WHY DO MEN KILL?
WHEN a shrewd but genial editor called me up on the telephone and asked
me how I should like to write an article (a “story,” he called it) on
the above lurid title, I laughed in his—I mean the telephone’s face.
“My dear fellow!” I said (I should only have the nerve to call him that
over a wire). “My dear fellow! It would ruin me! How could I keep my
self-respect and write that kind of sensational stuff—me, a reputable,
conservative, dry-as-dust member of the bar! Go to! Why do men kill?
Ha-ha! Why do men eat? Why do men drink? Why do men love? Why do
men——”
“Yes,” came back his somewhat cynical voice “Why?”
“How do I know?” I answered, still trying to be jocular. “_I_ never
killed anybody!”
“Eh?” said he.
I paused.
“Well,” I admitted, “never actually with my own hand, old chap! I
have—taken part—so to speak—in—er—proceedings that ultimately
resulted in the death of certain human beings—in a perfectly legal
way, but I’m not sure that I entirely approved of it. Duty, you know!
Salary—I had a growing family.”
“Look here!” he interrupted. “I want that story. I want to know
something. I do! I want to know why one man kills another man. If we
knew why, maybe we could stop it, couldn’t we? We could try to, anyhow.
And you know something about it. You’ve prosecuted nearly a hundred
men for murder. Get the facts—that’s what I want. Cut the adjectives
and morality, and get down to the reasons. Anything particularly
undignified about that?”
“N—o,” I began, taking a fresh start.
“All right,” he replied crisply. “Send it up for January.” And he rang
off.
I arose and walked over to the bookcase on which reposed several
shelves of “minutes” of criminal trials. They were dusty and
depressing. Practically every one of them was a memento of some poor
devil gone to prison or to the chair. Where were they now—and _why_
did they kill—yes, why _did_ they?
I glanced along the red-labeled backs.
“People _versus_ Candido.” Now why did _he_ kill? I remembered the
Italian perfectly. He killed his friend because the latter had been
too attentive to his wife. “People _versus_ Higgins.” Why did he? That
was a drunken row on a New Year’s Eve within the sound of Trinity
chimes. “People _versus_ Sterling Greene.” Yes, he was a colored
man—I recalled the evidence—drink and a “yellow gal.” “People
_versus_ Mock Duck”—a Chinese feud between the On Leong Tong and the
Hip Sing Tong—a vendetta, first one Chink shot and then another,
turn and turn about, running back through Mott Street, New York,
Boston, San Francisco, until the origin of the quarrel was lost in
the dim Celestial mists across the sea. Out of the first four cases
the following motives: Jealousy—1. Drink—1. Drink and jealousy—1.
Scattering (how can you term a “Tong” row?)—1.
I began to get interested. Supposing I dug out _all_ the homicide
cases I had ever tried, what would the result show as to motive for
the killing? Would drink and women account for seventy-five per cent?
Mentally I ran my eye back over nearly ten years. What _other_ motives
had the defendants at the bar had? There was Laudiero—an Italian
“Camorrista”—he had killed simply for the distinction it gave him
among his countrymen and the satisfaction he felt at being known as a
“bad” man—a “capo maestra.” There was Joseph Ferrone—pure jealousy
again. Hendry—animal hate intensified by drink. Yoscow—a deliberate
murder, planned in advance by several of a gang, to get rid of a young
bully who had made himself generally unpleasant. There was Childs,
who had killed, as he claimed, in self-defence because he was set
upon and assaulted by rival runners from another seaman’s boarding
house. Really it began to look as if men killed for a lot of reasons.
I wanted to call up my friend and ask what kind of killings counted.
Did he simply want to know why men murdered one another? He couldn’t
possibly mean that I was to attempt to explain why they saw fit to
exterminate each other by means of capital punishment? Or ran over
one another in trains and automobiles? Or allowed each other to die
from unsanitary conditions? Or lynched one another?—there was only
_one_ reason for that I knew. Or killed themselves? Nor did he mean
to have me go into the question of why they killed elsewhere—in
Naples, Sicily, Constantinople, and so on. No; what he wanted to find
out was why men in the United States of America killed other men of
their own kind without malice aforethought—legal and quasi-legal
killings excluded. Moreover, he wanted to know from the actual personal
experience of those who had weighed the evidence as to their motives in
a sufficiently large number of cases to be representative.
