title="[Pg 11]"/> them. Then there came another policeman, and I told him the truth, because he said he would box my ears if I did not tell the truth. Then I was taken away, and had to tell people how it happened. I was taken in a cab to the mortuary. I ate a piece of bread they gave me with a good appetite. I saw little Grete’s body, undressed, on a bed. I did not feel any pain and was not sorry. They put me with four women, and I told them the story. I laughed while I was telling it because they asked me such curious questions. I wrote to my mother from prison, and asked her to send me some money to buy some dripping, for we had dry bread.” That was what little Marie Schneider told the judge, without either hesitation or impudence, in a completely childlike manner, like a school-girl at examination; and she seemed to find a certain satisfaction in being able to answer long questions so nicely. Only once her eyes gleamed, and that was when she told how in the prison they had given her dry bread to eat. The medical officer of the prison, who had watched her carefully, declared that he could find nothing intellectually wrong in her. She was intelligent beyond her years, but had no sense of what she had done, and was morally an idiot. And this was the opinion of the other medical men who were called to examine her. The Court, bearing in mind that she was perfectly able to understand the nature of the action she had committed, condemned Marie Schneider to imprisonment for eight years. The question of heredity was not raised. Nothing is known of the father except that he is dead.[5]

Marie Schneider differs from the previous cases, not merely by her apparent freedom from pathological elements, but by her rational motives and her intelligence. The young French woman intended nothing very serious by her brutal and unfeeling practical jokes. Marie Schneider was as thorough and as relentless in the satisfaction of her personal desires as the Marquise de Brinvilliers. But she was a child, and she would very generally be described as an example of “moral insanity.” It is still necessary to take a further step, although a very slight one, to reach what every one would be willing to accept as an instinctive criminal. The example I will select is an Englishman, Thomas Wainewright, well known in his time as an essayist, much better known as a forger and a murderer. R. Griffiths, L.L.D., Wainewright’s maternal grandfather—to take his history as far back as possible—was an energetic literary man and journalist, whose daughter, Ann, born of a young second wife when he was well past middle life, “is supposed to have understood the writings of Mr. Locke as well as perhaps any person of either sex now living” (said the Gentleman’s Magazine) and who married one Thomas Wainewright, and died in child-bed at the age of twenty-one, the last survivor, even at that age, of the second family. Thomas Wainewright, the father, himself died very soon afterwards. Of him nothing is known, though there is some reason to think that Dr. Griffiths regarded him with dislike or suspicion.

The child seems then to have been born of a failing and degenerating stock. He was clever, possessed of some means, and grew up in a literary and artistic circle; but he was vain and unstable, “ever to be wiled away,” as he says himself, “by new and flashy gauds.” When still a lad, he went into the army for a time. Then, after a while, being idle in town, “my blessed Art touched her renegade; by her pure and high influences the noisome mists were purged,” and he wept tears of happiness and gratitude over Wordsworth’s poems. “But this serene state was broken,” he wrote, several years before his career of crime had commenced, “like a vessel of clay, by acute disease, succeeded by a relaxation of the muscles and nerves, which depressed me

hypochondriasis! ever shuddering on the horrible abyss of mere insanity! But two excellent secondary agents—a kind and skilful physician, and a most delicately affectionate and unwearied (though young and fragile) nurse—brought me at length out of those dead black waters, nearly exhausted with so sore a struggle. Steady pursuit was debarred me, and varied amusement deemed essential to my complete revivification.” Then he began to write his essays and criticisms, dealing chiefly with the later Italian and the French artists, under the name of Janus Weathercock. He was a man of many sentimentalities and super-refinements; he hated all vulgarity and “sordid instincts.” His tastes were sensual in every respect. Notwithstanding his means, they were not sufficient to satisfy his desires for luxurious foods and drinks, for fine perfumes, for large jewels to wear. He could not live without luxuries, just as little Marie Schneider could not live without sweets. At about the date that his chief literary activities ceased, and when he was about thirty years of age, he forged a power of attorney with the names of his trustees, assigning to himself the principal of £5000, of which he was enjoying the interest. This was then a capital offence; it remained undetected for twelve years. He is described at this time as “a smart, lively, clever, heartless, voluptuous coxcomb.” He was tall, stooping slightly, of dark hair and complexion, deeply set eyes, stealthy but fascinating, a large and massive head. He married a young lady who was poor, but a gay and brilliant person, and she had a widowed mother and two half-sisters. The young couple lived improvidently, and an uncle, Mr. G. E. Griffiths, who was well off, offered them a home in his own house. This welcome offer was accepted. A year after, Mr. G. E. Griffiths, after a short illness, died very unexpectedly, leaving his mansion and property to his nephew and niece. This money, however, also went rather fast; and now too there were no longer any expectations from relatives. The stepmother and her daughters, the Abercrombies, were poor, and their schemes to make a living were not successful. The Abercrombies were obliged to come and live with the Wainewrights in the large mansion they had inherited, and a very few months after this Mrs. Abercrombie died, like old Mr. Griffiths, very suddenly, in a fit of convulsions. No benefits, however, followed this death; affairs continued to grow worse, and soon the bailiffs were in the house, and there was a bill of sale on the furniture. The Wainewrights and Abercrombies migrated to handsome lodgings in Conduit Street, near Regent Street. They frequently went to the play, and one night, very soon after their arrival, Helen Abercrombie, who wore the thin shoes that women then always wore, got her feet wet, became ill, and was assiduously attended by Wainewright and his wife, who held frequent consultations as to her treatment by means of certain powders; in a few days she was dead, with the same symptoms as her mother, the same symptoms as Mr. Griffiths—“brain mischief,” the doctor called it. She died on the very day on which the bill of sale became due, and after her death it was found that her life had, during the same year, been insured, in various offices, for £18,000. Helen Abercrombie was a beautiful and very healthy girl, and her death led to suspicions, and gave rise to law-suits, which on the slighter but definite ground of misrepresentation were in favour of the companies. In the meanwhile Wainewright found it convenient to leave England (he had separated from his wife after the death of Helen