Professional Documents
Culture Documents
FEMALE OFFENDER
BY
PROF.
C^SAR LOMBROSO
AND
WILLIAM FERRERO
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
W. DOUGLAS MORRISON
HER majesty's PRISON,
WANDSWORTH
ILLUSTRATED
D.
A uthorized
Edition
HV
INTRODUCTION,
It
is
if
not the
Unfortunately it is the protection of society. cannot be said at the present time that either criminal law or penal administration is fulfilling this object. In
a recent comprehensive survey of criminal problems,
Professor von Liszt, a distinguished
felt
German
jurist,
himself compelled
to
among eminent
where
;
and
else-
and
that
it
the
same confession
of failure
is
not
among
ourselves.
we have only
and
among
civilised
communities.
As
far as
Great Britain
and the United States are concerned, the annual official expenditure in connection with crime amounts
VI
INTRODUCTION.
enormous sum.
In Great Britain this expendi-
to an
per
of
the Ohio Board of State Charities, the citizens of the United States
fifty-
What
According
feared that
to
the evidence
this
of General
United States Other questions which agitate the public and divide But the country can parties are doubtless important. live and prosper under free trade or protection, under bimetallism or monometallism, under Democracy or Republicanism, but it cannot survive a demoralised people with crime in the ascendant. That crime is on the increase out of proportion to the population
is
indicated in
many
Let us look
'N'ear.
at
it
by decades
Prisoners.
Ratio to poprlation.
I I I I I
in
3,442
in 1,647 in 1,171
in
in
855 757
in a
few
states,
we
are glad to
for
and
in
one or two,
trifle
;
but,
INTRODUCTION.
Upon the whole, the swell has been continuous tide that has no ebb."
In the United
the
Vll
like a
Kingdom
it is
impossible to estimate
movement
a given day.
Owing
to
substi-
to the
population of
in the
same manner
as
United States. But when the value of existing methods of penal administration is tested by the growth of the habitual offender we are confronted
with a similar record of disastrous
failure.
Why
dis-
Why
do the combined efforts of legislators, judges, police, and prisons produce so few practical results ? Is it because the social disease with which these agencies are grappling is beyond the reach of human skill, and
will
so
long as social
exists
facts.
This deduction
is
hardly
warranted by the
The
failure
of
existing
methods
is
of
criminal legislation
and administration
disease in the
body
politic.
the
The
is
Vlll
INTRODUCTION,
for on the ground that it proceeds upon principles which are not resting on the facts of social experience. It is assumed, for instance, in every criminal code that the only remedy, or almost the only remedy, against the criminal population is the fear of punishment.
As
far as the
it is
average
member
of the
community
on
is
concerned,
consequences
career.
may
his
moment
in his
To what
action
is
of
human
to estimate.
In any case
may
is
safely be accepted
man
that
to say, the
man who
from
conditions
is
on
critical
occasions
of
deterred
entertaining
certain
kinds
anti-social
ideas
will
by
be
ment.
If
the
population
was
composed
of
ordinary
principles
men
it
is
on which the penal code reposes would an efficient check on the tendency to crime. But is it a fact that the criminal population Is there any evidence is composed of ordinary men ?
constitute
to
show
that
the great
army
of offenders
who
is
are
made
up of the same elements as the law-abiding sections of the community? On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that vast numbers of the criminal
INTRODUCTION.
population
IX
do not
live
under ordinary
is
social
and
biological conditions.
It
under anomalous
and
social
conditions.
And
it
is
these
anomalous conditions acting upon the offender either independently or, as is more often the case, in combination which make him what he is. Penal laws pay exceedingly little attention to this These laws assume cardinal and dominating fact. that the criminal is existing under the same set of conditions as an ordinary man. They are framed and administered on this hypothesis and they fail
;
in their operation
is
funda-
mentally
lative
false.
It is
and administrative system which is drawn up meet one set of conditions will not be successful if in practice it is called upon to cope with a totally different set. A patient suffering from an attack of typhoid fever cannot be subjected to the same regimen, to the same dietary, to the same exercise as another person in the enjoyment of ordinary health. The regimen to which the patient is subiected must be suited to the anomalous condition in which he happens to be placed. Criminal codes to be effective must act upon precisely the same principle. They must be constructed so as to cope with the social and individual conditions which distinguish the bulk of the criminal population, and it is because they are not constituted upon this principle that these enactments are so helpless in the contest with crime. The impotence of criminal legislation is also due
to to another circumstance.
It
INTRODUCTION.
is an ordinary man, must be dealt with on exactly the same footing if he has committed the same offence. On this principle all offenders convicted of the same offences must be subjected to the same length of sentence, the same penal treatment, the same punitive regulations in every shape and form. This idea finds expression from time to time in popular outcries
against the
inequality of sentences.
is
It
is
seen in
sentenced to six
sentenced
essential
days.
The
offences
are
in
all
respects the
absurdly different.
there has
It is
In
many
instinct
right.
treatment
do
not
no doubt that the popular Existing methods of penal admit of the application to
Our
penitentiary
systems are based upon the principle of uniformity In this respect they of treatment for all offenders.
resemble our penal laws and are like them equally
barren of good results.
As
long,
therefore, as
we
treat-
ment
and conditions of
offenders, so long
will public
and
gravity.
INTRODUCTION.
XI
mere duration
is
concerned,
is
funda-
mentally erroneous.
The
duration
and nature of
and by the
disciplinary
social
and
as
much
by the offence he has committed. In certain cases this principle is acted upon now, but if penal methods
are to be
ciple
made
of greater social
of
adjusting
utility, it is
a printo
The
is
penal
treatment
theft
committed by a child of twelve is not dealt with by our judges and magistrates in the same manner as a theft of precisely the same kind by a person of mature years. In the one case the juvenile is perhaps
dismissed with an admonition, or
ditions are defective, he
is
if his
parental con-
ordered to be detained in
In the other
usually committed
prison. But according to the maxim that the punishment should be adjusted to the crime, both these offenders should be sentenced to exactly the same form of penal treatment. Again, in the case of offences committed by adults, if the one offender is a man and the other a woman the sentences are not
may
be precisely the
same.
Or
committed
xil
INTRODUCTION.
are not the
same
if
the one
is
is
in pos-
all
same amount
circumstances
of
equality
expense of
justice.
The
principle that
distinctly laid
down by Benin
tham.
" It is further to
owing
to the different
which
much
two
fore,
same degree of
actually
pain.
that
the quantity
inflicted
Thereon each
individual offender
may
be taken into account." As he says elsewhere, These circumstances cannot be fully provided for
legislator
;
by the
in
in
capable of
for
them by
the
whom
happen
to be concerned
may
be made known."
Bcntham
INTRODUCTION.
makes
it
Xlll
and must be taken and the cirinto account besides the actual offence cumstances to which he alludes are what we have already described as the social and biological condiperfectly plain that in penal legislation
administration
other circumstances
The
ditions,
What
and how are they to be ascertained ? What these conditions are and how they can be ascertained can easily be got at by an examination of the delinquent population
of various kinds.
ditions.
in
In
Book of
excellent
the
New
in-
account
the
given
of
social
antecedents
of
According to the returns 2,550, or 52-6 per cent., of the inmates came from homes which were positively bad, and only 373, or y6 per cent, came from homes which were positively good. It
mates.
is
also
stated that
1,998, or 41*1
population
left home before or soon after reaching the age of fourteen, and in a total population of 4,859 it is recorded that only 69, or i and a fraction per cent.,
at the
time
When we come
to look at
formatory Schools
returns for 1892, in
in
England we are confronted results. According to the a total of 1,085 juveniles com-
mitted to these institutions, only 425 were living under the control of both parents. All the others had only one parent, or had one or both parents in
XIV
prison, or
INTRODUCTION.
had been deserted by
their parents alto-
gether.
The
popula-
equally as bad.
homes
tion in
any shape.
is
social
Up
to
the
empowered
by law
to
But
after the
age of
no provision
As
which produce the offender remain he will continue to offend, and as long as Penal law shuts its eyes to this transparent fact it is doomed to impotence as a
The
criminal, as
is
a product of
INTRODUCTION,
social circumstances.
XV
prefers
call them, anthropological anomalies. to Criminal anthropology, as he has termed his investiis
gations,
really
an inquiry on
scientific principles
The
in
present
volume
which these
a translation of that
La Donna
men
Delinquents which
Dr.
Lombroso had
Legrand du Saulle, Brierre de Boismont, and Prosper Despine and in England in Pritchard, Thomson and Dr. Nicolson. But he has surpassed all these writers in covering
as Morel,
a wider
field of investigation, in imparting a more systematic character to his inquiries, and in the prac-
tical
from them.
Dr.
is
an intimate co-relation between bodily and mental conditions and processes. In accordance with this
principle he
As
that the
criminal
to be distinguished
member
of the community by
in the skull
much
brain
and
and
face.
The organs
seat of
many
XVI
INTRODUCTION,
ear,
ment of the
a total
its
absence or defective
;
development of the
bony skeleton
and tongue.
The
We
have also
sexual peculiarities, such as femininism in men, masculism in women, and infantilism in both.
considerable
are found in
mental anomalies of a more or less morbid character. These mental anomalies are visible among the criminal population in an absence of moral sensibility, in
general instability of character, in excessive vanity,
is
a product,
anomalies
lunatic
he stands midway between the and the savage and he represents a special
;
type of the
It is
human
race.
mand
to
The most
INTRODUCTION.
criminal type
Xvii
is to be found in the circumstance that the mental and physical peculiarities which are said to
in reality
common
is
The
criminal
only one branch of a decadent stem he is only one member of a family group his abnormalities are not peculiar to himself; they have a common origin, and
;
he shares them in common with the degenerate type of which he furnishes an example. Let us give a few instances of the ratio of degeneracy among the criminal population of Great Britain and the United States. Among the inmates
New York State Reformatory 12 per cent, were descended from insane or epileptic parents, ^S per cent, were the children of drunken parents, and 4 per cent, were the children of pauper parents. In
of the
England
suicide
is five
among
among
munity, insanity
is
According to a census taken of the English convict establishments in 1873 it was found that 30 male convicts per thousand were suffering from weak mind, insanity, or epilepsy. It was also found that 109 per thousand were suffering from scrofula and chronic diseases of the lungs and heart, and that 231 per thousand were afflicted with congenital or acquired deformities and defects. In Scotland ^^ per cent, of
the cases of insanity occur
among
in
offenders
who have
cent, of
been been
in prison before,
and
England 41 per
offenders
among
who
ha\ e
prison
before.
More minute
investigation
XVIU
INTRODUCTION.
would undoubtedly heighten But as they stand they are striking, and they establish beyond the of a doubt that the criminal population
these percentages.
sufficiently
possibility
exhibits
conditions.
In what way do our existing methods of penal law and administration attempt to deal with the offender exhibiting these anomalous conditions ? Do we act upon the principle so clearly enunciated by Bentham of adjusting our methods of penal treatment to the nature of the offender as well as to the
On
assumed that
all
offenders
and are therefore affected in exactly the same way and to the same extent by penal And what is the result ? A steady and discipline.
are the same,
failure
of
augmentation of expendi-
What
are
the
best
means of mitigating
?
this
In
the
first
place
with
the conditions
which
produce
the
criminal
population.
At
is
office
of a
criminal court
trial for
a criminal offence
to
is
if
he
is
found
in
almost
offence.
entirely determined
Except
INTRODUCTION.
little
XIX
conditions
of the offender.
The sentence
and
is
not
In fact
in
such
worse than useless as a weapon against the tendency to crime. It should be made the business of a criminal court to inquire not merely
instances
into the alleged offence, but in cases of conviction
who committed it and the duration and nature of the sentence must be determined by the results of this inquiry quite as
into the conditions of the offender
much
said
offence. It may be throwing new and unaccustomed functions upon courts of justice, and to a certain extent this is no doubt the fact. But it is
as
also to be
remembered
that as
social
organisation
machinery of govern-
ment must be adapted to these new conditions. The judicial machine is at present of too primitive a character in order to do its work efficiently it must be reconstructed, its functions must be enlarged. In the next place penal establishments must be placed upon the same basis as penal law. In other words, they, too, must be classified and administered
:
with a view to deal with the conditions which produce the offender. At present these establishments
are
all
of practically the
lines.
is
meted out
to
classes of offenders.
XX
INTRODUCTION.
tion
population
The criminal shows that this is not the fact. It is comis composed of many types. offenders who do not differ to any posed of casual
great extent from the ordinary
of juvenile offenders
;
man
;
it
is
composed
it is
composed
of insane, weak-
it is composed of minded, and epileptic offenders and habitual drunkards, beggars, and vagrants
;
finally there
is
useless
applying
the
to each
and
all
and determined as far as practicable by the kind of criminal type to which the offender
belongs.
Where
of penal establishments
is
impossible,
and where, in consequence, offenders of various types have to be incarcerated in the same establishment, these offenders should be classified in accordance with the type to which they belong, and subjected to If these principles a regimen adapted to their class. of penal treatment were applied to the criminal population it is certain that recidivism would
diminish
of
;
it
is
certain that
the habitual
criminal
rarity, and,
most important
W.
D. M.
CONTENTS,
CHAPTER
I.
FAGS
CHAPTER
PATHOLOGICAL
n.
ANOMALIES OF
FENDER
.....
THE
FEMALE
OF-
27
CHAPTER
HI.
.
36
CHAPTER
IV.
45
CHAPTER
FACIAL
V.
AND
CEPHALIC
.
ANOMALIES
.
OF
.
FEMALE
CRIMINALS
.76
.82
CHAPTER
FURTHER ANOMALIES
.
VI.
XXil
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER
VII.
88
CHAPTER
THE CRIMINAL TYPE
ORIGIN
.
VIII.
IN
WOMEN AND
.
ITS ATAVISTIC
.
.103
CHAPTER
TATTOOING
.
.
.
IX.
II5
CHAPTER
VITALITY
X.
CRIMINALS
.125
CHAPTER
XI.
.134
CHAPTER
THE BORN CRIMINAL
....
XII.
XIII.
.
.
I47
CHAPTER
OCCASIONAL CRIMINALS
I92
CHAPTER
HYSTERICAL OFFENDERS
.
XIV.
.
2l8
CONTENTS.
XXlll
PAGE
CHAPTER
CRIMES OF PASSION.
....
XV.
XVI.
. .
244
SUICIDES
......
CHAPTER
CHAPTER XVH.
,
269
289
CHAPTER XVHI.
EPILEPTIC DELINQUENTS
298
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
1.
SKULL
OF
CHARLOTTE
CORDAY
(3
plates).
Facifig page
34
2.
72
3.
Facing page
76
4.
GABRIELLE BOMPARD
96
5.
THOMAS
98
6.
MESSALINA
98
7.
MARGHERITA.
LOUISE
TOO
8.
PHYSIOGNOMY
(4 plates)
OF
.
FALLEN
.
WOMEN,
.
RUSSIAN
100
Facing page
XXVI
9.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
FEMALE
OFFENDERS
(5
plates).
Facing page
102
10.
NEGRO.
RED INDIAN
112
11.
FIELDS OF VISION OF
F.
M., IN EPILEPTIC
(2 platcs).
ATTACK
142
Facing page
12.
FIELD
(2
VISION
.
OF
,
FEMALE
.
OFFENDER
Facing page
144
CHAPTER
I.
When
his obser-
vations on delinquents
some
thirty
years ago, he
professed a firm
faith in
anthropometry, especially
the metaphysical, a priori systems dear to all those engaged on the study of Man. He regarded anthropometry as the backbone, the whole framework indeed, of the new human statue ot which he was at the time attempting the creation and only learnt the vanity of such hopes and the
;
evils of excessive
confidence
when
use, as
is
usual,
had degenerated into abuse. For all the differences between the authors of this work and the most authoritative modern anthropoall of them in reality professors of anthropologists metry arise precisely from the fact that the variations in measurement between the normal and the abnormal subject are so small as to defy all but the most minute research. One of the writers had already noted this fact as his work "The Criminal Man" was reaching its second and third editions and only became still more
convinced of
crania of
four
And
any
anatomico-pathological investigation, on being apthe same crania, proved the existence in them of no less than thirty-three anomalies. But unfortunately the attention of inquirers had been diverted from the anatomico-pathological method
plied to
to
we may mention
the
knowledge,
existent in
failed to detect
immense anomalies
they
salient
certain
;
were examining
the theory
of anomaly altogether.
must not, however, be understood to advocate abandonment of measurements. On the contrary, we would retain them as the frame, so to
the total
We
or, rather, as
whose armoury numbers furnish and we would recommend the most effective weapon such retention the more, that whenever a difference
;
anomaly
is
The study
by Messrs. Bergonzoli,
skeletons of prostitutes in
Messrs. Varaglia
while 17 others
who
were investigated by Mingazzini 2 and Ardu 3 the proportion of offences being Prostitutes, 4; infanticide, 20 complicity in rape, 2; theft, 14; arson, 3 wounding, 4 assassination, 10 homicide,
; :
Rome
15
II
poisoning, 4;
abortion,
i.
As
regards race,
were
Sicilians,
6 Sardinians, 31 Neapolitans, 7
2 Venetians,
natives of the
Tuscans,
3 Ligurians,
Cranial Capacity.
:
Normal Females
26
60
observed by
Female
Capacity.
Prostitutes. Criminals.
Amadei.
named
is
1,295 with
respect to
respect to 45 dolichocephahc crania, the latter being, as Calori had already remarked, always of inferior
capacity.
Among
than
female
criminals
we
find
the
smaller
capacities to be
more common
in the serial
averages
larger
among normal
fall
subjects,
while
the
capacities
off
tutes (1,244),
and
is
little
who
is
a far better
1,265,
by normal Italian women, for whom the figure found by Nicolini is 1,310, and by Mantegazza and Amadei, 1,322.
And
there
is
much importance
5
he
above 1,400
while
among
the normal
women
noted
by Amadei and Morselli, only 14 per cent, fell below the former figure and 29 per cent, rose above the latter a result which establishes the inferiority of
:
criminals.
Coming now
to separate delinquencies,
we
find the
heads as follows
Poisoning
Arson
Ij384 1,328
Wounding
Infanticide
Ij3H
1,280
THE SKULL OF THE FEMALE OFFENDER.
And
of lowest capacity
Homicide Rape
1,238 1,180
The
:-
Sicily
was
:-
Poisoning
57
Assassination
Homicide
... ...
Wounding
THE SKULL OF THE FEMALE OFFENDER,
The
distribution as re2:ards crime
.
is
Poisoning
and Curves.
Betw
figures
in the sub-cerebral
demonstrate that the asserted increase curve of the criminal does not
As
we
find a
in in
Umbria,
Latinia
Marches and
Sardinian
The
differs
figure
given
for
women, 4574,
women
of
the
same region, and approximates to the figure presented by the ancient Sardinian females, which was
46-94.
The medium
227.
is
VIII.
Cephalic Index.
find 13 brachycephalic
and 26 prostitutes we observed 3 sub-dolichocephalic and mesocephalic crania (75 to 80), 17 brachycephalic and sub-brachycephalic, with a minimum of 6S and a maximum of 82. Mingazzini among 17 criminals found an average
47
dolichocephalic crania.
Among
60 criminals we
Among
of 73'35, which shows a larger number of cases of dolichocephalic skulls than among the male criminals
whom
and
and
this fact
an average of 80*65.
The average index among the 13 brachycephalic among the 47 dolichocephalic it is skulls is 84*41
;
74*58.
among
and yy among
Italian
10
dolichocephali.
from Paira,
the average
is
with a
minimum
of 6S and a
8-2.
index of 7677, and one brachycephalic female had the ancient Etruscan type.
Of 4
85,
which
from
is
There
the
are
20
crania
the
Neapolitan
I.
territory.
Crania
from
Abruzzi,
Molise,
Avellino,
;
Benevento, Basilicata.
tical, 73-87.
II.
ver-
Crania from
Average
vertical, 75'Oi.
dolichocephalic, with a
minimum
maximum
assassin),
found
in
and a general
the Neapolitan
average of 75*48.
Calori
index of
76.
Among
70*9,
Sardinian
with a
of
of
was ob-
served by Calori,
cephali, with an cephali,
who found 6
average of 74
among
the dolicho-
II
found
minimum
;
cephalic
index of
average
maximum
of 76'o8, with
an
(among 6 women) of 72'36 which is a higher figure than that obtained by us. The cephalic index of the
ancient Sardinian
sents that of
women
is
modern Sardinian males, and yi'6S that of the ancient male inhabitants. Our figure consequently approaches that of the actual Sardinian
males, and differs from that of the present Sardinian
females.
The average
(71*22)
is
vertical
women
progenitors (77*05), and approximates more nearly to that of the Sardinian males, both modern (71*86) and
ancient
(72*34).
The
Sardinian
female
criminal
Females.
for
According
woman
of her epoch.
to
is
Morselli
the
normal females
74*5.
The
ancient Corsican
insuf-
Sicilian
minimum index
of 68*2, a
is
maximum
much
of the
women
Offences.
After
importance to be
12
Among
The
prostitutes
we
find
an average of
:
74'6.
13
14
the
larger
maximum
antero-
posterior diameter.
XII.
88.
per cent.
1= 1=
1-66 1-66
The
was
Complicity in Rape
Infanticide
Murder
(assassination)
Wounding
Prostitution
Homicide
Poisoning
7039
70-28 67-18
Theft
Arson
XIII.
Nasal Index.
is
The
56*42.
is
46*25 (according
to
of nostril.
36-5-
The
as follows
Poisoning
15
which
is
is
The
maximum
The
100,
68*o8.
is
as
below
Complicity in Rape
l6
as
under
Homicide
THE SKULL OF THE FEMALE OFFENDER,
ly
Among
is
is
123, the
maximum
:
130,
The
Arson
is
as follows
minimum is superior to the minimum of The difference (between jaw and cranium)
smaller,
latter-
notably
it
follows that
crania
Ardu
THE SKULL OF THE FEMALE OFFENDER.
XXI. BiGONiAL Diameter.
According to observations made by Ardu upon 17 criminals their average is superior to that of normal women, and even of the male, while the minima do
not
the
fall
I9
to the figures
oscillates
shown by
either
that
:
is
to say,
mean
between higher
limits
17 Criminal
Wotnen.
Maximum Minimum
Divergency
Relation
112
89 23
79*4
20
The
Arson
is
as follows
:-
Wounding
Homicide
...
...
91 91
..
Murder
(assassination)
Prostiiution Infanticide.,
Poisoning
90 90
175
O'OO
7-01
per cent.
o 4
21 21
36-84 36-84
9
I
1578 175
he
The figures which predominate are between 24-31, minimum height is 15, and the maximum 36. The distribution per crime is
:
Complicity in Rape
21
As we expected, and as we found Cojtclusions. already during our researches into the male criminal,
the conclusions to which the above data lead us are
but few.
and to the weight and diameter of the jaw, to which add observations on the cheek-bones.
and
orbital capacity,
It
is
clear, indeed,
that
fallen
all,
scanty cranial
prostitutes
capacity continues
;
be noted
in
and criminals alike while among normal women, even those whose cranial capacity is small and those who approximate to the average, the superiority to the other two classes of their sex persists up to the limit marked 1,300, and offers more analogy to the mentally afflicted than to the
sane.
In
average,
women
of good
life
women
are
and
lunatics.
Also
in
this
respect prostitutes
;
latter
As
larger cranial
women
of
good
lives,
peculiarity
"
Uomo
Delinquente,"
vol.
i.
3rd ed.
22
prostitutes
more
women
than of
normal females.
maximum
generally,
With regard to size of orbit the is reached by poisoners and murderesses who in this respect resemble the male.
is
The minimum
women,
It is curious,
found
among
thieves
and unchaste
especially prostitutes.
by
is
lunatics,
51,
is 47, and even whose average measure according to Peli should be surpassed, as in the case of males, by
almost
all
criminal
women,
homicide.
To
an exception.
The
good
women
of
as given
the
minimum.
is
The
little
cephalo-rachidian
index in criminals
average, i8'i, which
but
is, if anything, somewhat higher than the average supplied by poisoners, while the
minimum here again is found among women who have committed arson and rape. The cephalo-orbital index is very much below the normal female average of 28'4, and there is but little difference in this respect between women guilty of arson and wounding but
;
is
THE SKULL OF THE FEMALE OFFENDER.
The
facial
23
angle is found largest in the lists of poisoning and wounding, lowest in those of arson
and
rape,
and
of
medium
size
among
thieves
and
cases of infanticide.
The
as to
than
in
among
both cases
equal to the normal average, and the curves of the cranium furnish no data. This last is true also of the cephaUc index, except that in some places, and
especially in Sicily, the to that of the male, and,
and
The average
diameters,
is
(maximum), the
and the
frontal
(minimum)
as under
Among
,,
178 176-50
(Zannetti) i8o*67
92
91*5 92-5
It
will
figures
given
for
the
dinian
vertical
diameter, which
larger in our
women
(Italians of
among the modern Sardinians, among the ancient Sardinians. The transverse diameter is less among our women, while the longitudinal and frontal minimum occupies a
the Peninsula) than
but
less
than
24
Curve.
Horizontal
Curve
Ante.
...
loo.
Post.
Ancient Sardinian females... 292*50 ... 303-17 Modern Sardinian female criminals... 281
... ...
...
...
5074
49-64
54*27
By this it will be seen that approximate more to their ancient than to their and as regards the anterior modern prototypes portion of the whole horizontal curve, the figures
Sardinian
;
women
And when
it
is
is
very
it
is
evident
we have
work on the modern Sardinians shown modern females differ more from modern males
in
Sardinian
women
for the
moderns and
which
to
F'or the
575
women
still
approxi-
more
The
is
shown by
criminals
25
and criminals the lowest measurements. But here the ethnical element has to be taken into account, and
obscures
all
conclusions.
is
The
frontal diameter
in criminals.
Females guilty of rape and infanticide have the highest frontal index, and thieves and pros-
The same is true in great part of the coronal index. The nasal index is inferior to the average of 48, especially among prostitutes, thieves, murderesses, and
incendiaries.
The
largest
facial
index
is
found
in the lists
of
and homicide, the smallest in those of poisoning and arson the length of the face is greatest among those guilty of wounding, and least among
infanticide
;
But
it is
come
to be of great importance.
criminals
in the proportion of 36 to 16 in
the
The
is
much
;
greater than in
of moral lives
but
distinctive of the
male criminal,
who, while surpassing his female prototype in this respect, does so less markedly than the normal woman The maximum like the surpasses the normal male. minimum of male criminals is more remarkable than Finally, when the extreme figures at in the female. either end among criminals of both sexes are com-
26
pared,
it
maximum
to hold
fails
good
the
minimum.
is
The divergence
in
greater,
quently at a higher
of
level.
We
among criminals as among normals. The bigonial diameter of prostitutes exceeds that of criminals among the higher series (of figures) as 34 is to 21 per cent. The maxima of the criminals are to be found among the women who have coma sexual peculiarity^ persisting
still
more
heavier than
in
women
and jaw
of moral
is
skull
nearly
always as
the weight.
The length of the branchials is greatest among women who are guilty of rape and poisoning, and least among prostitutes.
CHAPTER
11.
anomalies
yield
more
ments.
centages
It is
we append a
anomalies be
than
in the
is
they are
class.
less so
males of a corresponding
The
difference
;
in
in irregularity of the the nasal cavity (33 to 48) occipital region (where the divergence is three times
less)
;
in the
less)
in the plagio-
cephalon,
cephali,
latter
in the sclerosis,
;
and
(also one-half)
finally, in
oxycephali,
is
and
bone
(of
which
there
only
in
one).
in
wormian bones,
28
women
approximate more to males, both criminal and normal, than to normal women, especially in the superciliary arches in the seam of the sutures, in the lower jaw-bones, and in pecucriminals
liarities
They
nearly
re-
semble normal women prominence of the crotaphitic line, and in the median There are also among them a large occipital fossa.
cheek-bones, in the
proportion (9*2 per cent.) of
virile crania.
cranial depressions
plagio-
cephalia
the
soldering
the
atlas
with
the
;
occiput
bones.
absence of sutures
Fallen
simplicity of sutures
wormian
distin-
women, on
apophisis
;
the
other
hand, are
a
canal
clinoid
forming
tumefied
fossa
parietal
prominences
size
;
median
occipital
;
of
double
narrow or abnormal nasal bones receding forehead epactal bone prognathous jaw and alveolar prognathism cranial sclerosis a virile type of face prominent
great occipital
;
irregularity
cheek-bones.
As
found
proceed to give
and
it
in prostitutes
is
normal female subjects, in female criminals, but it must be remembered that not always possible to deduce an average from
in
;
PATHOLOGICAL ANOMALIES.
47.
29
Prostitutes
of
out
30
the observations
For instance, if Messrs. Varaglia and Silva do not make mention of platycephali
certain pecuharities.
among female criminals, or if Mingazzini omits to speak of cranial depressions or prognathous features or cranial sclerosis, we may, with the utmost probability,
lies
in attention not
points.
Anomalous
teeth,
per cent,
of normal subjects, are to be found in I0"8 per cent, of criminals and in 5-1 per cent, of prostitutes.
The median
cent, of
occipital fossa
is
normal subjects, in 5*4 per cent, of delinquents, and in 17 per cent, of prostitutes, which is a figure exceeding that of male criminals (16). The narrow or receding forehead is found in 10 per cent, of normal women, in 8 per cent, of criminal women, and in 16 per cent, of prostitutes. Prognathism distinguishes 10 per cent, of normals, 33'4 per cent, of criminals, and 2>^ per cent, of prostitutes.
Plagiocephali exists
in
lyi per
cent, of
normal
44 per
This
cent,
among
prostitutes.
is
among male
The
never
observed
in
3*6 per
PATHOLOGICAL ANOMALIES.
cent, of
titutes.
31
in 3
Cranial sclerosis
is
present in
per cent, of
normal women,
in
much more
among
it
The wormian bones are found in 20 per cent, of normal subjects, in 64'S per cent, of criminals, rising in homicides to y6 per cent., and in 26 per cent, in
prostitutes.
The cheek-bones are prominent in 3-9 per cent, of normal women, in 18 per cent, of criminals, and in
16 per cent, of prostitutes.
Occipital foramen.
A curious
we
3*3
find
per
per cent.)
Articular
;
owing to dental apophisis (twice) porosity of surrounding bone (once) an offshoot of bone extending from the basion to the centre of the foramen (twice) incipient process of division of the occiput (once) marked asymmetry (once). The sum shows 15 per cent, of irregularities among
fossa of the basion,
;
among
prostitutes
while in
male lunatics the proportion was 0'5 per cent, and in male criminals 10*5 per cent. Signor Legge, among 1,770 crania in Camerino, found occipital fusion with the atlas in 12 per cent, with median condyles and basilar tubercles in 2*5
32
per cent.
either
occipital
representing
was found Legge observed it twice in 1,770 crania from Camerino and the neighbourhood.
basilar area with a double aperture
us).
from Pavia
instances
(where idiotcy
of imbecility.
is
Frontal suture.
thief,
Three
instances
;
once
in a parri-
once
in a
Piedmontese
aged 30
28.
aged
late
inferior to
and once in a Florentine infanticide, Here the proportion is 5'i per cent. the same in healthy males, where I calcu;
8
in
to
15
9 per cent.
per cent,
of
Mingazzini, however,
found
it
female criminals.
number
The very much larger Proportion of anomalies. of anomalies in prostitutes than in criminals
cent, of prostitutes
be demonstrated by the fact that in 51-5 per more than 5 anomalies will be present, whereas the same number is only found in
tutes
may
27 per cent, of criminals. The mean among prostiis 5 anomalies per cranium as against 4 among
First after prostitutes,
criminals.
come
thieves (4*2)
;
infanticides (4'o)
superior
cent.
to the other
two
classes, as
27 to 24 per
But
all
PATHOLOGICAL ANOMALIES.
33
cance when compared with male crania,^ where the average of anomalies is three and lour times higher (being yS per cent.) than in the case of female delinquents and prostitutes.
It will
many abnormal
as
frontal
in
normal
and projecting cheek-bones, are the male and this must be held to reduce
;
the average.
Not
which springs from passion, is exempt trom the law which we have laid down. In the skull of Charlotte Corday herself, after a rapid inspection, I affirmed the presence of an extraordinary number of anomalies, and this opinion is confirmed not only by Topinard's very confused monograph, but still more by the photographs of the
50 Male Delinq.
*
Femnle
Ihieves.
Infanticides.
Homicides.
Total.
Prost.
2 Anon' alies 3
..
O
8
18 18
12
12-6
4
5
o
2
20 40
12
27 32-4
12-6
7-2 7-2
6-5 16
26
1-6
6
7
4 78
24
27
9-5
26
51-5
24
27.0
Average of the
anomalies per
1*4
4-2
4-0
4-1
4-0
55
Ardu found
I
Cranium with
alies.
