St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1886-08-28
LOVE OF NoroRIETY.
Male and Female Cranks whose Ways
Are Past Finding Out.

Male and Female Cranks Whose WayS
Are Past Finding Out.
The tendency of a 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 a 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 Not 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, incomprehensible by the
world ut 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 a proclivity
| toward the use of toxic agents at criti-
cal domestic junctures.
Nevertheless it is certain that female
prisoners from Lucrez;a 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 all
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 ac-
luittal. Mrs. Dudley, who tried to kill
O'Donovan Rosa, was offered several
| hands and hearts on the strength OF
her homicidal enterprise. The young
| woman who played the part of female
burglar in Brooklyn last year captured
the affections of a stalwart farmer by
her felonious capacity. Perhaps the
dominant influence in those cases is
hat which attracted Fitz-James:
And were . path not dangerous known,
The dangers self wore lure alone"
| 1t is we'll known that when Bluebeard
hourished the most Fearful rumors were
in circulation about the fate of his
wives, but feminine curiosity. or enter
prise, or whatever the influence, mas
tered apprehension and the wicked man
had no difficulty in replenishing his
| secret chamber from the best fam lies
Of the neighborhood.
The women are indeed not a whit be-
hind the men in yielding to the fasci-
nation of notoriety, as witness the
strange exhibitions of sentimentality
which take place from tine to time in
the straitened habitations of the place
called Murderer's Row. What is it
about a red-handed assassin that eXer-
c.ses 80 queer an attraction upon ten
der women. that impels them to shower
attentions upon him. to fill his cell with
! flowers. to lavish upon him marks OF
their kindness. to single him out from
! all the world for consolation and APP
| prevail? Why. too. are such manifes-
tations so often specially reserved for
the male criminals whose victims have
been women? We speak of mysteries
the calculation of which seems hope
less. The WAYS of '.cranks." BE- they
male or female, are past finding out
! N. r Tribune.