The Mount Holly news. [volume] (Mount Holly, Burlington Co., N.J.) 1891-1942, 1896-10-13
CRIMINALS AT PLAY.
fHE CRUEL WAYS IN WHICH THEY
ss,s .s.,. AMI SE THEMSELVES.


The Test In All Their Games Is the Ability
to Bear Pain-In italian Prisons Surgeons
Are Always In Demand to Patch Up the
'Players."
Mario Carara, disciple Of Cesare
Lombroso, the Italian expert in crimi-
nal anthropology, has made special
study of the sports that criminals en-
gage in. The innocent games of child
hood, in the case of criminals, are tine
tured with cruelty and sometimes ac-
companied by homicide.
Criminals skip the rope, but part of
the game is to trip up the jumper and
let him fall heavily upon the stone pave
ment.
Criminals play leapfrog, but the OBJ
ject of the game is that he who makes
the "back" shall rise suddenly and vio-
lently just as the frog mounts and throw
him to the ground.
The criminals play blind mans buff,
but the man with the bandaged eyes
carries handkerchief bearing in one
corner a jagged stone, piece of hard,
sharpened wood or bit of iron. With
this weapon he strikes those whom he
pursues.
Another remarkable form of this
game is for the blinded one to be struck
by one or another of his companions if
he fails to name the one that touches
him. The penalty is not the innocent
one Of the children's game, but blow
SO severe that a physician has often to
be called in after game is over, and
occasionally the sufferer is disabled for
some time
1t has been found in those Italian re-
formatories where prisoners are not
kept in solitary confinement that pris-
oners' games are often accompanied
with bloodshed, and that it is almost
impossible to prevent cruelties. This is
especially true where prisoners work to-
gether, for they secrete tools and use
them as weapons in brutal sports.
In one of these games the player has
in each hand a stick, having fixed in
the end keen metallic point. He in
terweaves his arms, revolving the sticks
with rapidity, and the game is for an
other prisoner to thrust his head be-
tween the arms and endeavor to follow
the revolutions of the sticks without
being wounded. 1t usually happens that
he receives Is or 16 wounds and comes
out with bleeding head, while now
and then mortal injuries are received.
The victim in another game has his
eyes bandaged and places his palm upon
table, with fingers spread fanlike.
Another criminal repeatedly strikes be-
tween the fingers with pointed instru-
ment. If he wounds a finger, then the
two change places, and woe to the man
who refuses the exchange. The game is
dangerous, although the criminals as
sert that the wounds to the fingers are
not deep or severe, because, they say,
the metallic points are too short and do
not penetrate far, a grim form of phil
osophy.
The sport of criminals is accompanied
by characteristic craft. This is especial
ly shown in the methods in which the
newcomer is initiated into prison life.
The novice is conducted into an impro-
vised court chamber, where the judges
are his fellow prisoners. He is placed
upon a stand and gravely tried upon a
pretended charge, and he has barely
been condemned when the stand is sud-
denly drawn away, SO that he is thrown
violently upon the earth.
Many games necessarily imply resist
ance to pain as an absolute condition of
success. For example, there is the game
of needles. (" One of the players places
his closed fists upon the table, holding
steadily two needles, one in each hand,
the points being slightly exposed. 1t is
the game then for a companion to
strike with his own fists those of the
other and becomes a question of endur-
ance between the one who is pricked
with the needles and the one whose fists
are beaten by the others knuckles.
There are contests in which the fin
gers and hands are deeply wounded,
and the scars are an honorable distinc-
ton.
The characteristic feature Of all these
games, which are the recreation exclu-
sively of criminals in prison, is the love
of combat If, as is held by experts,
sports are the means of working off the
superfuous activity of life. it is evident
that superfuous activity, in the case of
prisoners, is especially powerful. 1t has
been noted in the case of prisoners that
so. ~ md
litheness, which Professor Lombroso
considers negative evidence of mental
weakness, since it testifies to a greater
development of the notorial centers at
the expense of the other cerebral centers.
But usually this physical energy is not
properly used in the ordinary life of the
criminal and finds outlet and enjoyment
in sports.
Another characteristic of the games
of criminals is the admiration shown
for physical force, manifested in the
docility with which the vanquished in
such sports submit to the brutality of
the victors, a thing observed among
savages.
Finally the insensibility to pain ex-
hibited in sports Of criminals proves
that such men are less acute in their
physical senses as well as less sensitive
to the pains Of others, since what seems
to others uselessly cruel is only the
usual thing with criminals. As the
drunkard, his taste hardened by alcohol,
has need of stimulant constantly
stronger, so in the case of. the criminal,
the nervous system demands stimulants
SO strong that to the ordinary steady
going individual they would be actually
painful. Pearson S Weekly.