Chapter IV: Criminal Anthropology (psychical) (2)

In all countries religion, or superstition, is closely related with crime. The Sansya dacoits, in the Highlands of Central India, would spill a little liquor on the ground before starting on an expedition, in order to propitiate Devi. “If any one sneezed, or any other very bad omen was observed, the start was postponed. If they heard a jackal, or the bray of the village donkey, their hearts were cheered; but a funeral or a snake turned them back. They were also very superstitious about their oil. The vessel was not allowed to touch the ground until the oil had been poured upon the torch, and then it was dashed on the earth; and from that moment until the job was finished no water touched their lips.”[67]

Among 200 Italian murderers Ferri did not find one who was irreligious. “A Russian peasant,” remarks Mr. Kennan, “may be a highway robber or a murderer, but he continues nevertheless to cross himself and say his prayers.” Dostoieffsky also notes the religious ardour with which the convicts gave candles and gifts to the church. All those who live by unlawful methods, said Casanova, confide in the help of God. Naples is the most criminal city in Europe for crimes against the person; the number of murderers there is about 16 in 100,000, while in Italy generally it is 8.12; and in Ireland (the least criminal land in Europe) it is about 5. Naples is also the most religious city in Europe. “No other city,” observes Garofalo,[68] “can boast of such frequent processions; no other, perhaps, is so zealous an observer of the practices of the church. But unfortunately--as an illustrious historian [Sismondi], speaking of the Italians of his day, wrote--‘the murderer, still stained with the blood he has just shed, devoutly fasts, even while he is meditating a fresh assassination; the prostitute places the image of the Virgin near her bed, and recites her rosary devoutly before it; the priest, convicted of perjury, is never inadvertently guilty of drinking a glass of water before mass.’ Those words of Sismondi’s,” Garofalo adds, “are as true to-day as when they were written.” Of Marro’s 500 criminals, 46 per cent. were regular frequenters of church, 25 per cent. went irregularly. Among sexual offenders the proportion of frequenters rose to 61 per cent. A man of sixty, known to Marro, imprisoned for rape on a child of eight, was much scandalised at the irreligious talk of some of his companions. “I do not imitate them,” he said; “morning and evening I say my prayers.”

Among women, the governor of Saint Lazare remarked to M. Joly, it is especially the criminals by passion who are superstitious, thieves very slightly so; they are practical women.

It must not be supposed that there is insincerity or hypocrisy in the religion of criminals. For the man of low culture the divine powers lend themselves easily to the succour of the individual, and it is always as well to propitiate them. German murderers believe they can do this crudely, according to Casper, by leaving their excrement at the spot of the crime. A rather higher grade of intelligence will effect the same end by prayer. A wife who was poisoning her husband wrote to her accomplice:--“He is not well ... if God wished it. Oh, if God would have pity on us, how I would bless Him! When he complains [of the effects of the poison] I thank God in my heart.” And he answers, “I will pray to Heaven to aid us.” And she again, “He was ill yesterday. I thought that God was beginning His work. I have wept so much that it is not possible God should not have pity on my tears.” Lombroso found 248 tattooed prisoners out of 2480 bearing religious symbols, while the slang of criminals witnesses to a faith in God, in the immortality of the soul, and in the church. When a woman who had strangled and dismembered a child, in order to spite its relations, heard her sentence of death pronounced, she turned to her advocates and said, “Death is nothing. It is the salvation of the soul that is everything. When that is safe, the rest is of no account.”

It is clear how easily religious beliefs and religious observances, especially in Catholic countries, lend themselves to the practices of the ignorant criminal, and it very rarely happens that the criminal condemned to death fails to avail himself of the ministrations of the chaplain (only once in more than thirty years at La Roquette), and frequently to respond to them with gratifying eagerness. In religion his primitive emotional nature, with its instability and love of sentiment, easily finds what it needs. A French chaplain of experience and intelligence told M. Joly that he had “more satisfaction” with his prisoners than with people of the world. The Rev. E. Payson Hammond, who has conducted many missions to prisoners, finds very great aptitude for conversion among them. Of the convicts of the State Prison of Jefferson City, in the United States, for instance, he remarks:--“Many hearts were melted to tears, and I believe that a very large number were converted.” “Convicts at their last hour,” wrote Lauvergne, “nine times out of ten die religiously. Whatever the enormity of their crimes, they all leave durable recollections in the heart of the priest who assists them. He sees them long afterwards in his dreams, beautiful and happy.”

When the criminal is not superstitiously devout, he is usually stupidly or brutally indifferent. Maxime du Camp, during a visit to the prison of Mazas, at service time on Sunday, had the curiosity to look into thirty-three cellules, to observe the effect of the ceremony: three were reading the mass; one stood up, with covered head, looking at the altar; one was on his knees; one displayed a prayer-book, but was reading a pamphlet; one wept with head buried in his arms; twenty-six sat at their tables, working or reading.

