Criminal Intrigue

Of criminals, actual or nominal, there are many kinds. It is necessary, first of all, to enumerate the chief varieties.

There is the political criminal. By this term is meant the victim of an attempt by a more or less despotic Government to preserve its own stability. The word "criminal" in this expression is usually a euphemism to express the suppression of a small minority by the majority. The aims of the "political criminal" may be anti-social, and in that case he is simply an ordinary criminal, but he is not necessarily guilty of any anti-social offence; he simply tries to overturn a certain political order which may itself be anti-social. Consequently the "political criminal" of our time or place may be the hero, martyr, saint, of another land or age. The political criminal is, as Lombroso calls him, "the true precursor of the progressive movement of humanity;" or, as Benedikt calls him, the homo nobilis of whom the highest type is Christ. From any scientific point of view the use of the word crime, to express a difference of national feeling or of political opinion, is an abuse of language. Such a conception may be necessary to ensure the supremacy of a Government, just as the conception of heresy is necessary to ensure the supremacy of a Church; the prison for political dissentients corresponds to the stake for religious dissentients. A criminality which is regulated partly by chronology, partly by longitude, does not easily admit of scientific discussion.

We have, again, the criminal by passion. He is usually a man of wholesome birth and of honest life, possessed of keen, even exaggerated sensibilities, who, under the stress of some great, unmerited wrong, has wrought justice for himself. Stung to sudden madness by some gross insult to his wife or wrong to his daughter, he makes an attempt on the life of the offender. The criminal by passion never becomes a recidivist; it is the social, not the anti-social, instincts that are strong within him; his crime is a solitary event in his life. Therefore he cannot figure as a serious danger to society; in some respects he serves even to quicken the social conscience and to check anti-social instincts. At the same time it is not to the advantage of society that a private individual should in a moment of passion even wreak justice; and the criminal by passion cannot complain that he in his turn becomes the victim of a social reaction.

We have also the insane criminal; that is to say, the person who, being already in a condition of recognisable mental alienation, performs some flagrantly anti-social act. A very large number of crimes are committed by persons who are impelled by delusions, or who have, before the commission of the crime, been in a condition of mental alienation. Nearly a hundred persons every year in this country are sent to prison to be found insane on admission. The hanging of persons who are afterwards generally regarded as insane has always, and is still, frequently carried on. In Germany Dr. Richter has shown that out of 144 lunatics who were, as was afterwards shown, at the date of their crimes in the highest degree insane, only 38 were recognised as insane before the judge-i.e., 106 madmen were, on account of their madness, condemned to severe punishment. Out of 100 insane persons brought to the bar of justice only 26 to 28 are recognised as insane.[1] The insane criminal is clearly in a category of his own. He is only a criminal in the same sense as an infant or an animal who performs some noxious act. The lunatic may be influenced by the same motives that influence the sane person, but he is at the same time impelled by other motives peculiar to himself, and to which we may have no means of access. To bring all the solemn formalities of law to bear against a madman, and to condemn him to severe punishment, is in a civilised country unreasonable.

The political criminal may usually be recognised without difficulty when we lay aside political prejudice; the criminal by passion can be recognised at once when we know his history. There is not usually much difficulty in ascertaining the insanity of the criminal who is insane in the strict and perhaps the only legitimate sense of the word-i.e., intellectually insane. But at this point we are no longer able to proceed with quite the same clearness and certainty. We are approaching the criminal in the proper sense, the criminal with whom we shall be chiefly concerned.

