When a crop of offences of a similar kind startles a district there may be a common cause found if it is sought for; and when the offences cease their cessation may be found to have some relation to that cause; but the arrest and imprisonment of one here and there as examples have as little relationship to the cessation of offences as prayer had in the stopping of an epidemic of cholera. In the one case you have to break up the association of offenders and destroy their spirit; in the other you have to attend to your drains and your sanitation. The punishment and the prayer in either case may assist in so far as they direct attention to the need for right action. How then do theseoutbreaks originate, and what causes them to cease? In the first place, they are not the work of professional thieves, though these take advantage of them. They begin in horseplay among the lads at the street corner. None of them may be abnormally mischievous or wicked, but a crowd has a spirit of its own which is different from that of its members. Everybody has seen dignified citizens under the excitement of, say, an election, when they got the news that the country had been saved in the way they desired, behaving in a sufficiently ridiculous manner and inciting others to a like behaviour. If they had received the news when at home it would at most have caused a smile, but in a crowd one has stirred the other to do and say things that neither would ordinarily do or say.
An orator may sway a crowd and utterly fail to move the members of it if he spoke to them individually. The lads at the corner will do things when they are together that none of them would think of doing if he were alone. Not only does each incite the other, but all incite each one to action. The horseplay is extended and indulged in by them at the expense of passers-by, and to their annoyance. If it stops there no noise is heard about “Hooliganism”; but if the lads, letting themselves loose, go further and injure a respectable citizen there is complaint. The culprit is at first frightened, but having done the thing he tries to make the most of it, especially if he sees his companions rather admire his temerity. He boasts of his daring and excites emulation. One tries to outdo another; other “corners” hear about and imitate the desperadoes; the newspapers take the matter up; and the place is in a state of terror. There is reason for the terror, too; for in the process unoffending and peaceful citizens have suffered serious injury. Theprofessional criminal, who is quick to take advantage of any chance, hangs on to the tails of the foolish lads, and under cover of their depredations helps himself to what he can get. Anything that gathers a crowd helps him, but he knows better than to commit assaults of this purposeless kind himself. He has no objection to rob the assaulted or the threatened and terrorised parties, however, provided he can conceal himself. If he can get any of the lads who began the proceedings to assist him, good and well; but in that case they may find they have started on a new and criminal career. The loose cohesion between the mischievous and the criminal elements in the crowd becomes organised; and by this time there is a general demand on the part of the citizens that somebody should be punished. Then the examples begin.
But the very fact that the outrages have been advertised, while it causes their imitation at first, makes parents and employers enquire into the conduct of their sons and their workers. The lads are kept in at night, or they are otherwise separated from each other. When the association begins to break up the process is not long before it is complete. Everyone who leaves it is suspected of being a possible informer, and the dread of they know not what—the most powerful kind of fear—invades their minds. The conduct that seemed so laudable is now given up and the epidemic dies out. To send one of the offenders to prison is simply to make him a martyr in the eyes of his associates, who know that he is no worse than they were and who sympathise with rather than abhor him. The real deterrent is the action of the parents and employers who know the lads. They neither want to get into trouble at home nor to lose their jobs. Those who are sent to prison have often little to do with thematter, and their exemplary punishment has less. Real hooliganism—the existence of young professional thieves who are in the habit of committing brutal assaults and inflicting injuries recklessly on their victims—is rare in Glasgow.
The young person is more likely to fall into error than his elders because of his inexperience. Whatever the law may hold, no business man expects the kind of service from a youth that he looks for from a man. The young man may have more knowledge than his senior and more recent information on many things, but only time can enable him to co-relate his knowledge. The question whether a lad knows right from wrong is all that some people will consider; which shows how little they know, if they really believe that the answer will enable anyone to assess a man’s responsibility. We are taught “right and wrong” from our earliest years by way of principles to guide us, but they are not always easy of application. The difference between a young and an old man is one of experience. Practice has enabled the one to use his knowledge in a way that the other has yet to learn. Our conceptions of many things on which we have been given information apparently full and accurate have been proved time and again to be quite wrong; experience enables us to discount our anticipations, but it only comes with years. In judging young people it is specially necessary to bear in mind the fact that with all their apparent knowledge they may have totally wrong conceptions of things, and that thus they have been misled. On many occasions I have had to note the fact that a young man had committed an atrocious crime; that he knew perfectly well it was wrong; that it was not due to imperfect powers of control; that he had brooded over and visualised it before the act; and thatits accomplishment had left him shocked beyond expression, for it was all so different from his conception of it.
No punishment could intensify the shuddering horror with which these lads regarded their own acts, “so different from what I thought it would be”; and yet in ordinary affairs we are well acquainted with the phenomenon. Why we should lose sight of it when a crime has been committed and we are seeking to unravel the causes is a mystery. Know right from wrong? Yes, and conceive the whole matter wrongly. This state of mind is not peculiar to the criminal, and may sometimes be present in those who take upon themselves to judge and condemn him.
In early life a lad is not only more liable to go astray, but having fallen it is more difficult for him to recover. He is more impressionable, and the impression of his crime and of the way in which he has been treated stands in his way. He has no record of experience behind it to which his memory can turn and by which he can be helped to seek the right road when he leaves prison. “Learn young, learn fair,” is as true of crime as of other things.
At the opposite end of the path of life a special cause of crime is degeneration of the physical or mental powers. In the first case the man may become destitute and forced into criminal courses in order to gain a living. In the latter case he may develop tendencies and commit certain offences that are quite at variance with his former conduct.
As a result of senile changes in body and mind some old men offend against the law. When the condition is marked they are dealt with for it, but in some cases it is only suspected and is not capable of proof. It is simply a question of whether they should be sent to prison or to a lunatic asylum.
SEX AND CRIME
The position of woman—The posturing of men—Love and crime—Two cases of theft from sexual attraction—The female thief—Case—Blackmailing—Jealousy and crime—Two murder cases—Case of assault—Fewer women than men are criminals—Their greater difficulty in recovery—Young girls and sexual offences—Perils of girlhood—Wages and conduct—Exotic standards of dress—Ignorance and wrongdoing—The domestic servant—Her difficulties—Concealment of pregnancy cases—The culprit and the father—Morals—The fallen woman—Bigamy.
The position of woman—The posturing of men—Love and crime—Two cases of theft from sexual attraction—The female thief—Case—Blackmailing—Jealousy and crime—Two murder cases—Case of assault—Fewer women than men are criminals—Their greater difficulty in recovery—Young girls and sexual offences—Perils of girlhood—Wages and conduct—Exotic standards of dress—Ignorance and wrongdoing—The domestic servant—Her difficulties—Concealment of pregnancy cases—The culprit and the father—Morals—The fallen woman—Bigamy.
