The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3. CRAVING FOR SENSATION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 98, 3 August 1910, Page 5

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3. CRAVING FOR SENSATION.

The Crippen case is a godsend !o the public. The doings of a decadent are of world-wide interest. Even the fact that Crippen read "Pickwick Pnr>i>rs" is of sufficient interest to cable f ll .- over the -world. The chorus of description sung when a great crime is committed sounds very like a thanksgiving service for the opportunity to revel in good "copy." It is an undeniable fact that crime is considered the most fascinating subject that can be written about. The most successful story writers are those who tell of tragedy—the old-fashioned child's poetry book taught in schools contained nothing but tragedy, sorrow, death, decay and disease, and ran the gamut from "The Blind Boy" to "Casablanca" and "The Idiot Child." Criminal trials, divorce suits, the hearing of cases against violent persons, will always fill courts. Melodrama, with heaps of murders, sensational rescues and horrible deaths, will fill theatres more quickly than any other class of entertainment, excluding only prize-fights or a lecture by a "reformed" criminal. The criminal is as fond of notoriety as is the great author, the eminent painter, or the successful public man. The crinjj, nal's doings are publicly recorded, nd ! as a warning to evil-doers to desist from crime, 'but because human nature revels in sensation. Public hangings would draw immense crowds, a street row will always magnetise the community, and] in numerous cases—all New, Zealand cities can be quoted—the crowd has been on the side of the wrongdoer and antagonistic to the police. As the public recording of sensational crimes is considered the most payable variety of newspaper piatter. it follows that the demand must he eupplipd, seeing that the newspapers, are not splfily philanthropic institutions. The excess of detail in regard to the records of crimes is an incitement to crime. Criminals have no methods of knowing what is go j ingi on in the distant criminal world except by the public prints and the records of unusual crimes always spur criminals to emulation. We hear of " waves of crime." Only a fortnight ago the extraordinary wave of crime now sweeping over England was mentioned in the cablegrams. The criminal is emulative and imitative. He admires the great criminal, and dreadful deeds spur decadents to imitation. It is noticeable that when a crime of a particularly awful kind has been perpetrated, crimes of that particular sort will be common for some time thereafter. So vast an effect has the public recording of such cases on the weakminded, that men innocent of a specific crime have given themselves in custody for the mere sake of notoriety. In the "Jack the Ripper" cases', dozens of lesser criminals applied for the "honor" of being recognised as the arch fiend. What extraordinary effects reading may have on unbalanced minds is certainlv shown even in New Zealand. The reading of books of invented crime have sent many boys burgling- with revolvers in their pockets. Lately, in France, two peasant youths, after a course of vile reading, murdered everybody on the farm where they were employed. Reading of such "literature" induced two New South Wales boys to go "bushranging." Their first deed was the shooting to death of a sleeping man. Three weeks afterwards another boy, also with the bushranging fever, shot his own father. He had the paper containing a record of the great feat of the other boys in a pocket. He had become totally unbalanced by reading ft. Judges, understanding the extraordinary affection of the public for awful details, sometimes order the clearing of a court in an especially obnoxious sexual case, but there is never any order against th%use 1 and exaggeration of details in cases of capital crimes. The Crippen story will be read with avidity, not only by most well-balanced people, but with tremendous avidity by criminals and those bordering on the edge of crime. It is undeniable that the criminal is surrounded with an unholy halo. In these days of progress, greater damage than ever can be done, for, as we saw in the records, dozens of einematographists were waiting at Father Point to get a pictorial record of the celebrity. Just as the reformed "hard-case" loves to get on a public platform to tell the people what a dreadful person he used to be, so does the criminal rejoice in his crime and loves to have followers and admirers. The peoples' detestation of crime does not hinder them from revelling in its story, and the writer who invents a new horror has a large following of readers." That the assimilation of horrors creates only a momentary sensation or stimulation in the balanced mind may be agreed, but that it has a tremendous and evil impression on the unbalanced is quite certain. There is, in. fact, no greater reason for the general publication of great crimes than there is for the publication of indecencies. The harm done by the former exceeds that done by the latter. Crippen, a decadent, is at the moment the most-talked-of man in 'England, and probably in the Empire, thanks to the system which the people demand of "starring" crime. And in the meantime the merest remark of the criminal will be considered of supreme interest to tens of millions of readers and a spur to the endeavours of budding Crippens.