improved external conditions, and notably
of the sanitary advances which result from the efforts of preventive
medicine, the race is deteriorating in general constitutional
robustness. Those selective agencies which in more primitive times
destroyed the sickly, especially during their early years of life,
have in part been removed or modified, with the result that the
sickly are preserved and in larger numbers live through and into
the child-bearing period, raising the mean duration of life, but
notably increasing the rate of mortality after middle age. These
sickly ones leave children behind, who, as a matter of course,
transmit their constitution to the race. In our study of disease
we included intemperance, for in cases where there is a distinct
liability to give way to drunken habits, and apart from those cases
where it is merely a habit acquired in bad company, we may look
upon it as a symptom of some innate variation from the normal, and
it is therefore the physician’s duty to treat it like any other
constitutional disease. In the same light we are bound to view the
cases of many criminals and persons who from some inborn defect
are incapable of doing their share in the work of the community.
_Crime is often an Acquired Habit._
It is probable that a large proportion of criminals are the creatures
of accident or of vicious training. Children are very imitative, and
are apt to acquire the habits and even modes of thought of those
who surround them; and bad example in their homes, or the neglect
of parents who, perhaps, in their turn had also suffered from bad
example and neglect, has often stamped a child’s character for
life. At school again, the child is surrounded by influences which
often affect him throughout life for good or for evil, and later on
he is still susceptible to many evil temptations which may in his
case be exceedingly strong. We are therefore all of us a compound
of our innate inborn qualities, and those that have been stamped,
as it were, upon us by contact with the external world; and we have
no right to judge in an off-hand manner of the innate qualities of
a criminal without a very extensive knowledge of his upbringing,
and of the temptations and influences which have surrounded him.
Theft by a person in necessity need by no means imply so vicious
a temperament as that of a man who spends his life in getting the
better of his less clever neighbours, and enriches himself by the
loss of others, as is done in many so-called legitimate ways; and
the killing of a man in passion may be done by one who would be
incapable of settling an old grudge by taking a mean advantage of an
enemy. Again, many criminals are incapables driven to crime through
their incapacity; therefore with the incapables let us study them.
_The Innate Criminal._
Over and above those we have just mentioned, however, are a band of
innate criminals whose feet take by nature the crooked rather than
the straight path, whose lives alternate between abuse of public
law and the punishment thereby entailed. These beget children, and
the suffering they inflict and have to endure is continued from
parent to offspring. In every locality these inveterate criminals
are well-known to the administrators of justice. Time after time
they come up for punishment, and wantonly and wilfully all chances
of improvement are thrown away; they seem wanting in those feelings
of individual responsibility, and in the wish to be held in esteem,
that are among the necessary first principles of life in an organised
community.
_The Jukes Family._
The histories of many of these criminal families have been written,
and perhaps the best known and most striking is that of the Jukes
family, written by R. L. Dugdale. This family was traced by Dugdale
for seven generations, and during that time it contributed to the
welfare of the State an unparalleled history of pauperism and crime.
It is seldom, indeed, that the history of crime can be traced so far
as it can be in the case of the Jukes, and the reason is that most
families disperse by intermarriage, and the taint becomes diluted
and no longer stands out in prominence. The distinguished French
novelist, Emile Zola, who, in a series of novels, traces out the
history of a criminal family, falls into the error of supposing that
such a thing as a long family history of crime is possible without
isolation from the rest of the community. The family of the Jukes
lived in a district by themselves in America, and they formed a
family clan, and intermarried amongst themselves, thus complying
with this isolation which is a necessity for the long continuation
of any family characteristic.
_Intermarriage does not stamp out Criminal Tendencies._
It might, perhaps, then be said that intermarriage and dispersion
of the criminal taint is, indeed, the most ready way of getting
rid of it. But this cannot be so, for it is more reasonable to
suppose that although by intermarriage the intensity of the criminal
tendency may be diminished, yet for the same reason individuals
with this innate tendency will be all the more increased, and that
the further intermarriage of these individuals with others having
similar taints of character, may at any time tend to again reproduce
the inveterate criminal in perpetual recurrence. We may dilute ink
with water so that we can no longer see that it is black, but we
dare not draw the inference that the ink has been destroyed. It
is equally as impossible to believe that the criminal taint can
disappear unless the criminals are prevented altogether from adding
their progeny to those of the rest of society.