It seems extremely rare to find intelligently irreligious men in prison. The sublime criminals whom we meet with in Elizabethan dramas, arguing haughtily concerning Divine things and performing unheard-of atrocities, are not found in our prisons. Free-thinkers are rarely found. A trifle will induce the prisoner to inscribe himself as Protestant, instead of Catholic, or _vice versâ_, or to change from one side to the other; but out of 28,351 admissions to three large metropolitan prisons, remarks the Rev. J. W. Horsley, only fifty-seven described themselves as atheists, and this number, he adds, must be further reduced as containing some Chinese and Mahommedans. It should be noted that a profession of atheism would deprive the prisoner of no advantage or privilege open to the others. Mr. Horsley once resolved to keep notes of the first twelve consecutive cases of those who on entrance described themselves either positively as atheists or negatively as of no religion. The results were interesting: 1 was a thief, a rather ignorant person, whose chief reason for being an infidel was that his parents had “crammed religion down his throat.” 2 an ex-soldier, a heavy drinker, and when asked why he had described himself as an atheist, “he said he only called himself mad;” he was actually insane. 3 a burglar, who said he meant that he never attended church because he had seen so much hypocrisy among professing Christians; in a few days he gave up the designation of atheist. 4 was a swindler, a great liar, and probably insane. 5 was a lad of nineteen, of very little intellect, who had deserted from the army; his father had been “a follower of Bradlaugh.” 6 a German Jew, who frequented Christian churches, but not having been baptised, simply did not know how to describe himself. 7 an intemperate schoolmaster, charged with deserting his family; he meant that he had ceased to attend religious worship because he was conscious that his religion was merely formal; his “atheism” was simply a form of penitent self-abnegation. 8 a conceited lad of seventeen who had assaulted his guardian, and had adopted atheism to justify his spirit of revenge. 9 a young man who had robbed his employer; he was brought up under religious influences, but having attracted attention by objecting to revealed religions, became a Secularist lecturer. 10 a prostitute and dipsomaniac with 150 convictions; always called herself an atheist when she was in a bad temper or drunk. 11 a young baker who had taken poison; called himself an atheist under influence of laudanum; goes regularly to a Congregational Chapel. 12 a girl of fifteen; she meant that she rarely, if ever, attended any place of worship. So that only in two or three, or at most four cases out of the twelve, was there profession of atheism in any legitimate sense of the word.

§ 7. _Thieves’ Slang._

Every profession, every isolated group of persons, almost every family possesses a more or less extended set of words and phrases which are unintelligible to strangers. This dialect is termed in English _slang_, in French _argot_, in Italian _gergo_. The most highly developed and the most widely extended slang of this kind is that used by habitual criminals. Every country has its own thieves’ slang, but within the bounds of that country the slang is generally intelligible; the Lombard thief, Lombroso remarks, can understand the Calabrian; Parisian _argot_ is intelligible at Marseilles. The use of criminals’ slang marks the recidivist. “When a man talks _argot_,” said the Abbé Crozes, “he is registered in the army of evil-doers.”

“I was jogging down a blooming slum in the Chapel, when I butted a reeler, who was sporting a red slang. I broke off his jerry, and boned the clock, which was a red one, but I was spotted by a copper, who claimed me. I was lugged before the beak, who gave me six doss in the Steel. The week after I was chucked up I did a snatch near St. Paul’s, was collared, lagged, and got this bit of seven stretch.” That is a pickpocket’s history of his arrest as narrated to Mr. Davitt. Here is the translation:--“As I was walking down a narrow alley in Whitechapel, I ran up against a drunken man, who had a gold watch-guard. I stole his watch, which was gold, but was seen by a policeman, who caught me and took me before the magistrate, who gave me six months in the Bastille [the old House of Correction, Coldbath Fields]. When I was released I attempted to steal a watch near St. Paul’s, but was taken again, convicted, and sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude.”

Mr. Horsley has an interesting passage on English thieves’ slang, which I will transcribe at length:--“Of multifold origin, it is yet mainly derived from Romany or gipsy talk, and thereby contains a large Eastern element, in which old Sanskrit roots may readily be traced. Many of these words would be unintelligible to ordinary folk, but some have passed into common speech. For instance, the words bamboozle, pal (companion, a friend), mull (to make a mull or mess of a thing), bosh (from the Persian), are pure gipsy words, but have found some lodging, if not a home, in our vernacular. Then there are survivals (not always of the fittest) from the tongue of our Teutonic ancestors, so that Dr. Latham, the philologist, says--‘The thieves of London’ (and he might still more have said the professional tramps) ‘are the conservators of Anglo-Saxonisms. Next there are the cosmopolitan absorptions from many a tongue. From the French _bouilli_ we probably get the prison slang term ‘bull’ for a ration of meat. ‘Chat,’ thieves’ term for house, is obviously _château_. ‘Steel,’ the familiar name for Coldbath Fields Prison, is an appropriation and abbreviation of Bastille; and he who ‘does a tray’ (serves three months’ imprisonment) therein, borrows his word from our Gallican neighbours. So from the Italian we get _casa_ for house, filly (_figlia_) for daughter, donny (_donna_) for woman, and omee (_uomo_) for man. The Spanish gives us _don_, which the universities have not despised as a useful term. From the German we get durrynacker, for a female hawker, from _dorf_, a village, and _nachgehen_, to run after. From Scotland we borrow _duds_ for clothes, and from the Hebrew _shoful_ for base coin. Purely of native manufacture, however, and entirely artificial, are the two classes of rhyming and back-slang which mingle with cant to make a whole. By the former, any word that rhymes with the one you mean to use is put in its place, and gradually becomes accepted. This has the merit of unintelligibility when it is desired not to let chance passers-by know of what we are speaking, which naturally occurs not seldom in the days of detectives and plain-clothes constables. Suppose I have ‘touched’ (_i.e._, been successful in some robbery), and feel inclined for some relaxation in company with my sweetheart (or one of them), I might address her thus--‘Come, cows and kisses, put the battle of the Nile on your Barnet Fair, and a rogue and villain in your sky-rocket; call a flounder and dab with a tidy Charing Cross, and we’ll go for a Bushey Park along the frog and toad into the live eels.’ This would apparently be but a pendant to the celebrated bit of nonsense extemporised by Foote, but, as a matter of fact, to a master or mistress of rhyming slang it would at once be understood as--‘Come, missus, put a tile (hat) on your hair, and a shilling in your pocket; call a cab with a tidy horse, and we’ll go for a lark along the road into the fields.’ And the second class of manufactured slang is that largely patronised by costermongers. It is called back-slang, and simply consists of spelling (more or less accurately) words backwards. Thus--‘Hi, yob! kool that enif elrig with the nael ekom. Sap her a top o’ reeb and a tib of occabot,’ is only, ‘Hi, boy! look at that fine girl with the lean moke (donkey). Pass her a pot of beer and a bit of tobacco.’ The art or merit of this form of slang consists in the rapidity, often remarkable, with which such words can be reversed. Thus a gentleman, wishing to test the skill of a professor of the art with a word not in common use in the market, asked his coster friend what was the back slang for hippopotamus. At once he answered, ‘Summatopoppy,’ the _y_ being euphoniously put for _ih_.”[69] Mr. Davitt thus describes a form of slang (“thieves’ Latin”) commonly used by professional burglars and the superior order of thieves:--“Its chief peculiarity consists in reversing the position of the syllables of a word containing more than one syllable, and making two syllables of all words having only one in ordinary pronunciation, by adding a vowel or liquid consonant to the first or second part of such word. By the application of this simple rule to slang words, the ‘lingo’ becomes too complicated for any but the initiated to understand. For instance, if two thieves were hunting for game, and one were to see a policeman, he would shout to his comrade--‘Islema! Ogda the opperca!’ which in slang is--‘Misle! Dog the copper!’ Otherwise--‘Vanish! See the policeman!’”[70] Very similar practices prevail in the thieves’ slang of France, Italy, Spain, and India. It is doubtless, indeed, universal. Closely allied is the kind of slang called _largongi_, by which, for example, _macaroni_ becomes _lacaronimique_, and _vache_, _lachevane_.

