CHAPTER I

Note: Images of the original pages are available through

Internet Archive. See

http://archive.org/details/criminalcommunit00devouoft

THE CRIMINAL & THE COMMUNITY

by

JAMES DEVON

Medical Officer of H.M. Prison at Glasgow with

an Introduction by Prof. A. F. Murison, LL.D.

"GREAT MEN ARE NOT ALWAYS WISE:

NEITHER DO THE AGED UNDERSTAND

JUDGMENT.

THEREFORE I SAID, HEARKEN UNTO ME;

I ALSO WILL SHEW MINE OPINION."

_Job_ XXXII. 10, 11.

Toronto: Bell and Cockburn

London: John Lane MCMXII

William Brendon and Son, Ltd., Printers

Plymouth, England

TO

MATTHEW G. KELSO

AND

SAMUEL GIBSON

FRIENDS INDEED

INTRODUCTION

The importance of the subjects handled in this volume requires no

demonstration. Already, and for long, the treatment of them has naturally

engaged the sympathetic study of philanthropists, and more recently it has

attracted the earnest attention of scientific inquirers. Hitherto,

however, the results have been far from satisfactory; and there is ample

room for further discussion, especially from the standpoint of a

thoroughly practical man with large experience both of criminals and of

the social conditions that breed them.

Nowadays there is a growing sense of social interdependence; there is a

more general and a more definitely realized aim to elevate the condition

of the less fortunate of our fellow-citizens; there are express efforts of

scientific investigators to discover a firm basis for practical reforms;

and practical reforms are urgent. Such tendencies of thought and feeling

may be expected to go far to ensure a warm welcome to this volume.

Dr. Devon's book is executed on a breadth of scale never before attempted.

It has three distinct parts: The Criminal; Common Factors in the Causation

of Crime; The Treatment of the Criminal. His exposition is perfectly

clear; he sees precisely, and he states directly, simply, and definitely

what he sees and what he thinks about it, very frequently driving home a

point with epigrammatic force. If he throws overboard unceremoniously what

he regards as mere lumber accumulated by the industry of speculation

divorced from experience; if he betrays some impatience with existing

theories and systems; if he advances his own views with confidence--the

handling is at any rate piquant, and brings the matter promptly to a head.

We are supposed to have travelled far from the mediæval brutality of

prison life, but have the changes not been superficial rather than deep?

Setting aside the catalogue of minor regulations and regarding the broad

spirit of prison life, one cannot but recognize that the conditions still

prevailing have much in common with the past. If we look for the really

essential changes during a hundred years, we find just these: (1) a

surface cleanliness of apparent perfection; (2) conversation, prison

visits, and arrangements tending towards a decent sociability between

prisoners and prisoners and between prisoners and the public reduced and

rendered difficult by multitudinous bye-laws. On the one hand, a

cleanliness obtainable only by irritating industry disproportionate to its

proper value; on the other hand, a reduction of such facilities as are

most likely to prevent a prisoner from degenerating to a social alien, an

automatic machine, or a lunatic.

The after-effects of a long sojourn in prison are not readily realizable:

it would require a very lively imagination to picture the life and its

inherent possibilities. The fact that some prisoners do manage to get

through their existence without falling into despair may be taken rather

as a tribute to the chances of exception confounding rule than as a proof

of conversion to virtue through punishment. It is too much to expect that

an ordinary man that has been incarcerated for a period of seven, or five,

or even three years, can become, on his liberation, once more a

"respectable" member of society. His spirit has been cowed; his

self-respect has been annihilated; he has been disqualified for

reabsorption in the community; he has been prepared to gravitate once more

towards crime and prison.

Another unfortunate aspect is the position of the prison warder. Apart

from the care of those under him, he is subject to so much personal

discipline--is so much the slave of "Rules"--that his life often becomes

little superior to that of his charges. In point of social origin or of

intellectual attainments he is not inferior to the ordinary policeman;

but, while the policeman is taught by society, the warder spends most of

his time in an atmosphere of degradation, fatal both to character and to

intellect.

We are pretty well agreed that consideration and sympathy should be

extended to the first offender, except in case of sheer brutality--and, as

Dr. Devon points out, even a man that commits an act of brutality is not

necessarily a brute--for the first offender is usually the victim of

"accidental misconduct." In the case of the habitual offender, who returns

to prison time after time for various transgressions, it would seem

judicious to keep him permanently from actual freedom, but to treat him

more as a diseased and positively dangerous man than as a noxious animal.

At any rate, first offenders should not be herded together with

case-hardened criminals.

Dr. Devon argues stoutly for the liberation of prisoners when responsible

citizens come forward to undertake for necessary periods the guardianship

and care of them. On this point it is important to note his precise

position: it is not for a moment to be thought that he advocates any

reckless liberation of scoundrels upon society. Let us see his actual

words: "Unconditional liberation has ended in disaster to all concerned.

Conditional liberation can only be expected to produce good results if the

conditions are reasonable.... A prison ought merely to be a place of

detention in which offenders are placed till some proper provision is made

for their supervision and means of livelihood in the community.... The

prison in which they would be placed would not be a reformatory

institution where all sorts of futile experiments would be made, but

simply a place of detention in which they would be required each to attend

on himself until he had made up his mind to accept the greater degree of

liberty implied in life outside. The door of his cell would be opened to

let him out when he had reached this conclusion; but it would not be

opened to let him out, as at present, to play a game of hare and hounds

with the police." The argument hinges on the conditions.

Side by side with this, the State might well note the advantage of

pursuing the scheme of letting first offenders out on probation; giving

them guidance and help in welldoing, and impressing upon them the

inevitable consequence of restraint in case of violation of the law. In

this way the transgressor--unless he be of the stuff of which arrant

evildoers are made--seems more likely to feel repentance instead of

remorse. He is shown clearly the power and the certainty of the law; and

at the same time he avoids the stain a prison life must inevitably have

left, even though the imprisonment had been of a comparatively short

duration.

Dr. Devon expounds, with irresistible logic, an argument in favour of a

proper training of the class most in need of it. It must not be forgotten

that ignorance cannot be expected to reason, and that poverty is heavily

handicapped. Many offenders do evil simply because they have never known

good. To punish these with blind and brutish vehemence is only a little

less callous than ill-treatment of mental derelicts and little children.

The principal aims of a prison system are presumably to punish offenders

and to induce them not to offend again. In neither case can the present

system be regarded as successful: it provides neither a proper punishment

nor an effective deterrent. That the influence is brutalising cannot be

ignored: the savage become bestial, the refined become tragically shamed

outcasts.

It is not to be anticipated that Dr. Devon will at all points and at once

conciliate agreement. Probably he is the last man to expect it. Perhaps it

is even undesirable that his views should be accepted without keen

discussion. But Dr. Devon is a seasoned warrior, well accustomed to fight

his own battles; and no man is readier to acknowledge frankly a sound

criticism.

Dr. Devon begins and ends on the same note: absolute necessity for the

"recognition of social conditions as they exist." Yes, "as they exist";

and not otherwise. His official position as medical officer of a large

prison for more than half a generation, and a long experience as one of

the examiners for the Crown for criminal cases in the West of Scotland,

give him a right to a hearing on the medical and official aspects of the

subject. There have been other writers that could claim official knowledge

of the subject but Dr. Devon's qualifications on the social side are

exceptional. He was helping to earn his own living before he was eleven,

and his knowledge of the conditions of life among the working class has

not been acquired from the outside. He had a practical acquaintanceship

with the work of the unskilled labourer and of the artisan before he began

the study of medicine; and his professional life, spent mainly in the

poorhouse and the prison, has given him opportunities for outside

observation of conditions with which he had had an earlier and more

intimate acquaintance. He has been emphatically a man of the people, going

in and out among his fellow-citizens of all classes for many

years--lecturing, sharing confidences, advising and counselling every day,

and, in a word, familiarising himself with every aspect of the diversified

social life around him; an incalculable advantage when utilized by a keen

intellect and a sympathetic heart.

It will be found, then, that he has brought together the two factors of

the problem--the Criminal and Society--with a solvent power beyond any

previous effort. I believe that his book is the most illuminating and the

wisest that has ever been written on the subject.

CONTENTS

PART I THE STUDY OF THE CRIMINAL

CHAPTER I THE CRIMINAL AND THE CRIMINOLOGISTS

Classification of criminals--The treatment of the criminal

not a medical but a social question--Technical differences

between crimes and offences--Changes in the law--Vice and

crime--The beginner in crime--Common characters of the

"criminal class"--Atrocious crimes exceptional--So-called

scientific studies of the criminal--How figures mislead--

Composite photographs and averages--Estimate of character

from physical examination--Causal relationship to crime of

these characters _pages_ 3-17

CHAPTER II HEREDITY AND CRIME

Does heredity account for one quality more than

another?--Impossibility of forecasting the conduct of

others--Do criminals breed criminals?--The fit and the

unfit--Unequal endowments--Ability and position--Inherited

faculties and social pressure--Crime the result of wrongly

directed powers--Original sin and heredity--Heredity

behind everything 18-23

CHAPTER III INSANITY AND CRIME

Insanity and responsibility--Removal of the insane from

prison--Crime resulting from insanity--Case of theft--Of

embezzlement--Of fire-raising--Insanity and murder

charges--The result of an act not a guide to the nature of

the act--Observation of prisoners charged with certain

offences--Insanity as a result of misconduct--Cases--The

mentally defective--Cases 24-40

CHAPTER IV PHYSICAL DEFECTS AND CRIME

Physical defects beget sympathy--Rarely induce crime--May

cause mental degeneration--Case of jealousy and murder 41-43

CHAPTER V THE STUDY OF THE CRIMINAL

The reliability of prisoners' statements--Deceit or

misunderstanding?--Frankness and knowledge required on the

part of the investigator--The prisoner's statement should

form the basis of enquiry--Information and help obtained

from former friends--The diffusion of knowledge so

obtained--The prevention of crime and the accumulation of

knowledge 44-48

PART II COMMON FACTORS IN THE CAUSATION OF CRIME

CHAPTER I DRINK AND CRIME

Drink commonly accredited with the production of crime--

Minor offences usually committed under its influence--

Drink a factor in the causation of most crimes against

the person--Double personality caused by drink--Drunken

cruelty--Drunken rage--Assaults on the drunken--Sexual

offences--Child neglect--Mental defect behind the

drunkenness of some offenders--Malicious mischief and

theft--Drunken kleptomania--The professional criminal

and drink--Thefts from the drunken--Amount of crime not

in ratio to amount of drinking in a district--The vice

existent apart from crime, in the country--And in the

wealthier parts of the city--Drunkenness and statistics--

Summary 51-66

CHAPTER II POVERTY, DESTITUTION, OVERCROWDING, AND CRIME

The majority of persons in prison there because of their

poverty--Poverty and drink--Poverty and petty offences--

Poverty and thrift--Poverty and destitution--Case of theft

from destitution--Poverty and vagrancy--Unemployment and

beggary--Formation of professional offenders--The case of

the old--The degradation of the unemployed to

unemployability--No ratio between the amount of poverty

alone and the amount of crime--A definite ratio between

density of population and crime--Slum life--Overcrowding--

Cases of destitution and overcrowding--Overcrowding and

decency--Poverty and overcrowding in relation to offences

against the person--The poor and officials--The absence

of opportunity for rational recreation--The migratory

character of the population--The multiplication of laws

and of penalties--Transgressions due to ignorance and to

inability to conform--Contrast between city and country

administration--Case of petty offender--Treatment induces

further offences--The city the hiding-place of the

professional criminal--Crime largely a by-product of city

life 67-94

CHAPTER III IMMIGRATION AND CRIME

The stranger most likely to offend--The reaction to new

surroundings--The difficulty of recovery--The attraction

of the city--The Churches and the immigrant--Benevolent

associations--The alien immigrants--Their tendency to hold

themselves apart--Deportation--A language test required--

The alien criminal--His dangerous character--The need for

powers to deal with him 95-102

CHAPTER IV SOCIAL CONDITIONS AND CRIME

The millionaire and the pauper--Ill-feeling and

misunderstanding--Social ambitions--Case of embezzlement--

Preaching and practice--Gambling--The desire to "get on"--

The need to deal with those who profit by the helplessness

of others--Political action--Its difficulty--Legislation

and administration--The official and the public--Personal

aid--Fellowship 103-116

CHAPTER V AGE AND CRIME

The inexperience of youth--The training of boys--Case of a

truant--Another case--Intractability--The foolishness of

parent and teacher--The absence of mutual understanding--

Recreation--Malicious mischief and petty theft--The cause

thereof--The need for instructing parents--Pernicious

literature--The other kind--The modern Dick Turpin--The

boy as he leaves school--Amusements--Repression--

Blind-alley occupations--The adolescent--Physical strain

of many occupations--Unequal physical and mental

development--The street trader--Hooliganism--Knowledge

and experience--The perils of youth--Old age 117-139

CHAPTER VI SEX AND CRIME

The position of woman--The posturing of men--Love and

crime--Two cases of theft from sexual attraction--The

female thief--Case--Blackmailing--Jealousy and crime--Two

murder cases--Case of assault--Fewer women than men are

criminals--Their greater difficulty in recovery--Young

girls and sexual offences--The perils of girlhood--Wages

and conduct--Exotic standards of dress--Ignorance and

wrongdoing--The domestic servant--Her difficulties--

Concealment of pregnancy cases--The culprit and the

father--Morals--The fallen woman--Bigamy 140-160

CHAPTER VII PUNISHMENT

The universal cure-all--The public and the advertising

healer--The essence of all quackery--The quackery of

punishment--Rational treatment--Justice not bad temper--

Retribution--Our fathers and ourselves--Their methods not

necessarily suitable to our time--Capital punishment--The

incurable and the incorrigible--Objections to capital

punishment apply in degree to all punishment--The "cat"--

The executioner and the surgeon--Whipping and its

effect--The flogged offender--The act and the intention--

Pain and vitality--Unequal effects of punishment--Fines

and their burden--Who is punished most?--Punishment and

expiation--Punishment and deterrence--Social opinion the

real deterrent--Vicious social circles--Respect for the

law--Prevention of crime 161-185

PART III THE TREATMENT OF THE CRIMINAL

CHAPTER I THE MACHINERY OF THE LAW

The police and their duties--Divided control--Need for

knowledge of local peculiarities--The fear of

"corruption"--The police cell--Cleanliness and

discomfort--Insufficient provision of diet, etc.--The

casualty surgeon--The police court--The untrained

magistrate--The assessor--Pleas of "guilty"--Case--Apathy

of the public--Agents for the Poor--The prison van--The

sheriff court--The procurator-fiscal--Procedure in the

higher courts--The Scottish jury 189-209

CHAPTER II THE PRISON SYSTEM

Centralisation--The constitution of the Prison

Commission--Parliamentary control--The Commissioners--The

rules--The visiting committee--The governor and the

matron--The chaplain--The medical officer--The staff 210-219

CHAPTER III THE PRISON AND ITS ROUTINE

Reception of the prisoner--Cleanliness and order--The plan

of the prison--The cells--Their furniture--The diet--The

clothing--Work--The Workshops--Separate confinement and

association--Gratuities--Prison offences--Complaints--

Punishment cells--Visits of the chaplain--Visits of

representatives of the Churches--The gulf between visitor

and visited--The Chapel--The Salvation Army--Rest--

Recreation--The prison Library--Lectures--The

airing-yard--Physical drill 220-242

CHAPTER IV VARIATIONS IN ROUTINE

The sick--Prison hospitals--The removal of the sick to

outside hospitals--The wisdom of this course--The

essential difference between a prison and other public

institutions--The treatment of refractory prisoners--The

folly of assuming that rules are more sacred than

persons--The position of the medical officer in relation

to the prisoner--The danger of divided responsibility--The

untried prisoner--His privileges--Civil prisoners--

Imprisonment for contempt of court--The convict--Short and

long sentences 243-257

CHAPTER V THE PRISONER ON LIBERATION

His condition--His need--Alleged persecution of

ex-prisoners--Discharged prisoners' aid societies--Work--

Temptations--The discharged female offender--The attitude

of women towards her--"Homes"--The women's objections to

them--Pay--The religious atmosphere and the harmful

associations--The effect of imprisonment 258-270

CHAPTER VI THE INEBRIATE HOME

The need to find out why people do wrong before attempting

to cure them--Enquiries as to inebriety--The inebriates--

Official utterances--Cost and results--The grievance of

the unreformed--The time limit of cure--The causes of

failure--The fostering of old associations--The prospect

of the future spree--The institution habit 271-283

CHAPTER VII THE PREVENTION OF CRIMES ACT (1908)

The Borstal experiment--Provisions for the "reformation of

young offenders"--Is any diminution in the numbers of

police expected?--Preventive detention--The implied

confession that penal servitude does not reform and the

insistence on it as a preliminary to reform--The prisoner

detained at the discretion of the prison officials--The

powers of the Secretary of State--The change under the

statute--The necessary ignorance of the Secretary of State

by reason of his other duties--The "committees"--The

habits to be taught--The teaching of trades--The ignorance

of trades on the part of those who design to teach them--

The difficulty of teaching professions in institutions

less than that of teaching trades--The vice of obedience

taught--Intelligent co-operation and senseless

subordination--The military man in the industrial

community 284-303

CHAPTER VIII THE FAMILY AS MODEL

The basis of the family not necessarily a blood tie--

Adoption--The head and the centre of the family--The

feeling of joint responsibility--The black sheep--

Companionship and sympathy necessities in life--Reform

only possible when these are found--"Conversion" only

temporary in default of force of new interests--The one

way in which reform is made permanent 304-310

CHAPTER IX ALTERNATIVES TO IMPRISONMENT

What is required--The case of the minor offenders--The

incidence of fines--The prevention of drunkenness--Clubs--

Probation of offenders--Its partial application--Defects

in its administration--The false position of the probation

officer--Guardians required--Case of young girl--The plea

of want of power--Old and destitute offenders--Prison and

poorhouse 311-328

CHAPTER X THE BETTER WAY

The offender who has become reckless--If not killed they

must be kept--The failure of the institution--Boarding

out--At present they are boarded out on liberation, but

without supervision--Guardians may be found when they are

sought for--The result of boarding out children--The

insane boarded out--Unconditional liberation has failed--

Conditional liberation with suitable provision has not

been tried--No system of dealing with men, but only a

method--No necessity for the formation of the habitual

offender--The one principle in penology 329-339

INDEX 343-348

PART I

THE STUDY OF THE CRIMINAL

THE CRIMINAL & THE COMMUNITY

CHAPTER I

THE CRIMINAL AND THE CRIMINOLOGISTS

Classification of criminals--The treatment of the criminal not a

medical but a social question--Technical differences between crimes

and offences--Changes in the law--Vice and crime--The beginner in

crime--Common characters of the "criminal class"--Atrocious crimes

exceptional--So-called scientific studies of the criminal--How figures

mislead--Composite photographs and averages--Estimate of character

from physical examination--Causal relationship to crime of these

characters.

People were never more anxious to reform their neighbours than they are in

our day. Everyone admits the widespread existence of misery, degradation,

and destitution; and many seem to think that the presence of these evils

is a modern phenomenon. Any man who has reached middle age and who has

lived and worked among the masses of the people knows better. The evils

are not new, but their widespread recognition is.

For ages the few have been the governors of the many, and the governed

have neither had the means nor the ability to communicate with their

rulers and with one another. In our day the ends of the earth have been

brought together by the invention of the engineer, and the schoolmaster

has been abroad among the people. The writer reaches a larger contemporary

audience, and the message of the speaker is carried over a greater area

than was ever before possible. Whether this has been wholly an advantage

may be questioned; but there can be no doubt that things that were hidden

have been made manifest, and one result has been that laws and

institutions which our fathers accepted have been placed on their trial.

Our system of dealing with criminals has not escaped criticism and has not

borne it well. Like all systems, it is based largely on the assumption

that men are, or ought to be, of one pattern. It is charged with failing

to reform those who come under its sway; but there is nothing to show that

it was designed for their reformation.

Men are brought under it as a punishment; and their acts, not their

personality, are the cause of their imprisonment.

Experience has shown that the military man who applies impartially a set

of rules to those who come under him has not been a success when placed in

charge of an institution for dealing with offenders. It is not that he is

less human than others, but that he is more rigid. Differences among those

placed in his charge have always been recognised; for instance, they could

not all be treated as though they were the same height, nor could it be

assumed that it was possible to secure uniformity amongst them in this

respect; but only the most obvious differences were regarded. Even

elementary classifications could not be left to the man whose duty it was

to administer rules, and so the doctor's aid was obtained in order to sort

out those who were physically unfit to do any but light work; those to

whom the diet was unsuited; and those who required to have special

privileges granted them lest the system killed them. It is sometimes much

easier to call in the doctor than to get rid of him; and largely on

account of his work it has been shown that all classifications hitherto

made have been inadequate. In the name of science he demands still further

classifications.

Men can only be placed in classes because of certain qualities they have

in common. Every classification must neglect individual differences; and

as it is these that mark men off one from another, any system or method of

dealing with men will fail in so far as they are left out of account. The

treatment of the criminal is not a medical question. It is a social

question.

A medical training is of more use to a man who is to study the subject

than a military training would be. It is important to be able to form a

rational opinion on the physical and mental capacity of a man; to know

whether he suffers from any disease which impairs his faculties and to be

able to direct treatment to the cure of that disease; but a considerable

degree of knowledge regarding these things may coexist with an amazing

amount of ignorance regarding the social conditions under which the person

examined has been brought up and formed. Give the medical man head and, so

far as he is merely a medical man, he will be a more expensive nuisance

than the military administrator.

A great deal has been written about the study of the criminal, but any

such study is defective and can only be misleading in so far as it is not

a study of offenders in relation to their circumstances. "Criminal" is as

loose a term as "tradesman." It may mean anything, but so far as any real

study is concerned it usually means nothing of any importance except to

the printing and allied trades. When the character of the prisoner is

estimated by men whose writings show no knowledge of his outside life, and

is confined mainly to an enumeration of the selected physical, and

imagined mental, characters of men while in prison, no study of the

subject has been made that is worth any consideration, save for the

purpose of formulating a theory without taking the trouble of ascertaining

the important facts.

The study of the criminal has mainly been based on observation and

examination of persons in prison; but in prison the criminal is not

himself. He whose obedience the law could not command, who kicked against

restraint, is now compelled to direct all his acts under authority. His

life has been arranged for him, and he might as well run his head against

the wall as refuse to obey. Everything is done with regularity and

quietness, and the monotony of it all oppresses him. His inclinations are

not consulted; his anger not regarded, except it transgress the rules.

Outside he may have a reputation for wit and sociability; in prison he has

no encouragement to show these qualities. Very likely he will talk freely

to any official person who is of an enquiring turn of mind; he may be glad

to have the chance; but he is on his guard, and will not communicate any

information that may get his friends into trouble and himself into bad

repute among them, unless he is going to gain a good deal by it; and not

always even then. He learns to take advantage of every opening that offers

any chance of increased comfort to himself, and he may readily make a

general confession of sin and promise of amendment if thereby he can gain

sympathy and obtain privileges. It is not surprising that he should behave

in this manner--the principle of making friends with the mammon of

unrighteousness is not unknown outside prison--but it is strange that

people who might be supposed to know the conditions in which he is placed

should talk as though the criminal were usually a stupid kind of person.

Any person who offends against the penal laws of the community in which he

lives may be sent to prison; whether he be called an offender or a

criminal will depend on consideration of points that are technical.

Generally speaking, persons convicted of offences against the person or

against property are classed as criminals, while those who have

transgressed against public order--as in breaches of the peace, etc.--are

classed as offenders. "An Act for the more effectual Prevention of Crime"

(34 & 35 Victoria, cap. 112, sec. 20) defines the word "Crime" to mean "in

Scotland any of the Pleas of the Crown, any theft, which in respect of any

aggravation, or of the amount in value of the money, goods, or things

stolen may be punished with penal servitude, any forgery, and any uttering

base coin, or the possession of such coin with intent to utter the same."

The Pleas of the Crown are murder, robbery, rape, and wilful fire-raising.

Those who have been convicted of crime as defined by the section quoted

would properly be called criminals, but it is obvious that the name is

applied and is applicable to many who do not fall under the definition. In

practice the treatment of prisoners who have been convicted of offences is

the same as that of those who have been convicted of crimes, when the

sentence is one of imprisonment. The distinction between them is a

technical one. If he is to be judged by the act of which he has been

found guilty, the same person may at one time be called a criminal and at

another time an offender.

As a matter of fact, it is very difficult to draw the line between crimes

and offences; and it is not uncommon to find that a man who has committed

a heinous crime is not so wicked a character as another who has never been

guilty of more than a petty offence.

The largest number of persons in prison have been convicted of minor

transgressions and have been dealt with in the police courts. Many of

these offences do not differ in character from those which engage the

attention of the higher courts. Their gravity is estimated either by the

result of the act, or the bad record of the person committing it, or both

factors together. Thus if in the course of a quarrel one person should

strike another and bleed his face, the police magistrate will assess the

damage done to society; but if the blow break the injured person's nose,

the case will pass to the sheriff. If a man in a drunken "spree" lift a

pair of boots from a shop-door, the bailie will probably deal with him;

but if, drunk or sober, he has been in the habit of taking other people's

property, he may be sent to a higher court.

The law differs in the same country at different times. It is the minimum

standard of conduct to which all members of the community are required to

conform, and, as public opinion changes, it undergoes alteration. Men who

in one generation have been executed as criminals have been honoured as

martyrs in the next, while acts which at one time have been regarded as

meritorious have at another time been severely punished. At no time will

an honourable man do all that the law permits him to do, for his standard

of conduct is higher than, and in advance of, the law. But a man may live

a thoroughly vicious life; he may lie, act dishonestly, be cruel and

vindictive--in short, break any or all of the ten commandments--and yet

keep within the law.

The law differs in different parts of the same country at the same time,

and a man may find himself brought under its operation in one district for

doing something which is permissible in another. This is a result of the

special powers given to corporations, or is due to the adoption by one

local authority of permissive legislation which a neighbouring authority

has not adopted. It may be very puzzling to a stranger, but the principle

of allowing the more enlightened districts freedom to improve their

administration is at the back of it; whether they could not find a better

way of carrying out their purposes than by sending to prison those who

offend against them is another question altogether.

Even under similar laws the administration may be different. The more laws

there are and the more rigid their administration, the greater will be the

number of offenders.

All kinds of people break the law. In some social positions there is less

opportunity for doing so than in others, but the conditions in which many

are placed make it easier for them to offend against certain regulations

than to conform to them.

All who are brought to prison for the first time are not first offenders.

In some cases they have had a long and successful career before being

apprehended, but even in these cases the physical and mental

characteristics that would mark them off from others among whom they have

been living are not apparent. A man's character and his characteristics

are the result of interaction between outside influences and inherent

faculties. He acquires habits of body and of mind, and they leave their

mark on him.

Vice and crime are not the same thing, nor have they any necessary

relationship. Though generally the result of a vicious impulse or

intention, there is hardly a crime in the calendar that might not be

committed by a person acting from a higher moral standard than that set by

the law. On the other hand, a vicious person may indulge in almost any

vice and yet keep clear of the law; it all depends on how he does it. A

dishonest person, if he puts his hand in the pocket of another and

abstracts the contents, may be sent to prison; but if by appealing to the

cupidity of his neighbours he can get them to put their hands in their own

pockets and hand him over the proceeds in order that they may share in the

El Dorado he has invented, he robs them just as effectively and is not

sent to prison. He may become a pillar of society and a legislator.

When people are sent to prison for the first time all that has been

determined is the fact that they have been guilty of breaking the law.

There is no justification for assuming that their characters are, on the

whole, worse than those of others. Some of them may have committed very

wicked crimes; but, except in a few cases, a thorough investigation of all

the attendant circumstances might modify any impressions derived from the

trial. Even the commission of a fiendish act is not incompatible with a

disposition that is usually and mainly good. We do not in practice assume

that a man is a bad man because he has done a bad thing, any more than we

credit him with being a good man because he has done a good thing. When

the evil he has done has taken a criminal form we are as little entitled

to judge the man by the act we condemn.

The fact that a person is in prison hinders any attempt to study him. The

investigator begins with a prejudice against him because of the crime he

has committed. Yet it is the most common thing to hear people who have

known a prisoner intimately for years say that they could not have

believed he would do the thing he has done. These people are quite as fit

to judge character as those who are called scientific investigators, and

they have better opportunities for doing so. They have not seen the

weakness of their friends in the form it has taken. The investigator

usually sees nothing else.

If those who come to prison for the first time were made the subject of

examination, it would be found that they are principally remarkable for

the absence of what the books call criminal characteristics.

Prisoners differ as much from one another as people who are law-abiding.

No two are alike even among those who have committed similar offences; and

those who enter prison for the first time are not distinguishable in

appearance from members of the same social class who have not transgressed

the law. That they may develop certain common characteristics as a result

of their way of living is true; and there is a criminal class in the same

sense as there is a professional class or an artisan class. The criminal

is born and made just as the policeman is born and made. See him early in

his career and it is impossible to tell what he is, but when he has

undergone his training it may be expected to leave its mark on him which

those who know may read with more or less success.

These common characters in the criminal have been laboriously sought for

and recorded; measurements have been made and tables compiled; ratios have

been calculated to decimals, and an appearance of scientific precision

has been given to the study of the criminal which has led many to the

assumption that the writers must know more about the offender than they

themselves do. Yet there are few men or women of mature years who have not

known with some degree of intimacy at least one person who has sunk into

the mire of vice and it may be of crime; and one such case thoroughly

known is a better basis for study of the subject than any amount of

tables.

It may be of importance to compare the peculiarities of habitual

offenders, but it is of greater use to learn how they acquired them. As

for the habitual himself, he is not really the problem. His life is seldom

a long one, and even if nothing other than is at present were done to, or

for, him, he would die out in a generation. I do not say that the question

of what we should do with our habituals is not important, but of much more

importance is the devising of means for preventing the wrongdoer from

acquiring the habit and joining their ranks. A study of confirmed

criminals may be interesting pathology, but it is the study of the

beginner in crime that will prevent the formation of the criminal class,

in so far as it affords means for enabling us to deal sanely with them.

When an atrocious crime is perpetrated there is intense public interest

shown in the criminal. He is examined in a distorted mirror and his parts

are magnified. The more extraordinary he is, the more monstrous he

appears, the greater the sensation. Yet the ordinary men and the ordinary

offences are at once the more common and the more important. Here and

there a person may be born with such a crooked disposition that it is

difficult to see how he could go straight; just as occasionally one of

great wisdom enters the world, or a child with more than the usual number

of heads or limbs; but the occurrence is quite exceptional, and it is

never profitable to generalise from it.

We have been reproached in this country with failure to make a scientific

study of the criminal; and the works of foreign writers have been

translated for our example and emulation. They contain a certain amount of

information, but its value is not apparent. The importance of a book is

not to be measured by the difficulty of understanding it. Big and strange

words may as easily mask an absence of useful knowledge as convey a

fruitful idea, and the man who has anything of importance to say regarding

his neighbour--even though that neighbour is a criminal--does not require

a pseudo-scientific jargon in which to say it. The criminal is a man or a

woman like the rest of us, and information about his head or his heels,

while it may have a special value in relation to his case, should not be

confounded with knowledge of himself. He is something more than a brain or

a stomach.

Either the so-called criminal characters are the cause of the man's

wrongdoing, the result of it, or have nothing to do with the matter. If

they are the cause of the criminal act, how is it that they are admittedly

present in others who are not criminals? It would certainly simplify the

work of the police if they knew that they could with any degree of safety

look for the perpetrator of certain kinds of crime among men with heads of

a given shape; but anyone who glances at the illustrated papers will see

for himself as many villainous-looking faces among notable people, even

among able people, as he will find in a prison. Our forefathers had a rule

that when two persons were charged with the same crime and there was a

doubt which of them was guilty, the uglier should be condemned. It is not

stated whether the officials and governing classes were at that time

chosen for their good looks. Fortunately the practice has long since

lapsed.

Unless a peculiarity is shown to have a causal relationship to crime its

mere existence proves nothing except the fact that it is there. That in

some cases physical defects do cause those who suffer from them to make

war on society, is undoubtedly the case; but it is very far indeed from

being the rule.

There are many people who are prepared to regard a book as learned if it

is sufficiently scrappy and contains figures arranged in a tabular form.

Yet figures when they deal with other than very simple things are almost

invariably misleading; and the more so as they have such an appearance of

exactness. It is easy for any two people to count the number of men in a

room and to agree as to the result; but ask them to say how many tall men,

how many with black hair, how many blue-eyed, how many straight-nosed--and

you will get a different result each time. The figures will be exact--they

cannot be otherwise--but your knowledge will be the reverse. If this is

apparent in such a simple matter as the recording of physical characters,

how much more apparent it is when an attempt is made to classify and

generalise on men. Most books admit that there are not sufficient data on

which to base conclusions, and then proceed to suggest conclusions. The

whole science of criminology is illustrated by the composite photographs

published gravely as contributions; for a composite is a photograph of

nobody at all. It is obtained by the superposition of photographs of

different persons, and is itself different from any of them. It may

represent them all as they ought to be, but it does not represent any of

them as he is. It is the criminal in the abstract--who does not exist. It

conveys in itself a warning against averages, for it is a pictorial

presentment of an average.

An average is the mean of different numbers. In dealing with masses of

people--feeding them, for instance--by providing a certain average supply

for each, all may be satisfied; but whenever the average is applied to

individuals it is misapplied, and one finds he has too much, another that

he has too little. Measure two men; one is 5 ft. 8 in., the other 5 ft. 4

in.; the average height of both is 5 ft. 6 in., which is the height of

neither. So when we have averages of height, weight, etc., given in the

case of criminals, we know that we have been told nothing about any of

them. The other physical characters of criminals in prison have been noted

without any attempt having been made to ascertain whether, and if so when

and how, they were acquired, and we are invited to contemplate a number of

twisted and bloated faces, many of which could easily be matched among the

non-criminals. See these men and women before debauchery has left its mark

on them and they are no uglier than some of us who are set over them.