The uncertainty on this borderland may be illustrated by the following case. W. T. is a boy of fifteen, a very small ugly-looking lad, with a small head, low in the forehead, larger in the back, high narrow palate, heavy sullen aspect, and slight external squint of left eye. His father and mother are healthy and sober people; one of the father's uncles died in an asylum, and one of his aunts committed suicide. The boy had convulsions at the age of eighteen months, and was very backward in walking and speaking; at the age of twelve he could not dress himself. At school he was very dull, apt to strike his companions if roused, solitary, fond of reading, but not remembering what he had read. His schoolmaster, an experienced teacher, had never known so peculiar a boy. But he was not a bad or untruthful lad, and had no vices. When he left school his father tried to teach him his own trade of shoemaking; but, though he had no special distaste for the work, he could not learn even the most elementary part of the trade. Other boys made fun of him, and he complained of his little sister, ten years of age, doing the same. One day, when he had been left quietly sitting alone with this sister, he took up his father's hammer, which was at his feet, and struck her, smashing in her skull. Then he locked the back door, as he always did on leaving home, and went out, closing the front door after him. He returned in an hour, wet from the rain which had begun to fall. He was taken to prison, and from the first displayed no emotion; he ate and slept well, and was a good, docile boy. The judge who tried him (Lord Coleridge) was evidently in favour of a verdict of manslaughter. The jury fell in with this suggestion, although the authority of Dr. Savage was in favour of insanity, and the boy was condemned to ten years' penal servitude.[2] Such a case shows very well the inaccuracy of our hard and fast lines of demarcation. Here was a person clearly of abnormal or degenerate character, and liable to sudden violent impulses; he would nowhere be popularly recognised as insane, and possibly it is not desirable that he should be so recognised. On the other hand, he cannot correctly be termed an instinctive criminal; he is on the borderland between the two groups, and a touch may send him in either direction.

Let us take another illustration. Miss B., nineteen years of age, the daughter of a captain in the army, is described as a tall robust-looking girl of lively temperament. When a few months old she had an attack of meningitis. As a child she was always wilful and troublesome. When she was eighteen years old she developed new instincts of mischief. She would sometimes take off her clothes, stuff them up the chimney, and set fire to them. When the servants rushed in she would be sitting on the hearth clapping her hands: "What a fine blaze!" She had frequently destroyed furniture, clothing, and books; she liked to cut carefully the strings binding a book, so that it would fall to pieces in the hands of the unsuspecting person who took it up. She drenched a baby, and frequently her own room, with water, without any reason. She once attempted to throttle the attendant in whose care she was put. She was backward for her age, though her education had not been neglected; she could not keep accounts, and was fond of reading children's books. There was a history of bad sexual habits, and she had a propensity to fall in love with every man she saw. She was perfectly coherent and rational, and accused others of doing the mischievous acts attributed to her. After being sent to a clergyman's house for some months she eventually recovered.[3] Here there was, strictly speaking, no insanity; there were vicious and criminal instincts which would no doubt have developed had the girl been sent to prison instead of to a comfortable home, and there was (as there very frequently is among instinctive criminals) a history of brain mischief. How shall we classify her?

Let us take another example-this time from France-in which the pathological element does not clearly appear. A gentleman named X., the French paper informs us, has been passing the summer at his country house with his daughter, aged twenty-two, and his son, aged twenty. From the moment of his arrival devastations occurred everywhere on his property. The shrubs were cut; garden plants and large branches of the birch trees removed; the doors and walls of the house were soiled. The grounds and dwellings of other persons in the neighbourhood were similarly treated. Windows were broken; the emblems of religion were outrageously insulted; the walls and doors of the church, the priest's house, and even the altar, were soiled with ordure. A drawing of the priest administering the sacrament to a cow was found on the walls, and obscene letters, containing also menaces of death and incendiarism, were received by M. X., the priest, and others. Terror overspread the parish, and no one dared to go out by night. At last M. X.'s son and daughter were discovered in the act. Alexis, the least guilty, having been drawn on by his sister, confessed his part in what had been done; he was the accomplice and confidant of his sister. She denied everything, even that she had aided her brother. There was no motive for these acts, save the pleasure of spreading terror through the country; they had had no intention of accomplishing their threats. The girl carried her impudence and imprudence so far as to send an insulting letter to the magistrate who was investigating her misdeeds, and to break windows, unperceived, in his presence.[4] This is an example of moral perversity, showing itself in malevolent and unsocial acts. Possibly, if we possessed a scientific history of the case, we might find a pathological element in it, but as it stands it is but an extravagant example of anti-social instincts, on the borderland of crime, which in a minor degree are far from uncommon.

