AN INGENIOUS USE OF KLEPTOMANIA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11692, 29 June 1901, Page 2 (Supplement)

AN INGENIOUS USE OF KLEPTOMANIA.

Criminality of the more subtle kind tends to confirm the cynic in his pessimism. It is obvious that a tithe of the ingenuity, nerve, and industry required to effect a really brilliant crime would guarantee their possessor a. competence in any of the more honourable professions of life. The paris correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph mentions .a story which illustrates this sufrtciently trite reflection. A self-styled •marquis presents himself at the house ol' a doctor with a tale of woe. He is blessea with a lovely daughter, dowered wnh many giftsas the daughter of a marquis of romance should be— has charms of pcr- • son and of mind, and is rich, but—she is a kleptomaniac. Nothing comes amiss to her nimble —spoons and forks, as well as purses. To the distraught parent, dreading the breath of scandal on ail untarnished name, money is no object. As a proof of his ability to pay the marquis produces the bundle of notes which only people on the stage and bookmakers ever carry about with them. The dazzled doctor accepts the responsibility; a beauteous maid with light lingers and a soubrette become inmates of his house. The method of cure is hypnotism, the subjugation of the weaker pilfering in-stinct,-by the stronger, more honest will of tho worthy doctor. All goes well for a few days; there is evidence that the healthy mind of the physician ;s exercising its corrective influences o v ' the weakened moral impulses' of the young lad}', for, in the words of a catechism she has never learn<»d, she keeps her hands from picking and stealing. But just as the triumph of virtuous will seems assured, kleptomania reasserts itself I*ll the most wholesale fashion. Everything vanishes as if by the touch of a magic wandthe interesting patient, her maid, the noble but heart-broken marquis, ar.d, worst of all, the doctor's jewellery, what are known as " objects, of bigotry and virtue." and a thousand pounds in hard cash, or, to be strictly accurate, in banknotes. Kleptomania had so mastered the three persons concerned that they had not only pilfered tho doctor's purse, which on no less an authority that Shakespere may be dismissed as trash, but they had also stolen the good name of a real marquis, which 011 the same high authority we know to be a most heinous offence. The police aro in pursuit, with the familiar result that they have " failed to track tho thieves to their lair." The sup- | posed marquis must have been of presentable appearance, clad after the fashion of his class, and sufficiently educated and intimate with the habits of good society .to deceive the physician; his supposed daughter, with tho very genuine kleptoinaniacal tendencies, must have been even better equipped, or she ■would not have spent four or five days in her host's house without arousing suspicion ; the soubrette had only a subordinate part . to play, bub still must have had acquirements enough to earn an honest living. Nevertheless, all these girts were staked upon the chance of making a coupfailure .in which entailed the most' serious consequcnccs; and success involved concealment • and evasion till such time as the excitement .had blown over. With such qualities the • •; . trio might have found no difficulty ill scaling .. -the straight and narrow path of honesty, " a £a yet (they seem deliberately to havo the primrose path" - of -kleptomania, The 'rL M 9 the everlasting bonfire." bomEST puz7 ' lQ Presented would oo more amazing were it less common. ifet ' ' ■ '