Of criminals, actual or nominal, there are many kinds

The Criminal by Havelock Ellis is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. I. Introduction

I. Introduction

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

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

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

We have also the insane criminal; that is to say, the person who, being already in a condition of recognisable mental alienation, performs some flagrantly anti-social act. A very large number of crimes are committed by persons who are impelled by delusions, or who have, before the commission of the crime, been in a condition of mental alienation. Nearly a hundred persons every year in this country are sent to prison to be found insane on admission. The hanging of persons who are afterwards generally regarded as insane has always, and is still, frequently carried on. In Germany Dr. Richter has shown that out of 144 lunatics who were, as was afterwards shown, at the date of their crimes in the highest degree insane, only 38 were recognised as insane before the judge—i.e., 106 madmen were, on account of their madness, condemned to severe punishment. Out of 100 insane persons brought to the bar of justice only 26 to 28 are recognised as insane. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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

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

—‘low
As through the abysses of a joyless heart
The heaviest plummet of despair could go,’—

hypochondriasis! ever shuddering on the horrible abyss of mere insanity! But two excellent secondary agents—a kind and skilful physician, and a most delicately affectionate and unwearied (though young and fragile) nurse—brought me at length out of those dead black waters, nearly exhausted with so sore a struggle. Steady pursuit was debarred me, and varied amusement deemed essential to my complete revivification.” Then he began to write his essays and criticisms, dealing chiefly with the later Italian and the French artists, under the name of Janus Weathercock. He was a man of many sentimentalities and super-refinements; he hated all vulgarity and “sordid instincts.” His tastes were sensual in every respect. Notwithstanding his means, they were not sufficient to satisfy his desires for luxurious foods and drinks, for fine perfumes, for large jewels to wear. He could not live without luxuries, just as little Marie Schneider could not live without sweets. At about the date that his chief literary activities ceased, and when he was about thirty years of age, he forged a power of attorney with the names of his trustees, assigning to himself the principal of £5000, of which he was enjoying the interest. This was then a capital offence; it remained undetected for twelve years. He is described at this time as “a smart, lively, clever, heartless, voluptuous coxcomb.” He was tall, stooping slightly, of dark hair and complexion, deeply set eyes, stealthy but fascinating, a large and massive head. He married a young lady who was poor, but a gay and brilliant person, and she had a widowed mother and two half-sisters. The young couple lived improvidently, and an uncle, Mr. G. E. Griffiths, who was well off, offered them a home in his own house. This welcome offer was accepted. A year after, Mr. G. E. Griffiths, after a short illness, died very unexpectedly, leaving his mansion and property to his nephew and niece. This money, however, also went rather fast; and now too there were no longer any expectations from relatives. The stepmother and her daughters, the Abercrombies, were poor, and their schemes to make a living were not successful. The Abercrombies were obliged to come and live with the Wainewrights in the large mansion they had inherited, and a very few months after this Mrs. Abercrombie died, like old Mr. Griffiths, very suddenly, in a fit of convulsions. No benefits, however, followed this death; affairs continued to grow worse, and soon the bailiffs were in the house, and there was a bill of sale on the furniture. The Wainewrights and Abercrombies migrated to handsome lodgings in Conduit Street, near Regent Street. They frequently went to the play, and one night, very soon after their arrival, Helen Abercrombie, who wore the thin shoes that women then always wore, got her feet wet, became ill, and was assiduously attended by Wainewright and his wife, who held frequent consultations as to her treatment by means of certain powders; in a few days she was dead, with the same symptoms as her mother, the same symptoms as Mr. Griffiths—“brain mischief,” the doctor called it. She died on the very day on which the bill of sale became due, and after her death it was found that her life had, during the same year, been insured, in various offices, for £18,000. Helen Abercrombie was a beautiful and very healthy girl, and her death led to suspicions, and gave rise to law-suits, which on the slighter but definite ground of misrepresentation were in favour of the companies. In the meanwhile Wainewright found it convenient to leave England (he had separated from his wife after the death of Helen Abercrombie), and took refuge with a rather impecunious gentleman who lived with his daughter at Boulogne. He persuaded this gentleman to obtain money to effect a loan by insuring his life. One night, after the policy had been effected, this gentleman suddenly died. We next hear of Wainewright travelling in France, doubtless for excellent reasons, under an assumed name. He fell into the hands of the police, and not being able to give a good account of himself, was imprisoned for six months. The French police found that he carried about with him a certain powder, at that time little known, called strychnine; this was put down to English eccentricity. At this time there was a warrant out against Wainewright for forgery; he was lured over to England by a detective, with the aid of a woman, and arrested. He was tried for forgery, and condemned to transportation for life. At the same time the suspicions of the doctor who attended Helen Abercrombie were roused, and Wainewright himself, after his condemnation, admitted to visitors, with extraordinary vanity and audacity, his achievements in poisoning, and elucidated his methods. It is also said that he kept a diary in which he recorded his operations with much complacency. The one thing that hurt little Marie Schneider was the dry bread; the one thing that moved Wainewright was being placed in irons in the hold of the ship. “They think me a desperado! Me! the companion of poets, philosophers, artists, and musicians, a desperado! You will smile at this—no, I think you will feel for the man, educated and reared as a gentleman; now the mate of vulgar ruffians and country bumpkins.” At Hobart Town on two occasions he endeavoured to remove by poison persons who had excited his animosity. He is described at this time by one who knew him well as “a man with a massive head, in which the animal propensities were largely developed. His eyes were deeply set in his head; he had a square solid jaw; he wore his hair long, stooped somewhat, and had a snake-like expression which was at once repulsive and fascinating. He rarely looked you in the face. His conversation and manner were winning in the extreme; he was never intemperate, but nevertheless of grossly sensual habits, and an opium-eater. As to moral character, he was a man of the very lowest stamp. He seemed to be possessed by an ingrained malignity of disposition which kept him constantly on the very confines of murder, and he took a perverse pleasure in traducing persons who had befriended him. He was a marked man in Hobart Town—dreaded, disliked, and shunned by everybody. His sole living companion was a cat, for which he evinced an extraordinary affection.” He died of apoplexy in 1852, at the age of fifty-eight. Wainewright presents to us a perfect picture of the instinctive criminal in his most highly developed shape, fortunately a rare phenomenon. It is this instinctive propensity to crime which is sometimes called “moral insanity.” This is, however, by no means a happy phrase, since it leads to much fruitless disputation. It is wiser at present to apply to such an individual the more simple term, instinctive criminal. There is, however, distinct interest in noting that at one period of his life Wainewright was on the verge of insanity, if not, as is more likely, actually insane; it is extremely probable that he never recovered from the effects of that illness. It may well be that if we possessed a full knowledge of every instinctive criminal we should always be able to put our hands on some definite organically morbid spot.