I will now give, in some detail, the history of a more decisive and significant example of this same moral insensibility. It is in a child, and I take it from German records. Marie Schneider, a school-girl, twelve years of age, was brought before the Berlin Criminal Court in 1886. She was well developed for her age, of ordinary facial expression, not pretty, nor yet ugly. Her head was round, the forehead receding slightly, the nose rather small, the eyes brown and lively, the smooth, rather fair hair combed back. With an intellectual clearness and precision very remarkable for her age, she answered all the searching questions put by the President of the Court without hesitation or shrinking. There was not the slightest trace of any inner emotion or deep excitement. She spoke in the same quiet equable tone in which a school-girl speaks to her teacher or repeats her lesson. And when the questions put to her became of so serious a character that the judge himself involuntarily altered his voice and tone, the little girl still remained self-possessed, lucid, childlike. She was by no means bold, but she knew that she had to answer as when her teacher spoke to her, and what she said bore the impress of perfect truth, and agreed at every point with the evidence already placed before the court. Her statement was substantially as follows:-"My name is Marie Schneider. I was born on the 1st of May 1874, in Berlin. My father died long ago, I do not know when; I never knew him. My mother is still living; she is a machinist. I also have a younger brother. I lost a sister a year ago. I did not much like her, because she was better than I, and my mother treated her better. My mother has several times whipped me for naughtiness, and it is right that I should take away the stick with which she beat me, and to beat her. I have gone to school since I was six years old. I have been in the third class for two years. I stayed there from idleness. I have been taught reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and history, and also religion. I know the ten commandments. I know the sixth: it is, 'Thou shalt not kill.' I have some playfellows at school and in the neighbourhood, and I am often with a young lady [believed to be of immoral life] who is twenty years old and lives in the same house. She has told me about her childhood, and that she was just as naughty as I am, and that she struck the teacher who was going to punish her. Some time ago, in playing in the yard, I came behind a child, held his eyes, and asked him who I was. I pressed my thumbs deep in his eyes, so that he cried out and had inflamed eyes. I knew that I hurt him, and, in spite of his crying, I did not let go until I was made to. It did not give me special pleasure, but I have not felt sorry. When I was a little child I have stuck forks in the eyes of rabbits, and afterwards slit open the belly. At least so my mother has often said; I do not remember it. I know that Conrad murdered his wife and children, and that his head was cut off. I have heard my aunt read the newspapers. I am very fond of sweets, and have several times tried to get money to buy myself sweets. I told people the money was for some one else who had no small change. I know that that was deceit. I know too what theft is. Any one who kills is a murderer, and I am a murderess. Murder is punished with death; the murderer is executed; his head is cut off. My head will not be cut off, because I am still too young. On the 7th of July my mother sent me on an errand. Then I met little Margarete Dietrich, who was three and a half years old, and whom I had known since March. I said to her that she must come with me, and I took her hand. I wanted to take away her ear-rings. They were little gold ear-rings with a coloured stone. I did not want the ear-rings for myself, but to sell at a second-hand shop in the neighbourhood, to get money to buy some cakes. When I reached the yard I wanted to go somewhere, and I called to my mother to throw me down the key. She did so, and threw me down some money too, for the errand that I was to go on. I left little Margarete on the stairs, and there I found her again. From the yard I saw that the second-floor window was half open. I went with her up the stairs to the second floor to take away the ear-rings, and then to throw her out of the window. I wanted to kill her, because I was afraid that she would betray me. She could not talk very well, but she could point to me; and if it came out, my mother would have beaten me. I went with her to the window, opened it wide, and set her on the ledge. Then I heard some one coming down. I quickly put the child on the ground and shut the window. The man went by without noticing us. Then I opened the window and put the child on the ledge, with her feet hanging out, and her face turned away from me. I did that because I did not want to look in her face, and because I could push her easier. I pulled the ear-rings out. Grete began to cry because I hurt her. When I threatened to throw her out of the window she became quiet. I took the ear-rings and put them in my pocket. Then I gave the child a shove, and heard her strike the lamp and then the pavement. Then I quickly ran downstairs to go on the errand my mother had sent me. I knew that I should kill the child. I did not reflect that little Grete's parents would be sorry. It did not hurt me; I was not sorry; I was not sorry all the time I was in prison; I am not sorry now. The next day a policeman came to us and asked if I had thrown the child out of the window. I said no, I knew nothing about it. Then I threw away the ear-rings that I had kept hid; I was afraid they would search my pockets and find them. Then there came another policeman, and I told him the truth, because he said he would box my ears if I did not tell the truth. Then I was taken away, and had to tell people how it happened. I was taken in a cab to the mortuary. I ate a piece of bread they gave me with a good appetite. I saw little Grete's body, undressed, on a bed. I did not feel any pain and was not sorry. They put me with four women, and I told them the story. I laughed while I was telling it because they asked me such curious questions. I wrote to my mother from prison, and asked her to send me some money to buy some dripping, for we had dry bread." That was what little Marie Schneider told the judge, without either hesitation or impudence, in a completely childlike manner, like a school-girl at examination; and she seemed to find a certain satisfaction in being able to answer long questions so nicely. Only once her eyes gleamed, and that was when she told how in the prison they had given her dry bread to eat. The medical officer of the prison, who had watched her carefully, declared that he could find nothing intellectually wrong in her. She was intelligent beyond her years, but had no sense of what she had done, and was morally an idiot. And this was the opinion of the other medical men who were called to examine her. The Court, bearing in mind that she was perfectly able to understand the nature of the action she had committed, condemned Marie Schneider to imprisonment for eight years. The question of heredity was not raised. Nothing is known of the father except that he is dead.[5]

