Woman as a Sexual Criminal

Table of Contents

Woman as a Sexual Criminal

Dr. Erich Wulffen

FOREWORD TO THE THIRD REVISED (GERMAN) EDITION

INTRODUCTION

Chapter I. CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN

Chapter II. PSYCHOSEXUALIS OF WOMAN

Chapter III. THE WOMAN THIEF

Chapter IV. FEMALE SWINDLERS AND CHEATS

Chapter V. PYROMANIACS

Chapter VI. THE ROBBER MURDERESS

Chapter VII. HONOR MURDER

Chapter VIII. POISONERS

Chapter IX. MURDER OF HUSBAND

Chapter X. MURDER OF KIN

Chapter XI. SADISTIC MURDERESS

Chapter XII. MATERNAL CRIMES

Chapter XIII. MASTURBATION, NYMPHOMANIA, ADULTERY, ETC.

Chapter XIV. EXHIBITIONISM AND IMMORAL COMMERCE WITH CHILDREN

Chapter XV. INCEST, SODOMY AND OTHER PERVERSIONS

Chapter XVI. FEMALE HOMOSEXUALITY

Chapter XVII. PROCURING

Chapter XVIII. PROSTITUTES

Woman as a Sexual Criminal

Dr. Erich Wulffen

This page copyright © 2007 Olympia Press.

The shocking deeds of female sex offenders Woman as a Sexual Criminal is the first book which deals exclusively with the unlawful activities of the fair sex; it is an alarming documentary of murder, rape, arson, theft, and other heinous crimes—all committed by women! Dr. Erich Wulffen, the leading authority on the subject of criminality in the 20th century, reveals the fearful truth about the dark side of woman's nature.

FOREWORD TO THE THIRD REVISED (GERMAN) EDITION

(from which this English translation has been made)

by Dr. Erich Wulffen

"The years of the World War and Revolution, with their subsequent increase in the number of female criminals and of crime in general, have reawakened my interest in such studies as I had formerly made of the sexual criminal. I felt it incumbent upon myself to make a thorough study of the woman as sexual criminal, making this work complete in itself and at the same time supplementary to my previous work, The Sexual Criminal.

"My new researches opened the road to a view of the criminality of woman in closer relation to her sexual life. Since the relationship of woman to society had greatly changed (she had received greater political equality to man, and in the last decade her demands for other rights were being granted, and still other rights such as equalities related to personal sexual life seemed also to be nearing their realization) it became necessary for me to study these new phenomena in the cultural history of mankind with more searching eyes, re-organizing the data, adding new data, and thus re-illuminating the whole problem.

"Since the customs and acts of the female criminal are always very closely related to general female physiology and psychology, and since in woman's lap the race is nurtured, this study will give us milestones along the road of progress of the race.

"The thoughts which I expressed in the two previous editions of this work required revision for still another reason: as woman as a sexual criminal was now to be published as part of The Encyclopedia of Criminology, under the editorship of Dr. P. Langenscheidt, it required re-writing for greater suitability to that work.

"Revision of Woman as a Sexual Criminal concerned particularly criminal statistics in which were set forth the latest official data; also many new case-histories, and illustrations characteristic of the changes during the period of the War and thereafter had to be added,

"Our suffering world quickly forgets the forensic facts of the past: for such and for other reasons it appears to me requisite and expedient to record in scholarly treatises the cases and examples of the past in order to be ever in a position to make illuminating comparisons with our current cases and problems.

"It was, moreover, necessary to present the newest amendments and legislative proposals to the codes of criminal laws, which should at no time be considered to have received final form. Essential, too, it was to insert certain new sexological observations and theories which were propounded for the first time in recent years; such as concerned themes like the sexual requirements of prisoners; new propositions of sexual reforms; psychoanalysis in relationship to sex and crime. I have taken this occasion to include among other additions a critical review of the Freudian psychoanalytical theories. Scholarly requirements made imperative the filling-in of other gaps; such as the newest discoveries and points-of-view of other scientists; their cases, methods and observations relative to the woman as a sexual criminal have been multiplied in this new edition.

