WOMEN IN CRIME

Evening Star, Issue 19002, 25 July 1925, Page 18

WOMEN IN CRIME

THE DEADLY FEMALE

WAS MRS MAYBRICK INfIOCEHT ?

As a result of several savage murders recently committed by women on the Continent, the question has been raised as to whether women have a greater tendency to crime than men (writes Nesta Ryall, in the ‘Sunday Chronicle’), and whether, in the alternative, when they do take to crime, they pursue their plans with equal relentlessness and callousness. Mr Rudyard Kipling has declared that “ the female of the species is more deadly than the male.” In so far as woman is visually more subtle in the moans she employs to gain the most trivial and harmless ends, this statement may be true enough. If we examine criminal records, however, wo find that we can dismiss as unproven this sweeping generality, although we may still hold, with Euripides, that “ tWo is no worse evil than a bad woman.” The case usually quoted against women is that of Mrs May brick, the beautiful young American who served fifteen years for the murder of her husband, a middle-aged Liverpool cotton broker.

GUILTY OR INNOCENT? The story of the Maybrick case is mo that might have come from the ven of a novelist. It shows the gradual lisillusionment of the eighteen-year-old laughter of an American banker, who named, apparently for love, an Engish business man more than twenty rears her senior. It reveals' her growng unhappiness a« she discovered her msband to be a hypochondriac, a conirmed drug-taker, a man who neglected lis business and drifted from affluence into a state of financial embarrassment. And it tells how this disillusioned girl-wife sought solace in a secret intrigue with another Liverpool business man. Mr Maybrick died from arsenical poisoning. Whether this was administered by his wife or whether his death was due to his own mania for dabbling in drugs remains a mystery. There is grave reason to believe that Mrs Maybrick never committed the crime for which she sewed her long and weary sentence. This opinion was hold to the last day of his life by the celebrated Lord Chief Justice Russell of Killoweu. To quote such a case as proof that a woman can be a heartless and callous murderer is manifestly absurd. Compare Mrs Maybrick, supposed to have good reason for wanting to bo rid of her husband, witli Henry Wainwright, who brutally murdered Harriot Lane, a young woman who loved him, and was the mother of his two children, but of whom he had grown tired. HENRY WAINWRIGHT. The story of both these murders is told in Mr George Diiuot’s new book, ‘Celebrated Crimes.’ There was not any doubt about Waiuwright’s guilt, although he escaped arrest for a year. Immediately after his victim’s death ho buried the body in quicklime beneath the floor of his warehouse in Whitechapel. Nino months later his shop was burned down. Ho became bankrupt, and a mortgagee seized the warehouse. Assisted by Ids younger brother, Wainwright dug up and dismembered the body, and made it into two parcels. A youth whom he asked to help him carry these parcels opened one and informed the police, who arrested Wainwright just as_ lie was carrying his gruesome parcels into his own home. Wainwright was hanged. There would have been a public outcry had he escaped the gallows, so conclusive was the evidence against him. Had Mrs Maybrick been acquitted, could there have been a public outcry? I will echo Mr Dilnot’s comment: ‘‘l think not.” _ Yot there was oven more popular prejudice against Mrs Maybrick, who was convicted on far from conclusive evidence, than against Wainwright. The bitterness against Florence Maybrick originated in the fact that she had been guilty of a moral slip. Wo saw the same attitude adopted towards Edith Thompson by ‘largo numbers of the public—especially of her own sox—during tlio ThoinpsouBywators case, although there are many. authorities on crime who hold that Mrs Thompson unjustly paid the supremo penally. One eminent writer has described her as “ slain by the sexlessnoss of her fellow women.” Those who maintain that woman has a potentiality for crime equal to that of man can be countered by the fact that we have never had a crop of Maybricks. But the recent cases of Patrick Mahon and Norman Thorne have shown us that there is a danger of a crop of Wainwrights. And wo must not forgot that'Thorne had an imitator in the boy who cut Grace Blakaller’s throat. WOMEN SWINDLERS. It is in the crooked crafts which bring in easy money that the female criminal finds her sphere. Women make good swindlers, confidence tricksters, jewel thieves, hotel robbers, disseminators of counterfeit coins, and crooks of every denomination for which pleasing manners and a good appearance are essential. But even in these dubious callings their force for evil is not a driving force. They make better accessories than leaders. One of the most notorious women crooks, “Cleopatra of the Underworld,” Mr Dilnot calls her, May Churchill, better known as Chicago May, is a typical example of a woman criminal. A lovely, auburn-haired Irish colleen, May grew tired of her homo, a peasant’s cabin in the feligo mountains, while still a child.

I CHARMERS OF THE GANGS. With hor parents’ savings she went to London, then found her way to the United States, whore her beauty, her fertility of resource, and her natural wit made hor tho iuol of some of tho most resolute of .international crooks. In London she met that daring international crook, Eddie Guerin, “ tho man who escaped from Devil’s Island,” and foil completely under his domination. Together they brought off some wonj dorful coups. They quarrelled, parted, ! and came together again, tor years. Then May became infatuated with Charles Smith, a young American crook. With him she tried to murder Guerin. For this crime Smith got a life sentence and May fifteen years. I Among the members of those bands 1 of desperadoes, the race gangs, whose continued immunity from justice is making our police methods a laughing , stock to other and less law-abiding nations, there are certainly one or two women of beauty aud ability. But they merely play the part of spies, and . sometimes of agents provocateurs, i The truth is that most women do not want to load lives of crime. It is love —either of a man or of themselves, i manifested in a passion, for luxury—which starts them down the steep and i slippery slope which leads to tho dock i at the Old Bailey.