As for the assessment of the mental characters of prisoners, the value of

it will largely depend on the ability of the examiner to place himself in

touch with them. Few people believe nowadays that by feeling the knobs on

the outside of a man's head you can tell the faculties within, far less

whether these faculties will be used for good or ill; and we are not

likely to advance the study of the criminal by founding conclusions on the

measurements of his head, facial angle, etc. The new phrenology differs

from the old in respect that it changes its terms and insists on more

exactness of measurement. Like the old, it may be fairly successful in

judging men after they have shown their qualities.

No one has yet discovered a reliable means of estimating the nature,

quality, and amount of a man's mental powers from his appearance. We may

learn what he says or does, but we can never be sure what he thinks. In

practice we are all continually forming estimates of those we meet. Some

judge by the clothes, some by the expression, most of us not knowing how.

So far as our impressions are concerned, however we think they have been

arrived at, we all make mistakes and have all to revise our opinions. The

man who prides himself on his ability to read character is usually the man

who makes the most mistakes; his confidence misleads his judgment. Even

the shrewdest are occasionally deceived after many and varied

opportunities of arriving at a correct estimate of their friends or

enemies, yet for his own purposes each man's judgment may be, in the main,

satisfactory and no one troubles about his neighbour's methods; but when

they are erected into a science it is time to protest.

The size and shape of the head, its malformations and asymmetry, may be

measured with a fair amount of success. This and more has been done with a

view to the future identification of individuals; but the theory

underlying the practice of taking such measurements is that no two

criminals are alike. The theory the criminologists seek to establish is

that they are all very much alike. It is stated that so many men who have

committed crimes have heads of a certain conformation, have peculiarities

in the character of their skulls. If these physical deviations have a

causal relation to their conduct, since the heads cannot be altered the

criminals are therefore outwith reform. The Church-people, on the other

hand, hold that all wrongdoing springs from "the heart"--not meaning

thereby the physical organ so called. You cannot give a man a new head

free from the objectionable shape; but men have developed a new spirit,

and from being bad have become good citizens without undergoing any

physical alteration; so that after all it would appear that "The heart

aye's, the part aye, That makes us right or wrong."

CHAPTER II

HEREDITY AND CRIME

Does heredity account for one quality more than another?--

Impossibility of forecasting the conduct of others--Do criminals breed

criminals?--The fit and the unfit--Unequal endowments--Ability and

position--Inherited faculties and social pressure--Crime the result of

wrongly directed powers--Original sin and heredity--Heredity behind

everything.

In the effort to assign a general cause for criminality an undue emphasis

may easily be placed on any one factor. There are those who seem to think

that heredity is the main cause, but they rarely attempt to define the

content of the term. In a sense heredity is the cause of everything, but

in that case it cannot be held to be the cause of one thing more than of

another. Suppose a man becomes insane at the age of thirty and it is shown

that a number of his relatives, direct and collateral, have also been

insane. If heredity accounts for his insanity what will account for his

sanity? Such a man under treatment may recover, but sane or insane his

heredity is not altered. The fact is that we none of us know enough

regarding the qualities of our ancestors to be justified in imputing our

inheritance of any special tendency to any particular one of them, and

every successive generation implies a mixing, if not a blending, of very

complex and sometimes opposing qualities.

If a man knows anything about anybody in this world surely it is about

himself. His knowledge is incomplete, but it is more full and varied than

his knowledge of any other body. He may be expected to know something

about the qualities and faculties of his wife. Yet all he knows of himself

and her, added to all he knows of the laws of heredity, does not enable

him to forecast with any degree of accuracy the faculties and tendencies

of his infant child, or to trace these back when they have developed.

In the case of criminals born and brought up in hotbeds of vice it is even

more hopeless to trace back family history, because there is often in

their case a grave uncertainty as to the personality of the male parent.

To say that as wolves breed wolves criminals breed criminals is nonsense

and mischievous nonsense. As canaries breed canaries do poets breed poets?

Criminals are men and women who have gone wrong; not necessarily because

of the possession of certain powers which they have inherited, but because

these powers have been used in a wrong direction. They come from all

classes; and there is nothing to show that if their children were taken

from them early in life and brought up in favourable surroundings they

would take to crime; but there is an abundance of evidence on the other

side.

There is a good deal of discussion nowadays regarding the fit and the

unfit among us, and a tendency to forget that a classification of our

fellow-citizens under one head or the other can only be made if we regard

the terms as relative to the conditions under which they live. That very

many prove their fitness to survive the continuous strain of economic

pressure, can as little be questioned as that others sink under the

ordeal. No one will deny that there is a good deal of unfitness shown by

persons in a comfortable position economically; and if some of the

Apostles of Fitness had any sense of humour they would hold their tongues

and hide themselves, for neither intellectually nor physically do they

show much claim to present an ideal standard.

Nobody denies that men are unequally endowed. Some have a powerful

physique; others have greater intellectual power. The usefulness of their

endowment to themselves and to others will largely depend on the position

in which they are placed. Put them to work unsuited for them, or place

them in positions where their faculties are not allowed free play, and

they may do very badly. The difficulty is to get the right man in the

right place. When he is in the wrong place he may be a nuisance to himself

and others; but it does not follow that placed in another position he

would not be a useful member of society.

An attempt has been made to show that certain faculties are inherited and

transmitted in certain families; but it is conveniently assumed that

position is of no importance. Everybody knows that, in the professions

chosen to illustrate the theory, promotion is not wholly dependent on

ability. That a father and son have both been judges offers no presumption

of special fitness on the part of the son. That high military rank has

been held by several members of the same family need not prove any of them

to be great soldiers; that the government of the State is now in the hands

of one family and now in the hands of another does not show anything more

than that these families have been in a position to secure the offices. It

would be a new and startling doctrine to assert that the man who is best

fitted for a position always obtained it. Everybody knows that the main

consideration in determining an appointment is whether a man has

influence enough to get it; and that influence need not depend on his

personal ability, but on his position in relation to those in whose gift

the appointment lies. Granted equal ability in two men, let one of them

start with family or social influence and the other with none, and there

can be no doubt as to what will happen. That an able man will obtain

influence in time is highly probable, but by the time he has gained

recognition he is likely to be too old to benefit much by it. The stupid

man who has a clever father has a better chance than the clever man whose

father has shown no special ability.

It is a very difficult thing for any man to learn the history of his

family. In the case of the eminent you get no two biographies that are

alike. An enquiry would show that this is equally true in the case of

those who are not eminent. A man may have one reputation inside his family

circle and quite a different reputation outside. We are all influenced in

our conduct towards others by our opinions regarding them. A man who has

pride in his ancestry will show it in his actions. There may be nothing to

be proud about, but that will not prevent him playing his part. On the

other hand, if he believes he has been disgraced by something that has

been done by some member of the family, his conduct is likely to suffer

from the belief. I have seen a woman whose brother was executed for murder

sink under the disgrace into a condition of recklessness verging on

insanity; and it is a matter of common observation that in some degree men

have been broken in spirit by the shame brought upon them through the

action of their relatives. It is impossible to discriminate between the

part played by inherited tendencies and social pressure, in the production

of certain acts.

Crime is not the result of inherited faculty, but of the direction in

which that faculty is exercised. There are some families where the parents

have been criminals and the sons have all done well; while the daughters

have followed in the footsteps of their parents. In these cases it is

probable that the determining factor has been the influence of the mother.

Her criminal acts and methods were more susceptible of imitation on the

part of the daughters than on the part of the sons, and the girls, even

though they had been willing to leave the house, would have had to face

life outside under greater difficulties than the boys.

The practice of singling out heredity as the cause of certain things to

the exclusion of others has no sanction in experience. Our forefathers

recognised that all men showed imperfections. They saw that one man was

given to envy; another to lust; another to covetousness; another to wrath;

and so on through all the deadly sins. They attributed these defects to

our heritage of Original Sin. The theologian has been displaced by the

scientific man, and if heredity is a newer name for our ignorance it does

not fit the facts any better.

We inherit all the faculties and powers which we possess, but what they

are only the event shows. Nothing can be taken out of a man but what is in

him, but there may be a good deal in him which is never taken out. We may

develop certain faculties, but not unless they are first present; and the

stimulus that they obey at one period in our lives may fail at another. We

may estimate the capabilities of a man who is dead from observation of

what he has done, but we cannot say that he might not have done better or

worse had his life been prolonged. In the case of great men this is

recognised, and we have laments over their early death and speculations

as to what they might have done, or regrets that they lived too long for

their fair fame. It is the same in the case of small men as of great.

Heredity is behind everything; not merely behind some things. If it

explains a man's disease, in the same sense it must also explain his

antecedent health. It cannot account for one part of his life more than

another. Even those who attribute disease or misconduct to heredity seek

to cure the diseased person and to correct his bad habits. Any success

with which they meet is not obtained by altering his heredity, but by

changing the conditions under which he has been living in such a way and

to such an extent that he reacts favourably to the change. We are not

warranted in saying of anybody that he is doomed by heredity to a life of

vice or of crime. The conditions that suit one person may not be suitable

to the healthy development of another, and the problem with regard to

those who transgress our laws is to ascertain under what conditions they

would behave best and place them there. Though their family history may be

of the blackest; though their ancestors may have been vicious, it by no

means follows that it is impossible for them to be otherwise. When a man

has done wrong it does not help him to be informed that he cannot do

better. He is often more than willing to transfer the blame to the

shoulders of others. It is more profitable to teach and help him to do

well than to encourage him to curse his grandfather.

There is only one way of finding out why people commit crimes and that is

by making a patient enquiry in each case. The causes in many cases may be

similar, but the part they play may be different.

CHAPTER III

INSANITY AND CRIME

Insanity and responsibility--Removal of the insane from prison--Crime

resulting from insanity--Case of theft--Of embezzlement--Of

fire-raising--Insanity and murder charges--The result of an act not a

guide to the nature of the act--Observation of prisoners charged with

certain offences--Insanity as a result of misconduct--Cases--The

mentally defective--Cases.

There seems to be a widespread opinion that all criminals and offenders

are more or less insane, but those who hold it have nothing to say in

support of their view save that they cannot understand how certain crimes

could be committed by any sane person. This is to beg the whole question,

which is, how many persons who are charged with committing offences are

found on examination to be unsound mentally?

Insanity has never been satisfactorily defined, but it is a term which in

the legal sense connotes irresponsibility. Yet if all insane persons had

no sense of responsibility it is difficult to imagine how they could be

suffered to live. Even in lunatic asylums the great majority of the

inmates can be induced to behave in such a way as to make it unnecessary

to tie them up. They have a very large amount of liberty conceded to them

without serious inconvenience to their neighbours and greatly to their own

advantage. If they simply did what any stray notion impelled them to do

this would not be possible. Their affliction frees them from

responsibility to the law for their actions; but in practice they have to

show by their conduct that they can and will obey the rules of the

institution in which they are placed before it is safe or reasonable to

let them go freely about in it. The physician does not demand from them

better conduct than their mental condition warrants him in expecting; but

they learn, in so far as they are capable of learning, that their own

actions will determine the degree to which they will be free from

interference, and that the necessary result of misconduct will be

increased restraint. Only in so far as they show a sense of responsibility

is it safe to allow them to be free from supervision. A person may suffer

from such a degree of mental unsoundness as will free him from

responsibility for his actions in the eyes of the law, and yet be able to

conform to the rules laid down for the guidance of his life by an asylum

superintendent.

A very small proportion of prisoners are persons of unsound mind, and in

most cases the mental unsoundness is the result of their own misconduct.

In Scotland there is no difficulty in freeing insane persons from prison.

By section 6 of the Criminal and Dangerous Lunatics (Scotland) Amendment

Act, 1871, it is provided that "When in relation to any person confined in

a local prison in terms of the Prisons (Scotland) Administration Act,

1860, it is certified on soul and conscience by two medical persons that

they have visited and examined such prisoner, and that in their opinion he

is insane, it shall be lawful for the sheriff, on summary application at

the instance of the administrators of such Prison, by a warrant under his

hand, to order such prisoner to be removed to a lunatic asylum." The

matter practically rests with the prison surgeon, for the prison

commissioners on his report never raise any objection to the transfer of a

convicted prisoner who is found to be insane. Yet the same persons return

again and yet again.

The warrant for detention in an asylum expires with the period of the

sentence of imprisonment, and the asylum authorities must obtain new

certificates before they can continue to keep the patient. When the degree

and kind of mental unsoundness is very marked there is no difficulty in

getting the necessary documents; but when the patient has been benefited

to the extent of being able to behave and speak no worse than many of his

fellow-criminals, it is different. He is sent for examination to a man who

is not acquainted with him. The doctor has to state facts observed by

himself as a ground for certification; quite properly he is not permitted

to ensure the detention of anybody on evidence that is second-hand. The

patient is quiet and on his guard, and his examiner can make nothing of

him. Accordingly he goes back to his haunts and his vices, impatient of

restraint, and is soon in the hands of the police again. Clearly there is

need of some modification in the law or its administration to permit of

such persons being dealt with.

Insane offenders may be divided into two classes: those whose wrongdoing

is the result of their insanity; and those who have been sound enough to

begin with, but who have become insane, just as they have contracted

physical diseases, as a result of vicious indulgence and its treatment. Of

the first-named class there may be one in about a thousand admissions. The

crimes charged are of all kinds and degrees of gravity, as the following

examples will show:--

X 1.--A man is brought to prison for the first time charged with a series

of petty thefts committed while under the influence of drink. He shows

signs of alcoholism, and is too dazed to give any account of himself. In a

day or two the alcoholic symptoms have passed off and his general

condition suggests enquiry. He has signs of mental disease which cannot

now be confused with drink. It is found that, until a year before, he had

been in business in an industrial town; that he had been a reputable

citizen, quiet, peaceable, and abstemious in his habits; that he began to

take to drink, and sold off his business, which realised several thousand

pounds; and that he had since been lost to the knowledge of his friends.

What happened in the interval I do not know. He was taken in charge by the

police for stealing glasses from a public-house, weights from a

shop-counter, and such-like things, which were certainly of no use to him

and which he could not sell. The charge was dropped and he was sent to a

lunatic asylum.

X 2.--A young man is imprisoned on a charge of fire-raising. He is brisk,

talkative, and cheerful, and laughs at the charge as ridiculous. Beyond

showing a high appreciation of his own qualities he does not do or say

anything to attract attention, and as he is really "bright" his conceit

only provokes a smile. He has no physical symptoms of brain disease, and

it is not suggested on his behalf that he is mentally unsound. A decent

workman who was interested in him called to say how well-behaved he had

always been, and to ascertain what ought to be done by way of assisting

his defence; and some things he said suggested the need for special

enquiry. It was found that prisoner had always been energetic and bright

at his work, and that he had good reason for boasting of his skill. His

fellow-workers admitted that, though they disapproved of his bounce. He

had been a teetotaler all his life and was a prominent member of a

militant temperance society. He was very industrious and thrifty. He

married a quiet, reputable girl who shared his opinions and ideals. He had

saved some money and he suddenly made up his mind to start in business for

himself. His wife did not approve of his doing so, as she did not like the

risk and was quite content to go on in their accustomed ways. He

persisted, and she yielded the point, but only when she saw her opposition

was causing domestic strife. He rented a small workshop and furnished it.

He got as much work as he could undertake--not a great amount--but before

he had time to see how his venture would prosper, he conceived the idea of

removing to a larger house. His wife was unable to see how he could safely

do this, as she did not think he had money sufficient to justify such a

course. Her opposition only made him more insistent, and on one occasion

he lost his temper so completely that she became alarmed. He threatened to

kill her, and looked as though he meant it. When she spoke to him about

this afterwards, he apologised and laughed it off; and as he had always

been a most affectionate and dutiful husband she dropped the subject.

Things went on as before till one day there was a fire in his workshop. It

was not got under till some damage was done, and it might have resulted in

serious loss of life and property, as there were dwelling-houses

adjoining. It was quite obviously the work of an incendiary, and he was

arrested on a charge of fire-raising, as he could give no satisfactory

account of his movements. On closer investigation it became quite apparent

that he was a person of unsound mind. Little things that had passed as

peculiarities, receiving only a passing comment, when dovetailed into the

story as I have related it left no room for doubt. The charge was dropped,

he was sent to an asylum, and there he died two years later from general

paralysis of the insane.

In his case his fellow-workmen, seeing him from day to day, failed to

observe more than a slight accentuation of the qualities they had been

accustomed to see in him. He talked a lot about what he could do; he

always did that. He offered to make certain articles for a man better than

any other could; very likely he was able. He started business on an

altogether inadequate capital; others have done the same thing. He wanted

to set up in a higher style of living; he was always ambitious--and so on.

Until he set fire to his workshop they had never known him do anything

inconsistent with his character, and while they laughed at his boasting

they did not doubt his sanity. It was the same with his wife. She

distrusted his judgment but did not doubt his sanity. His sudden murderous

threat she put down to his temper. His temper she attributed to his want

of sleep; for she admitted that he got up at night, and worked or moved

about. On one occasion, she confessed, he had proposed that he should cut

her throat and his own. He was quite quiet at the time and she thought it

an ugly kind of joke, as he woke her to make the proposal; but she

explained it to herself on the ground of overwork and sleeplessness. Those

who are coming most in contact with persons afflicted like this man are

the last to see the significance of the changes taking place before them,

because the transition is so gradual. This is true of people in all social

classes.

X 3 was a professional man in a very good line of business. Late in life

he was arrested on a charge of embezzling large sums of money. When I saw

him first he had a paralysis of the muscles of one hand, which was

withered in consequence; and he could not articulate owing to paralysis of

the muscles of the mechanism of speech. He put or answered questions in

writing. Enquiry showed that for many years he had been much respected and

trusted. He had amassed a considerable fortune, and had been upright and

honest in his dealings with others. He lived in the country and kept up a

large establishment. His business was one which dealt in large sums of

money. Some years before his arrest he married for the second time, and

there was trouble between his second wife and his family by her

predecessor. He had always been an open-handed man, but latterly his

public gifts had excited comment by their number and character. His mental

condition, however, was never suspected by his family. They assumed his

ability to afford anything he chose to buy. His wife left him as a result

of his conduct to her and in doubt as to his sanity, but these doubts were

not shared by his family. She said he had become capricious and sometimes

cruel to her, and quite different from his ordinary self. He would

sometimes bring in parcels of costly jewellery for which there was no

need. In the end she became frightened to stay with him; but though she

feared he might injure her, as he seemed to have taken a dislike to her,

she never suspected that he was frittering away his substance. When the

crash came it was found that he had within a short period thrown away tens

of thousands of his own, and as much belonging to others who had trusted

him. He had bought and sold property in a reckless way and without any

authority to do so, his reputation enabling him to do things which in

another would have been questioned. He was sent to an asylum. In his case

the paralysis from which he suffered, gradual as it was in its onset, had

attracted attention to itself and had actually masked the mental condition

which accompanied or followed it.

There are some crimes which in themselves shock us to such an extent that

we find it difficult to believe that any sane man would commit them. In a

book such as this I can only refer to certain sexual offences without

discussing them, but even in these cases the crime need not infer

insanity. We are no more justified in saying that a man is mad if he does

a mad-like thing than in calling him wise if he does a wise-like thing. A

man's criminal acts are only to be judged in relation to his other conduct

if we would form a rational opinion as to his mental condition; and that

again has to be considered in relation to the social condition in which he

is placed before anything approaching a fair opinion as to its adequacy

can be formed.

If a man's criminal act were to be taken as sufficient to infer his

insanity there are certain crimes for which we should never have anybody

tried. Every murderer would straightway be sent to a lunatic asylum on the

plea that he must have been mad or he would not have done it; and yet that

is precisely one of the most important points that have to be examined in

the course of a trial for murder in Scotland.

Murder is practically the only crime for which the death sentence is

passed. Scottish jurymen have shown a strong repugnance to be parties to

the death of a criminal. They may favour capital punishment in theory,

but, no matter how bad he may be, they shrink from handing a culprit over

to the hangman; and they will seize any opportunity to escape from doing

so if it is given them. They may be told they have nothing to do with

results; that their duty is to find a verdict on the evidence; but they

might as well be told to pull the bolt. They know what will happen. They

do not seem to believe that they are not responsible for the necessary

consequence of their acts, and in spite of the assurance of the law the

verdict is a worry to them. Few homicides are hanged in Scotland, and

there are few verdicts of murder, mainly for this reason. If the death

penalty were abolished--if it were even made only a possible

penalty--brutal murders would have a chance of being called by that name

and not by "Culpable Homicide."

For a time it was almost a matter of routine to set up a defence of

insanity in murder cases where the facts could not be seriously contested.

Now in most assaults there is an element of accident. The assailant is in

a state of rage and hits out wildly. The blow that will kill one man may

only stun another. Blows inflicted on one part of the body may cause

little more than inconvenience, but if the same amount of violence be

applied to another part death may result. I have known cases where as a

result of assault the victim seemed to have sustained injuries sufficient

to kill him, even though he had the nine lives sometimes attributed to a

cat, and yet he recovered--maimed and permanently unfitted to support

himself. That was not murder; in some respects it was worse; but there was

no attempt to prove the assailant insane. If death had ended the suffering

of the victim there would have been a plea of insanity set up. The

determining factor in the plea was thus the physical condition of the

assailed, not the mental condition of the assailant.

In Glasgow special care is taken in all cases of murder to enquire into

the mental condition of the accused. From the time he is admitted to

prison he is placed under observation with this purpose in view, and any

evidence bearing on the subject is carefully examined. His conduct in

prison may be perfectly sane, but if there is any reason to believe that,

when at liberty, he showed signs of insanity, the medical officer

personally makes an investigation and reports. The prisoner may be

penniless, but he suffers no prejudice thereby, as the work is undertaken

at the expense of the Crown; and at the trial the necessary witnesses are

usually produced on his behalf if the reports show that he is insane. This

is true in other than murder cases to this extent, that the procurator

fiscal informs the prison authorities of any allegation as to the

prisoner's mental condition and asks for a report. He also puts before the

judge any statement by the prison doctor as to the health of a prisoner

mental or physical, even although the report may not have been asked for.

Insanity may be a result as well as a cause of misconduct. A life of

alternate indulgence and repression tends to unsoundness of mind; and I

have seen men and women, who when first they fell into criminal courses

were free from any suspicion of insanity, gradually degenerate and become

insane. When the kind of life they lead is considered the wonder is that

so many of them do not become mad.

X 4 was a girl of the labouring class. She was handsome and of a fine

figure. Good-tempered and of an easy disposition, she was rather indolent;

and as she was not trained in any very strong regard for morality and had

plenty of admirers, she soon gave up working and took to the less

restricted life of the town. She got into the hands of the police and was

sent to prison, where her behaviour was beyond reproach. She did the work

required of her and was always even-tempered and orderly. She took to

drinking rather heavily, and during one imprisonment had a bad attack of

delirium tremens, from which she recovered only to fall into a condition

of dementia which remains and, though it has become less marked, leaves

her unfit to take care of herself. Her insanity is the direct result of

her excesses.

X 5 got into bad company and was encouraged rather than corrected by her

mother, who found her profit in her daughter's misdeeds. She left her work

but did not take heavily to drink, and by and by came to prison charged

with theft. She contracted disease in the course of her misconduct and

began to take fits. She gradually became worse, as she gave herself no

chance of recovery and neglected treatment when at liberty. She was in

prison for short periods during two years and finally became insane and

died. When first I saw her she was free from any mental or physical

infirmity. Her disease and death were the direct result of her way of

living.

X 6 had always been a wild and uncontrollable lad. He entered the army and

was soon found to be one of the bad bargains. He was ultimately

discharged. He got into a lawless set in Glasgow and picked up a living,

sometimes honestly, sometimes otherwise. He suffered imprisonment on

several occasions and was always a troublesome man to deal with. Gradually

he showed delusions of suspicion and had attacks of violence; and finally

he had to be dealt with as a criminal lunatic. In his case there was from

the beginning a condition of mental instability, which showed itself in

his restlessness and impatience of restraint. It unfitted him for a

soldier's life, and the discipline incident thereto was much more likely

to aggravate than to remedy his condition. Having no friends capable of

directing him, he flew to excesses and was punished for the crimes in

which he took part. Than life in prison there could be nothing imagined

that would be worse for him; and the monotony of it and the quiet would

tend to develop the delusions which afterwards dominated his mind, and

influenced his conduct to such an extent that under their influence he

committed assaults and proved himself to be a dangerous lunatic. His case

is different from the last two in respect that the very means adopted to

deal with his excesses were largely the cause of his final insanity.

Short of cases of certifiable insanity there are a number of prisoners who

are mentally defective. The total is small, but the individuals command an

amount of attention, and cause an amount of trouble to the public, out of

all proportion to their numbers. In some cases the defect consists of

delayed development; the body and the passions have grown at a greater

rate than the mental powers, but time and training would be likely to

establish an equilibrium.

In other cases there seems to be something wanting in their mental

outfit--they "have a want," as it is put colloquially and expressively.

Many of them are capable of behaving themselves when under the guidance of

well-disposed persons; and more may be found about religious meetings than

in prison. They have come under the influence of the Churches and have

benefited thereby, and it is largely because no such healthy influence has

been obtained over those others that they are in prison. They are usually

quite tractable and pay obedience to stronger-minded persons. When these

are law-abiding they cause no trouble, but when the influence is evil it

is otherwise.

Mental powers that may be sufficient to enable a man to work and live in

conformity with the law in one social position may be quite inadequate to

enable him to support himself in another. There are men holding positions

and discharging the duties required of them to the satisfaction of their

employers, who would sink to a very low level if cast adrift. Any fixed

standard of mental capacity is irrational, since it leaves out of account

the conditions under which the person examined has to live. The question

is: Is the person by reason of mental defect unable to bear the stress of

life under the social conditions in which he is placed? Is he fit to take

care of himself and abstain from offending against the laws?

Whatever may be the view of lawyers on the matter, no business man expects

the same conduct from a boy as from a man; nor will he trust a young man

to the same extent as an old man. The younger man may possess more

knowledge, but there is a difference between knowledge and experience, and

a man may know right from wrong without having the experience of life that

enables him to discount his passions and follow his knowledge. A person

who is mentally defective, and who has the additional misfortune to be

born into a family of poor people and brought up in a slum, if he

transgress the law can only be dealt with as though he were as fully

endowed as his neighbours. If he is not mentally unsound to such a degree

as to justify his certification as insane, there is only the prison for

him; with the prospect of hardships on liberation and imprisonment when he

offends, till he is sufficiently mad, or his record and his condition

combined are bad enough, to enable him to be placed under the treatment

he ought to have received from the first.

This is not necessarily the fault of those who administer the laws. The

police are not justified in permitting offences to be committed; and

whether the person who offends is sane or mentally defective it is their

duty to arrest him. The medical men who may see him can only certify if

they find him insane from their examination of him. Even if he is sent to

an asylum the medical superintendent cannot detain him if his condition

improves so far that he behaves sanely there; and out he goes to the old

struggle that he is quite unfit to face, with no one to help him or to

exercise authority over him when he has a wayward turn.

X 7 is congenitally mentally defective, and he has been neglected. He has

a stutter which makes it more difficult for him than for others equally

weak-minded to get in touch with those around him and, asking questions,

to learn. When he does make himself understood he has nothing of any great

interest to say, and he is bound to find in the impatience of the ordinary

man a barrier when he tries to speak. He cannot get work and there is not

much he could do. He haunts outhouses at night for shelter and is arrested

for trespassing in doing so. He is in a filthy condition and is a nuisance

and an offence to those with whom he comes in contact. He is sent to

prison for committing an offence which he cannot avoid committing and

which is the direct result of the destitution incident on his mental

defect and friendlessness.

X 8 is a quiet, peaceable, and rather attractive young woman. She was

married to a respectable young man with a small wage. She behaved very

well and seemed to be managing their home in a satisfactory manner, but

to his surprise and horror she was one day arrested, and was afterwards

convicted, for obtaining goods under false pretences. She had been unable

to make her income serve for the support of the household, although she

was not extravagant, and she had played up to her appearance and got

certain articles by a story that was fraudulent. Had she appealed to his

friends she would have been assisted, but she took the other course from

sheer mental incapacity to deal with her situation. Her case was

thoroughly investigated while she was in prison and arrangements were made

for directing her on her liberation. She is quite tractable, has no vices,

is anxious to do well, but is not fit to bear unaided the responsibilities

of her position. The Church to which she belongs has constituted itself

her guardian now that her condition has been shown; and she is not likely

to transgress so long as interest in her is sustained, nor to cost much in

money to those who are looking after her.

X 9 is a lad who has got out of parental control and seeks adventures. He

answers questions intelligently, if somewhat insolently, and so far as a

merely professional examination would show is not defective mentally. He

is to all appearance simply a bad boy. Observation of his conduct in

prison and enquiry outside, show the mental defect behind it. He has

recurrent outbursts of temper without apparent cause, and while showing no

sign of confused intelligence, he proceeds to smash things. He has been in

prison for malicious mischief and for offences against decency as well as

for theft. He is not given to drink, but is beginning to indulge when he

can get a chance. He works intermittently, but cannot stay at anything for

more than a short period. He was charged with housebreaking, but on a

report from prison as to his mental condition he was certified as insane

and was kept in an asylum for about a year. He had improved so much in

conduct that he was discharged, but the medical superintendent expressed

the opinion that left to himself he would probably break back; and he did;

resuming his old practices within a short period of his liberation. He can

do well enough under proper conditions, but is unfit to look after

himself.

X 10 is a young woman who is strongly built and of a pleasant manner and

appearance. She has been a domestic servant, but falling into bad company

has given up work. At first she only appeared to be "soft" a little, but

drink and excess have contributed to cause or to show--for in her case it

is difficult to say which--mental deficiency. She is quiet and

well-behaved in prison, and is of fair intelligence, but on liberation she

resorts to the lowest haunts and indulges in such excesses that when

brought back to prison she is in terror of death, she feels so ill. She

was induced to place herself under control for a time, and she did well,

working hard and cheerfully; but she returned to the city and resumed her

old courses. All who know her recognise that she "has a want," but the

defect is so slight that there is no possibility of having her dealt with

for it, as the laws at present only enable her to be punished for its

results. Unless her excesses produce some marked degeneration--and, as she

is reported to be having "fits" occasionally, that seems probable--all

that can be done for her is to arrest and imprison her when she offends.

When she is a wreck she will receive the kind of treatment and the

guardianship that might save her were it possible to give it now.

Just as some prisoners become insane as a result of their criminal and

vicious life, some undergo mental degeneration to a degree not

certifiable. In the case of the older ones this is accompanied by such an

amount of physical disability as compels them to seek refuge in the

poorhouse, and they are only back to prison on the rare occasions that

they leave its gates, induced thereto by a feeling of improvement and a

renewed desire to visit their old haunts. Taking insane and mentally

defective prisoners together, their number is small relative to that of

those who suffer from no mental deficiency. Clearly then insanity will not

account for crime in any except a very small number of cases. In fact the

proportion of insane among prisoners generally is not greater than among

the population outside, but in the case of females admitted for cruelty to

children it is enormously in excess.

CHAPTER IV

PHYSICAL DEFECTS AND CRIME

Physical defects beget sympathy--Rarely induce crime--May cause mental

degeneration--Case of jealousy and murder.

Just as some degree of mental deficiency is not incompatible with the

ability to live a peaceable and useful life, physical defects do not

necessarily unfit a man to discharge his duties as a citizen. In either

case the sphere of his usefulness is limited, but that is all that can be

said. Much will depend on his social position.

When a person who is physically defective falls into evil courses, it

appears likely that he should find it more difficult to return to the

right path than one who is healthy and complete in all his parts; but this

expectation leaves out of account the fact that the more pitiable and

abandoned a man is the more does his condition appeal to the charitable.

His very helplessness attracts attention and begets for him a

consideration not given to those who are stronger; and if he will but

place himself in their hands, there are many willing to look after the

lost sheep whose condition is so pitiable. In some respects, and as things

are at present, there is less need for anyone who suffers from physical

disability taking to crime than for an ordinary citizen; for the law

provides for him and prevents him suffering from destitution in respect

that he is disabled.[1]

[1] In Scotland able-bodied destitute males are not eligible for Poor

Law relief.

Physical defects are in very few cases the cause of offences. They narrow

the opportunities of employment, and they lessen the chances of work even

though the defect may not be of such a nature as to unfit a man for it;

but except in so far as they may result in destitution--which, if due to

disability, must be relieved by the Parish on application--they rarely

induce crimes. In some cases, however, serious crime can be traced to this

cause.

X 11 was an energetic and industrious man. He was a teetotaler and took an

active interest in local affairs. He was respected and trusted by his

fellow-workmen and took a leading part in the trade and friendly societies

to which he belonged. He also had an interest in books; read a good deal,

considering his opportunities; and exercised his intelligence beyond most

of his neighbours. He married a suitable partner and their family life was

an evenly happy one. In the course of his employment he sustained an

accident whereby he lost his arm. When he left the hospital his employers

found a suitable place for him; and his income did not suffer appreciably,

while his prospects were actually brighter in the new than they had been

in the old situation. He began to brood over the loss of his limb, and by

and by he became jealous of his wife. One day he made a murderous attack

on her and was sent to prison. He was very penitent there, and quite

reasonable. He explained that he had ceased to be the man he was when he

married, and that since the loss of his arm his wife had regretted their

union. She had never said so, but though she tried to hide her change of

feeling he could see it. He detailed the causes of his jealousy; and when

it was pointed out to him that, granting the facts, his inferences may

have been all wrong, he admitted the force of the argument. At most he was

unreasonably jealous, but not insane; and on going over certain incidents

with him and supplying the explanations of them, he agreed that he had

been too hasty in coming to the conclusions on which he had acted. He said

that he could not blame his wife, even while he believed she had been

unfaithful; that he could not bear to lose her and that was why he had

attacked her; but that he was very sorry he had done her the wrong of

suspecting her. He was convicted and sent to prison for a period and he

behaved rationally and well. His wife was warned that his jealousy might

reassert itself and that there was a probability that he would become

certifiably insane if he continued to brood on his accident; and she was

advised not to live alone with him. He behaved so well that the warning

was forgotten. About a year after they had resumed housekeeping he nearly

killed her and committed suicide.

In this case the crime was traceable to the accident which caused the loss

of the man's arm. The cause is exceptional only in respect to the

seriousness of the crime, but it is not at all unusual for persons who

have the misfortune to be lame or deformed to show a morbid sensitiveness

on the subject. Their defect overshadows their lives and colours their

view of things, sometimes causing them to become reckless in their

behaviour and offenders against the law. On the other hand, many develop a

strain of piety and tenderness for their fellows. The presence of the

defect proves nothing beyond its own existence.

