In comparatively rare cases flagellomania is a morbid condition by which responsibility is entirely abrogated; but from the medico-legal point of view responsibility is impaired or suspended in the majority of cases of well-marked sadism, which we have now to describe. To this category belong:
1. Sadistic Bodily Injuries and “Lust-Murder.”—The main types of this category are the “girl-stabbers” and the “lust-murderers,” who simply for the purpose of producing sexual excitement, or when already under the influence of such excitement, inflict on women more or less severe injuries with a knife or other murderous instrument. The actual intention to kill is present only in very rare cases. The lust-murder is, as a rule, only a murder as a sequel of a sexual act committed by force, the murder being done from fear of discovery, etc.; thus the murder has not in these cases anything directly to do with the sexual act. In other cases we have what appears to be a lust-murder in which death has resulted, contrary to the wish of the offender, from a sadistic bodily injury. Killing from a purely sexual motive is a very rare occurrence, of which, however, some very widely known cases are on record—like those of Andreas Bickel, Menesclou, Alton, Gruyo, Verzeni,[612] and “Jack the Ripper,” the Whitechapel murderer. [Regarding the Whitechapel murders, see E. C. Spitza, “The Whitechapel Murders: their Medico-Legal and Historical Aspects,” published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, December, 1888. Great attention and alarm was aroused in Paris in the years 1818-1819 by a girl-stabber (piqueur). In numerous caricatures, popular songs, and vaudevilles these assaults were “celebrated,” of which a very rare pamphlet, “La Piqure à la Mode” (Paris, 1819), gives evidence. Cf. J. Grand-Carteret in “Les Images Galantes” (1907, No. 7). Much alarm was caused in July, 1902, by the crimes of a new “Jack the Ripper” in New York, and by the horrible child-murders committed in Berlin by an obviously insane sadist, not yet arrested. In a single day he ripped up the abdomens of several small children with a pair of scissors.] Many “murder epidemics” (manie homicide), such as the murders recently committed in Sweden by Nordlund, who, though indubitably insane, was executed for them, are certainly connected with sexuality. The two following cases from German experience relate to typical “girl-stabbers”:
Ludwigshafen am Rhein, March 26, 1901.—After the manner of the Whitechapel murderer, an unknown criminal had for several weeks made the parts of the town lying in the direction of the suburb of Mundenheim unsafe. Not less than eleven girls were seriously injured after nightfall by stabs in the abdomen. To-night the police succeeded in arresting the criminal, who is a drover, Wilhelm Damian by name, twenty-eight years of age. Five years ago he was suspected of having committed a lust-murder on a servant-girl; he was arrested at this time, but was discharged owing to the lack of sufficient proof. Now the suspicion is aroused that Damian is responsible also for the lust-murder committed two years ago near Mundenheim on a little girl seven years of age, because the circumstances of that case suggested that the murderer was a butcher by occupation, and this applies to Damian.
Kiel, November 29, 1901.—It is not yet possible to arrest the stabber who, during the last week, has been active in the poorest quarter of the town. At first he limited himself to the northern districts, and there wounded only women and girls; but in the last day or two he appeared, not only in the central parts of the town, but also in the southern quarter, where, the day before yesterday, in the evening, he wounded a girl by two stabs, one in the neck and one in the hip. Since then a man has been stabbed, apparently by this same evil-doer, but was not seriously hurt. This happened in one of the busiest streets of the town, so that the escape of the criminal is very remarkable.
Other peculiar sadistic injuries sometimes occur. Thus, in the year 1902 a printer, twenty-two years of age, was condemned by the criminal court of Breslau, because in thirteen cases he had thrown oil of vitriol at young ladies! Here also we have probably to do with a sadistic tendency. In the end of October, 1906, in Berlin, a case came under notice in which a young girl took another girl to the dentist (!) and (after previous anæsthetization) had two teeth drawn unnecessarily; but whether this case was or was not of a sadistic nature remains undetermined. But we certainly have to do with sadism in those cases in which men or women inflict slight injuries on their love-partner for the purpose of sucking blood, which gives them sexual gratification (sexual vampirism). Many murders by poison (women murderers commonly prefer the use of poison to that of any other instrument) also arise from sadistic tendencies. At any rate, the majority of professional female prisoners, such as Jegado, Brinvilliers, Ursinus, Gottfried (the celebrated poisoner of Bremen), and others, were unquestionably women given to sexual excesses or sexually very excitable, so that here voluptuousness and the lust for murder appear to have an intimate causal connexion.
The following remarkable case of sadistic deprivation of freedom is reported by Kiernan (“A Remarkable Case of Fetishism,” published in The Alienist and Neurologist, 1906, p. 462):
“Two citizens of good position, of Wladikaukas, in Russia, had repeatedly carried off girls of good family, and had treated them in an extraordinary way. On account of senile dementia they were acquitted of criminality, and were sent to an asylum. The last victim was a young heiress, who was kept prisoner by them for an entire year. Two masked elderly men fell upon her by night, gagged her, put a bandage over her eyes, and drove away with her in a carriage. When the bandage was taken off, she was in a well-furnished drawing-room. The two old men, without saying a word, gave her a scanty dress of feathers, and shut her up in a great gilded cage, which stood in the drawing-room. One of them—she never saw the other again—came in silence to visit her every morning, looked at her through the bars of the cage, often threw her lumps of sugar, and every morning brought her a can of hot water, which he emptied into a vessel inside the cage, saying, ‘Take a bath, little bird.’ These were the only words which she heard. After a year had passed, the man let her out of the cage, put a bandage over her eyes, and drove her in a carriage to a place near her house. No similar case is known to me in medical literature. Everything was conducted Platonically; there was no coitus, no exhibitionism or masturbation, either before or after looking at this peculiar bird. Certainly there must have been some kind of abortive sexual gratification, of a sadistic character, and with the limitation that only young girls of good family, dressed as birds and kept in a cage, could excite libido. But why must they have the appearance of a bird? Possibly in the subconsciousness the idea of the bird as a lascivious animal played a certain part. But why did one only come and see the ‘bird’ every day? That they must be young girls is natural in the case of old men: extremes meet; but that they must be of good family suggests a sadistic element, and still more is this suggested by the imprisonment.”
2. Offences against Property committed from Sadistic Motives.—To this class belong all sadistic injuries not of the person, but of property. For example, pouring vitriol over the clothing, of which the following case (Vossische Zeitung, No. 574, December 7, 1905) is an example:
At the present time an unknown man is making the south-eastern districts of Berlin unsafe by the use of oil of vitriol. This dangerous criminal pours the liquid upon women’s clothing, selecting by preference light-coloured fabrics. Yesterday evening he almost completely ruined the new light-coloured dress of a young lady who was passing along the Hermannstrasse. The offender, who apparently derives pleasure from injuring women’s clothing, is of middle height, about twenty-five years of age, has fair hair, and wears a fashionable overcoat.
To the same category belongs arson from sexual motives, which was formerly[613] attributed to a “passion for fire” (pyromania); but when sexual motives play a part, it is unquestionably of a purely sadistic nature.[614]