A typical instance is that of a certain C... who was imprisoned about twenty years ago for defrauding a woman. My father undertook to cure him while in prison and was able to follow him in his subsequent career. This C... was a young man of good family, intelligent, honest, and a good linguist. His countenance was pleasing and bore no trace of precocious criminality. At the age of twenty he developed an unrestrained love of gambling and in order to indulge this vice, promised to marry a rich woman considerably older than himself, from whom he borrowed large sums, on the understanding that they should be paid back. However, shortly afterwards, he fell in love with a young girl and married her. His ex-fiancée brought legal action against him and he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment. During this time he shrank from seeing anybody and refused to exercise in order to avoid all contact with his fellow-prisoners. He showed great affection for his wife and declared his intention of turning over a new leaf. The offence he had committed, however seemed to cause him little or no regret, because, as he said, he would never have continued the deception had not his victim shown such willingness to be gulled. From prison he went to London, where lack of funds caused him to perpetrate another swindle, but this time he was able to escape to Naples. Here for twelve years, he worked honestly in a large hotel, but once again a pressing need of money made him engage in a third fraud of considerable importance, for which he is still undergoing imprisonment.
Habitual Criminals
The degrading influence of prison life and contact with vulgar criminals, or the abuse of alcohol, to which better natures frequently have recourse in order to stifle the pangs of conscience, may cause criminaloids who have committed their initial offences with repugnance and hesitation, to develop later into habitual criminals,—that is, individuals who regard systematic violation of the law in the light of an ordinary trade or occupation and commit their offences with indifference.
Physically, habitual criminals do not resemble born criminals, but they exhibit some of the characteristics of those offenders from whom their ranks are recruited, besides, in a more marked degree, certain acquired characters, like sinister wrinkles and a shifty and sneaking look.
Psychologically, criminaloids tend to resemble born criminals, whose habits, tastes, slang, tattooing, orgies, idleness, etc., they gradually develop, in the same way as old couples, living isolated in the country, adopt identical habits, gestures, and tone of voice.
The type of criminaloid, who develops into an habitual criminal is well illustrated by the case of Eyraud, who in conjunction with Gabrielle Bompard, murdered Gouffré and packed the corpse in a trunk. Through his marked weakness for women, Eyraud became successively a deserter, a thief, and a murderer. He certainly possessed a few of the characteristics peculiar to degenerates—long, projecting ears, excessive development, amounting to asymmetry, of the left frontal sinus, prognathism, exaggerated brachycephaly, and the span of the arms exceeding the total height, but he had not the general criminal type, his teeth were regular, beard abundant, and hair scanty.
His psychology corresponds exactly to his physical individuality. During infancy and youth, he showed nothing abnormal, except an unusual predominance of the sexual instincts. He exhibited no signs of that love of evil for its own sake, so characteristic of criminals, above all, of murderers. According to all accounts, he was a jovial individual, fond of making merry, but at the same time, brusque and violent and easily roused to passionate fury. His extreme susceptibility to the attractions of the opposite sex made him regardless of all moral considerations. In order to gratify this weakness, he became a deserter, dissipated all the money he had earned in a distillery and as a dealer in skins, and finally committed murder. At his trial, it was shown that before his escape to America, he had attempted to kill a woman who refused to leave her husband for him. He became violently enamoured of his accomplice, Gabrielle Bompard, to whom, like many criminaloids, he was attracted by reason of her greater depravity.
The extreme levity displayed by Eyraud seems to be the strongest link between him and the born criminal. He passed with extraordinary facility from gaiety to melancholy. His intellect was well developed, he spoke three or four languages, and was successful in most things he undertook, though he seems to have been incapable of remaining constant to anything for long. As a business man he wasted his capital, and even in the execution of his crimes he showed frivolity and incoherence. At Lyons, he hired a carriage, in which he placed the corpse of Gouffré and after driving about the streets with Gabrielle Bompard like a madman, left the body of his victim in a spot near which people were constantly passing.
Eyraud appears to have been a dissolute criminaloid whose unbridled passions and connection with Gabrielle Bompard caused him to develop into an habitual criminal. This diagnosis is confirmed by the absence of morbid heredity.
It would be futile to cite a long series of cases, in which, although the details may vary, we always find the same phenomenon, the gradual development of a criminaloid into a criminal. It will suffice to name a large class of criminals, in whom this phenomenon may often be observed—the brigands common to Spain and Italy.