CHAPTER V

THE STUDY OF THE CRIMINAL

The reliability of prisoners' statements--Deceit or

misunderstanding?--Frankness and knowledge required on the part of the

investigator--The prisoner's statement should form the basis of

enquiry--Information and help obtained from former friends--The

diffusion of knowledge so obtained--The prevention of crime and the

accumulation of knowledge.

Any study of the criminal based on observations made when he is in prison

must of necessity be partial and misleading. It is like writing a Natural

History from a study of caged birds. Parts will be right, but the whole

will be wrong.

Advantage might be taken of his presence there to find out something of

the antecedents of the prisoner. The opinions of experts may be of value

with regard to him, but they are not nearly so useful as his own opinions

on how he comes to be in prison, nor are they more reliable.

Prisoners are no more truthful than other people, but they are not

generally purposeless liars. When a man is in trouble and is called on to

give an account of himself he makes the best of his case; but people who

have never been in prison have been known to make no disclaimer when

praised for qualities they do not possess, preferring to let time correct

any false impression that may be to their advantage. It is not reasonable

to expect any higher standard of behaviour from a prisoner than we look

for from others.

Much of what is harshly called lying on the part of prisoners is due to

misapprehension on the part of their questioners. Most of them do not

waste lies. If the truth will serve, it is easier to tell it, to put the

matter at its lowest; but they are frequently worried with questions they

do not understand, put by persons whom they distrust, with the result that

they leave an impression of stupidity and untrustworthiness that is not

deserved. I remember a gentleman who considered himself a very acute

observer, informing me with regard to a certain prisoner whom he had been

questioning, that the man was weak-minded. I had very good reason for

holding another opinion, but wishing to find out how the visitor had

arrived at this conclusion, I interviewed the prisoner, and after some

talk approached the subject of his recent examination. A smile overspread

his face as he explained that he had been asked all sorts of questions by

the stranger and had not been allowed to answer in his own way, so he got

tired and let the other have it as he wished. His opinion of his examiner

I obtained as a personal favour, for as he put it, "It's no for the like

o' me to say onything aboot the like o' him--at least no here." I cannot

print his words, all of them. He said, "He's a ---- of a flat." Each had a

poor opinion of the other, and how far each was right others may judge.

The incident suggests several reflections.

It is not reasonable to expect that a prisoner will take the trouble to

understand and answer the questions of a stranger whose object in quizzing

him he does not know. Few of us would care to unbosom ourselves to the

first visitor who chose to interest himself in our affairs. He might count

himself lucky if he did not find himself violently expelled. The prisoner

cannot throw an unwelcome visitor out, but sometimes he would like to; and

the attitude of some who seek to do good is at times provocative. When the

enquirer is known it is a different story. Get the name of being "all

right" and you will learn, but you must first deserve confidence.

Frankness begets frankness, and for my own part I have found very few

prisoners who wilfully sought to deceive me when they knew why I sought

information from them. It was either freely given, or withheld with the

plain statement that they could not fairly give it. The information given

has not always been accurate, but there are not so many people who are

accurate in their statements--not through want of desire to be truthful,

but because their perception, their memory, or both, are blurred.

But more than frankness is required; there must be some ability to see

things from the standpoint of those who are questioned, and a sufficient

knowledge of their language to understand an answer when it is given.

There are very many people who think they know the English language, and

who do not seem to have realised the fact that a different significance is

attached to words in different districts and among different classes.

There are not merely slang words, but words used in a slang sense, and

when these are taken literally the result is misunderstanding. Yet we are

sometimes treated to the result of investigations by people who have had

no training, and who in a marvellously short time can obtain voluminous

and striking information; how much it is worth is another question. Try to

get by question and answer a short record of the antecedents of any of

your friends, and you will find that it cannot be done in a few minutes,

that it will not be free from inaccuracies, and that it will require

explanation before you understand it as they would like. To obtain such

information from a stranger is a more difficult task.

In the case of the prisoner the advantages to be gained are worth the

effort to overcome the difficulties. Having obtained his statement, it

might form the basis of an enquiry into his case and an attempt to help

him on his discharge. There are few men who have not some friends who are

persons of goodwill. They may be relatives, or employers, or

fellow-workmen; but their will may be greater than their power. Their

patience may have been tried to the limit of endurance or their interest

may have become languid; but if they will not or cannot help, they can at

least tell what they have done and prevent a repetition of the treatment

that has failed. There are very many people who would never dream of

joining a society for aiding prisoners, but who will willingly assist in

helping a person whom they have known in his better days. The societies

have their use, but that is no reason why a man's fellows should not be

enlisted in his aid; though they have no interest in the general question,

they may take an interest in the special case. In the attempt it will be

found that, even though the efforts made to help a given prisoner should

fail, a knowledge has been gained of the existence of conditions that

favour ill-doing.

Every official knows that in a great city there are occasions of

misconduct which the ordinary citizen does not suspect. Such knowledge, so

long as it is confined to officials, is comparatively sterile. They may

speak, but some other matter distracts public attention before it has been

focussed long enough on the subject to do any good. At most they may get

further powers to do for the citizens things which the citizens could far

better do for themselves. Talk of slums to a man who is comfortable is

often only talk, but set him to live in them and the effect is different.

In the same way, if you can, through his personal interest in a man, get

another to examine into the causes of his wrongdoing; to go over the

ground for himself; to see the process and the means of his degradation;

that man will note how many occasions of offence exist that might be

removed, and if only for the safety of his own family will give assistance

in removing them. Incidentally and in process of time a large mass of

information regarding the history of criminals and offenders would be

collected, and some generalisations of importance might be made. At

present those who generalise do so without any such careful study of the

persons whom they deal with as that I recommend. For sixteen years I have

been looking for the offender of the books and I have not met him. The

offender familiar to me is not a type, but a man or a woman; and we shall

never know nor deserve to know him till we are content to study him, not

as the naturalist studies a beetle, but as a man studies his neighbour.

PART II

COMMON FACTORS IN THE CAUSATION OF CRIME

CHAPTER I

DRINK AND CRIME

Drink commonly accredited with the production of crime--Minor offences

usually committed under its influence--Drink a factor in the causation

of most crimes against the person--Double personality caused by

drink--Drunken cruelty--Drunken rage--Assaults on the drunken--Sexual

offences--Child neglect--Mental defect behind the drunkenness of some

offenders--Malicious mischief and theft--Drunken kleptomania--The

professional criminal and drink--Thefts from the drunken--Amount of

crime not in ratio to amount of drinking in a district--The vice

existent apart from crime, in the country--And in the wealthier parts

of the city--Drunkenness and statistics--Summary.

Though the differences among prisoners in antecedents and faculties must

be taken into account if they are to be treated in a rational manner,

there are factors which are common to the causation of crime in many

cases. Their influence may vary in strength, but it cannot be disregarded.

Drink is denounced--and consumed--by all classes. There are many who

attribute all evils to its use, and some of these take the logical course

and advocate the prohibition of its manufacture and sale. Others make the

theory an excuse for doing nothing to remedy social conditions; for "you

never can stop men from drinking," and if drink be the cause of social

evils, and you cannot stop its use, why should they worry?

Any theory of the causation of evil will be fashionable if it offers a

superficial explanation of the facts and affords an excuse for doing

nothing more troublesome than giving good advice to the poorer classes.

Drink has brought misery and degradation on many, through their own

indulgence or that of those on whom they have been dependent; if it does

not cause, it is often an aggravation of poverty; and it is with no wish

to minimise its ill effects that I protest against exaggerating them. Our

social troubles are not traceable to any one cause, and it is not

profitable to single out a particular vice and place all evil to its

account; nor is the practice more laudable when the vice is not one to

which we are ourselves inclined. By all means let temperance be taught and

drunkenness be discouraged; this too we shall do better when we search for

the causes of intemperance.

One of the statements most frequently made is that the great majority of

crimes are due to drink. It would be more accurate to say that most

prisoners were under the influence of drink at the time they committed the

breach of the law for which they have been convicted. The great majority

are petty offenders. Strike them off and our prison population would at

once be reduced by more than a half. They have been drunk and incapable of

taking care of themselves, or they have committed a breach of the peace

through drink. Their sentences are short and their number is large. Many

of them are regular customers and return again and again in the course of

the year. Whether we are dealing wisely with them will bear discussion.

They do not seem to be any the better for it so far as their conduct

shows. They are enabled, in consequence of the rest and regular living of

the prison, to start on their next spree in a better condition physically

than would be the case if they were not detained there for a time; but

this is rather a personal than a public gain. At present they swell our

prison statistics and are a burden on the exchequer. That they should be

mixed up with criminals is no advantage either to us or to them. The cause

of their conviction is drink; but it does not make for clearness of

statement to add their numbers to those of criminals who have committed

crimes against the person or against property.

Crimes against the person are generally committed by people under the

influence of drink, or on persons who are intoxicated. A man takes liquor

to get out of himself, and is then in a condition to do or say things from

which he would refrain if sober. Some are not improved in temper as a

result of their drinking, and are more prone to quarrel and less able to

control their passion. It is commonly observed that a man can and does

develop a double personality, showing one set of characteristics when

sober and another when under the influence of drink. In both states he

receives impressions, and his actions when sober show that the impulses

which direct his acts are different from those which dominate him when he

is intoxicated. Just as his sober self is forgotten when he is drunk, his

drunken self is forgotten when he is sober--not wholly, it may be, but in

part. He seems more readily to remember violence suffered than violence

inflicted by him. Impressions received in one condition tend to be revived

when the person is again in that condition. If when he gets quarrelsome

and hits out he finds he has struck one who will strike back, he generally

gets out of the way and avoids the danger from that kind of person on a

subsequent occasion. Just as he learns to keep clear of lamp-posts and

other resistant objects, he learns to stop short of striking one who is

likely to hurt him.

The most serious assaults are not so much the outcome of drunken anger as

of drunken cruelty; and, pent up in one direction, it finds vent in

another. This passion seems to possess some men regularly, and it is

indulged at the expense of those who offer least resistance to it, viz.

the female members of their household. With them a habit is formed of

assaulting their women-folk, and the habit grows in force and intensity.

In most cases of brutal wife-murder that have come under my observation,

the fatal assault has simply been the last of a series committed regularly

when the culprit was under the influence of drink, and the woman's death

was the final incident in a long-drawn-out martyrdom.

In other cases men who are ordinarily peaceable find themselves in prison

charged with assaults of which they have no distinct recollection, the

result of sudden passion that has swept their minds when they were

intoxicated. Others become so pugnacious when they take drink that they

are not content till they are in a row and do not seem to mind whether

they get hurt or not. In their case--which seems to be the most common--it

is not the lust of cruelty but the delight in battle that stirs them, and

though they may get fully as much as they give, it does not deter them

from repeating their conduct.

Another class of assaults is that committed on persons who are under the

influence of drink, and who by their misconduct have provoked their

assailant. They are relatively few, and the assault is rarely so brutal in

character or so serious in result; though occasionally it may end

tragically. X 12 was a young man who married a girl of respectable

character. They were both sober and industrious. She had been engaged in a

factory before her marriage and had very little practical experience of

housekeeping. She was not accustomed to household routine, and as her

husband did not get home for his meals she had a lot of time on her hands.

Her house was in a different part of the city from that of her parents,

and she had to make friends for herself. Unfortunately she got into the

company of some who gossiped together and moistened the talk with drink.

At first she abstained, but by and by she began to do like the rest; and

unlike them she could not control herself. She showed a tendency to excess

which they tried to discourage for their own sakes as well as hers. Her

husband discovered her misconduct, and in order to break her of it removed

to another district. For a time she did well, and her relatives helped

her. But again she drifted in her search for company into that of those

who took the "social glass." It is wonderful how a woman when she has once

taken to drink finds a difficulty in making friendships with other women

who have not done so, unless she becomes a militant teetotaler. In the

present instance the young wife had relapse after relapse over a series of

years, and her husband seems to have done all in his power to save her.

She had two children, and when sober she attended to them adequately; but

her fits of drinking began to occur more frequently, and in them she

became more reckless. After one, in which she had sold out the household

furniture and disappeared, she returned penitent and he set up house again

with her. She kept sober for some weeks, they were getting things

together, and he was trusting her with some money. One Monday evening he

went home from his work to find the house partially stripped, the children

neglected, dirty, and in tears, and his wife in a dazed condition waiting

to receive him with maudlin apologies. In his anger he pushed her from

him. Her body struck the corner of the table, and shortly after she fell

and died. She had sustained rupture of an internal organ and she bled to

death in a few minutes. The result was altogether disproportionate to the

amount of violence used and was in a sense accidental, but her death could

as truly be attributed to drink as many of those which result from the

assaults of drunken persons.

Drink plays an important part in the commission of sexual offences, but it

is not more generally a factor in such cases than in those of simple

assaults. In the great majority of these charges against men under middle

age it is found that the assailant was at the time under its influence,

however; and in the most atrocious and unspeakable cases it is rarely

absent unless when there is insanity present.

Of late years there has been an increasing desire on the part of the

legislature to secure proper care for children, and to punish those who by

negligence or cruelty allow their offspring to suffer. Cases have been

reported that reveal a shocking state of affairs, and parents have been

prosecuted and sent to prison for their callousness and cruelty. Of all

prisoners these are usually the most hopeless and useless; the most

entirely selfish in their outlook; the most inclined to grumble and shirk

work; the persons with the keenest sense of their rights and the lowest

sense of their responsibilities--this from a merely superficial

observation of them. The care of the children falls naturally to the

women; the provision for them to the men. The men have excuses to offer

for the condition of the children, and these excuses are sometimes valid;

for a man cannot be at the same time working outside to support his family

and looking after them in the house. If the woman is given the money to

defray the necessary expenses, and neglects their care, it is difficult

for her to stand excused. In practically all the cases drink enters into

the question, and its presence explains but does not excuse the neglect.

It is a good thing for the children that they should be removed from the

care of parents who are cruel to them either by neglecting or by

maltreating them, and it is well that those who are inclined to

carelessness should know that their conduct may form the subject of

complaint; but a person may be physically fit to have children and

mentally incapable of taking care of them. A large proportion of those

women who have been convicted of cruelty to children are in this sad case.

The evidence has been of the clearest that they have squandered their

substance, indulged their appetites, and shamefully ill-used their

offspring, but only after they have been placed out of the reach of drink

is it possible to say whether at their best they are capable of

undertaking the obligations they have incurred by becoming mothers. In

some cases their mental condition has been so bad as to justify their

removal to lunatic asylums; in other cases the mental defect is quite

perceptible and is obviously such as to unfit them for their duties, but

is not sufficiently marked to enable them to be cared for by the lunacy

authority. Drink has been held accountable for their conduct and it has

had a share in its causation, but it has masked the permanent flaw behind

it, whether that defect has existed before the subject gave way to drink

or has resulted from drink. In the case of these women it is a serious

matter to allow them to return to duties they are unfit to discharge,

especially as there is a probability that the condition of the family may

be aggravated by its increase. Among women convicted of cruelty to

children there are very few who are not mentally defective as far as my

experience goes.

Just as drink causes some people to become savage, it incites others to

mischief. If a man lift things that do not belong to him and carry them

off, that is theft and punishable as such. If the culprit could state the

case to the magistrate as a lawyer would, it would be classed as malicious

mischief; but if he had the necessary training, or could afford to pay a

lawyer, he might not be in court at all. It is not yet an uncommon thing

for young bloods to destroy or take away the property of others, but they

are not charged with theft as a result of their exuberance. They are not

usually charged at all if they compensate the owners. Students of medicine

have been known to return from a symposium with a miscellaneous collection

of articles which they had conveyed without authority from shop-doors, in

addition to an occasional door-bell handle or knocker. If any of them had

been convicted of theft in consequence of this conduct, he would as a

result have been struck off the register and been prevented from entering

the profession for which he was training. A conviction for malicious

mischief would have no such grave result. The consequence is quite as

serious in the case of a labouring man. It is not merely that the sentence

is heavier; that is the least of it; it is the reputation of being a thief

that is attached to him on his discharge which he will find difficult to

overcome. It is bad enough for his prospects of honest employment that he

should have been in prison, but if the cause was not dishonesty he may be

regarded as merely foolish. If his offence has been theft it is another

story. Explanations are not wanted--nor thieves; and the dog with the bad

name may set about in despair to deserve it, becoming a recruit to the

ranks of the professional criminals. In such cases the man's downfall may

be attributed to drink; but he might reasonably attach some of the blame

to our stupidity in dealing with him.

Apart from those who are led into sportive acts when they are in liquor,

there are some who take to theft pure and simple. X 13 was a most

respectable man about thirty years of age. He was honest and industrious,

and except that he occasionally gave way to intemperance he appeared to

have no faults or follies. He was not very fond of company, and after his

work was done he spent most of his time at home in his lodgings, where he

had the reputation of being a quiet, peaceable, and somewhat studious man.

He was arrested one night when under the influence of drink, in possession

of property which had been stolen by him. On his room being searched the

proceeds of several thefts were found, and the remains of articles which

had been stolen and partially destroyed. It became apparent that he had

been responsible for quite a number of thefts from public places during

the two preceding years. His story was that he had no recollection of

stealing; and on the Sunday morning after his first theft he was horrified

to find a bag containing articles of clothing in his room. He ascertained

from his landlady that he had brought it home the night before, and he

told her some story to explain his questions. He made no attempt to sell

the property, but destroyed it in detail. He kept off drink for a time,

but falling in with some old friends one night, he took too much and again

he stole. It preyed on his mind to such an extent that he went on a spree,

with the same result. He could tell nobody of his trouble, and he got into

despairing and reckless moods in which he flew to drink, nearly always

returning with something. He was remonstrated with on account of his

growing intemperance, but with very little result; and it was a relief to

him when he was found out. How many thefts he had committed was never

known, but he had never made a penny by them. He was not a kleptomaniac

when sober, and his case is an uncommon one in respect more to the freedom

he enjoyed from arrest than to the nature of the impulse which he obeyed;

for there are a good many occasional thieves who are quite honest when

sober.

Others have fallen from a position as law-abiding citizens, and have lost

their self-respect, as well as their position, through habitual

intemperance. Their one passion is drink, and they will do anything to get

it. They cannot get work and could not keep it if they did, because of

their unsteadiness; so they live off others by begging or by stealing.

The most troublesome criminal to those whose duty it is to protect the

public, and the most dangerous to the property of his fellow-citizens, is

the professional; and no more than other professional persons does he go

to business the worse of drink, for that would be taking an unnecessary

risk. There are few occupations in which sobriety is not required to

ensure and maintain success, and this is true whether the business be an

honest or a dishonest one. Not that the thief need be a teetotaler; in his

hours of relaxation he may be found proving the contrary; but he cannot

afford to drink during business hours. In prison he may say that he is

there on account of the drink, but the statement, though it may be true,

is misleading. It is a convenient formula, and serves to prevent further

enquiry. He knows that those who question him have their prejudices, and

he is aware that it is the fashion to trace all crimes to drink--and no

further. Let him frankly confess his failing for liquor and he will

obtain some sympathy which may materialise on his liberation. It is

literally true in many cases, the statement: "If it hadna been the drink I

wadna been here." But it is also true that he has not been honest when

sober. For every time he has been caught there are many thefts he has

committed and escaped capture. Continue the enquiry and it is found that

what he means is that if he had not obscured his judgment with drink he

would not have attempted the job he undertook; or he would have kept a

better look-out before he did take it in hand. He is not a thief because

of the drink, but a thief who is caught because he has been intemperate.

The drink in this case has not proved an ally to crime, but an auxiliary

of the police; it has not caused the theft, but has enabled the thief to

be caught.

In many cases, however, it assists the professional criminal; for the

intoxicated man is an easier prey to him than the sober citizen. He can be

assisted home by willing hands that will go through his pockets with skill

on the road. He can be lured into dens that when sober he would avoid, and

there be robbed at leisure and with little risk. He may even be relieved

of his property without any pretence of friendliness, with small chance of

his offering effective resistance or causing a hot pursuit. In all these

ways he affords opportunity to the thief, and to the extent that the drink

places him in this condition it is a cause of crime.

It appears then: (1) that the great mass of prisoners were under the

influence of drink at the time they committed the offence for which they

have been convicted; (2) that of these the "crime" of the majority is

drunkenness, or some petty offence resulting therefrom; (3) that nearly

all the crimes against the person are committed by, or upon, people who

were intoxicated at the time; (4) that many offences against property are

partly the result of drink; (5) that the majority of crimes against

property are not due to drunkenness on the part of the criminal.

But the amount of crime in Scotland is not in proportion to the amount of

drinking in any district. The consumption of drink is not confined to our

cities and towns, and excessive indulgence sometimes takes place on the

part of people who live in the country, yet no considerable proportion of

our prison population comes from the courts of country districts or of

small towns. The vice may be present without issuing in crime, though the

drink itself has the same effect on the drinker whether he be living in

the town or in the country.

In the country and in small towns, where the population is stable and

where people are not packed together, they have opportunities each of

knowing his neighbour, and they take some interest in one another. Indeed,

one often hears complaints of villagers taking too much interest in their

neighbours' affairs. If a man drink more than he can carry, there is

usually someone about who will see him home; or at worst he finds rest

until he recovers, without the necessity of interference of an official

kind. In the town, although a man may have friends who would be willing to

look after him, he is separated from them, not by green fields, but by

rows of tenements and multitudes of passers-by who have no personal

interest in or knowledge of him; and if he lie down he obstructs the

traffic and has to be taken in charge. He need not be any more drunk than

the man in the country, but he is a greater public nuisance.

In the country if a man have his evil passions stirred or inflamed by

drink and seek to indulge them, friendly hands restrain him from doing the

injury he might otherwise do, and the crime which has been conceived may

never be executed; but in the city a man may, and sometimes does, brutally

assault and even slay another person, while people are living above,

below, and on each side of him; and no one troubles to look in and

ascertain what is going on. Men do not know their neighbours and do not

care to interfere in the affairs of strangers. They have learnt to attend

to their own business and to leave other things to their paid officials.

The officials likewise attend to their business; and the prison cells are

filled with men and women who have taken liquor to excess and have had no

friendly hand to assist them or to keep them out of mischief. In the

absence of this restraint and help, crime is just as likely to result from

excessive drinking in the country as in the town.

There is another difference in favour of the country toper that is worth

noting. The man who sells him the drink is usually a member of the

community in which he lives, and he cannot afford persistently to outrage

the sentiments of those among whom his lot is cast. He will not find it to

his comfort to obtain the bad opinion of his neighbours; and if he get the

name of filling his customers full he may run the risk of losing his

license. It is not to his interest to disregard the welfare of his patrons

even were he so inclined. Each district has its own standard of what is

fair and allowable, and no publican can safely continue to fall below it.

In the large towns the licenses are not usually held by men who live in

the district. Many of them are in few hands. The licensee is represented

by barmen who have a most harassing and exacting time; who work long hours

for wages that are seldom what could be called high; who are engaged

selling drink to men the majority of whom they do not know; and who are

expected while keeping within the law to sell as much liquor as possible.

Public opinion in the district can only touch the publican on his

financial side; and then only by a campaign directed to ensure regulations

that are sometimes as futile as they are vexatious, and that attack

indiscriminately the man who is really trying to conduct his business in a

reasonable way and him whose only care is to get as much out of it as he

can.

But not only is there drinking in the country as well as in the town.

There is no district of the town that has a monopoly of temperance. There

are fewer public-houses in the wealthier than in the poorer districts, but

there are more private cellars. There is no bigger proportion of

teetotalers among men who have money than among men with none; and

business men are as much given to drinking as artisans or labourers. There

is a difference in their methods of consumption, the one judiciously

mixing his potations with solids, the other taking his amount in a shorter

period of time and running a bigger risk of getting drunk. Even when he

does get beyond the stage of being quite clear in the head, the wealthier

man has the means of getting home quietly, and there may be no scandal and

no arrest. Though there may be as much drinking in the district in which

he lives as in some of the congested parts of a city, there is less crime

in proportion to the number of inhabitants; so that there are other

factors than drink necessary to the commission of crime, even when drink

is present.

In Glasgow we are accustomed periodically to learn from the testimony of

English visitors that we are the most drunken city in the kingdom; and

tourists write to the newspapers and tell their experiences and

impressions of sights seen in our streets, quoting statistics of the

arrests for drunkenness. This alternates with panegyrics of the city as

the most progressive in the world--"the model municipality." We are

neither so bad nor so good as we are sometimes said to be. That the

streets of Glasgow--or rather some of them--are at times disgraced by the

drunkenness of some who use them, is quite true; but the fact that some

travellers at some times see more drunk people in a given area than may be

seen in any English city does not justify the inference that the

inhabitants of Glasgow are more drunken than those of other cities. In no

English city is there so large a population on so small an area. If there

are more drunk in a given space there are also more sober people; but only

the drunks are observed. In Glasgow, moreover, the ordinary drink is

whisky, which rapidly makes a man reel. It excites more markedly than the

beer consumed so generally in England, which makes a man not so much drunk

as sodden. If it were worth the retort, one might point out that even if

it be true that in Scotland you may see more people drunk, in England you

see fewer people sober.

As for the statistics of arrests they are absolutely useless for purposes

of comparison, if only because of the different practices that prevail in

different parts of the country in dealing with drunks. It is also well

known that a comparatively small number of persons is responsible for a

very large number of arrests.

The facts show (1) that drink puts a man into a condition in which he is

more liable to commit an offence or crime than he is when sober; (2) that

while drinking is common in all parts of the country, police offences and

crimes occur mainly in closely populated districts; (3) that the amount of

crime and police offences in Scotland is not dependent on the amount of

drinking alone, but is mainly dependent on indulgence in drink under

certain conditions of city life; (4) that the major portion, and the most

serious kind, of crimes against property, are not attributable to drink.

CHAPTER II

POVERTY, DESTITUTION, OVERCROWDING, AND CRIME

The majority of persons in prison there because of their poverty--

Poverty and drink--Poverty and petty offences--Poverty and thrift--

Poverty and destitution--Case of theft from destitution--Poverty and

vagrancy--Unemployment and beggary--Formation of professional

offenders--The case of the old--The degradation of the unemployed to

unemployability--No ratio between the amount of poverty alone and the

amount of crime--A definite ratio between density of population and

crime--Slum life--Overcrowding--Cases of destitution and

overcrowding--Overcrowding and decency--Poverty and overcrowding in

relation to offences against the person--The poor and officials--The

absence of opportunity for rational recreation--The migratory

character of the population--The multiplication of laws and of

penalties--Transgressions due to ignorance and to inability to

conform--Contrast between city and country administration--Case of

petty offender--Treatment induces further offences--The city the

hiding-place of the professional criminal--Crime largely a by-product

of city life.

While the majority of prisoners were under the influence of drink at the

time they committed the offences for which they are convicted, it is

equally true that they are in prison because of their poverty. They are

there because they are unable to pay the fines imposed on them. Their

offences may be attributable to drink, but their imprisonment is due to

want of money. There are many who are most estimable citizens, though

poor; poverty alone does not lead them to prison. On the other hand, there

are many people who drink to excess and do not transgress the law; their

drunkenness alone does not lead them to jail; but while a man may be poor

and virtuous, his poverty will compel him to live under conditions in

which any vices he has may easily develop into crimes or offences.

It is sometimes said that poverty, and especially the poverty of the

masses, is the result of drink, but no statement was ever more grotesquely

untrue. That drink aggravates poverty is obvious; but no one can shut his

eyes to the fact that all poor people do not drink, and that all

teetotalers are not rich. Drink is often a cause of poverty; but to

attribute poverty mainly to drink is wantonly to libel thousands of our

poorer fellow-citizens who live far cleaner lives than many of their

critics. On the other hand, it is equally unsafe to attribute drinking

mainly to poverty, for many who indulge freely are possessed of

considerable means, and the practice is not peculiar to any social

condition. That some are driven to drink as a refuge from the monotony of

their lives is undeniable; but if poverty makes some men drunkards it

makes others teetotalers. They see that their chances of "getting on" are

less if they take drink than they would be if they kept strictly sober,

and they abstain till they have attained their object; though they may

make up for their abstinence afterwards.

Of prisoners convicted for committing petty offences--the largest

number--many have been driven to offend by the squalor of their

surroundings. Poverty tends to limit a man's choice in work and in

recreation. He is on the verge of destitution, having nothing in the way

of reserve, and he is forced to take work that may and often does result

in an income that is much less than the expenditure of energy necessary to

obtain it. If he is a member of a family or has friends in the district

where he is living, he can usually obtain assistance in the time of his

distress; and he is himself counted on to render help when required. That

such help is commonly given by the poor to the poor is a commonplace, but

its importance in preventing destitution in places where poverty is always

present is not sufficiently recognised.

The majority of working-class families live almost from hand to mouth. The

utmost to be expected from them in the way of thrift is provision for pay

in time of sickness from a friendly society; and even that is not possible

for all the members of a household. Provision may also be made for aliment

from a trade union in time of unemployment; and in some cases for some

period there may be something saved and set aside in the bank. They are

accustomed to hear of their improvidence from people who have never known

what it is to suffer from ill-health and consequent loss of income, and

who would find their place in a lunatic asylum if they tried to live for a

year under the circumstances of those whom they criticise and direct.

Their lamentations and advice are sometimes echoed by the man who has

risen from the ranks to comparative opulence, and who forgets that if his

neighbours had been like him he would never have been where he is. The

only capital they have is their health, and anything may happen to set

aside the principal member of the family and throw the others into a

struggle that may lame them.

The life of the individual worker is nearly always one of interdependence.

In his early years he is dependent on his parents and his elder brothers

and sisters. When he is able to work his wages go into the common stock,

and by the time he can earn enough to support himself he may have to

contribute to the support of his parents. Thrift in the case of any

family cannot be estimated by the money saved, and in many of the model

thrifty families it may be found that the cash saving has been made at the

expense of starving the bodies and minds of the children. Time and again,

well-doing families have become destitute after a severe and prolonged

struggle, or after a short period in which they have suffered blow after

blow, as a result of sickness or loss of work; and as there is no public

provision made for helping such people until they are quite destitute, and

then only the minimum of relief is given them and they are set adrift to

recover under conditions that render recovery almost impossible, it is

wonderful that so many manage to survive.

Those who sink are not therefore to be condemned on that account as worse

citizens than those who survive; the time at which they have been struck

by calamity may account for all the difference between them. We are all

liable to sickness and death, but if either comes at one time rather than

another it may make a very considerable difference to our families. When a

man who is in a steady situation with a fair wage dies leaving no

provision for his wife and family he is condemned. It is in vain to point

out that he used his pay towards their comfort and in such a way as to

ensure their fitness; he ought to have been more careful; and the very

people who preach faith are the first to blame him because he took no

thought of tomorrow, but did the best he could in the day that was his.

The fact is that every man who thinks, among those that are dependent on

the wages they earn--usually under a precarious tenure of their

situations--sees that his choice lies between securing the best conditions

in his power for his family in order that they may be the more fit to do

their work in the world, and doing something less in order to lay by some

money for them; between starving them in essentials during his lifetime to

secure them from starvation should he die, and giving what he has while he

is there to give, in the hope that he may live to see them develop

healthily.

From poverty to destitution is in many cases but a short step, and it may

be taken by those who have done nothing to deserve it. Sickness, loss of

employment, absence of friends who can assist, may drive a man to

extremity; and then it is a hard task indeed for him to keep within the

law and live. His sickness may enable him to qualify for parochial relief,

but as soon as he is recovered so far as to be able to go about he may be

cast adrift without means of support.

If a man does not live by working he can only support himself by the work

of others; being destitute he must beg or steal. X 14 was a man of

thirty-five years of age who was charged with theft. He was somewhat

"soft," and had managed to support himself during the lifetime of his

relations by casual labour. He was physically in good health and mentally

not bad enough to obtain care from any public body. On the death of those

who had looked after him he drifted to the common lodging-houses, but he

had not enough devil in him to be attracted by any of the vicious or to

indulge in any vices. He began to find difficulty in obtaining employment.

Under the stress of his condition his mental defect became accentuated,

and, though not prominent enough to call for official recognition, it

hindered him in his efforts to obtain work. Asked why he had stolen, he

gave a reply that in its reasonableness was striking. He said, "What was I

to do? I tried the parish, but they could do nothing for me, for I'm quite

weel. I tried beggin', but I didna get much, an' I was catched. You're no

sae often catched when you steal." He did not want to steal, but it was

the easiest thing to do. In begging he took a risk of apprehension for

everybody he approached, and from most he would get nothing in the way of

help. He took the same risk when he lifted something, but at any rate he

drew no blanks. He had some very orthodox views on punishment; for he

believed that the proper thing to do with a man who stole--when you caught

him--was to send him to prison for so many days, the time to depend on the

value of the property stolen; but he thought that the man who had suffered

imprisonment for theft, and so paid the penalty, ought to be allowed to

enjoy the proceeds of his theft; and he complained that though he had

served so many days for the theft of a pair of boots, he had not been

given back the boots on his liberation. I cite his case here, in spite of

the fact that he was mentally defective, because he really stated

correctly the dilemma into which a person is driven when destitute; and

because he appeared to be one who, had it not been for his poverty and

destitution, would not have required attention either as a mentally

defective or a criminal. His social condition gave no opportunity for the

proper development of his mental powers, but stunted their growth. As for

their quality, it is in no wise different from that of many who, thanks to

better chances, are able to get themselves accepted as public leaders on

the strength of an absence of showy vices, and the exposition of a logical

and narrow view of things; solid men and safe, free from levity and

serious-minded.

Poverty is no crime, but it is something very like a police offence if the

poor person is destitute. Everybody needs food, clothing, and shelter, and

they cannot be had without money or its equivalent. A man may starve and

go in rags rather than beg or steal, but he must sleep somewhere. He

cannot pay for a lodging, and to sleep out is to qualify for sleeping in a

cell. If the police were not better than the law in this respect our

prisons would always be full. There are many men out of work who are far

from anxious to get it; indeed, and for that matter, most people are quite

content to do no more than they need; and in spite of all that has been

said of the blessedness of labour, there are few of the most earnest

preachers against the idleness of others who would prefer to work longer

hours for less pay rather than shorter hours for more.

