THE MYSTERY OF CRIME.
Philanthropists are sweeping the heavens and scouring
the earth to discover some reformatory system, whereby
the juvenile criminal may be brought back to habits of
virtue, and the seed of vice be extirpated from the little
heart before it has fully blossomed there. It is very
justly argued, that the young are led, and do not
voluntarily go astray, as a general rule; that early delinquencies
are attributable to the misdirections of old hands in
iniquity; and that, if some process can be adopted which
will withdraw the infantine trespasser from the influence
of those who are hardened in guilt, the supposed natural
innocence of childhood will re-appear, and the character
will be rescued for a virtuous future. Hence, the
admirable exertions which are now being made in various
parts of the country for the establishment of reformatory
schools and institutions, where the young criminal may
be trained to virtue, instead of being sent to prison for
punishment and confirmation in crime.
One is occasionally startled, however, by a case for
which no remedial measure has yet been devised, and
which seems to puzzle and defy the best-considered of all
benevolent intentions. A few days ago, a little girl, aged
fourteen, stood in the dock at one of our provincial
Quarter Sessions, charged by her uncle with stealing a
cow which belonged to him, and selling it for her own
private advantage. She had lived with her uncle ever
since she became fatherless, at two years old, but was
dismissed by his wife, shortly before the theft, for the fault
of " souceness," and, soon afterwards, the cow disappeared,
and the owner traced it to the possession of a man to
whom his niece had sold it for £5. The case seemed bad
against the child; but she looked innocent, and was helpless;
and the cross-examination of the prosecutor, by a
counsel who volunteered for the defence, soon changed the
aspect of affairs, and converted the uncle into a type of
that fabled relative, who, under pretence of being guardian
to two children, founded the nursery tragedy of "The
Babes in the Wood." The uncle admitted, when
questioned, that some time before a neighbour had given
a calf jointly betwixt himself and the prisoner; that this
calf had grown into a cow, and been sold by him without
accounting for any of the proceeds to his niece; that, in
fact, he had purchased the stolen cow with the very
money he had received for the other, and that he had
never paid any wages for the services which he had had
out of the girl. The bench of magistrates declined to hear
counsel for the defence, and their chairman forthwith
directed the jury, to acquit the prisoner. The uncle
offered to receive back the girl into his house, but she
clung to her widowed mother, and the Court was deeply
interested in her behalf. Indeed, so much so, that a
benevolent barrister, unconnected with the case, but present on
the occasion, communicated with the clergyman of the
parish in which the child had lived; whilst offers of aid,
both pecuniary and protective, were rife and ready; and
the little martyr seemed likely to have made powerful
friends in the moment of her threatened destruction.
But an investigation of the case gave a totally new
colour to the proceedings. It turned out that the
supposed cruel uncle had been a most reluctant prosecutor,
at the solicitation of neighbours who wished to arrest the
child in a downward career which she had for some time
been pursuing. The uncle had in other matters been the
victim of his niece's finished deceits. Although resident
in a retired rural district, the ticket-of-leave scoundrel had
gone over the ground, and other bad associates had for
long been in communication with this child of public
interest, whilst she had always refused every endeavour
on the part of her pastor to accept school learning, or join
other children in the observance of Sunday; in short, she
was believed by those who knew her to be totally depraved
in morals; and they thought that no greater misfortune
could have befallen her than her escape from the arm of
the law.
Now, a case like this defeats reformatory effort so
completely, that you know not how to lay hold of it. Such a
child cannot, of course, be recommended for admission
into a virtuous household, and, after acquittal, there is
no compulsory power to force her into any machinery of
discipline which might raise her moral tone. At the same
time, the preference for vice at so early an age, before the
wild horses of ungoverned passion could have carried
her astray, is a phenomenon that can scarcely be
accounted for. Yet, we naturally look for a motive in the
guilty. In the recent trial of Mr. WOOLLER,* for the
murder of his wife by poison, the acquittal of a prisoner
was chiefly secured on the ground of absence of all
apparent motive, notwithstanding the force of suspicious
evidence. And we do not find fault with this decision, on
the contrary, the taking away of life, on merely
circumstantial evidence, is so questionable, because irreparable,
that we sincerely concur both in that and every similar
verdict. But juvenile crime and vice, such as we have
already adverted to, seem to exist without sufficient
motive or temptation to account for them, and such
occasional appearances in the moral world confound the
philanthropist more than any other. He knows not how to
treat them any more than how to account for such
unprovoked depravity. It only reminds him of what
happens in the matter of physical disease. We have
general sanatory rules which keep the assailant at bay,
and, on the whole, diminish the number of his victims.
Yet, now and then, those who are naturally least likely
to be attacked are the first to fall. The finest men in
our own Guards were the first carried off by cholera in
Bulgaria in 1854, and the same capricious malady often
makes havoc of the Grenadier Company in a regiment of
the line, and spares the weaker and less healthy men.
There is a deep mystery in all this.
* Gaslight note:
Wooller (aka, Wooler) was acquitted of a slow & deliberate
poisoning, because of lack of obvious motive (1855). During his
trial, however, a similar case arose wherein Palmer was very
clearly benefitting from the expiration of those around him.
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And again, if the early loss of all virtuous sentiment be
a startling and unaccountable fact, not less so is the utter
obliteration of all fellow feeling which is occasionally
manifested by the old and hardened criminal. How can
we get hold of an idea of PALMER'S state of mind, if one
third of what is attributed to him be true? Here is a
man, who from his ostensible profession is singularly well
acquainted with the adopted means of promoting health,
and saving life; and yet who systematically uses his
knowledge for the destruction of both. Here is a man
with all the closest ties of family affection about him — a
wife, a mother, a brother, a friend, a servant — who regards
each of these, as occasion may serve his purpose, with the
gluttonous eye of a pigbutcher, who reckons when to
stick in the knife by the moment when most money will
follow the fatal incision. Here is a professed lover of
sport and the excitement of betting, but who reduces all
chances to a flat certainty by signing the death warrant
of those whose removal will ensure a favourable balance in
his book. Here is an assassin of the first water — one
who is unique in his calling, for he selects his victims, not
on the highway, but on the hearthstone of his own home.
Such instances are very discouraging on the pathway of
the philanthropist, and might almost tempt him to despair
in his righteous endeavours after the reformation of his
species. But, after all, there is this satisfaction — that
great as is the mystery of crime, and hopeless as often
prove the best efforts to reform the criminal, the Power
who has ordained that it shall be so, has also provided
that the incorrigible shall not go unscathed. "Murder
will out," and the same progress in science which multiplies
our poisonous agents supplies us with new tests for
analyzing and detecting their presence.
(The End)
