Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1872-03-31

is something very startling in the certainty
with which a mania for the preparation of
great crimes spreads through the country
after an impetus has been given. The
Globe admits that it cannot be accounted
for on any known theory, yet it is as per-
sistent as fate. No sooner has some dread
ful murder been committed with an inge
nuity ofcruelty, than up start number of
others of similar nature, with almost every
detail counterpart. The theory advanced
of a morbid desire for notoriety is
utterly unworthy of consideration.
1t is epidemic, insists the Globe. The
murder of Alice Bowlesby in New York q
few months ago, and the packing her body
in a trunk by her assassin had hardly been
flashed over the wires, when number of
murders and concealments Of exactly the
same nature occurred, and every day brings
some new accession to the horrible list.
| When Mrs. Wharton was accused of Bor-
gian system of slow poisoning, the papers
were laden with accounts Of other women
who started up to poison husbands and
friends with frightful frequency. A woman
poisoned herself in New York with Paris
green; and cases Of poisoning by the same
mineral appeared in various sections of the
country. A schoolboy kicks another
to death In Brooklyn, and in a week at
least six cases of schoolboy murder take
place in widely different parts of the coun-
try. The latest evidence of epidemic in
crime appears to take the shape of
murders and suicides resulting from relig-
ious insanity, and so many Of these have
occurred simultaneously, as it were, and in
different parts Of the country, that the mat
ter seems worthy Of attention. Ohio has
recently furnished two cases of this char
acter, and Maine and New York each one.
In all these instances, where five murders
and two suicides were committed, the vic
tins have fallen at the hands of their near
est blood relatives, except in those cases
where suicide was accomplished. The pc
culiarity of these occurrences lies
not so much in the fact that
individuals were found ready to
take their own lives or those nearest to
them in pursuance of a crazy fanaticism,
but that entire families have been possessed
of singular madness, which has operated
upon all alike, and that, with a strange
| unanimity, the sacr:ficers and the sacrificed
have resolved upon the propriety of expiat-
ing some fancied sin, or making some fan
cied atonement for the welfare of the world,
by the killing of one or more of their num-
Der. The facts here stated are undeniable.
How are they to be accounted for? The
| New York Tribune attempts to account for
the contagion of crime which occasionally
| sweeps over the country. That paper says
in its issue of March %:
ssWithin the last two weeks an epidemic
of suicide among children has passed over
the country. One child steals small sum
| from his stepfather, and in an agony Of
\ shame kills himself rather than meet the
| eve of his mother. Another boy who had
| committed like fault in the shop where
| he was employed, puts pistol to his head
| and blows his brains out, after writing
| childish, pathetic letter, in which he bids
! everybody goodbye, and tells his father he
sis not going to make trouble in the house
| any more" These are but few Of many
! instances where come assignable cause could
| be given; but the last is that of boy who,
| without any reason, a cheerful, merry little
| fellow, in a happy home, puts an end to his
! life; very probably because he had heard the
| others did it.
"There is, as all Psychologists know,
contagion of crime; governed by rules and
referable to them, as any contagious physi-
cal disorder. Suicidal manias have, at diff
ferent times, passed over certain towns and
| districts until the aid of the law was needed
to arrest them. The women Of Lyons,
during a certain period, drowned them
selves in such numbers that the government
interfered, and, by the public exposure Of
the bodies, put summary stOpto the prac-
| ;ice. In Versailles, this mania, without any
cause other than that of the contagion of
example, reached such a hight that the
number of suicides during one year was
| 1900 Other epidemics Of crime, such as
ircendiarism, poisoning the tarantula fever,
which in the sixteenth century drove thou
/ sands of the Neapolitans dancing into the
sea,have all ragged principally among children,
hysterical girls and excitable boys. The causes
of such mental diseases are not hard to
find. The unhealty condition of public
thought, from religious or political action,
the morbid state of mind produced by lack
| of any education, or OVer-fOrcing, and, more
than all, the perpetual suggestion of any
certain crime by the press, TO brains already
thus diseased-every one of these causes
operates in the case of our children. They
are born, to begin with, of a nervous race,
half of whom are debilitated by overwork,
or the use of tobacco or liquor. The climate
! is exhausting, as no other; the ordinary
] pace of life that of a raCe-cOurse. The child
! of middle-class family (and it is in the mid
! die class these abnormal cases have occurred)
! knows nothing of the seclusiOn of the nur-
! sery; the frequent holidays in which be
| thinks all the world joins; the blessed igno-
RANGES that make the English and German
child's life an Eden, where his soul and body
may grow strong and healthy together.
The American boy eats his share of his
fathers knowledge from the time he can sit
at the table. Tammany Rings, murders,
social evils, are no mysteries to him; they
fill his ears at every meal and his eyes when
ever he looks into paper. There is usually
no attempt to hide from him any depth of
human degradation or vice. Even worse
than this: the troubles of the family-debts,
struggles, disagreements-are laid upon his
little shoulders with cruel CarelesSness, at
an age when he should not know there was
such a thing as trouble in the world.
American homes are sad and mirthleSs be-
yOnd any others. The American child is
born, in nine cases out Of ten, to
an inheritance of utterly causeless
gloom; his hard-working father and head
aching mother are so occupied in striving
for money or position for him that they for
get the careless sunshiny happiness which
is his birthright, and which their selfish
troubles have no right to cloud. His own
brain, especially if he be a boy of any
promise, is forced aud overweight; he is
taught to read as soon as he is weaned;
parents, teachers, public opinion, spur and
goad him thenceforth without ceasing; if he
is to go into trade his chance for education
usually stops at fifteen; at twenty, if he is
to enter tie professions; into these years he
must crowd a smattering of all sciences,