STUDENT OF MURDER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23334, 28 October 1937, Page 14

STUDENT OF MURDER

A NOTABLE AMERICAN TRIBUTE IN THE TIMES Mr Edmund Lester Pearson, the American criminologist, died in New York on August 8 of bronchial pneumonia at the age of 57. " Two English Friends" wrote of him in The Times:— ' Before his "Studies in Murder" appeared in 1924 he had been attracted to the intellectual study of crime, not as a penologist or a prison reformer, but chiefly for its psychological interest and its revelations of human nature. He did not, however, neglect the social causes of crime, and knew how to ' handle statistics; thus, he proved that the average American citizen was six times more liable to be murdered than the average Englishman. He attributed the differences to "the existence in Britain and her dominions of a disgusting medieval contrivance known as the gallows, and courts which are not reluctant to apply this instrument to murderers." It is amusing to record that, though often summoned for jury service, he Was only called on to serve once. He knew too much about crime and criminals. In 1926 his "Murder at Smutty Nose," containing a number of other cases in addition to that extraordinary crime, made a great impression, and in 1927 he resigned his post at the New York Library and devoted himself to writing and research. All his work showed not only a scholarly thoroughness, but also a sly and playful humour and great skill in presentation, qualities which made his magazine articles the delight .'of discriminating readers. The murder of Miss Lizzie Borden's stepmother and father, full of baffling mysteries, fascinated Edmund Pearson as it had fascinated the whole nation during the trial. It became his ambition to gather together in one book the whole story, and ■it was happily realised last spring, when "The Trial of Lizzie Borden" appeared as the first volume of a series of "Notable American Trials." A CLASSIC ANALYSIS Just as the Borden case may be described as the classic murder.of America, so Pearson's study of it bids fair to become the classic example of criminal analysis in the English language.- The book reprints verbatim the relevant testimony, including the testimony at the inquest, which was suppressed at Lizzie's trial, but its distinguishing feature is a long and masterly analysis of the whole case, more absorbing than any example of detective fiction. Pearson's other crime books, such as "Instigation of the Devil," "Henry Tufts: The Autobiography of a Criminal," "Five Murders," and "More Studies in Murder," show an equal mastery of narrative and of the selection of the relevant facts. That eight out of 10 people are interested in murder was Pearson's opinion, "and of the other two one is a pretender who thinks it more refined, or something, to be horrified." He knew also that what happens in real life is not reflected in the formulas of detective fiction. In one of his articles he writes: "Distressing as it may be, the dreadful truth remains that most criminal mysteries are solved, not by footprints, not by the discovery of a secret South American poison mixed with the victim's lipstick, not even by a withered japonica in the buttonhole of the dead man's pyjamas. They are solved by people going around and asking, 'Say, who d'ye think done this, anyhow? "" Among the most persistent superstitions about murder, Pearson put his finger on these: That murderers return to the scene of the crime; that they suffer from remorse and can't sleep at night; that they are given to making "deathbed confessions"; that the writers of detective stories would make great detectives; and that shoals of innocent persons are always being rushed to the electrie chciiix Pearson took, so to speak, in his stride the subject of the "dime novels "of America. He had made an exhaustive study of them in the New York Library, which possesses an unrivalled collection, and his book, which came out in 1929, is now the standard work on the subject. He protested that this muchabused fiction is really a highly moral form of literature; it certainly sheds a curious sidelight on American social history.