The chief interest of the slang of habitual criminals is psychological. It furnishes us with a curious insight into the mental processes of those who invent and use it; it is itself an embodiment of criminal tendencies; in Victor Hugo’s vigorous phrase, “C’est le verbe devenu forçat.” It is full of metaphorical expressions, of objects named after their attributes. Nearly everything is degraded, sometimes with coarse and fantastic wit. “While the imagination of the poet gives a soul to animate objects,” remarks M. Joly, “the imagination of the criminal transforms living forms into things, assimilates man to animals.” Thus the skin for them is leather, the face _un mufle_, the mouth _un bec_, the arm _un aileron_. The body is called the corpse, and to eat is to put something in one’s corpse. The woman who supports a bully is called his saucepan (_marmite_), a friend _un poteau_; _ne pas être méchant_ means to be a fool. Everything is thus vulgarised. The criminal instinctively depreciates the precious coinage of language, just as to his imagination money is at Paris “zinc,” and in the Argentine Republic “iron.”

The soul in French _argot_ is significantly called _la fausse_, and the conscience _la muette_; shame is simply _la rouge_. In English slang, as Mr. Horsley remarks, “the delicate expression ‘fingersmith’ is descriptive of a trade which a blunt world might call that of a pickpocket. Or, again, to get three months’ hard labour is more pleasantly described as getting thirteen clean shirts, one being served out in prison each week. The tread-wheel again is more politely called the everlasting staircase, or the wheel of life, or the vertical care-grinder. Penal servitude is dignified with the appellation of serving her Majesty for nothing, and an attempt is even made to lighten the horror of the climax of a criminal career by speaking of dying in a horse’s night-cap--_i.e._, a halter.” So that while the better things of life are degraded, there is a tendency to elevate those that truly indicate degradation.

The criminal slang of France and Italy has been studied in its psychological bearings much more thoroughly than the English, by Mayor, Lombroso, and others. Lombroso considers that the most marked and most curious characteristic of criminal slang is that already noted by which a thing is designated by its most salient qualities from the criminal point of view. Thus the advocate becomes the _blanchisseur_ or _imbiancatore_ (washerman); the _juge d’instruction_, the _curicux_ or the _père sondeur_; the sermon, _l’ennuyeuse_ or _tediosa_; the purse is _la santa_; the court, _la juste_. “The guillotine,” remarks M. Joly, “is designated without imprecation, without contempt, without hatred, but with a wealth of expressions and with a resignation, one might almost say a fatalistic humour, which is not reassuring for them--or for others. The executioner himself is called the _juge de la paix_.”

_Etrangler un perroquet_ is to drink a glass of absinth, the allusion being to the colour (green), and also, it is said, to the sensation in swallowing the absinth, and to other minute points. A prostitute is the _hôtel du besoin_, a _Louis-quinze_, and also the _bourre-de-soie_, in allusion, it is said, to murmured offers and a silk dress; the brothel is _le cloaque_. In Venetian slang a promise is called a shadow. In Bavarian cant a playing card is _karzerweg_--the road to prison.

Very strange, remote, and bizarre are some of these slang synonyms, full of coarse ironies and jests. _Paradouze = paradis_ (_douze_ instead of _dise_); _saucisse = moi_ (by way of _moi-s-aussi_); _crottard = trottoir_; _blanchir du foie_ = to intend betrayal (play on _foi_); _perdreau = pederaste_ (_pedro-pédero_); _herbe sainte = absinthe_; _être dans l’infanterie_ = to be pregnant (_enfanter_); _moulin à vent = derrière_; _pape = verre de rhum_ (_Rome_); _veronique = lanterne_ (_verre_); _vert-de-gris = absinthe_ (play on _vert_ and _verre_, with allusion to its deleterious properties); _demoiselle du Pont-neuf_ (that all may go over) = prostitute; _apaier_ = to assassinate; _boire dans la grande tasse_ = to drown oneself; a knife is a _lingre_ (from Langres, the French Sheffield); the _souteneur_ (a prostitute’s bully) is called by the English word _fish_, or some similar name (_poisson_, _goujon_, _baraillon_, _maquereau_); the prostitute is called _morue_, and _Banc de Terre-Neuve_ is applied to that portion of the Parisian boulevards lying between the Madeleine and the Porte Saint-Denis.

