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.[6] 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.[7] 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.”[8] 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.’”[9]
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.[10]
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.[11]
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.