How are we to explain the fascination of horror ?
Our -evening contemporaries will, we believe, acknowledge that the reports of the Plaistow trial were sold like those of a great political event or of the race for the America Cap, and we can ourselves testify that they were being sold late at night, like the accounts of a battle. We are, moreover, informed that the proprietor of one penny theatre on the south side of the Thames gave, before and during the trial, a most realistic representation of the tragedy, and that it proved a profitable speculation. Yet the crime had absolutely no interest except for its exceptional horror, there being no uncertainty as to the offender, and matricide by a child being an almost unknown offence. We do not suppose that the representation would increase the number of such crimes, but the fact that scores would pay pennies to witness such a scene reveals a strange and bad condition of feeling.
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