One consideration at once suggested itself. How about the killings
where the murderer is never caught? The prisoners _tried_ for murder
are only a mere fraction of those who _commit_ murder. True, and the
more deliberate the murder, the greater, unfortunately, the chance of
the villain getting away. Still, in cases merely of suspected murder,
or in cases where no evidence is taken, it would be manifestly unfair
arbitrarily to assign motives for the deed, if deed it was. No, one
must start with the assumption, sufficiently accurate under all the
circumstances, that the killings in which the killer is caught are
fairly representative of killings as a whole.
All crimes naturally tend to divide themselves into two classes—crimes
against property and crimes against the person, each class having an
entirely different assortment of reasons for their commission.
There can be practically but one motive for theft, burglary, or
robbery. It is, of course, conceivable that such crimes might be
perpetrated for revenge—to deprive the victim of some highly prized
possession. But in the main there is only one object—unlawful gain.
So, too, blackmail, extortion, and kidnapping are all the products of
the desire for “easy money.” _But, unquestionably, this is the reason
for murder in comparatively few cases._
The usual motive for crimes against the person—assault, manslaughter,
mayhem, murder, etc.—is the desire to punish, or be avenged upon
another by inflicting personal pain upon him or by depriving him of his
most valuable asset—life. And this desire for retaliation or revenge
generally grows out of a recent humiliation received at the hands of
the other person, a real or fancied wrong to oneself, a member of
one’s family, or one’s property. But this was too easy an answer to my
friend’s question. He could have got that much out of any elementary
text-book on penology. He wanted and deserved more than that, and I set
out to give it to him.
My first inquiry was in the direction of original sources. I sought
out the man in the district attorney’s office who had had the widest
general experience and put the question to him. This was Mr. Charles
C. Nott, Jr., who has been trying murder cases for nearly ten years.
It so happened that he had kept a complete record of all of them and
this he courteously placed at my disposal. The list contains sixty-two
cases, and the defendants were of divers races. These homicides
included seventeen committed in cold blood (about twenty-five per cent,
an extraordinary percentage) from varying motives, as follows: One
defendant (white) murdered his colored mistress simply to get rid of
her; another killed out of revenge because the deceased had “licked”
him several times before; another, having quarrelled with his friend
over a glass of soda water, later on returned and precipitated a
quarrel by striking him, in the course of which he killed him; another
because the deceased had induced his wife to desert him; another lay
in wait for his victim and killed him without the motive ever being
ascertained; one man killed his brother to get a sum of money, and
another because his brother would not give him money; another because
he believed the deceased had betrayed the Armenian cause to the Turks;
another because he wished to get the deceased out of the way in order
to marry his wife; and another because deceased had knocked him down
the day before. One man had killed a girl who had ridiculed him;
and one a girl who had refused to marry him; another had killed his
daughter because she could no longer live in the house with him; one,
an informer, had been the victim of a Black Hand vendetta; and the
last had poisoned his wife for the insurance money in order to go off
with another woman. There were two cases of infanticide, one in which
a woman threw her baby into the lake in Central Park, and another in
which she gave her baby poison. Besides these murders, five homicides
had been committed in the course of perpetrating other crimes,
including burglary and robbery.