We must discriminate; the objection to the man who will not work is that

he is not content to want. When he gets like that he is so far from being

an unemployed person that he has adopted the occupation of deliberately

living off others; that is his profession, and I am not at all sure that

it is quite as easy as it is assumed to be by those who have not tried it.

Certainly the amateur beggar makes but a poor show with the professional.

His is, at any rate, a dishonourable and an illegal profession; but while

in some cases he has been brought up to it, in many he has drifted into it

through destitution. We ought to have no professional beggars and no

professional thieves; but as they are in some way made, it does not help

to an understanding of the question to label them "habitual," condemn

them, and neglect to ask, if they "growed," how it was they began their

career. Many of these full-blown specimens have been offered work at

remunerative rates and have scorned it, which shows--that they did so;

that is all. It does not show that if in the beginning they had been taken

in hand they would have refused to do their share of labour. All

experiments of that kind only prove that the sturdy beggar finds it easier

and pleasanter to beg than to do the kind of work offered to him; they

teach nothing as to the causes which led him to begging; and poverty and

destitution are the most common causes.

In our large cities there are numbers of children who are destitute

because of their parents being unable to provide for them, or failing to

do so. They are cast on their own resources from a very early age, and

have sometimes to assist in the maintenance of others. When they can, some

of them leave the homes which have been far from sweet and take to living

in common lodging-houses--in Glasgow we call them "Models," with a fine

sense of humour, for they offer the best of opportunities for the

formation of citizens who will not be models. If the boy grows up as he

can, and in the process develops anti-social qualities, it is not he who

is most to blame; and when we condemn his conduct, as we must, we might at

least admit that his course has largely been shaped by the destitution

which it would have paid us better to prevent than to punish, when as its

result we have allowed him to develop into a pest.

At the other end of the ladder there are men who are refused work because

they are or seem old, and who are driven down through destitution to

become petty offenders. I remember when I was employed in the poorhouse a

man was brought to be certified insane. He had attempted to sever a vessel

in his arm in order that he might bleed to death, but his ignorance of

anatomy--he was a pre-school-board man--had caused him to make an ugly

gash at the wrong place. He was talkative, and his story was clearly told.

He was about fifty years of age and was unable to follow the only trade he

knew. He was an iron-worker and had done hard work in his day. He had

never been a teetotaler, but he had always attended to his work. At times

he made good wages, but he had suffered from periods of depression.

Sometimes he had been able to save money, but it had always melted. He

could get work when work was to be had, but for some year or two now he

was physically unable to take a place. He had contracted a disease of the

heart. His son had got married and had two children. He was a well-doing

and industrious young man; sober, steady, and a good workman. He had been

supported by this son, of whom he spoke in the highest terms. He also was

an iron-worker. The son had never grudged him his keep, nor had his wife.

Why then had he attempted to kill himself? His explanation was as clear as

it was unexpected. He said, "Doctor, do I look unhappy?" He did not;

indeed he was rather cheerful. "Well, I never had ony melancholy, if

that's the name for't. My son's a good lad. He slaves as I slaved, and at

the end he'll drap tae. I'm done. I've enjoyed my life on the whole, but

I'm fit for naething but to be a burden on him. He disna object; but

there's the weans. Every bite that goes into my mooth comes oot o' theirs.

If they're to be something better than their faither or me, they'll need

mair of the schule; and what wi' broken time an' low wages they'll no get

it. I want them to be kept frae work till they're educated tae seek

something better. He and I have had our share of hard work. I've had my

sprees, but he's a better man than I was--no a better tradesman; I'll no

say that--an' I want his weans to hae a better chance than he had. No, I'm

no a Socialist; I'm a Tory if I'm onything, but I never bothered wi'

political questions, though I've heard a heap o' blethers on a' sides.

What? Hell? Noo, doctor, does ony sensible man believe in that nooadays?

God's no as bad as they make Him oot to be, an' at onyrate I believe that

death ends a'." There was no shaking him. All he wanted was some lessons

in anatomy--which he did not get. He insisted that he was as sane as any

of us, and asserted that he could not be certified; but he was wrong

there. The law takes most elaborate precautions to prevent people killing

themselves, aye even when it has sentenced them to death, but so far it

has not made any provision for enabling them to work for their living.

We hear of the unemployable who could not work even if he were willing,

but apart from those who labour under mental or physical disabilities--and

many of them can and do work--I have not met many of this class. There are

many on distress works who make a very poor show; they are not fit for

that kind of work, but that is a different thing altogether from saying

that there is nothing they can do that is useful. Certainly in the

ordinary sense it cannot be said of the man who is too old to secure

employment that he is unfit for work. He is shut out by competition, the

employer quite naturally preferring what he believes to be the more

efficient workman. Few of the older men who are thus thrown on the

scrap-heap take things in such a way that they try the open door of death,

but the fact that they are condemned to forsake their occupation does prey

on the minds of many and embitter their lives; and the fear of dismissal

increases in intensity as their hair turns white. When the blow falls, if

they have no resources what is to become of them? There are all sorts of

schemes proposed for dealing on the one hand with the young and keeping

them longer at school, and on the other hand with the older men and

providing them with work. To an outsider it would seem that if the number

of men employed is sufficient to produce what is required, and there is a

large surplus of unemployed labour, those who are working are working too

long. A stranger might be excused for thinking that if one man is working

eight hours and another not working at all it would be better for both

that each should work four hours; but if he said so he would only show his

simplicity. The man who is employed would quickly point out that this

would reduce his wages. Yet when a man gets promotion, whether in the

public service or in private business, his salary and his responsibilities

are increased--the former certainly, the latter in such a way that it

becomes less easy to get rid of him--but his hours are usually reduced;

for more money would be of little use to him if he did not get time to

spend it. This is merely an observation, not a doctrine; but it is

difficult to see how employment is to be found for those who are willing

and able to work unless we cease to improve machinery and produce less

economically; or increase our production enormously; or divide the work

and the proceeds more evenly. In any case, and while that matter is being

settled, we might recognise the dilemma into which those are thrust who

cannot find work and are destitute.

They must beg or steal, and if they get into the way of doing either they

are liable to become less fitted and less inclined for other occupations.

X 15 was an artisan earning a fair wage and enjoying good health. He was

married to a woman who was a good housewife and manager. When he was about

thirty-eight he was thrown out of work by a strike in an allied trade. A

commercial crisis ensued and there was general distress. He managed for a

time to keep his head above water, but his resources gradually were eaten

away. His employers wound up their business, and when the local difficulty

had passed he found that he had to look out for another place. While idle

he had formed the acquaintance of others in like case. He had been a

steady, stay-at-home man, but in their company he took to amusements which

were harmless in themselves and new to him. He also imbibed a taste for

beer, but he did not get drunk. The company was not bad company, but it

was different from any he had been accustomed to, and it was not good for

him. For a time he looked for work, but he did not find it. Others got

settled, but the luck was against him, and he became discouraged and

despairing. By and by he looked about in a half-hearted way, and gave more

time to loafing than to seeking rebuffs. He was not destitute, as his

family was able to keep the wolf from the door. In two years he was only

interested in getting drink from anybody who would treat him, and in

discussing public affairs with others who had fallen like himself. He had

given up the idea of work and had degenerated from a good citizen to a

loafer and, later, to a drunkard. He was never convicted, but he had to be

warned because of his conduct towards his wife; and he died as a result of

exposure when drunk--to the relief of his family, who were in danger of

being dragged into the mire by him. In this case his family saved him from

destitution, but the loss of his work drove him almost imperceptibly into

the ranks of the derelicts, in spite of the counter-influences of home. In

many cases there is no family to do what his did for him, and the process

is more certain and easy.

Poverty compels men to live under conditions in which their vices may

easily develop into crimes or offences; and it makes those who have

transgressed the law less able to recover from the effects of a conviction

and more liable to become habitual offenders; but it cannot be said that

the amount of convictions in Scotland is in relation to the poverty of any

given district. In some parts of the highlands and islands, where poverty

is pronounced, there is an entire absence of crime.

While no ratio can be traced between the amount of drinking or the degree

of poverty and the number of crimes or offences in Scotland, there is a

very definite relationship between the density of the population and the

incidence of breaches of the law. Not only is there more crime in the city

than in the country, but from the densely populated parts of the city

there are more committals than from the less crowded districts. The

sanitary reformer has shown us that our city slums are breeding-places for

diseases that do not confine their operation to the people who dwell

there, but may easily infect those who live under more wholesome

conditions; and substituting vice and crime for disease and death the

statement is equally true.

By letting in light and fresh air to the houses where so many dwell we are

able to save lives which would otherwise be crippled or destroyed by the

insanitary conditions in which they are placed; and just as surely we

could break up the aggregations of people whose acquired way of living is

fatal to the proper development of an enlightened civic spirit, if we were

as eager to prevent as we are to punish wrongdoing. There they are; born

into little boxes of houses which are packed together in rows and built in

layers one above the other in the air. Their home life is passed in

similar boxes; and when they die they are put in smaller boxes and placed

in layers under the earth. The health officer would speedily interfere if

we tried to house as many pigs to the acre as human beings; but we eat the

pigs and cannot permit them to be raised under conditions that would be

likely to result in their contracting disease. Also there are fewer people

making a living by furnishing accommodation for pigs than for men; and it

is easier to regulate an occupation when those who are engaged in it are

not influential, than when they are; for we have a traditional dislike to

interfering with the rights of property. It is therefore much easier to

punish a slum-dweller for breaking our sanitary regulations than a slum

landlord for living off rotten dwellings.

It is well known that the worse the building is, the bigger the rent

charged in proportion to the accommodation supplied. If a man owns house

property he expects to make a profit when he lets it, from the difference

between what he has paid for it and the rent he receives from it. X 16 is

an old woman who is past work and has no resources. She has been in the

poorhouse, but will not stay there, though better housed and better fed

and kept cleaner than when outside. She is too old to settle down to the

ordered life of the institution, and when all its advantages are

enumerated to her and all available eloquence has been expended on her

with a view to persuading her that in her own interest she ought

gratefully to accept its shelter, she sullenly and silently shows that her

opinion of the place as a desirable residence does not coincide with that

of those who are in no danger of being forced to live there. She rents a

small house and takes in lodgers, intending to make her living from the

difference between what she pays and what she receives in rent. Under the

Glasgow sanitary regulations certain houses are "ticketed"; that is to

say, their cubic content is measured, and a card is fixed on the door

stating the number of cubic feet in the place and the number of persons

who may be lodged therein. One adult is the allowance for every 600 cubic

feet; and half that space is allowed for every person under twelve years.

The sanitary inspector is entitled to demand admission at any hour in

order to ascertain whether there is overcrowding. He calls one night and

finds that the limit has been exceeded, and she is sent to prison, in

default of paying a fine, for overcrowding. Of course there is a

difference between her and her landlord, for she has broken the law.

Precisely; but what kind of law is it that can reach only the poorer

transgressor and allows the partner in profits to escape?

X 17 is a woman of forty-two who has never been in prison before, and is

under sentence for overcrowding. On a midnight visit the sanitary officer

found six adults in a room ticketed for three and a half--a bad case. The

woman's story was that her daughter had been married to a young man some

twelve months previously. He was an iron-worker and seemed decent enough.

He lost his situation through bad trade and was unable to get another.

Meantime a child was born. The young people wrestled along for a time; but

after exhausting all the channels of aid which were open to them, they

were turned out of their house for failing to pay the rent. Their

furniture had been disposed of. The girl's mother took them in to shelter

them. She admitted she had kept them in lodgings for some weeks before the

"sanitary" came down on her, and I suspect she had been warned, but as she

said, "What was I to do?" Asked if she had informed the magistrate of the

facts, she said she had not. "I pleaded guilty, because if ye dae that ye

get aff easier." She could not even make the best of her case, but if she

had been able to employ a lawyer she would not have required to transgress

the law; and as for stating her own case, that is what few are able to

do--till by experience they learn. Even when a person of education and

means finds himself in conflict with the law, if he is prudent he gets an

experienced lawyer to appear for him and present the truth in the way that

will appeal most strongly to the judge.

Overcrowding not only breeds disease, but it tends to destroy the sense of

decency, and affords opportunities for the commission of crime which ought

not to exist. Now and again cases come before the courts that have to be

heard with closed doors, and in every one of them this factor of

overcrowding is present, affording the opportunity and inducing to the

commission of the crime. The subject is so foul that it cannot be

adequately treated here without grave occasion of offence. Unspeakable

corruption is easy and possible, and it goes on because it is unspeakable.

It has often been said that poverty and destitution are not likely to lead

to the commission of crimes against the person, but rather to crimes

against property and _a priori_ there is something to be said for the

statement; but whatever the likelihood we need not concern ourselves with

it when the facts are before us for examination. In the first place, the

great majority of persons in prison for committing assaults of all

descriptions are poor persons. It is a rare thing for one in a good

position to be convicted of assault, and even the most cursory examination

of those who are in prison for assaulting others will show that their

social condition was a factor in the causation of the crime. I have

pointed out the part that drink plays in the matter, and incidentally

shown that it is mainly operative under the conditions which exist in

closely populated districts; but many of the minor assaults are committed

by persons who are not under the influence of drink. Next to drink, among

the women, the most common cause assigned by them for their imprisonment

is "bad neebors." They do not lose their tempers and fight with each other

because they are poor or destitute, but poverty makes strange bedfellows

and forces people to rub against one another in such a way as to give

occasion for trouble; and to leave the fact out of account is simply to

attempt to study man apart from his surroundings and to ignore the effect

they have on his conduct.

In some parts of Glasgow--much as it has been improved during the last

generation--there is literally no room for the people to live. A place to

sleep in, to afford shelter from the weather, to take food in? Yes. Room

for recreation or for quiet rest? No. The forbearance, the good-humour,

the willingness shown to stand aside and allow another member of the

family to monopolise the scanty accommodation, are wonderful; and they are

the rule. Now and then, here and there, a breakdown occurs; and if it

result in a breach of the peace, we are not concerned to recognise the

cause, but only to punish the wrongdoers. "What's done we partly may

compute, but know not what's resisted," and are not disposed to find out.

A stair-head quarrel is a stock subject for the humorist; but try to live

for a week in such close and constant contact with anyone, earning your

living the while with exhausting labour, and your wonder will be that the

peace is so well kept. The fact is that those people put up with a great

deal more than their censors would stand, and that is one reason why they

are so badly off. If they were as impatient of our smug mismanagement as

we are of their transgressions we should have learned how to regulate our

cities long ago. There is a great effort made to evangelise the poorer

classes, and it is well supported by earnest men who are better off; it

would not be a bad thing if the slums returned the compliment and started

a mission to the West End. The _a priori_ reasoner would then perhaps

learn that while he might expect that crimes against property would in

part be the result of poverty and destitution, because such crimes would

relieve the poverty, though in an illegal way; crimes against the person

are also frequently a result of poverty, not that they are committed with

a view to its relief, but because discomfort, irritability, impatience of

restraint, and other mental conditions which lead to assaults, are as much

an outcome of poverty as it exists in the slums of our great cities as are

hunger and want.

There is no slum district in Glasgow that does not contain a larger number

of well-disposed than of evil-disposed persons; but a tenement may get a

bad name through the misconduct of one or two of its inhabitants, and a

street may be regarded as wild although there is only a minority of rowdy

people living in it. We take no account of those who do not annoy us, and

when the noisy people anywhere assert themselves we forget all about the

others. When we interfere officially it is to find that, good and bad,

they stand by one another. In this respect they are like gentlemen; they

do not give one another away to outsiders; and it is an interesting

sidelight on their view of the law that they do not look on its

representatives as their friends. So often its interference results in

making their condition worse that they distrust it; and it is often a

greater terror to those who do well than to the evil-doer. It is no

uncommon thing to see a woman who has been assaulted by her husband plead

with the court to let him go, and make all sorts of excuses or tell the

most incredible story to account for her injuries. Then we hear

exclamations and reflections on the power of human love and the forgiving

spirit of even a degraded woman. Human love is wonderful, but it is no

more marvellous than human stupidity; and in these cases the woman is

moved not so much by love of the man as by knowledge of the results to her

and hers of our way of dealing with him. On the whole, she prefers to run

the risk of ill-usage from him when he is at liberty, being assured of his

protection against the ill-usage of others, to having to wrestle on in his

absence and suffer from the disapproval of others who are as badly off,

because of her disloyalty. See that her condition is really improved by

his conviction and she will be less likely to perjure herself in the

attempt to save him from the penalty of his brutality.

In every slum district there are some living who could afford to go

elsewhere, but who remain where they are because it has never occurred to

them that they should remove. They have gone to the district in its better

days, and the change in its character has been so gradual that they have

not taken much notice of it. They stay on just as men stay on at business

after the need has passed, because they cannot think of doing anything

else and are loth to seek fresh fields. It is not good for them that they

should do so, but it is not bad for the slum; for old inhabitants of this

kind exercise a good influence on many of the others.

Most slum-dwellers are not there because they prefer slum life, but

because they are unable to pay for better accommodation. The smallness of

their dwellings makes healthy home-life difficult and in some cases

impossible. Having no room in the house for the recreation required after

work, the man goes out to seek change. The opportunities offered to him

are few, except those provided by private enterprise. There are the parks,

and great advantage is taken of them; but in Glasgow they are nearly all

at considerable distances from the most crowded districts. The public

bowling-greens are used to the utmost in the evenings, but are only

available for a part of the year. The libraries attract comparatively few

of those whose labour has entailed much physical strain on them; and

picture-galleries and museums appeal to only a very limited number of our

fellow-citizens, working-class or otherwise.

It was once the idea of those who pleaded for the public provision of

means of recreation that these should be of such a character as would

"improve" the working classes. The intention was excellent, but the people

themselves were left out of consideration, as is usual when efforts are

made to recreate men instead of providing opportunity for them to amuse

themselves. Perhaps they do not believe that it would be an improvement to

conform to our ideals; at any rate, the great majority have not shown any

eagerness to take advantage of the means for studying science and art

which we have placed within their reach; and they remain as regardless of

the worship of these deities as the great mass of the richer people who

quite honestly have sought to elevate them. The private caterer has found

a way to interest them, for if he failed to do so he would lose his means

of livelihood, and that fact may have helped to sharpen his powers of

perception. He has to amuse men as they are, not as he thinks they ought

to be; and our regulations quite properly debar him from doing so in an

objectionable way. The entertainments provided may not be of a very high

order, but the purpose of recreating thousands is served. If we regret

that they do not seek something better, let us remember the monotony of

their lives, the numbing effect of the conditions to which they are

subject, and be thankful they do not seek worse.

The small house of one or two rooms in a tenement is what the majority

have for a home, and when there is a family it is insufficient to enable

them to evolve a complete and healthy home-life in it. Social intercourse

is of necessity restricted, for there is no room for the gathering of

friends; and though public entertainments, while valuable adjuncts, are

poor substitutes for social intercourse, they are better than nothing. The

public-house is almost the only place where the mass of town-dwellers can

meet in a social way with their friends, and the perils attendant on such

meetings are evident to all men. The effort to provide some substitute for

it has taxed the ingenuity and baffled the attempts of many temperance

advocates and social reformers. Much as they have been criticised, the

music-halls and such places have been a powerful counter-attraction, but

any means of public entertainment cannot in the end supply the need for

social intercourse between kindred spirits. Some day the fact will have to

be faced that the only real substitute for the public-house is the private

house; and when that is fully realised the slums will go.

Many have to migrate from one district to another because of the nature of

their work. They have not "steady jobs," and though they may not suffer

from unemployment, they may be engaged now in one part of the city and now

in another. The result is that they have no abiding dwelling-place, and

as a rule have only the barest acquaintance with their neighbours; for

when people are moving about in this way they have neither the same

opportunity nor the same desire to form friendships with those around

them. Improvement in the means of locomotion has contributed to send

employers and well-to-do people out of the crowded areas of the city and

away from the parts wherein their employees reside. They see less of their

workmen than did a former generation, and their wives and families know

nothing about the men whose co-operation is required to secure their

comfort. There is less of personal contact than there was and more chance

of mutual misunderstanding. The bond between employer and employed becomes

more and more a mere money bond; each seeks to get as much as he can out

of the other; and with it all there arises a general feeling of

instability and insecurity, the necessary result of the absence of a

spirit of fellowship such as can only spring from the existence of a

personal as distinct from a pecuniary interest between man and man.

Where people are crowded together regulations are required for their

health and comfort, and the liberty of each has to be restricted in the

interest of the community. The more closely they are packed the more

interference is required. Practices which in the country might be harmless

or even laudable would be intolerable if permitted in the town. To make

our rules operative we enact penalties against offenders--and sometimes

enforce them. There are so many now that it is questionable if there is

anybody in Glasgow who has not at one time or another been a transgressor.

The man from whose chimney black smoke has issued, or who has obstructed

the footpath by leaving goods outside his shop-door, does not worry over,

because he is not seriously worried by, such laws. He may swear a little

when summoned, and say evil things about the officiousness of the

authorities, but it is a small matter to him even though he is fined. The

man who finds himself in court for using strange oaths in public or for

spitting in or upon a tramcar has more worry over the business. Even a

small fine makes a serious inroad in his day's earnings, and the loss of

time attending the court docks him of the pay by which he might discharge

the fine. However much it may be required, every extension of the police

regulations for the government of a city implies an increase in the number

of offences and offenders dealt with; and while it is necessary that

transgressors should be made to cease to do the things the law condemns,

it does not follow that the wisest means are always taken to secure this

object.

A crusade against consumption will meet with hearty approval everywhere;

but if the crusaders allow their zeal to direct their energies wrongly

their good intentions cannot be held as an excuse for the harm they do. In

a city that is ordinarily covered with a haze, and sometimes with a cloud,

of smoke; where the inhabitants for the most part live in tenement houses

that by no stretch of fancy could be called spacious; where the workers

are in many cases subjected to severe physical strain by the nature of

their work; and where the weather is variable and trying; it is not

surprising that many should suffer from "colds." They are under the

necessity of spitting, and they spit not out of joy of spitting, but

because they have to. The practice is filthy--it is all the evil things

that can be said of it; and it should be discouraged. The best way would

be to alter the conditions that occasion it; the worst way is to make the

spitter a comrade of the criminal before the bar of a police court.

As with this so with many other offences; they are manufactured without

due regard to the injury that may be caused by their enforcement. It is an

easy thing to place burdens on the backs of others, but in fairness to

them it should first be ascertained whether they can bear them. Many of

our laws are transgressed because of ignorance or helplessness; and

neither is an excuse. We are all supposed to know the law, and surely no

greater irony could there be than such a hypothesis. If everybody knew the

laws there would be no need for lawyers; and if the lawyers were agreed as

to what is the law at any time there would be little need for judges. So

well is it recognised that even the judges differ, that one set is

employed to correct another; and a final decision is only arrived at

because there is not another set yet provided to differ from them. If a

layman does not know the law he may be punished for his ignorance; but if

a judge does not know it the person in whose favour he has given a

decision may be punished by payment of the costs of appeal. Let us not be

too hard then on the ignorance of the man who has transgressed one of our

numerous commandments.

In the country, and where people are not crowded together, there are

offenders against good government; but there each one knows the other, and

when a man commits a petty offence, though the local constable sees it, he

may be judiciously blind if in his judgment that is the best course to

take. He knows the inhabitants--they are his friends--and he reacts to the

opinion of the district. If he makes an arrest the matter is discussed,

and when the offender comes before the court, magistrate and prisoner

meet as persons who know one another. Judgment is given on a knowledge not

only of the offence, but of the offender, and all parties in the case are

tried by the public. In the city it is not possible for the policeman to

know the people who live in his district, nor for them to know him. This

is a great disadvantage to begin with, for he is not able to distinguish

between those who may be corrected and restrained by their friends without

the need for their being charged and those who cannot be so dealt with. He

arrests a person whom he does not know for committing an offence. The

prisoner is brought before a judge who knows neither of them, save

officially, and judgment is given according to scale. As for informed

public opinion directed on the proceedings, there is none. In the city as

in the country, however, if an offender is known as being ordinarily a

well-behaved man he may not be prosecuted. If he is overcome by drink

someone may see him home or send him there. It is not so much a question

of his being well-to-do; it is a question of his being known. If not

known, no matter what his means he cannot be sent home in a cab; but he

may be taken to the police station in a wheelbarrow.

What else can the police do? We take men of good physique and character,

many of them country-bred and unacquainted with the complexities of city

life. They are paid the wages of a labourer, and with a uniform invested

with powers and duties of the most varied kind. They must be able to keep

people from offending, or to arrest them if they do offend; they must know

the law; they must be prepared to act as doctors on emergency--what must

they not be able to do? We multiply our complaints, and cast on their

shoulders duties we ought to perform ourselves; blaming them not only for

any blunders they may commit, but also for our own. We compel them to make

arrests and then lament the result. X 18 is sent to prison in default of

paying a fine, on conviction for using obscene language. She is seventeen

years of age, but does not look more than fifteen. In years she is a young

woman, but in body and in character she is a big girl. She is the eldest

of a family, the father of which is a casual labourer. The mother does

occasional charing. Both take drink, but neither has ever been convicted

or charged. The girl is employed in a factory and earns about enough to

support herself. At night she wants some fun after her day's work, and she

does not want to assist all the time in the household. She plays with

other and younger girls and is probably their leader. There is no

playground for them but the street corner, except they take the "back

close," which is not lit and which might be a source of greater evil than

the street. A complaint is made to the police of the bad language used by

the girls. It is certainly lurid; but where have they learned it? The

decorative expressions complained of are part of the current vocabulary of

many in the district, but are used with more restraint by the elders. We

have all our pet adjectives, which differ in different localities and are

of the nature of slang. In the West End a thing may be "awfully nice,"

though nothing can be at once awful and nice; in the East End the

adjective may be quite as inappropriate, but everybody knows its

signification; and so with other parts of speech. True, their language is

filthy, but it does not shock those who use it; and that is perhaps the

saddest thing about it. The girls are warned, but they persist in speaking

their own language, and in bravado ornament it profusely and shout

opprobrious words at the policeman. One is caught. She has not

necessarily been worse than the others in her behaviour, but she has

either run in the wrong direction or not fast enough to escape. She is

taken to the police station and warned. The complaints persist. Again she

is arrested. She is the bad one; she was taken before.

On her liberation from prison she had lost her work. She was shunned by

the other girls, whose mothers forbade them to associate with one who had

been in prison, lest they should be taken in charge also. It is an offence

to associate with some classes of offenders and criminals, and the

cautious among the dwellers in these districts do not care to take risks,

so they try to keep clear of anyone who has been in the hands of the

police. The law may be right enough, but you will not get them to believe

that the innocent person is safe; not if he is poor. "Keep awa' frae

Jeannie. She's been in the nick; an' if they see you wi' her they'll maybe

think you're as bad, and land ye there tae." They would help her if they

could, but they fear that association with her would only hurt themselves

and do her no good. Those who have been in prison themselves will go with

her, and those who are reckless; to their company she is confined, for she

will not take to religion and the help of its professors. She is soon back

again; as cheerful and as tractable as any girl could be.

In essence it is a common story. The police could have done nothing else

in the circumstances, and she had no grudge against them, but admitted

that they had treated her fairly; can as much be said for those who by

persistent nagging force the hands of their officials, and who are more

bent on punishing offenders than on mending their bad manners? We have

lost the personal interest we ought to have in our neighbours; we have

gone out from among them; we have cast on officials duties we ought to

undertake ourselves as citizens, and the result is an increase in the

number of offences. In themselves these offences are small matters, but

the offenders in many cases find themselves in prison for the first time

as a result; and it is the first time that counts. Every time a man is

sent to prison for a small offence committed he has been given a push

towards the life of a habitual offender; and the poorer and more destitute

he is the greater difficulty will he have in overcoming the effect of that

conviction. His first appearance may be on account of a small

transgression, but there is a common saying that is often taken to

heart--"As well be hung for a sheep as a lamb."

The absence of personal interest in their neighbours on the part of men in

crowded districts not only permits atrocious assaults and homicides to

take place in the very heart of a densely populated district, but it

allows thieves to exercise their profession unmolested because unknown. It

also enables them to escape observation when they are being sought for.

The city is their hunting-ground and their refuge.

Crime is largely a by-product of city life. It might be mitigated if we

were more public-spirited; but it will always be an evil crying out

against us, so long as we permit conditions to exist which shut men into

dens under circumstances that make decent communion and fellowship between

them difficult if not impossible, and compel them to remain there till

they can pay a ransom to the man who holds up the land for his profit or

his pleasure.

CHAPTER III

IMMIGRATION AND CRIME

The stranger most likely to offend--The reaction to new

surroundings--The difficulty of recovery--The attraction of the

city--The Churches and the immigrant--Benevolent associations--The

alien immigrants--Their tendency to hold themselves apart--

Deportation--A language test required--The alien criminal--His

dangerous character--The need for powers to deal with him.

A majority of the prisoners dealt with in Glasgow police courts are not

Glasgow-born; and this holds true of outlying towns. It is the stranger

who is the "bad one."

The town-bred man more readily accommodates himself to the conditions of

life there. He grows up among them and his life is rooted in them. While

he is yet young his steps are directed for him, and he learns to avoid

dangers into which the stranger may fall. There can be no association of a

man with his neighbour anywhere without some degree of conformity to a

common standard of conduct. No one can outrage the social customs of his

companions with impunity; and everybody is more or less influenced by the

opinion of those for whom he has a regard; so he conforms to the standard

of behaviour set by the circle in which he moves and is steadied thereby.

If, as is generally the case, his companions are not ill-disposed, he is

likely to be a law-abiding citizen; if otherwise, he will get an impetus

towards crime. In any case he is of the soil, and his growth can the more

easily be watched and directed.

The man from the country finds himself living under new conditions that

may rapidly make or mar him. He is away from the friends to whom he looked

for guidance; he is cast on his own resources and must exercise an

independent judgment; a temptation is not checked by the consideration of

what the family would think; and having nothing but his own inclinations

to consult, he is more likely to run loose than he would be when at home.

He is not necessarily more vicious or more foolish than his town-bred

brother; but he is not accustomed to the same kind of temptations, and can

neither resist them as well nor yield to them as gracefully. He is

therefore more likely to succumb, and more likely to suffer severely from

the consequences if he is found out; for just as he is handicapped by the

want of guidance, being a stranger he is not so likely to get proper

assistance if he falls into trouble.

Men are attracted to the city by the hope of increase in pay and pleasure;

and though in some respects the life seems unattractive enough, they still

come. The only people who are certain not to come, and perforce to stay,

are those who have a home in the country and fixity of tenure there. Their

sons may and do invade the towns, but when they do not succeed there they

return to the land. Workmen in the country are as liable to lose their

situations as townsmen; their work is hard and their hours of labour are

long; they think their pleasures are few and dull compared to those men

may have in the city, and they gravitate to it. They are drawn in by its

glitter, and driven in by the drabness of country life; sometimes also by

the clearance of men to make way for the huge pleasure-grounds that

disgrace Scotland, and have resulted in the replacement of men who drew

their subsistence from the soil (living a hardy life and rearing a healthy

race) by deer and their keepers. When the landless man comes to town and

fails to find steady work, he cannot go back to the country unless the

family of which he is a member have some hold on the land. The children of

crofters do go back in times of depression, returning to their father's

holding and working there; but the others swell the ranks of the

unemployed and are in peril of degeneration into the loafer or criminal.

The Churches play an important part in helping those young people from the

country who are recommended to them; but many never connect themselves

with Churches when they come to town at first. Some make a beginning, but

drop off, not so much because they dislike religion, but because they like

occasionally to talk and think about something else; and in comparatively

few of the Churches is the need for providing social intercourse

recognised. A man filled with the missionary spirit can find numerous

outlets for his energies, for there are evangelistic meetings held in all

districts and on all nights, and they welcome new-comers; there are also

temperance societies engaged in the propagation of their ideas; but the

majority of people who migrate to our towns are not prepared to engage in

that kind of occupation in their leisure hours, and they have just to

drift for the most part.

There are Benevolent Associations of the natives of one county and another

which have a powerful influence for good in aiding those who come under

their care, but that they do not cover the whole ground is evident from

the fact that many of their compatriots are never heard of by them. That

they stand by one another in an admirable way is undeniable, and their

influence is so strong that for certain kinds of public appointments in

Glasgow the Glasgow man has a poor chance--there being no Society of the

Natives of Glasgow in that place yet.

The absence of family counsel and constraint which may lead to the

degradation of the man who takes the wrong turn, may be a powerful aid to

his rise if he gets on the right track. He has to think and act for

himself; and his freedom from ties enables him to attend more exclusively

to his business. The immigrant to the city from the country is largely

represented in prison; but he is also largely represented in the town

council--and the one place may be held to be as typical of the reward of

the ill-doers as the other is of the well-doers.

There is another immigrant whose conduct usually receives more attention

from the public, viz. the alien. In the West of Scotland foreigners are

present in large numbers, having this in common, that they tend to form

little colonies wherever they settle, retaining many of the habits they

have brought with them, and remaining aliens in the sense that they are

not absorbed in the community as they ought to be. In the collieries in

various parts of the West of Scotland large numbers of aliens are

employed. Their names, which in many cases are difficult either to

pronounce or to spell, have been set aside by somebody or other and local

names substituted; so that it is not uncommon to find a man with a

familiar name who is quite unable to speak the language of the country.

They keep themselves apart, and do not usually interfere with others, but

some of them get into trouble through fighting among themselves.

Ordinarily peaceable and tractable, they contribute a fair quota to the

number of serious assaults committed, though the person assailed is

usually another alien. Their ignorance of the language also makes them a

source of danger to others.

When they have done some wild or criminal thing the culprits are deported,

after they have served their term of imprisonment; but their isolation

from the life of the district has in many cases contributed to the

offences committed, since it has prevented them from acquiring the point

of view of natives of this country and has caused them to follow the

customs of their own land. Any proposal to prevent their settling here

would come with a very bad grace from us, whose relatives are scattered

all over the globe and who pride ourselves on the fact. They are healthy;

and are neither wild nor intractable, but are generally industrious and

steady. In their interests and our own it is surely not advisable to

permit them to continue as colonies apart, separated from us by the bar of

language.