34
cranium which Prince R. Bonaparte presented to the and which are reproduced in Figs, i, 2, 3. The cranium is platycephalic, a peculiarity which To be noted is rarer in the woman than in the man. also is a most remarkable jugular apophisis with strongly arched brows concave below, and confluent with the median line and beyond it. All the sutures are open, as in a young man aged from 23 to 25, and simple, especially the coronary suture.
writers,
average
slightly
the shape
is
dolichocephalic (777) and in the horizontal direction the zygomatic arch is visible only on the left
The
is
insertion of the
also asymmetrifossa.
bone
and
there
is
a median
occipital
is
The
crotaphitic lines
are marked, as
orbital
the
temples
the
cavities
is
are
enormous,
left,
On
Measurements.
area
both sides are pteroid wormian bones. Even anthropometry here proves
characteristics.
The
orbital
women
The
133 mm.q., while the average among Parisian The height of the orbit is 35 mm., is 126.
cephalic index
77-5
the nasal
height,
(among
women
93*2).
5
Out
of
of these organs,
all
belonging to
prostitutes of Pavia,
(Fig.
i.)
(Fig.
3.)
PATHOLOGICAL ANOMALIES.
transversely and 123 obliquely, which
is
35
shorter than
the average
of
normal
women
(150-128).
Two
appearance, and in one there was complete flattening of the right side of the pubcs.
presented a
In
virile
all
while in
normal
women no
CHAPTER
III.
WeigJit.
The
was
and
Silvia,
1,178
grammes.
an
infanticide,
The
heaviest,
belonging to
was
1,328 grs.
Out of 17 brains of criminals Mingazzini found 4 sub-microcephalous, the weights being 1,006, 1,021, 1,056 in infanticides, and 1,072 in a matricide: the general average of the 17 was 1,14676, or 108 grs. below the masculine standard. In 120 normal women the maximum weight found by Giacomini was 1,530 grs. and the minimum, 929, was in a woman of 'jj years whose intellectual faculties remained intact while among the total number all were inferior to Pfleger and Wechselbaum, out of 148 normal 1,400. women, aged from 20 to 59 years, and of whom the average height was i m. 56, found an average weight and in 377 women, of ages of brain of 1,189 g^s. ranging from 20 years to senility, i m. 55 in height, the mean was 1,154.
; ;
i"
2>7
women aged
from
15 to
60
the 43 criminals it will be seen that the maximum of healthy women is higher than that of criminals,
and the minimum is lower. The average weight of criminals falls by 16 grs. below the average of Tenchini, and by 12 grs. below the first mean obtained by Pfleger and Wechselbaum, but is 1 1 grs.
above the second average of those writers. In the matter of cranial types, we found among 31 dolichocephali an average weight of 1,162 (as against
1,136 in the normal), and among 11 brachycephali an average weight of 1,198 (Calori gives 1,150 for the normal). This proportion holds good also in respect thus showing that among of cranial capacity
:
criminals as well
as normals there
is
a balance in
from
to
grs.
right; while in 18
to the
amount
of
the peduncles, and bulb was as 155*42 (or according to Mingazzini 1 53*14), which was higher than the
figure
(147)
exhibited
by 16 normal Piedmontese
38
mean
of the male
Anoiualies.
As
to anomalies
and
it
is
he observed only the brains of female criminals that Giacomini had so few exceptions to record. For while Mingazzini, VVillyk, and Tenchini found the
operculum in 4 per cent, of male criminals in 33 per cent, a deepening of the second annectant convolution (very rare in normal subjects) in 6 per cent, separation of the calcarine fissure from the occipital (observed in 10 per cent, of normals) and in Giacomini 5 percent, superficiality oi \^^ gyrus cunei;
occipital
;
;
;
number of convolutions
brains
of
female
criminals,
absence of the
the
two
criminals,
and on the
into
left
in
one
division of this
same convolution
two branches terminating in the occipital lobe in one case superficiality of the gyrus cunei in two rudimentary median frontal
; ;
gyrus
immediately to the superior an infanticide). From the deep upper side of the latter a fold
joining
itself
it
joined
the
anterior
left
frontal gyrus.
In the
39
in
median
frontal gyrus
was interrupted
the
posterior
portion
by a
frontal
arrow-shaped
furrow,
and
gy ri were
postcentralis
is
is
be-
hind
of the
is
calloso-marginalis,
the
left
interparietalis arrow-shaped.
hemisphere of a
the
woman
the
left interparietalis is
represented by a cruciform
lobule
furrow dividing
superior parietal
from
anastomatic transversal
front of the
this
first
fold,
followed by a sulcus in
In
same cerebrum the ascending parietal gyrus on the left was divided transversely into two secondary gyri by means of a convolution bifurcated on its higher
side
and exactly
Rolando.
and
in
a
to
downward
the
free
uninterrupted
margin of the malleus. In one case the calcarine fissure communicated with the collateralis and in
;
another the lower bifurcation of the same fissure joined the left extremus.
From
ficies
all this it is
of the hemisphere
the
same
in criminals as in
class.
40
hemisphere is less extensive in women than in men, whether the women be normal or criminal and if we cannot maintain with Hlischke and Rudinger that
;
is
larger in females,
it is
yet
men predominates
women.
left
over
than
in
on the
right,
and that
this occurs
more frequently
women
(i8'34) than in
men
(7"26).
crimi-
19
so that
Some
13 men, 19
17
women,
lies is i'^6 among males to i"ii among females, thus showing a notable excess among males.
anomalies.
Ferrier, for instance, relates the case of a
woman
whose
hemisphere was smaller than her left, as 510 grs. to 550, and in whom, moreover, the fissure of Rolando was interrupted by a deep annectant convolution following on the ascending frontal fold,
right
middle by two
sulci.
The ascending
parietal
peculiarity.
In
the third
frontal
convolution he observed a
depression, at the
bottom of which were folds of and firmer substance than the usual smaller size annectant convolutions, which he attributed to inflammatory processes. The malformation of the fissure of Rolando struck
4I
as extremely rare
he had,
in fact,
encountered
of
800 normal
brains.
and interruption of the ascending frontal convolution on the left; also a real median lobe on the cerebellum, formed, as in many mammiferi, by two sulci beginning in the median fissure, diverging in front, and crossing the horizontal convolutions of the median lobe throughout the whole length of the hemispheres.
3.
Pathological anomalies.
More
important
still
Out of i^ female
and
involucra, such as
ventricles; multiple
sub-arachnoid haemorrhages
;
of
thickening
in
median cerebellary peduncle meningo-encephalitis cerebral apoplexy haemorrhage in the lateral ventricles S3^philis; two transparent rounded vesicles adhering to the peduncle and on the lower side of the chiasma of the optic nerve under the arachnoid broad furrows abundant sub-arachnoid liquid endo; ;
cranial abscess
for
paralysis
a month previous
;
tremities
third
and fourth
42
scanty sum;
in
blows of a hatchet, only to obtain possession of a kept a diary of her impressions; was
domestic service
;
then a typographer
then
needlewoman and who presented only asymmetry She had hysterical of the face and of one pupil.
attacks after puberty, which in her case only declared
itself at
19,
After
adherence of the dura mater and of ha^morrhagic pachymeningitis, besides true atrophy of the cerebral
cortex.
anterior convolution was crossed by between the third median inferior convolution and its termination in the fissure of Rolando.
Her
central
fissures
The
so
that
The
fissure of
both the paracentral convolutions were between the third superior convolution and the median, and traversed by a deep and yawning fissure, which brought the interparietal fissure into direct communication with the first frontal sulcus. Here, then, is a case of atrophy, congenital and
fissure of
Sylvius
by
insufficiently
by small convo-
lutions,
'
43
is
laid
down
in their
in fact, a case of
Lambl,
in
^'Westphal's Archiv.
flir
Psychiatrie"
Marianna Kirtexen, who, under maternal guidance, gave forth oracles, and was consulted by peasants, and even by persons of high rank, showing much ability in guessing at their maladies and prescribing strange remedies, for which she was extravagantly paid. She was, in short, a clever swindler, although only 12 years old. She was lame, squint-eyed, and left-handed, her right arm being, indeed, almost paralysed. She was fluent, well-mannered, gave very correct replies, and had a real curiosity passion even for seeing and treating
(1888), gives the history of
the sick.
hemisphere of
horizontal
fissure
substance.
The wider
breadth,
in the
base,
rounded and
the
5-4 centi-
meters in
terminated
lay
towards
outside
and
end,
arachnoid, while
the small
opened into the external Into the upper segment of the cup-shaped fossa on the outer surface of the left hemisphere ran the lower part of the pre2*8 centimeters,
measuring
wall of the
44
central
ascendant) gyrus, and into the segment a portion of the superior frontal gyrus entered, also the lower part of the same, and the posterior portion of the median frontal gyrus. In the lower segment the posterior portion of the inferior frontal gyrus and the gyri of Reil's island were found while into the posterior segment entered the anterior portion of the first temporal gyrus, and
anterior
;
On
fluid.
fornix
were
atrophied.
flattened in the median and the horns of the lateral ventricle were The internal ganglia were dilated and rounded.
normal.
cells
flattened
two or even three simple nuclei. These cells were surrounded by dark, granular, nucleated matter, and had the appearance of cartilaginous fibre. The convexities of the pia mater and arachnoid
enclosed a large
CHAPTER
IV.
ANTHROPOMETRY OF FEMALE
I.
CRIMINALS.
AutJiors
of those
In
the
list
characteristics of
Marro/ who investigated 41 cases Troisky,^ 58 Lombroso and Pasini,^ 12^ cases; Ziino,-^ 188 Varaglia and Lombroso, 83 photographs cases Romberg,^ 20 cases and recently Silva.s 60 crania
cases
;
Salsotto,7
409
;
cases
Madame
Roncoroni,9
Tarnovvsky,^
100
female thieves
and
who
studied
50
normal women.
Bocca, 1889. I caratteri dei delinquenti." Troisky, " Cephalometry of Criminals with reference to some Symptoms of Physical Degeneration," Journal of Charkow, Russia, 1884. 3 Lombroso and Pasini, ** Archivio di psichiatria," 1883. 4 Ziino, " Fisiopatologia del delitto," 1881. 5 Varaglia and vSilva, "Note anatomiche ed antropologiche su 60 " Archivio psichiatria," cranii e 46 encefali di donne criminali italiane."
^
Marro, "
vol. vi.
^
7
Romberg, '* loi Cefalogrammi." Berlin, 1889. Salsotto, " La donna delinquente. Rivista di discipline carcerarie,"
Tarnowsky,
**
1887.
^
les
prostituees et les
voleuses."
9
Paris, 1887.
Roncoroni, " Ricerche su alcune sensibility nei pazzi. Giornaledella R. Accad. di Med.," 1891 ; " I caratteri degenerativi su 50 donne e 50 nomini normali I'olfatto, il gusto e I'udito in 35 normali." "Arch,
:
di psichiatria," 1892.
45
46
which we cannot
by Scarenzio and Soffiantini ^ in 14 by Andronico^ in 230 subjects by Grimaldis in 26; by De Albertis4 in 28; by Tarnowsky in 150; by Bergonzoli and Lombroso 5 in 26 crania; while Berg ^ lately made researches into the tattoo marks on 804. Gurrieri examined into the sensibility of 60 cases, and Fornasari gave the anthroRiccardi ^ aid pometry of a similar number.7 Ardu 9 made notes on the weight, height, &c.,
investigated
;
crania
of 176.
Accademia di Medicina," of Turin, Nos. 9 and 10, 1891, and in the "Archivio di psichiatria," vol. xiii., fasc. vi.," observations on characteristics of degeneration in 200 normal women, in 120 Piedmontese female thieves, and in 115 prostitutes of Turin. We also studied, synthetically, the type of the criminal in 300 women (234 of whom were in the female penitentiary, and 56 in the prison of Turin), as well as in 69 Russian female criminals and 100 prostitutes of the same
*
We
vii.
p. 29.
^
"Arch,
di psichiatria,"
1882, vol.
3 t
p.
143.
II
pudore. II manicomio," vol. v. No. I, 1889. Archivio II tatuaggio su 300 prostitute genovesi. crim.," vol. ix., 1888. psich scienze pen: ed antrop " Su 26 cranii di prostitute," 1893. 5 Bergonzoli e Lombroso, ^ Berg, " Le tatouage "Arch, chez les prostituees Danoises."
Grimaldi, "
De
:
Albertis,
"
psich.," vol. xi. fasc. 3 and 4, 1891. 7 Gurrieri e Fornasari, " I sensi e le anomalie nelle donne normali e Turin, 1893. le prostitute." '* ^ Riccardi, Osservazioni intorno una serie di prostitute," 1892,
9.
Turin, 1893.
47
Madame
Weight and
height.
The
of
Madame Tarnowsky
Tables,
pp.
on
to
weight
and
that
height
{see
51-2),
is
show
and 29'6 45 per cent, of murderesses are of weight below the normal while 50 per cent, of infanticides and 44 per cent, of murderesses are beneath the normal
per
cent,
infanticides
stature.
On the other hand, only 15 per cent, of poisoners were of lower weight, and only 25 per cent, of lower facts which can be referred stature than the normal to the circumstance that poisoners do not generally
:
classes.
According to the data of Madame Tarnowsky 19 per cent, of prostitutes and 21 per cent, of female thieves are below normal weight, the figures for peasant women being 20 per cent, and for women of educaHeight was less than the normal tion 18 per cent.
28 per cent, of prostitutes, 14 per cent, of thieves, 7 per cent, of peasant women, and 10 per
cent, of
among
educated females.
Salsotto gives 37 per cent, of infanticides, 70 per cent, of poisoners, and 52 per cent, of murderesses as
^ Ottolenghi e Lombroso, Turin, 1892.
"La
donna dclinquenti
prostituta."
48
of normal weight, and 38 per cent, of infanticides, 50 per cent, of poisoners, and 48 per cent, of female
assassins as of normal stature.
Madame Tarnowsky's
Normal weight, 567 per
cent, of thieves,
data
are
the
following:
46 per
cent, of peasant
58
64 per
74 per
cent,
women
(of
and
cent, of
educated women.
the other hand, that
15
Salsotto found, on
cent, of
18 per
infanticides,
and
Madame Tarnowsky's
the
same
re-
spect are 22*9 of prostitutes, 28 of thieves, 34 oi peasant women (of good lives), and 24 of educated
women.
As
by 14 per
19 per cent, of peasant women (of good conduct), and Salsotto gives as of 12 per cent, of educated women.
1 1
To sum up, weight appears more often equal to or above the medium in thieves and murderesses, but
especially in prostitutes
in infanticides.
3.
:
more
rarely
is
Medmm
height.
This, on
moral women.
tables
ANTHROPOMETRY OF FEMALE CRIMINALS.
'
49
Salsotto.
Tarnowsky.
55-1 1-52
577
1-53
5856-4 56 '4 kg. 56 58"5 55 55'2 i'53 1.55 1-53 1-55 1-56 1-56 1-54 mfor
Marro found that the average height good lives is 1*55, and for criminals
women
with
of
1*52,
medium weight
for
moral
women
medium
nese fallen
a
women r52, with a maximum of 1*67, and minimum of 1*43. Riccardi, who studied the quesand
the
social condition
among
("
the
Bolognese, found
following
data
Normal
Age. 17
(Riccardi).
Poor.
Averages. Normal.
Prostitutes.
150-4 152-9
153-3
1540
155-0 155-2 154-3
1550
154-1
152-3
1587
155-0
c.
153-7
163.0
Whence
it
age of
25,
which was
that of almost
measured, they were of shorter stature than the women in easy circumstances,
MeduLin weight. As to weight, from the averages furnished by Salsotto and Madame Tarnowsky, murderesses and female poisoners appear, as we
4.
50
women.
If
we now
women
:
in
and height,
Height.
...
...
27 Prostitutes.
Wgt
.
(kgnis.)
27 22
24 24
22 24 26
...
... ...
...
...
... ...
25 26 30 22 19
40
1,500
it
will
weight
greatest
among
prostitutes.
this even better by the twenty more weight-takings, which gave him an average weight of 58 kilogrammes, with a maximum of 75 kilogrammes and a minimum of 38, these being figures above the average of normal
Fornasari demonstrated
results of
women.
This greater weight
among
prostitutes
is
confirmed
by the notorious
who grow
could cite
who
gradually become
We
not a few
who
and even
still
more
clearly when, in
conformity with a formula obtained by means of thousands of measurements taken by one of the
writers
*
in
Lombroso, "Sulla
X o S
52
ANTHROPOMETRY OF FEMALE CRIMINALS.
53
stature (see Table III.), such women are regarded as having a weight equal to the average in whom the number of kilogrammes which represent the weight is
equal to the
their
have a only 45 per cent, of Russian peasant women, leading moral lives, and
weight above the average, while
in
and 46 per
44 per cent of infanticides is the same the case. Below the normal, on the other hand, are 46 per cent, of moral peasant women (Russians), ^y per cent,
of murderesses, 36 per cent, of thieves, 31 per cent. of infanticides, and 29 per cent, of prostitutes, while
Salsotto gives 25 per cent, as the proportion Italian female poisoners.
5.
among
Span of arms, The average in 44 Modenese (measured by Riccardi) was 1*556 m., while the average stature was 1*52, the consequent relation
being as I02'3 to 100 (and
in
Madame Tarnowsky,
results
54
Among 30 6. The average height of the body seated. Bolognese prostitutes this was 82*0, and relatively to
the height 53*6 per cent., as against 83*2, or relatively
to the height
537 per
;
cent,
is
also Bolognese
that
to say, there
able difference.
7.
Limbs.
limbs
moral
life
i" thieves,
Even the
right arm,
0'6i9,
0'588.
which
in
falls
Prostiall,
arms of
the
they work
less
The circumference
(in
82*2 in
women
in
Modena
is
greater (Riccardi).
The hand. The hand, however, according to Madame Tarnowsky, is longer in Russian prostitutes (right, 187; left, 184) than in peasant women and
even homicides
it is
(right, 185
;
left,
left,
175).
among
the prostitutes of
Bologna (where it measured from 155 to 198 mm.) the hand was longer than among normals (141 to 184 mm.), while the breadth varied from 65 to 85 among the first-named and from 52 to 84 among normals. Such differences which were marked in the
55
median averages were reached but the net result was that in normal women, even workers, the hands were smaller without exception. Fornasari measured the length of the middle finger so as to compare it with the breadth of the hand, and from the difference of the two measurements he was able to deduce the large or smaller digital development when compared with the palm. The length of the middle finger was measured on the back from the point to the head of the third metacarpus, and on the inner side from the point to the fold which separates the finger from the palm. The difference, in both measurements, between the middle fingers resulted as from about 19 to 20 mm.
On
mm., showing an average of 70 to 74 in normal women the difference is from 53 to 84, but the average is similar. On
varies in prostitutes as from 60 to 85
;
80-84
^"
minimum
and the
of 65 there
is is
a rise to the
maximum
of 99,
serial
average
85-89.
The second measurement, made on a careful anatomical basis, confirms the result yielded by the
so far as it shows that the shorter middle belong to normal women, and the longer ones to prostitutes but that relatively to the serial averfirst
in
fingers
age, while
the
first
length to
prostitutes
shows the
56
ANTHROPOMETRY OF FEMALE CRIMINALS.
to 140
120,
;
57
Normals conseon an average, and prostitutes show the maxima and minima of development. Between the maximum measurement of the calves and that of the thigh the variation was from 120 to 240 in prostitutes of Bologna, and from 120 to 220 in normals the serial mean being for the first-named 190, and for the
last-named 100.
calves
least
and
quently have
the
developed
second 150.
The
Between the maximum circumference of the leg and the circumference of the neck, the figures in Bolognese prostitutes were from 55 to + 30, and in normals from 35 to -f 5, the results being as > calves under, the neck <
22
14 8
... ...
...
...
17
...
prostitutes.
...
...
8 2
...
Bolognese prostitutes.
normals.
...
women have
often smaller
little
on the contrary, the neck is often larger or smaller than the maximum circumference of
prostitutes,
10. Foot.
the calves.
The
foot in prostitutes
is
shorter and
narrower than
in normals.
With
mm.
(serial
average, 230),
58
average, 210 to 220) in breadth, the prostitutes ranged from 64 to 90 mm. (median average, 80 to 84), and the normals from 70 to 96 (with an identical mean).
Between the length of foot and that of hand, show a greater difference than normals in the maxima and minima, but the media in the two
prostitutes
classes are almost the same.
prostitutes
is
women from
to 59 for
one as
The
foot,
therefore,
Cranial capacity.
Here,
as
far
as
measure-
ments can be exact in the case of women with their quantity of hair, Marro found the capacity in 41 criminals to be below that of normal women as 1,477 Among the women he observed, the to 1,508. following series of probable cranial capacities were
obtained
:
59
6
Si
<
rj-00 vO
62
63
predominate
in
cent)
(24 per cent), in murderesses (23 per cent), and in thieves (15 per cent); the widest circumferences
among
cent),
(;^y
per
(31 per cent), next in and in poisoners (10 per murderesses {ig'2 per cent),
then in infanticides
cent.).
Marro
states
that
(from 485-520) are to be observed in 27'4 per cent, of criminals and in 20 per cent of normals the
;
widest
541-580) are in 10*4 per cent of criminals and in 36 per cent of normals. The longtitudinal ctcrve. According 13. Curves.
(from
to
Madame Tarnowsky,
are furnished especially by prostitutes (56 per cent.) and by thieves (38 per cent), after whom come peasant women of moral lives {^y per cent), and by
educated
cent.)
women
(36*3)
assassins
and
highest figures (321-340), as given by Tarnowsky, are 34 per cent in peasants, 30 per cent, in thieves,
26'3 per
cent
in
in prostitutes.
Salsotto calculates
them
as follows
56 per cent, in murderesses, 52 per cent in infanticides, 40 per cent in poisoners, and 30 per cent, in
thieves.
Marro says
cent
7*2
that the
least
longitudinal
and
of
normals
the
greatest
Transverse curves.
Here
64
Madame Tarnowsky
given
by
is
Salsotto
diver-
gence
find
ethnical.
Italian female criminals Salsotto does not one with a transverse curve measuring from 200 while Tarnowsky, in Russia, finds 86 to 300 mm.
;
Among
per cent,
per cent,
among thieves, 85 '46 among prostitutes, 84 among peasant women, 80 per cent, among
limit of
educated women.
Between the
finds only
321-340
Madame Tarnowsky
4 per cent, of educated women, and I per cent, of thieves, while Salsotto gives 66 per cent,
among
assassins,
60 per
cent,
among
infanticides,
and
20 per cent,
among
poisoners.
(5
per cent.)
among
first
second
in 32 per cent.
the prostitutes observed by him, noted a great prevalence of the longitudinal over the transverse curve.
The
anterior circumference
:
31Q-328,
292-300,
in
in 25
per cent, of
per
cent,
of
compared
to infanti-
65
De
(282) in prostitutes.
14.
itself
in
the
by Madame Tarnowsky,
women
:
same country.
The
Medium
,,
anteio-posterior diameter
,,
,,
183
181
,,
,,
,,
in thieves in prostitutes
in
,,
,,
homicides
Maximum
,,
women
,,
.
,,
,, ,,
Antero-posterior diameter.
According to
all
Madame
Tarnowsky and
vail
among
prostitutes,
and above
among female
for 42'66
diameters.
For
instance,
we have 165-180
women
hand, from 183-195 are to be found only in I7'33 per cent, of prostitutes, in 8 per cent, of thieves, as
against 35 per cent, of moral peasant per cent, of the educated.
women and
50
cent, of criminal
Marro's figures are: from 154-175 among 70 per women and 41 per cent, of normals
;
Transverse diameter.
The
inferiority of prostitutes
is,
and
still
more
of thieves to normals
according to
66
Madame Tarnowsky,
145-155; the
among
prostitutes
and
thieves being respectively S7'99 3.nd 18, as against 71 and 68 per cent, among peasants and educated
women
normal
women
is
revealed
among them
504 per
and
Minimmn
frontal diameter.
In
Russia,
Madame
Tarnowsky found
whether normal, criminal, or prostitute, whose frontal diameter was Salsotto, on the other hand, between 95 and 105 found this measurement in 60 per cent, of poisoners, in 51 per cent, of murderesses (assassins), and in only
no
woman,
40 per
found
cent,
of infanticides.
frontal
Madame Tarnowsky
diameter
of
121
minimum
in
and
upwards
66 per cent, of cultivated women, in 21*17 P^^ cent, of prostitutes, in 8 per cent, of peasant women, and in 6 per cent, of thieves, but never once
in
any
Salsotto observed a
diameter of io'6 to 12
in
49 per
cent,
poisoners.
in criminals.
The medium
among
the
30 prostitutes of Modena observed by Riccardi was io6"2, or lower than that of moral women, which was
io8-2.
6j
Frontal JieigJit. The minima here, or 30-40, are found in 25 per cent of infanticides, in 26 per cent of murderesses, and in 40 per cent of poisoners the
;
maxima,or
i-67,are
30 per cent, of assassins, and 23 per cent, of poisoners. In the Bolognese prostitutes the average height is given at 40-70, and in moral women of the same town, at 40-60. In prostitutes the breadth is
100-129, in moral
The
and that of the face among Bolognese women follows: Prostitutes, 32-64 moral, 34-52.
;
as
The
cephalic index
is
us to attach
much
:
various observers
inclination,
we have
amounting
cephalic form
among Piedmontese
female criminals
Marro found hardly any difference between criminals and normals (the last-named showing '^6, and the first 85), except that the lower indexes as
but
were found in 2-6 per cent of criminals and no normals, while the highest, from 85 upwards, existed in 54 per cent of criminals and in 20 per cent
far as J J
in
of normals.
prostitutes.
is
most
to be relied
upon
comparisons, gives the media of the cephalic index as almost identical in prostitutes,
ethnical
in thieves,
and
in
among
68
were as under
,,
thief
,, ,,
,,
peasant educated
Bizygomatic diameter.
this
Madame
8'5
Tarnowsky
ii*o
in
gives
diameter as between
and
46 per
cent of thieves, 19 per cent, of peasants, 16 per cent of educated, and 14 per cent of prostitutes, all in Russia. In the educated the average is 112 and rises in prostitutes in peasant women it is 1 1 1
; ;
to 113,
and
in thieves to 114.
Among
diameter was 85-129, with a mean of 113 in moral women the breadth was 1 01-104, with an average
of 102.
structure has
But the great development of the facial osseous been already amply demonstrated in our references to heavy jaws and projecting cheekbones. In Italy, all the criminals examined by He gives the diaSalsotto had wide cheek-bones. meter as between I3'i and I4'0 for 45 per cent of poisoners, 70 per cent of infanticides, and 1 1 per while in Russia Madame cent of murderesses Tarnowsky found no women with an equally wide
;
diameter.
against
of moral
lives
(Fornasari).
Bitnandibidar diameter^ &c. In moral women of Bologna this varies as from 95-99 among prostitutes, as 100-104 The minimum, or 90-100, was observed
;
ANTHROPOMETRY OF FEMALE CRIMINALS.
by Madame Tarnovvsky
50 per cent of educated
peasants,
Italy,
in
69
and 19-33 per cent, of prostitutes in where comparisons with moral women are wanting, the minima found by Salsotto are in 23 per
cent, of infanticides,
to 12-0 in Russia)
was observed
prostitutes,
4 per cent, both of peasant women and the educated; and by Salsotto in 25 per cent, of murderesses, in 17 per cent, of infanticides, and in 5 per
cent, of poisoners.
Marro's figures as regards the diameters of cheekbones and jaws and the height of the forehead refer
to so small a
conclusions
can
being from the rural classes and his criminals from the population of towns, his respective data cannot be compared for even
;
Marro's normals
The
bigonial diameter
In Russian normals
,, ,,
is
prostitutes thieves
tt
homicides
70
is
,,
prostitutes thieves
93*9 94*2
95-5 96'6
homicides
the highest
criminals
and
prostitutes.
facial
The
In Russian normals
,, ,, ,,
prostitutes thieves
72-02 7i'Ol
'ji^'-oj
homicides
72-oi
15.
is
Hai7\
The
:
hair of criminals
and
is
prostitutes
by
Madame
Russians.
Women.
...
...
100 Thieves.
100 Prostitutes.
... ...
Dark
42 58
2.6
62 35
3
52 47
0*5
...
...
Prostitutes appear to
of dark
hair
than
specimens of their class are the most sought after. Marro already, even in his scanty figures, had noted
a predominance of fair and red-haired women among the unchaste, and this observation accords with our
own.
His
results
were
Criminals.
Normals.
...
... ...
...
26 per cent. 26 ,,
12 per cent.
Red-haired Chestnut-haired
48
41
,,
,,
20 o 68
,,
,,
ANTHROPOMETRY OF FEMALE CRIMINALS.
yi
An
is
also frequent
among
criminal
women.
Riccardi in a total of 33 prostitutes found 6 with an exaggerated amount of hair, 9 with a moderate quantity, and 4 with wavy hair. Fornasari among 60 found 48 with very abundant hair.
Archaeology,
indeed,
has
furnished
us
with an
example of thick, fair hair in Messalina, and records also the abundant tresses of Faustina. Madame Tarnowsky, on the contrary, found only
13 per cent, of criminals with very thick hair.
Among
Madame
la
the
women most
Of
"
noticeable
for
their
thing
The
intensity
of the pigments
still
by the dark colour of the eye, which is most frequent in prostitutes and thieves. The following results are given by Madame Tarnowsky
better proved
:
Russians.
150 Normals.
loo Thieves.
...
loo Prostitutes.
...
...
Dark
iris
...
Blue or grey
iris
30 percent. 70 ,,
39 percent.
61
,,
52 percent.
...
66
,,
irises
were
Wrinkles.
Taking
I
into
account
only
the
deeper wrinkles,
normals
(working-women
and
peasantry)
and 70
72
criminals, that
among
the
73
woman
in question
one occasion to
found others.
was born to do evil, and that, if commit it had failed, she would have
This characteristic is wanting among prostitutes. Not only is both senile and 18. White hairs.
precocious greyness
much more
it is
frequent in female
among
from our figures appear, contrary to assertions in treatises on the subject, to turn white sooner than
men
of the criminal
20 to 29
class.
Nor do
35 to 40
these results
50 to 59
30 to 34
40 to 49
60
200 Normal
women
of
74
We
baldness in
women
20 to 29
years.
p. c.
301034
years,
p. c.
351040
>ears.
p. c.
40 to 49
years.
p. c.
501059
years.
p. c.
60 X years
p. c.
200
Normal
women
75
whom
this
of
who
usual) very
young but so
;
possible to
little
CHAPTER
FEMALE
For
the sake of brevity
V.
we append
a table of the
principal
criminals
others.
anomaHes in the cephaH and faces of female and prostitutes, as observed by us and
shown to
cent,
The
be:
Cranial asymmetry.
criminals
special
cent.)
Present
per cent,
in
26 per
of
and
in
32
of prostitutes, with
{See
prevalence
among
Fig. 18.)
PlatycepJiali2,x^
common
is
in 15
and
in
criminals of
classes
which
Plate
is
however, are
I.,
characteristic.
{See
OxycepJiali.
are:
Fig. 14.)
this peculiarity
prostitutes.
Plate
I.
Plate
I.
Plate
I.
Plate
I.
yy
highest,
and among criminals, murderesses stand showing 22 per cent. Receding foreheads are in the proportion of 1 per cent, in criminals, 12 per cent, in prostitutes, and
only 8 per cent,
in normals.
Among
Russian
women
and
14 per
normal women.
15
per
normals
in 8
by Salsotto in 6 per cent, and among per cent, by the writers while Madame
;
feature
in
6 per cent, of
{See
of prostitutes, and in 4 per cent, of normals. Plate I., 2, 14, 17, 20 dis ; Plate II., 18, 24.)
Cranial anomalies.
criminals and in 45 per cent, of prostitutes. Frontal anomalies. Present in 20 per cent,
Present
in
35*5
per cent, of
of
6 per
cent, of normals.
{See Plate
I.,
2,
17,
and
Plate
II., 17.)
Asymmetry of Enormous
delinquents and in
in
77
1
delinquents, in 26 per cent, of prostitutes, in 9 per {See especially Plate I., 2, 3, 4, cent, of normals.
7, 19,
20; Plate
Projectiiig cheek-bones.
cent.
of criminals, especially murderesses (30 per cent), among 40 per cent of prostitutes, and 14 per cent of
normals.
{See Plate
16, 17, 23.)
I.,
20; Plate
II., 2, 3,
4,6,7,8,
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Anomalous
normal
women
8l
some
For
prosti-
crooked nose was found by us in 25 per cent of criminals, in 8 per cent, of prostitutes (Plate I., i,
2 h's,
5,
12).
nose was noted in 40 per cent, of normals, in 12 per cent, of homicides, in 20 per cent, of thieves,
flat
and
10,
in
12 per cent,
of prostitutes.
{See Plate
I.,
19; Plate
MongoLian physiognomy.
Found
in 13
per cent, of
criminals and in 7 per cent, of prostitutes. Asymmetry of the face is wanting in prostitutes.
