The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1903-03-29

THAVE had the happiness to receive
many letters of approval, sympathy,
i and suggestion on some recent
sketches of the darker sides of two of
the worlds greatest cities London and
New York, but nevertheless 1 postpone
the last lnstallment of my articles In or
der to discuss a subject of still more inn
mediate interest-the responsibility of So
ciety in relation to the murderer Ed
wards lately condemned to death at Old
Bailey l doubt IL any case since that
of the American poisoner Holmes, has
seemed to me so full of suggestion to a
student of the faults of our civilization.
The Murderers Record.
The man Edwards is apparently one
of the worst examples of the criminal
class. He is forty years of age and has
spent fifteen years in jail. His earlier
crimes were thefts. but within six days
of his discharge for the latest of such
offenses. he committed three brutal muir
ders, and he was arrested in the act of
attempting to commit a fourth. II is not
difficult to realize the barbarity of his
murders. There was first the dnplicity
of the plea by which he obtained access
to the house of his victims and secured
their confidence. Then there were the
barbarous circumstances of the crime
the killing of husband, wife and child.
1t does not need the imagination of Zola
to re-create the scene of the tragedy, the
fve minutes, or less of surprise horror.
resistance, fiendsh conquest and hellish
triumph; the screams. the stined cries,
and then the dead and CHASTITY silence.
To follow the scene further, even in
Imagination, is to grow dizzy and to be-
come faint.
The Murderer at His Trial.
The bearing of the man under his trial
was of a piece with his offense Ills
bravado, his buffoonery, his jeering con-
tempt for surroundings which usually
strike terror to the most callous heart,
his impudent salutatons of judge and
counsel his oerisiye approximations to
everybody to get along quick" all this
is true to the life of the inyeterate GRIM
1nal the doomed and dead soul. Yes,
there would seem to be no question that
this man Edwards is the very offal OF
humanity "A man who could no more re-
sist stealing when he saw an opportunity
than he could resist eating when he was
hungry, Constitutionally, he is "a Grimm
al, and it would seem to be the duty OF
society TO put its heel upon him and de-
stroy him just as we should put our heel
upon a poisonous snake which had crawl
ed4out of the jungle into the nursery.
ne MurdererS inheritance.
But wait. Perhaps the case Is differ
emit The snake belongs to another order
of being, and it may conserve some use
full purpose in the mysterious scheme OF
creation, but it is at enmity with hui
manity when 1t is in human habitations,
and man having no responsibility with
regard to it, has a right to crush H.
Has man no responsibility with regard to
his fellow-man, even when he is entirely
an instrument of evil?
Look at the history of this man Ed
wards. His father was a drunlSard, and
his mothers family We're deeply afflicted
with insanity. Drunkenness may be
sin, but ii Is not merely sin of the indi-
vidual; 1t is also a sin of the society,
which breeds opportunity and temptation,
and has never yet sufficiently punished
excess. Insanity is not Il normal condi-
ton; ii is a condition born not only of
individual transgressions, but also of the
accidents, errors. associations, and mis-
fortunes of society coming down, it may
be, through many generations. Edwards
was heir to all the sins which society
had committed through a drunken faith
err and a mother tainted with insanity
Before he was born his blood was pos-
soned with alcohol, and his brain was
afflicted with madness, and how these
evils were to express themselves in his
own life depended partly on the accident
of early associations.
The Murderer's Early Associations
What were those early associations?
Once more it does not require the i'm
agnation of Zola to re-create the home
of the murderer's childhood. His drunk
en- father wasting his mothers fortune
and bringing the family to beggary; the
quarrels, the recriminations. the constant
nagging and perhaps frequent blows. end
Ing with the drunkard's death and the
last AFFECT scene at the drunkard's grave.
The sons moral nature was poisoned at
the source, and short of the miracle of
che grace of God, only mora poison could
be expected from him.
Then. partly by choice, but mainly by
necessity, the mans own life was run
In such channels that only crime could
come of it. The wretched offspring OF