VAGARIES OF CRIME.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 374, 18 April 1908, Page 4

VAGARIES OF CRIME.

A remarkable address on the cause and cure of crime was given by Dr. Albert'Wilson, the brain specialist, during a private debate at the Sesame Club, I,ondou, on the night of Monday, February 17th. Dr. Wilson had promised to bring one of the most notorious craksmen of the Victorian era — now a reformed character —to explain the impulses which led him to crime. To the disappointment of everyone present the ex-burglar apparently did not care to face the ordeal, for he failed to attend.

Dr. Wilson announced that in the course of a special study pf the psychology of crime he had examined more than 200 criminals, including, murderers,pick-pockets, highwaymen, and burglars. “ Of all the cause of crime,” he said, “ perhaps the most remarkable is that of multiple personality. I had a striking cases in a girl of thirteen a few years ago.

“ In one personality she became a simple child of two, who could not understand words and did not know her own name. In another personality she became blind and imbecile.

“I took her to Sir John Tweedy, the eye specialist, who pronounced her totally blind. Sir Thomas Barlow also declared her a hopeless imbecile, and said that she should be put in an asylum as soon as possible.

MANV PERSONAEITIES. “ A curious fact was that in her blind personality she could draw pictures which she could not draw normally. In a third personality she was a criminal. Once while out for a walk she stole an orange, and when rebuked replied in the typical phraseology of a criminal, ‘lf you can’t get an orange, why nick it.’

“On another occasion in her criminal personality she pushed her sister into the fire, and only the sudden arrival of her mother in the room prevented a dreadful tragedy.” Dr. Wilson divided criminals into two classes — (1) Perverts. (2) Inverts. * “ We have to thank our present system of education,” Dr. Wilson said, “ for the recruiting of the inverts. Poor children with starved brains and bad heredity are forced to learn a lot of stuff at school quite useless for their environment. “The result is that by thirteen or fourteen, when they leave school, they have no pluck or stamina in them.” The four chief divisions of criminals Dr. Wilson declared to be : (1) Insane. (2) Dnstable. (3) Sports (in botanical sense — one varying from normal type). 4 Criminals irom environment or sun ouudiugs. Unstable criminals were those who yielded to impulse, he said, and had no power of arguing out what the after-effects of their actions might be.

“sports.” Sports, Dr. Wilson said, were harmless types of criminals, such as a burglar he knew who would slip the kitchen window catch, warm himself in front of the fire, and go away before morning without doing any real mischief. “ The father of this man,” said Dr. Wilson, “ was one of the most flourishing men in the City. He made a year, but when he died left nothing. That was a form of crime in itself. “The burglar’s mother also was a very neurotic woman. Of the six children of the marriage the daughter and two brothers went to the asylum. “As regards the effect of environment on crime, 1 invited an excellent example to come here to-night. lam sorry he has not come. I may say that he was the most daring criminal of the Victorian era.

“ He was so clever and intelligent that he might well have been Prime Minister ora Cabinet Minister. A more expert cracksman never lived. He would don evening dress to perpetrate his crimes, and, passing himself off as a peer, would mix in the best society. “So daring and desperate a criminal was he that the Home Office gave orders that he was never to be dealt with singe-han-ded, two policemen, heavily armed, being always commissioned for the purpose.

REFORMED TVPE.” ‘ ‘ His first sentence was for seven years, and his second for life. He was released when the King came to the throne, and has since reformed. “The father of this man was a farm bailiff in Staffordshire. His parents died, and he came under the control of his grandfather, who was a drunken wretch. “ The treatment he received was so brutal that one day he attacked his grandfather with a poker, beat him until he was nearly dead, and made off with his grandfather’s watch and which he took from a safe. Thus when he was thirteen years old his career of crime tiegan. “It is one of the most striking cases of crime as the result of environment that I have met.

“ Our .system of dealing with crime is entirely wrong,” Dr, Wilson concluded. “We want to make a clean sweep of our whole legal machinery and have it put in fresh. Each criminal has some peculiarity of his own which needs special consideration. At present we seem to aim at vengeance, not reform.

“ My burglar friend says that the only cure for crime is the indeterminate sentence. ”