A MOTHER OF CRIMINALS.

Evening Star, Issue 3803, 3 May 1875, Page 3

A MOTHER OF CRIMINALS.

In corroboration of the opinion of Mr Caldwell, governor of Dunedin gaol, relative to crime being hereditary, we subjoin the following extract from the ‘ New York Times’ of the 19th January last:—ln the meeting held yesterday of the State Charities Act Association, Doctor Harris brought forward some of tbe most remarkable statistics which have ever been obtained in the science of criminal reform. While reading of the efforts of tbe Prison Association, the attention of the Doctor was called to a county on the Upper Hudson, where there was a remarkable proportion of crime and poverty to the whole population. The county contained but one town and only small villages, with a population of some forty thousand, yet the number of paupers in its almshouses was four hundred and eighty - or one in ten —not reckoning a considerable number assisted by out-door relief. This proportion is probably greater than that of London or Paris ; but of this we cannot be certain, owing to tin defective method everywhere adopted in the statistics of paur-rism of enumerating names as persons. It is certain, however, that the proportion of paupers and criminals in the county was alarmingly great. The attention of tbe doctor was attracted to certain names which everywhere appeared in the criminal and poorhonse records of tbe coun'y. and he was led to follow up the traces of certain families These, again, seemed to be connected, and he was induced to search still further the genealogies of these families. Tbe results wil 1 remain as peimanent and most startling facts in the bistory of crime and its consequences. It should be understood by our readers that ordinarily it is extremely difficult to trace the descent of a criminal family, ,'n cities such familifs become broken up, and their members are scattered everywhere. In villages, though their lines of descent may be followed, yet the retributive laws of Providence usually carry the effects of crime only to the third or fourth generation, and then the race comes to an end through physical and moral degeneration, the final members being commonly idiots, imbeciles, lunatics, and, in some countries cretins. It happened, however, in this county that the physical vigor of the particular fami'y traced preserved some of its members for their evil destiny, and enabled the investigator to trace them during six generations of wickedness and misery. >'ome seventy yea s ago a young girl named Margaret was left adrift in one of the e villages, it does not appear whether th 'rugh the crime or misfortune of others. There no almshouse in the place, but she was a subject of out door relief—probably receiving occasionally food and clolhing fr< m tbe offic a’", but never e !u----catcd and rev<r kindly sheltered in a home, -he became the mother of a long rac-. of criminals ami paupers, and her progeny has cursed the country ever since. Th- county rec-rds show 200 of her descendants who have been criminals. In one eiiule generation of her unhappy line there were twenty children. Of these three died in infancy, and seventeen survived to maturity. Of the seventeen nine served in the S.ate prisousfor hi-h crimes an aggregate term of fifty years, while the others were frequent inmatesof gaols and penitentiaries andalmt-houses. Of the9oo d-. s -aidants’ through six generations, fn m this unhappy girl who was left on the village streets and abandoned in her childhood -a great number have been idiots, imbeciles, drunkards, lunatics, and paupers, but 200 of the more vigorous are on record ns criminals. Ibis neglected little child ban thus cost the county authorities—in (he (ll'icts she has transmitted - hundreds of thousands of dollars in the expense and care of criminals and paupers, besides the untoll damage she has inflicted on property and pubic morals. When sve think of the multitude of wretched beings loft upon the earth ; of the suffering, oegradatiorr, ignorance, and crime that one child has thus transmitted ; of the evil she has caused to thousands of innocent families and the loss to the commuuily, wc can all feebly appreciate the importance to the public of the care and education of a single paup' r child.