The
proportion
among
thieves
was 10 per
in
cent, only,
16 per cent,
of
In Russia the figures were 40 per homicides, 58 per cent, in thieves, 78 per cent, in prostitutes, and 2 per cent, in normals.
cent, of normals.
in
cent,
CHAPTER
VI.
FURTHER ANOMALIES,
The
list
of characteristics of degeneration
is
not yet
complete.
1. Moles. Hairy moles form a feature that has been but little studied, but must be added to those which mark degeneration in the female subject. It is a kind of indirect supplement of the beard, by which the female approximates to the male. We
have noted
cent.
it
14 per cent.,
among
prostitutes in 41 per
however, only
in 8
per cent, of
the latter.
Nana and
rival,
234 prostitutes one of the present writers, like Ardu, found a virile quantity of hair in 15 per cent., as against 5-6 per cent, in
Hah'iness.
Among
normals and
On
down which
Russia and
in thieves
it
is
present in 6 per
2 per cent, of
in
in
cent, of prostitutes in
in
homicides
is
wanting
and
that country.
In Italy
was found
11
normals in percent.
82
FURTHER ANOMALIES.
of normals, in 36 per cent, of homicides, and
in
83
13
per cent, of thieves and infanticides. In No. 7 of Plate I. it is seen to form almost a
beard.
3.
Madame Tarnowsky
and which seem to be characteristic of This is a cleft palate, which she Russian women. found among 8 per cent, of normals and 14 per cent.
subjects,
of homicides,
among
(of
which there
No.
18,
Plate
I.)
among 4
Madame Tarnowsky found 4. Masseter muscles. another peculiar feature in 6 per cent, of homicides and in 4 per cent, of thieves (while it was wanting in both prostitutes and normals). This was an unusual
of the masseter muscles, which was doubtless to be connected with the exaggerated size
development
of the jaws.
more singular and atavistic, still which she noted in two criminals, was peculiarity hypertrophy of the muscles of the neck, such as may be seen in large quadrupeds. {See Plate
Yet
another,
I.,
8.)
5.
Prehensile foot
From
it
observations
made by
times
as
normal
women
is
frequent as in normal men, being as 11 to 28. temale criminals it is only a little rarer than
84
normals (24). In prostitutes the proportion (42) almost double that observed among normals.
Basis from 8
mm.
upwards.
61
Basis from 3
mm.
upwards.
41
32
30
27 25
17
28 24
tn
o
=1
w
2.
S.
VI
that
phalange.
6.
"Arch,
FURTHER ANOMALIES.
85
with deep voices, and vocal chords that were large in proportion to the size of the laryngeal opening. Twenty-seven had still more masculine voices, with high bursts of sound followed by low, deep tones. On external observation the larynxes of these
women were
of normal
movement
flat
in
all.
Chiefly re-
size of the
wings of
thyroid angle.
To
this
width
gether
In
each case the larynx resembled a man, thus virility of face and cranium
Summary.
Almost
all
than in female offenders, have a larger number of the characteristics of degeneration than normal women. Only the asymmetrical face, strabismus, virile and
frequently in
prostitutes
and both
classes
among
criminals than
among
class.
prostitutes
less
while out-
little
frequent in the
free
from wrinkles,
the
jaws and cheek-bones, and above That is to say they show fewer all anomalous teeth. of the anomalies which produce ugliness, but are
signs of degeneration.
86
If
we
{see
following page). Table VI. They are least subject to asymmetry, to strabismus, to virility of face, to anomalous teeth and cheek-
in
bones,
but
have,
more
ears
frequently
than
others,
and hydrocephalic heads. Female poisoners, thieves, and assassins are most remarkable for cranial asymmetry and strabismus while the female assassin has most often a virile and Mongolian type of face. Female homicides and poisoners offer most examples of cranial depressions and diasthema of the and incendiaries are most characterised by flat teeth and deformed noses. Homicides, poisoners, and incendiaries have the more prominent cheek-bones, and infanticides resemble them in showing the largest number of asymmetrical faces and exaggerated jaws but on the whole the type of murderesses (whether assassins or poisoners) is more degenerate than that of infantipeculiarities of
the
cides.
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CHAPTER
TUTES.
VII.
own
eyes the
we have
detailed
will
derive assistance
from Plates I., II., III., which contain photographs of French and Russian prostitutes and delinquents.
If
asked
distant countries,
why we have chosen these examples from we can but reply that, beyond not
finding in
any other European land a co-operation by Madame Tarnowsky, we are also hampered by juridical considerations. Among the most ridiculous of the prohibitions
cracy,
which
is
first
in
Europe,
is
a presumption of innocence, so
in
up
to publicity
by recording
is
judges.
But once
it
admitted
beyond
question
that
CRIMINALS AND PROSTITUTES.
they are
sacred
reprobates,
89
once the
prison
doors have
and woe to
!
them oh, then they become him who touches, woe to him
who
studies them Consumptive patients, pregnant women, may be manipulated, even to their hurt, by thousands of but criminals students for the good of science
;
Heaven
forefend
When
Uomo
Delinquente,"
;
he was driven to the German prison " album " and the difficulties thrown in his way by the Italian authorities were doubled in the case of female
offenders and prostitutes,
it
Russian
prisons
cides, of
Female criminals. We will first take 5 homiwhom the two first have the true type of
{See Plate
I.)
their class.
aged 40, killed her husband with reiterated blows of a hatchet, while he was skimming the milk, then threw his body into a recess under the stairs, and during the night fled with the family money and
first,
The
She was arrested a week later and confessed her crime. This woman was remarkable for the asymmetry of her face her nose was hollowed out, her ears projecting, her brows more fully developed than is usual in a woman, her jaw enormous
her
trinkets.
;
own
90
No.
2,
Was
constantly ill-treated by
her husband,
strangling,
whom
breadth
with deep-
wide apart, and wild in expression. Was married against her will, No. 3, aged 21. ill-treated by her husband, whom she killed, after a night altercation, with a hatchet while he slept. In her we find only a demi-type. Her ears stand out, she has big jaws and cheek-bones, and very black hair, besides other anomalies which do not show in the photograph, such as gigantic canine teeth and dwarf incisors. No. 4, aged 44. Strangled her husband by agreement with her lover, and threw him into a ditch. Hollowed-out nose, black She denied her crime. Demi-type. hair, deep-set eyes, big jaw. No. 5, aged 50. A peasant. She killed her brother She denied her at supper, so as to inherit from him. Was condemned, together with guilt persistently. her hired accomplices, to twenty years' penal servitude. She had black hair, grey eyes, diasthema of the teeth, a cleft palate, precocious and profound Demi-type. wrinkles, thin lips, and a crooked face.
Passing
now
to poisoners,
we
be the most remarkable out of twenty-three No. 6, aged 36. Of a rich family, with an epileptic
mother, and a father
addicted
to
alcohol.
She
and
of
left
patella.
Nose hollowed out and club-shaped, weak reflex action She confessed nothing. Characler
and devout. Type. aged 34. Also poisoned her hu^/oand with An enormous under also denied her guilt. arsenic On close examination displayed gigantic jaw. incisors, and down so long as to resemble a beard. Demi-type. No. 8, aged 64. Poisoned her son's wife and the Deep wrinkles, ears much mother of the same.
resolute
No.
7,
;
singularity
is
Thin
lips,
9,
and a
cleft palate.
Demi-type.
Poisoned her daughterFluent
in speech,
No.
never
confessed
the
crime.
On
Her
were epileptic. Type. No. 10, aged 20. Attempted to poison her husband, an old man, who treated her ill. Darwin's lobule was enormously developed in her ear, as may be seen even from the photograph. Hydrocephalic forehead, nose hollowed out and club-shaped, large, unequal jaws, eyes and hair black. Type. No. II, aged 35. Poisoned her daughter-in-law, for an unknown reason, with some medicine. Fair hair, asymmetrical face, overlapping teeth. Guilt confessed.
92
Now we come
No.
thin
12.
to the incendiaries, of
whom
there
Set
fire
herself on
lips,
some malignant
Type.
large nose,
by molars.
No.
13,
aged
63.
Sets
fire
to a neighbour's house
because of a
offence.
ears,
qu*/rel
about money.
Denied
the
asymmetry of eyebrows. Demi-type. No. 14, aged 25. Set fire, in concert with her husband, to a neighbour's house out of revenge. She accused her husband and denied her own complicity. Many wrinkles, projecting parietal bones, big ears and
jaws, low forehead.
Demi-type.
No.
drunk.
15,
aged
41.
;
A peasant.
Set
fire
to nine houses
it
out of revenge
while
Very
ferocious
countenance, asymmetrical,
Sullen, very
black
narrow arch
Type. aged 45. Convicted more than once as a receiver, who had twice hidden convicts in her house. Crooked face and teeth, hoUowed-out nose, large, prognathous face, enormous superciliary arches.
No.
16,
Out of 9
No.
17,
aged
and hid
it.
Confessed nothing.
strong character.
ears,
Many
frontal
left.
wrinkles,
sinuses.
enormous
cheek-bones,
and
Right side of face higher than the Forehead receding as in savages. Canine teeth
93
Sunken
eyes, brownish-
green
in colour.
No. 1 8, aged 60. Assisted her daughter to drown the latter's newborn child then afterwards accused the daughter, in consequence of a quarrel about a
;
lover
whom
the two
women
shared.
Physiognomy
which age could not eradicate. Nothing anomalous beyond the hollowed-out nose and very wrinkled skin. The face, however, though
licentious tendencies
it
in
woman had
which betray a luxurious disposition. No. 19, aged 19, the domestic servant of a priest, had a child, of which the father was a stable-boy. Driven out of every house, she killed her child by
beating it on the frozen ground. Crooked face, a hollowed-out nose, big ears and jaws, incisors overlapping.
and fleshy
No.
20,
aged
25.
Was
the companion in arms of a band of brigands, one of whom was her lover. hollowed-out nose,
physiognomy
and
in
her
Many may
horrible,
and
agree,
so
far,
that
they
appear
when compared with corresponding classes among the men whose portraits were reproduced by us from the " Atlas de L'Homme Criminel" Among some of the females there is even a ray of beauty, as in Nos. 19 and 20 but when this beauty exists it is much more virile than feminine.
infinitely less
repulsive
94
T^HE
FEMALE OFFENDER.
let
To
bis,
6 and 6
and then
will see
how
hard, cruel,
and masculine are these lines, which yet are not wanting in grace. It is useful also to remark the physiognomical resemblance among the most different criminals. Nos. 6, 10, 9, and 3 look like members of the same And let anybody compare these with the family. few French thieves reproduced by Mace ^ (Plate III.), and he will see how little race can do for the French women seem Russians, and the Russians French. No. 2, for instance, in Plate III., in her jaws and long
;
face,
who
is
a Russian
Nos. 4 and 8 are like the sisters of Nos. 2 and 9, Russians, having the same oblique eyes, big, hoUowedout noses, and precocious wrinkles
III.,
;
while No.
9,
Plate
I.
same
and
uglier,
and here
is,
more
differ
refined a nation
are infinitely more would remark that the the further do its criminals
I
from the average. It is, for instance, well known in Russia that among Tartar criminals the depraved type is less striking than in the Russians, especially those who are natives of Moscow and St.
Petersburg (Kennan's
" Siberia,"
ii.).
The photographs
(see
from the note-books of Mace (a police official who was certainly unbiased and quite ignorant of criminal anthropology) only confirm our conclusions for there
;
"
Mon Musee
p.
148.
95
all
3, and 7, who show either a small number of abnormal features (such as big ears and lower jaws, very black hair, strong brows, and coarse full lips), or else show them to a limited degree.
Among
Note, in
often complete.
No.
2,
the
immense
jaws,
thick
lips,
;
crooked
eyes
in
No. 6 the marked strabismus, the sessile ear, the in Nos. 4 and 5 a repetition of asymmetrical face and in No. 8 the flat, crooked these peculiarities In every nose, low forehead, and slanting eyes.
;
;
The
Nos.
2, 4,
5,
8,
having the bodies of women, but all the air of brutal men whom they resemble sometimes, even in their
:
dress.
A
her
typical assassin
is
still,
Characteristic again
Z., first
No. 10 (Plate
III.),
a prostitute, then a
thief, finally
a murderess,
who
some
features
which
consider
typically criminal
im-
and an exaggerated frontal angle, such one notes in savages and monkeys while the
;
g6
jaws and
virile.
indeed
is
essentially-
(No.
The same maybe said of the Italian female brigand ii), who betrays the type not so much in her
if
man
one, like
Gabrielle Bompard.
The
hibits,
is
given, ex-
Brouardel,
all
Ballet
and
Motet
correctly
remarked,^
Her
stature
was
metre 46 her hips and breasts rudimentary, and she consequently looked so masculine that she was able, when dressed as a man, to accompany Eyraud every-
where without being recognised. She had thick hair, abnormal and precocious wrinkles, a livid pallor, a short, hollowed-out nose, a heavy jaw. Above all, she had an asymmetrical face, and Mongolian eurignathism.
Still
more
is
typically homicidal
and
lascivious, in
my
opinion,
Here we
numerous deep, precocious wrinkles, thick, a flat, crooked nose, which curved outwards, a receding chin, and a virile physiognomy
sessile ears,
crooked
lips,
(Figs. 7,
8).
Talmeyr (S?ir le Banc) has painted a veritable band of assassins and thieves, of which the leader was
^
" Archives d' Anthropologic Criminelle," Lyons, 1891. owe these two portraits to the kindness of Prince Roland Bona-
parte,
who
Europe, and
possesses one of the finest anthropological collections in who had the likenesses done specially for me.
Gabrielle Bompard.
97
own
profligate
and
by
little
had turned
men
she had to do
gang of murderers. Another woman, Thomas by name (Figs. 9, 10), was profligate and drunken, besides habitually practising abortion as a profession. She always fell
with, her son not excepted, into a
crime. She resembled Nos. 4 and 8, Plate III,, and was remarkable for facial asymmetry, sessile, protruding ears, a crooked nose, thin, crooked lips, and
many
wrinkles.
These two photographs give a very good idea of the criminal type in women, which evidently is less brutal than the corresponding type in the male
offender.
Very
often, too, in
is
disguised
by
youth with its absence of wrinkles and the plumpness which conceals the size of the jaw and cheek-bones, thus softening the masculine and savage features. Then when the hair is black and plentiful (as in
No. 10, Plate III.), and the eyes are bright, a not In short, let a unpleasing appearance is presented. female delinquent be young and we can overlook her
degenerate type, and even regard her as beautiful
the sexual instinct misleading us here as
it
;
does
in
making
us attribute to
women more
of sensitiveness
And in the and passion than they really possess. same way, when she is being tried on a criminal
charge,
we
98
many
all
will
in
finding the criminal type in No. lo, Plate V., nor yet
in Messalina,
who,
flattered
contemporary
many
of the features
wavy
hair,
2^
Magnan
{see "
Actes du
having
Margherita, the
of degeneration
12
first
is
only
her
at
that of a
woman
incisors,
of twenty.
She
is,
in
short, the
complete
We
and
her
fits
that
stole,
She used
to bite
him
to kiss her.
What
"
I
chiefly distinguished
tendency to onanism.
she said to her
do
it,"
mother,
but
cannot help
myself."
Fil-.
(i;.r!a!Hl
i^
Fig.
9.
Fig. 10.
(Thomas.)
Messalina.
99
All medical remedies were useless. At 1 1 years of age she underwent chloridectomy, and the bandages were hardly removed when the old practices recommenced. Let us take the next example, that of a born thief. Louise C. (Magnan writes of her), aged 9, was the daughter of a mad father, always in a condition ot sexual excitement. She was of weak intelligence her instincts had always been bad, her conduct turbulent, and her mind incapable of concentration. At three she was a thief, and laid hands on her mother's money, on articles in shops, on everything, in short, that came in her way. At five she was arrested and conveyed to the police-office, after a determined resistance. Her habits were vagabond and unruly. She shrieked, tore off her stockings, threw her dolls into the gutter, lifted up her skirts in
;
the
street.
Magnan
of face
offers
;
no morbid peculiarity
13),
one perceives
born criminal.
Her
flat,
physiognomy
above
all,
woman
virility
nay, a man.
of
aspect
is
and She
Precocity and
characteristic
the
double
and serves more than any other feature to destroy and mask her
of
the
criminal-woman,
type.
2.
Prostitutes.
With
the aid
of
Madame
Tar-
100
novvsky
from
We Moscow, and all aged from i8 to 20 years. that among them there do not undertake to say but the greater are no Germans and no Jewesses number are Russians from Moscow. (See Plate II.)
;
still
but
it is
only found
in
10
marked
In 15 per cent, we have and in all the examples there are the characteristics of madness as well as of criminality. Observe Nos. 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, where the wild eyes and perturbed countenance, together with facial asymmetry, recall women seen in asylums for the insane,
Nos.
only a half-type
The
faces of these
women
all
are
singularly
monoi, 2,
Nos.
and
14,
seem
to
face,
the
No. 25 might be called a Russian Helen, and No. 20 is very handsome in spite of her hard expression. The first fifteen might pass in the streets for beauties and indeed our more fashionable cocottes have exactly the same type. Ninon de Lenclos and Marion were
;
Some
many
against
equi-
all
same
qualities
Margherita.
Louise.
Plate
II.
Plate
II.
Plate
II.
lOI
an exaggerated form.
But
much
less
ugly than
in prostitutes
dii diable,
women
with
its
of great youth, in
whom
the beaiite
freshness, plumpness,
dis-
in the
to
8,
21
and
22),
outstanding
strong
nose (Nos.
i, 2,
I
jaw (Nos.
tion,
which
to be characteristics of degeneraand which distinguish all these examples except Nos. 16, 21, and 22, with their wild air, and Nos. 5 and 28 with their beautiful eyes. And yet another thing to be remembered is, that the profession of these women necessitates a comparative absence of peculiarities which, when existing, excite disgust and repulsion, and require as much as possible to be
artificially
we have pronounced
concealed.
Most
by
or
certainly
the
all
art
of
making
features
up, imposed
their trade
on
these un-
fortunates,
disguises
hides
many
characteristic
And
it
may
we
abundant hair, black eyes, and absence of wrinkles, where acquaintance with reality would reveal the
exact opposite.
Again,
if
more common among them than among and male offenders offer a corresponding phenomenon in the superior personal attractiveness of swindlers and forgers to homicides
palate, &c., are
female criminals
102
or assassins,
as
who
naturally
crimes.
Where
we
find
them
a truly Darwinian
by
cocottes,
trait. But even the handsomest female offenders have invariably strong jaws and cheek-bones, and a mascu-
line aspect.
These
of
among
marked
all
whom
there
is
a family resemblance so
merge the differences between Russian and the unfortunates who flaunt in fine equipages, or wander in rags through the streets of Italian towns. And when youth vanishes, the jaws, the cheek-bones, hidden by adipose tissue, emerge, salient angles stand out, and the face grows virile, uglier than a man's wrinkles deepen into the likeness of scars, and the countenance, once attractive, exhibits the full degenerate type which early grace had
as to
prostitutes
;
concealed.
Plate
III.
CHAPTER
VIII.
analytical
Quota of the type. More instructive than a mere enumeration of the characteristics of
is
degeneration
We
call
characteristics of degeneration a halftype that which contains at least three of these and
;
more of the
Out of
in the prison of Turin, and 234 in the Female House of Correction were natives of different
Piedmontese
Italian
provinces,
especially
from
the South.
In
these, consequently,
teristics
we
We
for
150 prostitutes
their
whom we
features
;
several
100
103
104
Madame Tarnowsky
same heads the
results
And we
classified
under
the
so as to
compare the
One
reader
subjects
how little these various returns differ. The we examined in the House of Correction resemble those we saw in prison; nor do our results differ much from the averages ot the other observers, allowance being made for the personal equation or individual divergences in the mode of regarding the
same
peculiarity.
results of the
The
I.
examination
may
be thus sum-
marised:
The
when
all
other observations
taken into
same type
is
only present
per cent,
Marro records the absence of the type in 58*7 Madame Tarnowsky in 55 per cent, we found it wanting in 55*9 per cent of the cases in the House of Correction, and in 55-8 of those in prison so
;
SDIJSI
I06
The demi-type
portions,
Marro finding it in 22 per cent, Madame Tarnowsky in 21 per cent, we in 29 per cent in the House of Correction, and in 28-9 in the prison. Average 25*20 per cent
:
2.
they offer so much more frequently a special and peculiar type. Grimaldi's figures are 31 per cent (of anomalies), Madame Tarnowsky's 43 per cent, our own 38 per cent making a mean of 37'i per cent These results harmonise with the conclusions to which we had already arrived in our study of particular features, and our survey of the various types of born prostitutes as distinguished from
in that
;
first
classified
among
thieves as
and 16 per cent; among assassins as 13*2 per cent, and as rising to 187 per cent in those accused of corruption, among whom were included old prostitutes.
The
indeed
least frequency
11 per
87
women
being
among
the
criminals.
Madame Tarnowsky
among homicides prevail shows how over those among thieves, and how the averages among prostitutes are higher than any others, be-
loy
anoma-
Normals
150.
Homicides
loc.
Thieves
too.
Prostitutes 100.
Anor
I08
to
say,
in
that
portion
of
the
stamp, the
for
type declares
then even
is
in
cases of idiotcy,
more important
in the
our
less
is far
marked and
with
tions
less
frequent
woman.
In her,
man and this phenomenon, with a few excepamong lower animals, holds good throughout
;
For
(Anomalo,
1893), the
common
characters of
Most
naturalists are
agreed
remark may be applied with equal justice to the moral sphere. Helen Zimmern, in her " Philosophy of Fashion," observed that women show their individuality better
than
are
men
due
element
in
man.
And
in truth,
sleeveless
all
belt,
from which
sively
civilisation,
sprung throughout the course of European how many have been the varieties of
from age to age, among different nations,
its
male
tially
attire
general lines
is
substan-
/
^
I09
conservative tendency of
social order
;
women
in all
questions of
cause
is
whom
falls
the
up the family, necessarily leads a more sedentary life, and is less exposed than the male to the varying conditions of time and space in her environment. More especially is this the case among the greater number of vertebrates, and still more of savages, where the struggle for life, both for parents and progeny, devolves primarily upon the male, and is the incessant cause of variations and peculiar adaptations in functions and organs (Viazzi). Now, once we admit that the primitive type of a species is more clearly represented in the female, we must proceed to argue thence that the typical forms of our race, being better organised and fixed in the woman through the action of time and long heredity,
joined to fewer ancestral variations, are less subject
and deformation by the influences which determine special and retrogressive variations
to transformation
in the male.
Man
no
women
in his
We
eat
them
all
"
and on being
a thousand
For one
whom we
lose,
male finds them convenient for other reasons, or has no objection to them, or attaches no importance to them. Such is the cushion of the Hottentot women, which is useful for the transport of children; and when this and other anomalies prevail among the women of any tribe, they assume a stable and perpetual character in virtue of the tenacity peculiar to
the feminine organism.
for the
is
comparative rarity of
that congenitally they
women
fact,
Atavism must be
still
less ferocious
whom we
;
meet with most frequently among women and as occasional criminals have no special physiognomy, they can offer no examples of the type. And woman's
inability in this respect
is
all
when
is,
in the
majority of cases,
an adulteress, a calumniator, a swindler, or a mere accomplice offences, every one of them, which require an attractive appearance, and prohibit the develop-
ment of
III
;
woman was
a prostitute,
rarely a murderess
but
and such she remained she was always Atavism, a^ain, then until semi-civilised epochs. explains why prostitutes should show a greater number of retrogressive characteristics than are to be
in the female criminal. Various as are these solutions of a singular problem, we may, I think, seek yet another. In female animals,
observed
in aboriginal
women, and
in the
women
of our time,
psychical
the
less active
than
in the male.
The
irrita-
on a degenerative process is therefore neither so constant nor so lasting, and leads more easily to motor and hysterical epilepsy, or to sexual anomalies, than to crime. For a similar reason genius is more common in men than in women and the lower animals remain insensible to narcotics, which intoxicate the human species, and are not subject to delirium or mania when attacked by fever. We have now got to the reason why criminality increases among women with the march of civilisation consequent
;
tion.
The female
criminal
is
a kind of occasional
in pro-
while the
woman
of pleasure, and, as
we
and
taste, a greater
In short, the female criminal aspect than the male because she
criminal
;
of less
typical
less essentially
because
in all
112
her
type even
in
from
it
and
finally
cannot be denied that when depravity in woman is profound, then the law by which the type bears the brand of criminality asserts itself in spite
But
it
of
all
restraint, at
any
much more
3.
Atavism helps to explain the The very precocity of prostitutes the precocity which increases apprimarily attributable to atavism. parent beauty
Atavism.
of the criminal type in woman.
their
is
Due
also to
it
;
is
criminal
type
for
female
in
is
femininity,
for
most
in
the
her
we conclude
and the
rule
that
there
must be
the
some anomaly.
significance
And
order to
understand
anomaly, we have only to remember that virility was one of the In proof I special features of the savage women.
atavistic origin of this
have but to refer the reader to the Plates opposite, taken from Ploss's work (" Das Weib," 3rd ed., 1890), where we have the portraits of Red Indian and Negro
beauties,
whom
it is
difficult to
recognise for
women,
And
the
same
is
and
brains.
The
Negro Woman.
II3
type of his species, the female criminal necessarily offers the two most salient characteristics of primordial woman, namely, precocity and a minor degree
of differentiation from the male this lesser differentiation manifesting itself in the stature, cranium, brain,
and
in
to a degree so far in
the muscular strength which she possesses advance of the modern female.
found
Exam.nles of this masculine strength may still be among women in country districts of Italy, and especially in the islands and the reader should
;
now be
would
able to understand
. . .
why
type in that Z.
strike
(Plate
III.,
No.
whose likeness
many
excessive obesity of prostitutes, to which we have already drawn attention, is perhaps of atavistic
The
origin.
"
The
fatness of
many
Duchatelet,
" strikes
those
who
when many
Persons living
these women and observing them every day have certified that this obesity only begins at about It is rarely noticeable in the age of 25 to 30 years. To what," he continues, young girls or beginners. The most "are we to attribute this peculiarity?
among
simple explanation seems to lie in the great number of hot baths which such women are accustomed to
take throughout the year, and, above all, to their inactive lives and abundant nourishment." But the lower orders of prostitutes, who are the
do not take baths and if their lives in the daytime are inactive, they are not so at night, when their wakeful hours are frequent and diversified by
fattest,
;
114
dances and orgies. And if we must admit that, as a rule, they grow fat only after the age of 20 years, yet we have but to look at the likenesses furnished by Magnan to observe that the tendency shows
itself
sometimes
in
Many
women make
so large a use.
But it is well known that workers in quicksilver mines and makers of looking-glasses, so far from being fat,
are noted for their thinness.
Moreover, prostitutes
who do
who undergo
rich
it.
women when grow enormously fat, and the reason of the phenomenon is atavistic. Maternal and sexual functions produce the cushion of the Hottentot w^oman, who by increasing in adipose and connective tissue reverts to a peculiHottentot, African, and Abyssinian
and
idle
arity of primitive
women or
is,
in
other words, an
example of atavism.
Indeed, in
Oceania and
to,
in
such
in
a
of
women
in prisons
and
asylums
more
there
In Imola
two kilogrammes), so that she is fatter than a Hottentot woman, and has to wear special stays.
CHAPTER
IX.
TATTOOING.
I.
Criminals.
Among
is
;
of tattooing
characteristic
so
common
become a
it
special
is
so rare
as to be practically non-existent.
Out of 1,175 sentenced women observed by me, by Gamba, and Salsotto, only 13, or 2-15 per cent., were
tattooed.
female lunatics the percentage is larger at any rate in Ancona, where Riva found 10 tattooed out of 147 that is to say, 6-8 per cent. All were tattooed
;
Among
all
There were no images. cross surmounting a globe, with which she had been tattooed by a mountebank. Another had, also on the arm, self-inflicted, four initials, being those of her mother and two lovers. This woman was a Venetian, an adulteress, condemned for wounding her paramour, and was affected with Yet another Venetian woman had four syphilis.
One had on
the
arm a
initials
on her arm.
thief,
aged
24,
Il6
who suffered from epilepsy, who had been first a model, then a prostitute, and had killed her lover, a painter, out of jealousy and because he would not pay
her, bore
on her forearm,
the
in large letters,
beginning
with a
W,
name
;
of the
man
underneath the date of the abandonment which he while on her o^/ier forearm was
Prostitutes.
very different.
is
The
proportion of tattooed
setting
among them
trebles
higher, even
which
doubles
and even
I
the
number
of
examples.
in
per cent.
The
principal characteristics
in
thirty-three cases)^
for the
two
The
is
whom
in
more, three.
in
two
In 31
.,
TATTOOING.
two
initials,
117
C. D.
One had
"
W.,
my
love,"
and two
One had
M.
B." (Evvia
first
il viio
lover
whom
she had
by whom she had and then been abandoned at the end of She was, nevertheless, a woman of some
fourteen,
only
names of their lovers, followed by the declaration, " Pour la vie" flanked sometimes by two flowers or two hearts. The marks are almost always on the shoulders or breast. Only twice was any obscene allusion found. La Rosny was covered all over with the names and initials of her lovers and the dates of her new attachinitials
or
ments.
As
follows
Breasts
The age
always
In
I
at
is
almost
early.
case
'
Il8
Parent
most frequent in the more degraded girls, who are accustomed to mark themselves with the names of
their lovers, effacing always the old
had been
15
names.
Old
names of women.
De Albertis observed that among prostitutes who are tattooed are the most depraved.
Out of
28,
those
15 had been in prison, 10 of them and one 24 times. Nine were covered with scars, 28 were wanting in moral sense, and 20 even in a sense of religion 25 out of 28 had dulness of touch, and i was absolutely wanting in it. All had been precociously depraved, one at 9, another at Seven of the 8 between 12 and 14 years. 10 years number had tattooed themselves, one at the age of 9 out of imitation. Fourteen out of twenty-eight showed
several times,
Very accurate researches made by Bergh in Denmark yielded similar results to the above. Among the unfortunates of Copenhagen the fashion came in when a young man, formerly a sailor, who
possessed an aptitude for drawing, and especially for
tattooing,
women.
years Bergh found 80
Within the
last five
women
tattooed out of a total of 801, and 49 of the number, or more than half, had been tattooed by the sailor in
question.
The
*
'*
by
their
TATTOOING,
female friends
poh'ce stations,
in
HO
Thirty-four were tattooed with letters, lo with names, 22 with letters and figures, 11 with names and figures, and 8 with figures alone. The greater
part of these tattooings were in red and black. In y2> out of 80 cases eternal love was proclaimed
by an
affixed
to
the
names
of
the
lovers
Twenty-three of the same women had written their own names, either partially or entirely; and in
5
cases there was the date and the year of their loves. Twenty-six had tattooed themselves with the
names of 2 lovers, 3 with the names of 3, 4 with 4, and 2 with 5 or 6. The lovers of Parisian prostitutes
erased the
have never been equalled in number. Five had name of one lover by replacing it (in the
same spot) with that of another, and adding the image of a funereal cross. This was observed also in
cases in France.i Two bore the name of a female friend beside that of the lover. Four were tattooed only with their own names, one with the
some
name
For the rest there was no great variety, the same marks being generally repeated. Naturally there are
often symbolical figures, the
Italy.
same
as in France
and
Fifteen
women had
a kind of knot formed by 7 showed a 6 a heart with two with two letters and an
; ;
in different directions
it,
120
Five
women
;
likeness
;
of a
young man
;
showed two clasped hands nine a heart, that well-worn symbol of love three a kind of ribbon two a branch with leaves, and two a leaf only. Eight had a bracelet, or a funereal cross, or a
four
;
Two women were tattooed in nine places, All these one in eleven, and another in fifteen. marks were on the upper part of the body rarely on the legs or chest and eight were on the joints of the
cannon.
;
fingers.
Three women were marked with a ring on the thumb, on the index and on the middle finger of the Three had marks on the left knee, one on left hand. the right knee, and three on both knees. One showed a design on the sternum, and another on a spot lower down, between the breasts. In Copenhagen, as in Paris and Genoa, the tattooed but none prostitutes were the lowest of their class of the designs which they exhibited were obscene. Generally they bore allusions to the love of men. The tattooings are usually always in the same places and of the same colour and sometimes they are superimposed, an effort being made to cover the name of an old lover with that of the new one. The chief difference seems to be, that while in Copenhagen only male names are found, on Parisian prostitutes there
; ;
Tattooing
frequent,
of prostitutes
sort,
is
and almost
unknown Out of
1,502
women, almost
TATTOOING.
121
1886 and 1890 were admitted to the division in the Vestne Hospital of Copenhagen reserved for clandestine prostitutes, only 31 were tattooed, 15 of them when very young, by the sailor already mentioned, and the remainder by their female friends or their
lovers.
3.
Conclusions.
Atavism.
On
in
the whole,
is
there-
fore,
found to a
than
far
degree
among
criminal
women
among men.
is
as
is
2.5
late
the
In
recent
practice
the
moles.