The instinctive criminal, in his fully developed form, is a moral monster. In him the absence of guiding or inhibiting social instincts is accompanied by unusual development of the sensual and self-seeking impulses. The occasional criminal, as he is usually called, is a much commoner and more normally constituted person. In him the sensual instincts need not be stronger than usual, and the social elements, though weaker than usual, need not be absent. Weakness is the chief characteristic of the occasional criminal; when circumstances are not quite favourable he succumbs to temptation. Occasional crime is one of the commonest forms of crime; it is also that for whose existence and development society is most directly responsible; very often it might equally well be called social crime. Here is an example. Two lads of honest life, the sons of agricultural labourers, being unable to obtain a scanty subsistence at home, start one day in a fit of desperation for a distant town in search of work. Without food or shelter, sleeping under a hedge, they reach a farm-house. Looking through a window they see a plum-pudding; they open the window, seize the pudding, and go a few yards off to devour it. In a few hours they are on the way to the lock-up, to receive, later on, a sentence of six months’ imprisonment. “At the close of it they were provided with an outfit and an introduction to an employer of labour in Canada; and when we last heard of them they were doing extremely well, with excellent prospects before them.” This sequel (which would have been better had it come before the seizure of the plum-pudding) proves that we are not dealing with instinctive criminals. Take another case mentioned by the same writer. A woman with a drunken husband who spends his last penny in the public-house, is driven by actual starvation to commit her first crime. She steals a small piece of meat to feed her hungry children. She is sent to prison. “We heard of her afterwards leading a most consistent and almost saintly life.” These persons, it is clear, were not the criminals but the victims; society was the criminal. Now and then, as in the cases just cited, it happens that the occasional criminal who is thus recklessly flung into prison is assisted to live a human life. In the great majority of cases he is ruined for life, familiarised with the prison, introduced to bad company. We have, as well as we are able, manufactured him into what is called the habitual criminal.