It would be no act of tyranny or hardship to insist that every alien

settling here should, within twelve months of his arrival, satisfy the

local authority of his fitness to speak the language sufficiently well to

enable him to understand others and be understood by them. At present it

is no uncommon thing to find men who have been in the country for years

and are yet unable to engage in the simplest conversation in English--or

Scotch if you like. In one homicide case the accused had been in the

district for sixteen years, could only speak a broken dialect, and

required to have the simplest statements interpreted to him. In the city

this condition of things is less marked, but as a general rule

aliens--apart from the professionals--who are committed to prison do not

speak the language intelligibly, even though they have been some time in

the country, and that for the same reason--they get on all right without

it. The Italians and others who are largely engaged in trading, pick up

enough to enable them to understand and be understood; their occupation

makes this a necessity; but even among them the interpreter is far too

often required. People are generally given to save themselves trouble; and

to learn a language is troublesome. If they can escape the necessity they

will do so, and there is no need to blame them for it. But their ignorance

is a trouble and a possible danger to us, and it does not seem to be

unreasonable to ask that it should cease.

There are other immigrant aliens who do speak the language and who are

present in the large cities. These are the professional criminals who

import their vices, and work their business, in a very systematic way.

They are more remarkable for their knowledge of the law than for their

ignorance of the language; and they are a very dangerous although not a

very large element in the population. They have an organised system of

correspondence and go from one part of the country to another, where they

have connections. They employ skilled lawyers for their defence when they

get into trouble, and within certain limits assist each other in the way

of business. There are some of them capable of any atrocity, and they are

all quite different from the ordinary criminal of the professional class

familiar to us here. They have a certain amount of polish, and an aptitude

for appreciating the standpoint of others sufficiently well to get on

their blind side. As for moral sense as we understand it, it does not seem

to exist in them.

Crime is their business and they place business first. When they are

convicted they are deported, but their resources and organisation enable

them to escape conviction very often. They require to be dealt with in a

much more drastic way than the law at present permits; for they are not

only a danger because of their depredations, but their presence and

conduct incite our own undesirables to do things they would not otherwise

attempt. As the law stands the onus of proving their undesirability rests

on the police, and it is very difficult to get positive evidence. If they

were required, on the initiative of the police, to prove to the

satisfaction of a court that they were earning an honest living, they

would find it impossible to do so. It may be objected that this is like

assuming a man to be guilty till he proves his innocence, which is

contrary to practice and a bad principle on which to act. As a matter of

fact, it is acted upon with our native thieves, once they have been

convicted; they may be charged with being found in possession of property

and required to account for having it or go to prison; and they can be

summarily tried.

In respect that a man is an alien he might reasonably be required to show

that he is not living off the proceeds of crime, as a condition of his

being allowed to remain in the country. He may be refused permission to

land if his character is known; but these people know how to get past the

immigration authority. Why they should then be free to transgress until

they trip and are caught it is difficult to see. If an alien seeks

citizenship here he must satisfy the authorities that he has lived for at

least five years in the country and during that period has been a

reputable citizen. The onus of proof is on him, and it is not assumed that

because he has never been convicted he should be naturalised. The

examination to which he voluntarily submits in order that he may become a

British subject he need not undergo if all he wants is the protection of

our laws while he is living by breaking them. I suggest that just as some

aliens have to submit to examination before being allowed to land, those

who have given the authorities occasion to suspect that they are living by

illegal means should be cited to appear before and satisfy a court that

their conduct is such as to justify their being permitted to remain in the

country; and failing their appearance, or their being able to do so, that

they should be arrested and deported.

CHAPTER IV

SOCIAL CONDITIONS AND CRIME

The millionaire and the pauper--Ill-feeling and misunderstanding--

Social ambitions--Case of embezzlement--Preaching and practice--

Gambling--The desire to "get on"--The need to deal with those who

profit by the helplessness of others--Political action--Its

difficulty--Legislation and administration--The official and the

public--Personal aid--Fellowship.

Our social inequalities are the cause of much serious crime. That such

inequalities always have existed is undeniable, and that they may continue

to exist is at least likely; at any rate, there is no immediate prospect

of their abolition; but the form and degree they take are variable. Within

recent times the gulf between the wealthy and the poor has been widened.

The pauper is an old inhabitant, but the millionaire is a new portent. The

rich man of our grandfathers' day was a local magnate who might be

capricious, but who could be personally approached. His successor is

cosmopolitan. The poor in those days were not so well informed as they are

now that the ends of the earth have been brought together, and the

mechanical inventions that have brought wealth to many have enabled the

multitude to get a wider outlook on the world. A rich man may be courted

for his riches, but they do not now gain him reverence from the poor.

If free education has not educated the masses any more than the expensive

kind has educated many of the rich, it has enabled them to read. They know

more than they did, and with the access of knowledge discontent with their

condition has increased. For good or ill many of them have lost the fear

of hell, but the fear of the poorhouse is still with them as with many who

are better off. The desire to make money dominates all sorts of people,

and in the effort men are marred. Each sees the greed of his neighbour,

but fails to see that he shares the vices of those he condemns. The man

who is "successful" is critical of the faults of those less fortunate; and

they in turn are often too ready to attribute his position to his absence

of scruple rather than to any ability he may possess. There is envy on the

one side and distrust on the other; but out of, and in spite of, it all

there is steadily growing an effort towards co-operation and mutual help.

In the welter of conflicting interests there is much done that every man

would disapprove if he saw it done by his neighbour. Yet those whose

conduct is most shady are often not conscious of the enormity of it, being

too much engrossed in the end they seek to be particular as to the means;

and that end is not always an ignoble one. They mean to do great things

and kind when their ships come home; and they do not see that the question

for each of us is not, What would we do if we had what we desire? but,

What are we doing, being what we are and where we are?

In the thirst for wealth dishonest practices are condoned in business, and

within the law robbery is allowed. There is a disposition to take more

account of what a man has than of what he is; and this cannot fail to have

a vicious effect. X 19 was a young man who held a position of trust and

received a small salary. He had no showy vices and, so far as could be

ascertained, not many others. He was strong in the negative virtues; being

an abstainer from drink, tobacco, and such things as are affected by

pleasure-seekers and cost money. His employers were quite satisfied that

they had in him a model servant; but they found their mistake, and were as

unreasonably indignant as they had been unreasonably pleased; for he had

been conducting a very ingenious system of fraud upon them. With the money

he had abstracted he had been speculating in shares, and he had been

successful up to a point. If his last venture had turned out well he would

have been able to resign his situation and live virtuously ever after,

first paying back to them their money. This is what he calculated would

take place, and if his expectations had been realised nobody would have

known of his misfeasance; but he lost on his venture and there was a

crash. He pleaded guilty to embezzlement and was sent to prison for a long

period. He had disposed of a considerable sum of money, but the curious

thing about it was that he claimed that he was simply doing what his

employers lived by doing--using other people's money without consulting

them as to details; though he admitted that in their case they were in a

position to meet claims, and their clients knew that their money was not

lying in a safe. He took his sentence quite philosophically, with the

remark that he had observed that people who had defrauded certain kinds of

commercial corporations, such as banks, always got longer terms of

imprisonment than those who merely robbed poor people; and as the firm

that employed him was a big concern he would have to be made an example

of. He was shrewd in his observations, however wrong-headed they were in

some respects, and he is not the only young man who has taken the risk in

the attempt to acquire riches and who has argued in the same way. The

number of those who are tempted to do so will diminish when it is shown

that the successfully dishonest person is as much condemned by the opinion

of those whose society he seeks as the failure is condemned by the law.

Men young and old go wrong in the endeavour to make a show. They want

position and are willing to pay for it even at the expense of others;

indeed, there are many who spend as much effort and energy in intriguing

to get a position they could not fill as, if properly applied, would

enable them to qualify for it. Some want to be social leaders, and exceed

the limits of their income in the attempt. So long as they merely get into

debt their creditors are the losers, but there are limits to credit and

their situation may offer them facilities for peculation. The intention is

to repay the money; but the honourable intention may be out of their power

to execute, and the criminal act brings them to disgrace and ruin. In all

cases where the process has gone on for years without discovery, the

offender is found to be firmly persuaded that he is rather an ill-used

person, and that if he were only allowed time he would be quite able to

show a balance on his side of the account. This suggests the reflection

that his conduct must have been often under review by himself, and a

wonder as to how long he has taken to twist his mind to a belief in his

own integrity in face of the facts; yet it is only some such belief that

has enabled him to continue his defalcations. It is sometimes matter for

surprise to the public that men who have continued to embezzle funds for

years should have appeared so respectable; but they are not acting a part;

they have convinced themselves of their uprightness through it all, and

that is a very important step towards convincing others.

Even the Churches are not free from the imputation of making the end

justify the means; and with lectures against gambling they sometimes run

lotteries to obtain funds. This does not show bigotry against gambling,

but it can hardly help to drive home the objection to the vice. Example is

worse than precept in these cases.

The Press, which reaches a wider audience than the pulpit, is becoming

more a means of making money for its proprietors than a medium for the

formation of reasoned opinion; and some papers have organised sweepstakes

under the thinnest disguise. As for betting, there are numerous papers

that depend on it for their profits. Workmen and women pore over the

betting news and run into debt to back a horse. The misery that many

entail on themselves and their dependents by this conduct is widespread,

and efforts have been made to check it, but it does not seem to be

diminishing. As a rule it is safe to assume that people do not bet with

the intention of losing, but with the hope of winning. It is not harmless

excitement they seek; it is money they want; and they argue that they are

doing nothing different from what is done by wealthier people on the Stock

Exchange. They know as little about horses as those who speculated in

rubber knew about that substance; and they have no interest in improving

the breed. They want to be rich without working, and they see that some

men manage it. The losers are forgotten; and what do they matter anyway if

_we_ win?

This spirit of selfishness and greed is not confined to the gambler,

though it shows itself nakedly in his pursuit; and before it can be

exorcised a better conception of our duty to each other will require to

be attained. Meanwhile it is a small thing to prosecute bookmakers and

those who deal with them, if the higher forms of gambling are left

untouched. The poor cannot afford to gamble and must be protected from

themselves; but can anybody afford to gamble? Can the State afford to

allow them to set such an example? The whole evil has been dealt with in a

peddling spirit. The bookmakers stand to win, whoever may lose, but they

are not the people who gain most. They are not an influential class,

however. If the newspapers were prohibited from publishing betting news

the machinery for the gamble would fall to pieces; but if this were

attempted there would be a howl, for they are not without influence. So

there are difficulties. There always are difficulties when influential

people have to be dealt with; and it is much easier to hit a little man

than a big one--but the profit is less. I do not say that there are not

those who gamble for the sake of the excitement, but that these do not

come to prison as a result. The man who does run grave risk of landing

there is he who gambles for the money that he may win but that he usually

does lose.

The desire to shine among others is at the root of much of the foolish and

criminal conduct of many men and women. It is not necessarily an evil

desire, but the methods adopted to secure admiration may result in evil.

There is much talk of the dignity of labour, side by side with the worship

of money. If people draw the conclusion that the dignity of labour means

that one man should work that another may spend, they are likely to make

an effort to escape the dignity. They hear of the blessings of poverty,

but they see that among them are not comfort and social consequence; and

in so far as they prefer these they will let anybody else have the

blessings. To admit that some must be poor if others are rich is not to

accept the poor man's lot for oneself. So long as honest work is only

given formal praise and poverty implies practical hardship, while the

possession of money is allowed to create a presumption in favour of a man,

there will be those who will seek to get it by any means in their power.

If we paid the homage to poverty that is given to wealth we might

reasonably expect to find these people content to be poor; but while there

is no likelihood of that being done, we may as well face the fact that our

social inequalities result in the commission of crimes against property

among a proportion of those who have a chance of helping themselves

thereby. The great mass of men and women--rich and poor--do keep free from

grave offences, living their lives quietly and discharging their duties as

citizens according to their light and their ability; but these false

ideals stimulate many to the commission of crime. It is well, therefore,

to remind ourselves and others that ultimately a man is judged not by what

he has but by what he is, and to recognise that a man is foolish if he

sacrifices his life and dwarfs his personal development for any social

advantage whatever.

The conditions which engender crime may be greatly modified and in many

cases may be destroyed by political action. Crime is largely a concomitant

of city life, as we have it. To live properly people need room, and so

long as the present congestion exists all our efforts can at best palliate

the evils which infest and infect us. We may regulate the sale of drink in

order to prevent drunkenness; we may classify our poor and attempt to

relieve their poverty; but drink and poverty are factors which remain

comparatively inactive in the causation of crime, except where men are

packed together to the degree in which we see them. Let our cities

continue to be hemmed in and built in the air instead of being spread over

the earth, and we shall require additional sanitary regulations to combat

disease and more police laws to cope with crime, while the numbers in our

institutions will increase.

The city is the product of our industrial pursuits and the methods by

which they are followed; but the city as it exists is no more necessary to

the life of the community than the city before the day of Public Health

Acts was a necessary part of our civilisation. Men could live conveniently

near each other and work at the same occupation, at least as efficiently,

if they had room, as is possible under the cramping conditions that exist

at present. Man's life ought to be something more than his work; and there

will be more who work to live when there are not so many who merely live

to work. Reform your cities; or rather see that men are not allowed for

their private interests or pleasures to "do what they like with their own"

in defiance of the public welfare, and the cities will reform themselves.

The tenants of the crowded districts are hustled by the law, which in some

cases they offend from sheer inability to do otherwise. When those who

make a profit by the existing conditions of affairs are as summarily dealt

with there will be a possibility of improvement. There are some landlords

who assume the supervision of their property and of their tenants, but

others are merely rent collectors; and their carelessness provides

opportunity for the criminal classes to hide themselves. So long as the

law allows men to make a profit by denying others access to the land

except on payment of whatever ransom they choose to exact, the cities will

remain crowded and the country will become depopulated. When the landlord

is made to pay if he will not let his land be put to its most profitable

use, there will be less inducement for him to withhold it for a time in

the hope of realising a famine price from the needs of the community. It

is poor policy to punish people for the results of the strain to which

they are subject while those who profit by the cause are left alone.

But political action is slow and political parties are--what they are. To

most of us a change of Government means that Lord This is replaced by Mr.

That; probably relatives, and almost invariably belonging to the same

caste; none of them particularly hasty in applying the remedies in which

they believe--for when it comes to doing things instead of talking about

them a great deal more depends on sentimental impressions, the result of

friendly contact, than on intellectual opinions and political theories.

Politicians are like other people; their imagination can more readily

picture the result of action as it affects their own friends than as it

affects those of another social class. Those who have a vested interest in

the present conditions of things may personally suffer by any remedial

change; and though there are many who are magnanimous enough to place the

public gain before all else, there are far more who honestly cannot see

that any measure whereby they would suffer a private loss can possibly be

a public gain. They are often very estimable persons, and knowledge of

that fact paralyses the action of their friends who are politically

opposed to them.

It would be so much more easy to remedy evils if those who profited by

their existence were only ill-natured and grossly selfish people; but when

they are kindly and courteous it is a pity to push them. Besides, they are

often widows and orphans; for there is a remarkably high rate of mortality

among the husbands and fathers of people who have money invested in land

and in breweries. There are other widows and orphans, however, who have no

intimate friends in Parliament, and whose condition cannot appeal so

powerfully to the imagination of Ministers because they belong to another

class. The trouble is that the measures that would aid one set of widows

and orphans would hurt the other; and even when legislation is passed its

action is delayed out of tenderness to existing interests.

There are many men in every Parliament who are anxious to remedy the bad

conditions they see around them, and they are not confined to any side of

the House; but there is no popularly elected body in the country where the

private member has so little power. In a Town or County Council he has a

vote in the election of the executive, and if he is not pleased with the

conduct of those whom he helps to office he can let them know the fact

pretty effectively. The Member of Parliament finds the Government formed

without any consultation with him on the subject, and if he belongs to the

same political party it is disloyalty for him to criticise Ministers

unfavourably. He is, however, allowed to praise and defend them, and this

usually keeps him tolerably busy. For the rest, he must never vote against

them except on a subject that they count of little importance and on an

occasion where they are quite sure of having a majority without him. He

must keep his own side in, no matter how much he disapproves of their

conduct of business; and he must recognise in practice that the men who

lead are the party. The people who sent him there may replace him at the

first opportunity, but he will have the consolatory reflection that if the

other side has got in it is only to behave in the same way. Some other

members of the families whose hereditary genius for governing the country

has made us the great nation we are will fill the posts their relatives

have vacated; and the electors will continue to have the shadow of

representative government while the substance remains with their betters.

Whatever the laws may be, much will depend on their administration. The

more the Parliament is occupied in discussing legislation the less

attention can it pay to administration. The real executive power thus

passes into the hands of the permanent officials; and the tendency is that

they should direct, as well as carry out, policy. As the public

departments extend their activities they are brought more closely into

contact, and it may be into conflict, with the lives of the citizens; and

it is all the more necessary that the powers given to them should be

exercised in consonance with the views of the representatives of the

public, or the public servant may become the master of those he serves. A

man may be both able and zealous, but if his ability and zeal are employed

in the wrong direction he is a greater danger than a stupid and lazy man

would be; yet if he is not guided and directed in the path he ought to go

he can hardly be blamed for following his own judgment.

The only security that public departments will act in accordance with

public opinion lies in their intimate supervision by representatives of

the public. At present it is notorious that only a nominal supervision

exists, and this is bad for everybody concerned; bad for the Member of

Parliament, for his constituents will not separate administration to which

they may object from legislation which they may approve, nor his votes

from the acts of the departments; bad for the officials, for the desire

for power grows with its use, and the heads are in peril of confusing

their will with the public interest and their prejudices with the good of

the service, while their subordinates will be tempted to a servility that

is fatal to faithful discharge of duty, if they get the idea that their

comfort and their promotion depend without appeal on their chief; bad for

the public, for it is a poor exchange to overthrow the tyranny of an

arbitrary monarch and to live under the unchecked dominion of a Board.

This condition of things may seem far off yet to many, but it has arrived

already so far as some of the poor are concerned, for they are hurried and

worried and prosecuted by zealous officials for doing things they cannot

avoid doing; and for my part I do not believe that that is in accordance

with public opinion, though I do not attribute blame to the officials

concerned, who are only acting according to their light.

Where there are an enlightened public opinion and a real public interest

in affairs it is better for all concerned; and though Parliament may fail

to deal with those whose interests conflict with public needs, there are

many things that private citizens can do to mitigate existing evils, even

although there were no new legislation passed. Officials could be aided

and encouraged to aim at the prevention of wrongdoing rather than at the

punishment of the wrongdoer. We might set about to see that more

opportunities of reasonable recreation are provided, and to find out

wherein and why our present provision fails. Employers might take a

greater interest in their workers, and if they sought to learn from them

would be in a better position to teach them. The Churchman might easily

come more closely into contact with some less fortunate member of the

congregation and give kindly aid and counsel; or receive it, perhaps,

where he would least expect it. All of us might see, if we looked a little

less to our own business and pleasure, that there are many around whose

struggle is a sore one, and whom a friendly interest would help far more

than any gift. Many there are who, although neither able to pay nor to

pray, could do much good and gain much by personal service. It would help

as nothing else can to a better understanding between us and our

neighbours, and a more acute apprehension of the evil surroundings in

which so many are compelled to live.

Men go wrong and keep wrong for the lack of good fellowship; and the

conditions which keep them struggling in a crowd hinder the fraternising

of man with man. The man who is comfortably seated in a theatre has time

and opportunity to look around him and to observe his neighbours if he

choose. He will not be uncivil to them, even if he take no interest in

them. Put him in a crush at the door, and in the effort to get into the

place or out of the crowd, he will not have the chance, even if he had the

will, to keep his elbow out of the ribs of his neighbour, though that

neighbour were his dearest friend. How many are crowded together

struggling to get out of the welter and too busy to take much interest in

others! I do not forget that there are many good people who are interested

in the poor and fallen; but it is those who are in danger of falling that

get least attention. There are mothers who are struggling on to save their

sons from the ruin to which they are tending, and children who are trying

to redeem their wayward parents; in face of all failures striving with a

patience as admirable as it seems futile; but there are few to help. Let a

father turn his daughter out for her misconduct and shirk his duty as a

parent; let her go headlong to the gutter; and when she is sufficiently

stained there will be rescuers tripping over each other to aid her. The

pity is that so often they should be more interested in trying to make

people conform to their ideals than in helping men and women for their own

sake. Most of us have not been so brilliantly successful in ordering our

own lives that we are justified in directing the lives of others; but by

interest in those who are having a harder struggle to live than has fallen

to our lot we may not only encourage the individual to better effort, but

we shall see more clearly what needs to be done by us as a community, not

to make men, but to remove those conditions which tend to enslave them.

CHAPTER V

AGE AND CRIME

The inexperience of youth--The training of boys--Case of a truant--

Another case--Intractability--The foolishness of parent and teacher--

The absence of mutual understanding--Recreation--Malicious mischief

and petty theft--The cause thereof--The need for instructing parents--

Pernicious literature--The other kind--The modern Dick Turpin--The boy

as he leaves school--Amusements--Repression--Blind-alley occupations--

The Adolescent--Physical strain of many occupations--Unequal physical

and mental development--The street trader--Hooliganism--Knowledge and

experience--The perils of youth--Old age.

The great majority of those who enter prison for the first time are young

persons, and in many cases they do not show any great degree of moral

turpitude. "As the twig is bent the tree is inclined," and what might have

been merely a phase of recklessness or a passing mood of lawlessness is

sometimes made a fixed habit as a result of the way it has been treated.

The younger the person the narrower is his experience, other things being

equal. In making the experiments which give experience we may hurt

ourselves and others.

There are some who are content to accept the statements of others and to

yield an easy obedience to those over them, but in early life the number

is not great; and where the elders are too busy to pay much attention to

the young there is a greater need for the boy to find out things for

himself. Rules of life as they are presented to many boys consist of a

series of prohibitions, and it is not always the worst boys who kick

against them. Wild and intractable boys do not always grow up into bad

citizens; but if they are taken in hand by the penal machinery of the

State there is not much chance for them. They may imitate the showy vices

of their elders not because they are vices, but because they are showy.

They do not admire the wrong things more frequently than grown-up people,

but they show their admiration in a way that is sometimes awkward both for

them and for us. They are misunderstood and condemned when they persist in

going their own way, although the cause of their vagaries may be simple

enough if an attempt were made to find it. X 20 was a boy of ten, the son

of a man in a comfortable position who had lost all control over him. The

boy had run away from school, and had left his home more than once and

gone wandering in the country. His father had coaxed and beaten him

alternately without any beneficial result. His schoolmaster informed me

that the boy was usually quiet and tractable, but did not take much

interest in most of his work. He was not of defective intellect and he

would not apply himself to some parts of the school course. He was fond of

animals. I found him suspicious and reserved; but as he had been told that

he was to be seen by the prison doctor, and as he evidently had expected

to be confronted with an animated bogey-man, there was nothing surprising

in that. He answered questions in monosyllables or not at all, but he

promised that he would come himself to my house and see some things which

I thought might interest him. I would not allow him to be brought to me,

though he lived some three miles off, and he kept his promise and came.

With the aid of some other juveniles he was made to feel at ease, and I

found he could tell a good deal about animals, such as tadpoles and

frogs, and that he had a real interest in such things. He came back

several times, and in an indirect way he was advised of the danger of

doing what his father had objected to; but it was perfectly evident that

his conduct had been the result of the way in which he had been treated,

and fear had caused him to commit at least some of the actions that had

given cause for complaint. Those who had charge of him were more in need

of direction than he was; for they had acted on the assumption that they

understood what was best for him, whereas the fact was that they had not

the faintest idea of the disposition of the boy, and were simply driving

him to extremities in their efforts to keep him right. They were

repressing instead of directing his tendencies, with disastrous

consequences. His schoolmaster understood; and he was permitted to act on

his knowledge with satisfactory results, the parents never having thought

that he was as likely to be able to instruct them as to teach their boy.

In this case the boy was fortunate beyond many others in respect that his

parents were able to seek and obtain advice when they became alarmed

because of his behaviour. They were in a position which enabled them to

give him the necessary attention when they learned what was required.

X 21 was a boy who had developed the habit of playing truant from school

and had come under the observation of the attendance officer. He was in

danger of becoming an associate of city undesirables. His mother was a

decent widow who had to support him and herself by casual labour. She was

obliged to go out in the mornings to clean offices and he was left to

himself. She was loth to have him sent to an Industrial School, but she

preferred that that should be done to running the risk of having him get

into the hands of vicious persons. There was no question as to her

rectitude, and as little of her ability to look after him when she had the

power; but she could not be out working and at the same time be

discharging her maternal duties in guiding him. So he had to be sent to

the institution. In a case like this--and they are not uncommon--it would

be far better to free the woman from the need of leaving her child and see

that she looked after him. She has a greater personal interest in him than

any official person can have and it need cost no more; while the gain in

character cannot be measured in terms of cash. The mother's burden is

greater than she can bear, and that is a reason for relieving it; but it

is no reason for breaking up the family and loosening the tie between

parent and child, and the practice cannot even be justified on the score

of expense.

Boys get the name of being bad when they are intractable, but bad boys are

fewer than bad men. There are too many people who are driven to assume

that they know what is best for the boy--or the man--and that without

making any attempt to understand those for whom they prescribe. When a boy

rebels against the line of action laid down for him it is taken as

evidence of his wickedness, though it may only show his good sense. He may

be doing the wrong thing with a purpose more reasonable than that of his

mentor, but he is likely to find that his intention will meet with no

sympathetic consideration even if he reveals it, and his action will meet

with punishment if he owns it. He is encouraged to lie in the hope of

pleasing his master, and when he is found out his iniquity is magnified.

Boys are far more given to the attempt to find the point of view of those

who are in authority over them than grown-up people are to find the

standpoint of the boy; and children will often show a deeper knowledge of

their parents than the parents have of them. If instead of assuming

knowledge and showing ignorance parents would try to understand, there

would be less disposition to rule the young by general prohibitions and a

freer hand given to them in the choice of their pursuits. Left alone, the

child will show its bent; it is not for the parent to thwart its

aptitudes, but to direct them into useful channels. Many are made

miserable by being set to books, and others are made equally wretched by

physical drill. Every year brings forth its own fad. The adult may keep

free from its tyranny to some extent, but let it find a place in some code

or other and every juvenile runs a grave risk of being subjected to it,

because someone in authority who knows nothing about him or his needs has

so ordered it.

The boy is kept at school for nearly as many hours in the week as many men

work, and when he is set free from its restraint he runs wild--if he is

not too tired, or if he has not been set tasks which cause him to work

overtime at home. He gets into mischief, and is denounced for his misdeeds

and the trouble and annoyance he causes; but boys are not more mischievous

than they were. There are few adults who have not been a great nuisance to

others in their own early days, but too many of them seem to have

forgotten all about that. By all means let the boy who has played some

mischievous prank be restrained and corrected, but in choosing the method

it might not be a bad plan to remember the exploits of a boy who was no

better in his day than the culprit is, if no worse. When we show that we

recognise a clear distinction between cramming juveniles with knowledge

and educating them, they will learn at the school how to amuse themselves

without annoying others. At present they are in this respect left mainly

to their own devices, and in very few cases is there any serious ground of

complaint against them. Considering their imitative tendencies and the

incitements many of them have towards wrongdoing, it is wonderful how few

go far astray.

When a boy is sent to a reformatory he has opportunities given him for

play, and the importance of providing different forms of recreation for

him is not ignored. This is by some called "putting a premium on

wrongdoing," and yet in spite of the reward there are few boys who

deliberately adopt a course of law-breaking in order to have the

advantages of life in that institution. Either they are too stupid or

there is not such a bias on their part towards evil as some would have us

suppose. The recreation which forms part of the means adopted to reform

the boy who has transgressed might conceivably prevent transgressions if

it were placed within the reach of others, especially as the association

of boys whose common interest is that they have all been before the courts

is not likely to make for their improvement.

Whatever its defects as an educational institution, the school has this to

its credit, that a better standard of conduct is maintained than could be

acquired by many of the scholars if they were left to grow up under the

conditions that obtain in their homes. Now and then someone does a

particularly shocking thing, and until quite lately when this occurred the

offender was liable to be brought to the police court. Now there is a

special court for dealing with children, but as there is no change in the

judge or in the officials before whom the child appears, all that has

been gained is his separation from older offenders. This is something to

be thankful for, but it is a minor mercy compared with what ought to be

done. He is more a subject for treatment by those whose experience enables

them to understand children than a "case" to be tried by a magistrate

whose traditions are those of the criminal courts.

Most of the charges are acts of malicious mischief or petty thefts. The

offenders have got out of parental control or have eluded the supervision

of their parents. In some cases the parents are culpably careless or

negligent, taking little interest in their children and making their home

worse than it need be. They spoil the child without sparing the rod, for

the boy is often hammered without mercy when he annoys them. He keeps out

of their way and may fall into bad company and bad habits. Most of these

boys show evidences of neglect in their appearance; but they are not,

though they may become, desperadoes. Others go astray not so much from the

culpable neglect of their parents as because, with the best will in the

world to guide the boy, the parent is either incompetent to do so from

sheer stupidity, or, more frequently, from being too busily engaged in

trying to make a livelihood to have the necessary time to give to his

care. A smaller number are the children of parents who are quite competent

to look after them, but who have failed to keep themselves in sufficiently

close touch with them--which is a more difficult thing to do than it

seems.

At school the boy may be under good guardianship, but he is away from his

mother during the greater part of the day, and he may pick up companions

who will not exercise the most favourable effect on him. They need not be

bad, but they may be bad for him. Out of school hours he seeks for

recreation, and in the effort to obtain amusement of a special kind he may

take what does not belong to him, and be found out and complained of; or

not be found out and continue the practice. It is all very simple and not

at all uncommon--except in the result. Honesty has to be learned, and some

people never learn it; though they never commit crimes. There is a

difference between being honest and being dishonest within the law. There

are few women or men who have not at some time or other "dishonestly

appropriated property," though they did not express it that way when they

abstracted sweets well knowing the penalty if caught. Some boys do not

steal sweets, but they steal money to buy sweets; and in the same way

others steal money to pay the price of admission to a place of

entertainment. Sometimes they break into shops to steal, and they are then

young criminals; but this rarely happens when the necessary money can be

picked up at home.

In a young person the desire for pleasure is naturally too strong to be at

first repressed by a sense of the rights of property. He does not need to

be taught that sweets please the palate or shows delight the eye; but he

requires to learn that in the long run honesty is the best policy.

Children are not likely to steal if they can get what they want without

stealing, but they may help themselves when they can if they are subjected

to unreasonable prohibitions. Even men and women have been driven far out

of the right path through attempts to repress their desires for harmless

amusement and to make them take life solemnly.

The dishonesty of children arises not so much from a perverted nature as

from an inability to appreciate the importance of honesty. It is a phase

that passes as their experience of the world grows. They can be trained

out of it, but attempts to knock it out of them are as likely to knock it

into them.

There ought to be provision made whereby parents could be advised,

admonished, and assisted in dealing with children whom they have been

unable to control. Our Children Courts are not designed with this end in

view, and I doubt whether it makes much difference to the child who is

sent to one of our institutions that he was sent from one room in the

courthouse rather than from another. Our money would be better spent in

assisting parents who have the will to do well by their children, but who

have not the power, than in taking the children away from them. As for

those who are careless of their children, they should be dealt with for

their carelessness. In many cases the apathy they show is a consequence of

our methods. If, instead of taking the children away from those who

neglect them, we trained and assisted them, we should have better parents

and better children. If carelessness and callousness were then shown by

the parents we could proceed with justice to deal with them for culpable

misconduct. At present we are not in a position to do so, since we are not

prepared to help them to discharge their responsibilities. We make it

easier for them to neglect than to care for their offspring, and if they

lose control of them to a sufficient extent we free them from the burden

altogether.

The spirit of enquiry and experiment leads many boys into mischief, and

some of their malicious acts are the result of it. Men too readily forget

that the boy sees things in a quite different light and relationship from

them. Some of the housebreaking adventures that look so bad on a

charge-sheet appear quite different when the story is told from the boy's

standpoint, and they do not always show such depravity as one would

expect. Some boys are always seeking adventures and becoming absorbed in

them; others are content to read about deeds of daring, and the works they

favour are often crude enough. Occasionally one is taken with a mask and

pistol in his possession attempting to rob in the highway, and then we

have homilies on the evils of pernicious literature of the "Dick Turpin"

sort, which might be more convincing if the homilists were themselves free

from connection with stuff that is worse.

The adventurous boys are not those who read much of any kind of book; they

are too busy living. The "Blood" is devoured more by the boy who dreams

rather than acts; but of the thousands of men who as boys read prohibited

books and enjoyed them, few are likely to spend much time on the equally

sensational publications that circulate in millions among adults. On the

whole, the boy will not get a more distorted view of life from the highly

coloured papers he reads than he would obtain from some of the newspapers;

and when he is being condemned for his preference for "Bloods," it would

not be amiss to remember that these productions have never set themselves

to foment in his mind feelings of ill-will against people of other lands.

It is not the boys but the adults who are raised by the papers they read

into hysterical outbursts of senseless rage or equally senseless fear now

of one and now of another continental power; and if "literature" is to be

judged by its apparent effect, then these papers are more pernicious than

the "Bloods," which the boy prefers to the books which are designed for

his moral instruction. There is no comparison between his highwayman--a

boy's highwayman who robbed the rich and gave to the poor, to the

inversion of all social order--and the industrious apprentice who married

his master's daughter, poor girl. The hero is a hero to him because he

dares all risks, is true to his friend, is gallant and generous, and faces

death with a brave heart. If he does the wrong thing he does it in the

right way, and it is not the thief but the man who gains the boy's

admiration. As for the industrious one, even a boy knows that there are

not enough masters' daughters to go round; and if he revolts at the

selfishness of the gospel of getting on, he is right in rejecting such a

false basis of morals. We know that the boy's Robin Hood or Dick Turpin

never existed in fact; but if they exist in his fancy?

To those who denounce them these papers are only a glorification of theft

of a particular kind, but there is no likelihood of its ever coming into

vogue again. Dick Turpin is now a company-promoter and his cheques are in

demand by Churches and political parties. He does not risk his life now,

and we are very glad to be taken into his confidence; but the boy has not

found that out yet. His books may be ill-chosen, but wholesale

condemnation will not mend the matter; and in books, as in other things,

it is impossible to tell what is good for the boy till something more is

known about him than that he is a boy. When he reads it is safe to assume

that he does so because he feels some need is supplied thereby. When its

nature is discovered a step will be made towards its better supply, but

not before. To take the boy away from the book he likes to a standard

author on the ground that it is better for him, is to run the risk of

creating in him a permanent dislike for the books chosen.

