Second opinion
SOME people have been so good as to suggest in the public prints that I lack compassion; and one person even went so far as to assert, in a celebrated journal, that I merely relay in my writing the prejudices of that eternal bane of British correspondence columns, Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells. It goes without saying that I had far rather be Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells than Compassionate of Islington, for at least the opinions of the former are honestly held. But, in fact, I am neither the one nor the other: I am merely a messenger, bringing the bad news to those who do not want to hear it.
Let us not descend, however, into the ranks of the self-pitying: that is to say, of 99.9 per cent of the human race. Let us, rather, pity others: for example, the victims of crime, of whom there are so many in this country.
There is no real mystery as to why this should be so. Last week, for example, I was going through a prisoner's medical notes when I came across a page listing his 'form' or 'previous', as his criminal record is known. This informative document enumerated his convictions and his sentences, and my eye was caught by a fine of £50 for burglary. Out of interest, I counted his previous convictions for burglary: 56. Assuming (what might not have been true) that he was a burglar of average competence, this meant that he had committed between 280 and 840 burglaries before his £50 fine. Even the late Lord Longford, who so generously forgave those who had wronged others, might have agreed that it was, in the circumstances, not an excessive punishment.
But the story had a happy ending. After a further 12 convictions, one for indecent assault, the prisoner received a life sentence for rape. True, he will be released after five years, but if he puts a foot wrong after that — well, he could be recalled to prison.
Earlier that day, as it happened, I had seen the victim of a rape that had gone unpunished. She was a girl of 18 who came from what might be called an alternative family structure: her mother's cur
rent baby-father was also her first cousin's current baby-father — that is to say, the father of his baby-mother's sister's daughter.
My patient's boyfriend — the same age as her mother's current baby-father, it goes without saying — turned out to be a violent man, who, in the cant psychobabble of today, 'couldn't let go' when she told him that she didn't want to see him any more. He therefore kidnapped her several times and raped her repeatedly, until she took the unusual and dangerous step of informing the police. The subsequent court case collapsed, however, when she refused to testify, having been beaten up in the street by his associates as an earnest of things to come if she didn't shut up. In England, there is no worse crime than going to the police Of course, had the rapist been convicted, he would have been in danger of violence from the very kind of people who sought to prevent his conviction in the first place. But consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, and not even the average Englishman, for all his innate love of justice and fair play, can fully achieve it.
Theodore Dalrymple
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