WOMEN ARE RUTHLESS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21538, 9 January 1932, Page 14

WOMEN ARE RUTHLESS

THEIR WORK AS CRIMINALS “Women don’t often take to serious crime,” I read in a report on the American gang that was led by a woman (says Dr Frederick Graves in a London paper). But someone else has said: “The snake sloughs its glittering skin, and woman is not always the angel in the home. She can adopt a criminal career very easily when it suits her purpose—and her pocket —and beat the clumsy brute man all round! ” So there!

Women have been sent to prison; have expiated their erring ways on the scaffold; and have lured gentlemen to the devil in spite of their baby a,ngel faces and innocent blue eyes. It all seems rather a nasty sort of libel on women. • , , , , . But I don’t know. Truth is not always palatable; and there is at least this much in it all, that there have been many famous woman criminals in history, and the woman has always used her sex and beauty as lure, spy, watcher, decoy, plotter, planner, and actual perpetrator of things not considered nice and genteel. But the things she does are usually characteristic of her special and peculiar mentality and exploit her essentially feminine traits. She rarely does a real burglary or a robbery with violence, even against her own sex. She leaves those things to man and relies more on guile than on physical strength. And murder, except for the removal of a rival or serious obstacle, is not in her regular line, and if she does go so far, it is generally the insidious poison she selects to do the trick. She generally chooses an accomplice, if she needs one, from the other sex, since she is always apt rather to distrust her own kind. On the other hand, a man does not rely on a woman very often, because he feels instinctively she may be a slave to her peculiar sensibilities and may allow her likes and hates to have too much play. She is apt to develop jealousies and passions, provoke disputes that may be fatal to success. When used for gang work she is usually cast for the part of organiser or watcher, and is useful to prepare the ground, pave the way, gather essential detail. A young and attractive maid, typist, clerk companion may gain confidence easily and learn secrets, take impressions of keys, find out safe combinations. The role of homeless outcast, begging a little warmth and shelter, has often been worked with marked success upon a sympathetic night watchman. He may become so interested that suspicious noises going on upstairs are not noticed, while she pitches a tale of woe embellished with a few tears and given in a quavering voice that suggests a Hard world or a broken heart. But woman has her weak points though she knows that often in her_ apparent weakness lies her strength in crime. She is rather apt to leave tell-tale traces—a whiff of scent, a smear of powder, and the print of a finger-tip. Or she will leave the print of a small shoe where she should have worn a man’s boot. Apart from the common failings ot petty thefts and shop-liftings—often mere fallings into sudden irrestible temptations —women, like scope and substantial results, and they are ruthless about their methods when they mean business.