Sometimes the slang of criminals, like that of the rest of the world, commemorates an historical fact. To dethrone in France is _juilletiser_. The sun is _le grand Jablo_, Jablochoff’s electric lamps having been the first used to illuminate Paris. A _coup de Raguse_ is a defection, in allusion to the Duke of Ragusa. In Italy a drunkard is called a Frenchman, a beggar a Spaniard, a card-sharper a Greek. In Spain a thief is called a _Murcio_, from the province of Murcia.

Words are frequently abbreviated. As examples, Lombroso mentions _tra = travail_; _ces mess = ces Messieurs_ = the police; _chand = marchand_; _lubre = lugubre_; _abs = absinthe_; _avoir ses aff = avoir ses affaires_ (_menstrues_); _mac = maquereau = souteneur_, of a prostitute.

Very curious are the large number of foreign words, in more or less corrupted form generally, which are to be found in criminal slang. In the German cant Hebrew words are numerous; German and French in Italian; German and English in French; Italian and Romany in English. “Hebrew, or rather Yiddish,” Lombroso observes, “supplies the half of Dutch slang, and nearly a fourth of German, in which I counted 156 out of 700, and in which all the terms for various crimes (except _band-spicler_ for a cheater at dice) are Jewish.” The presence of archaisms, classical and mediæval, is also curious.

It is more interesting to find a revelation of the things in which the criminal is most intimately interested by noting the wealth and variety of synonyms for certain words. Thus Cougnet and Righini found 17 words for warders or police; 9 for the act of sodomy; 7 for plunder. French cant has 44 synonyms for drunkenness, besides 20 for drinking, and 8 for wine, in all 72; while there are only 19 for water and 36 for money.

This slang is largely of ephemeral life, but a considerable proportion is permanent. Its tendency is, however, to die out. The modern professional criminal avoids slang as he avoids tattooing.

§ 8. _Prison Inscriptions._

Whenever the average human being is secluded for any considerable length of time from his fellows, he experiences the need of embodying some literary or artistic expression of himself. This instinct seems to be deeper and more wide-spread than that which induces some people to leave their names or other sign manual--the frothiest efflorescence of vain moments--on the places they visit. There is no vanity here, and it is an instinct from which no individual, whatever his degree of culture, is exempt; it is indeed scarcely distinguishable from the instinct which leads to the production of heroic works of art. The expression must vary with the individual. I knew a room, the residence of a long succession of medical students during certain weeks of seclusion involved by hospital duty, of which the walls were covered by inscriptions, humorous or broadly witty, cleverly artistic sketches, happy lines from the classics. Each person’s inscription is after his kind: Mgr. Darboy, the Archbishop of Paris, writes in the form of a cross, “O crux, mentis robur, ave;” Bill Sykes at Clerkenwell writes, “Lads, your only friend here is your brown lofe and pint of thick.”

In general, it seems, the lower the order of culture the more complete and trustworthy is the inscription as an expression of individual peculiarities. “The child loves to speak to himself,” as Dr. Corre remarks; “the negro, and especially the negress, think aloud; and if from restraint or distrust the criminal keeps silent his most intimate thoughts, he feels himself compelled to fix them wherever he may find himself, on the walls of his prison, or on the books that are lent to him. It is for himself, for himself alone, that he writes what he cannot or dare not say, and these revelations are very curious for the psychologist.” His desires and lusts, his aspirations, his coarse satires and imprecations, his bitter reflections, his judgments of life, are all recorded in these prison inscriptions on whitewashed walls, cell doors, margins of books, tin knives, and the bottoms of skilly cans and dinner tins. In Italy they have been studied in reference to their psychological significance with characteristic thoroughness by Lombroso; and in England Mr. Horsley and Mr. Davitt have recorded a considerable number.[71] The Italian inscriptions, on the whole, are marked by a greater preponderance of the sentimental, reflective, and imprecatory elements; the English are generally very practical and material, dealing with food questions, or giving a concise statement of the event which led to the individual’s incarceration, with occasional tendency to moral aspiration and didactic exhortation. Mr. Horsley notes that comparatively few inscriptions are found on the women’s side, but that these are obscene much more frequently than on the men’s side. I conclude from Lombroso’s very comprehensive collection that this remark also holds good of the Italian inscriptions. It should be added that every inscription is an infringement of prison regulations; it is “a vulgar question of bread and water to the hungry author,” and the impulse which produces it must therefore be of considerable strength.

Here are a few terse English examples of exploits, probably the work of old hands, and recorded by Mr. Davitt and Mr. Horsley:--

“A burst in the City. Copped while boning the swag. 7 stretch, 1869.
Roll on 1876. Cheer up, pals.”

“Little Dicky from the New Cut. 10 and a ticket. Put away by a Moll”
(_i.e._, sold by a prostitute).

“Fullied for a clock and slang” (_i.e._, committed for trial for
stealing watch and chain).

“Poor old Jim, the lob crawler, fell from Racker, and got pinched”
(_i.e._, James and Racker having gone out to commit till robberies,
the former was apprehended, and the latter escaped).

“For seven long years have I served them,
And seven long years I have to stay,
For meeting a bloke in our Alley,
And taking his ticker away.”

“The judge he seven years gave me,
Transported to Van Diemen’s Land,
Far away from my friends and relations,
And the girl with the dark velvet band.”

The last writer was at Dartmoor, and introduced Van Diemen’s Land because of the exigencies of rhyme.

The delights of food inspire much verse, and dissatisfaction with its quality or quantity a large number of remarks:--

“I had for my dinner, ochone! ochone!
One ounce of mutton and three ounce of bone!”

“Here’s luck to the pint of skilly!”

“Lord save me from starvashun!”

“One more month then out we go,
Then for feed of hot Coco;
Fried Bread and steak, Plenty of Beer,
Better luck than we get here.”

“Cheer up, boys, down with sorrow,
Beef to-day, Soup to-morrow.”