Passing over three cases of culpable negligence resulting in death, we
come to thirty-seven homicides during quarrels, some of which might
have been technically classified as murders, but which, being committed
“in the heat of passion,” in practically every instance resulted in
a verdict of manslaughter. The quarrels often arose over the most
trifling matters. One was a dispute over a broom, another over a horse
blanket, another over food, another over a twenty-five-cent bet in a
pool game, another over a loan of fifty cents, another over ten cents
in a crap game, and still another over one dollar and thirty cents
in a crap game. Five men were killed in drunken rows which had no
immediate cause except the desire to “start something.” One man killed
another because he had not prevented the theft of some lumber, one (a
policeman) because the deceased would not “move on” when ordered, one
because a bartender refused to serve him with any more drinks, and one
(a bartender) because the deceased insisted that he _should_ serve more
drinks. One man was killed in a quarrel over politics, one in a fuss
over some beer, one in a card game, one trying to rob a fruit-stand,
one in a dispute with a ship’s officer, one in a dance hall row. One
man killed another whom he found with his wife, and one wife killed her
husband for a similar cause; another wife killed her husband simply
because she “could not stand him,” and one because he was fighting
with their son. One man was killed by another who was trying to
collect from him a debt of six hundred dollars. One quarrel resulting
in homicide arose because the defendant had pointed out deceased to
the police, another because the participants called each other names,
and another arose out of an alleged seduction. Three homicides grew
out of street rows originating in various ways. One man killed another
who was fighting with a friend of the first, a janitor was killed in
a “continuous row” which had been going on for a long time, and one
homicide was committed for “nothing in particular.”
This astonishing olla podrida of reasons for depriving men of their
lives leaves one stunned and confused. Is it possible to deduce any
order out of such homicidal chaos? Still, an attempt to classify such
diverse causes enables one to reach certain general conclusions. Out
of the sixty-two homicides there were seventeen cold-blooded murders,
with deliberation and premeditation (in such cases the _reasons_ for
the killing are by comparison unimportant); three homicides due to
negligence, five committed while perpetrating a felony; thirty-seven
manslaughters, due in sixteen cases to quarrels (simply), thirteen
to drink, four to disputes over money, three to women, one to race
antagonism.
Reclassifying the seventeen murders according to causes, we have:
Six due to women, four to quarrels, five to other causes, and two
infanticides. Added to the manslaughters previously classified, we
have a total of sixty-two killings, due in twenty cases to quarrels,
thirteen to drink, nine to women, four to disputes over money, one
to race antagonism, five to general causes, three to negligence, two
infanticides, five during the commission of other crimes.
The significant features of this analysis are that about seventy-five
per cent of the killings were due to quarrels over small sums or other
matters, drink and women; over fifty per cent to drink and petty
quarrels, and about thirty per cent to quarrels simply. The trifling
character of the causes of the quarrels themselves is shown by the fact
that in three of these particular cases, tried in a single week, the
total amount involved in the disputes was only eighty-five cents. That
is about twenty-eight and one-half cents a life. Many a murder in a
barroom grows out of an argument over whether a glass of beer has, or
has not, been paid for, or whose turn it is to treat; and more than one
man has been killed in New York City because he was too clumsy to avoid
stepping on somebody’s feet or bumping into another man on the sidewalk.
The writer sincerely regrets that his own lack of initiative prevented
his keeping a diary similar to that of his colleague, Mr. Nott, during
his seven years’ service as a prosecutor. It is now impossible for him
to refresh his memory as to the causes of all the various homicides
which he prosecuted, but where he can do so the evidence points to
a conclusion similar to that deduced from Mr. Nott’s record. The
_proximate_ causes were trifling—the _underlying_ cause was the
lack of civilization of the defendant—his brutality and absence of
self-control.
With a view to ascertaining conditions in general throughout the United
States, I asked a clipping agency to send me the first one hundred
notices of actual homicides which should come under its scissors. The
immediate result of this experiment was that I received forty-five
notices supposedly relating to murders and homicides, which on closer
examination proved to be anything but what I wanted for the purpose in
view. With only one or two exceptions they related not to deaths from
violence reported as having occurred on any particular day, but to
notices of convictions, acquittals, indictments, pleas of guilty and
not guilty, rewards offered, sentences, executions, “suspicions” of the
police, “mysteries revived,” and even editorials on capital punishment.
A letter of protest brought in due course, but much more slowly, one
hundred and seven clippings, which yielded the following reasons why
men killed: There were four suicides, three lynchings, one infanticide,
three murders while resisting arrest, three criminals killed while
resisting arrest, two men killed in riots, eight murders in the
course of committing burglaries and robberies, seven persons killed
in vendettas, three race murders, and twenty-four killed in quarrels
over petty causes; there were twelve murders from jealousy, followed
in four instances by suicide on the part of the murderer; six killings
justifiable on the “higher law” theory only, but involving great
provocation, and thirty deliberate slaughters. The last clipping
recounted how an irate husband pounded a “masher” so hard that he died.