Forgood or ill great changes have taken place, and more are likely to occur, in the relative social and political positions of the sexes. Women are excluded from political power on the ground of their sex, and by way of opposing or of justifying this condition of matters everything but sex is discussed. It has been shown that woman is as clever as man; pays her rates at least as promptly; can work as hard and at as varied occupations; is capable of outstripping him in learning; shows as much intelligence; is more moral; and can sometimes be a greater nuisance to her neighbours. All which may be a very good reason for giving her a vote, but does not alter the fact that there is a great difference between the sexes. That may be no reason for excluding her from a share in the direct election of representatives to Parliament, but it is a fact that cannot be lost sight of and which seems to be forgottenwhen it is not deliberately minimised by both parties to the controversy. Man is something more than his brain, and so is woman. Indeed, their thoughts and their acts are often the outcome of the condition of their other organs; and the attraction of one sex for the other disturbs most frequently the calculations of observers. Among the primitives in our own country the principal subject of interest, after their means of subsistence—and occasionally before even that—is the opposite sex; and if one may judge by the books in greatest demand, those whose opportunities are more varied are far from indifferent to the same subject. The young man who is not stirred by desire to excite admiration in some girl—perhaps in all girls—is an exceptional being; at least he feels uncomfortable in their presence.
The love of attracting attention is very common, but while it causes men to do many strange things to obtain praise from their own sex, it much more frequently moves them to extraordinary actions in order to secure the admiration of women. Whether men or women are most moved by this feeling it is impossible to say, but the men are more likely to make fools of themselves. Their present social position gives them greater opportunities to do so; for the woman’s training and traditions are against her openly giving way to her feelings, and when she does so the result is apt to be disastrous. It is the commonest thing in the world to see young people posturing to attract the attention of those of the opposite sex, and their feelings may blind them to the consequences of their conduct.
A too intense interest in anything else is fatal to business, and the rule has no exception in favour of the amorous; so it is not uncommon for a lad to lose his place through inattention to his work, the resultof preoccupation in his love affairs. In some social stations this condition of mind may lead the lad into criminal courses. X 22 was an intelligent lad who had drifted into crime and continued in it. He had not offended against the law as a boy, though he had passed his early years in a part of the town where the sights are appalling and the prevailing tone of morals is low. He spent the later years of his boyhood in a suburban village and went to work in that district. When he was about seventeen there was an epidemic of “club dancings”; that is to say, places where a number of young men, having hired a room and a fiddler, charged others a small sum for admission to dance—girls being admitted free—and divided the profits or the losses among themselves afterwards. The dancers were usually the sons and daughters of respectable people, but their behaviour after the dance was not innocent. The more ardent among them became passionately addicted to the practice of attending such places and dropped both work and reputation in the process. The scandal of the thing ultimately became so great that under the pressure of public opinion the “clubs” were discontinued. At one time they were many in number and spread over a wide area. The young man of whom I speak was an enthusiastic devotee and went far afield at times to seek his pleasure. Working from early morning and dancing till late at night, it was morning again before he got home. He could not possibly keep up both the work and the pleasure, and the work had to go. He had to find money, and he got it dishonestly at less fatigue than by work. This had its end and it finished him. After being in prison he found the door of some of the clubs closed to him, but there were others. He did not escape so readily now when he stole, being known; and graduallyhe was shut out from the pleasures that had led him astray and shut into the company of those who, like himself, had been in prison. He was only one of a number whose downfall was attributed to dancing; but he had not the slightest doubt that if the dancing had been between those of the same sex it would never have led him off his feet. It was the sexual element in the matter that attracted him.
In this case the man lost his regular employment through absorption in his pursuit of women, but in many more cases the situation is forfeited through dishonesty caused by the desire to make an impression on some girl or to provide for her. X 23 was a lad of good character, quiet in his manner, well educated, and employed in a position of trust. He was serious and sober in his walk and conversation, and appeared likely in time to become a pillar of the Church and a model citizen. He was attracted by a girl who was of good reputation, and there was never any suggestion of improper conduct on the part of either of them. She lost her situation through no fault of her own, and he placed her in a house which he furnished at the expense of his employers, expressing his intention to marry her later. There was no improper intimacy between them. Those who knew him were surprised that he should be able to make the provision for her that he did—surprised also at his choice of her as a wife; but that is not an uncommon attitude on the part of friends—and equally surprised and pained when it was discovered that he had used money which was not his own in order to set up the establishment.
It would be easy to multiply examples of cases where the relations between the parties are less innocent, and to show that not merely young men, but men whoare advanced in life, have been driven by the attraction of the other sex to sacrifice their position.
Women are not ignorant of their power, and the criminal among them know how to use it to advantage. Because of their sex they are able to commit many thefts and to escape with impunity; indeed, a very large proportion of thefts from the person are committed by women, or with their assistance. They attract the man, go along with him, pick his pocket, and find some excuse to get rid of him in a hurry. When he discovers his loss they are out of reach, and in the great majority of cases he says nothing about it to the police, as to do so would cause scandal about himself. Only when the loss is too considerable to be borne, or when something is stolen that cannot be replaced, is the theft reported; and even then it is difficult to convict the thief. X 24 is a girl of twenty-six who has several times during the last eight years been convicted of theft. She is a buxom and cheerful young woman, neither a teetotaler nor intemperate, shrewd, and possessed of a considerable share of intelligence and humour. Brought up in a slum district, she was early at work; and when she began her present career she was earning honestly about fourteen shillings weekly. Some time ago I was asked to see her on behalf of a lady who had taken an interest in her from her appearance in court, and who was willing to help her to a better way of living. She was perfectly frank with me, and declined assistance on the ground that she could do better for herself. She said that with very little trouble she could make twice the amount to be gained by work, and with little risk. “You ken weel enough, doctor, that the lady could do nothing for me. She would put me in a place among her servants, maybe, and that would be a nice thing for the servants!Na, na. When I find it disna pay I’ll gie it up. As long’s the drink disna get a grip o’ me I’m a’ richt; and there’s no much fear o’ that.” Like others of her class, she does not live by prostitution, though her sex is her decoy. She has no prejudice in favour of chastity, but she takes very good care to run no unnecessary risks, and will find a means of getting away from the man she may pick up—if possible with his purse, but if not, then without it—before matters have proceeded to an extremity.
Others acting in concert with male accomplices lure men to houses where they are bullied and robbed; and this goes on with a degree of impunity that would be amazing, were it not for the fact that though the practice is well known, there are few of those who have suffered loss of money who care to add to it the loss of reputation that would result if they had to appear in court.