Denmark,
10 per cent.
Still
more remarkable
is
even among the tattooed female criminals the majority were prostitutes also and it was the most vicious and the most degraded of the unfortunates themselves who were tattooed, and tattooed more especially on
;
and
in
breasts.
Finally, prostitutes
alone, especially
Denmark and
France, showed
multiplicity
9,
11,
or
even 15. The predominating meaning of all these designs but it is a love which proves the inconis love
;
class, since
in
26 cases out
declaration
122
4,
5,
while
one.
women were
name with
new
have here, then, yet a further proof that phenomena of atavism are more frequent among
prostitutes than
We
among
while
male.
in
the
Other differences between the tattooings on women and those on men are a much greater want of
variety
;
an
absence of epigrams,
obscene
signs,
and cries of vengeance, and the presence of ordinary Here we have another symbols and initials only. effect of the smaller ability and fancy, the lower
degree of
for
differentiation
in
the
female
intellect
even the female criminal is monotonous and uniform compared with her male companion, just as
woman
Once
is
in general inferior to
man.
seek an explanation
again, then,
in
we must
learn
of the type
significant
when we
even the
savage
woman
is
men
are
thickly tattooed as
to
forming a complete record of their age, rank, honours, the enemies they have overcome, and even the property which they possess. But the women limit themselves at most to some delicate designs an feet or hands or arms, choosing the images of gloves and shoes in
TATTOOING,
I23
which the men adorn themselves. At Nouka Hiva it is a privilege of the more aristocratic woman to be tattooed with fantastic designs,
plebeian females being restricted to simple ones.
Among the Arabs especially prostitutes are tattooed on the hands, forearms, arms, and upper neck, with garlands, arabesques, or circular lines, and the men are also tattooed on the face. This custom is dying out among the women of Japan, has ceased among those of Burmah, and in New Zealand is reduced to two or three lines on the lips and chin. The same may be said of the women of Toba, in India, where the marks signify puberty only, or are perhaps intended for adornment, but have no religious, political, or commercial significance. So that here again is less tendency to differentiation. The desire to beautify herself, which is so great in the modern woman, was not present in the primordial female, who was a mere beast of burden or of generation therefore even such a simple and primitive adornment as tattooing, which required time and some trouble, and was accompanied with religious rites, and had besides to be durable, because serving as a register of descent and legal claims, was practised only by and for men. Among women for a long time its place was taken by blue and red painting of the hair, nails, and even teeth, which was resorted to probably only at the epoch of puberty. The fine ladies of Bagdad dyed their lips, legs, and chest blue,
;
124
In
Burmah
;
red
hair,
teeth, feet,
and hands.
By
is
all
simplicity of tattooing
criminal prostitute.
^
pean" {Revue
Scientijique^
CHAPTER
VITALITY
X.
Women
grief
This
is
remarkable
is
which she endures the hardships, even the prolonged life. It is a well-known fact that the number of aged female criminals surpasses the male contingent. " Witch " is a synonymous term for old woman in the language of the people and there are some proverbs which point to similar conhardships of prison
;
clusions.
We
cocious criminals
slightly greater
ii.),
among women
number of old female offenders is relatively much larger. I know of some denizens of female prisons who have reached
(Roncoroni,
"
Senola Positiva,"
the
the age of 90, having lived within those walls since they were 29, without any grave injury to health. As to comparative official statistics, I append a list of prison returns, which, because of their nature, are
126
Between 1870 and 1879, the inhabitants of prisons and convict establishments in Italy who were over sixty years of age, showed a percentage of 4'3 among the women, and 3*2 among the men.
The
were as follows
...
...
Women.
Years
,,
'8
per cent.
,,
8*i
301040:32-6 201030:27-6
,,
... ...
...
under 20
2*5
27
These
the
figures
how
women
For among
male criminals the number condemned to the galleys for life, or for periods longer than 10 years, is far greater than among women, as may be seen by these
returns
:
Condemned
10-15 years.
p. c.
to
Men,
13-5
Women,
VITALITY OF FEMALE CRIMINALS,
12/
become attached
instance,
Out of
of
i,68o,
972
took up a means
livelihood
became domestics
Out
of 3,401 in ten years (1817-27), 177 became chronically affected with the following complaints
:
70 had
different affections.
"
128
many
that
profession
resist anything."
is
That the
latter
must
confirmed by
many
special
lived to be 135
1588 to 1723), so that when the Parisians wished to instance something which resisted the assaults of time, they mentioned her and the towers She buried four husbands, and of Notre Dame.
was over 80 before losing her freshness of mind or body. Ninon de Lenclos at 80 still had glossy black
hair as in youth, white teeth, bright eyes, full form,
and
the
is
Abbe de
in old
Among
even
age
Have you
is
her age
the hair
which
temples
ever
Historians maintain that Thais died at 70, without having abandoned her profession. Plutarch,
indeed, relates that her death was owing to having pursued a young Thessalian, with whom was in love, into the Temple of Venus, where women of the country killed her out of anger at
her
she
the
her
still,
charms.
29
describing
much
"
wit as
when
decrepit.
Archea-
nassa
is
mine
Others say that the epigram which counts the wrinkles wherein little Loves nestle, refers to
wrinkles."
Asclepias.
mistress of Demetrius
The Chloe
of
and
who
of
which
to
take seven
husbands, to
tures of
little
whom
sepul-
honour.
under three hundred consuls and Ligella, whose equalled that of the mother of Ceres. age
on
and must so remain and tradition are there to show that the women who most frequently survive accidents and incidental and professional maladies
In short,
this
if statistics
are silent,
subject, history
women
of purest
life.
Parent
Duchatelet
remarked that
many
have passed the age of 25 years, and when, Many attrithey belong to the lowest class. buted the peculiarity to habits of drinking wine and
after they
also,
shrieking
he put
it
down
This
may be
true,
been to show me that the voice of these women masculine because they have a masculine larynx.
is
130
Handwriting. The handwriting also, few prostitutes who have any education,
masculine, and the
in the
is
very
somewhat
Lenclos,
same
is
Examples
are
Trossarello,
Ninon
de
Muscular
ordinary
force.
There
force.
is
no
lOO
proof of
extra-
muscular
In
infanticides
of
normal stature the dynamometer showed a lorce of 30 kilogrammes on the right side and 30 on the
left.
In
20 poisoners
the
results
were 24
left
kilo-
grammes on
In 130 assassins, 30 kilogrammes on the right side and 31 on the left; so that we have a noticeable leftside.
handedness
in
poisoners
and
murderesses.
And,
indeed, left-handedness has been observed in 23 per cent, of murderesses, in 43 per cent, of poisoners, in
13
peculiarity
per cent,
of
is
prostitutes
while
among normals
cent.
the proportion
from 9 to 12 per
prostitutes
And
the
number of left-handed
would appear to be very great if one were to trust the dynamometer, which, however, is not always
possible.
Gurrieri, with the help of this instrument, found
33 per cent, of left-handed prostitutes; Ricard found 10 per cent, left-handed, and from 8 to 5 per cent,
ambidexter.
ability,
it,
only
left-
ambidextrous.
the singular agility
More important,
I31
One of the writers has recorded the story of the woman Perino, of Oneglia, who jumped from trees
on to the roofs of houses into which she penetrated for purposes of robbery, and from which she escaped in the same way, evading detection for years. We know of a prostitute-model (epileptic and tattooed) who killed her lover, a painter, and who, especially when hurt in her vanity, was subject to
such
fits
of
violence that
five
gaolers
could not
She had embroidered a pair of epaurestrain her. lettes on a red shirt, and was accustomed to say,
"
This
is
my
uniform."
" I
am
a chieftainess of
She was, in fact, the leader of all the worst characters in Turin, and the terror of the surrounding neighbourhood. The celebrated Bonhours, a prostitute and murderess
brigands."
who wore masculine garments, and was as strong as a man, killed several men by blows from a hammer. The celebrated Bell-Star, who led a band of
assassins,
on one occasion rode in a race in North America, dressed as a man, and carried off several
Zola, with great justness, in his " Bete
prizes.
Humanie
"
endowed the murderous virago Flora with such strength of arm that she was able to run a train oft
the line so as to
It is
kill
rival.
active
servant-girls
least
honest
proved
133
tight-rope performers
and there
is
no
cocotte
who
woman
balls
and threw
and
like
The
:
observed by
Madame Tarnowsky
furnished
following comparisons
133
to
is
be
found
among
abolished action
may
which so easily attacks the anterior roots but it must be said that in the larger number of the cases observed there was no proof of any syphilitic
syphilis,
by
process.
Out of 100
prostitutes
rated reflex action, and 21 in whom it was slight or wanting. After prostitutes, the abnormal figures are
furnished
action,
by poisoners and murderesses, in whom the when anomalous, is tardy. The least abnormal
are infanticides.
The reflexes of the pupils were tardy in 10 per cent, of criminals and in 16 per cent, of prostitutes, and normal in y8 per cent, of the latter.
Reddening with
nitrate of
in
90
J<;apid {_,
Murderesses.
Infanticides.
40 per
55
cent.
80
70 per cent. 30 82
silence.
CHAPTER
XI.
FEMALE CRIMINALS.
I.
Touch.
In
our
first
inquiries
into the
sense of
criminal
among
ACUTENESS OF SENSE.
135
(left),
i
whom we
tongue.
9 in
20 female poisoners,
who
much
(left),
Among
hand) and
100
3*0
were
2'0 (right
In
2-2
that,
with 45 per cent, of left-handed subjects. So according to him, the sense of touch would be
in poisoners, rather duller in infanticides
normal
and
murderesses, while
among
50
homicides,
136
15
young
very
3-04
was
relatively
fine,
;
(tongue)
being 1-90 (right hand), 1*45 (left), 1-48 while in 68 of middle-age it was dull (right), 3-02 (left), 2*11 in tongue, and very
tactile left-handedness.
marked
De
class
Albertis
among 28
tactile
of 3*6 (r.) and found a minimum of 18. 4 (1.), with a maximum of vo and a Gurrieri, from observations made on 60 prostitutes
sensitiveness
compared with 50 normals or quasi-normals, concludes that the fleshy part of the finger in both hands
as
is
more
sensitive in normals.
2*5
For
instance, at a disfeel
tance of 2 to
mm. 60
the
two points
hand, and 70 per cent, in the left, while only 57 per cent, of prostitutes feel them The in the right, and 64 per cent, in the left hand.
in the right
left
hand
is
in prostitutes.
more
sensitive
tongue 80 per cent, of them as in against y^ per cent, of normals feeling the experiment at from 0*5 to 1*5, although 18 per cent, of normals were sensitive at from 2 to 2*5, and only 10 per cent,
the tip of the
ot prostitutes.
But here we must take into consideration three which have not been mentioned hitherto these are culture, age, and degenerative characteristics. In young girls, even those who show signs of
factors
:
is
very
fine.^
In 12
^ Touch, general sensitiveness, sensitiveness to pain and degenerate type in normal, criminal, and lunatic females (" Archiviodi psichiatria,"
1S91).
ACUTENESS OF SENSE.
girls
I37
aged from 6 to 15 years there appeared an average of 1-56 (right) and 2-57 (left); and the average obtuseness in educated women is less (2) than in women of the people (2'6), and is also very much less frequent (being only 16 per cent.) in nor-
some degenerative
and
is
very high
(75 per cent.) in those women, even when normal, who have many of these characteristics.
Consequently
all
divergences
having
compared criminals with normal peasant women (as did Marro and Madame Tarnowsky) or with old women, or with normal women who had many signs
of degeneration.
refer-
we found
:
56 female criminals
...
...
...
Dull {3 and over Medium (I's to 2-5). ... 52 per cent. 42 per cent.
61
,,
...
50
...
39 50
>>
These
figures
who do
not
present the type, while in the J type the sensitiveness of touch is middling, with
maximum
minimum
deadness
in
to
an
With
studied
help
of
the
general
we
average of 58-2
mm.
men
138
for
women,
57-6 (right)
and
therefore,
As
Lombroso algometer, the average among normal men was 42 mm., among normal women 45, in
female thieves 21*4 (right) and 20'5
(right)
(left)
;
in prosti-
and 21 (left), thus showing the tutes I9"0 and tactile left-handedness in the greatest dulness In 28 per cent, of prostitutes we found comlatter.
plete insensibility to pain.
and
sensitive-
when
mm.
At
a distance of 40
tion found, thus
mals and 39 per cent, of prostitutes was the proporshowing (what Madame Tarnowsky
tive in the
The
ACUTENESS OF SENSE.
the
clitoris,
139
and whose
that
is
least
hand.
And
natural.
still
in the palm of the For the hand of the more of the peasant, grows
is
in
Russian
women
especially the
causes, but
and
for
clitoris in
her case
explicable.
The
insensibility to
shown by the
facility
with
which these
women
prostitutes observed
this cause).
treated for
They
me
the case of
who
watch the operation of which she followed all the stages, as though a stranger to them, without uttering
a cry.
among
prosti-
found
in those
them the
lingual
children.
In
as against j6
in the child-bearing
rest.
But
140
the
good
always
4.
and hand.
Salsotto found magnetic cent of murderesses (130) and in 6 per cent, of poisoners and infanticides. Fifty per cent, of normals and 15 per 5. Taste. cent, of criminals observed by us showed great deli-
Magnetic
sensibility in 12 per
cacy of gustation.
strychnine.
cent,
They
detected
in
500,000 of
Among
of criminals, and
30 per
cent,
of prostitutes,
(i
marked deadness
in
100 of strychnine).
Madame Tarnowsky, whose methods, however, were less exact, found that 2 per cent, of homicides and thieves and 4 per cent, of prostitutes could not distinguish any one of the four solutions, bitter, sweet, and salt, used in experimenting on their sense the salt solution especially being the one of taste This is a phein which they made most mistakes. nomenon which has never been observed in normals.
;
6.
Sense of smell.
The
by
Dr. Ottolenghi with essences of cloves, resulted as 3 times duller in criminals (6 per cent.) than in normals
(2
per cent).
Among
19 per cent
As an
average result
we
i
obtained the
5th
in
According to
in
Madame Tarnowsky,
the olfactory
women,
in
in
66 per cent of prostitutes and homicides, and yy per cent, of thieves it was below the normal
;
ACUTENESS OF SENSE.
18 per cent, of moral
prostitutes
I4I
women,
in
in 8
in in
it
7.
Hearing.
in
This
sense,
in
according
Madame
of moral
Z6 per
cent,
women,
74 per
cent, of prostitutes, in
68 per cent.
;
of thieves, in
it was 54 per cent, of homicides weakened in 14 per cent, of normals, in 24 per cent.
2 per
cent.
of homicides.
Field of vision. Ottolenghi in my wards studied the field of vision of typical female criminals, of
8.
Only
field
3 in 15
of vision.
them
it
was more or
less
limited, in
9 there were deep peripheric recesses, forming that more or less broken peripheric line
in
which he noticed
in
epileptic
subjects
Anomalie
of a
del
campo
I
Bocca, 1890).
certain
give as a
example the
field
F. M.,
aged
of a
thief,
who
of asking alms.
off
something wherever she was received. She had the face of an old woman, marked cheek and frontal bones, small, very unsteady eyes, and wrinkles on her forehead. Her tactile dulness was remark-
142
able (3
(5
mm.
;
of pain
sleigh)
tested with Dubois Reymond's was subject every now and again to attacks
when
almost of mania, perhaps epileptic in character, during which she was sleepless and sang continually.
voluble,
field of vision (Laudolt method) when transhowed diminution, especially on the left side, asymmetry, profound peripheral scotomata. When the subject was excited the field of vision grew much larger, but became in no wise more regular. Her other senses varied in the same way her 0*5 (right), 0'5 touch was much more delicate her sensitiveness to pain more marked (30 (left) her smell became on the right, 30 on the left) most acute, responding to the first solution of the osomometer but she was wanting in the power of tasting anything bitter, and could not detect strych-
Her
quil
100).
In Plate.
fields
of remarkable
No.
thief,
Nov.
F.,
convicted.
Her
aged 40, who had been several times field of vision is limited, with an
one.
No. 4 belongs to another thief, also relapsed, aged Her 25, who had but few typical peculiarities. field of vision is normal in size, but on the right
side
is
quadrant.
ACUTENESS OF SENSE.
I43
Field No. 5 belongs to a clever swindler, and is normal on the left side, but rather limited on the right under side. (In this connection we may mention that male swindlers have all a normal field of vision.) A very abnormal visual field, typical of crime, is No. 6. This woman, aged 39, killed her husband (with the help of her lover) under circumstances of the utmost premeditation and indifference. The field is very small, and irregular throughout but there the whole periphery, especially on the left was neuro-retinitis of syphilitic origin. Another typical case of anomaly in the field of vision is in the born criminal, M. C, who at 9 years of age attempted to poison, and at 12 really did poison, a companion, while at 14 she was condemned tor corruption of minors and for theft. Her field of vision. No. i, is regular, but limited on the left, anomalous on the right, owing to peripheral scotomata, and with an irregular periphery. Br. M., aged 43, criminal, thief, and prostitute, has a field of vision showing a deep scotomata in the internal inferior quadrant of the left eye, while the right eye is normal. (See No. 2.) Among 15 occasional criminals, only 4 had anomaNo. 7 is quite regular. It lous fields of vision.
belongs to a
poison
her
girl
of 16 years
who
tried stupidly to
old
and
field
brutal
husband
by putting
No. 8
is
a large
and quite
regular, in spite of
Frenchwoman
to Italy
him
for
144
In 8 out of
was found
to
be
Typical
irregular periphery
is
the
field
of
woman
of 28, entirely
wanting
in
moral sense
rachitic,
frontal sinuses,
whither
abnormal in its periphery and is No. 10. The subject, aged 18, was a typical prostitute, and an accomplice in theft. The field is limited above, especially on the right, has an irregular periphery with a broken line, and two peripheral scotomata, one large and corresponding to the lower external sector on the right, the other smaller, and corresponding to the upper The visual faculty was external sector on the left. good, but there was deadness of touch in this subject (3 mm. on right and 4 on left). In regard to sensitiveness of the retina, born prostitutes approximate to the male born criminal, more than does the true female criminal. In making the above recorded observations it was found that there was a relation, in the case both of criminals and prostitutes, between general sensibility (especially sensitiveness to pain) and sensibility of the retina, and a similar relation between this and
Yet another
field
peripheral scotomata
Madame Tarnowsky,
cluded that the visual
than
in
in a too
field
in
homicides
smaller
so
Plate
IV.
Plate
IV.
ACUTENESS OF SENSE.
women. I
I45
De
;
Sanctis also
of 28 prostitutes in a
Lock
hospital, all of
field
it
not typical
in 17
he found the
concentrically, in 3
again there
Rarisotti
and
tion
in
examined the visual area of 10 prostitutes, 3 of the number found concentric limitawith scotomata and peripheral depressions.
only
the whole, therefore, congenital female criminals,
oftener prostitutes, present scotomata
still
On
and
and
phenomena
less
The absence
hysterical
of
the
special
characteristics
of of
subjects,
especially
the
most
frequent,
women
due to hysteria. This plea so often advanced when women are on their trial for offences consequently falls to the ground
9.
;
and the
fact really
is
that hysteria
is
more
There was
no remarkable
and 20
Of
*
than
'
" Arcbivio di psichiatria," xiv., fasc. i.-ii. " Osservazioni perioptometriche nei degenerati "
{Riv.
Med.y
1892).
146
normal
40 per
cent,
had
sight
above
the
Of
the 20 criminals
15
normal sight, 50 per cent, and 35 per cent, were equal to the average. Twenty per cent, of prostitutes and 30 per
criminals showed
myopia of 15'' to 20''. The chromatic sense was normal in 30 criminals and 50 prostitutes but in 4 among the latter class the perception of colour was feeble. On the whole, dulness of sense 10. Summary. (except in touch) and visual anomalies are greater
;
among
less in
prostitutes than
criminals.
The
male
syphilis
centres.
CHAPTER
XII.
perfect.
mass of female criminals possessing few or unimportant characteristics ot degeneration, we find a group in whom these features are almost more marked and more numerous than in males, so
while the majority of female delinquents are led into
crime either by the suggestion of a third person or by irresistible temptation, and are not entirely deficient in the moral sense, there
is
yet to be found
among them
pensities are
No
an
author
of
the
fifteenth
century,
"
can
deter
Their
mind
is
more
new punishments."
Feminine criminality," writes Rykere, " is more cynical, more depraved, and more terrible than the
criminality of the male."
"Rarely
is
surpasses the
she
is
she
148
"
flames
Terrible
all else "
is
poverty, but
woman
is
more
Caro,
terrible
than
(Euripides).
is
"The
Cruelty.
perversity of
woman
so
its
great,"
victims."
says
" as to
be incredible even to
Another
her
in the
diabolical
cruelty
with which
she
accom-
To
to see
kill
enemy does
of death.
as "
La
Taille," the
men
in torturing captives,
panion
The woman Tiburzio, after having killed a comwho was pregnant, bit her ferociously, tearing away pieces of flesh, which she threw to the dog.
Chevalier killed another
woman
in the
same con-
dition
by driving a
.
.
wound the lovers on whom she was revenging herself, a wound being in her view too She preferred to blind them by small a thing. throwing into their eyes a powder made of fine glass
P
.
which she had crushed with her teeth. asked why she had not stabbed her lover Da instead of throwing vitriol at him, answered in the words of the Roman Tyrant, " Because I wished Juni
.
.
.,
of death I Sophie Gautier killed, by slow torture, seven children who had been given into her care. History has recorded the mingled immense cruelty
"
I49
power.
salina,
We
down
women who have enjoyed royal or popular know of instances among Romans,
to
Palermo.
And
the
same may be
on a
Amestris,
begged Xerxes to hand over to her the rival's mother, whose breasts, ears, lips, and tongue she cut off and threw to the dogs, after which she sent the mutilated woman home. Parysatis, the mother of Artaxerxes, caused the mother and sister of a rival to be buried alive, while
to revenge herself
rival,
And
for ten
for
of
the
Emperor Cheon-Sin
him
into vicious
appeared on the scene she her killed, and sent the body, cut in pieces, to had the murdered woman's father whom she also caused
rival
when a
to be assassinated.
Among
nant
other Jjarbaritfes, Ta-ki used to order pregto be torn limb from limb.
women
But the culminating examples of such barbarity are offered by mothers in whom maternal affection, the most intense of human sentiments, is transformed
into hatred.
Hoegli beat her daughter, and plunged her head One day she kicked her downstairs, thus bringing on a deformation of
into water to suffocate her cries.
150
the Spine.
broke
;
the
child's
and when by all ill-treatment she had reduced her to be a mona camel," &c.
her
"
When
the
little
one was
ill,
to
make her
over her head, covered her face with filthy sheets, and
forced her to keep
awake by counting
"
make
hours at a time.
Stakembourg, a woman of bad life, on finding her42 abandoned by her lovers, took to persecuting her daughter. " I do not like girls," she used She hung her daughter from the ceiling by to say. the armpits, knocked her on the head with a brick, and burnt her with a hot iron whenever she came near her. One day, after having beaten her black with a shovel, she said, laughing, "Now you are a
self at
little
negress."
might
suffer more,
made
her
sit
She engaged a master to beat and reprove her when she did not know her lesson, which, seeing the child's starving state, happened very often. She tied and gagged her, and then made her little brothers stab her with pins, so that she might suffer
during meals.
not only pain but humiliation.
In
short,
we may
assert
that
if
female born
much more
is
ferocious.
What
the explanation
We
less
is
to
pain
151
will
If
the
one
be wanting, so
the
other be.
We
also
traits
in
is
common
deficient
;
with children
that their
moral sense
coldness,
by
weakness and an undeveloped intelligence. But when a morbid activity of the psychical centres intensifies the bad qualities of women, and induces them to seek relief in evil deeds when piety and maternal sentiments are wanting, and in their place are strong passions and intensely erotic tendencies, much muscular strength and a superior intelligence for the conception and execution of evil, it is clear
;
that
present
into
in
the
normal
criminal
woman must be
more
terrible
terrific
transformed
a born
What
they
had strong
and
sufficient
intelligence and if, moreover, their evil tendencies were exasperated by a morbid psychical activity
And women
are
men's, but
generally remain
When
and
excited
greater.
Moreover, the born female criminal is, so to speak, doubly exceptional, as a woman and as a criminal. For criminals are an exception among civilised people, and women are an exception among criminals,
152
the natural
prostitution
As
in
a double exception,
woman
is
consequently a monster.
the
Her normal
sister is
kept
by many causes, such as maternity, piety, weakness, and when these counter influences fail, and a woman commits a crime, we may conclude that her wickedness must have been enormous before it could triumph over so many
paths of virtue
obstacles.
Affections
and
passions.
in
Maternity.
strong
is
proof of degeneration
many born
criminals
Lyons, the celebrated American thief and swindler, although very rich, abandoned her children when she fled from America, leaving them dependent on public
charity.
in its
infancy without
it.
Madame
of
sixteen,
daughter
jealous.
of
whose
beauty
she
was
Gaaikema
Often
hand,
also
women
make
;
their
own
life
children
while,
on the other
for their
many
prostitutes desire
a pure
daughters.
Leger, assisted
neighbour.
killed her
by her
;
son, killed
and robbed a
husband
murder
his father.
153
women
the
and protecting, they make the instruments of their them to dangers which they have not the courage to face themselves. One of the writers saw in prison a woman called Marenco, a thief of idiotic aspect, who, having by a rare concession been allowed to nurse her baby in the cell where she was confined alone, and with nothing to do, allowed the infant almost to die of hunger under the plea that "to nurse it bored her"; and finally the child had to be weaned. This want of maternal feeling becomes comprehensible when we reflect on the one hand upon the union of masculine qualities which prevent the female criminal from being more than half a woman, and on the other, upon that love of dissipation in her which is necessarily antagonistic to the constant
passions, thus exposing
demanded of a mother. Her maternal weak because psychologically and anthropologically she belongs more to the male than to the female sex. Her exaggerated sexuality so
sacrifices
is
sense
suffice to
make
needs
Sensuality
has
the
multiple
and
imperious
of a
which
and,
absorb
mental
activity
woman,
spirit of
by rendering her
selfish,
destroy the
in
abeyance
a normal
woman
but the
154
'^^^
FEMALE OFFENDER.
female criminal is different. S/ie will prostitute her daughter to preserve her paramour.
Finally the organic anomaly, the moral insanity
(of epileptoid form)
whom
it
parallel case in
men
is
military insubordination,
at
such as in Misdea
attacks
leads
times to
murderous
upon superior
officers.
is
influence of maternity
upon women
whom
the
at least, as a
moral antidote.
Thomas, a woman vicious from her infancy, had but six months of goodness in her whole life. During that period the child she had borne seemed to have transformed her nature, but when it died
she relapsed into the gutter. Never,
then,
is
crime
to
in
a woman. degenerate
to
That
nature
it
lofty affection
is
foreign
the
of
criminals,
and
suicide
the or
excesses
which
contributes
are
madness.
Vengeance.
Vengeance
to
plays a principal
part in
The
inclination
acts
of
revenge
is
which
we
woman
The
carried in the
an excited condition, the smallest stimulus provokes a reaction out of all proportion to its cause
155
Jegado poisoned her employers because they had reproved her, her fellow-servants because they had done her some small ill-turn.
Closset tried to poison
for
scolding,
dismissed her.
Rousoux, when her mistress (a farmer) forbade her to take some cherries out of a basket, warned her that she would have cause to repent the prohibition,
and a few days later set fire to the farm. The same offence, under almost similar circumstances, was committed in June, 1890, by Bekendorf. M. tried to kill a friend who had spoken ill of her.
"
^^
/ nurse vengeance in my Jieartl' said Trossarello, and I advise my friends to do the same"
Pitcherel poisoned her neighbour out of revenge
his
for
having
refused
his
consent
to death
to
his
son's
to
marriage.
imitate our
When condemned
Lord by
liked,
and urged
I
God
did what
forgive."
He
shall never
As
criminal
is
Revenge
or even
being her weakness and the relative timidity of nature which restrains where reason alone is powerless. " In her," wrote one of the authors, referring to Trossarello, " vengeance is not sudden, it is not a species of reflex action, as the doctors say, and as it but it occupies her mind for months is in most men and years it is a pleasure which she secretly gloats
years, the explanation
;
;
156
over,
in
Most
the hatreds
women
are
of
complicated origin.
in
The
personal
susceptibility
the normal
woman
rises in criminals to
morbid
struggle
intensity.
They
extraordinary
for
facility.
life
them, and frequently the hatred ends in crime. disappointment turns to hate for the person who an unsatisfied has caused it, even involuntarily
repre-
senting
he may only have exercised a personal right. Defeat results in a detestation of the conqueror, which is most violent in
the
obstacle,
even
though
own
incapacity has
same passion
shower of have an inferior
they
to children,
which causes blows on any object against which and they prove knocked their heads psychical development, common not only but, according to Romanes and Guyau,
;
administer a
also to the
lower animals.
Morin conceived a violent hatred she had employed in an affair by which he, through his superior cunning, had proand she attempted to fited, while she had lost murder him. Rondest killed her old mother after having, partly through persuasion and partly through force, obtained
against a lawyer
The woman
whom
57
The
old
had come so to hate her that she preferred to head even when there was no longer anything
kill
Levaillant tried to
money
to
make
a fine figure in
and Plancher murdered her brother-in-law because he was rich and respected while she and her husband were poor. Naturally these sentiments of hatred are most ferocious when excited by an offence to the feelings which are strongest in women and represent their worst passions. If sexuality comes to complicate jealousy and vengeance these manifest themselves under a more terrible aspect than usual. M. for
. .
.,
member
of the
dej?ii-
Sometimes the hatred which fills these women has no cause whatever, and springs from blind and innate
perversity.
perfectly
Imperious and violent, they dominate the weak husbands, who, out of fear of the consequences ot
any attempt at control, leave them free to go their own way, and thus generate towards themselves a
hatred
in
Madame
158
he was
ill
months
is
to live
}'et
his death,
identical.
but murdered him. Madame Simon's case Madame Moulins had been married
who
with
the
so
man
far
as
acknowledge her
she hated
son
as
his
own.
in;
Nevertheless
"
him
He must die .^" she exclaimed continually tensely. and she caused him to be murdered. During twenty years Enjalbert's husband never addressed a reproach to her on the subject of her but at last he mildly complained, and dissolute life
;
roused such a hatred towards himself in her that she murdered him.
Stakembourg conceived a hatred of her daughter as soon as with advancing years she found that she could exercise her own trade as a prostitute with less profit
than formerly.
The
child
These women have the same passion for evil for its own sake which characterises equally the male born Their criminal and epileptic and hysterical subjects. hatreds are automatic, springing from no external
cause, such as an insult or an offence, but from a
morbid
which finds
are de-
influence
of this
irritation,
women we
scribing
must
visit
their
1 59
and the unhappy being with whom they are brought most frequently into contact becomes, for the merest
trifle,
Love.
Intense
Love, like hatred, is in their case only another form of insatiable egotism. In their love there is no altruism, no spirit of self-sacrifice only the satisfaction of their own desires. Their passion of
:
love
is
When
man
even at the cost of a crime. Possessed by one idea, hypnotised, one may say, they can think of nothing except how to appease they are unconscious of peril and rush their passion
instantly,
:
little
patience,
risk.
Nevertheless,
rather than
letters
The
their
encounters.
Buscemi
fell
humpbacked barber next with a swindler, who was The more opposition she enalso a married man.
countered from her parents the stronger grew her
l6o
passion.
It
led
evaporated.
Such a love is less a lofty and generous sentiment than the violent resistance (similar to that which we see in children) of wounded vanity to anything which
impedes the gratification of
Until the
own caprices. desire of these women is gratified it but the world must come to an end
its
;
is
forgotten
Beridot,
fled
when
from the
whom two
and tried, these criminals are plunged punishment into a new obsession. Self-salvation then becomes their one idea, their and like Oueyron, Beridot, Buscemi, sole desire and Bompard, they are willing to betray Saracemi, the very accomplice for whom they so blindly compromised themselves a few months previously. Indeed, hatred and love being only two forms of their insatiable egotism, their love shows a morbid tendency to polarise itself (so to say)
by the
fear of
first
new
passion.
husband whom she learnt to hate as soon as a new lover had replaced him in her affections. Cabit, a prostitute, madly in love with her souteneur L^roux, to whom she gave almost all her money, killed him when he deserted her in favour of another woman.
Beridot, to begin with, idolised the
THE BORN CRIMINAL.
