A certain C... on returning from abroad, found his former mistress married to his father. The pair resumed their liaison, but after a time, fearing a scandal, the woman threatened to drown herself unless her lover could find some means of adjusting matters on a satisfactory basis. C..., who disliked his father, poisoned him and disappeared with the widow taking with him a few valuables belonging to his father. A year later, the woman having died meanwhile, he returned home and made full confession, first to his sister and subsequently in court.
Moral Sense—Intelligence. In the place of a weak, clouded, or unbalanced mind and that cynicism and absence of moral sense and natural feelings which distinguish born criminals of the most elevated type and even geniuses, criminaloids generally possess lucidity and balance of mind and may show themselves worthy of guiding the destinies of a nation. The men implicated in the French Panama Scandal and the case of the Banca Romana (Bank of Rome) are instances. When under a cloud of disgrace, instead of that insensibility, cynicism, or levity common to true criminals, they show deep sorrow, shame, and remorse, which not infrequently result in serious illness or death. Their natural affections and other sentiments are normal.
It is notorious, too, that as soon as accusations were made against those implicated in the French Panama Scandal and the affair of the Bank of Rome, the greater number became ill and two died suddenly at the end of the trial.
Unlike born criminals, criminaloids manifest deep repugnance towards common offenders. They demand solitary confinement and forego exercise, the only recreation prison life affords, in order to avoid all contact with their fellow-prisoners.
Social Position and Culture of the Criminaloid. Criminaloids, as we have seen, are recruited from all ranks of society and strike every note in the scale of criminality, from petty larceny to complicated and premeditated murder, from minting spurious coins to compassing gigantic frauds, which inflict incalculable damage upon the community. The magnitude of a crime does not imply greater criminality on the part of its author, but rather that he is a man of brilliant endowments, whose culture and talents multiply his opportunities and means for evil. In all cases where opportunity plays an important part, the crime must necessarily be committed by individuals exposed to special temptations: cashiers who handle other people's money, which they may be tempted to spend with the illusory idea of being able later to replace what they have taken, officials and public men, who possess a certain amount of power and an apparent impunity, and bankers who are entrusted with wealth belonging to others, of which in that capacity they are accustomed to make use. Thus is explained why men of great talent and only slight criminal tendencies have taken part in gigantic frauds, such as the affairs of the Bank of Rome and the French Panama Canal.
A characteristic case is that of Lord S——, First Lord of the Treasury, who committed forgeries to the extent of half a million sterling. "No torture," he writes, "would be an adequate punishment for my crime. Step by step, I have become the author of innumerable misdeeds and ruined more than ten thousand families. With less talent and greater uprightness, I might be now what I once was, an honest man. Now remorse is in vain."
In Lord S—— we find united all the characteristics of the criminaloid: repentance, the desire to confess, irreproachable antecedents, a strong incentive to dishonesty, and great intelligence.
Although the damage inflicted on society by this man was probably far greater than any evil wrought by a vulgar born criminal could have been, his criminality is nevertheless of an attenuated type. The mischief he wrought owed its gravity, not to the intensity of his criminal tendencies, but to his remarkable talents, which increased his power for evil as for good.
In this category of criminals must be inscribed those clever swindlers, who set the whole world talking of their exploits: Madame Humbert, Lemoine, and the cobbler-captain of Köpenick.
Sometimes, especially in political or commercial criminals, we find cases of an auto-illusion, of which the author of the crime is as much a victim as the public. Sometimes it is some device or mechanism which an inventor is convinced he has invented or is about to invent, an enterprise, in which the promoter imagines he will gain enormous wealth. Sometimes it is a trick in which the cupidity of the victims and their readiness to swallow promises of large and immediate profits play as important a part as the ability of the swindler. Sometimes it is a gigantic hoax, in which the deviser himself becomes keenly interested and for the carrying out of which he spends as much talent and energy as would suffice, if employed honestly, to acquire considerable wealth; but the swindler delights in his ingenious fraud as though he were taking part in some thrilling drama.