It might be urged that in the case of the family of the Jukes
their crime was due to imitations of bad habits kept up in the
isolated district in which they lived. It must be at once granted
that much of their crime and pauperism was no doubt due to bad
upbringing, and the polluted moral atmosphere in which they lived;
nevertheless, we are justified in believing in the existence of
such a thing as innate want of moral backbone, of which they were
a probable example. We have not to go far to find in our everyday
experience of life that out of a family whose members are most of
them docile, yielding to discipline, and capable of affection and
self-sacrifice, one or two, perhaps, seem by nature to be wanting
in these qualities. Such sporadic cases are only to be explained
on the ground that imperfections in their ancestry have cropped
up in the new generation, for the criminal taint is a fact to be
observed and accounted for like any so-called physical peculiarity
of form or feature. It follows, too, that we are bound to look with
the greatest pity and commiseration upon the inveterate criminal as
upon a person diseased, and that we should use our best endeavour
to prevent the recurrence or continued permanence of such a type.
_Segregation of the Criminal an Ultimate and Effectual Resort._
We, therefore, come face to face with the necessity for practical
action on our own part if we would fulfil our obligations to those
who will come after us. As Pike remarks,[23] “Perpetual imprisonment
of the irreclaimable--imprisonment not only nominally but really for
life--would be among many causes of that change in the general tone
of society which is shown by history to be the greatest preventive
of crime as now understood. Like persons affected with scarlet fever
or other infectious maladies, the propagandist criminal should be
confined in his proper hospital--a prison--and if incurable should
be detained until his death. Like phthisis or other hereditary
disease, the criminal disposition would in the end cease to be
inherited, if all who were tainted with it were compelled to live
and die childless. The remedy may be painful, and even cruel, but
perhaps greater cruelty and greater pain may be inflicted by the
neglect which leaves physical and social ills to spread themselves
unchecked.”
Many of the innate criminals, and those who have committed crime
rather from the effect of want, or bad example, than from any inherent
tendency, sooner or later fall upon the parish. Within the same
wards of the poorhouse, or receiving the same out-door relief, we
find this criminal class together with the incapables and deserving
poor. This is, indeed, a most unfortunate state of things, for we
are bound to draw a strong line of demarcation between those, on
the one hand, who are in want through acquired habits of idleness,
those who are innately incapable, and those, on the other hand,
who are afflicted during their lifetime by sickness, adversity, or
old age. We habitually speak of these classes as “the poor,” and
the unfortunate use of this term as a common description of totally
distinct conditions has led to most undesirable consequences.
_Our Unfortunate Use of the Word “Poor.”_
With us everyone who has not sufficient means of subsistence we term
“poor,” we assist them out of the public purse, and we consider
that in so doing we obey Christian teaching. This theory and its
practice are due to a slovenly habit of mind, and perhaps also to
an incomplete acquaintance with Scriptural teaching. The “poor”
of Bible language means obviously the deserving and unfortunate,
probably the incapable, but certainly not the habitually idle and
vicious. We are not led simply to infer this, for there are positive
statements to this effect. St. Paul said: “If any man will not work
neither shall he eat,”[24] and again: “He that doth not provide
for his own house is worse than an infidel.”[25]
_The Unfortunate, the Aged, the Incapables, and the Vicious, are
treated alike._
Our forefathers were more discriminating in this respect than we are,
and even in the reign of Henry VIII. the line was drawn between
“poor, impotent, sick, and diseased folk, the sick in very deed and
not able to work, who may be provided for, holpen and relieved,
and such as be strong and lusty, who, having their limbs strong
enough to labour, may be daily kept in continual labour whereby
everyone of them may get their living with their own hands.” If,
however, we look a little closer into the matter we shall be able to
recognise at least three quite distinct classes of persons grouped
together under the term “poor,” and all of whom are treated by the
community very much on an equality. As we shall presently see, the
rough and ready way in which we view these three groups has led to
gross cruelty and injustice on the one hand, and to ill-advised
assistance and help on the other.