“O for a pot of beer!”

“Love is a great thing,” writes an Italian philosopher, “but hunger
surpasses everything.”

“O who can tell the panes I feel,
A poor and harmless sailor,
I miss my grog and every meal;
Here comes the blooming jailer.”

A poet, Crutchy Quinn by name, known to Mr. Davitt, and who was himself acquainted with seven of the prisons he characterises, wrote as follows with a nail on the bottom of a dinner can:--

“Millbank for thick shins and graft at the pump;
Broadmoor for all laggs as go off their chump;
Brixton for good toke and cocoa with fat;
Dartmoor for bad grub but plenty of chat;
Portsmouth, a blooming bad place for hard work;
Chatham on Sunday gives four ounce of pork;
Portland is worst of the lot for to joke in--
For fetching a lagging there’s no place like Woking.”

Quinn, in spite of his name, was not an Irishman, but two-thirds of the prison-poets, Mr. Davitt found, are Irish.

From the more miscellaneous group of sentimental, religious, moral, didactic, and reflective sayings may be quoted the following:--

“The heart may breake, yet may brokenly live on.”

Mr. Davitt found a book at Newgate with “Good-bye, Lucy dear,” written throughout it, and at the end--

“Good-bye, Lucy dear,
I’m parted from you for seven long year.
ALF. JONES.”

A poet of a more caustic school had added beneath this--

“If Lucy dear is like most gals,
She’ll give few sighs or moans,
But soon will find among your pals
Another Alfred Jones.”

Remarks against women are by no means rare, as the following given by Lombroso--

“La donna è un essere inutile; io la stima soltanto quando la ch...

NAPOLEONE I. EMPEREUR.”

And another Italian writes--

“He is a poor deluded fool who believes in the love and honour of
women.”

But the women reciprocate this sentiment, and in an Italian illustrated magazine a woman writes--

“In this stormy sea which is called the world I have only found
fleeting pleasures and cruel disillusions. And if I felt any happiness
I had to pay for it with bitter tears. Never believe in the love of
men: for them love is a pastime. When you have sacrificed for them
honour, family, religion, interest, youth, they will turn their
shoulders to you with contempt, in search of other loves. That is the
kind of thing that man is.”

But the same woman writes passionately to her accomplice in murder, robbery, and adultery--

“Questo foglio dal cuor ti mando,
L’ho scritto ieri sera lacrimando,
L’ho scritto avante cena,
Senza inchiostro e senza penna.
La punta del mio cuore era la penna,
Il sangue delle mia vene era l’ inchiostro,
Se penna e calamaio poco ti costa,
Se merito pietà ti prego d’ una riposta.
Addio, Addio,
Addio, mio bene,
Addio, mio amore,
Tu sei il mio cuore,
Per ti morirò.
1886.”

Another woman’s inscription is a pathetic recollection of an old ballad--

“I wish to God my baby was born,
And smiling on its father’s knee,
And I, poor girl, lay in my grave,
The green grass growing over me.”

Beneath a design of a funeral monument a thief wrote this inscription (translated from Lombroso)--

“Here lies the body of poor Tulac Who, tired of stealing in this
world, Goes to steal in another. His happy relatives have erected this
memorial.”

Very significant of mental vacuity in solitude are some inscriptions given by Mr. Horsley:--

“21,000 times have I walked round this cell in a week.”

“3330 bricks in this cell.”

“131 black tiles, 150 red tiles in this cell.”

Good resolutions and moral exhortations are not uncommon:--

“It’s no good crying, you have got to do it, then after you have done
it don’t do it any more; I wont.”

“Cheer up, girls; it’s no use to fret.”

“Brethren in adversity, turn your heart to God and be happy.”

“Good-bye all. Give up drink.”

“½ pint whisky brought me here--took the pledge for 2 years--renewable
for ever.”

“The Lord saith, It is good to be here.”

“The Almighty for master, the devil for servant. Amen.”

“Fear God and scorn the Devil, then you will not be here again.”

The Italian inscriptions supply a more dubious exhortation:--

“O thieves! our profession is ruined by those rascally judges. But
courage! Forward!”

This brief account would not be complete if I neglected to give some specimens of the imprecations, crude erotic aspirations, and perverse instincts which occupy some considerable space in Lombroso’s collection. I will leave them untranslated:--

“Abbasso il direttore delle carcere e il capo-guardia, che sono due
avanzi di galera. A morte le gafe [warders] e tutti le spie, a morte
il capo-guardiano delle carcere, a morte l’Arca che sono la rovina di
tanti giovani.”

“Mia adorata stella, quando potrô ch...?”

“Pensare che in questo stesso luogo vi sono tante bighe [women] che
hanno volontà di farsi infilzare e non possono e tanti p... che
infilzerebbero un cane altro che una f... e non possono farlo.”

“Pare impossible. Che si possa stare tanto tempo senza piantare il
membro in una f... od in un culo. Eppure sono già 22 mesi che me lo
meno due volte ogni quattro giorno e non sono ancora tisico.”

The last I will give was written by a woman in a religious book, and is translated by Lombroso from the Piedmontese dialect--

“La Marietta del taglio salute le sue amiche che fanno la porca come
lei, e saluta tutti i giovanotti che l’hanno ch... Menatevi una volta
l’uccello al mio gusto, che io me la meno al vostro, e quando sarô
libera venite a trovarmi che ce l’ho sempra calda e stretta tanto che
volete. Allegri!”

