The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1874-08-20
CHILD CRIMINALS.
The Associations Which Cause Dee
pravity I'm the Young.

The Associations Which Cause De-
pravity I'm the Young.
The counterpart OF Boston's white.
eyed boy murderer, says the New York
Herald, has been found in the person
of Henrietta Weibel, whose dislike for
infants urged her to attempt their de-
struction by fire. And so strong is
this dislike that the girl seems incapa-
BILE OF restraining it. Already on two
occasions che has been guilty OF in
cendiary attempts, having their motive
in the wish to destroy infant life. 1t is
curious that mania of this kind should
develop itself in one who is herself lit.
tie more than child, the more so that
the natural tendency in young girls is
to love and fondle infants. But no
doubt the influence of the wretched
society in which the daily life of this
child was cast weakens, if it does not
destroy, the best natural impulses of
those who grow up in its midst. There
is something appalling in the reflection
that thousands are compelled to breathe
the vitiating atmosphere which exerted
so baneful an influence on the moral
sense of this poor child. Poverty and
neglect do not fail to leave their i'm
press on their victims, and wherever
the children of the poor turn they see
before them little but what is calculated
to degrade and brutalize them. This is
peculiarly the case in great cities, and
it is in these vast human hives that ab-
normal developments of crime usually
occur. 1t would be difficult to imagine
q nature 80 perverse and cruel as that of
the boy murderer of Boston or this
child-hating girl growing up amid the
green fields. Something Of the fresh
ness of the country steals into the child
reared in presence of the beauty and
generous bounty of nature, while the
fetid tenement, and dirty and repulsive
alleyway seem to exert noxious in
fuence on the moral as we'll as the
physical characteristics of those who
grow up in the slums. Man is very
much the creature of circumstances.
He is mostly what his surroundings
have made him. 1t is, therefore, chari-
table to believe that under more favor
able conditions neither of the children
who have WOE unenviable notoriety
would have grown up SO utterly devoid
of moral sense as these have shown
themselves to be. Instead, therefore,
of condemning with too much vehe-
mence the child-authors of these muir
derous crimes, society would do well to
seek to remedy, in 80 far as it may be
remedied, the evil which lies at the root
OF the decentralization which exists
among the children of the poor, the
victims of the slrin. If these wretched
hn,, {n or
and society they are not much to
be blamed. So long as they are con-
tent to squirm in the loathsone dens
into which society and civilization have
crushed them, or their own folly and
vice or the vices of their parents have
sunk them, society does little to improve
or ameliorate their condition. 1t Is only
when crimes like the present call atten-
ton to the seething mass, sunk in
misery and degradation, which is
packed out of sight in tenement build
ings and noisome alleyways, that the
prosperous and wellsto-do remember
even the existence Of these unfortunates.
It may be an idle dream to hope for
the perfection of humanity it is at
least noble one, but there is 80 much
that may be done in the direction OF
elevating the lower classes in great
cities, that the most practical minded
would find ample scope for the exercise
of large philanthropy, even within
very limited lines of action. 1t is to
the spread of elevating influences
among the classes from which criminals
are chiefly recruited that we must look
for the suppression of that worst re.
proach to our boasted civilization-the
child criminal.