Idaho County free press. [volume] (Grangeville, Idaho Territory) 1886-current, 1886-10-15
LOVE OF NOTORiETY.
Male and Female Cranks Whose Ways
Are Past Finding Out.

Male and Female Cranks Whose Ways
Are Past Finding Out.
The tendency of certain sort OF
people to be fascinated by notoriety.
and especially by criminal notoriety, is
curious study. A recent dispatch
says that Mrs. Bartlett, the woman
lately tried in England on a charge Of
poisoning her husband, has, since her
acquittal, received several advantageous
offers OF marriage. Parallel cases may
be found in plenty. Some twenty
years ago Scotch girl named Made
leine Smith was tried at Glasgow for
poisoning her lover. The evidence
was strong against her, but it was
shown that the lover was disreputa-
BILE adventurer who had driven the girl
to desperation by threatening her with
the exposure of certain letters she had
written to him, and the jury returned
the Scotch verdict mot Proven" No
sooner was the prisoner free than offers
of marriage poured in upon her, and
this Notwithstanding the general belief
that she had killed the man. There
appears to be a sort of ''crank" theory
Of ethics, incomprehensibl by the
world at large, which governs such
cases, for on ordinary lines of reason
ing it is impossible to understand the
desire of any man to link his life with
a woman even suspected of proclivity
toward the use of toxic agents At criti-
cal domestic junctures.
| Nevertheless it is certain that female
PRISONERS from Lucrezia Borgia to the
Marchioness of Brinvilliers, and thence
to the present day, have exercised this
strange fascination upon class of weak
minds, and not only prisoners or sus
pected PRISONERS, but criminals of al
kinds have had the same peculiar HON
age paid to them. Laura Fair, who
shot down Crittenden, the California
lawyer. could have married any one Of
a dozen prosperous idiots after her &C
quittal. Mrs. Dudley, who tried to xii
O'Donovan Rosa, was offered severa
hands and hearts on the strength O
her homicidal enterprise. The young
woman who played the part of female
burglar in Brooklyn last year captured
the affections of stalwart farmer b,
her felonious capacity. Perhaps tn,
dominant influence in those cases il
that which attracted Fitz-James:
"And were a path not dangerous known,
The dangers self were lure alone,
1t is well known that when Bluebeart
fiourished the most fearful rumors wer
in circulation about the fate of hi
wives, but feminine curiosity, or enter
prise, or whatever the influence, mas
tered apprehension and the wicked mai
had no difficulty in replenishing hi
secret chamber from the best familie
of the neighborhood.
The women are indeed not whit be
hind the men in yielding to the fasci
nation of 'notoriety, as witness tn
strange exhibitions of sentimentalit,
which take place from time to time il
the straitened habitations of the plac
called Murderer's Row. What is
about red-handed assassin that exeI
cises so queer an attraction upon ten
der women, that impels them to Shove
attentions upon him, to fill his cell wit
flowers, to lavish upon him marks {
their kindness, to single him out froI
all the world for consolation and az
. provalP Why, too, are such NANTES
tations SO often specially reserved fc
: the male criminals whose victims hav
been womenp We speak of mysterie
, the calculation of which seems hope
, less. The ways of "cranks," be the
! male or female, are past finding out
, N. Y. Tribune.