Blackmailing is another practice that springs from the conduct of both men and women influenced in the direction of vice and crime by sex impulses; and jealousy is a powerful factor in the causation of some crimes of violence. Jealousy is not generally looked for on the part of those who are themselves loose in their conduct, but among them it may exist as intensely and manifest itself as powerfully as in any respectable citizen. It seems to be largely a matter of temperament, and to be to some extent existent apart from the desire for exclusive possession. X 25 was an ex-soldier married to a woman of low morals. They had both been loose in their behaviour and were both given to drink. He had on several occasions assaulted her for her infidelities, but he admitted that it was not jealousy that had caused him to do so; and he owned that he was just as bad himself. He went off to the war, and in his absence shebehaved very badly and took headlong to drink. She lived with another man. On his return he took up house with her, and the other man was a source of quarrel between them, especially when they were drinking. He was admittedly jealous, though there does not seem to have been any but a retrospective cause for the feeling. One day in the course of a quarrel she compared him with the other man to his disadvantage, and he savagely set on and killed her.
X 26 was a sailor who was attached to a woman whom he knew to be a prostitute. When he came to Glasgow he lived with her, quite well knowing her character. He spent his money freely on her, but could not keep her from her associates. One night she insisted on leaving the house where they lodged. She had been drinking heavily, and he tried to detain her. She insisted on going to the lodgings of another man whom he knew; and when he endeavoured to persuade her to remain where she was, she made a comparison between him and the other that set him in a blind fury of rage and jealousy, in which he killed her. The cases present similar features: a tolerance of general infidelity; a jealousy of a particular individual; and an explosion when the other was praised for certain qualities.
The same kind of thing has occurred with women. One day in the airing-yard of the prison a woman who was usually quiet in her behaviour made a sudden attack on another who had been admitted to prison on the preceding day. It transpired that the assailant had heard that the woman she assaulted was living with “her man.” The man was a bloated blackguard whom she had screened by pleading guilty to a charge of theft in which he was implicated. She herself was a prostitute, and when I pointed out that morally he could not be worse than she in that respect sheadmitted the fact, but added furiously that she would not allow that—to take him from her; although she was ready enough to recognise his worthlessness. It would be easy to theorise on these cases, and it might be interesting; it is well to note them, for they show that crime may result from passion in circumstances where it might not be expected.
The fact is that feelings the result of sex strike far deeper and wider than many good people care to acknowledge; but the whole subject is one on which a taboo is placed and it cannot be treated as frankly as it ought for that reason. The cause of jealousy and the excitement of the feeling is not so simple as many seem to think. It may be absent where there would appear to be the strongest ground for expecting its presence, and present under circumstances where it would not be looked for; and when present it may induce criminal acts on a provocation that would appear small indeed.
There are fewer female than male criminals and offenders, but they are more likely than men to continue in the wrong way when they set out on it, for it is more difficult for them to recover. Women are much harder on one another than they are on men; or than men are, either on their own sex or on women. This may be one reason why so few of them go astray, but it also contributes to keep the stray sheep from getting back to the fold. The girl is more closely guarded at home and is more intimately associated with her mother than the boy is. Even mothers who have gone to the bad do not always want their daughters to follow their example; and I have known those who lived by vice and crime who have sent their daughters away from them in order to be trained in religion and morals. Most of them cannot do that, but many dowhat they can, up to a point, to keep them straight. A girl suffers more than a boy from the neglect of a mother, and when to neglect is added bad example it may have a fatal effect on her. In proportion to their numbers there are more daughters than sons of criminal mothers who take to evil courses.
Apart from the mother, there are districts of the city where girls hear language and see sights that are not likely to have a good effect on them. The girl is taught to repress herself more than the boy and is trained towards secretiveness. The boy is rather given to flaunt his new-found naughtiness and to be checked for it or to discover of how little account it is. The girl may nurse it to her harm. It is a mistake to suppose that because a man or woman never uses objectionable language, or repeats objectionable stories, they have not left an impression when heard. As a matter of fact, the female side of any lunatic asylum is generally more remarkable than the male side for the foulness of the language of the inmates and the filthiness of their ideas. Among the sane members of the community the opposite is notoriously the case, but the insane are only repeating words that have lodged in their mind when they were sane. The same thing is true of female offenders; they outdo the men in the profanity and indecency of their language, when they begin.
When as a result of their surroundings young girls take to imitating their elders in vice they are much more dangerous than boys. Every surgeon in a great city, if he is connected with the administration of the law, knows that very young girls are sometimes made the subjects of horrible assaults; but he also knows that other girls as young incite and provoke assaults, and that some among them make the most terrible and detailed charges against men on no foundationwhatever but that of their own imagination excited by what they have seen. When men are guilty of certain offences under the Criminal Law Amendment Act there can be no defence of their conduct; they have no excuse for taking advantage of young girls; but it is sheer folly to ignore the fact that there are girls of school age in some parts of the city who deliberately importune men. It is terrible that it should be so, but they are only doing what they see their elders do and there is no use disregarding the fact.
If the street is a bad playground for the boy it is worse for the girl. She runs greater risks and her ignorance is as vast as his. When she goes to work new perils beset her. Her choice of occupation is more restricted, and her wages, though they may not be less in the first instance, do not increase in the same ratio as she grows to youth and womanhood. Whatever may be said for the higher education of women it is out of reach of the many. Most girls have the idea that some day they will be married; and they are often right. When this idea is present it is bound to affect their actions. Marriage means for a man the holding on to his work; for a woman it implies the giving up of her employment—at any rate, in Scotland most men who marry try to keep their wives at home. Among the poorer labourers this is not always possible; but it remains true that the great majority of married women are not industrially employed. They have quite enough to do at home, and sometimes more than enough; but the fact that the home is to be their permanent sphere of work, or the hope of this, makes many girls and women careless as to the choice of their occupation meanwhile. It also prevents combination among workers, to a large extent, and tends to keep wages low. How some of them live on their earningsis a mystery, but they do; and keep themselves in a condition of health and fitness which will compare favourably with that of many of the scientific people who prove by figures and standards that they don’t. There is grave risk in it, however; risk that they should not be asked to run. If they were not members of a family, each contributing earnings to a common pool, and each undertaking a share of the household work, many could not exist on the wages they receive. That any large number of them are directly driven to the street by the low rate of their wages is not, in my experience, true.
Complaints have been made that the children of well-to-do people accept lower wages and make it hard for those who have to earn their living to obtain reasonable pay. This may be true in a few cases, but it is not of general application. These people do not compete at all in many occupations; their parents are not foolish enough to let them do much for nothing; but they do sometimes exercise an injurious influence on the other girls by their presence. Girls are at least as vain of their appearance as lads, and they are quite as much given to personal adornment. Indeed, I think men will readily admit that women pay more attention to their dress and are keener on ornaments than they are. Certainly when one gets a new kind of hat-pin or “charm,” others must obtain something to balance it. If a girl has a fund to draw upon apart from her earnings she is likely to dress more expensively than her neighbours, and the weaker sisters are sometimes tempted to adopt extraordinary measures to keep pace with her.