The Countess de Challant caused by the new ones.
l6l
her old lovers
to be killed
man
him belong
to
Weiss worshipped her husband, and for his sake remained shut up a year and a half in the house,
him him when another man her with a passion still more violent.
as
if in
prison
at once,
and
tried to poison
inspired
whom
he,
by
extravagance and
like the affection
folly,
had no longer
money enough
This
but
is
of children
intense
or noble
incapable
of
disinterested
sacrifices
resignation.
tyranny such as is more often found man than of a woman. P. anxious to prevent her lover from going near other women, sent round a circular to all the ladies of the town warning them that he belonged to her, and that they should suffer if they attempted to invite him. Often when she heard that he was dining in some house, she would go there and make a scandalous scene before everybody. But a few months later, when she had replaced him with a new lover, she addressed a second circular to the ladies, saying that they were welcome to him, just as she might have
It results in a
in the
love of a
.,
1 62
her
Greed and
geance, greed
in
avarice.
is
To
less
whom
it
form than
in
shows men.
sometimes under a
Among
money
lazy to
and
is
their pleasures,
work
for
it,
there
money
to waste.
Women
we
are con-
sidering will
promises to bring in a rich harvest of valuables. Thus Bompard, attracted by the prospect of a rich
booty, urged
Eyraud
and
rich
and rob a
Rob.
woman.
Brinvilliers,
Rome
to be
wealth
and
suggested
murderous crimes
Crimes inspired by avarice (the opposite of prodigal among female criminals, although
among
males.
Gaaikema,
florins.
who
was
in
extremely
parsimonious,
22,000
order to inherit
expensive
Another woman a lady of high birth, out of whose reach her relatives had removed one victim
163
for fear of scandal began to ill-treat her third child simply because he was an additional expense. " Of him," she said, " we had really no need."
more frequently than men, women especially peasant-women are guilty of the murder of old
how much
or invalid parents who, being unable to work, represent only an additional burden on the family.
this cause
mother
alive.
Madame
significant,
husband, a useless
daughter-in-law.
portrait
we
give
in
Domestic
general,
women
in
leads,
all
where
it
exists
in
an exaggerated
degree (and
women), to crime. For a woman an unnecessary expense in the household is as terrible as the loss of a large sum or the danger of commercial ruin is
to a
man
for the
house
is
the
same
importance as a man attaches to h's usual field of activity, whether that be the professorial chair, the seat in Parliament, or the country over which he
reigns as a sovereign.
Hence the
ferocious hatreds
1 64
Dress.
Yet
is
woman
love of dress
and ornaments.
Dubosc,
who had helped to murder a widow, on being asked why she had done it, answered, " To obtain beautiful
hair."
M. B. began her career by stealing i,ooo francs, which she spent almost entirely in objects of personal adornment. M. and S. were accused of shoplifting, and elected to wear in prison the very articles they were charged
with stealing, thus choosing to furnish clear proofs of
their guilt rather than
acquittal
by renouncing
being well-dressed.
Madame
Madame
who had
This was
true,
avail
her victim
from the
the
Madame Tarnowsky says that many Russian women steal not from need as they are employed
but simply in order to buy luxury to dress and adorn themselves. And according to Rykere and Guillot the money which women obtain by the crimes they commit, either as accessories or principals, almost always goes
in
remunerative work
articles of
in the
65
woman
dress
and
A woman
who
is
ill-dressed looks
is
upon
the
herself as disgraced.
similar feeling
visible in
among
last-named to be the earliest form of property, and we need not wonder consequently that it should be a
frequent source of crime.
woman
steals or
murders to be well-dressed as a
swindle in order to
commercial
man
will
make
a brave
show on
or
settling day.
is
weak in these born criminals. The wife of Parency, while her husband was
that
when
setting
fire
to her lover's
house, cried
the rest."
aloud, "
the
Holy Virgin do
The Marchioness
her at her
trial
principal
church
accom-
meaning for the success of the crime about to be committed and in another letter she said, " He (her husband) was ill yesterday. I thought God was beginning His work." Pompilia Zambeccari had vowed to give a candle
;
to the
Madonna
if
husband.
1 66
sisters
who were
herself
all
subject
to
had visions wherein Jesus Christ appeared to her, and frequent auditive hallucinations during which she had fancied communications with God. Only the religious delirium was less intense in her case than in that of her brother and sisters a fact which partly explained why she alone was a criminal, and why, in the intervals of her madness, she possessed so clear and
religious
mania.
She
an intelligence. Maria Forlini, who had strangled and torn to pieces a child in order to revenge herself on its parents, on being condemned to death, turned to one of her One must counsel and said, " Death is nothing.
lofty
The
rest is of
no importance." V. B., before murdering her husband, threw herself on her knees to pray to the Virgin for strength to
accomplish the deed.
In 1670 the Parisian female poisoners of high rank alternated the administration of lethal powders with
Satanic masses for the death of their husbands or the
fidelity of their lovers.
A priest
woman
strangled,
bad
its
life),
after
which the
foetus
was
and
blood and
Voisin
little
victims.
God
to be the accomplice of
having abandoned
associate
her.
In
fact,
she
added, his
was
also to die.
1 67
is
The
born criminal
not want-
makes a strange contrast to her habitual depravity. Madame Lafarge was extremely kind to her servants. In her own neighbourhood she was called
the Providence of the poor and the sick,
visited
whom
she
and assisted. Jegado was extremely affectionate to her fellowservants, but poisoned them the moment they offended her. D'Alessio caused her husband to be assassinated, but only a few years previously she had nursed him devotedly through a dangerous illness. who murdered her husband with the assistF. ance of her lover, supported a child whom she had taken from the orphanage. Dumaire, who had enriched herself by prostitution She supported was generous with her money. very poor and almost all her relatives, who were
.
.,
whom
she finally
of the poor, and often wept at the recital of their miseries. She bought presents and clothes for children. P, T., one of the most ferocious female criminals who ever came under our notice, was very kind in succouring her companions, and showed a passionate
love for children.
Trossarello sat
intermittent and of
Criminal
women
unhappy simply
l68
And
a source of instinctive satisfaction to natures in whom the good fortune of others inspires only hatred. Moreover the exercise of charity enables
this
is
them
that
is
at their feet
is
power
is
gratified
by good
methods
facility
women
listen
to sentimental sug-
and the behaviour of the most ferocious among them in the presence of the scaffold, which to ordinary observers seems so heroically Christian and resigned as to appear a miracle worked by God for
the redemption of a lost soul.
Madame
to the
She wrote
letters
forgive her.
She was
her gaolers, to
her possession.
whom
she
still
in
She addressed a letter to her husband in which she urged him to bring up her children in virtue and the fear of God.
The woman
Tiquet
listened
devoutly
to
the
sermons of her was decapitated she lamented that he should have suffered so severely for a crime to which she was the truly guilty party; and she kissed the executioner so that he might feel that she did not hate him.
confessor.
When
her accomplice
priest,
declared
169
another
happy and perfectly prepared for Guillaume admitted that for her crime she deserved death. Balaguer showed herself pious.
she
died
Hfe.
She
left
all
mount the
scaffold.
wept when she left them to She assured the executioner that
some
truth of feeling
if little
depth.
tion
The
from her spiritual adviser, whose influence she falls under all the more easily because of her peculiar position. Alone, removed from evil, able to speak
only with the
priest,
she
is
naturally
moved by
is
his
not
reasserts itself
the absence of
stimulus to
evil.
This
effect
produced the more easily that the female criminal is usually very accessible to religious impressions. Add to this the instinctive yearning for sympathy and protection, even moral protection, which possesses
women
felt
in general,
and
is
likely to
make
itself
strongly
when they
are rejected
on the brink of the tomb. The priest is the only person with whom they have intercourse they wish to captivate him, and with their feminine facility for assimilating the ideas and feelings of others they assume all the Christian virtues for a few days, even that virtue which is most foreign to their nature,
namely
forgiveness.
Sentimentalism.
wanting
170
to these
place
is
supplied by a
" I
mawkish
am
jealous of nature
which enrages us with her beauty. Do you not find, dear, that this beautiful weather is made for lovers and speaks to them of love ? " Again " How I wish we had accomplished the deed (her husband's murder) which will make us free and happy I must see the end of it, for there is Paradise. At the turn of the
:
!
wrote
to
her
lover
letters
all
full
of
the
time
betraying him.
The
whom
at
48
**
Such a
!
practical
man
He
only loves
me
patronage of
think of him
my
*'
'
friends.
Ah, memories
I recall
Pour avoir de noble dame Obtenir le doux baiser, Je vais brulant d'une flamme Que rien ne peut appaiser.' "
women
wanting in deep, true feeling, they fall easily into exaggerated sophistries, like the coward who of imaginary theatrical boasts conversation in
courage.
Intelligence.
The
Some
varies
much.
are
As
a general
171
and
this is
one reason
why
many To
in
is
;
combut to
And
the crimes of
women
deliberate.
by some act out of all proportion to its cause (like Closset, Rousoux, &c.), or women of great physical strength like Bonhours or P., may
have
only average
intelligence,
criminals
who commit
M.
(a case
although her
She was greatly addicted to writing down her notions, and either scribbled them as best she could or dictated them to her companions and when we remember how undeveloped
education had been scanty.
;
women
in general,
must
superiority.
For the rest, M.'s intelligence is sufficiently demonstrated by the fact that at 17 she had organised for herself and others a vast and profitable system of prostitution. Brinvilliers, Lafarge, and Weiss had also acute Jegado was minds, and wrote extremely well. described by a witness as seeming a fool, but being
really fiendishly clever.
many
172
her wit
And
the
commit crimes through greed are usually well endowed with ability. Mercier, in spite of being subject to a religious mania which often caused her to make grave mistakes, had really remarkable business capacity. She had often amassed considerable sums of money by her commercial enterprises, and easily remade them when lost. Lyons, the celebrated American adventuress and thief, must have possessed a very superior intelligence. She enriched herself by robbery in America, and came to Europe to continue the same system out Arrested in flagrante by the of sheer love for it.
police of Paris, she succeeded in obtaining her liberty through the intercession of the British and American ambassadors. Equally able were many others, such
as the
newspapers, and
the disguise of a
months and extorting money from her father, until at his instigation she was arrested and her real sex discovered. Other instances are Bell-Star, who during many years led a band of outlaws in Texas and organised expeditions against the government of the United States itself, and finally the socalled Gravay de Liverniere already described, whose real name was never discovered out of the seven or eight aliases which she had assumed who at the age of 48 fascinated a youth of 19 to such an extent that he would not give her up even when she had
;
been
sentenced
who
simulated
the
birth
of
-^7d>
and
for a
Queen of Spain. P. W., who was guilty of stabbing and probably of poisoning, managed political newspapers, organised
the
political conspiracies,
Madame Tarnowsky
to
in
St.
management of her
much
ment
in
customers,
wretches bring-
and sometimes spies. Another proof that born criminals are often of
lies in
great intelligence
their
crimes.
(Ottolenghi),
of
and blackmail. Lacassagne induced her accomplice in the murder of her illegitimate child, to take all the guilt upon himself by promising to marry him as soon as he had worked
out his sentence, but when he presented himself to
assistance
of her brother.
to marry an
artisan,
who was in delicate health, her plan being to marry him when thus disfigured by persuading him that no other woman would take him, then to ruin his already
shattered constitution, and, on being
to
left
a rich widow,
explicable
heart.
is
The
174
'^^^
FEMALE OFFENDER.
that these
when we remember
women
are often
weak
and physically incapable of satisfying their perverse If they have sufficient astuteness they can instincts.
triumph in the struggle for life, but in the contrary case they become prostitutes. W7Htmg and painting. These two accomplishments are almost totally wanting in the born criminal.
still
We have
sorts of
embroidery which yet ought to be the graphic form peculiar to female offenders. The only instance we remember of the symbolic drawings in which male criminals indulge is that photograph, already which she had described, of the lover of Pran.
.
.,
adorned with two crosses and a death's head. The design was completed by a date, namely, that on which she intended to attempt his murder out of revenge for his having abandoned her. She held the document in high esteem, and kept it always by her
memento of her deed. The born criminal is rarely inclined to write much. We know but of three instances among them of
in prison as a
memoirs
those of
Bell-Star, while
woman
and Bell- Star, particularly the last, were certainly endowed with superior intelligence, but among male criminals even those whose mental equipment is less than mediocre, there have been
X.,
many who
Very
wrote memoirs.
who
75
document ever
Brinvilliers,
written
by
a female criminal
up by the Marchioness of
it
In
we
of religious sentiment
which
feels the
own
guilt
;
words
tion
need of defining the sense of one's by giving it the life and weight of written next, the absence of foresight peculiar to the
criminal,
and finally that aberration of moral percepwhich confounds as equally wicked omissions of mere formal religious duties and monstrous crimes
like parricide or incest.
Deliberation.
A nother
criminals
of
the
frequent
ability
of
born
which women so often accomplish their crimes, and which, whether we regard it as an effect of weakness, or as suggested by the reading of romantic literature, is equally an evidence of intellect above the average. The means taken to accomplish an end, even a comparatively simple end, are often most complicated. We have already described the elaborate plan conceived by Gras to obtain wealth and marry her
the deliberation
with
lover.
woman
of
whom
poses, carefully
meeting between the friend herself when with her lover and the friend's husband, in the hope that the jealousy of the latter would favour her own desires and later she induced the friend, whom she had then determined to poison, to write a declaration of suicide
;
vile pur-
176
M.,
in
who wished
first
a family,
tried to
against her by
calumny
failed,
she
When
name
R.
of the aggressor.
B.,
wishing to kill her husband, prepared, while he slept, a large cauldron of boiling water, then woke him, saying that somebody in the street was calling
to him,
and
as he went,
still
she pushed
there
him
It is clear
is
that to conceive such complicated plans need of a certain amount of imagination may supply the place of want of force.
it
present,
its
would
This
is
facilitate
and indirect
in
action.
that
women
who
dressed herself
77
men, or
like P.,
who
this
their
One
it
curious point in
itself
all
this deliberation
is
that
proves
the
cleverest
criminals.
The
when most
and him
kill
elaborate are
constantly
absurd
and
have and tied to a post, with nooses, carbines, pistols, and swords disposed all about to frighten him and superinduce in him the proper frame of mind for listening to a document composed in an inflated style which his daughter was to read aloud to him, and the object of which was to persuade him to sign certain bills of exchange. At the same time two ruffians dressed up as ghosts were meant to contort themselves, and utter terrific cries, thus giving the final touch to a scene which had been suggested by a novel of Mrs. Radcliffe's.
for the purpose.
there, she intended to
Once
into a cellar
In the same way the born criminal constantly endeavours to prepare a preventive a/il?z, or proof of innocence but her ideas, however ingenious, are often
;
Madame
gum, used
Lafarge,
who during
make
gum
herself.
victim,
and
as soon as
she
178
reached
air of
home
anger to
Madame Meyron
in his
caused her
lover,
bed by her
then
drew up the bed coverings, called her showing the corpse, said that death resulted from vomiting of blood.
Instigation.
friends, and,
must
have
The
be endowed with masculine strength of muscle, or her intended victim be another woman, or her contemplated crime an insidious one, such as poisoning The letters of the or incendiarism, her courage fails. and Aveline to their lovers are full of women Beridot
laments at weakness.
plice,
''
If
were a
woman
myself."
man
weak creature at the thought of a struggle with Moral shrinkings there one stronger than itself. the woman simply has recourse to instiare none For the born criminal is especially to be gation.
;
played by her
to
is
pression of Sighele's
the
deed with
an
extraordinary refinement of
wickedness.
Fraikin employed Devilde, a paid assassin, to murder her husband, and when his courage had failed him for the third time at the moment of execution, she angrily exclaimed, " A man must be
a fool to
let
At
THE BORN CRIMINAL.
1 79
conducted him to her husband's chamber, hid herself at the foot of the bed, at the same time showing him
a note for a thousand francs, and at the decisive moment she still had presence of mind enough to
admonish the murderer not to seize her husband by the hair, as he wore a wig. Albert, whose paramour, Lavoitte, instigated him to murder an old woman, thus recounted the wiles by which she persuaded him " She began by describing all the wealth of the woman, and the little use she made of it. I resisted, but the next day Philomene returned to the charge, arguing that in war one kills one's neighbour, and that there is no harm in it
:
then,
killed
why
?
'
woman
'
not be
for
God
will
"
pardon
us,'
she added,
He
Madame Simon
weak husband by
encouraging him to drink, and obliging him morning and evening to imbibe a mixture prepared by herself of brandy, gin, and other deleterious compounds.
Afterwards she proposed to each one of her innumerable lovers to commit the murder, promising one of them _five francs (^!) and her hand; and at last Merangal, a weak, half-crazy youth, was induced by her to accomplish the deed, for which she armed him
with her
own
hand.
Brinvilliers,
Madame
crime,
said
de
to
of her lovers
commit a
to yon You do not
him,
"
Wh'at can
lives or
it
matter
woman
defiial.
not?
know
her,''
Obstinacy
in
peculiarity
of
female
l8o
offenders,
their
and particularly of the born criminal, is denying their crime, no matter how convincing the proof of it may be. The male criminal, when denial no longer serves him, usually
obstinacy in
confesses, but the
woman
the
more
strenuously, the
asseverations become.
D'Alessio,
Rondest, Jumean,
Madame
survive
Jegado, in the teeth of all evidence, continued to assert that she did not even know the nature of arsenic, and that her one fault was to be too kindly
and
this attitude
the end.
altogether, they invent
even a child would not believe them, but the criminal reiterates them imperturbably.
Madame Dacquignie
She maintained that she had marks of violence. only inflicted one blow on him, yet the corpse had
six wounds.
Madame
of
description.
asserted that she had only inflicted daughter the usual corrections which a mother on her may give her child if the daughter was suffocated,
:
Madame HoegH
l8l
in
her lover
an ambus-
down, and encouraged his dog to bite her. Prager maintained that she had her brother armed
with a revolver in her husband's room only that he might take possession of certain letters which would
have compromised her in her divorce suit (but which she would not admit contained any proof of her adultery) as to the revolver it was intended simply to frighten her husband. Sometimes, when being tried in court, these women change their line of defence two or three times, and
:
they asseverate each new statement with undiminished ardour, and without apparently ever reflecting that
the variations in their story will influence the judges
against them.
Madame
Goglet,
who
house
in order
whom
Next she
true
Madame Goglet, but a great friend, who exactly resembled her, and had undertaken to nurse the old
man
in his real wife's place.
And
finally,
when
the
husband swore to her identity in court, she did not hesitate to affirm that he had become purblind in consequence of a shock.
"
The female
sophistical
delinquent,"
observes
Rykere, "
is
more
and argumentative than her male prototype. She finds pretexts and excuses which astonish one by their fantasticality and strangeness." Pasteur Arboux also remarks, "Not only do women when they fall into crime fall deeper than men, but
l82
they
They
and more
offenders are
made by female marked by absurdity and elaborateThat is to say, there is the same deliberaness. tion about them as we noted in the crimes of women. It is clear that if these criminals persist in their denials in the teeth of the most irrefragable
In short, the denials and excuses
proofs, this can only
little
imbued with the sense of truth, and fail to conceive the state of mind which evidence produces
in their judges.
The
to
cannot feel the force of an irrefutable circumstance, and they believe others The same to be in the same case as themselves. feebleness of logical faculty explains the complicated lies which they invent in their own defence, and of
their
own
brains, they
which they fail to perceive the absurdity, patent Add to this the action of though it be to others. auto-suggestion which, when the lies have been repeated often enough, ends by converting them into half truths, and does so all the more easily that female criminals have very short memories for their own In a brief period the recollection of what deeds. they have done grows dim, and the delinquent then, freed from the sense of her crime, is able all the better to fix her attention on the story which she is telling. The image of the truth already faint is replaced in her mind by the imaginary narrative. lie costs but little mental fatigue, and is consequently all
the easier
to
repeat.
The female
offender
does
1 83
waste
her
energy
in
inventing
plausible
To
the long
list
of contrathe
course of this
We
have shown that the female delinquent is obstinate in denying her guilt when pressed with questions by the judge. We have now to show that she often reveals her own guilt in a perfectly spontaneous manner: a singular psychological phenomenon for which there are many causes. One is that need to gossip and that incapacity for keeping a secret characteristic of the female sex. Gabrielle Bompard, for instance, while travelling with Garanger, began telling him many things about Eyraud, and on arriving in Paris, where all the newspapers were speaking of Eyraud and herself, she could no longer refrain from revealing her own identity and that of her accomplice. The woman Faure who threw vitriol at her lover would never have been discovered, so well had she taken her precautions, if she had not
herself confided the secret to a female friend.
Where
an act of vengeance is concerned the temptation to tell is doubled through the keen joy which the avenger feels in her deed, and her desire to intensify that joy
by confiding
it
to others.
Nor must we
neglect to
imprudence of the female criminal who does not realise the peril to which she exposes herself by
184
The female
far as to
criminal
her
her
make
it is
accomplished.
Her need
to
talk
about
will
it
finds satisfaction
by
indirect means.
She
show
herself
full
of anxiety
man whom
is
she intends
sure he
about to
die,
even
when he
is
still
quite well.
is
And when
at
last
he
and
is
Madame
poisoned
for
tart,
country
habitually wore
Hagu,
after
poisoning
you that she cannot live long. young a man could remain with a woman who hates him ? " Jegado, as soon as one of her victims fell ill, and before anybody suspected aught but a slight indisposition, would say, " He will Be sure of it. That is a mortal illness. Send die.
possible that so
for the priest,"
and so
on.
mind
which
"
always on death
"
Her
one person,
was
85
As we have
men, do drawing
not
;
embody
the
their
crimes in writing or
hence
more
imperious
longing
to
invoke the
man
will
by written
allusions, or
by some drawing or engraving on an utensil, SicJ Very singular is the confession which a woman sometimes makes to her lover. The female delinquent
will reveal
man
if
he
neither questions
She
will
even
gravity
commit a
fresh
over, and which often leads her to crime in order to rid herself of an
inconvenient witness.
lover, that she
and
later,
had stolen some Government coupons when tired of him, she killed him to save
in
Menghini,
avowed
D'Ottavi
the
left
murder of her
husband,
and
when
consequence of the tendency to mutual confidences which prevails among lovers, and especially of the need which every woman feels, when in love, to give some extraordinary proof
in all this a natural
We have
of devotion to the
man
of her heart.
The
greater
woman
i.
desires to
to
bestow
it
make
See "
Uomo
Delinquente," vol.
1 86
life
at the
mercy of her
And
here
we have
reckless
will
be as lasting
absence of
as
it
intense.
This, joined
to
that
Other-
how
could she
make up
whom
him
to be momentarily attracted
by an avowal which lifts woman, through her wickedness, out of the ranks of the commonplace), it must nevertheless in the
long run inspire only horror and aversion
?
having been
abandoned by her
lover,
drives
"
the
The
w^oman," writes Joly, " who is, or believes herself to be, betrayed, is merciless in denouncing her accomplices."
results
not from
The
woman
hopes (especially if young and good-looking) to earn The ficklethe indulgence of the law for herself ness of the female sex must also be taken into
account.
A woman
adores a
man
as a god,
;
and
is
him during a few months then her hatred, and she hands him over to
According to
justice
187
unhesialso, in
received
from the
woman
Perrin, his
associate in
the case.
In
consequence
of
this
frequent
deliberate
or
on the part of
In the band of malefactors captained by Chevalier and Abadie there was a regulation to the effect that only two women, the mistresses of the leaders, should
be admitted.
Synthesis,
In
of
the
male.
The
atavistic
is
diminution
of
to be observed
again in the
anthropology of the subject, shows itself once psychology of the female criminal, who is excessively erotic, weak in maternal feeling, inclined to dissipation, astute and audacious, and
dominates weaker beings sometimes by suggestion, while her love of at others by muscular force violent exercise, her vices, and even her dress,
;
Added
these virile
characteristics
:
are
often
the worst
qualities of
woman
and unevil
forming
a combination
of
ten-
l88
wickedness.
found
in
everybody,
deficient
in
criminal, like
intelligence,
;
but
possessed
of
great
physical strength
is
who
by
weak
But when by an unfortunate chance muscular strength and intellectual force meet in the same individual, we have a female delinquent of a terrible type indeed. A typical example of these extraordinary women is presented by Bell- Star, the female brigand, Her who a few years ago terrorised all Texas. education had been of the sort to develop her natural
qualities
;
for,
old,
way
comwas as strong and bold as a man, panions. She and loved to ride untamed horses which the boldest One day at Oakof the brigands dared not mount. land she twice won a race, dressed once as a man and once as a woman, changing her dress so rapidly that She was extremely her ruse remained unsuspected. dissolute, and had more than one lover at a time, her admirer en titj-e being always the most intrepid and
to excite the enthusiasm of her ferocious
At
the
first
sign of cowardice
he might be, Bell-Star dominated him entirely, while as Varigny writes as many all the time having
1 89
At
her associates
partly
through
intelligence, partly
through
charm as a She organised attacks of the most daring description on populous cities, and fought against government troops, not hesitating the very day after one of these raids to enter some neighbouring town unaccompanied, and dressed as almost always in male attire. Once she slept in the same hotel as the
certain
woman.
judge of the district, without his once suspecting her identity or even her sex. And as during the tal?/e (Thote dinner he had boasted that he would undoubtedly recognise Bell-Star if he ever met her, and would arrest her on the spot, the following morning,
when mounted, she sent for him, told him who she was, called him a fool, and after lashing him twice She across the face with her whip, galloped away. wrote her memoirs, recording in them her desire to
die in her boots.
in
government
troops, directing
the
Another Napoleon in petticoats similar to Bell-Star was Zelie, a Frenchwoman by birth. She was extremely intelligent, spoke three languages perfectly,
extraordinary personal fascination, and even from childhood showed herself perfidious and profligate. Her adventures having carried her to the brigand country of North America, she became the leader of a band of malefactors. With a bold and audacious air, and her revolver in her hand, she was
15
had
igO
always the
arose
to face danger,
among
them and make them lay down Laughing she crossed perilous mountainfeared
to
follow her
neither
cow
her.
in
M.
thief,
R.,
prostitute,
and all this at the age of 17. When only 12 she robbed her father in order to have money to spend among her companions. At 15 she fled from home with a lover, whom she left almost at once for a career of prostitution. With a view to
mailer,
gains, when only 16 she organised a vast system of prostitution, by which she provided young girls of 12 and 15 for wealthy men, from whom she exacted large sums, of which only a few sous went to
larger
the victims.
on her clients, one of whom, was dismissed from his post in consequence of her revelations. She was extremely vindictive, and committed two crimes of revenge which serve to show the strange mixture of ferocity and cunning composing her character. One of her companions having spoken evil of her, she (who was then only 16 years of age) let a little time pass, then coaxed her enemy to accompany her outto levy costly blackmail
a highly-placed functionary,
They reached
a deserted
spot as evening
other
girl
and M. R. suddenly threw the on the ground, and while recalling her
fell,
IQT
and a key, nor desisted until her victim had after which she quietly returned to town. " You might have killed her," somebody said. " What did that matter " she replied " there was nobody to " You might have employed a hired assassin." see." " I am afraid of those," was the answer. " Besides, on " But with principle one should do things oneself." a key you could never have killed her " (went on the other). "If one beats the temples well," M. R.
scissors
fainted
.?
replied, "
it is
quite possible to
kill
a key."
violent
would be
difficult to find
greater wickedness at
We may regard
M. R.
as an instance in
which
is
That
to
was sanguinary (for she went about always with a dagger in her pocket, and stabbed anybody who offended her in the least) and at the same time inclined to commit the more cautious and insidious
crimes, such as poisoning, blackmail, &c.
And we
consequently find in her an example of the law we have already laid down, to the effect that the female
is
more
terrible
CHAPTER
XIII.
OCCASIONAL CRIMINALS.
The born offender is more completely and Intensely depraved than any other, but the case is quite different with the
occasional
criminals
who form
In
the
per-
them
and vice are of a milder form, and there is no want of the higher virtues of the sex, such as chastity and maternal love.
1.
PJiysical cJiaracteristics.
is
The
first
thing to be
observed
per
As we saw
are
already
54
cent,
in
of
female
offenders
absolutely
normal
show no
having fineness of
smell.
2.
taste,
and 6 per
Moral
cJiaracter.
moral equipment.
observations
unconsciously described
when recording
in
his
on female prisoners,
the
following
words
"
all
The
guilty
In
which
to peni-
OCCASIONAL CRIMINALS.
I93
tencethan men, recovers the lost ground more quickly, and relapses into crime less frequently."
And he quotes a lady visitor of St. Lazare who, speaking of the female prisoners, said " When one
:
knows them
"
it
is
" thus
showing
not excessive.
The
continues Guillot,
;
and obscenities those in the female cells are much more reserved, and speak only of repentance and of love." And he gives a few examples " In this cell where my love perishes, far from thee, my adored one, I moan and suffer." " John loves me no longer, but I shall love him
:
always."
" You who enter the cell, called souriciere^ if not separated from your loved one you only suffer one-
half."
"
What
its
should
cell,
my
mournful
agony,
"
it expresses all its pain and longing and despair at the thought of my
unless
loved one
"
?
woman
" I
Henrietta once loved her lover more than any ever loved, but now she detests him."
swear never to begin again, for I love brought me here, for I killed Beware of men, they are liars all."
am
sick of
lover.
men
"
my
The judgment
of
men
is
nothing
only
God's
matters."
"
God
is
so good.
He
Mary, our Lady, Holy Virgin, I throw myself your feet, and place myself under your protection."
"
194
And
is
very strong.
with horror from the idea of going to St. Lazare where they might come into contact with prostitutes.
Mace
remarks
"
shameless and
:
The women
are reluctant.
They
are alarmed at
it
an
brand of ignominy and disgrace. They see themselves brought into contact with the degraded of their sex, and no woman enters willingly on the road
to that prison."
and delinquents
hold venal
in St. Lazare. in
is
The
latter
women
horror
but
it
must
The born
despise
criminal,
prostitute,
the
she
is
herself
equally
unchaste.
Guillot
amply demonstrated already by us. In St, Lazare," says Guillot, " maternal jealousy
rivalries
frequently breeds
and
jealousies.
Every
mother wishes her own handsomest, the strongest, and to be most admired, most caressed. The birth of an infant is an event
;
and which turns the whole prison upside down insubordinate offenders, who would not submit to
OCCASIONAL CRIMINALS.
prison regulations even
1 95
solitary
And
how
little
the
sister.
affection
remarks upon the species of and the extreme trustfulness of this class of
if
women
young
and
and good-looking.
a
filial
a kind of
" I
:
am
In prison,
but it is of no have a lawyer." Here, then, is an example of the need of protection and the confidence in the other sex, which we have described as characteristic of the normal woman, but which are entirely wanting in the born criminal, who, semi-masculine, tyrannical, and selfish, demands not help or protection from anybody, but the simple
with a theft of 2,000 francs
charged
consequence
satisfaction of her
own
passions.
This confidence in the lawyer is only a form of the feminine need of protection, which finds a stronger expression in love. Love among occasional offenders
is
much more
disinterested
born criminals
*'
in
whom,
indeed,
"know how to distinguish between the unhappy woman who testifies in court against her lover while
They"
(occasional offenders), writes Guillot,
trial,
or while
196
-yoke of a monster, as in the Prado trial, and the woman who from cowardice consents to take part in
a conspiracy against her lover.
class for
They
pity the
first
having to do what they would do themselves under similar circumstances, but the action of the second class revolts the sentiments of tenderness and
generosity of which these
women
show
are
still
capable."
in
court, because,
so,
would have
ill-treated her.
especially
is
womanly
we must make
a psychological examination
Stiggestion.
In
many
woman
is
suggestion on
prison-sister
once said to
us,
pointing to the
women, " These are not like men. They do not commit crimes out of evil passions, but to please They steal or compromise themselves their lovers. for men's sakes, without having sometimes any direct
interest in the act."
OCCASIONAL CRIMINALS,
Sighele
of
^
197
these occasional
the length of
fruit,
time
necessary to
make
together
is
done.
A
kill
certain L.,
whom
him a
bottle of sulphuric
it
;
acid,
promising to
make
but
at the
moment
felt
wine she
her courage
confessed.
Guiseppina (Josephine)
afterwards married her.
P.,
a fatherless
girl
of
17,
herself,
who
out
whom
The
woman, thrown on her own resources, was reduced from wealth to a mere pittance of thirty francs a month and she became the lover of a certain Guillet,
;
who
obtained great
and
her husband's
property induced her to assist in murdering him. Josephine had yielded, but when arrested showed " God will herself penitent and confessed the crime.
I have been so unhad no means of existence, I was alone and starving. My own family would give me nothing, and it was then this man (Guillet) ruined me. He is the origin of all my misfortunes and of my crime."
happy.
'
xiii.
"Coppia Criminale,"
and
xiv.
Turin.
ig8
M.
deofeneration,
the profligate
and was industrious and honest, resisted designs of her father, and turned a deaf
who wished
fell in
man
of bad
from home in his company. The pair were soon reduced to misery, for the woman could find no work, and the man looked for none and eventually the lover proposed that they should
and
fled
commit burglary upon a jeweller, threatening to abandon the woman if she refused. For a time she resisted, then, after two days of utter want, consented, but only to show herself uncertain and inefficient in the commission of the offence, so that she was arrested In prison she showed herself without any difficulty.
There was, penitent and made a full confession. however, something masculine in her force and energy of character, and still more in her absence of maternal
instincts.
