Fallacy of “Criminal Classes.”

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12643, 31 December 1926, Page 11

Fallacy of “Criminal Classes.”

By

E. Phillips Oppenheim

THE answers to these queries, surprising though the conclusion may seem, is that as a community the criminal elas-ses arc «u insignificant in numbers that they may be said not to exist at all. Crifiie (that so misused word) is more of an impulse than a habitude, an individual and singular excrescence evolved more often by circumstances jbhan predisposition. Some of the world’s greatest eriminals have been men with a high standard ot morality. Crime, in its completest significance, is the detached and individual outcome of one of the major passions of life—greed, lust or hatred'. It may blaze out, curiously enough, only once in a lifetime, hut although for a minute or an hour it may make a man a ferocious and terrible' criminal, yet it does not make him one of the criminal classes. CRAZED BY PERFUME For example, I remember amongst the oases m which I have been interested, the story of a young nja-n, a Welsh Sunday-school teacher, who was accused and convicted of assaulting and attempting to murder —she subsequently recovered—the girl whom he was courting. His life had been an entirely blameless one. He iwas with" great self-denial supporting-his parents, his behaviour towards his fiancee had always been respectful and irreproachable. : Yet something happened to him during -those few minutes of his life which destroyed his mental balance and transformed him into an absolutely irresponsible being. Ho tried to explain to his lawyer —an acquaintance of mine—the genesis of his sudden fit of madness, himself all the time in a pitiable condition, but more dazed and horrified at ’the idea of the crime which lie had committed than afflicted with any fear of punishment. HYSTERIA “It was a very lonely place,” he confided. “It seemed to come to me with’ a rush how entirely we were cut off-'-from the world. There wasn’t a human being within miles of us. She had some perfume on her hair

The Sunday School Teacher who “Saw Red.”

Popular interest in the study of many of the most fascinating phenomena of life is frequently interfered with by the looseness of accepted definitions (writes E. Phillips Oppenheim, in the London “Chronicle”), For instance, who are the criminal classes ? Where do they exist and have their being ? Have they a code aind programme of life of their own, a system of living apart from ours?

A TEMPORARY LOSS

which once before I had told her sent me almost crazy. We were lying on soft grass, with vyild flowers all round and thp sun on our faces. I think she saw that I was a bit queer, and she laughed-at me.” “Afterwards 1 hated the thing i had done so much that I tried to crush the life out of her, and all the time it was I who was calling out for help—not her.” Hysteria 1 Absolute and terrifying in its completeness. Hysteria leading without a doubt- to a criminal act, but the young man could never by any chance have belonged to the criminal classes. Then take the ease of the New York mounted policeman, Hess, who was sentenced some fifteen years ago to penal servitude for life for an assauli upon a child. Extraordinarily goodlooking and riding a magnificent horse with great skill, he had been for years one of the picturesque sights of Fifth avenue.

It is a fact that he received as many anonymous letters as a matinee idol—his legal adviser showed me a whole packet of them. Nevertheless he remained modest, respectful, ana well-behaved. Then, one fatal day, he met in Central Park -a little girl who used to spend hours watching him in Fifth avenue and to whom he had become a sort of god. When he descended from his horse and took her to have an ice-cream there was not, assured me, an evil thought in his mind. The opportunity came and with it tnaC mysterious hysterical impulse which i 5 without doubt a form of insanity I saw him in hiS oell, and lam convinced that hiS predominant sensation was not one of self-pity hut of sheer, horrified amazement that he should have been guilty of such a detestable act. Hess, without question, committed an abominable crime, but he was not, any more than the young AVelshm-an, one of the criminal Tlie daily riff#aff of the police courts are, in nine cases out of ten, the mice of wrong-doing- —misdemeanants, not criminals—and as often as not the poor wretch who plays the leading part in the greatest drama of our modern existence—-the murderer on trial for his life —is not an habitual criminal at all, but the victim of either a maudlin hallucination or a temporary logs of self-control. Members of the criminal classes, as a matter of fact, appear very seldom in the police courts or the higher courts of Justice. Their numbers are few and they know their business.

After a four days* search a Bradford man found .£3OO worth of bank notes in a rubbish heap. Ho put them among com© old papers in a cupboard, but while ho waß on holiday a charwoman cleared out the apparent rubbish, into tho dustbin, whence it was sent to a municipal rubbish tip>, .Fish which will live contentedly on one meal every five years are sometimes found in subterranean caverns. In their natural state they are pale in colour, but turn black if keut in the light.