The steps by which the occasional criminal, aided on the one hand by neglect, on the other by the hot-bed of the prison, develops into the habitual criminal are slow and subtle; that is one of the tragedies of life. M. Joly has recorded the experiences of the police concerning the thefts that take place at the great Parisian shops, the Louvre, and the Bon-Marché. “This is the beginning. From a gallery one sees a woman—rich or well-to-do-who buys a certain number of objects and pays for them; but without asking permission she takes some little, almost insignificant object—a little ribbon to fasten a parcel, a more commodious paper-bag. No one will say that she is stealing; no one will think of speaking to her or disturbing her. But she is observed and even watched, for one expects to see her again some time after taking, as she walks along, say, a flower worth twenty-five centimes. A little later she will appropriate an article of greater value, and henceforth she will take for the pleasure of taking. The inclination, which at the beginning had in it nothing instinctive or fatal, will grow as all habits grow. Another time a woman who had no intention of stealing, but whose conscience is probably elastic, grows impatient at the delay in attending to her wants. It is, let us suppose, a purse worth ninety-five centimes, and the shopman is busy with purchasers of more expensive objects. Suddenly the woman nervously yields to a swift temptation; she does not wish to wait longer, but instead of replacing the purse on the counter she slips it into her pocket and turns on her heels without paying. ‘From that moment,’ said the inspector, ‘she is lost; she will come back to steal, but she will steal intentionally and deliberately.’”

The world and the criminal’s friends are startled some day by a great crime, but that crime is linked on to a chain of slight, occasional, sporadic vices and offences. Sometimes we can trace out these links. Barré and Lebiez were two young French criminals who attracted attention some years ago. They were both of good family, both very intelligent, the former about to enter on a commercial life, the latter on the eve of becoming a doctor of medicine. At this point they murdered an old woman to rob her, and cut up the body to dispose of it. The crime was deliberate and carefully prepared; there was nothing romantic or obviously morbid about it, and a few days after the crime Lebiez delivered an able and eloquent lecture on Darwinism and the Church. In each of these young men there were, M. Joly observes, nine stages in the path of crime. Let us first note those of Barré:—1. His employer is obliged to dismiss him on account of misconduct with a servant girl. 2. He writes untruthful letters to his family, describing habits of work which do not exist. 3. He acquires an extravagant taste for speculation on the Stock Exchange. So far his course, though not exemplary, was one that has often enough been traversed by persons who have never reached the scaffold. 4. He speculates with the savings which two girls had entrusted to him for investment. 5. To obtain money from his father, to whom he talks of establishing himself, he forges letters. 6. He embezzles various sums of money by an aggravated form of the same process. 7. He steals a watch from a prostitute’s rooms. 8. He steals eight francs from the same. 9. He decides on the murder of the old milk-woman with whom he has had business relations, and whose savings, as he knows, are considerable. Lebiez went through the following stages:—1. His violent language to his mother is remarked. 2. He is, notwithstanding very small means, known to be living with a mistress, and he procures obscene photographs. 3. On account of irregularity he is sent away from an institution where he gave lessons. 4. He speculates on the Stock Exchange, which, being poor, he could only do by accepting profit and refusing to meet loss. 5. He steals books from his friends and sells them. 6. He several times leaves his lodgings clandestinely, without paying the rent. 7. He participates in the theft of the watch by Barré. 8. He shares the profits of the second theft. 9. They decide on the murder together. Such are the slow steps by which the occasional criminal becomes the habitual criminal or the professional criminal. It must be remembered that the lines which separate these from each other, and both from the instinctive criminal, are often faint or imperceptible. “Natural groups,” as Mr. Galton remarks, “have nuclei but no outlines.” In the habitual criminal, who is usually unintelligent, the conservative forces of habit predominate; the professional criminal, who is usually intelligent, is guided by rational motives, and voluntarily takes the chances of his mode of life; while in the instinctive criminal the impulses usually appear so strong, and the moral element so conspicuously absent, that we feel we are in the presence of a natural monster. It is not, however, always possible to make these distinctions.