Within the same rooms and wards of the poorhouse, or receiving
assistance under the same system of out-door relief, we find
those who, from innate or acquired vice, form the criminal class,
undistinguished from worthy and respectable men and women and
their children, whose only fault was, perhaps, that their small
savings over and above the necessities of their life had been spent
too carelessly, or even had, perhaps, been invested in a society
administered by dishonest men; we find widows and orphans of men
who have died from accident or disease while in the course of
regular and honourable employment. With these will be mixed the
class we have especially to study--the incapables; a poor type,
with physical and mental defects, such as insanity, epilepsy, and
idiocy, and with these many vagrants must be included. Where laws
or regulations are framed to deal with these three classes, as if
they formed one natural class, the greatest injustice of necessity
follows. The law-makers have to deal with the idle and vicious as
well as with the deserving and distressed, and by grouping these
classes together and framing regulations to apply to all, some are
of necessity treated more kindly than they deserve, while others
become the victims of unmerited brutality.
This fact was first brought forcibly home to me by a case in a
north country poorhouse--a case which quite represents the present
disgraceful method of treating those without means of subsistence.
A woman, a soldier’s widow, whose husband and three sons (all
soldiers) had been killed in active service, was left without
relatives. She supported herself and lived soberly until old age,
when feebleness and commencing gangrene of the foot compelled her
to seek the poorhouse, where she died alone and unvisited by any
friend. I saw her in the next bed to a drunken prostitute. The one
woman had given of her body to the country’s defence, the other had
given of her body to its ruin, and yet the country treated them
both alike because they were alike in want of bread.
Lawyers and law-makers have tried, with limited success, to cope with
these questions ever since the first Poor-law in 1601; they have
failed, perhaps, because of their point of view and of approach.
The physician, accustomed as he is to study his cases, each with
their peculiar symptoms, and each with their appropriate methods of
treatment, would, perhaps, have done better than his legal brother.
We must look deeper than the mere surface, we must not be content
to give bread and pass away, and feel that our duty is done.
_Our Poor-law Regulations are at Fault._
In reference to the first class, those who are lazy and vicious,
and will not work although capable of it, we have to remember that
the community is itself to some extent to blame for the present
state of things.
Before 1834, the Poor-law in country districts habitually supplied
the unemployed with what was considered a sufficiency, and those
who maintained themselves by independent industry and capacity
often fared worse than those in receipt of regular Poor-law aid.
“Poor is the diet of the pauper, poorer is the diet of the small
ratepayer, and poorest is the diet of the independent labourer,”
remarked a witness in the Poor-law Commissioners’ Report of 1834.
It cannot be denied, therefore, that there is a certain want of
independence (especially perhaps in rural districts) engendered by
methods of relief administered in past times. As a result of this,
those without physical and mental disqualification for work fall
back on the Poor-law for relief in time of distress, and, counting
on the certainty of this relief, are less strenuous in their efforts
to provide against the evil hour. Vice, too, is increased in those
who know that during the incapacity which may follow its exercise
the workhouse door is open to them, and that food and shelter are
to be had between the intervals of each debauch.
It was for the benefit of the sickly, the aged and other really
deserving poor, that organised charity came into existence, but it
too often has been the lazy and vicious who have profited thereby.
_The Idle and Vicious are Subjects for the Criminal Law._
But though society has made so great a mistake in the past, it is
no reason that this system should continue. And that it should do
so is inadvisable, both in the interests of the ratepayers and in
the interests of those upon whom the rates are spent.
The poor-rates are generally paid with extreme reluctance, whereas
were it felt that they were to be props to the aged and needy, this
reluctance would largely vanish. People are generous enough--witness
the cordial support universally given to supplementary charities--but
few pay their poor-rates willingly, for they know that in most cases
these rates go to the support of the drunken, vicious and lazy. As
to the paupers themselves, not only would increased funds be at
the disposal of the deserving poor, but the moral atmosphere of
the poorhouse and relieving office would be altogether purged by
the exclusion of the sturdy beggars, of those who are able-bodied,
but idle and vicious, who should be placed apart and treated under
separate regulations. They are subjects for the police and for the
criminal law; as outcasts from humanity, we may endeavour to reclaim
them, but whilst unreclaimed, let them feel the full effects of
their misconduct. The prison cell is warmer than the rock cranny or
pit in which the primitive Briton sheltered himself, and the prison
fare is better than was his food. Why, then, should the idle and
reprobate vagabond receive the advantages of a civilisation built
up by the busy toil of those around him, a toil in which he will
take no part?