Leaving out the suicides and those killed while resisting arrest, there
remain one hundred persons murdered, not only by persons insane or
wild from the effects of liquor, but by robbers and burglars, brutes,
bullies, and thugs, husbands, wives, and lovers, and by a vast number
of people who not only destroyed their enemies in the fury of anger,
but in many instances openly went out gunning for them, lay in wait for
them in the dark, or hacked off their heads with hatchets while they
slept.
It is, indeed, a sanguinary record, from which little consolation is to
be derived, and the only comfort is the probability that the accounts
of the first one hundred murders anywhere in Europe would undoubtedly
be just as blood-curdling. I had simply asked the clipping bureau to
send me one hundred horrors and I had got them. They did not indicate
anything at all so far as the ratio of homicide to population was
concerned or as to the blood-thirstiness of Americans in general. They
merely showed what despicable things murders were.
As to the reasons for the killings, they were as diverse as those
which Mr. Nott had prosecuted, save that there were more of an
ultra blood-thirsty character, due probably to the fact that the
young lady who did the clipping wanted (after one rebuff) to make
sure that I was satisfied with the goods she sent me. And this
suggests a reason for the large percentage of cold-blooded killings
prosecuted by my friend—namely, that Mr. Nott being the most astute
prosecutor available, the district attorney, whenever the latter had a
particularly atrocious case, sent it to him in order that the defendant
might surely get his full deserts.
The reasons for these homicides were of every sort; police officers and
citizens were shot and killed by criminals trying to make “get-aways,”
and by negroes and others “running amuck”; despondent young men shot
their unresponsive sweethearts and then either blew out their own
brains or pretended to try to do so; two stable-men had a duel with
revolvers, _and each killed the other_; several men were shot for being
too attentive to young women residing in the same hotels; an Italian,
whose wife had left him and gone to her mother, went to the house and
killed her, her sister, her sister’s husband, his mother-in-law, two
children, and finally himself; the “Gopher Gang” started a riot at a
“benefit” dance given to a widow and killed a man, after which they
fled to the woods and fired from cover upon the police until eighteen
were overpowered and arrested; a young girl and her fiancé, sitting in
the parlor, planning their honeymoon, were unexpectedly interrupted by
a rejected suitor of the girl’s, who shot and killed both of them; an
Italian who peeked into a bedroom, just for fun, afterward rushed in
and cut off two persons’ heads with an ax—one of them was his wife;
a gang of white ruffians shot and then burned a negro family of three
peacefully working in the fields; a man who went to the front door to
see who had tapped on his window was shot through the heart; a striker
was killed by a twenty-five-pound piece of flagging thrown from a
roof; there was a gun fight of colored men at Madison, Wisconsin, at
which three were shot; a gang of negro ruffians killed and mutilated a
white woman (with a baby in her arms) and her husband; masked robbers
called a man to his barn at Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and cut his
throat; an Italian was found with his head split in two by a butcher’s
cleaver; a negress in Lafayette, Louisiana, killed a family of six with
a hatchet; a negro farmer and his two daughters were lynched and their
bodies burned by four white men (who will probably also be lynched if
caught); a girl of eleven shot her girl friend of about the same age
and killed her; several persons were found stabbed to death; a plumber
killed his brother (also a plumber) for saying that he stole two
dollars; a murderer was shot by a posse of militia in a cornfield; a
card game at Bayonne, New Jersey, resulted in a revolver fight on the
street in which one of the players was killed; bank robbers killed a
cashier at twelve o’clock noon; a jealous lover in Butte, Montana, shot
and killed his sweetheart, her father, and mother; a deputy sheriff
was murdered; burglars killed several persons in the course of their
business; Kokolosski, a Pole, kicked his child to death; and a couple
of dozen people were incidentally shot, stabbed, or otherwise disposed
of in the course of quarrels over the most trivial matters. In almost
no case was there what an intelligent, civilized man would regard as
an adequate _reason_ for the homicide. They killed because they felt
like killing, and yielded to the impulse, whatever its immediate origin.