"I want to make acknowledgments of the valuable contributions to the comprehension of the sexual life and of sexual criminology which their celebrated authors have communicated to me for inclusion in this present work. If there is any lasting contribution in my researches and work, these scientists are to be given due credit for cooperation.

Above all I owe great thanks to the Honorable Dr. Bott von Bodenhausen, Councillor-at-Law, in Hamburg, for this noteworthy inspiration and for the new arrangement of this work.

INTRODUCTION

All comprehensive works on criminology in their essence describe the characteristics and details of the male criminal, treating the female criminal only as a mere appendix. Such a one-sided representation does not give a true idea of the share of women in crime which, according to statistics, amounts to about one-fifth of the total. Such lopsided treatment fails to give a distinct and a conclusive account of the woman criminal. Thus our knowledge of the woman as a criminal has been defective and incomplete.

It is quite true that the active traits of the male criminal produce a richer variety of crimes than the passive female and therefore requires a more comprehensive treatment. But the female criminal is not a uniform type: she is of a peculiar composition and combination and shows much of the unique in her makeup. And if we should select woman's monopoly in crime—murder by poisoning—for our examination, we would find in it a rich soil for criminal psychology. The chapter on crimes of cruelty—cruel mothers, wives, governesses and political criminals—gives us a deep insight into the woman's soul, and, above all, woman's sex crimes is a world by itself.

Writers such as Lombroso and Granier who wished to do justice to this subject devoted a special work to the woman criminal; but in the past no German writer produced such a work. Aschaffenburg in his Crime and Its Control treats the characteristics of the female criminal merely from the point of view of statistics, to which he appends a few brief, psychological notes, without venturing into the general psychology of woman even in his section on the psychical qualities of the criminal. Paul Pollitz in his Psychology of the Criminal adds nothing to it. Similarly, in my own Criminal Psychology and The Sexual Criminal, the discussion of the male criminal preponderates. The purpose of the present book is to furnish an independent, complete work on woman as a sexual criminal.

In this book I will not repeat or review what I have already discussed in great detail in my other work: sex biology, sex psychology, characterology, psychopathia sexualis, etc., and the reader must refer to that book for these principles of criminology, which have not changed since the appearance of the earlier book. The same must be said of the etiology of the different crimes and of their annexed juristical valuations. The present book will show only the progress of scientific development in criminology.

The chief purpose of this book is to work out the essential features and details of female crime from carefully chosen material, in such a manner as to get a plastic picture of the female criminal. Neither Lombroso nor Granier set such a task before them, inasmuch as their incomplete case material fails in any way to give sharp graphic representation of woman as a sexual criminal. I have undertaken such a task because I am convinced that such proposed cases; found in the records of criminology and in court decisions, will also be helpful to this sphere of science. It is only in the large and extensive data of female crime that we may find the persuasive material and the power of conviction for the theory which I shall propose. It was this conception which inspired me to write an independent work comprehensible in itself; the material used is different throughout from that employed in my other book, The Sexual Criminal, and the especially instructive cases in the latter will only be referred to in passing.

The conception of woman as a sexual criminal, on which this book is based, is the same as I have shown it to be in my other work. There I have characterized the male criminal as a type and the female as a born sexual criminal in relation to that type. Most of woman's criminal tendencies, on account of close lying psycho-physiological causes, stand in some fixed relation to her sex life. In this sense then, the female thief, swindler, extortioner, incendiary, robber, murderer, may be regarded as a sexual criminal. This imputation is so lucid and so easy to understand that its adoption bids fair to become current.

The order of treatment in this work is the same as in The Sexual Criminal. There the various deeds of violence were classified either on the basis of a sexual aberration, e.g. sadism, etc., or on a social basis, such as adultery, abortion, etc. It would not have been amiss to have adopted the system of Camille Granier in his Criminal Woman, and to have carried out a sharp differentiation into maternal and sexual criminality and crimes connected with industry or politics, i.e. mass criminality. If it were a question of characterizing the female criminal, then it only remained to represent the different female sex criminals in our own sense—the female thief, swindler, incendiary and extortioner. The female murderer, again, had to be grouped further into murderers in connection with robbery, poisoning, murder of kin, of the husband, etc. Considering that cruelty is such a well pronounced female trait we were justified in assigning to it a separate chapter with special consideration of cruelty in the mother, wife, teacher, and in political crime. Abortion, infanticide, exposure of infants and the hanging of children, of course, go together. In the pure sex crimes, too, the various crimes are represented: incest, bigamy, adultery, immorality, prostitution and pimping.