The professional criminal, though not of modern development, adapts himself to modern conditions. In intelligence, and in anthropological rank generally, he represents the criminal aristocracy. He has deliberately chosen a certain method of earning his living. It is a profession which requires great skill, and in which, though the risks are great, the prizes are equally great.

Lacenaire, a famous criminal of the beginning of the century, has sometimes been regarded as the type of the professional criminal, and to complete this classificatory outline it may be well to sketch his career. He was born at Lyons about the beginning of the century, received a good average education, and was very intelligent, though not distinguishing himself at college. He was ambitious and, at the same time, incapable of sustained work. He came to Paris to study law; but his father’s resources were inadequate, and he became a clerk, frequently changing his situation, growing tired of work at length, and engaging as a soldier. So far no offence is recorded. When he returned to France his father, become bankrupt, had fled. Some friends came to the young man’s help, and gave him 500 francs. He hastened to Paris and spent it in enjoyment. Then he entered the literary Bohemia, and wrote verses and political articles, fighting a duel with a nephew of Benjamin Constant and killing him. He said, later on, that the sight of his victim’s agony had caused him no emotion. Soon his love of enjoyment outran his means of getting money, though these might have been considerable had he cared to work steadily, and he obtained money by theft and swindling. Condemned to prison, he soon formed connections with professional criminals, and associated them in his schemes and joined them in their orgies. He adopted false names, multiplied forgeries and disguises, and preyed actively on society. After an orgy at this time he committed a murder, and he attempted to murder a man who had won a large sum from him in gambling. The crime and the attempt both remained unpunished. Gifted with intelligence, and still more with vanity and audacity, Lacenaire continued his career of systematic crime until finally he met the guillotine. He was a professional criminal, but also, it will be seen, he was something of an habitual, something of an instinctive criminal.

We have glanced briefly at the circles of crime—circles that extend from heaven to very murky depths of hell, and that yet are not far from any one of us. It is still necessary to touch on the various ways in which the causes and nature of this vast field of crime may be approached.

There are, first, the cosmic causes of crime; that is to say, all the influences of the external inorganic world, the influence of temperature on crime, the increase of crimes of violence in hot weather, the periodicity of other kinds of crime, the influence of climate, the influence of diet.

Then there is the biological factor. Under this head we include the consideration of all the personal peculiarities of the individual, anatomical, physiological, psychological. These peculiarities may be atavistic, atypic, or morbid.

Lastly, there is the social factor in crime. Criminal sociology deals with the production of crime by social influences, and by economic perturbations. Infanticide is nearly always related to the social factor; and the study of the various social influences which promote or hinder infanticide is extremely instructive. The relations between crimes against the person and the price of alcohol, and between crimes against property and the price of wheat, also belong to this department of the study of crime. Society prepares crimes, as Quetelet said; the criminal is the instrument that executes them. “The social environment,” Lacassagne has well said, “is the cultivation medium of criminality; the criminal is the microbe, an element which only becomes important when it finds the medium which causes it to ferment: every society has the criminals that it deserves.”

It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of the social factor in crime. To some extent it even embraces the others, and can be made to regulate and neutralise them. But we cannot deal wisely with the social factor of crime, nor estimate the vast importance of social influences in the production or prevention of crime, unless we know something of the biology of crime, of the criminal’s anatomical, physiological, and psychological nature. This book is concerned with the study of the criminal man.

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This book is part of the public domain. Havelock Ellis (2013). The Criminal. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/44500/pg44500-images.html

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