In so far as a standard of dress is set up that is beyond the earning power of the workers to maintain, girls who have other resources than their wages areliable to exercise an injurious effect on their fellow-workers. X 27 was a young woman of prepossessing appearance and good manner. She had been employed in a place of business in town. Her wages were small, and she had charge of cash transactions to a considerable amount. She was quietly and well dressed. She was arrested on a charge of embezzlement and she admitted her guilt. She confessed that she had begun to take small sums in order to keep herself “respectable,” and her peculations not being discovered, she had continued to help herself. There was sickness at home, and to relieve the pressure there she had taken larger sums and been found out. In the course of enquiries I found that there were other employees none of whom had her opportunities of taking from the cash-box, but some of whom dressed themselves on “presents” from gentlemen. There was room for suspicion that each knew what the others had been doing. It was certain that they knew that their earnings were insufficient to enable them to live and dress as they did, and it was equally clear that in their cases they had no resources at home to supplement their earnings.
There are some workshops in which the moral tone is very low, and the association of young girls together in them has a bad effect on their conduct. The ignorance of many men and women with regard to the most elementary physical facts is remarkable. Mysteries are made of physiology, as though innocence and ignorance were synonymous terms. Fear takes the place of enlightenment, and when a girl is seen to transgress the limits of conduct laid down for her without the dreadful consequences they have been led to expect, the others are apt to think they have been misled; and some of them embark lightly ona certain course of conduct with a confidence begotten of ignorance as great as that which once made them timid. Young people are better to learn the truth about themselves from those they respect and trust, than to be kept in ignorance till some chance reveals a distorted version to them. X 28 was a man of the labouring class who was charged with contravention of the Criminal Law Amendment Act. He had been a very hard-working man, and for years had lived on little and saved the greater part of his earnings. Then, as systematically as he had put the money past, he started to get rid of it. He had nearly £200, and he proceeded to spend about £2 a week on his “spree.” He drew the money from the bank in small sums, and, doing no work meanwhile, he proceeded to take enough drink to keep him on the right side of drunkenness. This had been going on for over six months before his arrest. Early in the course of his wanderings he had made the acquaintance of two girls who were employed in a tailoring establishment in the city. They spoke to him and made him certain proposals. This was in the dinner-hour. In time he was introduced by one girl to another during the succeeding four months, till he had dealings with seven in the same establishment—that is to say, seven admitted the facts. Their ages ran from fifteen to nineteen years, and without exception they were all the daughters of respectable parents, to whom the story of their conduct came as a severe shock. That story will not bear repetition; it was exceedingly gross. The facts were only discovered in an accidental way through the illness of one of the girls. She at first denied everything; but under pressure made a confession of part of the truth, and, the charge being laid, enquiry elicited the rest.
A large number of girls are still employed in domestic service, though the tendency has been for them to seek industrial work, where they are for some part of the day their own mistresses. The spread of elementary education has been blamed for the shortage in the supply of servants, but it is only one of many causes for the change from the time when there were more girls seeking work than places for them; and girls are not likely to seek service as a result of the railings of those who, to judge by their utterances, are in need of some elementary education with regard to their own position. There seems to be an idea fixed in their heads that they have a right to be served by others, and that on their own terms. If the schools have taught the girls that they are not born to do for others what they ought to be able to do for themselves, it is something to the credit of the schools. Domestic servants have been too long treated as though they were inferior beings, with the natural result that their work has come to be looked upon as lower in character than that of the factory or the office girl. A greater independence of spirit and behaviour is permitted in those engaged in industrial occupations than in domestics, and this has a good deal to do with the preference shown for these pursuits.
Domestic service is a better preparation for married life than work in a factory, but in spite of this it has very serious disadvantages. It presents the form of family life without the spirit. In a great many cases it has all the disadvantages and few of the advantages. Those who are loudest in their complaints of the degeneration of servants show quite clearly that they are angry really because they no longer get girls to give not only reasonable service, but the obedience of flunkeys. Girls in workshops are not treated asdomestics are; they would not stand it. Their wages may be lower, but at least they are not looked upon as beings of another creation than those placed over them. When people shun certain kinds of employment it is not generally because they are foolish, but because they believe that that kind of work is not worth having.
The servant in the house is too much in the house. Her mistress is quite ready to assume that she should know all that the girl is doing, but the confidence is expected to be all on the one side. For the mistress to interfere in the girl’s affairs is to show a proper interest in her; but for the girl to return the compliment is impertinence. The girl is often subject to unsympathetic supervision; she is seldom allowed out to associate with those whose company she desires; her life is a monotonous and exacting one; and in many cases she has as few opportunities for seeing visitors as she has for visiting. That some should react unfavourably to these conditions is not surprising; and when they are out they may show the same tendency to friskiness displayed by that other domestic animal, the family dog. Many of them have few friends near the place of their employment, and their work does not provide them with the same facilities for forming friendships as industrial employment does. If they do go astray the consequences are therefore more serious, because they are to a large extent thrown on their own resources, having few to whom they can appeal for help or advice.
There are no workers who are more generally industrious, honest, and patient, and who are more harshly judged. Only those who go wrong seem to attract attention; at least it is only they who are heard of; and in proportion to the large number employed they are few. Their position away from their family leavesthem more exposed to the attentions of those of the opposite sex than other girls, and when they succumb the consequences may be more serious. If their condition is suspected or discovered the extent to which they are considered members of the family soon becomes apparent. The girl who is in this state has no illusions on that subject. She knows quite well that she will receive no sympathy, and that would not matter so much if she were not equally certain that she will be turned out whenever the fact becomes known. She cannot face her people. She fears the scandal she will bring on them, and what she should do is a puzzle to her. What she tries to do is to conceal her condition as long as possible. She knows quite well that a time will come when it will unmistakably reveal itself, but anything may happen in the interval. She refuses to think about the future and lives in the present. The effort that should be expended in making preparations for the event is spent in concealing its approach; till some day she finds herself a mother. The habit of concealment has become a part of her, and it asserts itself in the state of pain and panic in which she finds herself, with disastrous results to the child. X 29 was a girl about twenty years of age who came from a mining district to domestic service in Glasgow. She was a healthy girl and a good servant. One day her mistress had reason to suspect that something had taken place in the house of which she had not been made aware; and a search revealed the dead body of a new-born child in an outhouse. The girl was arrested and sent to hospital. In due course she was transferred to prison, where I had to investigate the case with a view to determining her mental condition. She told me the story bit by bit quite clearly. When she became aware of her condition she tooksteps to hide it, and up to the end she had been successful in doing so. She did this in order to make up her mind what she ought to do. Sometimes she decided to go home to her friends, and at other times she meant to apply to the parish. Her health was good all the time. At last she made up her mind to go home, and had written stating her intention, but saying nothing about her condition or about staying there. The child was born the night before the day she had fixed for her visit. She was taken by surprise, and had no preparations made for its arrival. By her actions she showed that she knew what was necessary in order to attend both to child and mother. It cried out, and in her alarm she stopped its mouth. It did not cry again, and she next set about its concealment. She knew that she had killed it, but she did not think this murder. She would have thought it murder if it had not just been new-born. She had seen similar cases reported in the newspapers as “Concealment of Pregnancy” and not counted murder. As she had her day off to pay her visit she did so. She walked at least ten miles in doing this. She told her friends nothing. She hoped to be able to dispose of the body, but her mistress had found suspicious signs in her room, and on a search had discovered the child. She was curiously knowing in some respects, but her ignorance was as peculiar as her knowledge; and I had no reason to doubt the truth of her story, which stood such tests as could be applied to it.