In the city most of the boys leave school when they are fourteen years of

age, and entering on new pursuits are subject to fresh temptations. The

employment they obtain is largely a matter of chance, but whatever it may

be, they are less likely to go wrong when engaged at it than when free

from it. Their playground is the street, and there is no adequate

provision made for their recreation. On payment of a small sum they may

obtain admission to the music-halls or the picture-shows, and these latter

are largely patronised by boys. That they serve a useful purpose is

undeniable, and if the entertainment they offer may not be all that is

desirable, it is practically all that is to be had by many. Since it

cannot be had freely there are temptations to find the means, and the boy

amongst his neighbours who is worst off in respect of money is hardest

pressed. It is deplorable that some should yield to the temptation to

obtain money dishonestly, but it is idle to ignore the condition of things

and neglect to provide reasonable opportunities for the recreation which

is required after work done. There are private organisations taking the

matter in hand, but their appeal, though wide, is, and must be, sectional.

Boys' Brigades in connection with the Churches can only reach a minority

of the juvenile population, and the same statement applies to Boy Scouts.

There are those who object on principle to both organisations on the

ground that they foster the military spirit, but the militarists

themselves do not appear to share this view. Boys like to play soldiers,

but when they get sense they drop that; and meantime they play, greatly to

their advantage. As for the Scouts, they seem to represent an improved

edition of "follow my leader," and their uniform prevents their being

interfered with while they play. It does none of them any harm to believe

that they are saving their country so long as they are really saving

themselves, and no greater number of them develop a taste for a soldier's

career later in life than enlist from among those who have never belonged

to one or other of the organisations. It may be that the intention of some

of the promoters is to feed the army, but that is to leave out of account

the boys themselves and the development of their minds. Whatever the

intention, the result is good in so far as the interest of the game keeps

the boys in healthy exercise.

The most popular of all the forms of public recreation is the football

match. Week after week the grounds are filled by tens of thousands of

spectators who find in the game they witness not only amusement for the

time, but matter of conversation and interest which outlasts the day.

Young and old they are mostly partisans, and though their conduct may

leave much to be desired, that should not distract the observer's

attention from the main fact, which is that they are enabled to find a

real interest in something which is at least harmless. There are those who

lament the fact that the spectators are not players, and who condemn them

for being merely vicarious partakers in the game. As a matter of fact, a

good many of them have played, and some of them have got into trouble for

playing. A very little acquaintance with the facts would make the

Jeremiahs aware that there is no public provision made for allowing very

many to play; that a great many who enjoy seeing others play have no time

when free from labour to practise much themselves, even if a field were

near; and that if any large number began to play football in the only

spaces open to them--the streets--there would be no room to get about. It

is not a bad plan to consider men's limitations before condemning their

pursuits, but it is too little practised.

The football match is a strong counter-attraction to the public-house or

the aimless wander through the streets, and the football field would be an

admirable playground for many of the young, as they would readily admit;

but those who want them to play rather than to look on are never very

prominent when an attempt is made to find them the means. Some of them use

the public streets for a practice ground, greatly to the annoyance of the

passengers and sometimes to their danger. The nuisance has to be stopped

and the usual method is adopted; the universal panacea for all evils is

applied, and the culprits are taken in charge by the police. A small fine

is inflicted, with the alternative of imprisonment if the lads are over

sixteen. I have seen a batch of them brought to jail because their fines

had not been paid. All that had been done was to ensure that these boys

would not play football in the streets for several days; yet the cost of

their escort and board during that time, if expended on the hire of

ground, would have provided them and others with opportunities of play for

six months; and they do not play in the streets for choice--at least it

has not been demonstrated that they do.

Alike in work and in play the boy's pursuits are largely matter of chance.

He has to seek employment and is generally ready to take anything that

presents itself. Some of the situations that offer most attractions to him

are of such a character as to prevent him from applying himself to work at

which in his manhood he could earn a living. In the beginning he may earn

more money at these occupations than he would if apprenticed to some

skilled handicraft, but before many years he is cast off by his employers,

unsettled by his work, and less fit and less inclined to spend time in

qualifying either for a trade or a profession. There are far too many

blind-alley occupations open to boys, and they should be closed to those

entering on industrial life. There are many men who by advancing years are

shut out from the work they have been accustomed to do; they are leaving

the ranks of the skilled workers, and they could do the work at present

done by lads with advantage to the community, since there would not then

be numbers of young persons spending the most receptive years of their

life in occupations by which they cannot hope to earn their living when

they reach manhood.

As the boy grows to adolescence he tends to get further from the control

of his parents. His growth implies change in him, and he may develop new

needs and new desires without the power necessary to control them. It is

well recognised that in adolescence there is a special liability to

physical or mental breakdown, and short of this it is no uncommon thing

for young people to show a degree of instability that alarms their friends

for their safety. Yet in youth there are very many employed at occupations

that are in a marked degree physically exhausting. They are permitted to

take far too much out of their body, and though they may thereby develop

their muscles, they are almost certain to hinder the healthy development

of their minds. The State has interfered with some trades and prohibited

certain processes of manufacture on the ground that the chemicals employed

affect the health of the workers in an injurious way; and it has laid down

regulations for the proper sanitation of workshops. It will yet have to

consider the advisability of limiting the amount of physical energy that a

man may be allowed regularly to expend in work, and the sooner it begins

with lads the better for everybody. At present we hear of the large wage

earned by workmen in certain trades and their notorious improvidence. To

anyone with eyes to see their improvidence is not more evident in the way

they spend their wages than in the way they earn them; for their lives,

industrially, are short, and they are too often physical wrecks in middle

life, partly from the undue fatigue to which they have been subjected and

partly from vices they have contracted in the attempt to stimulate

themselves when fatigued. We only hear of the vices, but their industry is

equally foolish if it implies excessive expenditure of vitality; and no

income in money would justify the cost at which it is obtained.

Time and again there come before the courts young men who are neither

insane nor weak-minded, but whose mental powers have been stunted and

twisted by the conditions to which they have been subjected. They are not

there for committing offences against property, but for startling the

district by some atrocious assault; and there is this point of similarity

about them all, that they have been engaged at work which was too heavy

for them, and when set free from it have used the strength of a man

incited by a man's passions to do things that only a boy would conceive.

Equal mental and physical development is rare in youth, and in practice

everybody recognises the fact. There are some big lads who are young for

their years and little ones who are preternaturally old-fashioned; but

time mends the matter, and a balance is established if something does not

occur to mar the youth meanwhile. Placed under conditions that favour the

development of muscle and prevent the development of the mental powers,

young men cannot be wholly blamed if now and then they shock us by showing

the natural result of such a course of training.

About the streets of the city there are lads who take care not to work

too hard. Many of them are the children of parents who have never

exercised much care over them, and in some cases they have been sent out

with a few coppers to purchase papers and sell them; or to beg. They have

learnt to like the life and have deliberately adopted it themselves in

preference to other employment. They come to prison sooner or later if

they escape the reformatory; and sometimes after they have been there.

There is only one opinion possible among those who know the facts about

the street-trading they carry on--that it should be abolished; and the

only real difficulty is that its abolition ought in justice to be

accompanied by some provision for the employment of those young persons

who have been engaged in it. The newsboy is a great convenience to the

public and the newspaper owners. He sometimes is an important aid to his

family, for in a proportion of cases the parent is as respectable and as

anxious to take care of the boy as anyone could wish. It is her poverty

that compels her to use his services. But the risks to the boys outweigh

all advantages. The poverty that compels a mother to subject her child to

such risks ought to be relieved; the public and the newspaper proprietors

would find other means of obtaining and delivering the news if they

realised the cost of the present condition of things; and a nursery of

criminals would be removed.

In most cases the parents require more attention than the boys, and

especially the female parent. The children are her peculiar care, and if

she takes to drink the results to them are serious. Whatever differences

of opinion there may be as to the hereditary transmission of intemperance,

there is no room for doubt as to its effect in causing the mother who is

subject to it to become an inefficient guardian of her child. Her family

suffers from neglect, and they are driven f on the street to pick up a

living as best they may. When they can they may take lodgings in a

"Model," and in any case they learn from others how they may live with

most license. They are nearly all gamblers, and honesty is not a virtue

that they find profitable.

The fact is that there could be no worse school for a boy than the street

and no worse companions than those who live there, not because they are

gifted with any additional dose of original sin; they are no worse

mentally, morally, or physically than many others; but because a tradition

has grown up among them that is anti-social in its character, and like the

rest of folks they conform to the conditions in which they find

themselves. When they loaf or steal they do it because they believe that

it is easier and more profitable than working in a regular way. Show them

that they are wrong and they will modify their opinion and their action;

but that is precisely what is not done. They have heard all you can tell

them, and they adhere to their own standpoint not because they are more

stupid than their teachers, but because they see another side to the

story. When they are imprisoned they are not generally intractable, and

they do what they are told because it pays better to obey than to rebel;

but outside, though they recognise the inconvenience and risk of being

caught, they have a not unjustifiable belief in their power to dodge those

who are watching them, and at the worst they prefer to serve a term of

imprisonment once in a while rather than exchange their way of living for

another. It is just as well to recognise the fact that they do not follow

their objectionable courses because it is difficult to do so. When they

are dishonest it is usually because they believe it is easier for them to

pick up a livelihood that way than by any honest occupation within their

reach or experience. Their opinion may be right or wrong, but it is formed

on a knowledge of a different set of facts from that within the ken of

those who judge them; and it does not help to a better understanding of

them that we should assume that they are greater fools than we are, though

we do not share their follies.

Now and then there are outbreaks of savage violence on the part of young

lads in the streets; acts which, apparently purposeless and certainly

cruel, shock the citizens and anger them. Then there is a cry for

vengeance; never an attempt to seek the causes of the trouble; and the

matter is forgotten when a few of the offenders have been given "exemplary

punishments." Exemplary punishments always repay examination, and

sometimes the hapless individual who is made the whipping-boy for others

has been rather cruelly treated; not that that seems to matter if the

offence complained of ceases, for it is taken as proof that the

authorities have done the right thing in making an example of him. The

assumption is one that never bore examination at any time, but it seldom

is examined.

When a crop of offences of a similar kind startles a district there may be

a common cause found if it is sought for; and when the offences cease

their cessation may be found to have some relation to that cause; but the

arrest and imprisonment of one here and there as examples have as little

relationship to the cessation of offences as prayer had in the stopping of

an epidemic of cholera. In the one case you have to break up the

association of offenders and destroy their spirit; in the other you have

to attend to your drains and your sanitation. The punishment and the

prayer in either case may assist in so far as they direct attention to the

need for right action. How then do these outbreaks originate, and what

causes them to cease? In the first place, they are not the work of

professional thieves, though these take advantage of them. They begin in

horseplay among the lads at the street corner. None of them may be

abnormally mischievous or wicked, but a crowd has a spirit of its own

which is different from that of its members. Everybody has seen dignified

citizens under the excitement of, say, an election, when they got the news

that the country had been saved in the way they desired, behaving in a

sufficiently ridiculous manner and inciting others to a like behaviour. If

they had received the news when at home it would at most have caused a

smile, but in a crowd one has stirred the other to do and say things that

neither would ordinarily do or say.

An orator may sway a crowd and utterly fail to move the members of it if

he spoke to them individually. The lads at the corner will do things when

they are together that none of them would think of doing if he were alone.

Not only does each incite the other, but all incite each one to action.

The horseplay is extended and indulged in by them at the expense of

passers-by, and to their annoyance. If it stops there no noise is heard

about "Hooliganism"; but if the lads, letting themselves loose, go further

and injure a respectable citizen there is complaint. The culprit is at

first frightened, but having done the thing he tries to make the most of

it, especially if he sees his companions rather admire his temerity. He

boasts of his daring and excites emulation. One tries to outdo another;

other "corners" hear about and imitate the desperadoes; the newspapers

take the matter up; and the place is in a state of terror. There is reason

for the terror, too; for in the process unoffending and peaceful citizens

have suffered serious injury. The professional criminal, who is quick to

take advantage of any chance, hangs on to the tails of the foolish lads,

and under cover of their depredations helps himself to what he can get.

Anything that gathers a crowd helps him, but he knows better than to

commit assaults of this purposeless kind himself. He has no objection to

rob the assaulted or the threatened and terrorised parties, however,

provided he can conceal himself. If he can get any of the lads who began

the proceedings to assist him, good and well; but in that case they may

find they have started on a new and criminal career. The loose cohesion

between the mischievous and the criminal elements in the crowd becomes

organised; and by this time there is a general demand on the part of the

citizens that somebody should be punished. Then the examples begin.

But the very fact that the outrages have been advertised, while it causes

their imitation at first, makes parents and employers enquire into the

conduct of their sons and their workers. The lads are kept in at night, or

they are otherwise separated from each other. When the association begins

to break up the process is not long before it is complete. Everyone who

leaves it is suspected of being a possible informer, and the dread of they

know not what--the most powerful kind of fear--invades their minds. The

conduct that seemed so laudable is now given up and the epidemic dies out.

To send one of the offenders to prison is simply to make him a martyr in

the eyes of his associates, who know that he is no worse than they were

and who sympathise with rather than abhor him. The real deterrent is the

action of the parents and employers who know the lads. They neither want

to get into trouble at home nor to lose their jobs. Those who are sent to

prison have often little to do with the matter, and their exemplary

punishment has less. Real hooliganism--the existence of young professional

thieves who are in the habit of committing brutal assaults and inflicting

injuries recklessly on their victims--is rare in Glasgow.

The young person is more likely to fall into error than his elders because

of his inexperience. Whatever the law may hold, no business man expects

the kind of service from a youth that he looks for from a man. The young

man may have more knowledge than his senior and more recent information on

many things, but only time can enable him to co-relate his knowledge. The

question whether a lad knows right from wrong is all that some people will

consider; which shows how little they know, if they really believe that

the answer will enable anyone to assess a man's responsibility. We are

taught "right and wrong" from our earliest years by way of principles to

guide us, but they are not always easy of application. The difference

between a young and an old man is one of experience. Practice has enabled

the one to use his knowledge in a way that the other has yet to learn. Our

conceptions of many things on which we have been given information

apparently full and accurate have been proved time and again to be quite

wrong; experience enables us to discount our anticipations, but it only

comes with years. In judging young people it is specially necessary to

bear in mind the fact that with all their apparent knowledge they may have

totally wrong conceptions of things, and that thus they have been misled.

On many occasions I have had to note the fact that a young man had

committed an atrocious crime; that he knew perfectly well it was wrong;

that it was not due to imperfect powers of control; that he had brooded

over and visualised it before the act; and that its accomplishment had

left him shocked beyond expression, for it was all so different from his

conception of it.

No punishment could intensify the shuddering horror with which these lads

regarded their own acts, "so different from what I thought it would be";

and yet in ordinary affairs we are well acquainted with the phenomenon.

Why we should lose sight of it when a crime has been committed and we are

seeking to unravel the causes is a mystery. Know right from wrong? Yes,

and conceive the whole matter wrongly. This state of mind is not peculiar

to the criminal, and may sometimes be present in those who take upon

themselves to judge and condemn him.

In early life a lad is not only more liable to go astray, but having

fallen it is more difficult for him to recover. He is more impressionable,

and the impression of his crime and of the way in which he has been

treated stands in his way. He has no record of experience behind it to

which his memory can turn and by which he can be helped to seek the right

road when he leaves prison. "Learn young, learn fair," is as true of crime

as of other things.

At the opposite end of the path of life a special cause of crime is

degeneration of the physical or mental powers. In the first case the man

may become destitute and forced into criminal courses in order to gain a

living. In the latter case he may develop tendencies and commit certain

offences that are quite at variance with his former conduct.

As a result of senile changes in body and mind some old men offend against

the law. When the condition is marked they are dealt with for it, but in

some cases it is only suspected and is not capable of proof. It is simply

a question of whether they should be sent to prison or to a lunatic

asylum.

CHAPTER VI

SEX AND CRIME

The position of woman--The posturing of men--Love and crime--Two cases

of theft from sexual attraction--The female thief--Case--

Blackmailing--Jealousy and crime--Two murder cases--Case of assault--

Fewer women than men are criminals--Their greater difficulty in

recovery--Young girls and sexual offences--Perils of girlhood--Wages

and conduct--Exotic standards of dress--Ignorance and wrongdoing--The

domestic servant--Her difficulties--Concealment of pregnancy cases--

The culprit and the father--Morals--The fallen woman--Bigamy.

For good or ill great changes have taken place, and more are likely to

occur, in the relative social and political positions of the sexes. Women

are excluded from political power on the ground of their sex, and by way

of opposing or of justifying this condition of matters everything but sex

is discussed. It has been shown that woman is as clever as man; pays her

rates at least as promptly; can work as hard and at as varied occupations;

is capable of outstripping him in learning; shows as much intelligence; is

more moral; and can sometimes be a greater nuisance to her neighbours. All

which may be a very good reason for giving her a vote, but does not alter

the fact that there is a great difference between the sexes. That may be

no reason for excluding her from a share in the direct election of

representatives to Parliament, but it is a fact that cannot be lost sight

of and which seems to be forgotten when it is not deliberately minimised

by both parties to the controversy. Man is something more than his brain,

and so is woman. Indeed, their thoughts and their acts are often the

outcome of the condition of their other organs; and the attraction of one

sex for the other disturbs most frequently the calculations of observers.

Among the primitives in our own country the principal subject of interest,

after their means of subsistence--and occasionally before even that--is

the opposite sex; and if one may judge by the books in greatest demand,

those whose opportunities are more varied are far from indifferent to the

same subject. The young man who is not stirred by desire to excite

admiration in some girl--perhaps in all girls--is an exceptional being; at

least he feels uncomfortable in their presence.

The love of attracting attention is very common, but while it causes men

to do many strange things to obtain praise from their own sex, it much

more frequently moves them to extraordinary actions in order to secure the

admiration of women. Whether men or women are most moved by this feeling

it is impossible to say, but the men are more likely to make fools of

themselves. Their present social position gives them greater opportunities

to do so; for the woman's training and traditions are against her openly

giving way to her feelings, and when she does so the result is apt to be

disastrous. It is the commonest thing in the world to see young people

posturing to attract the attention of those of the opposite sex, and their

feelings may blind them to the consequences of their conduct.

A too intense interest in anything else is fatal to business, and the rule

has no exception in favour of the amorous; so it is not uncommon for a lad

to lose his place through inattention to his work, the result of

preoccupation in his love affairs. In some social stations this condition

of mind may lead the lad into criminal courses. X 22 was an intelligent

lad who had drifted into crime and continued in it. He had not offended

against the law as a boy, though he had passed his early years in a part

of the town where the sights are appalling and the prevailing tone of

morals is low. He spent the later years of his boyhood in a suburban

village and went to work in that district. When he was about seventeen

there was an epidemic of "club dancings"; that is to say, places where a

number of young men, having hired a room and a fiddler, charged others a

small sum for admission to dance--girls being admitted free--and divided

the profits or the losses among themselves afterwards. The dancers were

usually the sons and daughters of respectable people, but their behaviour

after the dance was not innocent. The more ardent among them became

passionately addicted to the practice of attending such places and dropped

both work and reputation in the process. The scandal of the thing

ultimately became so great that under the pressure of public opinion the

"clubs" were discontinued. At one time they were many in number and spread

over a wide area. The young man of whom I speak was an enthusiastic

devotee and went far afield at times to seek his pleasure. Working from

early morning and dancing till late at night, it was morning again before

he got home. He could not possibly keep up both the work and the pleasure,

and the work had to go. He had to find money, and he got it dishonestly at

less fatigue than by work. This had its end and it finished him. After

being in prison he found the door of some of the clubs closed to him, but

there were others. He did not escape so readily now when he stole, being

known; and gradually he was shut out from the pleasures that had led him

astray and shut into the company of those who, like himself, had been in

prison. He was only one of a number whose downfall was attributed to

dancing; but he had not the slightest doubt that if the dancing had been

between those of the same sex it would never have led him off his feet. It

was the sexual element in the matter that attracted him.

In this case the man lost his regular employment through absorption in his

pursuit of women, but in many more cases the situation is forfeited

through dishonesty caused by the desire to make an impression on some girl

or to provide for her. X 23 was a lad of good character, quiet in his

manner, well educated, and employed in a position of trust. He was serious

and sober in his walk and conversation, and appeared likely in time to

become a pillar of the Church and a model citizen. He was attracted by a

girl who was of good reputation, and there was never any suggestion of

improper conduct on the part of either of them. She lost her situation

through no fault of her own, and he placed her in a house which he

furnished at the expense of his employers, expressing his intention to

marry her later. There was no improper intimacy between them. Those who

knew him were surprised that he should be able to make the provision for

her that he did--surprised also at his choice of her as a wife; but that

is not an uncommon attitude on the part of friends--and equally surprised

and pained when it was discovered that he had used money which was not his

own in order to set up the establishment.

It would be easy to multiply examples of cases where the relations between

the parties are less innocent, and to show that not merely young men, but

men who are advanced in life, have been driven by the attraction of the

other sex to sacrifice their position.

Women are not ignorant of their power, and the criminal among them know

how to use it to advantage. Because of their sex they are able to commit

many thefts and to escape with impunity; indeed, a very large proportion

of thefts from the person are committed by women, or with their

assistance. They attract the man, go along with him, pick his pocket, and

find some excuse to get rid of him in a hurry. When he discovers his loss

they are out of reach, and in the great majority of cases he says nothing

about it to the police, as to do so would cause scandal about himself.

Only when the loss is too considerable to be borne, or when something is

stolen that cannot be replaced, is the theft reported; and even then it is

difficult to convict the thief. X 24 is a girl of twenty-six who has

several times during the last eight years been convicted of theft. She is

a buxom and cheerful young woman, neither a teetotaler nor intemperate,

shrewd, and possessed of a considerable share of intelligence and humour.

Brought up in a slum district, she was early at work; and when she began

her present career she was earning honestly about fourteen shillings

weekly. Some time ago I was asked to see her on behalf of a lady who had

taken an interest in her from her appearance in court, and who was willing

to help her to a better way of living. She was perfectly frank with me,

and declined assistance on the ground that she could do better for

herself. She said that with very little trouble she could make twice the

amount to be gained by work, and with little risk. "You ken weel enough,

doctor, that the lady could do nothing for me. She would put me in a place

among her servants, maybe, and that would be a nice thing for the

servants! Na, na. When I find it disna pay I'll gie it up. As long's the

drink disna get a grip o' me I'm a' richt; and there's no much fear o'

that." Like others of her class, she does not live by prostitution, though

her sex is her decoy. She has no prejudice in favour of chastity, but she

takes very good care to run no unnecessary risks, and will find a means of

getting away from the man she may pick up--if possible with his purse, but

if not, then without it--before matters have proceeded to an extremity.

Others acting in concert with male accomplices lure men to houses where

they are bullied and robbed; and this goes on with a degree of impunity

that would be amazing, were it not for the fact that though the practice

is well known, there are few of those who have suffered loss of money who

care to add to it the loss of reputation that would result if they had to

appear in court.

Blackmailing is another practice that springs from the conduct of both men

and women influenced in the direction of vice and crime by sex impulses;

and jealousy is a powerful factor in the causation of some crimes of

violence. Jealousy is not generally looked for on the part of those who

are themselves loose in their conduct, but among them it may exist as

intensely and manifest itself as powerfully as in any respectable citizen.

It seems to be largely a matter of temperament, and to be to some extent

existent apart from the desire for exclusive possession. X 25 was an

ex-soldier married to a woman of low morals. They had both been loose in

their behaviour and were both given to drink. He had on several occasions

assaulted her for her infidelities, but he admitted that it was not

jealousy that had caused him to do so; and he owned that he was just as

bad himself. He went off to the war, and in his absence she behaved very

badly and took headlong to drink. She lived with another man. On his

return he took up house with her, and the other man was a source of

quarrel between them, especially when they were drinking. He was

admittedly jealous, though there does not seem to have been any but a

retrospective cause for the feeling. One day in the course of a quarrel

she compared him with the other man to his disadvantage, and he savagely

set on and killed her.

X 26 was a sailor who was attached to a woman whom he knew to be a

prostitute. When he came to Glasgow he lived with her, quite well knowing

her character. He spent his money freely on her, but could not keep her

from her associates. One night she insisted on leaving the house where

they lodged. She had been drinking heavily, and he tried to detain her.

She insisted on going to the lodgings of another man whom he knew; and

when he endeavoured to persuade her to remain where she was, she made a

comparison between him and the other that set him in a blind fury of rage

and jealousy, in which he killed her. The cases present similar features:

a tolerance of general infidelity; a jealousy of a particular individual;

and an explosion when the other was praised for certain qualities.

The same kind of thing has occurred with women. One day in the airing-yard

of the prison a woman who was usually quiet in her behaviour made a sudden

attack on another who had been admitted to prison on the preceding day. It

transpired that the assailant had heard that the woman she assaulted was

living with "her man." The man was a bloated blackguard whom she had

screened by pleading guilty to a charge of theft in which he was

implicated. She herself was a prostitute, and when I pointed out that

morally he could not be worse than she in that respect she admitted the

fact, but added furiously that she would not allow that--to take him from

her; although she was ready enough to recognise his worthlessness. It

would be easy to theorise on these cases, and it might be interesting; it

is well to note them, for they show that crime may result from passion in

circumstances where it might not be expected.

The fact is that feelings the result of sex strike far deeper and wider

than many good people care to acknowledge; but the whole subject is one on

which a taboo is placed and it cannot be treated as frankly as it ought

for that reason. The cause of jealousy and the excitement of the feeling

is not so simple as many seem to think. It may be absent where there would

appear to be the strongest ground for expecting its presence, and present

under circumstances where it would not be looked for; and when present it

may induce criminal acts on a provocation that would appear small indeed.

There are fewer female than male criminals and offenders, but they are

more likely than men to continue in the wrong way when they set out on it,

for it is more difficult for them to recover. Women are much harder on one

another than they are on men; or than men are, either on their own sex or

on women. This may be one reason why so few of them go astray, but it also

contributes to keep the stray sheep from getting back to the fold. The

girl is more closely guarded at home and is more intimately associated

with her mother than the boy is. Even mothers who have gone to the bad do

not always want their daughters to follow their example; and I have known

those who lived by vice and crime who have sent their daughters away from

them in order to be trained in religion and morals. Most of them cannot do

that, but many do what they can, up to a point, to keep them straight. A

girl suffers more than a boy from the neglect of a mother, and when to

neglect is added bad example it may have a fatal effect on her. In

proportion to their numbers there are more daughters than sons of criminal

mothers who take to evil courses.

Apart from the mother, there are districts of the city where girls hear

language and see sights that are not likely to have a good effect on them.

The girl is taught to repress herself more than the boy and is trained

towards secretiveness. The boy is rather given to flaunt his new-found

naughtiness and to be checked for it or to discover of how little account

it is. The girl may nurse it to her harm. It is a mistake to suppose that

because a man or woman never uses objectionable language, or repeats

objectionable stories, they have not left an impression when heard. As a

matter of fact, the female side of any lunatic asylum is generally more

remarkable than the male side for the foulness of the language of the

inmates and the filthiness of their ideas. Among the sane members of the

community the opposite is notoriously the case, but the insane are only

repeating words that have lodged in their mind when they were sane. The

same thing is true of female offenders; they outdo the men in the

profanity and indecency of their language, when they begin.

When as a result of their surroundings young girls take to imitating their

elders in vice they are much more dangerous than boys. Every surgeon in a

great city, if he is connected with the administration of the law, knows

that very young girls are sometimes made the subjects of horrible

assaults; but he also knows that other girls as young incite and provoke

assaults, and that some among them make the most terrible and detailed

charges against men on no foundation whatever but that of their own

imagination excited by what they have seen. When men are guilty of certain

offences under the Criminal Law Amendment Act there can be no defence of

their conduct; they have no excuse for taking advantage of young girls;

but it is sheer folly to ignore the fact that there are girls of school

age in some parts of the city who deliberately importune men. It is

terrible that it should be so, but they are only doing what they see their

elders do and there is no use disregarding the fact.

If the street is a bad playground for the boy it is worse for the girl.

She runs greater risks and her ignorance is as vast as his. When she goes

to work new perils beset her. Her choice of occupation is more restricted,

and her wages, though they may not be less in the first instance, do not

increase in the same ratio as she grows to youth and womanhood. Whatever

may be said for the higher education of women it is out of reach of the

many. Most girls have the idea that some day they will be married; and

they are often right. When this idea is present it is bound to affect

their actions. Marriage means for a man the holding on to his work; for a

woman it implies the giving up of her employment--at any rate, in Scotland

most men who marry try to keep their wives at home. Among the poorer

labourers this is not always possible; but it remains true that the great

majority of married women are not industrially employed. They have quite

enough to do at home, and sometimes more than enough; but the fact that

the home is to be their permanent sphere of work, or the hope of this,

makes many girls and women careless as to the choice of their occupation

meanwhile. It also prevents combination among workers, to a large extent,

and tends to keep wages low. How some of them live on their earnings is a

mystery, but they do; and keep themselves in a condition of health and

fitness which will compare favourably with that of many of the scientific

people who prove by figures and standards that they don't. There is grave

risk in it, however; risk that they should not be asked to run. If they

were not members of a family, each contributing earnings to a common pool,

and each undertaking a share of the household work, many could not exist

on the wages they receive. That any large number of them are directly

driven to the street by the low rate of their wages is not, in my

experience, true.

Complaints have been made that the children of well-to-do people accept

lower wages and make it hard for those who have to earn their living to

obtain reasonable pay. This may be true in a few cases, but it is not of

general application. These people do not compete at all in many

occupations; their parents are not foolish enough to let them do much for

nothing; but they do sometimes exercise an injurious influence on the

other girls by their presence. Girls are at least as vain of their

appearance as lads, and they are quite as much given to personal

adornment. Indeed, I think men will readily admit that women pay more

attention to their dress and are keener on ornaments than they are.

Certainly when one gets a new kind of hat-pin or "charm," others must

obtain something to balance it. If a girl has a fund to draw upon apart

from her earnings she is likely to dress more expensively than her

neighbours, and the weaker sisters are sometimes tempted to adopt

extraordinary measures to keep pace with her.

In so far as a standard of dress is set up that is beyond the earning

power of the workers to maintain, girls who have other resources than

their wages are liable to exercise an injurious effect on their

fellow-workers. X 27 was a young woman of prepossessing appearance and

good manner. She had been employed in a place of business in town. Her

wages were small, and she had charge of cash transactions to a

considerable amount. She was quietly and well dressed. She was arrested on

a charge of embezzlement and she admitted her guilt. She confessed that

she had begun to take small sums in order to keep herself "respectable,"

and her peculations not being discovered, she had continued to help

herself. There was sickness at home, and to relieve the pressure there she

had taken larger sums and been found out. In the course of enquiries I

found that there were other employees none of whom had her opportunities

of taking from the cash-box, but some of whom dressed themselves on

"presents" from gentlemen. There was room for suspicion that each knew

what the others had been doing. It was certain that they knew that their

earnings were insufficient to enable them to live and dress as they did,

and it was equally clear that in their cases they had no resources at home

to supplement their earnings.

There are some workshops in which the moral tone is very low, and the

association of young girls together in them has a bad effect on their

conduct. The ignorance of many men and women with regard to the most

elementary physical facts is remarkable. Mysteries are made of physiology,

as though innocence and ignorance were synonymous terms. Fear takes the

place of enlightenment, and when a girl is seen to transgress the limits

of conduct laid down for her without the dreadful consequences they have

been led to expect, the others are apt to think they have been misled; and

some of them embark lightly on a certain course of conduct with a

confidence begotten of ignorance as great as that which once made them

timid. Young people are better to learn the truth about themselves from

those they respect and trust, than to be kept in ignorance till some

chance reveals a distorted version to them. X 28 was a man of the

labouring class who was charged with contravention of the Criminal Law

Amendment Act. He had been a very hard-working man, and for years had

lived on little and saved the greater part of his earnings. Then, as

systematically as he had put the money past, he started to get rid of it.

He had nearly £200, and he proceeded to spend about £2 a week on his

"spree." He drew the money from the bank in small sums, and, doing no work

meanwhile, he proceeded to take enough drink to keep him on the right side

of drunkenness. This had been going on for over six months before his

arrest. Early in the course of his wanderings he had made the acquaintance

of two girls who were employed in a tailoring establishment in the city.

They spoke to him and made him certain proposals. This was in the

dinner-hour. In time he was introduced by one girl to another during the

succeeding four months, till he had dealings with seven in the same

establishment--that is to say, seven admitted the facts. Their ages ran

from fifteen to nineteen years, and without exception they were all the

daughters of respectable parents, to whom the story of their conduct came

as a severe shock. That story will not bear repetition; it was exceedingly

gross. The facts were only discovered in an accidental way through the

illness of one of the girls. She at first denied everything; but under

pressure made a confession of part of the truth, and, the charge being

laid, enquiry elicited the rest.

A large number of girls are still employed in domestic service, though the

tendency has been for them to seek industrial work, where they are for

some part of the day their own mistresses. The spread of elementary

education has been blamed for the shortage in the supply of servants, but

it is only one of many causes for the change from the time when there were

more girls seeking work than places for them; and girls are not likely to

seek service as a result of the railings of those who, to judge by their

utterances, are in need of some elementary education with regard to their

own position. There seems to be an idea fixed in their heads that they

have a right to be served by others, and that on their own terms. If the

schools have taught the girls that they are not born to do for others what

they ought to be able to do for themselves, it is something to the credit

of the schools. Domestic servants have been too long treated as though

they were inferior beings, with the natural result that their work has

come to be looked upon as lower in character than that of the factory or

the office girl. A greater independence of spirit and behaviour is

permitted in those engaged in industrial occupations than in domestics,

and this has a good deal to do with the preference shown for these

pursuits.