I hope that such a division which stresses the individuality of the different criminal groups will appear convincing and that it will lead to a different and more sympathetic understanding of the personality of the criminal woman and of woman in general. The task of criminology in the future will be to view the criminal woman's personality as the motive for her crimes.

It was quite indispensable to preface this individual treatment by a theoretical discussion of the general and criminal psychology of woman. It also appeared necessary to review the results of the other schools of criminology, especially the Italian and French schools, pioneers in this field. We must also mention the Spanish school which, in an arresting manner, pointed to the connection between crime and illiteracy.

In the presentation of the larger cases we place less stress on the psychiatric analysis of the criminal—a procedure hitherto much favored and even exclusively employed in German texts. It is true that criminal psychology owes much to psychiatry; but just as it cannot be identified with anthropology, so also it cannot be made one with psychiatry, which tends rather to obscure the purely psychological. In this connection we are reminded of the somewhat drastic criticism made by Professor Eulenburg regarding the relation between the psychiatrist and the psychologist. It is laughable to see how many a 'psychiatrist' who, by the way, is an out and out philistine, tries to pose as an acute and profound psychologist in his professional judgments. And why? Because the whole blessed day he sees around him people whose spirit is disturbed, whom he treats, or rather, takes care of. This leaves the same impression upon me as a guardian of the poor discoursing on the social importance and function of wealth; or as a guard at a menagerie lecturing on animal life in nature, or a cobbler on the natural beauty of the human foot. Extensive, selective and factual case material, in itself will be much more effective and convincing to the reader than all the psychiatric opinion put together; for when the typical features of the woman criminal are repeated in different cases they become a living entity.

Psychologists went from one extreme to another. The old empirical method was frowned upon and discarded, and experiment became the fashion. It was soon discovered that the experiment in its essence and purpose was very questionable and one-sided—and that empirical psychology was, after all, the right procedure because it rests on experience, repeated and renewed a hundred-fold in life. And it is for this very reason that psychological opinion of character, motive and act, based on experience, is often safer, more convincing and more generally valid than a medico-forensic opinion which impresses only the untrained psychologistical judges.

Liepmann in his Psychology of Woman points out that experimentation in the psychology of the sexes will be found wanting because the person experimented upon is never a complete man or a complete woman, but rather, according to biological science, a being of opposing sexual traits. Max Marcuse believes it useless to clarify this question by means of experimental psychology. Liepmann recommends the biographical method which, by the side of the questionnaire, is employed also by Hymann. The complete reports after a crime or after the trial are of a certain geographical value in criminal cases insofar as the course of the development of the accused person — no matter how incomplete — can be seen through it, and the motives of the deed associated with and derived psychologically from the essential nature of man. Reliable biographies of persons from different classes of society furnish us with the best estimates of character and are of great importance to psychology. A documentary presentation tested and worked over by a skilled psychologist gives the case a sure biographical foundation. Autobiographies of criminals, evaluated correctly by a psychologist, approach the results of a questionnaire. Space, naturally, will limit full description of all the cases presented in this book; in many cases it will be sufficient for our purpose only to underline and evaluate psychologically the most essential features. Our main object will be to present the most important cases, especially of woman as a murderess. In these cases the characteristic traits of the female criminal stand out in such bold relief that they will be easily recognized again in the smaller and larger grouped cases, so that the parts may be readily fitted into a whole. The correct, and I might even say the artistic, employment of this method is for us to let the cases talk for themselves, and not to mar the plastic, convincing and sensational effect of the recital by superfluous repetitions and pedantic emphasis.