The case in its main features is quite characteristic. There are some mistresses who, when they find their servants in this condition, take steps to see that they are tended in some way. They cannot be expected to keep them in the house, but they do what can be done to prevent the mother and child suffering.There are others who simply turn them out and take no further interest in them; and it is the fear of this that leads to concealment. If they would even act as mediators between the girls and their people much mischief would be prevented.
Hardly ever does such a case as the above occur but what there are letters to the newspapers demanding that the father of the infant should be placed in the dock with the mother. The mother is not there for begetting a child, but for killing it, and the former act is not yet punishable by law. The general opinion seems to be that men are continually seducing women, and I am not in a position to say whether it is true or not. Judging from books, it forms the subject of many stories, but I am here only writing of that small portion of the world which has come under my own observation, and in my experience it is grotesquely untrue. I have heard the woman’s statement in the great majority of cases of infanticide in Scotland during the last sixteen years, and I can recall few in which she made any complaint against the father of the child, although I sought for it. In some cases I was told that the father had not been informed of the woman’s condition, although she knew where to find him; and that he had been kept in ignorance because she did not want to marry him. In the other cases the conception seemed to be the result of intimacy that was temporary and long past. I am far from suggesting that there are no bad men who lead girls astray; what I say is that in this class of case these are not the girls who appear as criminals.
The fact is that among a certain class of lads and girls there is a degree of looseness of behaviour that is in striking contrast with the officially recognised code of morals. They take risks with a light heart, and the woman pays; not always because the manshirks, but because any consequence of their conduct is entailed on her by her sex. The girl knows this as well as the lad, but neither of them considers consequences at the time. An acquaintanceship begun innocently enough may insensibly and by degrees become something more, not as the result of consideration, but quite independent of anything in the way of thought. If consequences were certain it might be different. It is difficult to apportion blame and it is not very profitable to try; but it is quite certain that the woman leads the man as much as he leads her to misconduct. Child murder is no necessary consequence of his act, and there is no sense in assuming that he knew the girl’s condition and deserted her, when the fact can easily be ascertained.
It would be a great mistake to suppose that girls who do not preserve their chastity are necessarily bad. It is largely a question of manners and customs. They would quite readily admit that it is wrong to be unchaste, as many an untruthful person will admit it is wrong to lie; but they do not seem to suffer in self-respect, nor greatly in the esteem of others, if they yield themselves to the lad who is their sweetheart for the time. Their conduct may be suspected; but in the absence of proof, and if decency is observed, their morals are taken for granted.
Every professional man knows that there are very many different standards of conduct in Glasgow. The doctor cannot shut his eyes to the fact if he would; the lawyer during the time he acts as Agent for the Poor sees and hears enough to convince him that the professed and the working standards of conduct are different; and even among those connected with their Churches clergymen occasionally find some who have to get married as a result of their behaviour.The girls who misbehave in this way may be reviled as prostitutes, but that is utterly to fail in judging them. That they are no worse than the men goes without saying; but there cannot be a standard for the woman and another for the man, though in practice it is more frequently the moralists who try to make one—not by their words, but by the effect of their judgment. The same girl who has given herself to men is sometimes the most bitter in her denunciations of prostitutes; but on the subject of prostitution I do not propose to enter, for any real consideration of it would involve a plainness of speech on which it would be unsafe to venture.
This must be said, however, that the woman who goes astray is treated shamefully by the law, which operates to drive her deeper in the mire and causes reformation to be more difficult for her than for any other kind of offender. Any proposal to place these poor souls more completely under the domination of officials, medical or police (whether made on the specious pretext of public health or public morals), would intensify the difficulty, and would result, as it would deserve, in increasing the evil it sought to remedy. It is bad enough that any members of the community should become slaves to the vices of others, but it would be worse to confirm them in their slavery in order to protect those whom they serve.
In proportion to the number of offences committed by women bigamy appears to be more common than it is among the male offenders. The reason is largely economic, but the method of its operation is dependent on sex. The woman wants a home, but if she were not a woman that is not the way she would choose to get one. She could get established, but her sense of propriety will not allow her to accept the positionwithout the form of marriage, even although she knows the form to be illegal. In many cases, however, she does not know this. She may have ground for a divorce by reason of the desertion of her husband or his misconduct; but the ground for divorce and the ability to obtain one are different matters. If divorce is to be permitted there does not seem to be any reason why it should be refused to those who cannot afford to go to law to obtain it. If one of the parties to a marriage gives cause for divorce the need for it will be the greater in proportion to poverty, for people are less able to keep out of each other’s way if they are living together in a small house than would be the case if they had more room; and if they are separated the economic disadvantages are not less. Yet these are the very people who are least able to obtain relief; their poverty ensures that. When they go through the form of marriage with some other we pay the cost of their imprisonment. The money would be better employed in setting them free from the contract which has gone wrong. Some of them voluntarily give themselves up in the belief that their imprisonment will break the former marriage. Our judges have become more and more inclined to deal leniently with such cases; reserving their heavy sentences for those which show moral turpitude; and the number of these is small. To the woman there is something in the form of marriage which enables her to preserve her self-respect, and the “marriage lines” are a testimony to others. It is a queer condition of affairs, in their view, that allows them to live with a man if they do not go through a ceremony of marriage with him, and which sends them to prison if they do; for they cannot be expected to see that the rights of property may depend on the prohibition of conduct such as theirs.
PUNISHMENT
The universal cure-all—The public and the advertising healer—The essence of all quackery—The quackery of punishment—Rational treatment—Justice not bad temper—Retribution—Our fathers and ourselves—Their methods not necessarily suitable to our time—Capital punishment—The incurable and the incorrigible—Objections to capital punishment apply in degree to all punishment—The “cat”—The executioner and the surgeon—Whipping and its effect—The flogged offender—The act and the intention—Pain and vitality—Unequal effects of punishment—Fines and their burden—Who is punished most?—Punishment and expiation—Punishment and deterrence—Social opinion the real deterrent—Vicious social circles—Respect for the law—Prevention of crime.