To this class we may, if we will, offer work, but in offering bread,
we undertake a greater responsibility than we perhaps are aware
of. Food and clothing means the power to live and marry, and as
there are limits to everyone’s resources, when we give anything,
even a penny to a passing beggar, we are giving some of this power,
we are taking upon ourselves the responsibility of “selecting,”
and are influencing this selection, let it be in never so small a
degree. We are playing with humanity the part of the gardener with
his flowers, or the farmer with his stock.
This is a very high function, and a difficult one to perform
judiciously, yet we all of us presume to exercise it without thought
or training. There can be no doubt that the lawgivers responsible
for the present condition of public charity, and private individuals
who assist cases whose thorough investigation they have been too
lazy to take up, are in part responsible for the perpetuation of
the criminal classes in the community.
_The Poor in very Deed._
If we place the vicious and idle, though capable, pauper on one
side, in a class by himself--a criminal class--we can deal fairly
and reasonably with the other two classes.
Under the varying conditions of life some people are hardly pressed
upon, and the burden is light upon other persons’ shoulders. Our
conditions of life, although perhaps selective in the main, are by
no means uniformly so, and thus it happens that the amount of money
in a man’s pocket is no certain criterion of even his capacity to
make it. Especially in a community such as ours, where men pass in a
lifetime from poverty to riches or the reverse, and often as a result
of surrounding conditions over which they have no control, we may
have stupidity and vice reposing sumptuously on inlaid Florentine,
while intelligence and virtue are seated on rush-bottom. As I hope
to bring out shortly, there is too little selective influence in
a civilised state. Some of our old aristocratic families were
headed no doubt by men of great capacity at their commencement,
but it was the organisation of Romish civilisation that gave them
the conquest over their worse organised fellow-kinsmen settled in
England. Blood for blood, innate quality for innate quality, there
was little to choose between them, yet circumstances made one the
villein and the other the lord. Selective influences that might
have operated in a savage community have been kept in abeyance to
a great measure by inherited property and class distinction; and
though, fortunately, good men are continually rising, and vicious,
idle men are falling, yet this is to a great extent kept in check.
Thus we find in the lower class many men and women of excellent
physique and mental capacity doing in their lives as much as can be
expected from anybody. From the biological point of view--that of
blood, bone, muscle and brain, a view which we, in our biological
study, are bound to take--the lower labouring class is little
inferior in quality, whilst they exceed in numbers the upper and
middle classes. From the changing conditions of life (conditions
that are not uniform in any class) they especially suffer, for they
are nearer the limit which, if passed, means deprivation of that
which is necessary.
_Our Misguided Attitude to these._
We have, therefore, no right to assume that when we find destitution
around us the destitute are of necessity more to blame in their lives
than we are in ours. They may have been hardworking and provident,
and yet have fallen victims to want. Any note of condescension in
our attitude towards this class is an impertinence of the grossest
nature, and it is our duty, if we help at all, to do so as one
brother to another, simply and naturally. The recipients of help
should be allowed to feel that they are receiving only what they
would themselves be prepared to give; that they should receive it,
not as a dole to be eaten in bitterness, but as a friend’s gift to
be enjoyed.
In these cases we are far too apt to stand aloof and do nothing,
or to interfere only when it is too late, so that while the very
scum of the criminal classes are being supported, worthy members
of society are allowed to pass through circumstances of the utmost
distress without a helping hand. The numberless stories, many of
them undoubtedly true, of the large sums yearly made by well got-up
begging swindlers, show how little our emotions are guided by our
reasoning faculties. We are too prone to give when our feelings get
a shock, and we are too often incapable of acting in anticipation
of a catastrophe which is not already before our eyes. How many
there are around us in difficulty, who, with some judicious help,
might themselves regain prosperity. Too often we wait till it is too
late, till all is practically lost--till, in fact, our “feelings”
have been sufficiently acted upon.