For she was pregnant, but said openly that she should take no care of her child. "Women are the cause of most of the offences committed by men," writes Guillot, "but they are often ignorant of the means by which their caprices have been satisfied or if they have suspicions they stifle them, not daring to protest, and either yielding to threats or allowing themselves to be blinded by They become, in fact, docile slaves." love.
;
The
majority
of
abortion
have done so under suggestion infanticides, on the other hand, showing, as we have seen, a greater similarity with the women who err from passion.
As
is
OCCASIONAL CRIMINALS,
act of the
I99
is
woman
it
only.
Generally
it
her lover
which would otherwise result. F'ouroux, for instance, induced his mistress, who was the wife of his friend, an officer in the navy on foreign service, to commit abortion. Georgina Boges, a woman of very weak character, almost without any individuality of her own, was so much under the influence of her lover (who was also her mother's) that she helped him to kill her child. Before the judge she was still so much dominated by her partner in sin and by her mother that she tried to exculpate them by taking the whole blame of the crime upon herself
forces her to
who
Desiree Ferlin, a girl of weak health and character, extremely gentle, was violated by her own father, and at his suggestion had recourse to abortion but when arrested refused to speak of her father until forced to do so, and then tried to defend him. A girl named Lemaire was also twice forced to commit abortion
;
by her
father
who
Once, because she had broken loose, he made her kneel on the edge of a scythe to ask his
beating her.
pardon.
Sometimes
lover,
it
is
but the example of an acquaintance which supplies the impulse to the act. woman finds
200
on the subject, nor has formed anyShe meets a friend who was once in a similar position and has more experience who gives the address of an expert midwife, and testifies to the simplicity and security of the method recommended. Nobody will know anything any more than in the friend's case. The perplexed woman ends by being persuaded, and a fixed resolution succeeds to her first vague desire. Here is a letter found among the papers of a midwife, and furnishing a good example of the way in which such an idea is formed gradually by suggestion in the midst of many doubts
definite resolution.
;
:
no
"
Madam,
I
My
friend,
Mrs.
X., tells
me
may
:
have to
tell
you a very
I
delicate thing
am
pregnant and
in despair.
if 1
am
sure
my
lover
would abandon me
give
I
had a
child,
me
pain.
He
does not
know my
do not wish him to know it. My friend assures me you will be able to relieve me without danger and without anybody's knowledge. Please make an appointment and believe in my eternal gratitude." In other cases it is want and the claims of an already large family which suggest the expedient.
that
"
Why
?
bring
"
another
is
unfortunate
being
into
the
world
This
mother who loves the children she has already, and would love the new-comer if it were not destined to add to the existing misery of the family. Her idea is no proof of perversity, especially as she desires to get rid not of a living thing, but of some-
OCCASIONAL CRIMINALS.
201
thing invisible and intangible, which has for her as In this connection we yet no existence in reality. may recall the case in which Zola was on the jury
and which he related to a reporter of the Figaro. "A woman was in the dock who in three confinements had had four children. One day she found
herself
again
pregnant.
Her husband, a
porter,
In despair the
woman went
*
to
whom
Then suddenly an
only get rid of
idea
came
could
it!'
she said.
Together they seek out this woman in a washhouse, and the deed is done, in return for the sum of four francs and a half, which is all the porter's wife can And now behold all three at the assizes dispose of Would you have had the heart to condemn those three women who had nine children among them, and who stood there in tears ? / had not the heart." Now here is a case in which the criminal is an artificial product, the outgrowth of a suggestion, and absolutely analogous to the examples furnished on
!
much
larger scale
by hypnotism.
It is true that, as in hypnotism, the subject only responds to the suggestions which are in harmony
with his character and the women who are induced by another will than their own to commit offences have certainly had a latent tendency to crime. But the tendency is not strong enough for them to have
;
sinned spontaneously and this is the point wherein They are they differ from the born criminal. offenders, indeed, but offenders on a reduced scale,
;
202
and they possess only some of the characteristics of the born criminal. In one case the maternal
sentiment will be deficient, in another there are dissolute tendencies, facility for falling in or out of love
;
and sometimes there is even less departure from the type of the normal woman, crime being resorted to with difficulty and followed by intense remorse. In short, there are degrees by which we pass from the born criminal to the woman of moral life, and each degree offers the example of a more or less complete occasional offender. Suggestion, as we have seen, emanates almost always from a lover, the reasons for this being partly sexual and partly due to the confidence which women have in men. Another factor, as in the case of M. R.,
is
if
and the influence which a man naturally acquires over the woman to whom he is joined by illicit affection. More rarely suggestion emanates from a woman. Giulia Bila was bound to Maria Moyen, a woman of equivocal life, by affection of an intensity such as is rarely seen, and was so entirely under her friend's
influence as to consent without difficulty to execute
her.
and
felt
adopted the suggestion of throwing a bottle of vitriol in his face. But her offence was hardly committed before she was filled with horror and remorse. She allowed herself to be arrested, and weeping, averred,
OCCASIONAL CRIMINALS.
what of course was
true, that
203
own
when accomph'shing the act. Fernande K., a German woman of the most mah'gnant character, organised in Paris a band of female
mistress
domestic thieves
soldiers.
whom
commanding them
She picked up
dismissed for a
little all
as
general
commands
his
the servant-girls
first
some
difficulty
;
in
by forging certificates, and forced them commit robberies of as much value as possible
tions
each house, the proceeds being brought to her for division, with a lion's share lor herself
Not one
of
defraud her of even a small part of the spoils by keeping anything back from the division.
Rondest, that ferocious born criminal, who, as we have seen, murdered her mother so as not to be obliged to support her, had a friend in whom she
gradually inspired
just
the
same hatred
for
the
The
friend,
as a personal enemy, and constantly repeated Rondest's own phrase, " I have to support you," just as though she had been the daughter m propria
woman
and
insulted
her,
i)erso7id.
This
is
and crime
affections
analogous
describe as
what experts
is
in
mental
phenomenon
unknown
204
Friendship
is
^^^^
FEMALE OFFENDER,
shown, and
one.
certain
cases
it
results in the
total
Why
do we
and
this suggestion
have already explained the absence of friendship between women by the latent animosity of one to the other but there is
in the criminal class
;
We
Friendship
there
is
not possible
a
when between
psychical
two
persons
is
marked
normal women are monotonous; they resemble one another, and cannot be acted upon by suggestion consequently friendship with its dominion of the stronger over the weaker is
difference.
:
Now
impossible to them.
On
a difference
in
character as
lends
itself
easily
to
masculine
creature,
being
able
influence
the
criminaloid, in
whom
bad
being
Education
bad
woman
now by
the higher
Many women
nothing to show
for
OCCASIONAL CRIMINALS,
labour.
205
want while conscious and being debarred from the probability of matrimony owing to the ordinary man's dislike to a well-instructed woman, they have no
are reduced to
it,
They
of not deserving
The
thembe
themselves
thefts.
the others
sell
commit
Mace
found
veils,
relates
that
many
governesses
are to
in St.
Lazare imprisoned
to
umbrellas,
pocket-handkerchiefs,
and
other
articles
make
a good ap-
pearance
and which they cannot always They have been driven to consequently, by the exigencies of their
school,
" The number of governesses," he says, who have no pupils is so great that a certificate,
M.,
the
daughter
a
of
an
eccentric,
unpractical
mother, received
education,
high
literary
but
incomplete
life. At twenty-three she found herself an orphan, ruined by family reverses, and with an idle brother who refused her all help. After various vain efforts she accepted a post of teacher in an elementary school in the country, but
was dismissed, at the unanimous request of the inhabitants, on its being discovered that she was a Protestant. Then, alone in the world, without means of existence, and haunted by the memory of more prosperous days, she began buying articles of jewellery in shops, where she obtained credit in
16
206
virtue either
resold
them
at
half-price or
pawned them.
series of
Excessive
teinptatio7is.
We
relates
have observed
that
to
that
is
in
the
normal
female
Richet
articles
found
Paris
and
are
culti-
brought
vated
that
it
the
Municipal
R.,
by men
and a
once confided to the writers very difficult for women to play without
cheating.
So weak a respect
in
for
the light of an
escapade
that they
we must admit
Women,"
idea that they may do anything to men, since it is always open to them to pay with their persons." Shoplifting, which has become so common since
is
a specially feminine
temptation being
articles
furnished
by the immense
number of
desires of
women who
We
saw that
women, but articles of necessity, since they equip them for conquest and therefore the huge shop, with
;
OCCASIONAL CRIMINALS,
its
207
into crime.
An
inspector of the
Bon Marche
told
Joly that out of 100 female thieves 25 per cent, are habitual offenders who rob whenever they can, 25 per
cent, are impelled to the act
are, as
by want, and 50 per cent, monomaniacs that is to say they are women often in a good social position and
he expressed
it,
who
many
beautiful things
displayed
before
them.
Of
maniacs.
Mace
women
in society
it,
come
the need of
to temptation.
Zola has given a good description of this form of dishonesty in his " Bonheur des Dames." Ladies who cannot spend, or do not need to do so,
go go
all
the
same
curiosity.
by
little
beyond
their
means or
accomplish a dexterous
theft.
Domestic
almost
all
thefts
sional crimes.
committed by maidservants are head of occaGirls come up from the country and
208
which reigns seems to them a sign of enormous They are badly paid, yet are given money, plate, and other valuables to handle, which awake in
wealth.
in
every woman.
small
Forty-nine per
servants,
Madame Tarnowsky,
and
belong
the
class
of
domestic
prison
to
say,
34 per cent, are general servants that is they receive no training and take low
wages."
to
occasional
proportion
thieves.
domestic
servants
among
female
feeble organic shrinking from and stealing soon becomes a habit if the occasions for committing it be repeated the occasional offender becomes an habitual offender, and
theft,
who
are
"
whom we
pay.
Once women
lottery,
for the
savings bank.
now they take fifty francs for their They plant their toll-house between
OCCASIONAL CRIMINALS.
pality of Paris itself
its
is
209
dues.
levied
on
all
eatables,
"The richest shopkeepers tremble before this new tyranny, and seek silently but invariably to conciliate it. Anybody attempting control is met
or
We
in
servants
demand
particulars
regarding
their
which em-
Madame Grandpre
is
much
She mentions maidservants who have so enriched themselves as to become persons of consideration in their neighbourhood, and who, worse still, instruct in their own practices young
greater in Paris to-day.
girls freshly arrived
Lazare " She had come to Paris to seek a situation which would enable her to support two little brothers of whom she was very fond. She was very ignorant, but was engaged in the house of rich people, who paid her ill and nourished her badly, besides setting
St.
One
evening,
when
own
"
210
went to console her. She won the girl's confidence, and in reply to her complaints of misery, taught her various artifices by which she could add to her salary, and which the other, seeing small harm
in
them, consented
she said,
'
to
after
only a
little
hesita'
tion.
yet,'
And
respected in
on the contrary, she the neighbourhood, and all the tradesnot in prison
;
men bow
to her.'
Another proof that thieves are occasional criminals, differing but little from the normal woman, is furnished us by the observation of Madame Tarnowsky, who remarks on the difference in industry between prostitutes and thieves. The latter, when in prison, can be employed in various ways they are prudent and put by money they are also more tenacious than prostitutes, and can concentrate their minds better thus showing their freedom from many
;
;
:
are
among
in
honesty
thieves,
then
of employers
against those
whom
formed into habitual offenders. The male child only learns respect of property from teaching and example, and much more fatal
consequently
is
OCCASIONAL CRIMINALS.
infant
211
who
is
when
well
The
in her
by Madame Tarnowsky
remarks upon Russian female thieves, of whom majority spring from the people, whose habits are the careless and spendthrift.
"
The
up without learning
idle in the
and
is left
to run about
midst of
fire
and hungry, for at home there is and she finishes one day either by prostituting herself for a dainty, or by stealing some article for which her longing has grown during long hours of idleness, and then she goes to prison to expiate the crime of having been born of poor and
She
is
often cold
vicious parents.
"
Her
first
knowledge acquired from her companions in prison, and promising herself to profit by what she has learnt, but to be wary and not let herself be
rich in
caught again.
" After her first theft she has ceased to hold communication with her family, who, in any case, could only starve and ill-treat her and crime consequently
;
becomes a necessity of her existence." Other occasional offences com7. Abuse and blozi's. mitted by women are blows and abusive language.
Owing to the latent antipathy of women towards one another, they are subject to mutual hatreds which arise and grow from trivial causes, and, thanks to the sex's superior hastiness of temper, lead easily to insults and assaults. Abuse and
212
women
what, in a
men namely,
method of resenting injury. " A little water spilt upon the stairs," writes Mace, "will set two women quarrelling. One slaps the other; the slapped one flies to the police court and causes her enemy to be condemned to a fine, in default of
paying which she
is
taken to prison."
Such incidents happen every day between neighbetween bours, or competing retail shopkeepers caretakers and tenants, between portresses and servant-girls, between servant-girls themselves, and
;
so on.
Nor
often resort to
modes
Mendicity.
Even
begging, which
in
men
is
almost always a result of degeneration, a congenital tendency developed by vagabondage and idleness,
is
sometimes in women an occasional delinquency. As we have pointed out already, women are less inclined than men to commit suicide from want, and one reason of this is that when reduced to misery
they resort with
less
difficulty
to
begging, either
because they are by nature more pliable to circumstances, or because more moved by maternal affection.
Mace tells the story of a widow with two daughters who, when no longer able to earn even a franc a day by
sewing trousers, because one of the girls was ill and had to be nursed, sent the other one out to beg. The child was arrested, but would not give her address until she had exacted a promise that she should not
OCCASIONAL CRIMINALS.
be sent to prison.
213
The
whom
in
she
like
her
husband
a hospital.
The
spectacle
seemed so
measures, he
left
Mace
;
says
women
women
for
begging
for
even they, so
the law,
little
feel that it
they recognise
offence, in the
for
same manner as they visit the vagabond propensities of the true degenerate.
9.
It is the occasional
contradiction with
the
monotony
pre-
that in different
There
are,
in
short, ethnological
variations
in
the
criminality of
variations in
women
is
214
means of saving their reputaand concealing a shame of which the causes are A special accidental and an incident of their calling. opportunity breeds a special class of offence, and the offenders, who are quasi-normal, would have broken no laws had the condition of their life been different.
According to "Scandales de
abortion are
the
St.
anonymous
Petersbourg"
author
of
the
infanticide
and
the
common
incidental crimes
among
upper
of the
dissolute habits
them arising from the of the men, and the facile morals
the midst of a society which
is
women
in
so strangely
civilised
customs.
The
" It
is
especially the
women of the upper classes who have recourse to this Sometimes they are young girls anxious to offence. sometimes married women, save their reputations who, for one reason or another, do not wish to become mothers. Specialists both male and female have The facility with which abora very large practice.
;
tion
is
practised
is all
bands nor lovers are at all scrupulous in this respect, and regard the act as only slightly if at all
criminal.
still
more
common
offence
among
Russian
women
is
simulation
and
is
legislative reasons
marriage
costly
and
difficult
women have
to consent to
a feeble
OCCASIONAL CRIMINALS.
one
for the
215
most part
than
the man.
Very
wear}''
there
are
no
of a legal
tie.
Then
it
is
that the
woman
conceives
which
may
brated law-suit in
cious banker,
St.
very avari-
who
companion
to
by pretending
make
completely
her,
She managed the ruse so well as to deceive him and he made her a handsome donation.
;
full
confession of
which
covered him
In the same way shoplifters were for a time a French speciality, for as long, at least, as the huge and emporia of fashion were French exclusively even now the evil must be greater in France than elsewhere, if we may judge by the fact that almost all our examples of the offence come from French writers. The reason of this preponderance is that, by common report, the French shops are the biggest and the most attractive in the arrangement of articles for sale consequently they are the most tempting.
; ;
2l6
Another occasional
local,
is
is
so diffused
it.
condemn
In proof,
we have
and female midwives who practise chiefly in this branch and recommend their establishments in newspapers and on posters. Not long ago one of them caused a leaflet " to
ladies'' to
be distributed in the streets. This phenomenon is due undoubtedly to the ever larger share which women are beginning to take in professions and business, thanks to the natural
development of capitalism, and which, by rendering maternity a positive misfortune, causes abortion
to be almost a social necessity.
is
And
public opinion
is
no
form the
majority of criminals,
one which
nals
;
includes the milder sorts of born crimiand another which differs but little from the normal, which may indeed even be described as consisting of normal women in whom circumstances have developed the fund of immorality which is
latent in ever}'- female.
To
the
first
suggestion,
class belong above all offenders through and who are guilty of bloodshed or offences
;
is
often a matter of as
;
little
moment
as
it
is
to children
it
appears to them in
OCCASIONAL CRIMINALS,
217
pensation are due to the owner of the article taken, but not to abstract justice, the representative of
society.
it,
that
is
to say, as
it
an was
regarded in the primitive periods of human evolution, and as it is still regarded by many uncivilised nations.
CHAPTER
XIV.
HYSTERICAL OFFENDERS.
In the asylums for the insane hysteria is most common, and chiefly contributes to differentiate
insanity
in
the
in
the female.
1888 there were 4 hysterical males and 788 hysterical females, the latter thus forming one-tenth But in our official criminal of the insane (64-82).]
[In Italy in
statistics hysteria
does not
exist.
Salsotto,
it
by exerthe
among
graver female criminals, but only in a few instances. In the prison of Turin we find it in 3*9 per cent, of
the inmates, the
maximum
among
the poisoners and assaulters, with 7*2 per cent, in murderesses, 4-0 per cent, in women guilty of rape,
and
minimum)
in infanticides.
I
All
grave a degree as one would imagine a priori. As a general thing it seems connected with crime
because
it
Add
cases where
was consulted,
218
often adduced
by the
HYSTERICAL OFFENDERS.
accused or her counsel
there,
;
219
is
not
This
may
be attribu-
the
women
who
and hysteria
It
is
our
I.
women
to those of Paris
PsycJiology.
We
need
"
characteristics of hysteria.
They can be
the second
volume of
L'Uomo
Delinquente," pp.
there
is
327-30.
women
suffi-
power of
is
profoundly
and their absorbing preoccupation with themselves makes them love scandal and a public sensation.
They
easily
are
moved
;
in
Their
will
trials
and scandalous forms of revenge, they embitter the life of those around them by continual quarrels and
disputes.
still
witness,
and they
is
This
{a)
symptom which
is
in childhood.
What
of
more importance
for
is
the
220
facility
women
to
undergo hypnotic
side of the
make one
in the other,
itself is
sug-
suggestion.
watch
it,
sup-
posed to descend.
also be evoked.
If the subject
made
of
their condition
perform appropriate
and they proceed to Complete amnesia and paralysis may be suggested, and the peculiar exaggerated reflex actions of the tendons follow. Real
sex,
acts.
fixed ideas, strange, impulsive, even criminal, may be evoked the patient can be made to kiss a cranium, can be induced to kill a third party at some
;
and to do
it
that he
is
own
will,
so that he
sometimes
which
in
It follows that
crimes
may be
a
committed
cataleptic condition,
The hypnotised
is
an
obedient automaton,
HYSTERICAL OFFENDERS.
221
own he
Moreover, during
each of these hypnotised states he forgets what he has done in the preceding one, and remembers it
only when brought back to the same
state, which is an important thing to remember. For where one offence succeeds to another, and imputations are made of deeds which the offender has forgotten
his
responsibility
decency which he denied, and thus aggravated his position. Motel, however, remembered that he was subject to the somnambulistic trance and hypnotised him, with the result that before the judges he ingenuously confessed the offence.
is
The
"whom you
will see
laugh immoderately
"
;
One
hour," writes
Sydenham,
and discontented with everything the next they are cheerful, and follow about their acquaintances with a tenacity equal to the affection which they first had
for them."
"Their
causes.
sensibility
is
exalted
grieve
word
of
will
the
death
their
children,
Their
but
in intellectual control,
by
action."
222
"
dominate
them because they become organic. An idea will bring about a convulsion, and often one notices in them a sudden incoherence, a sudden confusion of
mind, which passes after a long sleep.
Reflection
will
is
(This
is
another
just
like
epileptics,
jealousy springs up
at
once,
but
one
friendship
it
dies
and
is
transformed into
quarrels.
is
an absolute contagion
among them,
and they organise puerile revolts, laugh and complain about trifles. When one girl puts on a flower all the others do the same, and usually they are very fond
of brilliant colours.
of cataleptic intensity.
woman
will
be
dumb
or
months under pretence that speech or motion may hurt her. But this is their only form of perseverance. They are indolent and idle by
immovablefor
work actively
for
special
is
a special handwriting, or father a tendency to vary in their handwriting, which sometimes very large and sometimes very small,
They have
HYSTERICAL OFFENDERS.
according to their psychical condition (Binet).
is
223
This
a peculiarity which
(d)
we observed
also in epileptics.
"
They have
The
scriptural
''
expression,
Homines
letters.
seems
anonymous
out object
tinues the
:
they cultivate
as an art."
"
And," con-
same authority, "one is astonished at the sagacity and tenacity of their fictions, especially
is
concerned.
They
observe, for
it,
and they
man
into
when a doctor
revealed that
In
all
may
be per-
is
in the desire to
do
evil
Another peculiarity
easily they
may
be cured.
(/") The cases of theft and arson are most common among hysterics at the period of menstruation. It is true that this {g) They are remarkably erotic.
is
denied by some. Legrand says that they depart from virtue less out of lasciviousness than from a
224
Spirit
unknown emotions,
;
but
would remark that even in such cases the sexual element is latent and for the rest, if very many are apathetic, others are most excitable. Legrand out of 83 hysterics found 12 per cent, who prostituted themselves without necessity, and three committed monstrous excesses. Moreover, all the
;
sexual functions.
greater part turn
Where they
upon
assaults.
Some
hysterical
women," writes Schiile, " during the honeymoon will leave their husbands and run away with a casual
acquaintance."
I would add to all these peculiarities yet another, which has been well described by L. Bianchi that
is,
or letters
happens that
Naturally
become the victims of their own it is still easier for them to delude
others.
The man
the
murder him, after which he gulled and cheated his doctor (who had defended him during his trial and cured him of hysterical attacks by hypnotism), and extracted from him a large sum by pretending that he was about to make a good marriage (" Archivio di psichiatria," vol.
authorities that a prelate
vii.
fasc
i.).
And we
almost
all
accusa-
HYSTERICAL OFFENDERS.
tions of assault are supported
letters {see following pages).
2.
225
by anonymous or forged
like
Beh'rmm.
Hysterical,
epileptic
subjects,
from melancholy or monomaniacal delirium indeed, according to Morel, they show this
symptom the oftenest when the other special morbid phenomena of their malady are wanting. The maniacal affection is accompanied by hallucinations and impulses, by a continual need of agitation and change of movement, by the desire to break and throw down all that comes in the way. It will make
a sudden apparition in the midst of rude health, last but a short time, and depart without leaving any trace.
All at once a person will leave a ball-room and throw himself into the river. girl will break all the plates
and pour boiling water on her brother's neck while he is dining, then fly from the house to a wood, where
found building an altar with stones for the own marriage. Often these crises are periodic, thus offering another analogy to epilepsy. 3. The forms of hallucination are the same as those
is
she
celebration of her
rats,
serpents (espe-
and, as
Suicide.
Suicide
is
more
often
simulated than
always automatic and causeless, and is at once and very ostentatiously coram publico, instead
of quietly as
is the case with other suicides. take laudanum after warning the police.
One
will
Another
jumps
5.
Flights.
Another point
when a boat
in
is
passing.
226
in taking flight
and
and sometimes not will go away for two or three days, either abandoning herself to prostitution, or simply wandering about, after which she will return home and sometimes boast of what she has done, or sometimes keep
A woman
silence.
Hysterical
prison,
6.
women, like drunkards, are calm and do not protest against punishment.
in
False accusations.
Many
women
accuse their
assault,
But the most common form of calumny is criminal which accusation is often brought against a public magistrate, or a father even, but more frestill
quently
is so absurd that it cannot be believed but often it succeeds and the means adopted for making it consists almost always of
letters,
anonymous
or otherwise.
unmarried woman of 25, of good family, pursued a priest with love-letters in the following terms: "My beloved, where are you? Nobody knows us. Your Laura, who kisses you ardently." short time afterwards the innocent priest was accused by the lady of having corrupted her. A girl of 18 declared to the King's Proctor that she had been criminally assaulted several times by priests, her cousin aiding. She went into the most minute particulars, declaring that she was praying
An
HYSTERICAL OFFENDERS.
22J
The priest came, invited her into the sacristy, then proposed that she should accompany him to Spain. When she resisted his proposals he cut himself in
two places in order to induce her to listen to him. She fainted, and on coming to her senses found he had taken advantage of her, and so on, and so on.
On
had taken her to a convent where the nuns shut her up all one night with a priest. The accused parties were brought up for trial, and
the absurdity of the
girl's
in her story, composed verses in the priest's honour, and showed letters containing declarations of love, which she affirmed were written by him. Finally a medical examination, which ought to have preceded instead of following all these pro-
and proved
the
girl
to
be
suffering
from
hysteria, heightened
by
whom
Maria,
seated
General D. M. had a daughter of i6, called who complained that Lieutenant P., when
to her.
From that moment anonymous letters rained upon the house, containing declarations of love for the general's wife and threats against the daughter and finally arrived a missive, also anonymous, which warned the general that an attempt had been made The lieutenant was forto dishonour his daughter.
;
228
bidden the
ground, half
attire, which was stained with blood. She declared that the lieutenant had come to her room in the night and tried to criminally assault her, and had wounded her with a knife and the family
from the
officer
He was arrested, and and boasting of his deed. although it was proved that the anonymous letters
were not
his,
ally while
he was
in
resemblance
them
whom
hysterical
anosmia and ambliopia, the poor young man was condemned by the jury to ten years'
imprisonment.
An
hysterical
woman
stole linen
from a hospital,
and even from her own press, and hid it with much When brought up for trial she succeeded in care. having it believed that she had found, or been presented with, the articles she had stolen. Out of 83 hysterical accused, 21 had made false accusations, 9 of which were of criminal assault,
besides 3
who
whose case is related by Legrand du showed hysteria at puberty, and at the same time was so devout that she wished to enter a convent. At 20 she began a series of fantastic calumgirl,
Saulle,
accusing a priest of having seduced her when he had never even seen her. After her marriage she took to drink, and used to
nies,
HYSTERICAL OFFENDERS.
beat her husband.
finally
22g
She eloped with a shopman, and was imprisoned for attempted homicide. A famous instance is the woman Glaser's, who deceived doctors and judges, and passed for being mad, dumb, subject to hallucinations, a forger, a thief, and calumniator without anybody ever being able to discover how far it was all true, and whose case was the despair of the great expert Casper by
obliging
him
Maria V. (aged 23) was found unconscious, deeply cut in a regular manner all over her face and body, her hands tied, her mouth gagged with a handkerchief, and her eyes tied down with the strings of her
cap.
whom
she minutely
when she
invention.
an hysterical
live coals in
Maria H., a woman of 26, when jilted by her promised husband Martin, fell into convulsions and
syncope, but eventually recovered.
One morning
all
some months she wounds on her person, and accused an uncle of Martin's, who was sentenced to five years' imprisonment. In a short time new wounds were followed by new accusations, this time against
the end of
At
exhibited
who had
all
the inhabi-
230
become a popular was only after she had stolen articles from a family which she entered as servant that
and
it
suspicion of her
to arise.
l?07td
fides
in the other
matters
Later she married a vine-dresser, began who shortly afterwards died of poison and a forged will finally resulted in her being sentenced to prison
;
for
life.
(Legrand du Saulle,
"
Les Hysteriques,"
of
12
1884.)
lawyer relates
how
girl
charged a
proprietor of Gratz
him
to
be put in prison for a year, and he would have remained there longer, only that a servant accused
of stealing by the same person was proved innocent through the missing watch being found in the latter's
own
Later the police were informed that the aforesaid proprietor out of revenge caused stones to
trunk.
be thrown every night against the windows of the house where the girl lived with her mother, but when they went there at midnight they found the denouncer throwing the stones
7.
herself.^
Stealing.
hysterical subjects
stealing.
Out of 83 accused of various offences, 17 had been and, as we have seen, Legrand du guilty of this
;
women in 104 who had caught stealing in the shops of Paris. been C. H. went to a neighbouring village to watch her
Saulle found 50 hysterical
husband, of
*
'
whom
find
Gratz, 1884.
HYSTERICAL OFFENDERS.
23
She stole 21, and sold them so cheaply that the buyer himself accused her of theft. She confessed, and at the same time made a hearty meal, and talked to everybody of what she had done. When arrested she
threatened to
into shops
kill
herself.
Another hysterical subject, aged 20, penetrated by means of false keys, and carried off
whatever of value she found. A., the daughter of mad parents, at 15, during menstruation, imagined herself surrounded with enemies.
She
find,
everything she
could
wholesale.
At the end of 10 to 15 days she quieted down, and declared that she had yielded to an irresistible
impulse.
During 8 years she seemed cured, then after a pregnancy she had a return of the symptoms, then showed erotic tendencies and fell into prostitution.
Stealing in the big shops is a special thing caused by the great crowd and the immense stock.
Like
found
epileptics,
hysterical
subjects
offences.
as
whole
I
gamut of
Out of 88
21 guilty of calumny.
17
232
8.
Multiple crimes.
of
Murdei'.
We
it
the impulses of
hysterical
;
women
is
those
big
children
but
strength
to
do
evil which is wanting in them as in all women. For the rest they can often surpass their sex, and then become terrible, worse than men. And there are not wanting instances in which one
greater
of crimes
of different sorts.
Another will prostitute herself, steal chiland steal. A certain U., a peasant woman, was hysterical to a high degree. Very beautiful, she became the mistress of one who ill-treated and starved her then, in complicity with another, a young lover, she robbed him, and finally one night, while he was asleep, she, unassisted, mutilated and almost killed him with a reapingdren, calumniate,
;
hook.
Before the judges she invented a story of an imaginary struggle, and succeeded in having herself
acquitted.
the
The woman Bompard was hysterical, and so was woman Zelie, of whom we have already spoken.
offered
But the most classical example of hysteria is by the woman Z., who was at once a thief, a prostitute, an assassin, and a calumniator. Her story is the same as that of all the morally insane
or born female criminals.
HYSTERICAL OFFENDERS,
She was a woman of
small
morality.
;
233
drank and had a bad character her sister led a profligate life her mother a foundling was helpless and complaining. Z. was branded with hereditary signs very thick, black hair, black eyes, a big mouth, very prominent cheekbones, and frontal microcephalia. From her early school-days she was the torment of her companions. profligate between the age of When only 14 she quarrelled with and 14 and 17. worried her fellow-workers in a shop where she had been placed, and where she also behaved in a bestial and dissolute manner. She stole and accused two of her companions of theft, besides falsely accusing her master of adultery. She stole some lace and hid it under the bed only that she might discredit a fellowworker who had never done her any harm, and who was dismissed in consequence of the charge. She also tried to poison another employer who had always been kind to her and in a sort of delirium
father
;
Her
at
women and
She would cut the or make her own room filthy and then accuse
it.
her mistress of
She formed a
violent friendship
with a
woman
handsome appearance and rather light conduct but even here she was moved by the envy which consumed her. She wished to see her friend covered with jewels so as to annoy another woman, and also probably to prepare the way for a future attack upon her character. Later she turned
Lodi, of
;
named
234
She became the mistress of an old man, and robbed him until, in spite of his fear of her (a fear that he
confessed to the police), he dismissed her.
But she
man was killed by repeated blows on the head. Nobody was in his room but Z., who suddenly roused
the street
and was found hanging out She declared that she had been alarmed by the presence of two assasThe sins, then of one who had disappeared entirely. state of the lock of the house-door, which had evidently been vainly forced from the inside, showed When the absence that she herself had tried to fly. other aggressor, and the fact that she was of any found to have hidden the old man's purse in her stocking, and his jewels in her clothes, made it
by her
shrieks,
of the
window
in
her nightdress.
first
lie,
she then
admitted having helped the murderers, but averred that she was only the accomplice of a paid assassin
hired
by -a
certain
Pallotti,
who had
instigated
her to commit the deed so that he might be freed from a debt of i,8oo francs which he had contracted for jewels to give his mistress (Lodi).
And
story
Lodi and
innocent.
Pallotti
such
She was
hardly admitted before she asked to go to confession, and she dictated prayers in verse to the Madonna.
Rut
at the
letters
bearing the
HYSTERICAL OFFENDERS.
235
in the
murder.
assizes she
showed
else
when everything
full in
Lei Pallotti
tell"
the
face in court
and
said, "
You have
It
little
to gain
fear. But a i^w hours murder she remembered having left a ring in her victim's room, and she remained throughout quite unmoved, even when shown the blood-stained hammer with which experts declared that the deed might have been done even by the hand of a woman.
be mistaken, but when I recall many similar an I can but think that a motive and element of calculation in this woman's crime was the prospect of being able to calumniate Lodi, whose
1
may
instances
and
I
in
may remind
woman
of Buonvecchiato
"
who asked
to be allowed to beat
It is
because
I ahvays
see
him caressed by
not wanting
others!'