The universal cure-all—The public and the advertising healer—The essence of all quackery—The quackery of punishment—Rational treatment—Justice not bad temper—Retribution—Our fathers and ourselves—Their methods not necessarily suitable to our time—Capital punishment—The incurable and the incorrigible—Objections to capital punishment apply in degree to all punishment—The “cat”—The executioner and the surgeon—Whipping and its effect—The flogged offender—The act and the intention—Pain and vitality—Unequal effects of punishment—Fines and their burden—Who is punished most?—Punishment and expiation—Punishment and deterrence—Social opinion the real deterrent—Vicious social circles—Respect for the law—Prevention of crime.
Sincenewspapers have become great advertising mediums their readers have had information thrust upon them by picture and story regarding the need to flee from ills to come and seek refuge in the patent pill. Health is the great thing to attend to, and there is a large number of people engaged in our instruction. Some will have us see to the equal development of all our muscles, though what we are to do with them when they are developed we may not clearly apprehend. Others prescribe for us all a proper course of diet, and though the professors differ among themselves as to what is the best food for mankind, they seem to be all agreed that there is a universal food. If we find their prescriptions do not suit us, that is an evidence of degeneracy on our part whichmust be overcome. It is all very like what has passed itself off as education. At school, if a boy showed an aptitude for drawing and none for composition, he was taken from the thing he could do and worried into doing the thing he was not fitted for doing, with the result that in many cases children left school able to do a number of things equally badly and few things well. The attempt to make people ambidextrous is more likely to make them left-handed in both hands.
Health is the greatest of blessings, but the man who is always concerned for his health is not the healthy man; time passes, and he may lose his life while he is preparing to live. He is encouraged to examine himself, and all the possible ailments which may annoy him are described and their significance exaggerated till he gets nervous. A specific is found for every ill to which the flesh is heir, and its efficacy is trumpeted till some equally infallible cure replaces it in public estimation. The saving remedy may be called a quack preparation, and its composition proclaimed and condemned by the regular practitioner, but a sufficient number of purchasers is found to justify the expense of advertising it. It is sure to benefit somebody, however antecedently improbable that effect may be, and there is certain to be some sufferer who will be grateful enough to testify to its cure. Some of the testimonials may be spurious, but many of them are quite as genuine as any that the doctors receive. The reader sees that Mrs. Dash has suffered from pains in her back for years, and has tried the patience and the prescriptions of every doctor within her reach without obtaining any permanent relief. She has had to resign herself to a state of chronic invalidism, and is an object of pity to all who know her. She hears from a friend of the wonderful curative effects of theRational Rheumatic Regimen and puts herself under treatment, with the result that her neighbours cannot believe she is the same woman, and she herself feels in better health than she has ever before enjoyed. Then follows a list of symptoms which is sure to appeal to some sufferer. The public, knowing all that can be urged against quack medicines, distrusts and purchases them. The buyer knows that the case of Mrs. Dash is not published for philanthropic but for business reasons, but he thinks that what cured her may help him. It may or it may not, but he risks it.
Even those who utterly condemn quack medicines fall quite readily into the error of quackery when they come to discuss social subjects; for the essence of quackery is the belief that what is good for one person must be good for every other. Diseases are not entities, but conditions that cannot exist apart from the man; and similarly crime cannot exist apart from society. We may alter conditions in such a way that the tendency to disease or crime will be lessened; but when a person has become diseased we have to know something more about him than the fact that he shows certain symptoms before he can be treated in any rational way and with a prospect of his recovery. So when he has committed a crime we must know more than that fact before there is much hope of being able to correct him. There is as much quackery in the practice of making punishment fit crime as in that of making remedies fit diseases.
When a man offends against the law he is taken in hand by the ministers of the law; and they are awakening to a sense of the futility of their treatment of him, but so far not much progress has been made towards a rational method. There are more institutionsprojected and a greater variety of remedies prescribed; but they depend on the nature of the crime charged, rather than on the character and condition of the culprit. Some day it may be acknowledged that the court that has to determine whether a person is guilty of the offence charged against him is not therefore the court that is able to determine his treatment, but there will first require to be a more general recognition of the fact that before a man can be treated rationally for any physical, mental, moral, or social fault in him, something more must be known about him than that the fault is there.
I do not suggest that rational treatment will invariably be successful; there is nothing absolute in this world, not even our ignorance; but I do assert that we are not entitled to act irrationally in dealing with criminals, and that that is what we generally do at present. The practice of the courts has changed much more than the law during the last sixteen years, and there is a greater disposition on the part of judges to seek information regarding those who are brought before them, as well as a more marked reluctance to send offenders to prison if there appears to be a probability that they will not repeat their offence.
The old theories of punishment have broken down, and it is now difficult to find any coherent theory behind the practice. When a crime is committed that shocks the public by its atrocity there are demands made for fierce retribution on the culprit, partly on the plea that he ought to be made to suffer, and partly for the purpose of deterring others from repeating the act. Incidentally those who are most insistent on the employment of the executioner show that they possess a fair share of the same spirit that educed the act which they condemn. They are rightly indignant,but they do not seem to see that justice and bad temper are not the same thing.
Few would defend the application literally of the retributive “eye-for-an-eye” principle. They know that a man’s eye may not be of as much use to him as that which he has destroyed may have been to his victim. It may be like taking gold and offering lead in exchange. Even if the eyes be equal in value it does not in the slightest degree compensate the injured person to know that the person who did him the injury is as blind as he; and as for the community, it is to place two blind men where one was before. Of course nobody has proposed to deal in this manner with the person who blinds another; but many are quite satisfied to act on the principle, and to apply it by way of killing murderers and flogging those who commit assaults. The law has prohibited certain actions as below the standard of conduct permitted to the members of the community. When a man takes life, in order to show him the sacredness of life, it takes his. It is a lesson to him; and there is this to be said for it, that it prevents him from offending again.
We all know how much we are the superiors of the poor foreigners in our manners and our powers, for in spite of our modesty, our teachers in the Press are always insisting on the fact, and truth compels us to admit it. Yet these same teachers sometimes confuse us not a little by their methods of defending us when we are charged with doing something which we cannot deny having done. Some necessary severity in war, or some strong actions on the part of those who in our name teach the native races how to live, may have provoked remark on the part of other nations. At once we hear that they have done similar things; but if we are better than they, surely we must proveit by our actions? If we are better than those whom we judge and condemn, why do we treat them as they have treated others?
