, 1888-04-06
PERIODS OF CONTAGIOUS CRIME.
Do Criminal Epidemics Have Their ORR.
gin in the Secret Snrinra of Natnrn2

Do Criminal Epidemics Have Their ORR
gin in the Secret Springs of Nature?
1t has been frequently noted that there
are epidemics in suicide and in other
crimes. A criminal epidemic peculiar to
Chicago, and to II or two other cities
having a large floating and vicious class
population, is hat of Sunday murders,
which are the results of a dav of idleness
spent in the open saloons, where the vilest
and most fiery liquors are sold. Murders
with peculiar features often occur in
groups in all parts of the country. 1t has
been traditional in France that epidemics
of suicide return in regular cycles, at
each recurrence of the suicidal Juror, the
successive victims of their own murder
Gus hands vieing with each other in the
greater ghastliness of tho tragedy that
they enact. During one of these periods
a suicide literally capped the climax"
by leaping from the top of a tower, 200
or 300 feet, to the pavement below.
Stories of wife murders in many parts
of the country, relieved by n few excep-
tional murders of husbands by their
wives, reach the press and the public 81
simultaneously from many different
sources. Murder is in the air. has be-
come an habitual expression from the re-
turn of these bloody times. In the days
of bank burglaries-now much less FIRE.
quent, owing to the projections that sci
ence has provided for money vaults-it
was not often that n single robbery was
reported-they s'came in battalions."
This was not because the same gangs en-
gagged in many different enterprises, but
because a universal similar impulse per-
meated the minds of the criminal class
haN-,tal o., tbaga fnr,,, NF ill
A curious study might be made of the
causes of epidemics of crime. In super
stitious times all evils were attributed to
the influence of adverse stars. This may
hav been IN approach to scientific truth,
or its advanced shadow. That meteoro-
logical conditions seriously affect the
health and spifits-and affect some more
seriously than others-is a fact of such
every day experience that it is no longer
regarded as phenomenal. The causes of
meteorological change must be the causes
lying back of the pervading disposition
at times witnessed to commit peculiar
classes of crime. A suicidal atmosphere
must ave its origin in some of the secret
springs of nature.
Advanced speculation has recently at
tributed cyclones, earthquakes and other
terrestrial disturbances to great changes
in the surface of the sun or in the super.
heated ether surrounding it. Sun spots
and eruptiOns of solar flames have been
frequently noted as occurring synchronic-
ally with devastating hurricanes, tidal
waves, ~upheayings of the ground or
scorching summer heat, A scientist. who
has made this and kindred questions a
serious study, has advanced the theory
that when numerous deaths by paralysis
or paralytic attacks are simultaneously
reported, they are the result of such dis
turbanccs in the sun as are called sun
spots. A theory quite as plausible as this
might attribute epidemics of crime to
similar influences, by which weak rea-
sons are overthrown and murderous in
tents are kindled in excitable minds with
destructive tendencies. There are causes
for all things in life and nature, and no
study of such causes is in vain.-Chicago
Journal.