This conclusion is abundantly supported by the figures of the Chicago
_Tribune_ for the seven years ending in 1900, when carefully analyzed.
During this period 62,812 homicides were recorded. Of these there were
17,120, of which the causes were unknown and 3,204 committed while
making a justifiable arrest, in self-defence, or by the insane, so that
there were in fact only 42,488 felonious homicides the causes of which
can be definitely alleged. The ratio of the “quarrels” to this net
total is about seventy-five per cent. There were, in addition, 2,848
homicides due to liquor—that is, _without cause_. Thus eighty per cent
of all the murders and manslaughters in the United States for a period
of seven years were for no reason at all or from mere anger or habit,
arising out of causes often of the most trifling character.
Nor are the conclusions changed by the figures of the years between
1904 and 1909.
During this period 61,786 homicides were recorded. Of these there
were 9,302 of which the causes were not known, and 2,480 committed
while making a justifiable arrest, in self-defence, or by the insane,
leaving 50,004 cases of felonious homicides of known causes. Of these
homicides, 33,476 were due to quarrels and 4,799 to liquor, a total of
38,275 out of the 50,004 cases of known causes being traceable in this,
another seven years, to motives the most casual.
It would be stupid to allege that the _reason_ men killed was _because_
they had been stepped on or had been deprived of a glass of beer. The
cause lies deeper than that. It rests in the willingness or desire of
the murderer to kill at all. Among barbaric or savage peoples this is
natural; but among civilized nations it is hardly to be anticipated.
If the negro who shoots his fellow because he believes himself to have
been cheated out of ten cents were really civilized, he would either
not have the impulse to kill or, having the impulse to kill, would have
sufficient power of self-control to refrain from doing so. This power
of self-control may be natural or acquired, and it may or may not be
possessed by the man who feels a desire to commit a homicide. The fact
to be observed—the interesting and, broadly speaking, the astonishing
fact—is that among a people like ourselves anybody should have a
desire to kill. It is even more astonishing than that the impulse
should be yielded to so often if it comes.
This, then, is the real reason why men kill—because it is inherent
in their state of mind, it is part of their mental and physical
make-up—they are ready to kill, they want to kill, they are the kind
of men who do kill. This is the result of their heredity, environment,
educational and religious training, or the absence of it. How many
readers of this paper have ever experienced an actual desire to kill
another human being? Probably not one hundredth of one per cent. They
belong to the class of people who either never have such an impulse,
or at any rate have been taught to keep such impulses under control.
Hence it is futile to try to explain that some men kill for a trifling
sum of money, some because they feel insulted, others because of
political or labor disputes, or because they do not like their food.
Any one of these may be the match that sets off the gunpowder, but the
real cause of the killing is the fact that the gunpowder is there,
lying around loose, and ready to be touched off. What engenders this
gunpowder state of mind would make a valuable sociological study, but
it may well be that a seemingly inconsequential fact may so embitter
a boy or man toward life or the human race in general that in time he
“sees red” and goes through the world looking for trouble. Any cause
that makes for crime and depravity makes for murder as well. The little
boy who is driven out of the tenement onto the street, and in turn off
the street by a policeman, until, finding no wholesome place to play,
he joins a “gang” and begins an incipient career of crime, may end in
the “death house.”
The table on the opposite page gives the figures collected by the
Chicago _Tribune_ for the years from 1881 to 1910.
In view of the foregoing it may seem paradoxical for the writer to
state that he questions the alleged unusual tendency to commit murder
on the part of citizens of the United States. Yet of one fact he
is absolutely convinced—namely, that homicide _has substantially
decreased in the last fifteen years_. Even according to the figures
collected by the Chicago _Tribune_, there were but 8,975 homicides in
1910 as compared with 10,500 in 1895, and 10,652 in 1896.
