WOMEN’S FAULT

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 2, 24 March 1927, Page 7

WOMEN’S FAULT

THEIR PART IN CRIME AN ACTRESS'S OPINION Sir Arbuthnot Lane has pointed out that all the misery of the human race is caused by women. They, as the guardians of the young, teach wrong habits of feeding. But the indictment has been carried still further by the well-known actress. Miss Joyce Kennedy, who is bold enough to proclaim in the following article her belief that women are also the secret of our crowded prisons. Besides being a popular actress, Miss Kennedy is a keen student of criminology. She has been present at most notable trials during the past few years, and hopes soon to write a book on crime and criminals. While being shown over a prison quite recently, I asked the governor what influence brought the majority of his prisoners to gaol. He replied, without any hesitation whatever. “Women and . . drink.” “ But why do you place women first?” I replied. "Because 80 per cent of the men under my charge owe their present predicament either directly or indirectly* to some girl or woman, who has either consciously instigated their crime, or has been the unconscious motive. The other 20 per cent arc here through drink or their own criminal cussedness.” This was certainly a startling indictment on my sex, and I said so. At once my governor friend began to quote numerous cases—so many, in fact, that I was crushed into silence. Thinking it over, I feel convinced that what he asserted is true. Women have done more to fill our prisons than any other influence there is. Inspired by Jealousy. Suppose you are being shown over a woman’s prison. As you watch your erring sisters exercising in the nrescribed area of recreation, vonr brain hurriedly tabulates. . the able jewel thief; the lady of the slums, whose back-chat with an erstwhile friend developed to a row, and then to minor bloodshed; the abnormal mother, so cruel that the law stepped in to aid her reformation; the wretched girl. Let your brain continue to tabulate, but. work as it may, it will never, while it confines itself to the crimes actually perpetrated by woman herself, arrive at any just conclusion as to the enormous part women play in filling prisons. Take yourself mentally again to the men’s cells, and think „ . . the casual labourer who, in a transport of moral rectitude, kicks his wife nearly to death because she has been too lavish with her affections. The husband of intensely respectable villa life, who, long enduring of the petty infidelities of a woman, and not having the courage to defy or the strength of mind, to deny, at last takes her by the throat and crushes out the faithless little life. To Buy Her Some Trifles. The man who has let passion ride paramount till the delicate curtain between the man and the maniac has been riven just because he loves. Except in such a case as this, where the woman actually instigates the offence, woman stands exonerated from participation in these crimes, but is yet so active an agent in bringing them about that she has. all unwillingly, brought the victim to the prison cell. Far more actively does she participate where the unfortunate boy falsifies his accounts that she may have a necklace, where the business man lies and cheats, albeit in the most gentlemanly manner, that his “little wife's” insatiable demands for the superfluities of clothing and personal adornment may be gratified, where intrigues, political and financial, are run at the instigation of the • woman adored of the moment. It is said that prison begets woman-haters. I can well believe this in the case of men who have spent months, perhaps years, in durance vile, through the machiavellian cunning or the insatiable greed of some woman.