We must also reject the idea that crime has nothing but a social background; the war and the years after have completely destroyed this doctrine. Crime has a closer relation to anthropology than to sociology; it is not true that crime is conditioned by the imperfections and shortcomings of the social structure; for even in the most ideal human society, which the human reason can construct, even in a Utopian Paradise, man would still continue to commit acts which would have no purpose in a state of social bliss. And all this because of primordial, organic reasons, i.e. anthropological causes. He would murder, he would still indulge to excess in sexual lust, he would destroy for the joy of hate. Man's congenital predispositions, relating him to the rest of the animals, viewed from these assumptions of anthropology, drive him irresistibly to acts which we call crime. It is true, nevertheless, that the social conditions may hasten the production of the factors under which the criminal disposition is discharged. If man were not predisposed to crime anthropologically the social environment could never bring it about. This, of course, does not imply our re-enthroning of criminal anthropology with its emphasis on the born criminal: everyone of us carries in him the predisposition to crime; we are all born criminals, in this sense of the word. These tendencies, however, need not be sought in any malformations of the skull, or in pronounced abnormalities of the psyche.

Criminality is present as a congenital germ in every man; however, it is hidden, to the undiscerning eye, by man's other dispositions and tendencies, by his social character and activities. We are all veiled criminals. In this connection it is of little difference whether this criminal tendency is manifested in man's emotional or intellectual life, or whether it is expressed in word or deed. It is merely due to this superficial difference that we puff up with self-righteousness and shake off morally the real criminal. Such difference does not exist for the inner reality. Lombroso with his theory of the born criminal was on the right path but he was afraid to draw the ultimate conclusions and for this reason he finally lost himself in superficial anthropological speculations. And the moralists smiled and chuckled. One may, however, venture beyond him and try to lift the mystery which Kant himself passed up.

The normal human predisposition induces man to crime. This assertion is especially true in the case of woman who is determined by the social conditions even to a lesser degree than the male. Woman's primordial character, so intimately tied up with her bodily organization, like that of the child, demonstrates this disposition to crime so simply and emphatically that it was, perhaps, this very simplicity that prevented its discovery till now. A new consideration of the nature of woman criminals thus broaches anew the whole problem of crime, scientifically bringing new links into the chain of criminological research.

Chapter I. CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN

1. The Italian Positivist School of Criminology.

In The Female Offender, Lombroso makes a thoroughgoing biological and anthropological study of the normal woman and, relatively, of the female animal and then goes on to a discussion of the anthropology of the woman criminal. He emphasizes the fact that woman shows a grosser sensibility than man. He proves this by many examples and with the corroborations of other authors regarding the different sensory areas; he also emphasizes woman's lesser sexual sensibility. At the very outset Lombroso propounds the theme of female sexuality—a theme so important to Mantegazza. Sexual excitement in the man is almost always more passionate and characterized by a painful tension in the testicles and the seminal vesicles, or in a convulsive, uninterrupted priapism; woman hardly ever experiences such pains in connection with her sexual desires. Sergi emphasizes the fact that the normal woman loves to be wooed and worshipped by the male but that she gives in to his desires only like a sacrificial animal. It is well known how much trouble a man must take, how many caresses he must spend if the woman is to give in to his wishes and to share with him his passion. Without these preliminary plays and flirtations, woman remains cold and will gratify as little as she feels. Saint Prospere states that woman succumbs not to the power of her senses, over which, in contrast to the male, she has a good control; her weakness lies in a different direction: in her heart, her vanity, etc. It is to this greater, organically conditioned, sexual frigidity of woman, that Lombroso ascribes the fact that among most peoples the adulterous woman is punished much more severely than the adulterous man. Even woman's tendency to prostitution lies in her lesser sexual sensibility. Nothing corresponding to prostitution may be observed in the male sex.

