Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/358

344 equality is accounted for by the physical strength required for its perpetration being possessed equally by the sexes. In crimes against persons, the influence of this factor can be traced, but not in so marked a manner as in the crimes referred to. In poisoning, for instance, the ratio between the sexes is 91 women to 100 men, and while active mental traits may in part exist as causes for this nearly equal ratio of the sexes, yet the total absence of any need of physical strength must be given due value. Poison is essentially a weapon of weakness. It figures largely in history as the agent of women and politicians. One reason, which probably existed in mediæval days, but which cannot be regarded in modern times, was the difficulty of detection in cases of death by poisoning. It was surrounded by an atmosphere of horrible suspicion, which was never relieved by certainty. It was selected as a political agent by reason of this secrecy, by both sexes, and thus at this period had no sexual qualities. Modern advances in chemistry have rendered poisoning one of the most surely detected of all crimes, and its perpetration has become a characteristic of the weak and cowardly. In some other offenses, as in incendiarism, in which physical strength is as unessential as in poisoning, the ratio between the sexes falls to 34 in 100. Although this is a crime well within the compass of woman's physical abilities, yet it involves other elements, which deter women from its perpetration. Motive, which is the exciting cause of crime and enters largely into the intensity of the tendency, cannot act so powerfully in the latter as the former crime. In order to kill, a stronger motive is required than to burn. Incendiarism requires considerable personal exposure, and danger of immediate detection. Parricide with a ratio of 50 to 100, and wounding of parents with a ratio of 22 to 100 (Quetelet), offer a remarkable contrast to murder and the wounding of strangers, with a ratio taken together of 9 to 100. The necessity of physical strength exists equally in the perpetration of these crimes. The marked difference in ratio, therefore, must be explained by other means. Opportunity and domesticity, already referred to in a former paper, exist largely as the cause of the difference. M. Quetelet, speaking in general terms of the influence of opportunity and domestic habits upon woman's criminal career, remarks: "They can only conceive and execute guilty projects on individuals with whom they are in the greatest intimacy; thus, compared with man, her assassinations are more often in her family than out of it." It would be difficult to present a stronger argument of the influence of woman's social position as a restraint to crime. As we observe in the crimes just referred to, it is not the enormity of the offense which restrains, for we have in parricide twelve times the frequency of murder; it is not weakness, for then parricide, murder, and wounding, should agree in frequency. We are able to trace in this no influence of morality, it is simply the result of the varying degrees of opportunity, domestic life, and mental peculiarities.