Crime scene

“ One man’s list will show a string of pocket-picking cases, or attempts in that line, and it will be rare, indeed, to find in that record a case of robbery with violence, housebreaking, or any crime necessitating great daring or strength. ”

“ The criminal law which had its origin when violence was rife is admirably adapted to the prevention, prosecuting and punishment of crude crimes, such as arson, rape, robbery, burglary, mayhem, assault, homicide, and "common-law" larceny,—theft accompanied by a trespass. In old times everything was against the man charged with crime—at least that was the attitude of the court and jury. "Aha!" exclaims the judge as the evidence goes in. ”

“ Here is the motive for the crime, clear as light. Are not the bloody knife, the bloody dress, the bloody clothes of the prisoner, unimpeachable witnesses to the criminal act? The criminal agency of the prisoner has not the shadow of a possibility to obscure it. His motive is gigantic. The blood on him, and his despair when arrested, cry ‘Murder! murder!’ with a thousand tongues.
“Men may lie, but circumstances cannot. The thousand hopes and fears and passions of men may delude, or bias the witness. ”

“ These fellow-workers of ours who are now on trial for murder are not one whit more guilty of the crime with which they are charged than I am. The man who committed the murder was a policeman, an officer of the law; the victim of the crime was as usual a striker, a wage-slave, a poor working girl. ”

“ Stories of Crime. Accounts of crime, or “police news stories,” are constructed on practically the same principles as those of fires and accidents. In all crimes in which human lives are destroyed or endangered, the essential points are the names of the persons involved, the nature of the crime, its cause, its results, and, if the perpetrator escapes, clues to his identity and whereabouts. In murders, attempted murders, suicides, and defalcations, the motives for the crime are always matters of great interest. ”

“ It is well known, too, that another class of sensational novels, the plots of which consist in the development of criminal intrigues, tend to promote crime by rendering it fascinating and indicating an attractive and exciting method of perpetrating it. ”

“ Wearing a Salvation Army uniform, a burglar was caught early yesterday in the home of Walter Katte, a vice-president of the New York Central railroad, at Irvington-on-the-Hudson.—New York World.
3. Murder.—The reports of crimes of this sort can hardly be classified, for there are so many things that may be worth featuring in any murder case. The story itself is usually of such importance that the mere fact that a murder has been committed gives it news value even if there is nothing unusual in the crime—just as in the case of a featureless fire story that begins with "Fire." ”

“ While the country is ringing with the record of a great crime—while the murderer is on his guard night and day, waking and sleeping—the police watch and work: but by-and-by, when the crime is half forgotten—when security has made the criminal careless—when the chances of detection are ten-fold—the police have grown tired, and there is no eye to watch the guilty man's movements. ”

“ And again, since the social factors have special import in occasional crime, and crime by acquired habit, and since these are the most numerous sections of crime as a whole, it is clear that the periodic movement of crime must be attributed in the main to the social factors. ”

“ Such an action is as much and as flagrant a crime or offence against the community as an act of robbery or murder, which, though primarily an injury to the individual, is primarily avenged as an injury to the State. ”

“ Instances of their Almost Superhuman Skill—How Criminals give themselves Away: the Murder of M. Delahache, the Stepney Murder, and other Instances—Cases in which there is Strong but not Sufficient Evidence: the Burdell and Various Other Murders: the Probable Identity of “Jack the Ripper”—Undiscovered Murders: the Rupprecht, Mary Rogers, Nathan, and other Cases: Similar Cases in India: the Burton Crescent Murder: the Murder of Lieutenant Roper—The Balance in Favour of the Police.
I.—THE CAUSES OF CRIME. CRIME is the transgression by individuals of rules made by the community. ”

“ Drive out some night to a lonely road, find a single person walking along out of sight of anyone else, offer him a ride, knife him, and go home. In such a crime, there's no reason to connect killer and victim—no motive, no clue, no suspect. ”