NUMBER OF MURDERS AND HOMICIDES IN THE UNITED STATES EACH YEAR SINCE
1881, COMPARED WITH THE POPULATION
+------+--------------+---------------+-------------+
| | NUMBER OF | ESTIMATED | NUMBER OF |
| | MURDERS AND | POPULATION | MURDERS AND |
| YEAR | HOMICIDES IN | OF THE | HOMICIDES |
| | THE UNITED | UNITED STATES | FOR EACH |
| | STATES | | MILLION OF |
| | | | PEOPLE |
+------+--------------+---------------+-------------+
| 1881 | 1,266 | 51,316,000 | 24.7 |
| 1882 | 1,467 | | 27.9 |
| 1883 | 1,697 | | 31.6 |
| 1884 | 1,465 | | 26.7 |
| 1885 | 1,808 | 56,148,000 | 32.2 |
| 1886 | 1,499 | | 26.1 |
| 1887 | 2,335 | | 39.8 |
| 1888 | 2,184 | | 36.4 |
| 1889 | 3,567 | | 58.2 |
| 1890 | 4,290 | 62,622,250 | 68.5 |
| 1891 | 5,906 | | 92.4 |
| 1892 | 6,791 | | 104.2 |
| 1893 | 6,615 | | 99.5 |
| 1894 | 9,800 | | 144.7 |
| 1895 | 10,500 | 69,043,000 | 152.2 |
| 1896 | 10,652 | | 151.3 |
| 1897 | 9,520 | | 132.8 |
| 1898 | 7,840 | | 107.2 |
| 1899 | 6,225 | | 83.6 |
| 1900 | 8,275 | 75,994,575 | 108.7 |
| 1901 | 7,852 | 77,754,000 | 100.9 |
| 1902 | 8,834 | 79,117,000 | 111.7 |
| 1903 | 8,976 | | 112.0 |
| 1904 | 8,482 | | |
| 1905 | 9,212 | | |
| 1906 | 9,350 | | |
| 1907 | 8,712 | | |
| 1908 | 8,952 | | |
| 1909 | 8,103 | | |
| 1910 | 8,975 | 91,972,266 | 97.5 |
+------+--------------+---------------+-------------+
| Total| 191,150 | | |
+------+--------------+---------------+-------------+
Meantime the population of our country has been leaping onward.
We are blood-thirsty enough, God knows, without making things out
any worse than they are or juggling the figures. Our murder rate per
100,000 unquestionably exceeds that of most of the countries of western
Europe, but, as the saying is, “there’s a reason.” If our homicide
statistics related only to the white population of even the _second
generation born_ in this country we should find, I am convinced, that
we are no more homicidal than France and Belgium, and less so than
Italy. It is to be expected that with our Chinese, “greaser,” and
half-breed population in the West, our Black Belt in the South, and
our Sicilian and South Italian immigration in the North and East, our
murder rate should exceed those of the continental nations, which are
nothing if not well policed.
But of one thing we can be abundantly certain without any figures at
all, and that is that our present method of administering justice
(less the actions of juries than of judges)—the system taken as a
whole—offers no deterrent to the embryonic or professional criminal.
The administration of justice to-day is not the swift judgment of
honest men upon a criminal act, but a clever game between judge and
lawyer, in which the action of the jury is discounted entirely and the
moves are made with a view to checkmating justice, not in the trial
court-room, but before the appellate tribunal two or three years later.
“My young feller,” said a grizzled veteran of the criminal bar to me
long years ago, after our jury had gone out, “there’s lots of things in
this game you ain’t got on to yet. Do you think I care what this jury
does? Not one mite. I got a nice little error into the case the very
first day—and I’ve set back ever since. S’pose we _are_ convicted?
I’ll get Jim here [the prisoner] out on a certificate and it’ll be two
years before the Court of Appeals will get around to the case. Meantime
Jim’ll be out makin’ money to pay me my fee—_won’t you_, Jim? Then
your witnesses will be gone, and nobody’ll remember what on earth it’s
all about. You’ll be down in Wall Street practicing real law yourself,
and the indictment will kick around the office for a year or so, all
covered with dust, and then some day I’ll get a friend of mine to
come in quietly and move to dismiss. And it’ll _be_ dismissed. Don’t
you worry! Why, a thousand other murders will have been committed in
this county by the time that happens. Bless your soul! You can’t go
on tryin’ the same man forever! Give the other fellers a chance. You
shake your head? Well, it’s a fact. I’ve been doin’ it for forty years.
You’ll see.” And I did. That may not be Why men kill, but perhaps
indirectly it may have something to do with it.