New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1871-07-19
TIE PHENOMENA or CRIME

There is always something startling in the
occurrence of a quick succession of crimes
which bear resemblance to one another,
either in the motive or the mode of their COM
mission. Only few days ago it seemed as if
murder following upon Illicit intercourse be-
tween the sexes was becoming epidemic. To-
day mania for poisoning appears to be the
fashionable form of crime, of which the Sher-
man case in Connecticut, the Ruth case in
Kansas, the Wharton case in Baltimore, and
one or two Others that have recently come to
light, are the most conspicuous examples. In
reality, there is no cause for surprise in this
concurrence of similar instances of homicide.
1t cannot be called coincidence. History so
abOunds with cases of this character that we
are justified in suspecting that they follow
general law, and that perhaps in the
progress Of social science we may learn to
combat them az cffectually as we oppose the
cOntagiOn of cholera or yellow fever. The
tendency of crime to become epidemic is pretty
generally admitted. Incendiarism, suicide,
infanticide and murder by poison are Offenses
which experience shows to be specially liable
to propagate themselves by infection. About
the middle of the 18th century there was
a
society of young wives was discovered who met
at the house of an old woman called La Spara
to devise means for getting rid of their hus-
bands Fourteen were hanged, and great
number of others, including young and beau
tiful girls, were whipped half naked through
the streets of Rome. The notorious TOfania, who
carried on the poisoning trade for fifty years,
flourished about the same time; and almost
simultaneously the crimes and execution of
Madame de Brinvilliers gave rise TO a mania
for poisoning in France which lasted until
more than hundred persons had been ex-
ocuted. A celebrated poisoning case in En-
gland in 1916 was followed by an extraOrdi-
nary increase of the same form of crime espe-
cially among the poor in the agricultural
counties one woman killed eight of her chill
dren by putting arsenic on her breasts. After
the execution of the English poiSoner Palmer
about fifteen years ago. for killing his wife with
strychnine, an English gentleman named Dove
got rid of his wife in precisely the same way,
and acknowledged that reading about the
Palmer case induced him to do it. De Quin-
cey mentions the frequency of the assassina-
ton of prominent historical characters be-
tween 1888 and 1895, that short period of forty
seven years witnessing the murder of William
of Orange, the Duke of Guise, Henri ILL.,, Henri
w., the Duke of Buckingham, Wailenstein,
and perhaps Gustavus Adolphus, whose fate
is surrounded with mystery. Suicide by drown
ing was once so prevalent among the women
of Lyons that to check it the authorities or
dered the bodies of all the victims to be pub
licly exposed in the market-placo. AT Yer
sailles, toward the close of the last century,
there were 1900 suicides in single year.
Several cases of epidemic inccndiarism have
occurred in this country; and we have no
doubt that it would be found, if the ncces-
sary statistics were accessible, that other forms
OF crune have prevailed here from time 10