“ A student of pharmacy became a hangman for the same reason and a rich Dutchman paid the butchers for allowing him to kill oxen. If, then, one is dealing with a crime which points to extraordinary cruelty, how can one be certain about its motive and history without knowing the history of the criminal? ”

“ Criminal cases, such as robberies, assaults, forgeries, murders, and the like, are conducted in a different manner. The head of the police in the district where the crime was committed, is entrusted with the collection of the evidence. ”

“ Comparing the number of cases of murder, attempts to murder, manslaughter, shooting at, stabbing and wounding, and adding to these offences the crimes of burglary, housebreaking, robbery, and arson—comparing all these cases reported to the police for the five years 1870-1874, with offences of a like character reported in the five years 1884-1888, we find that the proportion of grave offences to the population was, in many cases, as great in the latter period as in the former. [7] This shows clearly that crime, while it is increasing in extent, is not materially decreasing in seriousness ”

“ There is an old adage that murder will out. And this expression of human experience is only repeated in what we modern scientific detectives are doing. No man bent on the commission of a crime can so arrange the circumstances of that crime that it will afterward appear, point by point, as an accident. ”

“ Nor need we wonder that the most credulous should have been startled by the recital of such atrocious cruelty, which far surpasses any thing that is usually found in the records of crime. The offence of murder, dreadful as it is, is unhappily too familiar in our criminal proceedings ”

“ Body of the Crime Story.—The body of the crime story, like that of the accident, follows the lead in a simple chronological narration of events. Interest may be added by quoting direct statements from persons immediately connected with the crime,—how it feels to be held up, how the robber gained entrance to the building, how the bandits escaped. In stories of burglaries and robberies the value of the stolen goods and any ingenious devices for gaining entrance to the house, stopping the train, or halting the robbed party should always be given. ”

“ The police, who are ever on the watch, immediately seize and carry off any offender, but from the statements of persons who have had an opportunity of observing, as well as from my own slight experience, I am convinced that there is an untold amount of misery and crime. ”

“ A vile male member of the common criminal classes had not only taken occasion to loot a jeweler's window, broken by some innocent lady, but had coolly murdered a policeman who interfered with him in the perpetration of his selfish crime. ”

“ We have thus exhausted in a short and general review the subject of the natural origin of criminality.—To sum up, crime is a social phenomenon, due to the interaction of anthropological, telluric, and social factors. This law brings about what I have called criminal saturation, which means that every society has the criminality which it deserves, and which produces by means of its geographical and social conditions such quantities and qualities of crime as correspond to the development of each collective human group. ”

“ In the few cases that get into the newspapers, are there not instances of slain bodies found, and no murderers ever discovered? Multiply the cases that are reported by the cases that are NOT reported, and the bodies that are found by the bodies that are NOT found, and what conclusion do you come to? This. That there are foolish criminals who are discovered, and wise criminals who escape. The hiding of a crime, or the detection of a crime, what is it? A trial of skill between the police on one side, and the individual on the other. ”

“ Before we study crime from the point of view of a juristic phenomenon, we must study the causes to which the annual recurrence of crimes in all countries is due. These are natural causes, which I have classified under the three heads of anthropological, telluric and social. Every crime, from the smallest to the most atrocious, is the result of the interaction of these three causes, the anthropological condition of the criminal, the telluric environment in which he is living, and the social environment in which he is born, living and operating. ”

“ We may accept the unpleasant fact without theorising further as to the genesis of crime. I propose in these pages to take criminals as I find them; to accept crime as an actual fact, and in its multiform manifestations; to deal with its commission, the motives that have caused it, the methods by which it has been perpetrated, the steps taken—sometimes extraordinarily ingenious and astute, sometimes foolishly forgetful and ineffective—to conceal the deed and throw the pursuers{4} off the scent; on the other hand, I shall set forth in some detail the agencies employed for detection and exposure. ”

“ The crimes of violence and murder, and the lesser crimes against property, practically all come from those who have been reared in the poor and congested districts of cities and large villages. The robbers, burglars, pickpockets and thieves are from these surroundings. ”

