Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/349

Rh existing among men and women. This will involve the use of some of the facts already considered. While it is true that the social conditions, which we have so briefly analyzed, bear upon woman chiefly because she is as she is, yet they bear also upon the other sex. Many of the sexual conditions we shall study relate to women alone, and, therefore, in their criminal career, exist as a defining force. If, in the ordinary concerns of life, women exhibit mental traits which serve amply to distinguish them, and place limits to their activity, not less in the tabulated histories of crime are the same distinctions and limits found.

1. Age materially influences the extent and degree of crime in both sexes. In relation to physical and functional development, age exists as a defining force. It appears to affect the criminal careers of the sexes in two ways: by permitting such a degree of bodily power to be reached as to render possible criminal acts in different degrees; and, the bodily powers remaining the same, the varying mental conditions produce changes in the force and direction of the criminal impulse. Each period of life, therefore, is characterized by degrees and qualities of crime which belong to it. In other words, certain phases of crime are perpetrated at one period of life in excess of any other period. These remarks do not apply to both sexes equally, for these periods do not correspond either as to age, or in the nature of the offense, the excess of which distinguishes one period from another.

For the purpose of studying the influence of age upon the criminal career of women, I shall analyze the figures of Mr. F. G. P. Neison. The materials embraced in the table of Mr. Neison are for five years, from 1834 to 1839; for, strange to say, the Home-Office returns, since the year last named, to the date of Mr. Nelson's publication, ceased to give the age and sex with reference to classes of crime. In order to simplify the comparison, I shall take the number of male criminals corresponding in age to the female, as the standard of measurement in reference to any given division of crime. Fractions are omitted in reference to both sexes.

At twelve years of age and younger the proportion of females to males is 1 to 6 for crimes against persons, and for crimes against property without violence for the same age the proportion is again 1 to 6. Bearing in mind what has been said in a former chapter, that the ratios of the sexes as to crimes against persons and property are 16 to to [sic] 100 for the former, and 26 to 100 for the latter, and which also correspond to the difference in strength between the sexes, we see that the element of sexual inequality in strength does not present itself as a factor. In other words, the correspondence in the proportion of the sexes to the two classes of crime represents physical equality, while