To hire a man to kill another is a queer way to teach men to respect life. That our fathers did it is true, and we have taken over the practice from them. I do not think it probable that our fathers were any greater fools than we are, but their circumstances were different; not to speak of the fact that we have had handed on to us by them an accumulation of experience in civil life which they had not time to absorb. We may be no better than they were, but they have not failed to contribute to make us better off, and their ways of doing things are not suitable to the altered circumstances in which we find ourselves. They were more worried by their fighting men than we are, and were always liable to be assailed by some lord or other whose honourable occupation was arms and who was industrious in the pursuit of it. He or somebody like him professed to protect the worker and ensure him the fruits of his labour—less discount. The fighting man has always made this profession; but he never protects the worker from the worker; he protects the worker from some other warrior who may be a greater nuisance—or may not. Now he is under the direction of the law, and is not allowed to make war on his own account. The survivals that do are criminals.
In the good old days the governor was often busily engaged and had no time to bother with offenders. The pit or the gallows were for them, unless they could be depended on to refrain from troubling him and pay him for letting them work. Part of the time he was himself a prisoner in his castle—and a not very sanitary or comfortable prison it was—and at othertimes he was acting as warder over some other lord whom he had besieged. The easiest way to deal with unruly persons was to hang them to a tree and leave them there; they deserved it, and even if they did not, they might do so; in any case they were a good riddance. Now we are more settled and less summary in our dealings with each other. We have long ceased to employ the hangman except in cases of murder, and even then the penalty is seldom inflicted in Scotland; for it is repugnant to the feelings of most juries, and they only call killing “murder” when their feelings of indignation get the upper hand.
I am far from saying that no case can now be made out for capital punishment; what I am contending is that it is the outstanding example of the application of the retributory principle; and yet in practice it is usually defended on the ground that the culprit is so bad that he ought to be killed—another ground altogether. “What could you do with a man who would do that?” is the question addressed to those who assert that the worst use to which you can put a man is to kill him. Well, is he so bad as all that? I have seen a number of very tough specimens under sentence of death, and have watched the effect on warders of intimate association with them. They have had to be constantly in the company of the condemned, for although he has to be killed he must be given no opportunity to kill himself; and in almost every case the men had only one opinion after getting closely in touch with the criminal, and that opinion was that, in spite of all the evil in him, he was not such a bad creature after all. In some cases the opinion of his character was much more favourable; but in all cases the opinions were the result of seeing the man when he was under the sentence of the law. That is as truean observation as that the sentence was the result of conduct when he was running wild. It was the same man who had done the wicked act who impressed men favourably, though their official bias was against him; and he could not have done so if the qualities had not been in him.
There may be men among us who are so utterly bad that all the State can do with them is to kill them in order to secure the safety of others, but I have not seen them. There are men so riddled with disease that no cure for them can be held out, and the disease may be of such a character that it is likely to infect or affect injuriously those who attend them, but doctors are not permitted to kill them. In these cases as strong an argument could be adduced in favour of capital punishment as in the case of criminals; and there are those who advocate the lethal chamber for certain classes of the diseased and “unfit.” In every case the advocates of the proposal should be the first to go there, for their very advocacy shows that they are themselves unfit to take a sufficiently wide view of the good of the State.
We know too little of the possibilities of life to be justified in condemning anyone to death. The medical man speaks of some diseases as being incurable; but so far from meaning what he says literally, his whole life is spent in seeking for cures. Knowledge widens slowly, and false lights are hailed as true, but in spite of all set-backs there is progress; and to-day the diseased conditions that our fathers could not deal with may be relieved and in many cases cured. What the doctor really means is that there are many diseases for which he has not yet found the appropriate remedy; and when we speak of men as being incorrigible we are only entitled to use the word in the same limitedway, meaning that we have so far not been able to correct them.
The infliction of the death penalty has no good effect on those engaged in it. I have never seen anyone who had anything to do with it that was not the worse for it. As for the doctor, who must be in attendance, it is an outrage on all his professional, as well as his personal feelings. The physician is taught that it is his duty to save life, apart altogether from its personal value. When he is called in to a patient it is no affair of his whether the sick person is a saint or a sinner; it is his duty to do his best for the patient irrespective of any question of character, and to risk infection as readily for the sake of the wicked as for the sake of the good. At the behest of the law he has to take a part in the killing of a man whom he has been instructed to attend in order that at the proper time he may be led to death in a state of good health.
I do not say that there are not men who may seem so debased and vile that any reformation would appear to be only remotely possible; but while they are to be blamed for their wickedness, we are not free from blame for permitting them to grow into such a state before taking them in hand. In no case that I have seen was such interference impossible had our system been one that lent itself to the prevention of crime and the reformation of the criminal; but because it was easier and more profitable for them to do ill than to do well, they went the wrong road with disastrous results to others as well as to themselves. Blame them by all means; but let us be just, and having settled how much they are to blame—not a very profitable task—let us set about to find how far we are to blame; having punished them, what about punishing ourselves? Our punishment is fixed by laws that noParliament can alter; our own neglect of the wrongdoer ensures it.
The objections to capital punishment apply to all punishment up to a point, for if it is wrong to slay a man it is also wrong to maim him; and in so far as our conduct towards him makes him a less efficient member of the community it does maim him. There are many who are so indignant with the law-breaker that they have no patience with anybody who has doubts as to whether our way of dealing with him is all that could be desired. They object to his being pampered—whatever that means—and call everybody a sentimentalist who is not for “vigorous means of repression.” There is a sentiment of brutality that is quite as dangerous as any sentiment of pity, and a great deal more harmful; but pity for the criminal need have very little part in consideration for his reform. He may be, and often is, far from being an estimable or attractive person, and the last thing he needs is pity. A man may be a good physician or surgeon without being given to anything approaching sentiment that is maudlin; but whether he is full of pity or not he must be sympathetic—that is to say, he must be able to appreciate the standpoint of those with whom he is dealing. So must the man who would deal with offenders; if he fails in that he fails in everything. It may be all very well to describe some of them as brutes and to say they should be treated as brutes, but it does not help forward the matter of treatment in the slightest degree; for even brutes cannot all be treated alike, and if a man is treated as a brute it is not likely to result in making him behave like a man. “The only way to make a man is—Think him one, J. B., As well as you or me.”
The cat is a specific for the “brutes” that have notqualified for the “rope.” The argument seems to be that because a man has committed a brutal crime therefore he is a brute; as he has inflicted serious bodily injury on a fellow-citizen it is proper that someone should be employed to inflict serious bodily injury on him. But will the man whom you employ to do this laudable work not be a brute also? Does your official imprimatur remove the brutality of his act? If not, one result would seem to be that at the end you have two brutes among you instead of one.
There has never been any pretence that the executioner’s occupation is not a degrading one; never in all this country for very many years, at any rate. He is not looked down upon because by his office he inflicts pain. The surgeon in the course of his work inflicts pain, but nobody considers him any the less worthy on that account. A hand might be cut off by either of them in the discharge of his duty; but though the result may be the same to the owner of the hand, the object has been different. The surgeon has amputated the hand to save the man’s life; the executioner has cut it off to maim the man. There can be no objection to the infliction of pain on a criminal more than on others if it is incident on a course of treatment which there is good reason to believe will result in his reform; but there is no such reason for belief in the efficacy of flogging.