Woman's sensitivity to pain is also smaller in harmony with her lesser general sensibility. For this reason woman offers greater resistance to pain; she is always ready for another pregnancy; she is a patient nurse of the sick. No courage, however, is involved in this. On the other hand, her irritability is more manifest in expressions of pain or woman as a whole, like a child, is more irritable than sensitive. Her education, too, contributes to this excitability to pain, making it more abounding and expressive. In connection with this, Lombroso also stresses woman's lesser moral sensibility. Because she feels less deeply and intensely, she suffers less and can bear more under certain conditions. Just as she thinks less, so does she feel less. Woman's cruelty flows from her lesser sensibility to pain, and is the result of her own weakness. This explains the oft-reported cruelty of woman in times of revolutions. Nor is it contradictory to say that pity is strongly developed in woman. Pity arises from her weakness and her instinct of maternity. Maternity is the characteristic function of the female and on it rest her entire physical and organic variability — that function being throughout of an altruistic nature. Sexual selection has favored the development of this sympathetic feeling in woman. For this reason woman is more sympathetic than just. She is also more cruel than just. She has no sense for abstract justice; here, too, her weakness affects her judgment. As in her sexual emotions, so in her feelings of love, woman shows a lesser intensity than man. This is true in spite of the fact that love is only an episode for the man, but life itself to the woman—to speak as Madame de Stael. What drives woman to man is her need for reproduction and her maternal feeling. Love is only a subordinate, secondary function to maturity. Woman loves the man only in her children and especially in her sons; he recedes in importance behind her children. Her love for the male induces her to sacrifice herself, even to complete submission. The man chooses a woman with his senses; she admires in him his strength, his peculiar traits and lets her vanity decide for her.

We have already referred to woman's less pronounced moral feelings. Fruits of her education are her insincerity and her skill in telling lies. We teach women the art of lying; dissimulation is her weapon of defense. This is related to the well known fact that she cannot give an objective report of any event and therefore cannot tell the truth at court. Woman's outward friendliness and amiability is only superficially sincere. Even in her tenderness she mingles a malicious spirit. Woman's insincerity is rooted in her very entrails, promoted by the event of menstruation which in our social structure must be kept secret. This lack of sincerity has a certain connection with her sense of shame. Mendacity, the concealment of defects and the enhancement of her charms by means of fashionable clothes, and perfumed cosmetics are also dictated by sexual selection. With the growth of civilization the vanity of the male decreases, that of woman increases.

Woman is less intelligent than man. The women geniuses in the past have not approached the men geniuses in grandeur. It must also be pointed out that since the Middle Ages women have received the same education as men. Woman's intelligence is less creative and less original; consequently she shows a greater capacity for assimilation. She possesses an instinctive, psychological power of observation and intuition. Her logical sense is not strong; the criterion of truth for her is very subjective; a mere story is readily turned into a fact. She does not like analysis and abstraction. The man is persevering, the woman patient; therefore, she is more fit than he for certain professions. Because of lesser participation in the business of reproduction, the male possesses an originally higher capacity for development. In the entire animal world intelligence is in reverse relation to fertility; between the intellectual and the sexual functions there is the same distinction as between growth and structure.

Woman's rage is blind and is marked by a satanic ferocity. She is inclined to greed and avarice; pronounced vices are wanting in her; her sense of righteousness and honor are not prominent. Woman is conscious only of one honor, the sexual. Jealousy and envy are most conspicuous when women come together; one needs only to hear women judge one another; they are given to the petty habit of malicious gossiping. The feeling of revenge is stronger and more lasting in woman than in man. The normal woman possesses many character traits which resemble those of the uncivilized, the child, and, therefore, also the criminal (vanity, revenge, rage and jealousy); besides these she shows the opposite features which neutralize these, but which prevent woman to approach that degree of balance which enables the man to take the middle road between liberties and duties, between egotism and altruism. Woman's conscience is weaker than man's. Theft and swindling in particular, insofar as they do not concern her person or her relatives, cause her no moral scruples.

Lombroso rejects the results of craniometric observations as unimportant and unwarrantable both for the male and the female criminal, because he considers the measurable differences between normal and abnormal so little that they cannot be discovered without the most minute measuring. The skull of the female criminal is rich in abnormalities but to a lesser degree than that of the male. Many of the abnormal marks of the female criminal are almost normal in the male skull (strongly developed frontal sinews and molar bone); in general, the skull of the female criminal comes closer to that of the male than to the normal female skull. Similarly the anthropometry of the female criminal and of the prostitute offers but slight results because woman's greater stability and lesser differentiation.

This, from the anthropological point of view, does not permit any prominent distinctive marks. The criminal type in whom usually three, four or more signs of degeneration show is scarcer in woman than in man. A genuine, con-genitally criminal nature is seldom observed in her; the occasional criminal is the more prevailing phenomenon. Atavism in the criminal woman occurs only in cases of precocity and women of the masculine type.