“ Vance amended evenly. “Crimes possess all the basic factors of a work of art—approach, conception, technique, imagination, attack, method, and organization. Moreover, crimes vary fully as much in their manner, their aspects, and their general nature, as do works of art. Indeed, a carefully planned crime is just as direct an expression of the individual as is a painting, for instance. ”

“ The police now took possession of the house, and the mysterious nature of the transaction fully warranted them in the first step which they took—the detention of the three servants. A minute examination of the premises took place, the result of which was, a firm conviction on their minds that the murder had been perpetrated by an inmate of the house, and that a simulated robbery had been got up, for the purpose of raising a belief that the diabolical crime which had been committed was the act of a nocturnal plunderer and assassin. ”

“ Then of a sudden he said:
“You have a rather unusual method of picking suspects.”
“In what way?”
[144]
“When the police have a criminal to catch, a crime to clear up, they go over the list of criminals who work at such crimes, then they check up on those persons, possibly shadowing them for days. But you—you simply go to a fire and pick a man who seems particularly interested in the fire. You say to yourself: ‘He might be the man.’ Then you start shadowing him.” ”

“ They were of the most atrocious character—murders committed, not from the ordinary motive of revenge, or of robbery, or to escape from the punishment of other offences,—but its object was indiscriminate murder for dissection, and cold-blooded [293] traffic, rendering the crime profitable in proportion to the number of its victims. These atrocities seem to have attracted the notice of the Lord Advocate, whose conduct, in all these proceedings, he considered highly meritorious. ”

“ The police were active no doubt, but so far they had discovered nothing.
Two men, the murderer and the murdered, engulfed in that great whirlpool known as humanity, small units of no importance, since no one seemed to care. Interesting to the detective whose duty it was to track the crime to its perpetrator. Interesting to the reporter who could fill a column with accounts of depositions, of questionings, of [Pg 16] examinations. Interesting to the after-dinner talker who could expatiate over the moral lessons to be drawn from the conception of such a crime. ”

“ Passing the robbery then, for despite my denial you may think your explanation correct, and a jury might agree with you, let us come to the murder. Do you suppose a man would make a wager to commit a crime, and then go to the extreme of killing a woman. ”

“ But a horrible crime, a murder perpetrated under circumstances unusually diabolical, the criminal being no less a person than the last lord abbot himself, and the victim a beauteous girl whom he had seduced, rendered this institution accursed in the eyes of God and man. ”

“ What we call crime is, at the beginning, usually an effort to get, or to pretend to get, into step, but, being a violent or miscalculated effort, it is liable to fail, and the criminal falls to the rear of the social army. “I believe that most murders are really committed by Mrs. Grundy,” a woman writes to me, and, with the due qualification, the saying is worthy of meditation. ”

“ The first set of portraits are those of criminals convicted of murder, manslaughter, or robbery accompanied with violence. It will be observed that the features of the composites are much better looking than those of the components. The special villainous irregularities in the latter have disappeared, and the common humanity that underlies them has prevailed. They represent, not the criminal, but the man who is liable to fall into crime. ”

“ We are enabled to continue the narrative, not for the guidance of any who may read it, but as a warning The fact that Peace has now to answer the capital charge is of itself sufficient evidence of the gradations downwards which the pursuit of crime involves.
“The singular episodes in the career of the criminal are stranger even than many a highly imaginative novelist could have portrayed. ”

“ Had one of our writers of detective stories imagined so extraordinary a crime as having taken place in the heart of a busy neighbourhood, within hearing, almost within sight of hundreds of people, he would have been scoffed at for exceeding the bounds of probability. ”

“ Suspicions of a dreadful character entered the minds of persons, whose duty it was to superintend the police of the town,—suspicions of murder, which might well be supposed to have been excited by the influence of the Almighty, and through which the guilty were eventually discovered and brought to punishment. ”