§ 9. _Criminal Literature and Art._

M. Joly has made some interesting investigations (which he has recorded recently in the _Archives de l’Anthropologie Criminelle_) concerning the favourite reading of French prisoners. He found that such criminals do not read either Molière or Voltaire. Nor do they care for the psychological novel of character and analysis; they have no taste and no capacity for introspection; they prefer the _rococo_ style, and an old romance in five or six volumes called _Épreuves du Sentiment_ is a great favourite at La Grande Roquette. This is what we should expect from that sentimentalism which has already been noted. But among the favourite prison novelists Alexandre Dumas is _facile princeps_. We must not seek to explain this by finding in Dumas a response to specific criminal instincts. In this matter prisoners are at one with a very large body of non-prisoners, with George Sand, Tolstoï, and Rossetti at their head. It is the universally human quality in the prolific novelist, the anodyne of his entrancing and unflagging interest, the satisfaction which he offers to the love of adventure, by which Dumas fetters the criminal as well as the man of genius. The female prisoners at Saint Lazare, unlike the male prisoners, are constantly asking for Voltaire’s books, which, however, the sisters are not able to supply. They are very fond of Henri Conscience, the Flemish Walter Scott, a preference which is also by no means shared by the men, and they delight in all sorts of innocent and sentimental love-stories, although their marginal annotations to these do not always admit of reproduction.

If the favourite reading of those whose criminal career is decided is of so innocent a character, the same cannot always be said of the literature read by the immature. There is ample and unquestionable evidence to show that a low-class literature in which the criminal is glorified, as well as the minute knowledge of criminal arts disseminated by newspapers, have a very distinct influence in the production of young criminals.[72] Tropmann, a notorious French murderer, was influenced by novels. The famous criminal Lacenaire, who glorified himself and was glorified by others, has had an influence in the production of crime down to our own day. After every celebrated or startling crime, some weak-minded and impressionable persons go and commit the like, or give themselves up to the police under the impression that they have been guilty of the crime. It is youths and children who are especially prone to the imitation of criminal events from books or from real life. After the murders associated with the name of Jack the Ripper several murders by young children took place throughout the country.

It is not, usually, until he is in prison that the criminal tries to find literary expression for himself. This expression takes chiefly the form of verse, nearly always of a rude character, often affected or boastful, but not seldom vigorous or pathetic. A criminal has been known to declaim from the scaffold a poem on his own death; another asked and obtained permission to present his defence in verse. It would be difficult to give stronger proof of a predilection for verse forms.

A song, of which this is a translation, was heard in a Russian prison:--

“In this spot where infamy has placed for ever her dwelling, two angels pant, having in their hands a cross.... But at night, with measured steps, slowly, slowly, watching the prison, the sentinels turn. Within these walls are sadness and terror. Without are life, gold, and liberty.... But the black echo of that slow, slow step warns me: Thou shalt stay, stay.” This was written and most sweetly sung by a man who had cruelly murdered his wife.

The poetic productions of English criminals, however numerous, are of no great interest; they seem to appear at their best in the inscriptions already given. Mr. Davitt has a chapter on “Prison ‘Poets,’” but what he has to say of them is not encouraging, although he tells us that Portsmouth has the reputation of being “a community of imprisoned songsters,” and such a specimen as the following does not produce much desire for more--

“’Twas one fine morning I left Wakefield Jail,
Myself and comrades we did cry our fill,” etc.

One could write as well as that without being a convict.

Lamb and other good judges thought well of Thomas Wainewright, the forger and poisoner. As a man of letters he enjoyed considerable reputation as a critic, and was certainly a man of refined artistic tastes.[73] It is to-day not easy to detect in him many signs of critical insight or fine literary ability. He was one of the writers of that “Dandy and Silver Fork School” of whom Hazlitt says:--“Macassar Oil, Eau de Cologne, Hock and Seltzer Water, Atta of Roses, Pomade Divine, glance through the page in inexhaustible confusion, and make your head giddy.” His writing is but the vain froth of a nauseous life. The following extract is fairly characteristic:--“It appears to us that the time requireth not the hand of genius to give it a gusto for the tastes and feelings of what are called the lower orders,--rather the reverse! We want more macaroni and champagne, less boxing and bull beef. Now, Mr. Drama [Hazlitt] of the _London_ seems determined to show his readers that his stomach is hearty--that he can relish bread and cheese and porter, which certainly are very fine things in the country, and--when we can get nothing else--and so far, all this is very well. But surely, in the centre of fashion, we might be now and then indulged with more elegant fare,--something that would suit better with the diamond rings on our fingers, the antique cameos in our breast-pins, our cambric pocket-handkerchief breathing forth Attargul, our pale lemon-coloured kid gloves! some chicken fricaseed white, for instance; a bottle of Hock or Moselle, and a glass of Maraschino.” These things and the like of these were for Wainewright the only things in the world that seemed desirable, and his passion for them lay at the root of his crimes.

In Italy we meet with a genuine, and often traditional body of criminal songs which is of great interest. It is found in chief perfection in Italy and the large neighbouring islands, Sardinia, Corsica, and especially Sicily, where the civilisation is more primitive, and the level of criminality much higher. In the _Canti Siculi_ of the able and enthusiastic folklorist, Pitré, there are twenty-seven which he describes as Prison Songs; with others rather similar in the same collection, the total amounts to forty-one (4 per cent. of the whole), mostly declarations of vengeance, laments for lost liberty, imprecations against judges and police. Some are in praise of prison, as the following:--

“Carcere, vita mia, cara, felice!
Lo starmi entro di te come mi piace!
Se spiechi il capo a quel che mal ne dice,
O pensa che far perdere la pace.
Qua sol travi i fratelli e qua gli amici,” etc.