9.
Poisoners.
among
hysterical criminals.
J.
Maria
lunatics,
had cases in her family of hypochondriacs, and suicides. Left an orphan, and leading
life,
rather an agitated
fell
ill,
236
and
this
with
certain
an invalid
whom
and her stomach oppressed. Maria then gave her another mixture, an effervescent, which produced delirium during three days. The same mixture given to another lady had the same effect, namely, delirium and vomiting and some sweetmeats which Maria insisted on the invalid
eyelids being paralysed,
;
When
attentively
upon
young
girl.
Under pretence
do her charge's health good she took her away, and gave her the usual sweetmeats, whence followed delirium, vomiting, and the victim's death. In this way she poisoned nine people and the curious thing was that she foretold, in conversation with her friends and neighbours, the death of her victims and the symptoms they would present, thus
;
own
guilt.
When
HYSTERICAL OFFENDERS,
10.
2yj
Saints.
saints,
ecstatics,
like
Koerl and
Louise Latean.
Analogies of hysteria with epilepsy. The reader have observed how much analogy there is between hysteria and epilepsy. The convulsions of hysteria are so like epileptic fits that they can only be distinguished from them by the scarcity of urea,
11.
will
zones,
especially
on which
will
sometimes cure
an attack
current
effect
;
by the beneficial effects of a continuous by hydropathic treatment by the smaller of bromide, and by the absence or merely
;
;
(which
is,
however,
present
sometimes).
Wettkowski
sufferers.
("
Klin-Wochens," Berlin,
1886) did
Rousseau found only a low degree oscilbetween i*io and 1*5. The attack is followed lating by a fall, which hardly ever reaches 39 but Rousseau says that the same patient may have different tem;
of epilepsy be wanting,
the
lateral
all
and dulness of sense are very much more marked. Here again Briquet and Morel observed that where convulsions or other typical symptoms are absent, psychical phenomena are common. There is a relation between hysteria and the
arities,
action,
if in
if
a lower degree,
may
be said of epilepsy
18
and
238
more
be cured at the
critical age,
on the
its first
makes
appearance
in
&c.
(see above).
The analogy
('*
is
which we noted
Delinquente,"
vol.
in
ii.
Uomo
and
also in
i.).
some
in
(Idem, part
preferred
give
the
textual
be accused of par-
dipsomaniacs
is
quite certain.
And
morally insane
his for
and the symptoms, in desire for a change of place, in his need to do evil evil's sake, in his gratuitous mendacity (lying for
in the variability of his
And
here
symp-
HYSTERICAL OFFENDERS.
draw
sufficient attention.
239
these
is
Chief
among
lie
their
Valentini
instant
writes
" TJiieves
unprovoked
they
lie
the
they open
their
mouths
without
it
knowing why^ from second 7iature ; ana unconsciously even when they have no wish
tell
they do
to
deceived
without motive.
tell
is
And
Moeli says
they
" that
criminals
lies
even
ingrained
will
the habit in
go
continue to have ability in his art." And the mendacity of children is notorious. Epileptics are also sometimes distinguished by the letter-writing mania. And I alluded to the morally
insane
who
Vari-
common
to the hysterical
and
the epileptic
and
epileptics,
among
and they also are capable of that double personality which in some hysterical persons constithemselves
tutes
;
a true second
life.
Finally a persistent or
Calumny.
The
feature,
tinguishes hysterical
intensity of their
women from
for
it.
others
is
the
mania
The
reason
is
simple.
bad women (and they are the most frequently hysterical) have less strength and less capacity than men for deeds of violence, and are consequently more inclined to crystallise their bad
Women even
'
Man
of Genius," part
iv.
240
also they are more subject which incarnates an idea and transforms it into action. Like the hypnotised subject described in my " Studies on Hypnotism " (3rd ed.), they profess and proclaim the false with the same intensity as an honest person will affirm the true,
to that auto-suggestion
especially as
women,
impressed
it.
own
lie,
which presents
itself to their
which the hypnotised experience at every stage, and whence suggestion derives its overmastering force. Finally (as Schlile says), " they have such an unbridled fancy that truth and falsehood, facts and desires, are all one, all equally true to them, and they consequently often misrepresent in perfectly good faith."
Hysterical
women
only
among
halls of justice
where
it
is
which
energy.
hysteria
affirms
with
such
studying the
more
cele-
which
it
has given
rise, is
that the
subjects
ot
affection, like
epileptics,
would be
even
if
(as I
HYSTERICAL OFFENDERS.
24
hysterical
liberty.
do not maintain to be the case) most criminals were it would never be wise to set them at
undeniable susceptibility to be allowed to plead in their must not favour since as a general thing they can only be
their
Even
great
suggestion
influenced for
evil,
We
saw
this in
Bompard, who
(see above),
fell
into
the
hands of an honest
continually.
man
A
A
still
is
by the
life
following case
profligate
robbed a
man
of his purse.
He
had
perceived the
loss,
and returning
it.
to the house he
The woman
and
when sum-
the missing sum almost intact hidden chimney. The thief was taken to prison, and fright and rage produced in her such strong hysterical convulsions that four robust people could hardly hold
moned found
in the
One of the writers came upon the scene after some hours, and by a simple compression of the bulbs and the application of a small magnet cured the convulsions entirely, but they were followed by
her.
we hypno-
should cease.
vulsions
;
It did so as if by magic, like the conand when two days later both symptoms returned they were cured immediately by the same
242
charge of the
by the
Evil One.
Now
here was an opportunity to try hypnotism as a means of obtaining a confession of guilt, so we continued our
experiments in suggestion for some time, and were able to conjure away a headache and a mood of deep melancholy we even obtained, though only for a
;
and believed
we had dominated the patient completely. But when we ordered her to make a sincere confession of guilt
she immediately began over again the string of
lies
which she had told (naturally in vain) to the magisrelating, namely, that the man had invented trate story of the stolen purse out of revenge for having the
;
been repulsed by the prisoner's young sister, how the money found was honestly come by, &c.
The proof
that
she deceived
us
unconsciously
mendacity
lies
in
when
day by a companion that she had spoken of her offence, and believing that she had betrayed
herself, suspecting also (for the hysterical are
always
suspicious) that
we were
had invented
lies
and had
suffer-
all.
And
when
anew, and we naturally did not insist, since the will of the patient had to be respected, and we were satisfied with the results already obtained.
Suggestion in this case was strong enough to cure
convulsions and haemorrhage, but
it
HYSTERICAL OFFENDERS.
243
nor alter by one fraction the mendacious tendencies which were thus proved to have an organic basis deeper than that of any other hysterical manifestation. Seeing that the only dif13. Hysterical prostitutes. ferences between the born criminal and the hysterical woman consist in the superior mendacity and volubility of the latter, and in a frequently paradoxical
it
becomes
itself
clear
the
reason
why
epilepsy shows
rarely
among
prostitutes is that it is replaced by hysteria. Legrand du Saulle observed that 12 per cent, of
hysterical
women
dilettantism, without
Madame Tarnowsky
found
that
15
per cent,
of
She included under this head the few who showed intelligence and cultivation, as well as those who loved excitement, and others greedy and vain who appropriated everything they found. Most of the number were extraordinarily precocious and profligate, having begun their career as early as the age of eight, and they also showed the special changeableness of hysterical subjects by passing from one lover to another and hating the old ones profoundly. Thirteen per cent, had real attacks
prostitutes were hysterical.
of hysteria.
We
and
it
know
that
psychical
hysteria, like
epilepsy,
may show
is
unaccompanied by true convulsions, then only the more cynical and indecent, and
itself
is
is
CHAPTER
XV.
CRIMES OF PASSION.
An
analysis
of
the
crimes of
passion
disproves
yet
another
of
many
is
popular fallacies
regarding
as that
women.
The
inferiority of the
not so
much numerical
the female offenders differ from the genuine type of the male criminal in their nature, which has
more
analogy with the born female delinquent on the one hand and the occasional criminal on the other. But
crimes of passion have, nevertheless,
in
much
in
common
among
usually
;
both sexes.
I.
Age.
Naturally,
at
as
among men,
is
so
women, the
The age
committed
:
is
Vinci was 26
Stakel-
Laurent 22 Hogg 26 Noblin berg 27 Daru 27 and the female political criminals were also 22
; ;
young (Sahla
18
Corday 25
Renault 20).
crimes of passion resulting from love have been committed at an age comparatively advanced, by
in
women
whom
cycle.
CRIMES OF PASSION.
245
The woman
up
servant,
with a fellowrobbed her master of bonds for 20,000 francs, all of which she handed over to her lover without keeping a penny for herself.
in love
and
at his instigation
Dumaire
2.
Perrin
at the age of
40
of degeneration. If we except a greater development of the maxillae, and greater virility than usual, female offenders from passion have no special physiognomical characteristics nor
CJiaracteristics
signs of degeneration.
Madames C. H. B.,i Charlotte Helfmann, Vera Sassulich, Kulischoff,2 were all very handsome. Virile characteristics. is It remarkable that 3. female offenders of this class have also some mascuCorday,
Perowska,
of firearms.
Mesdames
selves
Clov.
habitually with
Madame
pistol,
Raymond always
having, said
carried
dagger and a
the
the
all
husband, acquired
habit
at
Hawaii, where
it is
difficult
sisted
in
it
women do the same. Nevertheless, to understand why she should have perafter many years of residence in Paris.
Souhine was described by the witnesses as having a haughty, energetic, and resolute character. Madame Dumaire, according to Bataille, who was present at her trial, was resolute, outspoken, logical.
*
Madame
^^g Lombroso,
" Uomo Delinquente," vol. ii. pp. Lombroso and Laschi, "Crime Politique," vol.
117, 168,
ii.
p. 177,
Plates
VI., VII.
246
Finally,
many women,
contrary
to
the
usual
tendencies
politics
of their sex, occupy themselves with and become religious and political martyrs. Madame Daru was a Corsican, Noblin a native of that is to say, both belonged the Basque provinces to semi-primitive nationalities in which the woman is habitually rather virile, and both showed muscular strength in the commission of their crime, for Daru killed her lover with blows from a knife, and Noblin
;
strangled her
rival.
this description
always found
in criminals alone, as is
proved by the
most angelic of women, who yet as a child climbed box with her schoolboy
companions, from
gave.
4.
whom
Goodfeeling.
Affection.
In the women
great intensity
who commit
of feeling.
is
Ellero,
born criminal. speaking of the incendiary, R. Antonia "There was but one opinion about her: all
with compassion for
all
the
needy and
the
suffering.
Her
heart
was indeed
CRIMES OF PASSION.
247
was blood of her blood, a pure instinct, and, for was not very wise. Not once but many times she had induced her husband to go
for
security
the
family
of
her
sister
who was
signed by her neighbours after she had been arrested. Myers, who killed her faithless lover, eventually
Ottolenghi noted
in
and very chaste instincts. She proved these, in fact, by her assertion that what disgusted her in her husband was not so much his coarseness nor his repulsive appearance as the idea that he had been her mother's lover. Madame Daru adored her children and maintained
toil,
living.
passion
mostly criminal from the only female offenders who, when married in the penal
infanticides
are,
The
who
Joly,
are
settlements,
"
families.
Often,"
St.
Lazare
we have
whom
it
no absence of maternal love. A little time ago there was an infanticide pretty girl, neither an idiot nor depraved who used to make dolls out of the house-linen, and carry them in her arms like infants."
quite evident that there
is
248
Despine tells the story of a girl who, directly her child was born, threw it down a lavatory but when it was brought back still alive, felt maternal love
;
awake
it,
in her, so that,
it,
warmed
nursed
mothers.
The chief quality of Madame Souhine was an extreme independence w^hich made her prefer to die with her children rather than live on charity. Madame Du Tilly, an excellent wife and mother, had but two ideas to provide for her children and to prevent her improvident husband from ruining himself and his family. Jamais, even when in the greatest want, remained chaste and pure, and wTote to her absent lover, " I keep myself for you." Madame Dumaire, who had provided for herself by a rather equivocal marriage, on being left a widow showed herself generous, and
The passion 5. Passions as motives for crimes. which most often betrays such women as we have
described into crime
ness of the normal
intensity
is
love.
woman, they
and take a
the
in
of
Heloise,
delight
man
whom
they are
ready to
violate
was her only beauty. Jamais sent her soldier-lover money and gifts, although she had to support herself and two children by her toil.
CRIMES OF PASSION.
Dumaire was
love with
Picart,
249
passionately in
disinterestedly but
whom
demanding that he would marry might continue to live with him. if only she Spinetti married a man of bad character, whom she vainly tried to reclaim, and whom she, herself once rich, eventually consented to wait on like a serhis studies, never
her
vant.
that,
Noblin was so devotedly attached to Sougaret although herself naturally of good instincts, she
would not leave him even after discovering him to be a criminal. Three times, to please him, she committed abortion, and finally accomplished a crime which was repugnant to her natural goodness.
This intensity of love explains
such
why
almost
all
illicit
connections without
Virginity and marall
customs
to say,
and
in
institutions, to the
average type
that
is
this
case,
normal
woman.
But our offenders love too passionately to submit to such laws. They are like Heloise, who refused to marry Abelard for fear of injuring him, and declared herself proud to be called his mistress.
The
ascribed
greater
number of
originally to an
an instance
fell
in
the infanticide
in love
who
in
a short time
hopelessly
with a stranger
whom
From
woman whom
250
But all such lust and love of pleasure and idleness. good and passionate women have a fatal propensity to love bad men, and they fall into the power of frivolous and fickle, sometimes depraved lovers, who not only abandon them when tired of them, but often add to the cruelty of betrayal the still greater cruelty of scorn and calumny. The motive for crime, then, in the woman becomes very strong, and is hardly ever limited to the mere Such women as Camicia, Raffo, pain of desertion. Harry, Rosalia Leoni, and Ardoano were betrayed and in the instance of Leoni after vows of fidelity there was the additional fact of the opprobrium
;
who declared
that he
was one of thirteen. Vinci, who had sacrificed her hair for her lover's sake, was taunted by her rival, who took advantage of the ugliness consequent on the loss of the adornment
to supplant her.
her occupation
Jamais was cynically deserted by her lover when, failing, she could no longer supply
received, moreover, letters of
an insulting nature from him. Madame Raymond was betrayed by her husband and by her most intimate friend. She discovered the
intrigue and, for once, forgave
it
;
her rival
full
An
that of Guerin.
Madame
T.,
CRIMES OF PASSION.
for
25
many years had led a comparatively happy life, all once finds herself and her children deserted, and the house despoiled by her husband, who has fallen
at
in love
with a prostitute.
these causes
To
her
all
we must add
woman what
calls
but which
is
where the dominating force is egotism. and often the inhuman severity of relations, add to a sorrow which is already profound. Jamais, for instance, was repulsed by her dying father, who would not receive her last kiss and Provensal was
in a society
Derision,
who
re-
in
the cases
which we have been considering, but become the principal motive of crime in infanticides, who are,
however, also moved by a kind of desire to revenge
themselves on the child for the infidelity of the
father.
"
When
" I
it
it
was born,"
it
said an infanticide to
Grandpre,
his child
closed round
Statistics
neck."
unmistakably all that we have advanced by showing that illegitimate births and infanticides are in inverse, and not as might be
prove
expected, in
cide
is
dii^ect ratio
that
is
most frequent
in districts
where, illegitimate
births
severity.
252
by towns and
France
rural
neighbourhoods
1851-55-
^^^^"^'^
(
lown
Italy
ri885 1886
1
1 1887
1
888
CRIMES OF PASSION.
6.
253
rarely than
Materiial
and
domestic love.
More
we have
some
injury inflicted on
the woman's
Madame Du
Tilly, a
and insulted by her rival in his love, a milliner. The honour of the family and its well-being were being ruined little by little, but the worst prospect of all to her was that if she died her children would
have the other woman for a stepmother. To avert such a catastrophe Madame Du Tilly determined to disfigure her rival by throwing vitriol in her face.
In a similar case
of blows
Madame
T. inflicted a hailstorm
upon the prostitute for whose sake her husband had sold everything, even the domestic
utensils.
Madame Daru, a very well-conducted woman, was exposed to continual brutality on the part of her drunken husband. One day, when he had threatened both herself and the children with a knife, she fled with her little ones from the house, then, returning when the man was asleep, stabbed him to death. Another woman, whose portrait Mace gives, a person of refinement, education, and gentle nature, who had fallen from prosperity into extremest want, committed a theft that she might pay her son's
school-fees.
When
name
in
identity
in court
later
would never have been known had a lawyer not recognised her. She died a few days of a broken heart.
19
254
One
that
is,
disposed to wonder at
first
at the rarity
But maternity
and evil for a mother hesitates to commit an offence which might separate her temporarily or permanently from her child. The idea of such a risk leads her to forgive injuries inflicted on the child himself rather than resort to violent means of revenge and she will
;
him
as she
might do
if
Moreover, maternity
;
while criminality, even when inlogical function duced by passion, is pathological and it is rare for the two things to be confounded. Maternity is an intense normal feeling, and cannot therefore become a perturbing element but the case
;
with love
is
different.
In the normal woman love is weak, and only becomes intense when it has reached the stage of a pathological phenomenon.
This theory finds confirmation in the fact that is largely a cause of madness. The proportion ot cases in which domestic sorrow has promaternity
duced insanity
is
as follows
Percentage.
Men.
Women.
8-40 3*66 11-28
i-6o
2*64 5*24
women
(12) than
;
men
loss of a child
and
grief at
sterility
women
insane as against
no man.
CRIMES OF PASSION.
There
out of
child
is
255
factor
yet
another restraining
which
number
of
crimes arising
regards her
maternal passion.
woman
resenting in
for himself
her own person the injuries inflicted on him, especially while he is little and cannot provide
after himself,
child grows up and can look he separates from his mother, and she,
feels
A
it
To
a certain degree,
who abandon
or walk alone.
fly
And
if
is
possible only
when the
it
must be rare, since an infant not having entered upon the struggle for life has few enemies, and is exposed to few injuries or persecutions. Almost the only person against whom they have to be protected or revenged is a bad or careless father, and he fortunately is not a very common phenomenon, elementary duty to his family not being the relation in which the civilised male shows himself most frequently wanting.
very reason
7.
confounded into a whole with maternal love, is that passion for dress which we found so characteristic of the born criminal. Madame Du Tilly confessed that one of the things
256
which most exasperated her against her husband was that he arrayed his mistress in her garments. Madame Raymond was irritated by the frequent presents of jewellery made by her husband to his paramour, and which contrasted with his avarice T. told us that she went to towards his wife. visit the kept mistress of her husband with a heart but when she full of rage, but no intention of assault saw the woman wearing her own wedding-veil she leapt upon her and killed her with blows. Sometimes the same irritating effect is produced by objects which have some peculiarly dear or sacred
;
associations of ideas.
8.
Up to
this point
we have now
to
in
some
women.
the almost
on the provocation. Madame Guerin, hearing that her husband was at Versailles with his mistress, flew Madame Daru, on bein^ there and stabbed him.
threatened, together with her children,
more
seriously
waited
heart.
till
he was asleep, then thrust a knife into his lover's throat immediately
making the proposition which we have already and similar instances of rapid action are offered by Provensal and Jamais. Only in some women, again, does sincere and violent
on
his
described
CRIMES OF PASSION.
257
up
to the authorities.
Madame Daru
failing she
fire
tried to
commit
suicide,
gave her-
self in charge.
A.
B., after
setting
to her house
money, remained paralysed at It was only at the the idea of what she had done. instigation of her brother that she went to claim the money she took what the agent gave her without made a full, unasked confession. remark, then
to obtain the insurance
;
Madame Du
and was
loss of
an eye. Of her own accord she paid her a large indemnity, and continually asked if she were in
further
when the
doctor gave a good account of his patient. And only in occasional instances is the suddenness
of the impulse betrayed by the choice of any within reach, as in the case of
weapon
Madame
Guerin and
or the
fists,
as in the
example
of
who
is
mistress
we
find
un-
who
without aiming properly at their respective victims, whom they barely touched.
9.
The
women
Often which contrast with the exaggerated goodness of the male criminal, and cause them to approximate on the one hand to the born criminal,
are as a rule not previously quite immaculate.
traits
258
criminal.
Fre-
That
is
the
woman
is
man
it
is
also colder
and more cunning, so that the crime is executed with an ability and a gloating which in the deed of pure
passion are
psychologically impossible.
Nor does
;
contrary, there
is
often exultation
the offender
as we have whole neighbourhood testified, and who was so good a wife and mother, on learning that her husband had a mistress, hid a stick under her skirts one night, and after lying in wait for the couple, fell upon them with threats, and finally beat them. The husband later formed an intimacy with another woman, a servant in his house and towards her B.'s Sometimes after a conduct was very hesitating. sometimes, especifurious scene she drove her away
That
B., to
seen, the
ally
when money to
But
B.'s
and
rival.
in the
client,
CRIMES OF PASSION.
sought out the servant
259
ferociously.
in
the
the
preceding
offence,
manner of the
good) from the true passionate criminal. Madame Laurent, on discovering that her husband had an intrigue with the servant-girl, dismissed the
latter
;
woman
but the
memory
who at the end of six months sought out the offender and killed her. No man guilty of a crime of passion would have deferred his vengeance so long. The use of vitriol, too, which as we saw was employed by Madame Du Tilly (and others), is opposed by its insidiousness and inhumanity
more
in the
mind of the
to
The
employment
must be
of execu-
woman
tion.
is
very
much
excited at the
moment
B. R.,
whom we
man
who
made
at the
husband's food.
obediently threw
away
at once.
attempt on his life, to which she at once confessed. Here, then, is another example of a slow and deliberate
26o
crime
(for
itself as
husband.
Bergamo (also of irreproachby her husband, dressed herself in men's clothes, and accompanied by an old hag of her acquaintance, hid herself in a wood till the rival passed, then fell upon her and wounded and disfigured her (the elder woman aiding). Here passion was the origin of the crime, and the criminal, as we
peasant
of
able morals), being betrayed
woman
nevertheless
type,
who always
of
of
passion
great
unaided.
The crime
house where her husband and his mistress were in the habit of meeting, and to gain admittance resorted
to a very clever stratagem.
bell
and
under the door a note addressed to her husband, and which said " Paul, open. Lassimonne He is on (the mistress's husband) knows everything.
slipped
:
his way.
come
to help you.
Do
not be afraid."
Madame
her
all
the same.
One day
his habitation,
woman (a little humpback), she stabbed him to death. Even Madame Daru, who is one of the most genuine
types of the criminal from passion, was not prevented
CRIMES OF PASSION,
by anger against her husband from planning him with most security during his sleep.
Dumaire,
if
26
to kill
She had
self
led a profligate
have enriched herand she showed the utmost disinterestedness of character in relieving the wants of her relatives, and so on. She fell in love with Picart, and was faithful to him for many years had a daughter by him helped him in his studies and did not ask him to marry
frugal enough, strange to say, to
by her gains
her, but
only to continue to
live
with her.
But Picart, on finishing the course of instruction for which she had paid, contemplated leaving her to marry a rich heiress, and then Dumaire killed him. The purity of her passion and the unworthy conduct of her love would incline one to regard her crime as impulsive, but against this theory we must place the long premeditation (shown in the warning addressed
to Picart's family, " If
it
be necessary to
if
kill
him,
will
do
it ")
and
way both
of committing
it, which contrasts with the stormy but uncertain and hesitating action of true
passion.
Dav.
her.
He
was seduced by a sergeant whom she who had promised to marry deserted her when she was pregnant, and
.
she threw
vitriol
over him.
262
Now
who
is
alleges
moved by
egotism.
Here
a girl
Before
happened
deed before anything had to provoke it. Also she sought out her lover in a low masked ball to which she went accompanied by another man, thus showing some lightness of conduct and finally she chose vitriol as her weapon, because, as she declared, she wished her
;
victim to feel
all
man were dead. Equally balanced between the two sorts of crime (that ascribable to impulse and that proper to the born delinquent) is the deed of the girl Santa, who
if
the
her),
months endeavoured to (who had seduced and finally did kill him with a
lover
Clothilde Andral,
not
new
to equivocal adventures),
of an officer
who
She was
last,
left in
great want,
made
the greater
;
by
at
and
child,
lover,
who never
CRIMES OF PASSION.
even answered her
letters,
263
vitriol
she threw
at him,
slightly.
life
of
her long preparation (for three times at long intervals she came to spy upon the officer)
woman and
mere passionate impulse on the other hand, the motive for the offence was a grave one, and the sentiment from which it sprang was not ignoble.
are against the theory of
but,
;
In
all
we
find
man and
transforms him temporarily into a homicide, but a slower and more tenacious feeling, which produces a ferment of cruel instincts and allows time for
reflection
in
of the crime.
that the
answer to
are
this,
described
naturally
little
very good
and
it
is
But
this
apparent contradicthat
when we
tendencies,
reflect
woman
slight
is
criminal
such
as
by
less sensibility
and
less intensity
all
of passion.
Let
a woman, normal in
else,
normal woman be exposed to grave provocations, and these criminal tendencies which are physiologically latent will take the upper hand. But then the woman does not become a criminal through the intensity of her passions (these being colder *n her), but through the
citable than usual, or let a perfectly
crime which an
264
That
is
to say, a
normal or
quasi-normal
a crime of passion
without being a typical criminal from impulse. Her passions are weaker (than the man's), yet strong
enough
when some
free
is
out-
feelings
sets
her
latent
ascribable
is
in
which
but
very important
factor,
unaided to produce the pareffect, to achieve which the suggestion of a ticular man is necessary. Lodi stole at the instigation of
would be impotent
her lover,
who
threatened
to leave
her
if
she did
man
who one day confided to her that he had committed a crime. After many years of life in
common Noblin
woman, and
in
found herself deserted for another her grief she threatened Sougaret
He had
in order to
new
mistress,
and
save himself he conceived the idea of getting rid of one woman and binding the other to him by making
and it was the latest For a determined to sacrifice. mistress that he reluctant girl to the whole month he incited the " He drove me on," she related, " torturing deed.
her an accomplice in murder
:
me
for
weeks,
now
excitii'g
my
hatred by telling
me
to
how much
now
defying
me
CRIMES OF PASSION.
strike her
265
1
and reproaching
me
with cowardice.
me
would not
kill
the other
woman."
that passion alone would not be produce a crime, but must be reinforced by suggestion. This only means in other words that
see, then,
We
sufficient to
suggestion
criminal
is
women whose
but for that
A man
who
commits a crime when driven to it by strong passion, may have a great natural repugnance to the offence, which is momentarily suffocated by feeling but a
;
that
induced by suggestion to commit a deed of blood is, with leisure to calculate and to feel a horror of
the action
demanded
must
in
organic
possible
repulsion
to crime.
wickedness existing
have a lower degree of The latent fund of the normal woman renders
impulse which
egotism.
Egotistic
There
woman.
in
women
is
whom
the
egotistical
illness, accident,
Their offence
;
may be
regarded as originating
partly in passion
also entirely
but it lacks a grave cause, and is unprovoked by the victim thus showing an analogy with the deeds of the born criminal.
;
266
We will
in
man loved and was loved by a whose cousin, an heiress, was herself in love with the same individual. The man, good at heart, but weak, and alarmed at the idea of a struggle for life, decided eventually to engage himself to the
Belgium.
dowerless
girl
heiress.
marriage,
dangerously
ill
marry the man of her choice, the dying so possessed by jealousy that she determined to destroy her promised husband's chances of happiness by taking away his character. She swallowed a vQry valuable diamond, and then confided to her father that the young man had stolen it.
position to
woman was
who regarded
the con-
common
The
him of
her
having
order that
authorities ordered
an
Derw
much
and brought
in
Her
woman
CRIMES OF PASSION.
267
would always be hers alone, she snatched a loaded gun from the wall and shot him dead. Madame Perrin, bedridden for five years and incurable, became extremely jealous of her husband, reproached him perpetually with his infidelities, and finally determining to put an end to the situation, she called her husband to her bedside and wounded him with a revolver which she had hidden under the sheets. The crime, she declared, had been premeditated for a long time.
In
all
is
women.
crime by an
resents
happiness
in
as
a personal injury.
The sudden
destruction of their
own
felicity
renders
doubt the motive is a strong and in normal circumstances they would have remained excellent women. But all the same the offences we have detailed prove the likeness between women and children, since they might be described as offences committed by big children of developed intelligence and pas-
No
is
one
their
sorrow
great
sions.
is
is
entirely
by Spencer
men
to crimes of passion.
'
268
And
cent, of
is
women
" Madness
in
Women,"
1893.
CHAPTER
XVI.
SUICIDES.
I.
To
must investigate suicides for, even setting aside legislative and juridical considerations, the affinity and analogy between criminal impulses and suicide are so great that the two offences may be considered as two branches of the same trunk.
Suicide resembles crime in
its
variability,
but the
times
number of deaths
less
self-inflicted is four
and
five
Here
T.
Italy (1874-1833)
r,
y^^n.
Women.
19-8
Prussia (1878-1882)
8o-2 83-3
167
19-3 .^ . 15-4
807
84-6 79-0 75-0 70-0
73-0 85-0 8i-o 78-2 70-0
2ro
19-0
30-0 27-0
i^'o 19-0 21-8
Holland
(1
880- 1 882)
Denmark (18S0-1883)
Connecticut (1878-1882)
300
separate the
And
the
if
out of
all
these
figures
we
suicides caused
20
others,
we
find
same proportion
among
26g
crimes of passion.
270
2,
The
smaller
is,
number
(among women)
so to speak, prefigured in the smaller proportion of suicides from physical suffering, that is to say, the
revolt of the
Out of a hundred
(Morselli)
:
as follows
SUICIDES.
quently exposed to physical pain
271
are physiologically
as physical sensisensibility,
bound
bility
to endure
it,
indeed.
And
moral
be
forms
the
basis
of
and
the
physical
pains
may
the
almost
described
as
we
here
with
original
reason
why women
commit fewer
3.
Want.
Want
also a cause
to suicide.
in
The percentages
;
doubled and tripled by the fact that women commit suicide two and three times less frequently.
The proportion
under
:
is
as
272
the difference in
a duchess and a
washerwoman
is
man
can
who have maids or companions, &c., but a man who has to descend from a high place does not bend with such facility beneath the iron hand of destiny more often he breaks. Moreover, a woman having fewer needs and a lower degree of sensitiveness is better adapted than a man to support not only moral suffering, but even physical privations, such as insufficient food, absence of comforts, and
all
We have
seen
women
of high rank
so on.
There
is
the additional
fact,
too,
that
in
cases
in-
woman
and
is
consequently
much
less
overcome
Maternity,
mother who
grief of
less
affected
by the
her children,
oftener
whom
she
streets,
much
errors
and
his faults.
Finally, a
woman
having
less
man
;
has less difficulty in resorting to begging, an expedient to which the sterner sex often prefer death
and it frequently happens that a w^oman, with her weaker moral sense, will have recourse at last to the It follows from facile relief offered by prostitution.
SUICIDES.
all
273
this that
many more
woman
When
can be driven by want to suicide. poverty, in her case, has reached the acutest
stage of privation,
when
all
means of
relief fail,
and
she also
is
whose infamous propositions I would not listen." A beautiful young girl left a letter saying that she had nothing left, all she possessed being in pawn. " I might have had a well-stocked shop," she added, " but I prefer death to the existence of a fallen woman." Love contributes largely to suicide as to 4. Love.
crime.
The
statistics
show a preponderance
Germany (1852-62)
Saxony (1875-78)
Austria (1869-78)
Men. 2*33
1-83 5-80 5*89
...
Women.
8-46 5-i8 17*40 14-13 7-50 i2-o8
Vienna (1851-59)
Italy (1866-77)
Belgium
380 953
are,
however, furnished by
Men. 12-50 15-48
Women.
8 13-16
France (1856-68)
These
figures
show
that
the
passionate
woman
and the flies this fact, through the well-known pangs of love and law of antagonism between suicide and crime, must
to suicide as a relief to the disillusions
;
274
This predominance among women of suicide over homicide for love is in perfect harmony with our view of the nature of love in women. We saw that
in
women
love
is
a species
the
entire
of slavery, a sacrifice
personality.
gladly
made
of
elements, even
egotistic
when very
to
strong,
sentiments
triumph
the
average
only
woman, but
that
ill-treatment
on the part of
it
their lover
In such natures
love cannot
is
to crime.
To
a psychological
absurdity, since
their
love
and
There are many ignorant Heloises who, when putting an end by suicide to the agony of an ill-requited affection, express in their last words a feeling of self-sacrificing devotion towards the man w^ho should inspire them only with vindictiveness.
to her lover says " You have During two years you swore to marry me, and now you desert me. I love you, but I cannot survive the loss of your affection." Another writes, under similar circumstances " I have done everything morally possible to live without the affection which comprised my whole but the effort is beyond my strength. Cerlife
girl
wTiting
deceived
me.
