Abercrombie), and took refuge with a rather impecunious gentleman who lived with his daughter at Boulogne. He persuaded this gentleman to obtain money to effect a loan by insuring his life. One night, after the policy had been effected, this gentleman suddenly died. We next hear of Wainewright travelling in France, doubtless for excellent reasons, under an assumed name. He fell into the hands of the police, and not being able to give a good account of himself, was imprisoned for six months. The French police found that he carried about with him a certain powder, at that time little known, called strychnine; this was put down to English eccentricity. At this time there was a warrant out against Wainewright for forgery; he was lured over to England by a detective, with the aid of a woman, and arrested. He was tried for forgery, and condemned to transportation for life. At the same time the suspicions of the doctor who attended Helen Abercrombie were roused, and Wainewright himself, after his condemnation, admitted to visitors, with extraordinary vanity and audacity, his achievements in poisoning, and elucidated his methods. It is also said that he kept a diary in which he recorded his operations with much complacency. The one thing that hurt little Marie Schneider was the dry bread; the one thing that moved Wainewright was being placed in irons in the hold of the ship. “They think me a desperado! Me! the companion of poets, philosophers, artists, and musicians, a desperado! You will smile at this—no, I think you will feel for the man, educated and reared as a gentleman; now the mate of vulgar ruffians and country bumpkins.” At Hobart Town on two occasions he endeavoured to remove by poison persons who had excited his animosity. He is described at this time by one who knew him well as “a man with a massive head, in which the animal propensities were largely developed. His eyes were deeply set in his head; he had a square solid jaw; he wore his hair long, stooped somewhat, and had a snake-like expression which was at once repulsive and fascinating. He rarely looked you in the face. His conversation and manner were winning in the extreme; he was never intemperate, but nevertheless of grossly sensual habits, and an opium-eater. As to moral character, he was a man of the very lowest stamp. He seemed to be possessed by an ingrained malignity of disposition which kept him constantly on the very confines of murder, and he took a perverse pleasure in traducing persons who had befriended him. He was a marked man in Hobart Town—dreaded, disliked, and shunned by everybody. His sole living companion was a cat, for which he evinced an extraordinary affection.” He died of apoplexy in 1852, at the age of fifty-eight.[6] Wainewright presents to us a perfect picture of the instinctive criminal in his most highly developed shape, fortunately a rare phenomenon. It is this instinctive propensity to crime which is sometimes called “moral insanity.” This is, however, by no means a happy phrase, since it leads to much fruitless disputation. It is wiser at present to apply to such an individual the more simple term, instinctive criminal.[7] There is, however, distinct interest in noting that at one period of his life Wainewright was on the verge of insanity, if not, as is more likely, actually insane; it is extremely probable that he never recovered from the effects of that illness. It may well be that if we possessed a full knowledge of every instinctive criminal we should always be able to put our hands on some definite organically morbid spot.

The instinctive criminal, in his fully developed form, is a moral monster. In him the absence of guiding or inhibiting social instincts is accompanied by unusual development of the sensual and self-seeking impulses. The occasional criminal, as he is usually called, is a much commoner and more normally constituted person. In him the sensual instincts need not be stronger than usual, and the social elements, though weaker than usual, need not be absent. Weakness is the chief characteristic of the occasional criminal; when circumstances are not quite favourable he succumbs to temptation. Occasional crime is one of the commonest forms of crime; it is also that for whose existence and development society is most directly responsible; very often it might equally well be called social crime. Here is an example. Two lads of honest life, the sons of agricultural labourers, being unable to obtain a scanty subsistence at home, start one day in a fit of desperation for a distant town in search of work. Without food or shelter, sleeping under a hedge, they reach a farm-house. Looking through a window they see a plum-pudding; they open the window, seize the pudding, and go a few yards off to devour it. In a few hours they are on the way to the lock-up, to receive, later on, a sentence of six months’ imprisonment. “At the close of it they were provided with an outfit and an introduction to an employer of labour in Canada; and when we last heard of them they were doing extremely well, with excellent prospects before them.”[8] This sequel (which would have been better had it come before the seizure of the plum-pudding) proves that we are not dealing with instinctive criminals. Take another case mentioned by the same writer. A woman with a drunken husband who spends his last penny in the public-house, is driven by actual starvation to commit her first crime. She steals a small piece of meat to feed her hungry children. She is sent to prison. “We heard of her afterwards leading a most consistent and almost saintly life.” These persons, it is clear, were not the criminals but the victims; society was the criminal. Now and then, as in the cases just cited, it happens that the occasional criminal who is thus recklessly flung into prison is assisted to live a human life. In the great majority of cases he is ruined for life, familiarised with the prison, introduced to bad company. We have, as well as we are able, manufactured him into what is called the habitual criminal.

The steps by which the occasional criminal, aided on the one hand by neglect, on the other by the hot-bed of the prison, develops into the habitual criminal are slow and subtle; that is one of the tragedies of life. M. Joly has recorded the experiences of the police concerning the thefts that take place at the great Parisian shops, the Louvre, and the Bon-Marché. “This is the beginning. From a gallery one sees a woman—rich or well-to-do-who buys a certain number of objects and pays for them; but without asking permission she takes some little, almost insignificant object—a little ribbon to fasten a parcel, a more commodious paper-bag. No one will say that she is stealing; no one will think of speaking to her or disturbing her. But she is observed and even watched, for one expects to see her again some time after taking, as she walks along, say, a flower worth twenty-five centimes. A little later she will appropriate an article of greater value, and henceforth she will take for the pleasure of taking. The inclination, which at the beginning had in it nothing instinctive or fatal, will grow as all habits grow. Another time a woman who had no intention of stealing, but whose conscience is probably elastic, grows impatient at the delay in attending to her wants. It is,