Victim

“ He would weaken from despair, she from the candor of her soul. They would wait. But ah, the tragedy of it! Even these men hardened by years of contact with every species of human suffering and crime were openly moved. If they needed an excuse, surely they could find it in the superior abilities and attainment of the man upon whom justice was about to wreak its vengeance. And yet, what more despicable crime had they ever encountered in the long line of their duty. The youth and innocence of the real victim and the worth of the intended one only added to its wickedness and shame. ”

“ There are crimes done every day, which the world knows by heart, and yet shudders to see recorded, even in the most carefully vailed phrase. But the crime of which I was the victim, was too horrible for belief. Wareham the criminal, my own mother the accomplice, the victim a girl of fifteen, who had been reared in purity and innocence afar from the world. ”

“ I gave a gasp and pulled off more cushions, then I fell on my knees, struck down by the greatest horror which a man can feel. Death lay before me—violent, uncalled-for death—and the victim was a woman. ”

“ Let an ultra-civilized, hyper-refined man stand between the slayer and his victim and watch the life blood's fitful spurts from a wrecked artery, and all his Veneer of refinement and civilization is burned up in a blast of horror and rage. ”

“ AS some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
⁠I've got a little list—I've got a little list
Of social offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed—who never would be missed! ”

“ I have no redress, no compensation, and no help. Any one may be a victim, and you and I, by thoughtlessly passing on the deadly thing, may all unconsciously be driving another nail into a man's coffin. ”

“ Omitting all hearsay and they-say knowledge, I was her forty-seventh victim; and as pœnologists affirm that more than half of the criminal acts are undiscovered, it can at once be seen how society is menaced by people with good hearts. ”

“ We begin by wounding the victim, and then we kill it, that the sight of our cruelty may no longer put us to the blush. Late reflections upon those days of error have unveiled for me many a dark depth in the human heart. ”

“ A horrible murder had just been committed by a miserable man of the name of Good, who endeavored to conceal his crime by cutting to pieces and scattering in different directions the mangled remains of his victim—a woman. The details of these horrors filled the public papers, and were the incessant subject of discussion in society, and were calculated to produce an impression of terror difficult to shake off even by so little nervous a person as myself. ”

“ If you could stand with me by the side of the little deformed dead body, and, turning from the sickening sight, could be shown the new victim to whom the brute was already betrothed, do you think it would require long arguments to convince you that there was a deadly wrong somewhere, and that someone was responsible for it? ”

“ The spectators who feel no abhorrence at a public execution, but rather a self-applauding superiority, and a sense of gratified indignation, are surely excited to the most inauspicious emotions. The first reflection of such a one is the sense of his own internal and actual worth, as preferable to that of the victim, whom circumstances have led to destruction. ”

“ Thou hast before thee a person tied at the stake, burning over a slow fire, and it's thou who would'st reproach him with the atrocious spectacle his sufferings inflict on sensitive souls? Ah, a spectacle that he shows thee indeed against his will!
"And it is this martyred victim,this patient sufferer, whose whole being is a perpetual torture, an agonising irritation, it's this man burnt alive whom thou'dst accuse of being thy executioner. ”

“ Until this happen, let the poor victim be accursed, and evil work with the posterity of her betrayer!' The miserable murderer invoked the infernal powers to assist in the fulfilment of his curse, and then, as if beside himself, ran to the turf-pits. ”

“ Once victim, always victim—that’s the law!” ”

“ With terms of defiance, the victim, in those solemn trials, commonly excites the animosities of his tormentors, as well as his own; and whilst we suffer for human nature, under the effect of its errors, we must admire its force. ”

“ And in cases where deadly violence is inflicted with deliberation and malice aforethought, one may nobly throw his body as a temporary barrier between the destroyer and his helpless victim, choosing to die in that position, rather than be a passive spectator. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here is another example taken from his speech in what is known as the White Murder Case:
An aged man, without an enemy in the world, in his own house, and in his own bed, is made the victim of a butcherly murder, for mere pay. ”

“ But suppose one pass, as is permissible in philology, from the word itself to its softened synonym, then, instead of committing an ignoble assassination you make an `elimination;' you merely and simply remove from your path the individual who is in your way, and that without shock or violence, without the display of the sufferings which, in the case of becoming a punishment, make a martyr of the victim, and a butcher, in every sense of the word, of him who inflicts them. ”

“ The pillory and stocks, the gibbet, and even the whipping-post, have seen many a noble victim, many a martyr. But I cannot think any save the most ignoble criminals ever sat in a ducking-stool. ”

“ A condition of reverence being thus inherent, it follows that the images which reason has unconsciously reared must meet with some disturbing shock before they can be impaired or dismembered. But the blow once fairly delivered, the victim of the assault in too many cases passes out into the ranks of the assailants. ”

“ But, like a cat playing with a victim Rearing Bill deliberately delayed. Here was a worthless, terror stricken, utterly helpless and friendless victim. Odd Jobbing Det looked his sorry misery and his voice went up in a shrill breaking wail of hopeless terror, for he felt the drunken brute’s determination to “get a man”, establishing a reputation as bad, killing to see a victim kick. ”

“ But its attempts have done little, and cannot be expected to do much, because it is contrary to reason and experience to suppose that there can be any real check to brutality, consistent with leaving the victim still in the power of the executioner. ”

“ Once victim, always victim—that's the law!'
'Oh no, no, Tess,' he said blandly. ”