SUICIDES,
tainly
275
my
fault
is
great,
and
my memory
;
will
be
cursed even by
my
child, the
very thought of
whom
but still sets all the chords of my being vibrating without the other half of myself, without him whom
I
have
lost,
my
I
life is
insupportable.
feet,
had thought
in-
spurned me.
the
pray that he
may pardon my
justice of character,
my
violence,
happy hours which he passed with me." of two deserted women wrote to her friend " Assure him (the lover) that I pray for his happiness, and die adoring him." Another said, " Death will soon divide us. I hope thus to make you happy."
One
"
What have
done,"
asked yet a
last letter to
third, in her
because
my
life ? "
Desertion, in
the deserter.
death,
He is looked upon as lost through which causes so much grief, that for the woman no other consolation is possible but to die And she dies when she does not go in her turn. mad.
Marro,
figures
:
in this respect,
Women.
2*5 per cent.
Unrequited love causes madness in Betrayed love Desertion, or the death of husband
or wife
Sighele,
*'
0*3
0"6
,,
17
3 '2
suicidio
,,
,,
Evoluzione
di
dall'
omicidio
1891.
al
nei
drammi
d'amore."
"Arch,
psich,"
Brierre
de
Boismont, "
Du
Suicide," i860.
276
the proportion
and
sextupled
for
women. Now,
if
we connect
these
frequency of
virile characteristics in
from passion, we
Women who
virile
lovers
strength of sentiment.
And
this
is
the reason
why
even the
woman
guilty
of a crime of passion so rarely offers the complete Love alone does not excite type of her class.
her to crime
egotistical
she
is
less
moved by
when
it
than
has
by
set
sentiments
which
disillusion
fermenting.
existing in
a woman,
be the case, then either her natural latent fund of wickedness has been set free, or virility of disposition has infused into her feelings a violence, and consequently a capacity for murderous assaults, to which the true woman, the finished
If the contrary
woman,
is
a stranger.
The
if
such
it
can be called
in
woman
is
suicide
all
sort.
remarkable
that
marriage
more
suicides
among men than women. Fourteen women commit suicide when deserted by their husbands, and the same number when widowed against fifty men in the first case and forty-one in the second.
This fact
is
partly explained
by the predominance
and partly by the circumstance that, as we have seen, so many women go mad from love. We must
SUICIDES.
277
women
legally
to violent
forbidden.
illicit
or
all
social
having been created for the average specimen of humanity, the woman who tranquilly casts anchor in the port of marriage belongs to the great army of normals, and loves too feebly to commit suicide when widowed. On the other hand,
institutions,
the passionate
erected
woman
finds
in
the
very barriers
by society
the rock
wreck.
go
to
women who
a
commit
5.
go mad.
midtiple
suicides.
Double
and
In
double
is
almost always
suicide, thus
the
woman.
Where two
is
is
lovers
commit
expiating what
laws, the
woman
after
and she reproached him, saying, You do not love me enough to make this sacrifice." Bancal ended by consenting, but when the time came he hesitated to open her veins, and she urged him to it, begging him to make haste. When she fainted, Bancal felt a horror of his deed and tried to stop the bleeding, but Trousset, determined to die, insisted that he should give her poison, and, when that was not enough, that he should stab her. " Make an end of it," she said "you must kill me." Similarly in the case of C. M. and P. L. it was
resisted,
;
He
278
with the
hesitated
girl
the
and began
It is
idea originated, and as he to weep, " Child," she said, " you
!
have no courage.
myself.
See
will
kill
young
girl
of
who was
affianced
all
in
the habit
of reading
neither
parents
refused
at
their
consent to
the marriage,
became
am
determined
to die," she
Give
me
The day
of
came, and he
left,
new year he would be able to see promised bride again. But when the moment
was denied him
in
punishment
the
girl
for
an
infraction
of discipline.
When
learnt
this,
she could no Gasson deserted and rejoined Bertha, with whom he passed a week. But as he was in constant danger of being arrested. Bertha conceived the idea of suicide, persuaded him to consent, and fixed the day and hour for the deed. He was continually for putting it off, but she ordered him to fire. The attempt failed, and when Gasson was brought up for trial, the contrast between his character and the woman's shone forth as clear as
costs, as
SUICIDES,
noonday.
279
and showed that he had been under the influence of suggestion. She, resolute, firm, virile, proved by her attitude that she had planned and prepared everything.
He was
by her parents
to
marry
a rich
she disliked, during the absence on military service of her previous affianced. She was
man whom
and when her lover returned on a day's to San Bernardo. They spent a few hours there then, tying their feet and
in despair,
leave
The woman
a letter for her family, in which she said that she had been constrained to make a marriage she
detested,
husband, or
life,
man
in
when
father
mother to prehe joked with but when the evening arrived he had
his
;
He begged
disappeared.
between
dish.
whom
great affection,
and the youth there had long been had asked her mother for the same
She arrayed herself for the first time in a she had purposely embroidered many months before, and said, " Do I not look like a bride?" then by the evening she also had disdress that
appeared.
The two
same
suspicion,
28o
met
letter
from the
water to be turned
in
off,
found the
girl
if
them
The
girl's
wherein
the writer
"
alluded
with
pleasure
to
the
thought of
that day."
Moralists and theologians may say what they will, but in this money-making, sordid age, such incidents, so far from inspiring us with horror, fill our eyes with tears and our hearts with the deepest com-
passion
for they
still
feel strong,
them.
we
see
is
so
common,
an elective affinity strengthened by the reproductive organs and the peculiar repugnance to separation induced by these in the molecules of the organism.
The Indian
rite than any masculine tyranny or than the sanction which religion usually accords to any time-honoured custom. (The Vedas,
We
know
that
when the
attempted to put an end to the barbarous usage, or at least to prevent the priests from encouraging it, they met with great opposition. Lieutenant Earle endeavoured to dissuade a widow,
English
first
who was
smilingly
SUICIDES.
281
the
effect
;
by urging her
flames by
first
at
least
to
try
of
the
she,
and
with a smile of scorn, plunged the member a lighted oil-lamp, and watched it burning " You moved. may say what you choose," replied to the officers, " but I must belong to and to nobody else I loved him and could not
;
into
unshe
him
love
another."
She went seven times round the pyre, then mounted it, and laying her dead husband's head on
fire
The
we have
offered
is
proved by the fact that in countries where there is no religious ordinance of the kind as, for instance, in China yet childless widows will hang themselves publicly, believing that they go to join their dear
In New Zealand the daughter of conqueror Hongi, seeing her father returning the from battle unaccompanied by her husband, jumped into his boat, snatched his sword, and after running
deceased at once.
herself,
in the land of
We
who
most
woman
out with
In a double suicide
that
of R. F. and G. B.
it
And
fail
man
in
282
in-
All this
is
quite natural.
in the
normal woman, a very important element, even though as a rule she does not feel the sentiment with excessive intensity (we may here recall the celebrated dictum of Madame de Stael), for the passionate woman it must necessarily constitute almost her whole existence. To separate her from her lover is to kill her while a man, even when very much in love, finds life too attractive on other sides to feel that his whole existence is shattered because deprived
;
of
to
and
is
in all the
aims
in
woman
That
why
so
many men,
Robert Greslou
commit
suicide
is
removed, while
illicit
the
woman
before.
Add
connections,
such
which we have been considering, women risk social consequences of much greater moment to themselves than to their lovers, and under
as
those
commit
is
suicide
reinforced
to
them.
women
is
that of
SUICIDES.
despair, kills her
herself.
283
young
Madame
Arresteilles,
who adored
him
her
daughter,
be sent to an asylum
the
idea
unable to
support
of
separation,
Madame mother put an end to herself Monard, worn out by the brutality of her husband, who continually beat herself and her two children,
the
tried to
kill
the
latter.
Madame
Souhine, a very
respectable
working woman, whom the imprisonment of her husband and an industrial crisis had
all
she had,
bought good dresses for her children, gave them a comparatively sumptuous repast, and then when they were asleep she strangled them and tried to commit
suicide.
all
very moral
and
their act,
looks at
first
by
pletion of their
own
self-inflicted
is
death.
To
die
them seems
like killing
them-
An
think her
ended if those of her children must continue, and the proof of this is that these infanticides followed by suicide always take place
sufferings
own
when
284
themselves
that
is
is,
For maternity
and a mother
unable to provide for themselves provides for them by every means in her power, such means including
at times the pathological at present considering.
phenomenon which we
are
When the child grows up the mother can separate from him, and although she continues to love him (thus differing from the lower animals which abandon
offspring), she no longer feels bound to him by that common life which, so to speak, makes of two beings but one organism. Madame Souhine, when asked why she had killed
their
kill
herself,
replied
wished to go with them." This view is confirmed by the fact that when the child is still young enough not to be, as we might say, entirely disjoined from his mother, but sufficiently old to undergo suggestion^ then his mother does not
actually
kill
him, but
persuades
him
to
commit
suicide in her
company. E. and E. B., whose cases were examined by Gamier, persuaded the one, a boy of 13, the other, a boy of 10, to kill themselves at the same moment as their respective mothers put an end to their own lives. Sometimes, however, the double maternal suicide is determined not by misfortune leading to despair, but, by more egotistical sentiments, and the crime then becomes analogous to a suicide of the passionateselfish sort, and is the equivalent (offered by natures
SUICIDES,
285
women and
affectionate
mothers.
E.,
a prey to
man
and in poor circumstances. The woman was by the existence she had to lead in one room, which served as bedroom, sitting-room, and kitchen, and where constant poverty reigned. She perpetually accused her husband of ill-treating her, although such was not the case, and finally, in a moment of greater irritation than ever, she decided to kill herself and
herself
fretted
the son
whom
she adored.
If,
instead of being a
woman
been wicked and wanting in maternal love, she would have revenged herself for all the privations and pains of her life by tormenting her child, as did Madame Stakembourg, and perhaps by poisoning her husband. But being of a better nature, she
chose suicide in company with the boy, thus yielding
to
an
egotistical
impulse
instead
of to the ego-
altruistic feeling
which
maternity.
Double suicides in two women are extremely rare. have found one incomplete instance in the death of Olga Protaffovv and Vera Gerebssow They were very intimate friends and lived together in extreme poverty. Tired of their misery. Vera made her friend promise to kill her if within two months their condition should not have improved. Olga
We
21
286
promised,
after
months were
word.
over,
much
The
to
rarity
friendship,
and
is
be ex-
the
small degree of
Double
women can feel for one another. among married couples are also
and for the third time we have to matrimony being an institution adapted observe that to normal women, such women, with their weak passions, naturally pay but a small toll to suicide,
extremely rare
while,
women
find in the
customs, the prejudices, and the laws of marriage the very rock on which they perish. We know of only one
very sad case of a double suicide of husband and wife, youth of 20, an only which happened at Bologna.
son, adored
by
by
his
and to whom a magnificent literary future seemed promised by the examples of talent which he had already given, died suddenly during an epidemic of diphtheria and his parents, thus deprived of their one great object of affection, committed suicide together by asphyxia a month In this instance the intense paternal and later. maternal love of the pair had bred a new bond of union, a kind of second love for their son into which entered all the pride and all the hopes they had centred on this offspring of the mutual tenderness of and in this sentiment we must seek the their youth
;
explanation of
suicide between
SUICIDES.
6.
287
at once
Suicides
from madness.
Confirmatory
and explanatory of the affirmation that suicides from passion are comparatively rare among women, is the fact that 50 per cent, and sometimes more, of suicides in the female sex are due to madness. These are the statistics
:
Women.
Germany (1852-61)
Prussia (1869-77)
Norway
5077
44 48-40
10-80 81-94 13-16 27-50 28-40
These
by
the predominance
among women
of causes producing
them
exclusively,
in preference.
and pellagra, which attacks them Together these two causes counterbaleffects
a
to
woman
crime.
Only when
grief
spirit to
woman
to
This phenomenon
respect
regard to crime.
An
infinity of variations in
the
slight
hyperesthesia and
may conduce and the woman, as less sensitive and less variable than the man, must contribute fewer exvivacity of passion to positive madness,
;
to suicide
288
amples of those suicides from passion which in men arise from the multiple variations, the numerous slight psychical anomalies which occur in this or that
individual.
Woman
being
less variable
is
example of a double
in
And
that
is
why
The woman,
man,
in other
And when
are
rarely
the anomaly
one.
is
excessive, suicide
and madness
very
Consequently
women
with
are
criminal
when
compared
men, That
is to say, the two poles are respectively normality and extreme degeneration, and the intermediary variations which should connect the two do not exist.
CHAPTER
XVII.
Statistics.
In
1,753
Italy,
there were
criminal
criminal
women
of
against
a lower proportion
criminals,
women
for
among
these being
women
Richter's observations
we
learn
were
the
while
out
of
1,462
female
lunatics
made
together with
290
we
the
largest
contingent
of
male criminal
lunatics),
and the
which that disease when existent in women has to assume the forms of prostitution or lasciviousness, both offences which, however reprehensible, are less criminal and less dangerous, and therefore do not lead to sensational trials and jealous reclusion. Ninetynine out of a thousand of our female criminal lunatics were prostitutes, and 212 servants, or of no profession.
Out of 24 female
Sander
1 1
2 swindlers.
As
decade 1870-79,
in Italy:
...
Mania
Imbecility and idiotcy
...
33 22
Hallucinatory
monomania
Megalomania
Suicide
Moral
folly
showing an evident prevalence of the forms (hallucinatory monomania, melancholia, suicide) generated by prison life, and on account of detention, or of those congenital affections, such as imbecility and idiotcy, which ought to guarantee the subject from incarceration while the diseases so common in the male criminal, such as epilepsy and moral folly, are rare. Esquirol says that even among moral women the most common forms of madness are melancholia and
;
furious mania.
In
Italy,
CRIMINAL FEMALE LUNATICS.
291
inferior to the male as 1,657 to 3,414, but the female maniacs (especially furious maniacs) are as 1,843 to
1,836.
If
among
who form
is
the largest
little
but
mad-
the case
among
of criminals.
and found that 53, or 12-9 per out of the number were affected as follows Epilepsy 11 (2-6 per cent.), hysteria 19 (4-9 per cent),
:
alcoholism
13
(3-1
idiotcy
10 (2*5
per cent).
The
murderesses
(130)
292
to be found
in
At Broadmoor the greatest number of lunatics are among the homicides and wounders (103
141)
;
next comes
3.
incest,
19
parricides
6,
and
burglary
The greater number of female lunatics are married women, while the greater number of male lunatics
are single
{see "
L'Uomo
countries.
Delinquente,"
vol.
ii.)
and
made on healthy
receive
criminals in
all
The
lunatic
asylums
for
females
more
inmates in
summer
The
statistics of
and autumn are respectively 11-14. male criminals are about the same.
Out of 100
3 idiots, 3 drunkards,
,,
3 3
,,
,,
Out of 10 wounders
3 hysterics, being 30 per cent.
Out of 10
Out
of
20 poisoners
2 hysterics, being 10 per cent. 2 epileptics, 10 ,, ,, 1 drunkard, ,, 5 ,,
Out
of
20 swindlers
2 hysterics, being 10 per cent.
I
epileptic,
,,
,,
Out of 4 incendiaries
3 cretines, being 80 per cent.
Out of 25
guilty of rape
hysteric,
,,
,,
293
And
the
same may be
Premeditation.
Although
to
less
marked
all
degree than
{see
And
of the crime,
and the efforts at dissimulation, are equal and sometimes greater than similar phenomena
establish an alibi,
in the
simple criminal.
of the most extraordinary instances of ability was given by Euphrasie Mercier, who carried through a series of most complicated forgeries in order to
One
Madame
all
Menetrier,
trace of the
that, in spite
when a nephew
it.
And
from her
lunatic,
birth,
who
mad probably being the daughter of a religious believed that he could cure all illnesses.
(Ball, "
And
De
la
Responsabilite
history, after
lady of wealth, aged 26, with no hereditary becoming a prey to fixed melancholia,
294
whom
she tended as a
nurse,
and effaced the marks to escape detection. She protested remorse, but relapsed again immediThere are (says Savage) pathological female thieves steal, knowing what they do. They feel, especially at certain periods, an irresistible temptation to thieve, or to break things, or to plunge their hands into Nothing will deter them from the particular liquids. accomplishment of their desires, which they achieve, There if by no other means, then through violence. are women whose appetite can only be appeased
with stolen food.
Delinquente.")
{See also vol.
ii.
ately (Savage).
who
of
"
L'Uomo
One
which normal
peculiarity
is,
of the
however,
is
only an
periods,
exaggeration
of
her
state,
that
acute at
particular
such as menstruation,
all
noted
symptoms resembling
will
epilepsy.
and
mother of five who was at school, and after despatching orders for the youngest one, who was with a wet nurse, to be brought to her, threw herself with the remaining three down a well.
relates
the case
of
one, the
children,
who
295
state a
writes Icard,
"when
in
this
woman
mothers
capable of anything.
Passionately loving
;
pose infamous calumnies against their dear ones while chaste women will talk and act in the most indecent
naturally good, will
;
manner."
"
'
kind of animal instinct reigns supreme in the pregnant woman (writes Cabanis, vol. iii. p. 344), and may drive her to any excess. And the same pheno-
menon
is
possible at the
first
return of menstruation,
We
see,
then, that
female lunatic, and consequently of the criminal lunatic, is an exaggeration of the sexual instincts. These which in male lunatics are almost always in abeyance, lead
in quite
in
women, even
girls,
("
in
very old
women
as
young
writes,
to
the
unnatural excesses.
Arch,
Marro
at
"The
the period of
They have ideas of strange marriages delirium. and monstrous births, and are subject to sudden One will be seized with a obscene delusions.
delirium of jealousy
;
another
feels herself
swarmed
over by little imps, who hang on to her apron, play her every kind of trick, pinching and pricking Hallucinations, in short, abound, presenting her.
the one
"
mania (writes Schule) " women relieve themselves by incessant chatter, in which there is a mixture of true and
Under the
influence of
296
false perceptions,
tastic
gestures."
Nymphomania
a shameless bacchante.
She
tries
to
attract every
man
She often sometimes the most refined coquetry. suffers from intense thirst, a dry mouth, a fetid breath, and a tendency to bite everybody she meets, as if affected with hydrophobia, and sometimes she even shows a horror of liquids, and feels as if she
were being strangled.
One
morbid
theria.
"
of the writers
erotic
in
which these
a
in
woman,
The
instance
remains unique
(Lombroso,
Amore
is a milder form of the same mania which the subject shows either an excessive cleanliness or an excessive dirtiness, also a tendency to
More common
in
her
own
"
Allgemeine Psichopathologie,"
is
Sometimes
the presence
she
makes her pulse beat more rapidly, gives her a At first reserved, she more animated expression. will later throw off all restraint, and only think and
ing,
Female
prototypes
lunatics
in
all
in
general
surpass
their
male
tenI
sexual
aberrations
and
am
297
Zeit Psych.,"
of female from maladies of the reproductive organs, which, by increasing reflex action and impairing psychical activity, bring on convulsions and produce abnormal sensations, which are transformed
that
lunatics
suffer
who
affirmed
two-thirds
into
illusions,
hallucinations, delirium,
or
obscene
impulses.
comim-
in the
mania
is
in
women
is
women madness
its
mani-
festation
than in men.
Briefly, in
female criminal
lunatics
we
find to a
we had
namely, an inversion of
cially distinguish the
normal
woman
namely, reserve
docility
CHAPTER
XVIII.
AND MORAL
Epileptic delinquents.
same
relation as in
women
men
rarer
in
the
female
Marro
in
in the
is
epilepsy also
male delinquents.
during six and a half years, out of 23,333 male criminals in the prison of Turin, there were 0'66 per
cent, of epileptics,
affected out of
while,
if
we take
the averages
of the calculations
made by
we find from 0^25 to 0*27 of male epileptics in Italy, and 0'2 7 in France (Charvin) among the normal
population.
Much
ness, as
rarer
is
we may convince
Scalia,
According to the decennial statistics of Beltrani and the investigations of Virgilio Rossi
298
EPILEPTIC DELINQUENTS.
("I.
299
Pazzi criminali,"
Rome,
between 1880
;
and
891, 25 were epileptic, and 35 morally insane while out of 36 female criminals none were epileptic,
1
and only three morally insane. Between the years 1866 and 1882 out of Zjj male lunatics in penal establishments, 9 were epileptic and 49 morally insane and out of 20 female lunatics, none were epileptic, and only one was morally
;
insane.
in
188 1
there
were
22
epileptics
;
lunatic delinquents (or 33 per cent.) out of 24 female lunatic delinquents, 3 were epileptic
This
in the
fact,
which
is
criminality of
women,
ordinary mad-houses.
Italy, in
In
the year
statistics,
there
were
in
the different
mad-houses
617 women (100 men as against 59-i women) in 1886-88 the female epileptics were 58*0 as against icx) males and the predominance in this
men, and
;
respect of
men
over
women
Northern
Italy.
300
epileptics,
and
39-3 to
In
statistics
by the Government of Australia), between 1887 and 1891 epilepsy was noted as determining madness iii times in men, and 70 times in women. The greater number of male epileptics to be found in the asylums is all the more significant that the
furnished
is
less
than
in females.
As Kohler
tiker
;
justly observes
("
women.
100
epileptics
53-4
males
for
46-6
females.
surpasses
first
the
neither the
and lunatics received into the asylums number, far more than that of the living denizens at any given moment, which we ought to
it is
number of
this
women
The
is
women much
EPILEPTIC DELINQUENTS.
irritable
301
than in
men
centres,
although
in
there
may
be
;
equality
of
the
lies
motor centres
women.
in
Tonnini remarked
epilepsy
the
female
more often causes dementia and imbecility than madness that is to say, it produces fewer psychical
;
anomalies just as
anomalies, there
it
being
women
as
One
phe-
beginning at
of the indi-
again
from their
and reasons
is
cortical irritation
much
less
common
the
male.
In short, the predominance of the male sex over
the female
is
insanity which, as
affinities
we have
proved, presents so
many
physical
epilepsy.
The
among women.
22
It
explains
why
they are
302
SO
much oftener merely occasional criminals, and why, even when criminals from passion, they hardly ever commit their crimes in one of those sudden also impulses w^hich are always partly epileptoid why, in common crimes, they exhibit a premeditation,
;
which springs instantaneously from an epileptic movement. It throws light on the tardy action of the female offender, and while confirming the theory of the relation between congenital criminality and
epilepsy, serves also to explain sexual differences.
On
woman
is
a born
criminal,
in her as in her
male prototype the symptoms of an epileptic tendency and naturally these are the more marked the
;
results furnished
in 10
per cent.
,, '
10
5
130 murderesses
,,
j,
3'9
>
while in
100 infanticides
10 wounders 25 offenders against morals
',,
,, ,,
,, ,,
,,
,, ,,
,,
,, ,,
90 thieves
o o o
,,
Here, then,
congenital
we
criminals, while
as
gradually diminishes
and disappears
offenders.
we
EPILEPTIC DELINQUENTS.
Again,
303
among
aged
19,
many
on 26 occasions in She was 1*59 m. in height and weighed 54 kgs. Her lower jaw was much developed she had orbital margins, prominent cheek-bones and sinuses, a regular nose and ears, black hair (scanty from long-standing scald), very large, sparkling dark brown eyes enormous median incisors (with diasthema), and canine lateral teeth sloping internally and backwards like all the other lateral teeth. The total circumference of her cranium Its probable capacity, 16 16. was 570. Cephalic index, 84. She was tattooed with the entire name of an Italian lover, whom she had known in Paris, and a date, both ornamented, and on her left arm bore the initials of another lover, and the words, faime Jeanr she felt the General sensitiveness Faraday current at 66 mm. on the right side (normal 70) and Sensitiveness to pain at 55 on the left. 30 on the right side (normal ^6) and 30 on the left. Tactile
one year
in the prison of Turin.
; ;
^^
sensitiveness
mm. on
left
in
showed much irritability during atmospheric changes. she felt a strong burning Magnetic sensitiveness sensation when the magnet was applied to her fore:
304
head.
taste, small.
Sense of smell,
dull.
Exact chromatic perin both eyes. Hearing: she perceived a watch at 140 cm. on the right and 131 cm. on the left. She had been very precocious, and was a mother (of a dead child) for the first time when only 16. Her movements were easy, prompt, and very rapid Her and her muscular agility most remarkable. muscular force was exceptional, the dynamometer marking 55 on the right and 50 on the left and although bound she succeeded in tearing the straitwaistcoat which had sometimes to be applied to her. Her greatest force lay in her teeth, with which she could reduce wood, glass, and other things to the Her voice was sonorous and harsmallest pieces. monious her perception and ideation rapid. She
Sight
30"20
ception.
;
;
could remember distant events, but not recent ones. She was very dissolute, and chose her lovers among
the worst characters.
When
she
consumed
a
capricious,
it
in drinking,
mule-like
obstinacy,
was
also
extremely
satisfaction of every
fancy which she took into her head even when in Her hatred knew no limits, and she gloated prison.
over revenge with voluptuous delight. Having been betrayed by one of her lovers, she tattooed his name
and the date of her acquaintance with him on her right arm, at the same time swearing vengeance on him. And one day, having enticed him to visit her, she spat in his face a paste composed of glass and tobacco, which she had kept in her mouth, and which Another lover, having blinded him completely.
EPILEPTIC DELINQUENTS.
3^5
beaten her when drunk, she allowed him to fall asleep, and then set fire to the mattress on which he
was
lying.
she entered prison for the 26th time in one year she was covered with wounds, but would not give up the name of the man who had attacked her, saying that she wished to work her own revenge, and
When
she did not conceal even from the judge the intention of wounding her assailant as soon as she should be She always carried a knife, which at liberty again. she used on the smallest provocation and with the
utmost indifference. She was quite insensible to the consequences of the wounds she inflicted, and recalled
with pleasure a
see, in Paris.
man whom
and
she killed, as
to
we
shall
She
was not
her
satisfaction
enough,
preferred
blind
victims.
She was, however, kind to her female companions when in- need, and she was passionately fond of While not really a thief, she appropriated children. with great facility anything which came in her way. She spoke French and Piedmontese slang with great facility, and sang forbidden songs in a pleasing
manner.
Prison life had no terrors for her on the contrary she dominated the situation and insisted on the best
;
treatment.
Born near Caserta, she was stolen by some strolling mountebanks at the age of two years and grew up without knowing that she was not among her own Having quickly learnt to sing and dance, kindred.
;
306
and began
this life at
14
in
At
man
whom
deeply
lived
love
with
her.
Frightened and
much
escaped and went to Paris. She some days by singing, then became the mistress, for two years, of a young man, a model, from Catanzaro, by whom (at 16) she had a dead She eventually left her lover, who, she dischild.
grieved, the girl
for
moment
knife
drunken
with such
She killed a painter who had refused to pay her, and it was after her imprisonment for this crime that she began to be a model but her life became ever more profligate and bestial, and she frequented the worst company. Even when out of prison her unruly conduct caused her to be arrested for wounding alone 12 times in one year. The police said that she ought to be arrested every day. In affrays she
;
and daring as to put men as well as women to flight. When in prison she clamoured and shrieked for days together, and broke everything within her reach. No punishment sufficed to correct her. The slightest cause would provoke this condition, the only way of calming which was to give her something that she wanted. She only remembered the crisis very confusedly when it had passed, but sometimes an allu-
EPILEPTIC DELINQUENTS.
sion
her.
307
to
the
outbreak
provoked
fresh
one
in
two or three months she had been motor epilepsy, to the great terror of her cell-companion (whom it may be mentioned in passing she had corrupted). Another of our examples is M. B., aged 47, whose
At
intervals of
type of face
is
Mongolian.
somewhat
dull, 2-8
;
handedness)
slight
slight
insensibility to
by peripheral scotomata in the internal superior quadrant From her early youth she had drunk 5 or 6 litres of wine a day, and eight wine-glasses of aquavita.
pain
sight
affected
At
squandered
the age of 20 she stole a thousand francs, which she in articles of adornment and in wine.
Later she wounded a lover who had left her for another woman, and strung herself up to the act by drinking, because, as she said, " He who has most
thread spins most cloth."
delight on the idea of having punished him, and talks of doing as much for her relatives who refuse her her
share of inheritance.
cut
down
their vines
and
their grain.
She does not know that she was ever epileptic, but many times when at her work in the kitchen she has cut her hand without noticing it. She has had attacks of giddiness without cause, and has fallen to the ground in them and finally she has on three distinct occasions shown that she did not know what she was
;
doing by acts of unusual eccentricity, one being an attempt to light the fire with a note for 50 francs
308
which she took from a drawer, and which her mistress only succeeded in snatching from her just in
time.
She has no recollection of these acts any more than she was conscious at the time of performing them, and
she relates them as they were told her.
is
that of a
woman whom
at first
She had but few characteristics of degeneration, only overhanging brows, a heavy lower part to her face, alveolar prognathism, and anatomical and functional lefthandedness. She took part with her lover in an audacious robbery committed upon a dealer in second-hand articles then tried to escape, but, when
we took
to be an occasional delinquent.
stolen
article
in
her
hand).
She declared
;
that
when
than
physiognomy
left
pleasing.
;
her Her capacity was remarkable Her touch was dull on the
her sensibility to pain normal, and
;
side, 3
mm.
normal also her taste and smell visual field of left eye slightly limited. There was something virile and She had quarrelled with energetic about the woman. was filled with hatred for the lover her father, and Her who had been the cause of her misfortunes. prison-sister rages were most violent, and because the
briefly
reproved
her
she
hair
muttered,
by the
window." This subject, who is a middle type between criminaloids and born criminals, had only one real attack of motor epilepsy, and that was caused by the deep
EPILEPTIC DELINQUENTS.
annoyance of seeing her brother's
were none.
2.
309
mistress,
who was
Prostitutes.
According
is
to
Parent-Duchatelet's
prostitutes are
statistics,
among
which we found
criminals.
for
among the worst sort of female Turin among 480 slightly criminal
cent, of epileptics.
we found r5 per
figures as a
But these
anthropology, and
we
women condemned
was
epileptic,
for corruption of
in
and only
one
case,
plicated
by
hysteria,
did
we
find
Here, then,
of which
is
we have met
many
in the course of
our
we
reflect
female sex
[see
when we
re-
member
woman.
Seeing the passive and retrogressive nature of the prostitute one can understand how an atavistic return
of moral insanity accounts for her appearance on the
irrita-
which produces psychical epilepsy and leads to the graver crimes and the more striking cases of
sexual perversity.
310
3.
morally insane.
In
;
men and 43 women that is to say, for lOO women. In the years 1886-88 there were 155 females and 274 males, or 55-6 of the former for 100 of the latter and predominance of the male sex is more marked in Southern than in Northern Italy, just as we saw was the case with epilepsy.
105 being
40*9
men
EPILEPTIC DELINQUENTS,
her children, gives them
311
When
such
women become
profligate
they claim
all
threaten to
enter a house of ill-fame, and yet are not rarely subject to a delirium of jealousy, in which
life.
When
calm returns
sit
and melancholy." There is a more constant relation between prostitution and the commoner forms of moral insanity
such as lead to confinement in an asylum.
Here the
symptoms
C. di B.,
are
still
who had
hated everybody
kind to her
:
those
who were
allowed to
di S.
and one day she begged to be beat two dogs because it irritated her to
C.
to
vice,
among
the hys-
family, well-educated, and most profligate existence, but nevertheless accused her husband of dissolute conduct with such plausibility, that she succeeded in drawing the attention of the authorities to him. In the
a poetess,
312
asylum she boasted of her former profligate life, and twitted the matrons for having observed a different rule She was already an old woman, but sucof conduct.
ceeded nevertheless
in getting
up
asylum, then turned on those who had abetted her and calumniated them as she calumniated the medical
ances.
them the gravest annoycomposed magnificent verses on the beauty of platonic love, and on the very same day would resort to disgusting eccentricities of food perversion of appetite which was her only sign of
attendants, thereby causing
She
madness.
Another poetess of great intelligence showed the same profligacy in her love affairs, of which she made shameless confessions to the men themselves. She was rich, but induced everybody to give her promissory notes, of which she always exacted
full
pay-
ment
in her intrigues
was publicity, w^ith its concomitant scandal. Another woman, with all the characteristics of degeneration (enormous jaw and sinuses, but a great fineness of touch, I 'I mm.), had been sold by her mother to a man who honourably married her. From the very day of
her marriage she poisoned her husband's
life,
accusing
him before the syndic and the doctors of infidelity, even of incest. And when he wished her to undergo
an operation
for internal polypus, she
it
maintained that
he only desired
She spent the whole day in idleness, only interrupted by excesses in drinking and profligacy, and by card-playing, the latter being resorted to by her for the purpose of divining Her the intentions of her husband and her lovers.
to kill her.
EPILEPTIC DELINQUENTS,
habits and conversation
indecent.
also
313
in the asylum were most Like many persons of obscene habits, she
;
showed at times a desire for disgusting food but she was clever enough before the doctors and
judges to justify everything she did, and succeeded
at last in getting her
husband prosecuted.