A small group stands out from the great mass of female criminals marked by a depravity more intense and more perverse than the male type. They belong to the group of born criminals whose characteristic is their versatility in crime e.g. the Marquise de Brinvilliers—a patricide, poisoner for greed, theft, incest, incendiarism and infanticide; and by cruelty, torture of children, Messalina. Her grosser sensibility and lesser sensitiveness to pain already make of the normal woman a criminaloid being. The born female criminal possesses a heightened sexuality and is inclined to prostitution which is a natural atavism with her inasmuch as she is more or less of a prostitute in the primitive state. In the born female criminal the other traits are grouped around this need of erotism: in most cases motherly love is absent in her, for the maternal sentiment in woman counteracts her criminal impulses. Hate and revenge are the motives to crime of the born criminal, love only very rarely. The born criminal has a passion for evil's sake. Crimes to satisfy greed are more frequent in her than in man. A very lively intelligence is quite common in her; impulsive acts are rarer in her case; frequently she is even ingenious. At times the perpetration of the crime demonstrates in her a remarkable complexity, at other times it is done with too much art so that it becomes absurd. If she feels herself inferior for her task, she will instigate a man to do the deed, except in the cases of the incendiary and the poisoner. She is obstinate in lying no matter how incredible her subterfuges seem. She is more sophisticated and cunning than the male criminal, but not seldom does she betray herself in spite of it; the poisoner, for example, through wheedling around her victim and showing excessive concern for him, or through careless expressions of imminent death. The female criminal takes pleasure in a roaming, desultory life. With certain traits of the male criminal she has all the bad traits of the female nature.

Alongside of this type of born criminal, Lombroso places the occasional female criminal and the criminal from passion. The first comprises a very large group in whom vice and perversity are developed but slightly, and in whom the feelings of shame and maternity are not absent: special bodily or physical peculiarity are not evident. The occasional female criminal easily succumbs to suggestion, especially to that of her lover; her lack of breeding and education is her stumbling block; vanity and passion for luxury offer innumerable and favorable opportunities, e.g. in stores, to tempt and mislead her. To this group belong also servant girls who steal from their employers in an almost professional manner. Further crimes belonging to this group of the occasional female criminal are assault, adultery and infanticide.

The female criminal from passion stands closer to the type of born criminal and to that of the female criminal of occasion than to that of the male delinquent from passion. Male peculiarities may be observed, and sympathetic emotions are more manifest in her than in the normal woman; sometimes such emotions predominate. Most female criminals from passion are conditioned to their deeds by motives of love, and they also love differently than the essentially cool, normal woman. However, her outbursts of passion are not as severe as those of the corresponding male criminal, and may develop gradually for months, nay years, and sometimes even in recurring periods. Consequently her planning is cooler and more circumspect and the perpetration of the crime shows the dexterity and the complexity already referred to above. The crime frequently brings about the feeling of a satisfied revenge; true repentance is rare and suicide rarer still. Often doubt arises whether such a woman belongs to the group of born criminals or to that of the criminal from passion, because she is poised exactly between the two. In most cases we are dealing not with that outburst of passion which blinds the senses and in a moment turns an otherwise honest man into a murderer, but rather with a tenacious, slowly developing passion having its origin mostly in egotism. For very similar reasons female suicides are less frequently brought on by passion and are about five times less frequent than male suicides for like reasons. However, suicide from passionate love (unrequited love, betrayal or desertion) are much more common in woman; in pact suicide the woman most frequently plays a prominent role; she shows more determination and usually is the one to conceive the idea and prepare the execution. Suicide, in the wider sense, also holds where a mother chooses death together with her children, most often infants; for she cannot regard her own suffering ended if she leaves her children behind in misery.

