THE EPIDEMIC OF MURDER N OTHING is more astonishing than the
law of moral contagion which appears to render violent crime the cause of more violent crime, almost after the same fashion as that in which one case of scarlet-fever is the cause of another case of scarlet-fever. Possibly it may be the failure to discover the author or authors of the horrible Whitechapel murders, besides the morbid interest excited by those murders, which may have added to the force of the criminal impulse,—or, rather, which may have diminished the fear that should have counter- acted the criminal impulse. And if so, the ill-success of the police in recent cases of murder,—for example, in the case of the murder at Poplar, and of the three recent child- murders, the authors of all of which may very likely suc- ceed in escaping detection,—will contribute still further to increase the criminal's hope of escaping punishment. But though it may well be that the mystery which envelops a good many of the recent murders has diminished dangerously the wholesome dread of exposure and of punishment, we believe that the morbid excitement which the story of the murders has produced has done far more to stimulate the active criminal impulse, than the failure to detect the criminal has done to diminish the dread of consequences. The evidence of this is that in so many of these cases the murder has certainly been the consequence of some other outrage, as in the horrible ease at Godalming, where the murderer gave himself up to justice, and where there is, therefore, little reason to suppose that the hope of escaping punishment can have materially attenuated the deterring motives. Again, the young murderers at Tunbridge Wells would never have been convicted, had. they not themselves furnished the evidence on which they were found guilty ; so that we may feel very confident that however mischievous the failure to bring criminals to justice may have been,—and, of course, it has been very mischievous,—in diminishing the deterrent motives, it has wielded nothing like the same pernicious influence on the amount of crime which the brooding of unhealthy imagina- tions over the foul dttails of violent crime has had in directly stimulating the passions which breed crime. The fear of punishment—especially of the most effective of all punishments, the manifestation of popular loathing,—is certainly a sort of antiseptic which more or less stops the spread of contagion ; but it is a feeble antiseptic at best, if its force be measured against the virulence of the poison spread by a constant study of the horrible details of sensa- tional crime. One of the most serious responsibilities of every criminal is the tendency of what he does to breed further crime of the same or of kindred types ; though perhaps it is just as well, considering the hideous attraction that every sensational consequence appears to have for many criminals, that they do not and cannot anticipate the full horrors of the plague they are spreading. There are not a few criminals who, if they supposed that they could destroy the human race at one blow, would be all the more tempted to do it by the magni- tude of the crime. And we have little doubt that if the Whitechapel murderer had known beforehand of all the horror, all the blood-thirst, and all the morbid degeneracy of feeling generally that his deeds would excite, he would have entered on his black design with even more insane ardour than he actually displayed,—and certainly he dis- played more than enough for our unfortunate generation. It is a great misfortune that the publicity which is neces- sarily given to every great crime, and still more to every great series of crimes, in itself fosters the moral ferment that produces suet!. crimes. The evil, however, is nearly inevitable. It would never do not to express indignation and horror. And yet the indignation and horror,— except, at least, where they are directed against the actual offenders,—rather stimulate than diminish the morbid tendencies of which crime is the consequence ; and even where they are directed against the actual offenders, they cannot by any means effectually neutralise the injurious consequences of the morbid excitement that has been pro- duced. If the many persons whose passions are excited by reading the details of crime could realise that they were cer- tain to become the objects of popular loathing in case they committed such crimes, perhaps it might be different; but as they generally hope to escape detection, and do not always look forward so far as even to think of the consequences of detection, the dread of this loathing is a very ineffectual antidote to the moral poison of these sensational stories of crime.
But however little good it may be possible to do by ex- pressing the natural and healthy indignation with which the people in general view these horrors, this at least we should avoid,—this which in some instances is not avoided, —namely, the expression of a sentimental and maudlin dislike to capital punishment where capital punishment has been so richly deserved. It is a curious fact, but we believe it to be a fact, that the disposition to cry out against the shedding of the criminal's blood is not altogether alien in sentiment from the disposition which attaches an ex- cessive interest to the commission of bloody deeds. The modern tenderness for life as life is itself in excess. The crime of murder, heinous as it is, is not so heinous because blood is shed, but because it is the last, the most emphatic, and most conspicuous expres- sion of license of all kinds,—of the habitual and life- long failure of self-restraint, self-respect, and respect and consideration for others in things both little and great. The tendency to fix attention on the shedding of blood as the most terrible of all crimes, ministers to that unhealthy interest felt in the shedding of blood which is at the source of all this morbid feeling. We hold that the murderer is by no means the only criminal who might properly be put to death for his crime ; that, indeed, there are not a few murderers who are less guilty than many criminals who have never shed blood ; and that even where they are the worst of criminals, as they often are, it is more for the criminal actions which led up to the murder, than even for the murder itself. At all events, the maudlin dislike to capital punishment comes of the same stock as that excessive interest in murder which fosters a great deal of the contagious virulence of the crime. We would no more hesitate about the capital punishment of any of the recent murderers, if their guilt could be estab- lished, than we would hesitate to say that, after all, the murder they committed, wicked as it was, was not the worst evidence of their criminal life, but was only the natural consequence of much fouler thoughts and purposes and actions which it was impossible to protect from ex- posure without this final crime. Shedding of blood is, at least when we have such murderers as these to do with, the least cruel and the most wholesome way of expressing the public loathing for their licentious life.
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