Marie Schneider differs from the previous cases, not merely by her apparent freedom from pathological elements, but by her rational motives and her intelligence. The young French woman intended nothing very serious by her brutal and unfeeling practical jokes. Marie Schneider was as thorough and as relentless in the satisfaction of her personal desires as the Marquise de Brinvilliers. But she was a child, and she would very generally be described as an example of "moral insanity." It is still necessary to take a further step, although a very slight one, to reach what every one would be willing to accept as an instinctive criminal. The example I will select is an Englishman, Thomas Wainewright, well known in his time as an essayist, much better known as a forger and a murderer. R. Griffiths, L.L.D., Wainewright's maternal grandfather-to take his history as far back as possible-was an energetic literary man and journalist, whose daughter, Ann, born of a young second wife when he was well past middle life, "is supposed to have understood the writings of Mr. Locke as well as perhaps any person of either sex now living" (said the Gentleman's Magazine) and who married one Thomas Wainewright, and died in child-bed at the age of twenty-one, the last survivor, even at that age, of the second family. Thomas Wainewright, the father, himself died very soon afterwards. Of him nothing is known, though there is some reason to think that Dr. Griffiths regarded him with dislike or suspicion.

The child seems then to have been born of a failing and degenerating stock. He was clever, possessed of some means, and grew up in a literary and artistic circle; but he was vain and unstable, "ever to be wiled away," as he says himself, "by new and flashy gauds." When still a lad, he went into the army for a time. Then, after a while, being idle in town, "my blessed Art touched her renegade; by her pure and high influences the noisome mists were purged," and he wept tears of happiness and gratitude over Wordsworth's poems. "But this serene state was broken," he wrote, several years before his career of crime had commenced, "like a vessel of clay, by acute disease, succeeded by a relaxation of the muscles and nerves, which depressed me

-'low

As through the abysses of a joyless heart