Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/23

6 possibility. As unlikely is it that the motive was a long-cherished revenge; the fact that the butchery was practised, not on an individual or set of individuals, but on the members of a class (apparently on such members merely as chance threw first in the murderer's way) seems to negative that idea. The suggestion that the crimes were committed for the sake of obtaining from the bodies a certain organ to be sold for scientific purposes is, of course, untenable. The state of the market for such articles negatives the hypothesis. One fails to descry any motive. But this failure is no ground for inferring insanity, and it would be danger ous to so regard it. Apparent absence of motive is no criterion. No doubt, in cases of alleged kleptomania this element is of first importance. If a person in comfortable circumstances financially, with the means even of giving charity to others, secretly fill her pockets with bread at the table of a friend (as in an authentic case, recorded by Dr. Rush), certainly the absence of reasonable motive is all but conclusive of an irresistible propensity to steal. But in this respect the crime of theft stands absolutely alone. And even in the case of theft, were the article stolen any thing but a commodity-readily obtainable in quantity by the wealthy purloiner, — were it, for example, a curio or article of virtu, — mere affluence would not infer absence of motive.

In the case of any other crime, it is the extreme of rashness to conclude that motive is absent, because it is unascertainable, and even defies conjecture. If one but practise a little introspection, the variety and the apparently trifling nature of the motives which sometimes actuate man, even in innocent matters, must strike him. Further, that these secret springs of action should be obscure to others must appear quite natural. In this respect of want of adequate motive the London tragedies would be hard to bring within the category of so-called moral mania. Intellectual derangement might account for them so far as this point is concerned. Absence of reasonable motive and presence of unreasonable motive — the play of hallucinations and delusions — may turn out to be a plausible explanation. But in so far as motive goes, the theory that these crimes are the results of monomanie sans ddlire seems untenable.

They bear no resemblance to the few instances of this alleged disease recorded, and repeated in every medical treatise on the subject. A sudden and "unaccountable" desire to take life, — a wife waking in the night with an irresistible impulse to kill the husband at her side, with no reason for it, and in spite of a strong affection for him; a servant, while undressing a child of whom she had charge, being struck with the whiteness of its skin, and thereby possessed of an impulse to murder it, and so forth, — an inexplicable craving, which is not persistent. But here we have something different. The impulse was to all appearance sustained, — unless, indeed, these various murders turn out to be the work of several individuals, and those unconnected with each other, the later cases being the result of a morbid imitation of the earlier. It was not a sudden flash out of a propensity to kill. It was persistent or recurrent. A most common evidence of this so-called insane and irresistible impulse is the voluntary confession of the act. Immediately the impulse is gratified it seems to pass off, and the murderer quietly surrenders himself to the proper authorities. This is a strong argument in favor of the insane nature of the impulse. It will, we believe, be acknowledged by medical observers to be the fact, that of those alleged homicidal maniacs who fly after committing the murder, all show unmistakable symptoms of intellectual insanity. On this ground alone, then, we are forced to the conclusion that the apparent absence of motive in these London murders is not to be explained on the irresistible impulse theory, and that the case is outside the category of " moral mania."

The craft and cunning evinced in the murders in question seem little to consist with