To-day in the cells at the police court sits a young man with the ‘hunted eyes’; he has been brought from one of Her Majesty’s prisons by two warders, where he was serving a term of imprisonment. He had been charged at this court, and committed for trial and sentenced, but now he is brought back and charged with a more serious offence. He is only twenty-eight, intelligent, and a clever workman. His young wife, soon to be a mother, is unaware of this second and more serious charge. I know him, and know that he has served seven years in a convict prison, where he made the acquaintance of my burgling bookbinder. So I ask him how he spends his time in prison, and what work has been given him during that portion of the present sentence he has served. ‘Oakum-picking in my cell for the first month, and I sit and curse myself and everybody all the day long. I wonder I am not mad; perhaps I am,’ was the reply I got from him, and I wonder too.
I ask for no maudlin sympathy for these men; I do not want them ‘coddled’ or patronized. I do not ask for the abolition of severe punishment in their case, but I do ask that their punishment shall be grounded on common-sense principles, and that humanity and science shall play some part in their treatment. I have visited but few prisons; from personal observation I know little of their inner working, but of men who have been released from prison I have a large experience, and for them I have some right to speak. I have made personal friends of them; I have worked and hoped, planned and schemed, for them. I have studied them, and I have suffered for them, and I know that the convict whose letter to the press I have quoted voices the cry of all intelligent criminals, and that they join with him in the plea, ‘Give us work—work for hand and mind; work—intelligent work—or our hearts will lose all hope. Work—interesting work—or our brains will lose the last remnant of reason.’
With a humanized prison system many of these men might be lifted up, but alas! when they come into the hands of any society or individual who purposes helping them, not only has their crime and its consequences to be considered, but the work of the prison has to be undone before success can be achieved. To undo this in some cases is, I believe, an impossible task; the stain has become part and parcel of themselves, and though they may have good instincts, intentions, and desires, they cannot carry them out, for the dead hand of the prison is upon them, and to crime they go with automatic certainty. But I have given instances of criminals that possess a mania for one particular kind of crime only, and who rarely, if ever, commit any other. Such are by no means few in number, but how to deal with them is beyond my comprehension, for though it is possible to trace their crime to its cause, it is impossible for me to say how that cause can be removed. One thing, however, I do feel sure about, and it is this, that the present method of dealing with them while in prison intensifies the proclivity. Medical and scientific men ought to succeed where I fail; they can go deeper down into the wonders of the human body and mind. I can but pity such criminals, and in my blind way try to help here and there one of them. But to the Faculty I point out the undoubted fact that otherwise decent and estimable men and women have a mania for a particular sort of crime, and that at intervals an almost irresistible impulse towards its commission comes upon them.
Probably this is not a new discovery; others beside myself must have noticed it. They may have noticed it, but very few can have had the same opportunities as myself of seeing the reality and force of this mania, and possibly no one has ever racked their brains or searched their mind as I have in the vain endeavour to find some method of saving these people from themselves, and of helping them in the strenuous but fruitless battle that many of them fight. To the Faculty I point it out, and to the Faculty I look for help. Shall I look in vain? Are we to be for ever impotent before diseases of the mind? I hope not, and I believe it will not always be so. The wondrous and varied organisms of the human body are now made visible to us, its diseases are traced and located, treated and often cured. But the abyss of the human mind is still unexplored, its diseases are still unclassified, and its peculiarities but little noticed.
Science and human sympathy in combination may do much for such criminals, but compassionate men, though full of religious zeal, can of themselves do nothing. I wish to be plainly understood; I do not undervalue the power of religious influence. God forbid! I do not depreciate the power of religious conviction. But the Almighty works by human means, and it is His will that men be saved by men. If these men are to be saved from their crimes, some means of dealing with the cause of those crimes must be found. Is this too much to hope for? Twelve years ago I was noting this peculiar kind of insanity, for such it appears to me. One man I then knew was undoubtedly a deeply religious man, yet he was constantly in trouble for a peculiar kind of trumpery theft. His remorse was intense, and at every failure his agony and repentance was sincere. One day he called on me, and he seemed very happy and confident. ‘Thank God!’ he said, ‘it’s all right now. I have got full salvation, and I am simply trusting.’ He had joined another religious body, and was in constant attendance at prayer-meetings; but a month later he was in the cells again for a repetition of his old offence. He was no hypocrite, for it was not a matter of sin, but of disease in his case, and he is typical of many.
CHAPTER X
CRANKS
Numbers of people seem to be possessed of a strange kind of mania that only manifests itself in action when they have taken a little drink. It may be, and it frequently is, a very small drop of drink that does the mischief; but it leads to surprising results, for some weak spot, some peculiar trait, or some secret longing is operated upon at once. Poor old Cakebread used to say: ‘It is the argument that does it.’ Inordinately fond of talking when free from alcohol, a very small dose of it made her tongue-power ten times greater, and she became ‘argumentative,’ and the police were required.
In vino veritas is often true, though more often the reverse holds good. Most people that are worth their salt have a hobby of some sort, and though ‘cranks’ are sneered at, yet the possession of a hobby is not to be despised, for it shows, at any rate, that the possessor is in earnest about some object, and is not the aimless, indifferent, and apathetic individual that lives like a vegetable, and goes through life without his pulses stirred, his heart warmed, or his brain-power excited. Don Quixotes are more estimable than cabbages, but they had best let drink alone, or they may share the fate of some I have seen and wish to tell of in this chapter.
Patriotism—and we are all patriots nowadays—is an excellent quality, but patriotism plus a dose of alcohol is not always a blessing, as a well-educated young stalwart found one morning to his cost. It was near the polling-day, and the previous night he had been at a smoking concert, and truth compels to say in connection with a branch of the Primrose League. The smoking had been accompanied by drinking, and there were several speeches. The candidate for Parliamentary honours was present, and made a stirring speech on the protection of British industries. He waxed eloquent about the evils of foreign competition, and drew a dark picture of the future of the working-classes if the influx of foreigners was allowed to continue.
It was Saturday night, dark and wet; the shops were just about closing when the young patriot wended his way home. All at once he stopped, for something on the other side of the street attracted his attention; so he crossed over to a tailor and outfitter’s establishment, in the doorway of which there stood ten little nigger boys, dummies, nicely dressed, to show the public the quality and cheapness of the goods. A shopman was just in the act of removing them for the night, when the patriot called out, ‘Halt!’ and the shopman halted.