The born prostitute —called such in opposition to the occasional prostitute—is characterized by sexual frigidity simultaneous with a sexual precocity. A thoroughgoing sexual occupation practiced by women who are almost completely devoid of a real sex life. The genesis of prostitution lies not in sensuality but in a moral idiocy. The absence of family and motherly feeling is conspicuous. Petty crimes, especially theft, are frequent among them; the pimp appears as an accomplice. The crimes of prostitutes as a rule are of a mild form. Alcoholism is common among them and the sense of shame is hardly developed. When a woman prostitutes herself in spite of her sexual frigidity the determining cause lies not in lust but in the lack of a moral sense; women who possess no sense of shame, no feeling for the ignominy of vice, who feel themselves drawn to forbidden deeds from a perverse taste, give themselves up to this profession because it allows them to lead carefree lives without labor; her sexual frigidity is really an advantage to her, an adaptation in Darwin's sense, for a woman who is easily and strongly excited sexually, could not long bear the life of a prostitute without soon being exhausted; to the prostitute, coitus is an indifferent act, physically and mentally, and she indulges in it because to her 'it's easy money'. Their laziness is extraordinary. All degrees of intelligence are found among the prostitutes, from the lowest of the low, the greatest majority, to that bordering on genius, as in the Hetarae,—Aspasia and Leana, Madame Pompadour and other glamorous coquettes. The bully, in spite of his brutality, is tolerated by them because of the desire for a man's protection. An incredible light-mindedness prevents all their care for the future. The constitutional prostitute is found not only among the lower class of society, but also in the higher social spheres and even among the nobility. The latter do not as a rule offer themselves in the brothel, but in her own or some other's house. For Lombroso the identity of character in the criminal and the prostitute, on an anatomical and psychological basis, is complete. A psychological examination of the prostitute shows her to have criminal traits; the reason she does not commit any crime is because prostitution is her means for satisfying her desires. Crime and prostitution are respectively the male and female expression of the criminal nature. The true degeneration of woman is manifested not in crime but in prostitution.

The occasional prostitute has many traits in common with her sister the born type. In her the sense of shame is never completely wanting. The causes of her failing are lost virginity, deception, rape, misery and bad example. Psychically, however, the occasional prostitute is more abnormal than the occasional criminal.

In spite of the fact that these teachings of Lombroso of a congenital, anatomically marked criminal type, have been rightfully disputed, still his extensive and, in part, acute observations give us even today a valid basis without which no criminal psychology would be possible. His research into the female criminal has smoothed a path for our criminal psychology for woman and is, to this day, of great significance.

2. The French School of Criminology. The French criminologists have viewed the female criminal in a somewhat different light than the Italians. Though following the basic ideas of Lombroso, they have preserved an independent critical attitude, at least in the essential questions. Their adroit psychological presentations have, at times, tempted them to express judgments which astonished me by their superficiality. Their national character, expressed in a gallantry toward the female, in the non-conviction of women guilty of murder or manslaughter, may be observed also in the field of science, where a battle about the innate morality and natural virtues of the woman has been carried on. Their extensive investigations of store thefts, in which women are the chief perpetrators, arise also from this unmistakable feminist feature of the French school. The French criminologists were the first to set up the question: is woman less guilty or only less culpable? French criminal psychology, at any rate, shows us new and interesting paths for the understanding of the female criminal.

According to French statistics of crime for 1902, there are, at most, 14 women to 86 men for every 100 persons convicted. Economic crises and periods of famine, according to Dupuy, have but a slight effect on female criminality. Durkhein states that for every 10,000 women there are 21 criminals, as compared to 145 male criminals for the same number of men, the proportion being one woman to every seven men. Quetelet, the Belgian sociologist, ascribes this numerical smallness of female crime to her physical weakness, to her social dependency, moral apprehensive-ness and abstention from excessive drinking. Camille Grainer points out that the theory adduced by criminologists regarding the physical strength of woman in the discovery of a murderess is of no value. A young girl strangled an eighty-year-old man and broke his tracheal cartilage in several places; the strength used up by the girl was measured on the dynamometer. A test showed that most girls of the murderess' age and constitution were able to swing the instrument's needle to the same point. Another murderess dragged the corpse of her victim 50 meters from the place of the crime. However, a woman may be an accomplice or a partner in the perpetration of forceful theft, gang theft or murderous attack, without herself applying any force. Criminal banding together of women is rare in French statistics, amounting to 13 cases in a 100. Most commonly the woman acts in the company of a man in theft, robbery with murder, poisoning and murder. In pact suicide her influence is mostly decisive. Granier compares prostitution not to crime but to suicide. Reinach calls prostitution female vagabondage.