There are also fine notes of despair, and sweet recollections of the absent mother or sweetheart. Sardinia, a land of brigandism and assassination, has produced numerous criminal songs of interest. “The Corsican songs collected by Tommaseo,” remarks Lombroso, “might be said to be almost all the creation of brigands. Nearly all breathe vengeance for a slain friend, or hatred against an enemy, and admiration for murder.” A ferocious Corsican brigand, named Peverone, who used to leave his mark behind by covering his victim with capsicums (peperoni), wrote verses which, says Lombroso, “would not be unworthy of Laura’s sweet singer.” In such a case as that of Corsica, we must, however, be very cautious how we use the word “criminal.” In that land barbarous conceptions still rule; a child is brought up from its earliest days in an atmosphere of robbery and bloodshed; what in a more civilised country we call “crime” is there to a large extent the normal social state. It is in Corsica that a parish may vote a pension to a brigand (the _commune_ of Ciammance, for example, in 1886); that more than half the persons liable to serve as jurymen in an _arrondissement_ (4400 out of 8000 in one instance) may themselves have appeared behind the bar; and where a mayor (_arrondissement_ of Sartène) may issue a proclamation in the following terms:--“Art. I. The carrying of arms is formally forbidden on the territory of the commune of Levie. Art. II. Exception is made in the case of persons notoriously in a state of enmity.”

As a specimen of French criminal literature I will give a poem by Lebiez, the young murderer spoken of in Chapter I.; it is addressed to a young girl’s skull:--

“De quelque belle enfant restes froids et sans vie,
Beau crâne apprêté par mes mains,
Dont j’ai sali les os et la surface blanchie
D’un tas de noms grecs et latins,
Compagnon triste et froid de mes heures d’étude,
Toi que je viens de rejeter
Dans un coin, ah! reviens tromper ma solitude,
Réponds à ma curiosité.
Dis-moi combien de fois ta bouche s’est offerte
Aux doux baisers de ton amant;
Dis-moi quels jolis mots de ta bouche entr’ ouverte
Dans des heurs d’égarement ...
Insensé!... Tu ne peux répondre, pauvre fille;
Ta bouche est close maintenant,
Et la mort, en passant, de sa triste faucille
A brisé tes charmes naissants.
Triste leçon pour nons, qui croyons que la vie
Peut durer pendant de longs jours!
Et jeunesse, et bonheur, et beauté qu’on envie,
Tout passe ainsi que les amours!
Aussi, quand, vers le soir, âpre et dur à la tache,
Je travaille silencieux,
Mon esprit suit le monde et, tout inquiet, s’attache
A des pensers plus sérieux,
Je rêve au temps qui passe ... alors je te regarde,
Et, songeant aux coups de destin,
Sur ton front nu je crois lire en tremblant: ‘Prends garde,
Mortel, ton tour viendra demain.’”

When his papers were returned to him by the police, Lebiez wrote on the margin of this: “Poor verses! but, bad as they are, they are a faithful picture of the state of my mind in moments of solitude. In the world I am amiable and gay. I am taken for a wild fellow, who mocks at everything; but if they knew my character thoroughly, if they were aware that when I laugh and joke I have just come out of a solitude of despair and tears! If they knew that there are sobs at the bottom of my heart when smiles cover my lips, they would not say that I mock at everything. My gaiety is only a mask which hides the anguish which has for so long torn my heart.”

There are one or two examples of newspapers written and conducted by prisoners. The Abbé Crozes, in his _Souvenirs de la Petite et de la Grande Roquette_, gives us specimens and a facsimile page of one of these, the _Tam-Tam_, which, however, only lasted a very short time. Here are a couple of fragments from this remarkable journal:--

FABLE EXPRESS.

“Un grand tambour-major, pressé par la famine,
Dinait d’une maigre sardine
Et s’en régalait sur ma foi!
_Morale._--On a souvent besoin d’un plus petit que soi.”

ECHOS ET BRUITS.

“Nons apprenons avec plaisir à nos lecteurs le projet formé par la
Société Agricole de France, de se servir des oreilles de Transparent,
pour se livrer à des essais sur la culture des champignons.

L’abondance et la qualité du fumier que contiennent ces vastes
esgourdes, leur grandeur, leur système d’aération promettent aux
amateurs de cèpes les résultats les plus satisfaisants.”

Very different from the _Tam-Tam_ is the _Summary_, a newspaper published at the Elmira Reformatory, New York. This newspaper, largely written by prisoners and, at one time at all events, edited by a prisoner, contains, besides original contributions and the news of the Reformatory, a summary of general news; and by its tone and its method of selection, it compares favourably, as it has been said, with many newspapers published outside prison-walls. The following contribution to the _Summary_ is from “a bright young burglar,” about eighteen years old, and is entitled “God and the Robin”; it has an allegorical and personal significance:--

“Early in the morning, long before the lazy cock crows, you may hear
the robin singing his welcome to the sun. He has been watching through
the darkness for the first rays of coming day, and as they appear he
pours forth the melody as an expression of his joy. All is quiet till
his music rends the air, and as you listen you are inspired with
thoughts of Him who made the robin and you. Perhaps the sweet song is
a prayer of thanks to God for sheltering him from the dangers of the
night. Do they know of God? Who can tell? Perhaps He is the cause of
what we in our ignorance call instinct. Once as I listened to their
music I fell asleep, and dreamt of a house near the sea. It had a lawn
in front, on which was a robin hopping in search of food for her
young. But as she hopped about the sky seemed to grow darker. I knew
that a storm was approaching, and when it came I saw the robin cling
to the tree for shelter. But the wind was fierce, and it tore her from
the branch, and in spite of all her efforts it bore her away out over
the ocean, farther and farther from the land, till at last, when its
energy was spent, its fury gone, it left her on the ocean with no land
in sight to guide her to her home; and as she flew she thought of her
little ones at home, and of her mate. She thought she was flying to
them, but every little effort was taking her farther away, though she
knew it not. When at last she began to tire, she looked at the
restless waters, but they offered her no relief; and in her frightened
cry I seemed to hear her say, ‘O where shall I rest my weary wing?’
But in the murmuring of the ocean she heard no reply, so she could but
fly on till darkness came, when, utterly exhausted, she fell upon the
cruel waves and died. And He who made her will receive her when the
course of life is past. Cannot the little robin find in that house of
many mansions a place to rest her weary wing? Is heaven made for man
alone? Are not these little creatures who never offend God, but
worship Him with the purity and happiness of their little hearts,
entitled to the joys of hereafter? Who can doubt it?”

