The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1874-08-03
Child Grimm n Is.

The counterpart of Boston's white-eyed boy
murderer has been found in the person OF
Henrietta Weibel whose dislike for infants
urged her to attempt their destruction by fire.
And so strong is this dislike that the girl
seems incapable of restraining it, Already on
two occasions she 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 little 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 natu-
raj 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 impress on their victims,
and wherever the children of the poor turn
they see before them little but what is calcu-
lated to degrade and brutalize them. This is
peculiarly the case in great cities, and it is
in these vast human hives that abnormal de-
velopments of crime usually occur. 1t would
be difficult to imagine nature 30 perverse
and cruel as that of the boy murderer Of Bos-
ton or this child-hating girl growing up
amid the green fields. Something of the
freshness of the country steals into the child
reared in presence of the beauty and generous
bounty Of nature, while the fetid tenement
and dirty, repulsive alleyway seem to exert
noxious influence on the moral as well as the
physical characteristics of those who grow up
in the Sums Man is very much the creature
Of circumstances He is mostly what his sur
roundings have made him. 1t is therefore
charitable to believe that under more favora-
BILE conditions neither Of the children who
have won unenviable notoriety would have
grown up so utterly devoid Of moral sense Us
they have shown themselves to be- Instead,
therefore, of condemning with too much vehe-
mence the child-authors of these murderous
crimes society would do well to seek to remedy
in SO 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 slums. If these wretched
beings grow up as enemies to order and So
ciety they are not much to be blamed So
long as they are content to squirm in the
loathsome dens into which society and civil
zation have crushed them or their own folly
and vice or the vices of their parents have
sunk them, society does little to improve or
amelior..te their condition. It is only when
crimes like the present call attention to the
seething mass, sunk in misery and degrade
ton, which is packed out of sight in tene-
ment buildings and noisome alleyways, that
the prosperous and well-to-do remember even
the existence of these unfortunates. 1t may
be an idle dream TO hope for the perfection of
humanity; it is at least noble one, but there
is SO 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 ior the sup 3
preston OF that worst reproach to our boosted
civilization-the child criminal.