I do not say that nobody has been the better for a whipping. There are many men who are ordinarily as modest as those of our race usually are, and who say that they were well whipped in their boyhood with great benefit. It might be unsafe to suggest that the argument is not so convincing as it may seem to those who advance it. Sometimes there is a temptation to think that the treatment, if it were really soefficacious in making them virtuous, might with profit have been continued; but there can be no doubt they are firmly convinced that without the thrashings they received they would have been worse than they are. This hardly touches the point, for it is one thing to be whipped by an official who has no interest in the person whipped, and another thing altogether to be chastised by a parent or guardian, or even at his instance. The effect on the integuments may be the same in both cases, but there is a psychological effect which is different. Children know that wrongdoing on their part is sometimes the occasion and the excuse for an exhibition of temper on the part of their parents; and they take their punishment with the best grace they can and keep out of the way next time they misbehave. A whipping in cold blood they do not take in the same spirit; and they are right.
The great objection to any arbitrary punishment is that it may do far more harm than good. Suppose a child is disobedient and obstinate, and the father proceeds to whip it into obedience. If he succeeds the child may, through fear, avoid such conduct in the future; but if the child persists in his obstinacy in spite of the whipping, and gets into that dumb dour state in which he is likely to go off in a fit if the whipping is persisted in, the shoe is on the other foot. The father has to desist through fear, the child having met force with passive resistance is the master, and he retains the impression of his parent’s brutality and impotence. It is never wise in the case of children, or of men, to embark on a course of treatment that you cannot continue till your object is gained.
There may have been some reason in flogging men with the object of ruling them by fear, but the policywould depend on the thoroughness with which it was carried out for what success it could obtain. There would always be the risk that the penalty would make men more ferocious if it were the probable result of their misconduct, for if fear may prevent people from doing the ill they desire, it will also cause them to seek safety by attempting to destroy the evidence of their wrongdoing. Make death the penalty for robbery, and a direct inducement is offered to the robber to kill his victim and prevent him from telling tales. Flog men for breaches of the law, and if they fear the pain they will the more readily become reckless, on the principle of its being as well to be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.
That there is a strong feeling on the part of the public against flogging is undeniable, and it is not so much the result of reasoning as of sentiment. The process shocks their sense of propriety. The mass of men not only shrink from suffering pain, but they shrink from the suffering of others, and they are less inclined than they once were to believe in its efficacy as a remedial agent. The man who in a former day would have been flogged and set to work is now sent to hospital if the whip has scored his flesh. A surgeon stands by to see that his vitality is not lowered beyond a certain point in the execution of the sentence; it is a nice occupation for him to superintend the impairment of a man’s health, but as a compensation the rogue may become a patient and the doctor have the privilege of healing any wounds made under his supervision. The patient is now in a position to do any mischief he chooses; you have done your utmost with him and are not permitted to kill him. If as rigid an enquiry were made into the causes of men’s wrongdoing as is made into the question of their personalguilt there would be less occasion for punishment as we have had it.
Boys are still whipped for some offences and in certain cases. To say that it is better to whip a boy than to send him to prison, is only to admit that whipping is the less serious of the two methods of injuring him; and in some cases the boys are whipped for no other reason. There is a well-founded reluctance to sentence them to detention in any existing institution, combined with a belief in the necessity of inflicting some penalty on them for their misdeeds. The boy has done wrong and he must pay for it. The world is so constituted that we are all the children of our acts; payment may be delayed, but it must be made sometime if every deed carries its penalty with it; but such a belief is quite consistent with scepticism as to the necessity for the legal penalties on which so many place importance. Indeed, that they also carry their consequences is seen of all men, and there is no manner of doubt that those on whom they fall are made worse citizens by them. That might be a small matter if their degeneration did not injuriously affect the community of which they are unworthy members, but in hurting them we are hurting ourselves.
It is not so much what we do as the spirit in which it is done that causes the mischief. A person who is sick and in bed may be as much a prisoner as a man in a cell. His doctor may prevent him from seeing visitors and may sentence him to a period of something very like solitary confinement, but he knows that this is done with no intention of hurting him, but because it is necessary in the interest of his health, or that of others. The prisoner has no such opinion as to the purpose of his imprisonment, and neither have those who carry it out. He may be the better for it, thoughthat is exceptional, but discomfort and pain is an essential part of whatever cure there is. I remember when a student a worthy old practitioner who made a point of choosing the most painful remedies for persons suffering from certain diseases, as he held the opinion that they ought to be made to suffer for their misconduct. He certainly made them suffer, but as they were not compelled to attend him they chose others who cured them more rapidly and with less pain.
It is now generally recognised that pain, or anything that lowers vitality, operates injuriously and retards the recovery of patients; and every means is taken to prevent suffering, not because it makes the patient feel bad, but because it causes him to be bad. Suppose a surgeon said to a man who appeared before him with a scalp wound received through falling on the kerb while under the influence of drink, “You have been foolish and wicked, since you have made yourself intoxicated and lost control of your senses. Your head is wounded, and it is only a chance that you have not been killed. You have disgraced yourself in the eyes of those among your friends who have any sense of respectability, and you have run the risk of losing your employment as the result of your intemperance. This I cannot permit to pass unpunished. An example must be made of you in order to deter others from following the same pernicious course. You have forfeited the right to consideration, but, though you must be made to remember that such conduct as yours cannot be lightly passed over, I shall deal with you as leniently as possible for the sake of your wife and family. You will receive an application of germs to your wound which will produce erysipelas, after which I shall proceed to deal with your cure.” The doctorwho tried this method would be sent to a lunatic asylum; but it is precisely what is done in our courts. The prisoner is told he is bad—and he is; then he is sent—to be made better? Not at all.
Whatever may be said against the prisons, it cannot be shown that they ever were designed to reform those sent to them, and if they fail to do so they do not therefore fail in the purpose for which they were built, which is to detain and punish criminals. The extent to which they do punish varies greatly according to the antecedents of the person who is sent to them. On the clerk and the labourer who have received the same sentence its physical effect may differ very much. If both are put to do labouring work, as they very well may be, at the end of the day the man who is accustomed to it will be less hurt and fatigued than the man who has been used to other employment. If the object is to make them all alike uncomfortable the clerk should be set to dig a trench and the labourer to write, and at the end of the day the one would be stained with ink and the hands of the other would be stinging or blistered. As it is the work done by the labourer is child’s play to him, but it is toilsome to the man whose occupation is sedentary; to the public it is not of much utility in any case.