Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/753

Rh not particularly important as factors in the grave class of crime now under consideration. So far as it relates to parents, these emotions may be excluded. Other emotions must in parricide be called into action. But, in poisoning and crimes affecting others beyond parental relation, I believe the purely sexual emotion is the main ingredient in the motive. M. Quetelet states that adultery, domestic quarrels, and jealousy, cause nearly an equal number of poisoning in both sexes; but in murder the number of women by the husbands exceeds the number of husbands by the wives. In poisoning, with the ratio of 91 to 100, for all motives and against unspecified persons, we perceive that when the crime is brought within the domestic circle and against persons bearing a very close relation to women and narrowed down to these motives, all differences between the sexes disappear. This is brought out in order to make clear the fact that women are not worse than men, but that under conditions favorable to their more restricted sphere of activities, and from motives operating in the direction of their peculiar psychical traits, they will equal men in the perpetration of those crimes suited to their strength. Crime, as it relates to men and is perpetrated by them, conforms in an equal manner to their physical and mental characteristics, and exists in a ratio with the sphere of their activities. While a difference of morality may exist between the sexes, it is not equal to explain the constantly varying ratios of the sexes, to crime. Whatever the differences of morality may be, it is not sufficient to create any difference in the tendency to crime, when the crime conforms to the conditions just stated. The abnormal action of mental sexual traits is more often met with among women than among men. M. Prosper Despine assigns great importance to the moral perversions which accompany the hysterical tendency in women, and regards it as one of the marked characteristics of sex in crime. Hysteria in its myriad forms, when it disturbs cerebral function, appears to be a perversion of the emotional faculties. An offense committed during an attack of hysterical insanity is not of course a crime, as I am here studying it; but it is a grave question, to what extent may the criminal habit grow out of the perversion of morals which may attend the hysterical state of mind? In the course of two years' acquaintance with criminal female convicts, I became impressed with the fact that nearly every one of them gave evidence of possessing hysterical tendencies. In connection with this tendency, another significant fact was observed the power to control the expression of the feelings and emotions was much less in them than in the average woman. Women who are liable to attacks of hysterical perversion of the emotions are usually under the direct influence of the diseased action but a short time, so that the possibility of criminal attempts at such times is comparatively limited. It is not therefore the presence of an actual attack of hysteria which promotes the tendency to crime; but the impaired control over the desires and emotions which coexists with the