“ Being asked why they committed these cruelties in cold blood, they answered, 'they were obliged to do it by their sacred bond.' Upon these occasions they practised great cruelties, mangling the bodies of their victims that each man might have his share of the guilt. ”

“ And those who did these things, mimicked the sufferers, like people employed in the representation of theatrical farces; but the relations and friends of those who were the real victims, merely because they sympathized with the misery of their relations, were led away to prison, were scourged, were tortured, and after all the ill treatment which their living bodies could endure, found the cross the end of all, and the punishment from which they could not escape. ”

“ Such an illegal examination, brutally conducted, covers the helpless and innocent with the awful shadow of fear fathered by the suspicion of cruel abuse, and the victims of such gross assault, in their loneliness, beyond all help, are forced to appear guilty of something when they are not. ”

“ I regard these people who are in the clutches of the law not only as unfortunates, but, for the most part, as victims. You may call them victims of nature, or of nations, or of governments; it makes no difference, they are victims. ”

“ Victims—the word placed at the head of this article—is a designation for those woe-begone mortals who have had the misfortune to drop out of the ranks of society. Every body must know more or less of victims, for every body must have had to pay a smaller or greater number of half-crowns in his time to keep them from starvation. ”

“ Thousands of innocent people had been murdered in circumstances of atrocious cruelty. Neither age nor sex had been respected. Indeed, children, old men, and women seemed to be the favourite victims of the savages. ”

“ The victims of violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one—no matter where he lives or what he does—can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours. ”

“ These unfortunate wretches are the victims of quarrels, or sudden fights;—and the front of the deadly window is commonly crowded with women and children—the relatives of the victims who come thither to seek after or to gaze their last on friend, father or husband. ”

“ Their families were often made the victims of revenge; and instances were numerous where feeble women and little children were slain in cold blood by neighbors long and familiarly known to each other, in retaliation of like atrocities perpetrated by their husbands, sons, or brothers. ”

“ I’ll translate the passage roughly as I read: ‘It is not uncommon to find people who inflict wounds on themselves; such are, besides persons pretending to be the victims of assaults with deadly weapons, those who try to extort damages or blackmail. ”

“ They believed their words. Everybody shows a respectful deference to certain sounds that he and his fellows can make. But about feelings people really know nothing. We talk with indignation or enthusiasm; we talk about oppression, cruelty, crime, devotion, self-sacrifice, virtue, and we know nothing real beyond the words. Nobody knows what suffering or sacrifice mean—except, perhaps the victims of the mysterious purpose of these illusions. ”

“ 'crime, like death, is not confined to the old and withered alone. The youngest and fairest are too often its chosen victims.'
'But, can you—oh! ”

“ The victims of persecution had now turned persecutors on their own account, and persecutors of the most terrible description. ”

“ The naked, strong body has known death, and sits in utter dejection, finished, hulked, a weight of shame. And what remains of life is in the face, whose expression is sinister and gruesome, like that of an unrelenting criminal violated by torture. The criminal look of misery and hatred on the fixed, violated face and in the bloodshot eyes is almost impossible. ”

“ That punishment of which men used to talk so wisely and act so foolishly, what was it but the expression of their fear? And they had need to fear, since they—i.e., the rulers of society—were dwelling like an armed band in a hostile country. But we who live amongst our friends need neither fear nor punish. Surely if we, in dread of an occasional rare homicide, an occasional rough blow, were solemnly and legally to commit homicide and violence, we could only be a society of ferocious cowards. ”

“ Whether we consider the tragedy that we are trying and the circumstances that surround it, the charge that followed it, the necessary course of the trial that has been had before you, the difficult and painful duty of the counsel upon both sides of the case, or the duty that shall finally be committed to your charge, there is that in it all which lacerates the heart strings of humanity. It was an incredible crime, incredible but for the cold and merciful facts which confront and defeat that incredulity. ”

“ Punishment and death,―these are the portion of the depraved. To deserve death in the iniquity of guilt,―this is the climax of crime. To die without regret at the call of duty,―this is the acme of heroism. ”

“ That night, gentlemen, a murder was committed of a deeper and darker dye than guilt ordinarily wears: a murder which in centuries hence will stand amongst the blackest chapters in the gloomy annals of crime. ”

“ I leave him to a higher retribution—to One who says, ‘Vengeance is mine.’ I believe him to be guilty of the murder but if the uplifting of my finger would send him to his disgraceful death, I would tie down my hand rather than lift it, for I could not, in my own mind, separate the man from the injury. ”

“ Of horrid Guilt that lies upon us all?
To have died innocent, and seen these Babes
By savage Hands dash'd to immortal Rest,
This had been light, for this implies no Crime:
But now we die as guilty Murderers,
Not savage Indians, but just Heaven's Vengeance
Pursues our Lives with all these Pains and Tortures.
This is a Thought that points the keenest Sorrow,
And leaves no Room for Anguish to be heighten'd.
Honnyman. ”

“ If the revolt and treachery of all most dear to him, the hatred of his very flesh and blood, the unceasing enmity of his own sons, a miserable old age, and a heart-broken death-bed—if these things may be deemed Heaven’s vengeance upon murder—then, of a surety, that murder was avenged! ”

“ This, when it is done from enmity, hatred, or revenge, is homicide or murder; for the civil life proceeds and is estimated by many in the world, in a like degree with the life of the body; and he who kills or destroys it, is also as guilty before the angels in the heavens, as if he had killed his brother or neighbor as to the life of the body. ”