Domestic service is a better preparation for married life than work in a

factory, but in spite of this it has very serious disadvantages. It

presents the form of family life without the spirit. In a great many cases

it has all the disadvantages and few of the advantages. Those who are

loudest in their complaints of the degeneration of servants show quite

clearly that they are angry really because they no longer get girls to

give not only reasonable service, but the obedience of flunkeys. Girls in

workshops are not treated as domestics are; they would not stand it.

Their wages may be lower, but at least they are not looked upon as beings

of another creation than those placed over them. When people shun certain

kinds of employment it is not generally because they are foolish, but

because they believe that that kind of work is not worth having.

The servant in the house is too much in the house. Her mistress is quite

ready to assume that she should know all that the girl is doing, but the

confidence is expected to be all on the one side. For the mistress to

interfere in the girl's affairs is to show a proper interest in her; but

for the girl to return the compliment is impertinence. The girl is often

subject to unsympathetic supervision; she is seldom allowed out to

associate with those whose company she desires; her life is a monotonous

and exacting one; and in many cases she has as few opportunities for

seeing visitors as she has for visiting. That some should react

unfavourably to these conditions is not surprising; and when they are out

they may show the same tendency to friskiness displayed by that other

domestic animal, the family dog. Many of them have few friends near the

place of their employment, and their work does not provide them with the

same facilities for forming friendships as industrial employment does. If

they do go astray the consequences are therefore more serious, because

they are to a large extent thrown on their own resources, having few to

whom they can appeal for help or advice.

There are no workers who are more generally industrious, honest, and

patient, and who are more harshly judged. Only those who go wrong seem to

attract attention; at least it is only they who are heard of; and in

proportion to the large number employed they are few. Their position away

from their family leaves them more exposed to the attentions of those of

the opposite sex than other girls, and when they succumb the consequences

may be more serious. If their condition is suspected or discovered the

extent to which they are considered members of the family soon becomes

apparent. The girl who is in this state has no illusions on that subject.

She knows quite well that she will receive no sympathy, and that would not

matter so much if she were not equally certain that she will be turned out

whenever the fact becomes known. She cannot face her people. She fears the

scandal she will bring on them, and what she should do is a puzzle to her.

What she tries to do is to conceal her condition as long as possible. She

knows quite well that a time will come when it will unmistakably reveal

itself, but anything may happen in the interval. She refuses to think

about the future and lives in the present. The effort that should be

expended in making preparations for the event is spent in concealing its

approach; till some day she finds herself a mother. The habit of

concealment has become a part of her, and it asserts itself in the state

of pain and panic in which she finds herself, with disastrous results to

the child. X 29 was a girl about twenty years of age who came from a

mining district to domestic service in Glasgow. She was a healthy girl and

a good servant. One day her mistress had reason to suspect that something

had taken place in the house of which she had not been made aware; and a

search revealed the dead body of a new-born child in an outhouse. The girl

was arrested and sent to hospital. In due course she was transferred to

prison, where I had to investigate the case with a view to determining her

mental condition. She told me the story bit by bit quite clearly. When she

became aware of her condition she took steps to hide it, and up to the

end she had been successful in doing so. She did this in order to make up

her mind what she ought to do. Sometimes she decided to go home to her

friends, and at other times she meant to apply to the parish. Her health

was good all the time. At last she made up her mind to go home, and had

written stating her intention, but saying nothing about her condition or

about staying there. The child was born the night before the day she had

fixed for her visit. She was taken by surprise, and had no preparations

made for its arrival. By her actions she showed that she knew what was

necessary in order to attend both to child and mother. It cried out, and

in her alarm she stopped its mouth. It did not cry again, and she next set

about its concealment. She knew that she had killed it, but she did not

think this murder. She would have thought it murder if it had not just

been new-born. She had seen similar cases reported in the newspapers as

"Concealment of Pregnancy" and not counted murder. As she had her day off

to pay her visit she did so. She walked at least ten miles in doing this.

She told her friends nothing. She hoped to be able to dispose of the body,

but her mistress had found suspicious signs in her room, and on a search

had discovered the child. She was curiously knowing in some respects, but

her ignorance was as peculiar as her knowledge; and I had no reason to

doubt the truth of her story, which stood such tests as could be applied

to it.

The case in its main features is quite characteristic. There are some

mistresses who, when they find their servants in this condition, take

steps to see that they are tended in some way. They cannot be expected to

keep them in the house, but they do what can be done to prevent the mother

and child suffering. There are others who simply turn them out and take

no further interest in them; and it is the fear of this that leads to

concealment. If they would even act as mediators between the girls and

their people much mischief would be prevented.

Hardly ever does such a case as the above occur but what there are letters

to the newspapers demanding that the father of the infant should be placed

in the dock with the mother. The mother is not there for begetting a

child, but for killing it, and the former act is not yet punishable by

law. The general opinion seems to be that men are continually seducing

women, and I am not in a position to say whether it is true or not.

Judging from books, it forms the subject of many stories, but I am here

only writing of that small portion of the world which has come under my

own observation, and in my experience it is grotesquely untrue. I have

heard the woman's statement in the great majority of cases of infanticide

in Scotland during the last sixteen years, and I can recall few in which

she made any complaint against the father of the child, although I sought

for it. In some cases I was told that the father had not been informed of

the woman's condition, although she knew where to find him; and that he

had been kept in ignorance because she did not want to marry him. In the

other cases the conception seemed to be the result of intimacy that was

temporary and long past. I am far from suggesting that there are no bad

men who lead girls astray; what I say is that in this class of case these

are not the girls who appear as criminals.

The fact is that among a certain class of lads and girls there is a degree

of looseness of behaviour that is in striking contrast with the officially

recognised code of morals. They take risks with a light heart, and the

woman pays; not always because the man shirks, but because any

consequence of their conduct is entailed on her by her sex. The girl knows

this as well as the lad, but neither of them considers consequences at the

time. An acquaintanceship begun innocently enough may insensibly and by

degrees become something more, not as the result of consideration, but

quite independent of anything in the way of thought. If consequences were

certain it might be different. It is difficult to apportion blame and it

is not very profitable to try; but it is quite certain that the woman

leads the man as much as he leads her to misconduct. Child murder is no

necessary consequence of his act, and there is no sense in assuming that

he knew the girl's condition and deserted her, when the fact can easily be

ascertained.

It would be a great mistake to suppose that girls who do not preserve

their chastity are necessarily bad. It is largely a question of manners

and customs. They would quite readily admit that it is wrong to be

unchaste, as many an untruthful person will admit it is wrong to lie; but

they do not seem to suffer in self-respect, nor greatly in the esteem of

others, if they yield themselves to the lad who is their sweetheart for

the time. Their conduct may be suspected; but in the absence of proof, and

if decency is observed, their morals are taken for granted.

Every professional man knows that there are very many different standards

of conduct in Glasgow. The doctor cannot shut his eyes to the fact if he

would; the lawyer during the time he acts as Agent for the Poor sees and

hears enough to convince him that the professed and the working standards

of conduct are different; and even among those connected with their

Churches clergymen occasionally find some who have to get married as a

result of their behaviour. The girls who misbehave in this way may be

reviled as prostitutes, but that is utterly to fail in judging them. That

they are no worse than the men goes without saying; but there cannot be a

standard for the woman and another for the man, though in practice it is

more frequently the moralists who try to make one--not by their words, but

by the effect of their judgment. The same girl who has given herself to

men is sometimes the most bitter in her denunciations of prostitutes; but

on the subject of prostitution I do not propose to enter, for any real

consideration of it would involve a plainness of speech on which it would

be unsafe to venture.

This must be said, however, that the woman who goes astray is treated

shamefully by the law, which operates to drive her deeper in the mire and

causes reformation to be more difficult for her than for any other kind of

offender. Any proposal to place these poor souls more completely under the

domination of officials, medical or police (whether made on the specious

pretext of public health or public morals), would intensify the

difficulty, and would result, as it would deserve, in increasing the evil

it sought to remedy. It is bad enough that any members of the community

should become slaves to the vices of others, but it would be worse to

confirm them in their slavery in order to protect those whom they serve.

In proportion to the number of offences committed by women bigamy appears

to be more common than it is among the male offenders. The reason is

largely economic, but the method of its operation is dependent on sex. The

woman wants a home, but if she were not a woman that is not the way she

would choose to get one. She could get established, but her sense of

propriety will not allow her to accept the position without the form of

marriage, even although she knows the form to be illegal. In many cases,

however, she does not know this. She may have ground for a divorce by

reason of the desertion of her husband or his misconduct; but the ground

for divorce and the ability to obtain one are different matters. If

divorce is to be permitted there does not seem to be any reason why it

should be refused to those who cannot afford to go to law to obtain it. If

one of the parties to a marriage gives cause for divorce the need for it

will be the greater in proportion to poverty, for people are less able to

keep out of each other's way if they are living together in a small house

than would be the case if they had more room; and if they are separated

the economic disadvantages are not less. Yet these are the very people who

are least able to obtain relief; their poverty ensures that. When they go

through the form of marriage with some other we pay the cost of their

imprisonment. The money would be better employed in setting them free from

the contract which has gone wrong. Some of them voluntarily give

themselves up in the belief that their imprisonment will break the former

marriage. Our judges have become more and more inclined to deal leniently

with such cases; reserving their heavy sentences for those which show

moral turpitude; and the number of these is small. To the woman there is

something in the form of marriage which enables her to preserve her

self-respect, and the "marriage lines" are a testimony to others. It is a

queer condition of affairs, in their view, that allows them to live with a

man if they do not go through a ceremony of marriage with him, and which

sends them to prison if they do; for they cannot be expected to see that

the rights of property may depend on the prohibition of conduct such as

theirs.

CHAPTER VII

PUNISHMENT

The universal cure-all--The public and the advertising healer--The

essence of all quackery--The quackery of punishment--Rational

treatment--Justice not bad temper--Retribution--Our fathers and

ourselves--Their methods not necessarily suitable to our time--Capital

punishment--The incurable and the incorrigible--Objections to capital

punishment apply in degree to all punishment--The "cat"--The

executioner and the surgeon--Whipping and its effect--The flogged

offender--The act and the intention--Pain and vitality--Unequal

effects of punishment--Fines and their burden--Who is punished

most?--Punishment and expiation--Punishment and deterrence--Social

opinion the real deterrent--Vicious social circles--Respect for the

law--Prevention of crime.

Since newspapers have become great advertising mediums their readers have

had information thrust upon them by picture and story regarding the need

to flee from ills to come and seek refuge in the patent pill. Health is

the great thing to attend to, and there is a large number of people

engaged in our instruction. Some will have us see to the equal development

of all our muscles, though what we are to do with them when they are

developed we may not clearly apprehend. Others prescribe for us all a

proper course of diet, and though the professors differ among themselves

as to what is the best food for mankind, they seem to be all agreed that

there is a universal food. If we find their prescriptions do not suit us,

that is an evidence of degeneracy on our part which must be overcome. It

is all very like what has passed itself off as education. At school, if a

boy showed an aptitude for drawing and none for composition, he was taken

from the thing he could do and worried into doing the thing he was not

fitted for doing, with the result that in many cases children left school

able to do a number of things equally badly and few things well. The

attempt to make people ambidextrous is more likely to make them

left-handed in both hands.

Health is the greatest of blessings, but the man who is always concerned

for his health is not the healthy man; time passes, and he may lose his

life while he is preparing to live. He is encouraged to examine himself,

and all the possible ailments which may annoy him are described and their

significance exaggerated till he gets nervous. A specific is found for

every ill to which the flesh is heir, and its efficacy is trumpeted till

some equally infallible cure replaces it in public estimation. The saving

remedy may be called a quack preparation, and its composition proclaimed

and condemned by the regular practitioner, but a sufficient number of

purchasers is found to justify the expense of advertising it. It is sure

to benefit somebody, however antecedently improbable that effect may be,

and there is certain to be some sufferer who will be grateful enough to

testify to its cure. Some of the testimonials may be spurious, but many of

them are quite as genuine as any that the doctors receive. The reader sees

that Mrs. Dash has suffered from pains in her back for years, and has

tried the patience and the prescriptions of every doctor within her reach

without obtaining any permanent relief. She has had to resign herself to a

state of chronic invalidism, and is an object of pity to all who know her.

She hears from a friend of the wonderful curative effects of the Rational

Rheumatic Regimen and puts herself under treatment, with the result that

her neighbours cannot believe she is the same woman, and she herself feels

in better health than she has ever before enjoyed. Then follows a list of

symptoms which is sure to appeal to some sufferer. The public, knowing all

that can be urged against quack medicines, distrusts and purchases them.

The buyer knows that the case of Mrs. Dash is not published for

philanthropic but for business reasons, but he thinks that what cured her

may help him. It may or it may not, but he risks it.

Even those who utterly condemn quack medicines fall quite readily into the

error of quackery when they come to discuss social subjects; for the

essence of quackery is the belief that what is good for one person must be

good for every other. Diseases are not entities, but conditions that

cannot exist apart from the man; and similarly crime cannot exist apart

from society. We may alter conditions in such a way that the tendency to

disease or crime will be lessened; but when a person has become diseased

we have to know something more about him than the fact that he shows

certain symptoms before he can be treated in any rational way and with a

prospect of his recovery. So when he has committed a crime we must know

more than that fact before there is much hope of being able to correct

him. There is as much quackery in the practice of making punishment fit

crime as in that of making remedies fit diseases.

When a man offends against the law he is taken in hand by the ministers of

the law; and they are awakening to a sense of the futility of their

treatment of him, but so far not much progress has been made towards a

rational method. There are more institutions projected and a greater

variety of remedies prescribed; but they depend on the nature of the crime

charged, rather than on the character and condition of the culprit. Some

day it may be acknowledged that the court that has to determine whether a

person is guilty of the offence charged against him is not therefore the

court that is able to determine his treatment, but there will first

require to be a more general recognition of the fact that before a man can

be treated rationally for any physical, mental, moral, or social fault in

him, something more must be known about him than that the fault is there.

I do not suggest that rational treatment will invariably be successful;

there is nothing absolute in this world, not even our ignorance; but I do

assert that we are not entitled to act irrationally in dealing with

criminals, and that that is what we generally do at present. The practice

of the courts has changed much more than the law during the last sixteen

years, and there is a greater disposition on the part of judges to seek

information regarding those who are brought before them, as well as a more

marked reluctance to send offenders to prison if there appears to be a

probability that they will not repeat their offence.

The old theories of punishment have broken down, and it is now difficult

to find any coherent theory behind the practice. When a crime is committed

that shocks the public by its atrocity there are demands made for fierce

retribution on the culprit, partly on the plea that he ought to be made to

suffer, and partly for the purpose of deterring others from repeating the

act. Incidentally those who are most insistent on the employment of the

executioner show that they possess a fair share of the same spirit that

educed the act which they condemn. They are rightly indignant, but they

do not seem to see that justice and bad temper are not the same thing.

Few would defend the application literally of the retributive

"eye-for-an-eye" principle. They know that a man's eye may not be of as

much use to him as that which he has destroyed may have been to his

victim. It may be like taking gold and offering lead in exchange. Even if

the eyes be equal in value it does not in the slightest degree compensate

the injured person to know that the person who did him the injury is as

blind as he; and as for the community, it is to place two blind men where

one was before. Of course nobody has proposed to deal in this manner with

the person who blinds another; but many are quite satisfied to act on the

principle, and to apply it by way of killing murderers and flogging those

who commit assaults. The law has prohibited certain actions as below the

standard of conduct permitted to the members of the community. When a man

takes life, in order to show him the sacredness of life, it takes his. It

is a lesson to him; and there is this to be said for it, that it prevents

him from offending again.

We all know how much we are the superiors of the poor foreigners in our

manners and our powers, for in spite of our modesty, our teachers in the

Press are always insisting on the fact, and truth compels us to admit it.

Yet these same teachers sometimes confuse us not a little by their methods

of defending us when we are charged with doing something which we cannot

deny having done. Some necessary severity in war, or some strong actions

on the part of those who in our name teach the native races how to live,

may have provoked remark on the part of other nations. At once we hear

that they have done similar things; but if we are better than they, surely

we must prove it by our actions? If we are better than those whom we

judge and condemn, why do we treat them as they have treated others?

To hire a man to kill another is a queer way to teach men to respect life.

That our fathers did it is true, and we have taken over the practice from

them. I do not think it probable that our fathers were any greater fools

than we are, but their circumstances were different; not to speak of the

fact that we have had handed on to us by them an accumulation of

experience in civil life which they had not time to absorb. We may be no

better than they were, but they have not failed to contribute to make us

better off, and their ways of doing things are not suitable to the altered

circumstances in which we find ourselves. They were more worried by their

fighting men than we are, and were always liable to be assailed by some

lord or other whose honourable occupation was arms and who was industrious

in the pursuit of it. He or somebody like him professed to protect the

worker and ensure him the fruits of his labour--less discount. The

fighting man has always made this profession; but he never protects the

worker from the worker; he protects the worker from some other warrior who

may be a greater nuisance--or may not. Now he is under the direction of

the law, and is not allowed to make war on his own account. The survivals

that do are criminals.

In the good old days the governor was often busily engaged and had no time

to bother with offenders. The pit or the gallows were for them, unless

they could be depended on to refrain from troubling him and pay him for

letting them work. Part of the time he was himself a prisoner in his

castle--and a not very sanitary or comfortable prison it was--and at

other times he was acting as warder over some other lord whom he had

besieged. The easiest way to deal with unruly persons was to hang them to

a tree and leave them there; they deserved it, and even if they did not,

they might do so; in any case they were a good riddance. Now we are more

settled and less summary in our dealings with each other. We have long

ceased to employ the hangman except in cases of murder, and even then the

penalty is seldom inflicted in Scotland; for it is repugnant to the

feelings of most juries, and they only call killing "murder" when their

feelings of indignation get the upper hand.

I am far from saying that no case can now be made out for capital

punishment; what I am contending is that it is the outstanding example of

the application of the retributory principle; and yet in practice it is

usually defended on the ground that the culprit is so bad that he ought to

be killed--another ground altogether. "What could you do with a man who

would do that?" is the question addressed to those who assert that the

worst use to which you can put a man is to kill him. Well, is he so bad as

all that? I have seen a number of very tough specimens under sentence of

death, and have watched the effect on warders of intimate association with

them. They have had to be constantly in the company of the condemned, for

although he has to be killed he must be given no opportunity to kill

himself; and in almost every case the men had only one opinion after

getting closely in touch with the criminal, and that opinion was that, in

spite of all the evil in him, he was not such a bad creature after all. In

some cases the opinion of his character was much more favourable; but in

all cases the opinions were the result of seeing the man when he was under

the sentence of the law. That is as true an observation as that the

sentence was the result of conduct when he was running wild. It was the

same man who had done the wicked act who impressed men favourably, though

their official bias was against him; and he could not have done so if the

qualities had not been in him.

There may be men among us who are so utterly bad that all the State can do

with them is to kill them in order to secure the safety of others, but I

have not seen them. There are men so riddled with disease that no cure for

them can be held out, and the disease may be of such a character that it

is likely to infect or affect injuriously those who attend them, but

doctors are not permitted to kill them. In these cases as strong an

argument could be adduced in favour of capital punishment as in the case

of criminals; and there are those who advocate the lethal chamber for

certain classes of the diseased and "unfit." In every case the advocates

of the proposal should be the first to go there, for their very advocacy

shows that they are themselves unfit to take a sufficiently wide view of

the good of the State.

We know too little of the possibilities of life to be justified in

condemning anyone to death. The medical man speaks of some diseases as

being incurable; but so far from meaning what he says literally, his whole

life is spent in seeking for cures. Knowledge widens slowly, and false

lights are hailed as true, but in spite of all set-backs there is

progress; and to-day the diseased conditions that our fathers could not

deal with may be relieved and in many cases cured. What the doctor really

means is that there are many diseases for which he has not yet found the

appropriate remedy; and when we speak of men as being incorrigible we are

only entitled to use the word in the same limited way, meaning that we

have so far not been able to correct them.

The infliction of the death penalty has no good effect on those engaged in

it. I have never seen anyone who had anything to do with it that was not

the worse for it. As for the doctor, who must be in attendance, it is an

outrage on all his professional, as well as his personal feelings. The

physician is taught that it is his duty to save life, apart altogether

from its personal value. When he is called in to a patient it is no affair

of his whether the sick person is a saint or a sinner; it is his duty to

do his best for the patient irrespective of any question of character, and

to risk infection as readily for the sake of the wicked as for the sake of

the good. At the behest of the law he has to take a part in the killing of

a man whom he has been instructed to attend in order that at the proper

time he may be led to death in a state of good health.

I do not say that there are not men who may seem so debased and vile that

any reformation would appear to be only remotely possible; but while they

are to be blamed for their wickedness, we are not free from blame for

permitting them to grow into such a state before taking them in hand. In

no case that I have seen was such interference impossible had our system

been one that lent itself to the prevention of crime and the reformation

of the criminal; but because it was easier and more profitable for them to

do ill than to do well, they went the wrong road with disastrous results

to others as well as to themselves. Blame them by all means; but let us be

just, and having settled how much they are to blame--not a very profitable

task--let us set about to find how far we are to blame; having punished

them, what about punishing ourselves? Our punishment is fixed by laws that

no Parliament can alter; our own neglect of the wrongdoer ensures it.

The objections to capital punishment apply to all punishment up to a

point, for if it is wrong to slay a man it is also wrong to maim him; and

in so far as our conduct towards him makes him a less efficient member of

the community it does maim him. There are many who are so indignant with

the law-breaker that they have no patience with anybody who has doubts as

to whether our way of dealing with him is all that could be desired. They

object to his being pampered--whatever that means--and call everybody a

sentimentalist who is not for "vigorous means of repression." There is a

sentiment of brutality that is quite as dangerous as any sentiment of

pity, and a great deal more harmful; but pity for the criminal need have

very little part in consideration for his reform. He may be, and often is,

far from being an estimable or attractive person, and the last thing he

needs is pity. A man may be a good physician or surgeon without being

given to anything approaching sentiment that is maudlin; but whether he is

full of pity or not he must be sympathetic--that is to say, he must be

able to appreciate the standpoint of those with whom he is dealing. So

must the man who would deal with offenders; if he fails in that he fails

in everything. It may be all very well to describe some of them as brutes

and to say they should be treated as brutes, but it does not help forward

the matter of treatment in the slightest degree; for even brutes cannot

all be treated alike, and if a man is treated as a brute it is not likely

to result in making him behave like a man. "The only way to make a man

is--Think him one, J. B., As well as you or me."

The cat is a specific for the "brutes" that have not qualified for the

"rope." The argument seems to be that because a man has committed a brutal

crime therefore he is a brute; as he has inflicted serious bodily injury

on a fellow-citizen it is proper that someone should be employed to

inflict serious bodily injury on him. But will the man whom you employ to

do this laudable work not be a brute also? Does your official imprimatur

remove the brutality of his act? If not, one result would seem to be that

at the end you have two brutes among you instead of one.

There has never been any pretence that the executioner's occupation is not

a degrading one; never in all this country for very many years, at any

rate. He is not looked down upon because by his office he inflicts pain.

The surgeon in the course of his work inflicts pain, but nobody considers

him any the less worthy on that account. A hand might be cut off by either

of them in the discharge of his duty; but though the result may be the

same to the owner of the hand, the object has been different. The surgeon

has amputated the hand to save the man's life; the executioner has cut it

off to maim the man. There can be no objection to the infliction of pain

on a criminal more than on others if it is incident on a course of

treatment which there is good reason to believe will result in his reform;

but there is no such reason for belief in the efficacy of flogging.

I do not say that nobody has been the better for a whipping. There are

many men who are ordinarily as modest as those of our race usually are,

and who say that they were well whipped in their boyhood with great

benefit. It might be unsafe to suggest that the argument is not so

convincing as it may seem to those who advance it. Sometimes there is a

temptation to think that the treatment, if it were really so efficacious

in making them virtuous, might with profit have been continued; but there

can be no doubt they are firmly convinced that without the thrashings they

received they would have been worse than they are. This hardly touches the

point, for it is one thing to be whipped by an official who has no

interest in the person whipped, and another thing altogether to be

chastised by a parent or guardian, or even at his instance. The effect on

the integuments may be the same in both cases, but there is a

psychological effect which is different. Children know that wrongdoing on

their part is sometimes the occasion and the excuse for an exhibition of

temper on the part of their parents; and they take their punishment with

the best grace they can and keep out of the way next time they misbehave.

A whipping in cold blood they do not take in the same spirit; and they are

right.

The great objection to any arbitrary punishment is that it may do far more

harm than good. Suppose a child is disobedient and obstinate, and the

father proceeds to whip it into obedience. If he succeeds the child may,

through fear, avoid such conduct in the future; but if the child persists

in his obstinacy in spite of the whipping, and gets into that dumb dour

state in which he is likely to go off in a fit if the whipping is

persisted in, the shoe is on the other foot. The father has to desist

through fear, the child having met force with passive resistance is the

master, and he retains the impression of his parent's brutality and

impotence. It is never wise in the case of children, or of men, to embark

on a course of treatment that you cannot continue till your object is

gained.

There may have been some reason in flogging men with the object of ruling

them by fear, but the policy would depend on the thoroughness with which

it was carried out for what success it could obtain. There would always be

the risk that the penalty would make men more ferocious if it were the

probable result of their misconduct, for if fear may prevent people from

doing the ill they desire, it will also cause them to seek safety by

attempting to destroy the evidence of their wrongdoing. Make death the

penalty for robbery, and a direct inducement is offered to the robber to

kill his victim and prevent him from telling tales. Flog men for breaches

of the law, and if they fear the pain they will the more readily become

reckless, on the principle of its being as well to be hanged for a sheep

as a lamb.

That there is a strong feeling on the part of the public against flogging

is undeniable, and it is not so much the result of reasoning as of

sentiment. The process shocks their sense of propriety. The mass of men

not only shrink from suffering pain, but they shrink from the suffering of

others, and they are less inclined than they once were to believe in its

efficacy as a remedial agent. The man who in a former day would have been

flogged and set to work is now sent to hospital if the whip has scored his

flesh. A surgeon stands by to see that his vitality is not lowered beyond

a certain point in the execution of the sentence; it is a nice occupation

for him to superintend the impairment of a man's health, but as a

compensation the rogue may become a patient and the doctor have the

privilege of healing any wounds made under his supervision. The patient is

now in a position to do any mischief he chooses; you have done your utmost

with him and are not permitted to kill him. If as rigid an enquiry were

made into the causes of men's wrongdoing as is made into the question of

their personal guilt there would be less occasion for punishment as we

have had it.

Boys are still whipped for some offences and in certain cases. To say that

it is better to whip a boy than to send him to prison, is only to admit

that whipping is the less serious of the two methods of injuring him; and

in some cases the boys are whipped for no other reason. There is a

well-founded reluctance to sentence them to detention in any existing

institution, combined with a belief in the necessity of inflicting some

penalty on them for their misdeeds. The boy has done wrong and he must pay

for it. The world is so constituted that we are all the children of our

acts; payment may be delayed, but it must be made sometime if every deed

carries its penalty with it; but such a belief is quite consistent with

scepticism as to the necessity for the legal penalties on which so many

place importance. Indeed, that they also carry their consequences is seen

of all men, and there is no manner of doubt that those on whom they fall

are made worse citizens by them. That might be a small matter if their

degeneration did not injuriously affect the community of which they are

unworthy members, but in hurting them we are hurting ourselves.

It is not so much what we do as the spirit in which it is done that causes

the mischief. A person who is sick and in bed may be as much a prisoner as

a man in a cell. His doctor may prevent him from seeing visitors and may

sentence him to a period of something very like solitary confinement, but

he knows that this is done with no intention of hurting him, but because

it is necessary in the interest of his health, or that of others. The

prisoner has no such opinion as to the purpose of his imprisonment, and

neither have those who carry it out. He may be the better for it, though

that is exceptional, but discomfort and pain is an essential part of

whatever cure there is. I remember when a student a worthy old

practitioner who made a point of choosing the most painful remedies for

persons suffering from certain diseases, as he held the opinion that they

ought to be made to suffer for their misconduct. He certainly made them

suffer, but as they were not compelled to attend him they chose others who

cured them more rapidly and with less pain.

It is now generally recognised that pain, or anything that lowers

vitality, operates injuriously and retards the recovery of patients; and

every means is taken to prevent suffering, not because it makes the

patient feel bad, but because it causes him to be bad. Suppose a surgeon

said to a man who appeared before him with a scalp wound received through

falling on the kerb while under the influence of drink, "You have been

foolish and wicked, since you have made yourself intoxicated and lost

control of your senses. Your head is wounded, and it is only a chance that

you have not been killed. You have disgraced yourself in the eyes of those

among your friends who have any sense of respectability, and you have run

the risk of losing your employment as the result of your intemperance.

This I cannot permit to pass unpunished. An example must be made of you in

order to deter others from following the same pernicious course. You have

forfeited the right to consideration, but, though you must be made to

remember that such conduct as yours cannot be lightly passed over, I shall

deal with you as leniently as possible for the sake of your wife and

family. You will receive an application of germs to your wound which will

produce erysipelas, after which I shall proceed to deal with your cure."

The doctor who tried this method would be sent to a lunatic asylum; but

it is precisely what is done in our courts. The prisoner is told he is

bad--and he is; then he is sent--to be made better? Not at all.

Whatever may be said against the prisons, it cannot be shown that they

ever were designed to reform those sent to them, and if they fail to do so

they do not therefore fail in the purpose for which they were built, which

is to detain and punish criminals. The extent to which they do punish

varies greatly according to the antecedents of the person who is sent to

them. On the clerk and the labourer who have received the same sentence

its physical effect may differ very much. If both are put to do labouring

work, as they very well may be, at the end of the day the man who is

accustomed to it will be less hurt and fatigued than the man who has been

used to other employment. If the object is to make them all alike

uncomfortable the clerk should be set to dig a trench and the labourer to

write, and at the end of the day the one would be stained with ink and the

hands of the other would be stinging or blistered. As it is the work done

by the labourer is child's play to him, but it is toilsome to the man

whose occupation is sedentary; to the public it is not of much utility in

any case.

A common method of punishing offenders is to impose fines upon them, so

that if a man has money he may commit any of a large number of offences

without any risk of imprisonment. It may even be profitable for him to do

so, for the fines for doing some illegal acts by which money can be made

are in some cases less than the profits to be made by transgressing the

law. It is a queer condition of affairs. The principle of restitution is

one that can be readily understood and approved, but fines are not an

attempt to apply such a principle. They go, not to any person who may

have been injured, but to the local exchequer for the most part. This is a

vicious arrangement, for it is an incitement to the local authorities to

make as much as they can off the offenders in their district; and whether

they are ever moved by it or not, it is not proper that they should have

any interest in filling their coffers by such means.

Fines fall very unequally as a burden on those subjected to them. The

amount inflicted, though small, may be out of all proportion to the

offender's means; half-a-crown is not much, but it is a great deal to the

man who has not got it. Before the same court you may have two men charged

with similar offences. One is a motorist who has exceeded the speed limit;

the other is a driver of a light van who in trying to catch a train has

been reckless in his driving. The motorist may be fined in five times the

amount inflicted on the vanman, but to the one the sum only represents a

small inroad on his means, while to the other it represents something like

a week's wages. There is not one law for the rich and another for the

poor; if there were they might not be so unequally treated. There is the

same law for both; but in its effect it favours the rich at the expense of

the poor, and that is not to the ultimate advantage of the community.

The fine is an alternative to imprisonment, and in practice it is a

peculiarly striking example of our whole system of punishment. The

magistrate on behalf of the public says to the offender, in effect, "You

have transgressed the laws of the state in which you live and must

therefore be punished. I do not wish to be too hard on you, but you must

either pay us five shillings or we shall keep you for three days." Now as

people cannot be kept in prison without cost being thereby incurred, the

effect of the sentence is that if the offender does not pay to the police

five shillings on his own account the taxpayer pays the prison five

shillings. The culprit is injured by being sent to prison; but the public

is also injured by having to pay. It is remarkably like the operation

known as cutting off the nose to spite the face. This is indeed the effect

of most of our punishments; they injure others besides the criminal, and

there is room for grave doubt as to whether they benefit anybody. Once the

punishment has been undergone, the offender is supposed to have expiated

his offence; but as there is no positive expiation for past wrongdoing,

except it may be future welldoing, this is a fiction.

It is not a wise thing to teach the ignorant that they can pay for any

harm they do; least of all to teach them that they atone by imprisonment

for injuries inflicted on others. It is no compensation to a man who has

been hurt to know that his assailant is being lodged and fed at his

expense, and that some day he will come out no better than when he went

into his place of retreat. When a man is disabled by injuries he has

received his family is likely to suffer, and if he be a working man they

may be in peril of becoming destitute. His assailant is shut up, and his

family too may suffer in a similar way and to an equal degree. The law

will see that the offender is taken care of, but the injured person and

the families of both the parties are left to struggle as best they may.

What harm have they done? They are neglected, and may suffer hunger unless

they also do harm, while the offender is "expiating" his offence at the

public expense.

In so far as punishment is retributive it is foolish and indefensible,

harming not only those on whom it is inflicted, but those who inflict it.

If as individuals we are not justified in fostering a spirit of revenge,

we are as little entitled to encourage such a spirit in our corporate

capacity. Their actions show that some men are capable of doing very

wicked things, and that is a very good reason for interfering with them;

but it is no reason for interfering in such a way that we are all burdened

by it, while there is no reasonable expectation that they are being

brought to a better frame of mind.

Until late in the last century the Crown Prosecutor craved for punishment

on those who had committed indictable offences "in order to deter others

from committing the like offence in all time coming." That form has been

dropped, but the theory is still widely held that punishment deters others

than those convicted. The prison returns show that there is no reason for

claiming that it deters many of those who have been punished from

repeating their offensive conduct. The "others" in some numbers are always

recruiting the ranks of those who habitually transgress, but the great

majority of our fellow-citizens keep out of prison. Are we to believe that

this is because the punishment of the prisoners sent there has deterred

them from committing offences? It may be the reason; but it cannot be

proved even if it is. For my own part, I have never seen any cause to

believe that my acquaintances and friends refrain from beating their wives

and from taking what is not their own because if they did these things

they might be sent to jail; and I have observed that those who theorise

most about the conduct of others and its causes, are frequently quite

unable to advance any evidence from their own observations and experience

that would support their theories.