_The Incapables._
While the first of the classes into which we have divided the “poor”
are destitute as the result of vicious training, and the second from
the hardships of their special surroundings, the third class are
destitute from innate incapacity. To the idiots, insane, epileptics
and others suffering from severe constitutional defects, there must
be added the vagrants who will not, because they cannot, do regular
work. I say “cannot,” for I believe the vagrant class forms an
interesting and ill-understood body by themselves. They fill our
workhouses, to which they crowd in inclement weather, leaving the
towns for the country in spring, and returning to them in autumn.
They sleep in barns, under ricks or hedges, and live on what they
can find or beg or steal. They marry and have children, who are
often a source of profit from the increased charity they bring.
Give them a spade to dig, a hammer with which to break stones, or
a garden to weed, and they tire of the constantly repeated action,
be it ever so simple; complex manipulations, or tasks requiring
forethought or attention, are for them quite out of the question.
They will keep rooks out of the fields, tramp after bulrushes,
or trap a rabbit, but an unexciting occupation with a result not
immediately attainable is to them unendurable. We can hardly fail
to see in this class, in many cases, the direct descendants of
our more savage ancestors, who most probably never mingled in the
streams of civilisation that have flowed by their side. They have
continued to exist by the primitive and precarious means adopted
by early men to gain their livelihood. Charity, firstly of the
monastery, and secondly of the Poor-law, has kept them alive, and
we have them by our side to-day.
_Segregation Ultimately Required for their Elimination._
Whatever be their origin, there they are, leading an existence that
is an anachronism and an anomaly in our civilisation. Theirs are
the hardships and privations of the savage, but from their position
in society, of which they form the lowest dregs, they have not his
advantages. Their neolithic ancestor who lived in the Sussex Downs
or the Yorkshire Wolds, and shot buzzards with flint-tipped arrows,
felt a superiority amidst his surroundings, and we have every reason
to believe he was as proud a man as any one of us. But the poor
tramp, an outcast and a dependent, lives a life worse than that of
the shepherd-dog in the fields, and perpetuates this misery from
century to century. Here, as with the idiot or epileptic and others
of this class, there is clearly a case for segregation. All are
obviously unfit to perpetuate themselves, and in the best interests
of the human species they should be prevented from so doing.
We have seen in this chapter that just as preventive medicines
and the luxuries and comforts of modern civilisation have so far
tended towards race deterioration, so in like manner our law-framers
have done their best to perpetuate some of the worst strains that
society possesses, strains that in a community without poor-laws
would many of them have long ago ceased to exist. While, therefore,
it is quite clear that the end that we should have in view is the
non-perpetuation of the criminals and incapables, any proposal to
segregate these would in the meanwhile probably be unfavourably
received. In the case of the unhealthy we may hope by force of public
opinion soon to prevent such marriages as are to-day of too common
an occurrence, but in the case of the criminals and incapables
the case is different. They are not to be touched by a sense of
public duty, for they only obey the preponderating influences of
the moment. Their lives will have to be ordered for them, and the
responsibility of action must fall upon other shoulders. One cannot
help thinking that a great step could be taken in the meanwhile
by purging the poorhouses of all unworthy occupants. The criminal
classes would then stand by themselves, and the public, learning
gradually to regard them in their true light, would probably very
soon grudge to support them, generation after generation, and would
come to see that their segregation under circumstances involving
no personal hardship would diminish and in time remove the evil.
_Incapables to be Treated like Chronic Hospital Patients._
The incapables seen side by side with the distressed and aged would
then be viewed with that commiseration they truly merit. Their lives
might be made better worth the living than they are at present, and
the poorhouse might come to be regarded as a hospital and shelter
for the unfortunate, rather than as a refuge for drunkenness and
vice. The denizens of these dreary buildings might then partake
in their share of kindly attention, and feel some warmth of human
sympathy now denied to them.
FOOTNOTES
[23] “A History of Crime in England,” vol. ii., pp. 579, 580.
[24] 2 Thessalonians iii. 10.
[25] 1st Epistle to Timothy v. 8.