The protective moral timidity stressed by Quetelet is regarded as the expression of woman's conservative character. This hatred of new ideas keeps her from activity and her criminality becomes defensive. Quetelet believes that male and female morality, aside from the latter's bashfulness, are less diverse than is commonly assumed. Woman's pliant character, the result of weakness and of long restriction of freedom, makes the young girl more docile than the boy. Her precocious mental development makes of her a better student. However, to conclude from this to woman's innate morality is not to the point; witness the precocious murderess. In the Geronde in 1904, a child of 4 trampled the head of her 3-month-old brother, no doubt with the set purpose of remaining by herself. In the Department of Bouches-du-Rhone, in 1896, a small girl of two, vexed by her older sister, took the position appropriate to the satisfaction of revenge, as if it were to satisfy a natural desire: while the little mother cleaned the floor, her smaller sister took a knife from the table, and with both hands gave her a cut with full force in her lower region; then she deliberately replaced the knife on the table (Archives d'anthropologie criminelle XI, 375). Joubert, then, is not in the right when he extols woman's natural virtues opposing them to the acquired qualities of the male's. To a certain extent, however, the danger to the woman's morals and mental integrity is only periodical, associated with the periods of puberty, pregnancy and the menopause. This already shows a clear approach in French criminology to my own description of woman as a sexual criminal.

The French school too stresses woman's habitual disregard for truth. Experience teaches that the improbability of a statement will not induce her to relinquish it, whereas the more logical man gradually wavers when he recognizes the impossibility of an alleged fact, resulting in his confession.

The female criminal type set up by Lombroso is questioned by the French School. No organic type for the female criminal seems to exist, according to Toulouse. This type is distinguished from the male criminal merely in the manner in which woman differs from man and she behaves in crimes as she does in normal life. Granier considers it difficult to formulate a criminal anthropology common to man and woman. A comparison between the male and female criminal cannot be linked up with anatomy. He who desires to study the criminal woman must compare her to the normal woman on the one hand, and to the prostitute and the mentally affected on the other. Indeed, her lagging behind the man in individual development permits our opposing her to the male criminal type. Granier declares, on the other hand, that it is incorrect to maintain that because woman is less inclined to crime than man, she must also show a lesser number of stigmata as the Italian school tried to prove: in her anatomical structure woman is more conservative and shows more atavisms. He also states that it is more difficult to describe the exceptional type, for the anomalies do not permit the average to show; her very mark is the want of constancy. Granier, however, does enumerate a number of stigmata: the voice of the criminal woman is rougher than that of the normal woman, the growth of hair richer and more extensive, the neck stronger. The typical female criminal mostly shows the union of two or three anomalies: she is taller than her normal sister, and left-handedness is more frequent; however, the prehensile foot is freak rather than a stigma. The female ear is more removed from the simian ear than the male's, whereas the ear of the female criminal shows numerous malformations, especially frequent being ansated ears (after Zenio, Lombroso dissenting).

With the exception of incendiarism which is characterized by extreme degeneration, but which is committed by women less frequently than is assumed, woman's lesser expansiveness, a stronghold without any advanced forts, explains her smaller criminality. Obedience to law, fear of its decrees, which is an ethical burden upon many a male are of no consequence in feminine behavior. The competence of conscience has been extended to the detriment of criminal justice. The general law does not concern woman: the characteristic presumptuousness of Sophocles' Antigone may be observed in almost all female crimes. Political crime is the best example of this, as may be proved in the heroines of revolutions" (Granier).

The same criminologist distinguishes between the various forms of crime; maternal criminality, the victim of which is the child; infanticide, abortion, abduction and foisting of children, assaults against persons and, lastly, torture of children. Another form of female crime enumerated by him is the sexual crime which is viewed in a threefold manner according to whether the actor is sweetheart, mistress or wife. The murderous assaults of woman he subdivides according to the means chosen: coal smoke, sulphuric acid, arsenic. Poisoning from passion or greed is then mentioned and the typical female poisoner is described; patricide and dismemberment (Medea) are only touched upon, and the use of sulphuric acid (vitriolage) for the purpose of defacement are