There can be no doubt that the dignified jurists who adopt Mansfield's

view (that a man should be hanged not because he had stolen a horse, but

in order that others might not steal horses) would resent the suggestion

that they themselves are honest simply from the fear of the law, and it

would show less conceit of themselves and more knowledge of their

neighbours if they assumed that the mass of their fellow-citizens are no

worse than they.

In my day at school some boys were unmercifully whacked, when the master

got into a temper as a result of their iniquity. The theory was that this

discouraged others from committing the same offences; but as boys are as

often punished for the stupidity of themselves or the teacher as for any

wilful misconduct on their part, the theory was not in accord with the

practice. When some unfortunate culprit was called up, the feelings of the

rest of us were of a mixed nature. Partly we were sorry for him, but the

degree was dependent on our personal regard for him; partly there was a

feeling of contempt for him in so far as he was imprudent enough to let

himself be caught; partly there was some curiosity as to how he would

demean himself; and mainly there was thankfulness that we were not in his

shoes. The punishment did not deter any of us from doing the same thing;

but it did make us more careful in the doing of it, and it gave some a

training in duplicity that appears to have been of use to them in their

business careers.

In so far as the teacher was considered to be a tyrant it was rather a

feather in a boy's cap than otherwise if he could disobey, especially if

he escaped. Even if he were caught it was not considered a disgrace, and

if he were severely punished the clumsiness he had shown in playing his

pranks was overlooked and he was treated with the respect due to a

martyr. It was a small matter to break the master's rules, though nobody

cared to be caught; but it was a serious thing for a boy to outrage the

standard of conduct which was adopted by his neighbours. The teacher who

knew this could command obedience so long as he worked on the knowledge;

and it is the same with men as with boys. They react most powerfully to

the opinion of the circle in which they move; if it were not so they would

soon cease to be members of it. Who sets the standard it is usually

impossible to say; but each influences the other, although one personality

may be more dominant than any other. He is the bad one when there is a bad

one; not because he is worse morally than others, but because he is

usually more daring and active; and as the commandments by which boys are

ruled are mainly negative, his positive personality brings him into

conflict with them and leads others after him.

But there are social circles in our midst where men are placed in the same

relation to the law as boys were at school. They are told to respect it,

and they know they must obey it at their peril; but it appears to them as

a series of senseless and unjust prohibitions which interferes with their

comfort and does not offer them any protection against their enemies. They

do not need policemen to protect their property, for they have none to

protect; and they feel quite able to look after their personal safety.

What they would appreciate would be protection from what they consider the

exactions of the factor and the tax-collector, and there are no police of

that sort yet. They have no respect for the law any more than I have

respect for a steam-engine, though I keep out of its way. If the law is

something that protects other people from them, but does not protect them

from other people, they cannot be expected to hold it in much respect;

they may look on it as their enemy. Many do not go so far, though they

distrust it and its ministers; but there are coteries, groups, who do

regard the law as something that it is praiseworthy to break. I am not now

referring to a man who makes a living by theft, but to the young people

who are brought up in certain slum districts and who there contract

inverted ideas of morality. Granted the existence of such circles, it is

easy to see how defiance of the law may get a young man the admiration of

his fellows; and as there are parts of the city where homage is rendered

to him who has most frequently and cleverly outraged the law by stealing,

or by tricking its representatives--where so far from honesty being

esteemed a virtue it is sneered at; where chastity is at a discount, and

the thief, rake, and bully is the ideal character--there is no reason for

any wonder that in the face of punishments there is no lack of offenders.

These people see no reason to respect our rules of conduct. Our

punishments may exercise a deterrent effect on them to the extent of

causing them to modify their methods of operation, but the bogey we fix up

for their warning will not make them virtuous or cause them to alter the

standards they have set up.

Punishment does not deter the great mass of our fellow-citizens from

committing crimes. They are law-abiding because they have no inclination

to break the law and no inducement to do so. Let it press on them and we

may hear another story. I am old enough to remember when in 1886 it was

proposed to give Home Rule to Ireland; we had then professors and eminent

citizens threatening to take up arms rather than allow the proposal to be

carried. They were genuinely alarmed for the safety of their friends, and

their respect for the law took a back seat for the time. It is an easy

matter for many of us to stand by the laws, for we have not felt their

pinch. That may be a reason why there is always such a difficulty in

changing them, and why almost any change is supported by the poorer

classes. Certain it is that even among the honest and welldoing poor there

is a suspicion of the law and a reluctance to have anything to do with it.

Those who are definitely at war with it and those who may be tempted to

join them, are the only persons whom we may reasonably hope to deter from

the commission of certain offences by our arbitrary punishment of those

whom we catch; and even in their case there is no ground for the belief

that the deterrent effect is such as to cause them to mend their way of

living, but only to modify their methods. The real deterrent is social

opinion, and when one of them comes out of jail it is quite evident that

his imprisonment has not caused him to sink to the smallest extent in the

estimation of those whose good opinion he values.

Serious crime has steadily declined in Glasgow as the nests of the

criminals have been torn down. They are much less potent for evil when

separated from each other than when herded together; but now and then

there is a recrudescence of brutality and violence followed by demands for

more severe treatment of those who are captured. In France, lately, the

guillotine has been brought forth again with the object of frightening the

bandits. I know nothing about conditions there; but it is quite evident

that here we might have such a demand resulting from an outbreak of crime,

caused not by leniency of treatment of prisoners, not caused indeed by the

way in which any part of our penal system acts, but due to the impunity

with which the sharpers and criminals in our midst are allowed to

practise. So long as there is no provision whereby a man can obtain

opportunity for honest work with a guarantee that the fruits of his labour

will not be taken from him, there will be many unemployed. Most of them

are quite well-disposed persons, but some of them are not. We cannot deal

properly with the shirkers and sharpers till we have separated off the

merely unfortunate. When we have seen that men have opportunity to support

themselves we shall be fairly entitled to question the person who has no

visible honest means of subsistence as to how he is obtaining his living;

and, failing satisfaction, to deal with him. Meantime they are mixed up

with the honest and law-abiding but unfortunate citizens, to the

aggravation of the misery that honesty and poverty combined have brought

on them.

Let them combine and act together and there is no saying how far they may

go; not because our prisons are too comfortable; not because of anything

that does or does not take place there; but because our cities are not

properly managed; because we have permitted the aggregation of people

under conditions that have been favourable to the growth of an anti-social

sentiment; because we have bred the monster that strikes fear into us.

The treatment of the criminal may be wise, or it may be as foolish as I

think it; but you might as well blame the method of treating a typhus case

in hospital for the spread of that disease in an insanitary area, as blame

the leniency of the courts for any outbreak of crime you may have in the

areas which are known to be infested with criminals. All the elements are

there for such an outbreak, and if it occurs it will be because we have

permitted them to combine. How far we are justified in making one person

the scapegoat for the sins of another, even if we could do it, is a matter

for discussion by those who are concerned with such problems. For my own

part, I do not think it fair to make an example of anybody, as it is

called, and I do not believe that it serves any good purpose that could

not be better attained by more rational means.

PART III

THE TREATMENT OF THE CRIMINAL

CHAPTER I

THE MACHINERY OF THE LAW

The police and their duties--Divided control--Need for knowledge of

local peculiarities--The fear of "corruption"--The police cell--

Cleanliness and discomfort--Insufficient provision of diet, etc.--The

casualty surgeon--The police court--The untrained magistrate--The

assessor--Pleas of "guilty"--Case--Apathy of the public--Agents for

the Poor--The prison van--The sheriff court--The procurator-fiscal--

Procedure in the higher courts--The Scottish jury.

To the majority of people the living representative of the law is the

policeman. It is his duty to protect the citizens from evil-doers, and to

arrest offenders. He is the subject of a good deal of chaff, but his

position is generally respected; and although men get into the force who

by temper and experience are quite unsuited for their work, the great

majority discharge the duties laid upon them in a manner that is

surprisingly satisfactory, when the demands made upon them are taken into

account. They are supposed to have a knowledge of the law, and for

practical purposes they must know something of medicine in order that they

may give first aid to the injured; they are expected to be able to answer

questions of an exceedingly miscellaneous nature when asked by the passing

stranger; and they require to be always cool and clear-headed, to be ready

for any emergency, and to have a temper that nothing can ruffle. If they

have enough of these desirable qualifications to satisfy the authorities

they may receive a salary for their services rather better than that given

to the unskilled labourer.

That efforts are made to obtain good men for the post is undeniable. That

these efforts are always so enlightened or so successful as they might be

is not so certain. In Glasgow, for instance, a standard of height is set

up which excludes the vast majority of Glasgow-bred men from this

occupation. In some parts of the country men go to flesh and bone, and

they are big-framed and brawny; but this is not the case in the town. Yet

a man's height offers no presumption of his fitness for any position

involving the exercise of judgment. A minimum 5 ft. 6 in. includes all the

5 ft. 7 in. and 5 ft. 8 in. men; and a minimum 5 ft. 9 in. excludes all

these and limits the choice of candidates very much. It is not the best

men to act as guardians to the public peace that are sought, but the best

men amongst those of a certain height; and this is bound to lower the

standard of efficiency. Indeed, the higher the standard of height the

lower the standard of efficiency will tend to become, because of the

limitation of choice implied.

The police force is a civil force and ought to be entirely under the

control of the citizens through their representatives, but this civil

force is not formed on any conception of civic needs. It is organised on a

military model, and subject to inspection by a military man on whose

reports to the Secretary of State its efficiency is decided. Nobody seems

to think of asking what such an inspector knows of the needs of the

district whose police he inspects. His training enables him to tell when a

man carries himself well and turns out his toes nicely, and the ability of

the police to do so is aided by their going to inspection in new

uniforms; so that the inspector sees a number of men in new clothes, and

decides by their bearing their fitness to act as policemen. This condition

of things enables a man to earn a salary who might otherwise be

unemployed, and if it stopped there the absurdity might be worth the

money; but when a police force is to be judged and their grants to be

graduated, not according to their knowledge of the work, but according to

the ignorance of their inspectors, there is likely to be trouble. If the

police require to pay more attention to the inspector who can stop their

grant than to representatives of the citizens in whose service they are

supposed to act, it is a bad thing for the police and for the citizens.

Every district has its own peculiarities, not observed by those who live

there because of custom, but noticed by strangers and sometimes

disapproved by them. It is an advantage, therefore, that those set in

positions of authority should be acquainted with the customs and manners

of the people among whom they live. A policeman will discharge his duties

with more comfort to himself, more credit to the force, and greater

benefit to the community if he knows those in the district in which his

duties lie. Unless he is in touch with the law-abiding elements therein,

unless he knows them and has their confidence and support, in many cases

he will not be in a position to distinguish between conduct that is

harmless and conduct that is criminal. For instance, it is well known that

professional thieves depend largely on their coolness and daring for their

success. If "thief" were written all over them they would starve, and they

only earn their living because, to those who are personally unacquainted

with them, they are not distinguishable from honest men. The policeman

knows this; and if he sees a person coming out of business premises long

after business hours, he quite naturally questions that person by look or

by word. If he does not know whether the person has a right to be there he

may make a fool of himself, either by arresting a man who has had

legitimate business on the premises or by letting a thief get away. He is

on the horns of a dilemma in which he should not be placed.

Again, supposing complaints have been made about lads loitering around

certain closes or corners, and the policeman has been instructed to have

this stopped. If he knows the inhabitants of his beat he is able to

discriminate between those who have a certain right to be about the place

and those against whom the complaint is directed. If he does not know them

he may reprimand or arrest the wrong people altogether, causing trouble

for himself and widespread irritation that need never have been aroused.

Those who have been affronted or injured do not take his difficulties into

account; and it may be that those who are responsible for placing him in

what is, after all, a false position, have not sufficiently considered the

evil results caused thereby.

The military habit of assuming that every man is like every other man, and

shifting people about like so many dolls, has its disadvantages in civil

life. It does make a difference whether the man set to do a certain duty

is acquainted with the conditions in which he is placed or is ignorant of

them. Even at the door of a court not only discretion but knowledge is

necessary on the part of the door-keeper, and from neglect to recognise

this simple fact a Sheriff has been stopped at the door of a High Court; a

Procurator-Fiscal after thirty years' service in the court has been

refused admission; and the medical officer in attendance has had to demand

to see a superintendent before he could get in. If such things are

possible in cases like these, it is quite clear a good deal of trouble and

annoyance, and possibly a good deal of injustice, may result in quarters

which cannot be said to be influential.

It has been said that it is advisable to move men about from one district

and from one duty to another in order to prevent their possible

corruption; but the men are neither so stupid nor so bad as this reason

would imply. The person who is corrupt will carry his corrupt tendencies

with him over a wider area and be quite as dangerous there; for the less

he is known the more readily will his personal defects escape supervision

and criticism on the part of those among whom he works; and it is better

that he should be discovered and dismissed than that the great mass of

policemen, who are neither stupid nor corrupt, but who are honestly

seeking to discharge their duty in such a manner as to gain them the

goodwill of their fellow-citizens, should have their work rendered

unnecessarily arduous and difficult. Too much is expected of them

considering the opportunities they are allowed, and their faults are due

more to the system by which they are ruled than to any personal defects on

the part of the men. Anything that will bring that system more intimately

in touch with the needs of the community and more sympathetically in

contact with the difficulties of the poorer classes will help towards the

efficiency and also the comfort of the force.

When a person is arrested on any criminal charge he is first taken to the

local police station, where the charge is entered. He is searched and

placed in a cell, and if there is anything special in the charge against

him, or in his appearance and behaviour, his treatment may be modified

accordingly. In the great majority of cases the person arrested is only a

petty offender at most. If he has money sufficient, he may hand it over as

bail and be released with a notice that if he does not appear at a time

and place specified his money will be forfeited and he may again be taken

into custody. If he or his friends cannot leave a pledge for his

appearance he makes acquaintance with the routine of administration. He

becomes the tenant of a cell where he remains till the sitting of the

court next morning. If the cell accommodation is fully taken up he may

have company; and while every effort is made to prevent old offenders

being placed in the same cell with those who are in for the first time,

the best that can be done is bad.

Although prisoners are presumed to be innocent till they are found guilty,

they are in many respects worse treated while waiting to be sent to prison

than after they arrive there. This is not the fault of the police so much

as that of the authorities who are responsible for the accommodation or

the want of it. A drunk man may be a very helpless or a very intractable

person, and little can be done for him till he is sober. His condition is

such that it is quite clearly not the best practice to put him in a cell

and leave him there. It is no uncommon thing to find that the drunkenness

has masked some more serious condition; but even although there should be

nothing behind his intoxication, the man is more liable to contract

illness than a sober person. In less enlightened countries than ours such

prisoners are not left alone, but are kept warm and placed under

observation till they are sober. In our country they are less carefully

treated. Drunk or sober the prisoner is in an uncomfortable position.

The police have difficulties to contend with that are not present in the

prisons. The prisoners they arrest are not appreciably more dirty than

when they arrive at the prison, but in the police cells there are not the

same facilities for making and keeping things clean. There is no supply of

free labour and not a generous provision of paid cleaners, and the cells

in some cases seem to be constructed more with a view to saving the

expense of cleaning than to providing for the reasonable custody of

prisoners. Wooden floors are less easily cleaned than asphalt or cement,

and both in the prisons and the police cells this seems to determine their

construction. It is a piece of senseless cruelty in a climate such as

ours, as anyone can easily find out for himself if he cares to try. In

such a place even in warm weather it is difficult to keep the feet warm,

and cold feet do not improve a man's temper.

The newer cells are lined with glazed brick in deference to some sanitary

notions. It is a great pity that the apostles of sanitation cannot be

compelled to live in the places they design. No doubt the glazed walls are

more easily cleaned than whitewashed brick would be, but they strike a

chill into the occupants of the place, and moisture condenses on them in a

way that it does not elsewhere. Cleanliness let us have by all reasonable

means, but to be clean it is not necessary to be uncomfortable; and such

methods are enough to disgust with cleanliness those who have to submit to

their results. Another objectionable feature of the cell is the presence

of a water-closet in it. Surely the sanitary expert has been napping when

this was arranged; but here again the matter seems to be one of expense.

The reasonable way would be to escort prisoners to a place when necessary,

but that would mean the provision of a proper staff of warders. The cell

is otherwise unfurnished save for a raised slab of wood which takes the

place of a bed. There is no bedding provided. It is a barbarous provision

for the man who is presumed to be innocent. As for his diet, there is none

prescribed. He may have food sent in or he may have money to purchase it.

If not, he will have to get along on bread and water, not having been

proved guilty. In the morning he will be brought before the court, and if

he asks for it he may have water to wash himself before appearing there.

Cleanliness is not enforced, though it may be encouraged; but judging by

their appearance when admitted to prison, not many have sought the

water-basin during their stay in the police cell.

By the Summary Jurisdiction Act, 1908, it was provided that persons should

not be kept in police cells for more than one night, and all persons

remanded were sent to prison, to their distinct advantage; for there the

staff and conditions are arranged for the custody of prisoners, and they

are free for the time being from the noises incidental to the arrest and

confinement of drunken persons, while they have a better chance of having

their needs attended to. This procedure entailed more work on the

officials, a difficulty that could easily have been overcome by a small

increase in the staff. It meant not more trouble than is necessitated in

the case of persons remitted to higher courts, and if the interests of the

prisoners who are presumed to be innocent had been considered the Act

would have remained in force; but their convenience was not represented so

powerfully as that of the officials, and reversion to the old, bad plan of

retaining prisoners in the custody of the police has taken place. They may

be kept in the police cells for forty-eight hours.

Some of those who are arrested may be suffering from injuries or disease.

To attend these a casualty surgeon is employed. When he is asked to do so,

it is his duty to call and see prisoners who complain or who are obviously

ill. His pay is small; and from it, until lately, he had to provide any

dressings and medicines that were required. It is not part of his duty to

see every prisoner before the court begins. Occasionally people are sent

to prison who should never have been brought before the courts at all.

Both police and surgeon are placed in a very difficult position by the

system. The police may err in their judgment as to the condition of a

prisoner and may fail to direct the attention of the medical man to him.

On the other hand, if they call in the surgeon too frequently to see

persons who are not in need of his services he may reasonably complain,

and dissensions may arise on this account which will make the working of

the system irritating to all parties. In order to their comfort, surgeon

and police have to make allowances for each other and to stand by one

another in a way that is not likely to make for such efficiency of service

to the public on the part of either as is desirable. When some

extraordinary case attracts attention blame is lavishly showered upon the

police; and it is generally undeserved, at least in the form it takes.

They are not to blame because of their failure to do things for which they

are unfitted. They may be to blame for not protesting against duties being

thrust upon them which should be performed by others. It is misdirected

economy to underpay medical men, and until this is recognised accidents

may be looked for and incidents will occur to shock the public because of

the injury which some person has inadvertently sustained.

In the Court the Burgh Procurator-Fiscal may prosecute, or his depute may

act for him. In Glasgow with all its police courts there is only one

trained lawyer who prosecutes. The great mass of the charges are conducted

by his deputes, who are invariably police officers. The only witnesses in

many cases are constables and the prosecutor is one of their superior

officers. It is a state of affairs that does not impress an outsider by

its wisdom, and it is not regarded by those who come within its scope as

being fair. The police have too many duties thrust upon them.

On the bench, in the great majority of cases, there is an untrained judge.

In Glasgow there is only one stipendiary magistrate, who is a trained

lawyer. The others are magistrates of the city, who have to discharge a

multitude of duties, among which is that of sitting in judgment on their

fellow-citizens. They have been elected to the Town Council to serve their

constituents as members of that body, and in due course they are made

Bailies. Nobody pretends that they are thereby endowed with a knowledge of

the law, experience in weighing evidence, or the judicial mind; but they

are invested with judicial powers, and in certain cases can send men to

prison for twelve months. They are usually men of excellent character and

intentions, but unfortunately both of these qualities may exist with utter

incompetence from a judicial standpoint. The draper would not admit that a

grocer could exchange businesses with him and the concern go on as well as

ever. Each man knows that to learn his own trade requires time, to speak

of nothing else; but they appear to believe that all that is required to

enable them to execute what in law stands for justice is the possession of

a chain of office. Were there any foundation in fact for such an idea

many weary years of study would be saved; for it is easier to get a chain

than a licence to practise. That they are usually quite satisfied of their

own fitness for the work goes without saying; and it would be a piece of

vanity as harmless as it is foolish if the liberty of so many were not

placed in jeopardy by it. It has been urged as an argument against the

appointment of trained lawyers that there were fewer appeals from the

decisions of the Bailies than from those of the professional man. This is

meant as a testimony to their superior fitness, presumably; for the only

relevant inference from the statement is that the Bailie is better

qualified to act as a judge than the man who has had a training in the

work. It is a startling testimony to the superiority of inspiration to

reason. There are no testimonials from those who had appeared before the

courts either as prisoners or agents, however; and the plea is not

convincing. That it should ever have been made is a striking commentary on

the fitness of those who made it; or on their modesty.

Appeals from police-court decisions can only be made on a case stated by

the magistrate whose judgment is appealed against. Trained men are not

free from liability to error, and they recognise the fact. If a case is

stated in such a way that the issue is obscured there is no use in

attempting an appeal; so that freedom from appeals may as readily be a

testimony to the inefficiency of a judge as to his efficiency. It may

afford a presumption that he is not only unfit to try a case, but not to

be trusted in stating one. To suggest that it affords evidence of the

superior ability of the draper and the grocer to the lawyer in law

matters, is to presume too much on the credulity of the public. If they

are really so splendidly endowed it is surprising that they should not

place their services at the disposal of one another when a question of

trade causes dispute. In that they might be expected to have knowledge at

least; but though Bailies have power to send men to prison they are not

empowered to try civil causes involving the property of their

fellow-citizens. That is to say, they have power over the lives, but not

over the property of the lieges. This is surely a grave injustice; either

to them or to the prisoners.

In every court where a bailie presides he is aided and advised by an

assessor, whose duty it is to keep him within the law. It is a somewhat

farcical situation. The prisoner is there because he is charged with

breaking the law; the bailie is there to try him on the charge; and behind

him is a legal gentleman to see that the judge does not himself break the

law in the process! He may either take the advice of the assessor or

disregard it, but he is the responsible magistrate. If he follows the

assessor's advice, that official is in the exercise of power without

responsibility, which is not a position in which anybody should be placed;

if he follows the inner light, the "safeguard" which the assessor is

supposed to be is useless.

It is looked upon by many as a very small affair, this whole matter of the

Police Court, but it is really a very large affair and a very important

one. Police Courts are those where most offenders appear for the first

time, and from them they are first sent to prison. As the first step

counts for so much, it is of the utmost importance that those who come

before these Courts should have their cases thoroughly considered. This

cannot be done if the proceedings are hurried, and it is notorious that

Bailies "try" scores of prisoners in a day, the work not appearing to

interfere with their ordinary occupations. Many of the prisoners plead

guilty; but it is well known that there is a widespread belief among the

labouring classes that if you plead guilty you get a shorter sentence.

What justification there is for this belief I cannot say, but of its

existence and its operative effect there is no room for doubt. They do not

seem to take into account the effect the registration of a conviction may

have against them at any future time, and pleas are given that no lawyer

would advise.

I do not mean to suggest that people in large numbers plead guilty when

they have no knowledge of the offence, but that the act they have

committed may have been capable of another than a criminal construction. X

30, a girl, is charged with fraud, which is a sufficiently serious crime.

She has no previous convictions against her. She is remanded to prison,

and there states she has been advised to plead guilty and she will get off

lightly. She is told of the grave nature of the offence and legal

assistance is obtained for her. It is found that she is a wayward girl who

left her people and came to Glasgow. She obtained employment in a shop,

and got lodgings in a part of Glasgow that is not very reputable and with

people who were not likely to keep her straight. She lost her work and was

kept on in her lodgings; but an event occurred there which made it

imperative that she should go elsewhere, and she removed to the house of

her landlady's daughter. She was there a fortnight when she met a woman

whom she knew and through her obtained a situation. She left her lodgings

and went to live with this woman. At the instance of her former landlady

she was arrested for obtaining board and lodgings on false pretences. It

was shown that she had paid her debt while she was working; and she

protested she had made no false pretences, but meant to pay the balance

when she could. The case was adjourned to enable her to do so. If she had

not had legal advice and assistance there is no doubt that this girl would

have had a conviction for fraud recorded against her. She had got into bad

company and was on the way to the gutter, but by the operation of the law

she would have been driven there. To deal properly with the large numbers

which come before the Police Courts would take a great deal of time, but

that is no reason why the cases should be hurried through.

If a man has the means to fee a lawyer he is in a better case, or if he

has committed an offence which is serious enough to cause his remand to a

higher Court, for there he will get legal assistance free; but if he is

simply a petty offender with no one to help him he will probably get dealt

with without any loss of time and be sentenced by scale.

It is time that some provision was made to have the police court made less

a police court and more a court of justice. There is far too much police

about it for the public interest. Anybody may attend, but few do so; and

the proceedings might for all practical purposes be conducted in private,

so far as the towns are concerned. The cases are seldom reported, and when

the newspapers do notice the proceedings it is usually in a jocular way;

but they are no joke to the persons concerned. A sensational murder is

detailed and canvassed as though the only matter of importance to the

country was the hanging of the wretch who has got into the limelight.

Every hysterical theorist is anxious to get his opinion of the proper way

to treat criminals put before the public; and all the time we are busily

engaged in putting into our machine young and old who have taken the first

step downwards, and congratulating ourselves on the smoothness with which

it works. It is not cruelty that causes us to behave in this way, but

sheer stupidity and lack of imagination. Now and then a man who has eyes

to see gets made a Bailie, but he makes a poor police judge. Those who

look upon themselves and are credited by others with the heaven-born

instinct are as likely to be the men whom no one would trust to be a judge

in his own cause; and it is quite possible for a man who is narrow-minded,

vindictive, and callous to have the fate of his poorer fellow-citizens

placed in his hands, and, because he likes the work, to continue on the

bench long after his term as a Bailie has expired. If it is important to

deal with wrongdoing in the beginning; if it is desirable to prevent

people from being sent to prison when that can be avoided; it is obvious

that we must see that our minor courts are so arranged and so officered

that those who come before them have at least as good a chance of having

their cases weighed as the old hands who go to the higher Courts get

there.

The Sheriff may sit to try cases summarily, just as the Bailie does; but

the court is ordered differently. The Procurator-Fiscal has no connection

with the police. The case is reported by them to him and he makes his own

enquiries and may drop proceedings altogether. The Sheriff is an

experienced lawyer and he sees that the prisoner's case is properly

presented. The prisoner, if he wishes, may have a law-agent to appear on

his behalf, and in jury cases it is the duty of the prison authorities to

see that a lawyer has the defence in hand.

In Scotland it has been the custom for all indicted prisoners who have not

the means to pay for legal advice to receive competent legal

representation. The Agents for the Poor give their services freely and

ungrudgingly. They behave towards the poor person who is accused of crime

in the same way as the hospital doctors do to the sick who present

themselves. In the course of their work they have to devote considerable

time to the cases of those whose defence is entrusted to them; and if the

charge is one that brings the accused before the High Court they appear by

counsel for him. No person appears in the dock of the High Courts in

Scotland who has not a qualified member of the Bar to defend him; and the

absence of financial means does not affect this privilege. This provision

of legal advice and assistance is not made at the expense of the public,

but at that of the profession; and it is of as much benefit in its own way

as that made for the sick by the members of the medical profession. I have

never seen young medical men work with more enthusiasm to pull a patient

from the jaws of death than is shown by the lawyers in their efforts to

snatch the accused poor person from the hands of the prosecution. In both

cases the energy might be expended to better purpose; for sick persons are

frequently restored to health only to become a greater nuisance to their

neighbours, and some accused persons are acquitted and sent out to prey on

society; but when all discount has been made there is left a great deal of

good work that was well worth doing. With regard to the work of both

doctor and lawyer, we may some day take steps to see that the persons

restored to health do not use their powers to the disadvantage of society,

and that those restored to liberty do not use their freedom to molest

others. At present we take no account of them once they have ceased to be

cases--to our disadvantage as well as to theirs--and no one recognises

more clearly than the lawyer that he is sometimes engaged in the attempt

to turn loose on society a man who has no intention of conforming to its

laws. On the other hand, everyone who has taken part in the work knows

that were it not for his action serious injustice would be likely to take

place.

If there were as full a provision made for the defence of prisoners who

come before the Police Courts as exists for that of those who appear in

the higher Courts, it would be alike to the advantage of the officials,

the prisoners, and the public; but to ask that such a provision should be

made at the sole cost of the legal profession is to ask too much. In

special cases they have never been appealed to in vain; and they need to

give more time to one case than would enable a medical man to attend

twenty. Their services are not sufficiently appreciated and known by the

general public, or it would be recognised that they have contributed to

save many poor people from degradation and helped to prevent accessions to

the ranks of the habitual offender. No one would propose that prisoners

who are called before the higher Courts should be deprived of skilled

advice and advocacy unless they are able to pay, and yet there is less

need in these Courts than in the Police Courts for the provision that

exists.

When a prisoner has been remitted from a Police Court he is transferred in

a van to prison, to await further proceedings. It has often been remarked

that the various departments in Corporations seem to act independently of

each other. The Sanitary Department acts energetically to prevent

overcrowding in some circumstances, but the van used for conveying

prisoners to prison seems to have escaped their notice. It is a

prehistoric vehicle in the form of a bus without windows. It is divided

into compartments each holding a number of prisoners, and the partitions

contribute to prevent proper ventilation. It is lit by a few panes in the

roof. On a hot day it is stifling. Any vehicle of the kind would never be

licensed for the conveyance of ordinary passengers, animal or human, by a

modern sanitary authority.

The presiding judge in the Higher Courts is either a Sheriff or a Lord of

Justiciary. The Sheriff has jurisdiction over a County and may sit both as

judge and jury; that is to say, he may try cases summarily; but his Court

differs materially, even when he is doing so, from that of the Burgh

Magistrate. In the first place, more public attention is given to the

proceedings, for the higher the Court the greater is the interest shown in

its work. In small country burghs this rule may not hold good, for there

the inhabitants know more of what is doing in their midst. They may be

acquainted with police, judge, and offender, personally; and in that case

are likely to take a lively interest in the proceedings, criticising

freely all the parties and influencing powerfully the tone of the Court;

but in a great city the Police Courts might as well be held anywhere for

all the effective public supervision and informed criticism they receive.

Then the police are not prosecutors in the Sheriff Summary Courts. The

prosecution is conducted by a Procurator-Fiscal who is appointed by the

Lord Advocate, and who holds his appointment for life and is not in any

way under the authority of the police. The Sheriff is a man of experience

in his profession, and is continually engaged in judicial work, mostly of

a civil character. He is not merely or mainly engaged in dealing with

criminals, and is not likely to acquire a subconscious prejudice against

the defendant.

The Lord Advocate is the head of the department concerned with

prosecutions in Scotland, and no criminal action can be taken without his

direction or concurrence. Private prosecutions at common law are

practically unknown. His deputes act for him in the higher Courts and are

instructed by the procurators-fiscal, who are solicitors and prosecute in

the Sheriff Courts themselves. It is their duty to make enquiries into all

charges with which the Police Courts are not competent to deal, and these

enquiries are conducted privately. From the time a prisoner is passed on

to them until he appears at the Court to plead or to be tried there are no

public proceedings against him. He is brought into the Court at an early

stage, the charge is read over to him, and he is asked to make a

declaration. A law-agent is provided for his assistance, and he is told

that anything he says by way of declaration may be used against him. The

agent may advise him to say nothing and he usually does so, his

declaration amounting simply to a denial of the charge. This is signed by

him and read at his trial, usually closing the case for the Crown. While

the declaration is being taken the public are excluded from the Court. If

the Procurator-Fiscal considers that his enquiry does not justify further

proceedings the charge is dropped, provided the Lord Advocate agrees; but

if the authorities are satisfied there is a case for trial an indictment

is served.

In Scotland when a prisoner is indicted to appear before a jury court he

must be served seventeen days before his trial with a copy of the

indictment, containing the charge, a list of the productions against him,

and a list of the witnesses to be called for the prosecution. Seven days

thereafter he is brought before the Court to plead to the charge. If he

plead guilty he may be dealt with there and then. If he plead not guilty

his plea is recorded and he is sent back till the second diet of the

court. If he intend to set up a special defence, such as insanity or an

alibi, notice of such defence has to be given at the pleading diet; but

the witnesses he intends to call need not be notified to the Crown until

three days before the trial by jury. The prosecution cannot add any

productions or any witnesses to the list furnished in the indictment; but

if it is decided that additional witnesses are required the diet may be

deserted and a new indictment served. In no case, however, can a prisoner

be kept with a charge hanging over his head for more than one hundred and

seventeen days from the date of his committal. After that time he is

entitled to be liberated and no further proceedings on the charge can be

taken against him at any time.

The Crown usually makes careful enquiries in the public interest when any

special plea of insanity is brought forward; and if satisfied that the

plea is a valid one, has provided, at the public expense, expert testimony

to that effect on behalf of the prisoner. The greatest care has been taken

to ensure that prisoners brought before the higher Courts do not suffer

from lack of means, and there is never any disposition on the part of the

prosecutor to make it a point of honour that he should obtain a

conviction. There is no speech by the prosecutor in opening his case. So

far as the Court is concerned the jury start without any bias against the

prisoner, and as the evidence is led they gain their knowledge of the

case. In most cases the prosecutor does not address the jury at all. He

contents himself with leading evidence. The character of the prisoner is

not disclosed to the jury until after their verdict has been returned. If

during the trial any reference is initiated by the prosecution as to

previous convictions, the prisoner is entitled to an acquittal upon the

charge against him. The point the jury has to determine is whether the

person committed the crime charged, and they have to find their verdict

simply on the evidence led.

The Scottish jury consists of fifteen men, and the verdict of a majority

is required. They may decline on the evidence to express an opinion on the

prisoner's guilt, but instead may find the charge not proven. This is the

most practical provision for giving a prisoner the benefit of any doubt

that exists in their minds after hearing the evidence. Whatever the

verdict may be, the prisoner, having been once tried, cannot again be

charged with the same offence. It is difficult to conceive any system

under which a prisoner charged with crime could be more fairly treated;

and if in the minor Courts offenders received the same consideration, the

number sent to prison would be greatly diminished and the ranks of the

habitual offender would fail to receive so many recruits.