The following interesting dialogue in the Socratic manner--“An Imaginary Conversation between two Members of the Casuistry Class”--is also by a very young criminal, who was also something of a poet:--

“Did you not agree last Sunday with the member of our class who said
that life in prison is a state of slavery?

No, I did not. In fact, I am astonished at your question. I rather
think it is _not_ a state of slavery.

That is a very curious belief.

It may appear to be; but I think it can be proved to be logical. You
say that imprisonment for wrong-doing is slavery; but what is slavery?

I should define it to be the involuntary subjection of one person to
the will of another.

But cannot a person be a slave to passion and to other qualities of
mind as well as to persons?

Yes.

Then your definition is obviously incorrect. I would define slavery as
a state in which one’s actions are regulated by some power over which
he has no control. Would you agree with me?

Well, I think I would.

Very well. Having agreed upon a definition of slavery, we will discuss
whether life in prison is slavery. Now, let me ask, why are men sent
to prison?

Usually for violating the law.

Well, do you believe that men steal, for instance, voluntarily?

Undoubtedly.

Your tone is rather confident, so I daresay you can tell me _why_ men
steal?

In order to get certain articles that will enable them to live more
comfortably, or which they desire to have.

That is, you mean that they have certain feelings--such as laziness,
love of gain, etc.--which they wish to gratify?

Well, yes.

But if a man had not these feelings he would not steal?

I think not.

Then these feelings regulate his conduct in stealing?

It seems so.

But you agreed that he whose conduct is regulated by some power other
than his own free will is a slave.

Well, I am afraid you have caught me again.

But do you admit it?

I do.

Then he who prevents this man from stealing is emancipating him, not
enslaving him?

I see you are right.

Then one who is in prison for wrong-doing is a free man, not a slave?

Yes. But suppose that the man has been sent to prison unjustly; what
then?

To answer your question, I should have to know what your conception of
true freedom is. True freedom is, as it appears to me, the triumphing
of the spirit or better part of man over the flesh or weaker part;
that is, acting according to one’s highest conception of what is
right. Do you agree with me?

I do.

Then do you not think that the truly righteous man, be he in prison or
out, is free? Do you not see that a man who does right, even though he
lose fortune or life by doing so, is freer than the one who allows his
conduct to be regulated by fear, malice, or other passions? Remember
that a man may be free in a dungeon and bound down with chains, and
that he may be an abject slave and be clothed in purple.”

The _Summary_ perhaps does something to encourage priggishness, but priggishness, it need scarcely be said, indicates a far higher moral level than the vacuous brutality which lies behind so large a proportion of prison inscriptions.

So far we have been dealing with writers who are first and above all criminals. It is necessary to mention a few artists and men of letters who, while distinctly criminals, are not primarily criminals. Villon is generally named at the head of these, and with good reason, as he has himself supplied the evidence by which he must be counted a criminal. But Villon was a poet, and a great poet; his crimes never degraded his art. It is worth noting that almost the only passage[74] which Lombroso quotes to prove such degradation is, on independent grounds and apparently with good reason, regarded by Jannet, Villon’s editor, as spurious.

Cellini, as self-revealed in his wonderful autobiography, bears more distinct marks than Villon of instinctive criminality. Crime is, however, rare among great sculptors; on the other hand it has been, as Lombroso points out, very common among painters; numerous are the examples of murder, cruelty, theft, sexual offences, among distinguished painters; alcoholism is also very common.

Casanova, a man of various and extraordinary abilities, has in his _Memoirs_, of which the strict historical accuracy is now generally accepted, produced one of the most valuable and interesting records of the eighteenth century, and at the same time a most complete and complaisant history of his own criminal offences. It is difficult to say whether in him the criminal or the man of genius is most prominent.

A living poet of some eminence, M. Paul Verlaine, furnishes an interesting example of the man of genius who is also distinctly a criminal. M. Verlaine is the chief of the so-called “Decadant” school. The precise rank that he will ultimately take as a poet is not yet clear; while on the one hand he has been unduly neglected, on the other he has been unduly extolled. At his best he excels in delicate passages of vague and mystic reverie, in sudden lines of poignant emotion. His style, a curious mixture of simplicity and obscurity, is studded with words borrowed from the criminal’s argot. His latest volume[75] contains poems which well show his curious power of expressing the most delicate _nuances_ of sentiment side by side with the crudest, most unabashed impulses of cynical depravity, self-revelations of sexual perversity, which might have earned for the book a title in a line of its own, “L’embarquement pour Sodome et Gomorrhe.” I do not propose to quote any of these but from a short but interesting series written during an imprisonment of several years at Brussels. Here is a poem describing the life of the prisoner:--

“La cour se fleurit de souci
Comme le front
De tous ceux-ci
Qui vont en rond
En flageolant sur leur fémur
Debilité
Le long du mur
Fou de clartè.

Tournez, Samsons sans Dalila,
Sans Philistin,
Tournez bien la
Meule au destin.
Vaincu risible de la loi,
Mouds tour à tour
Ton cœur, ta foi
Et ton amour!

Ils vont! et leurs pauvres souliers
Font un bruit sec,
Humiliés,
La pipe au bec.
Pas un mot ou bien le cachot,
Pas un soupir.
Il fait si chand
Qu’on croit mourir.

J’en suis de ce cirque effaré,
Soumis d’ailleurs
Et préparé
A tous malheurs.
Et pourquir si j’ai contristé
Ton vœu tetu,
Société,
Me choierais tu?