The Culture of Murder.

(From Grand Forks Daily Herald, December 10, 1888.)

The Culture of Murder.

How Impulsive Organisms Are Prepared to Do Dark Deeds.

No fact is more patent to science than the direct effect of influences exerted through the medium of the senses upon the brain—that particular part we of the organism whose function we call “mind.” Darwin, Ruskin and all the great students of development have labored to bring this fact within the cognizance of the general thinking public. That they have failed is only too painfully evidenced by the persistence and surprising ingenuity of the practice of cultivating homicidal propensities, and collatorally murder, by a refined use of the art of mural decoration.

While we empower the police to put down with a strong hand the exhibition in shop windows, and the censor of stage plays and spectacles to interdict the parade in theatres of pictures and scenes of an “immoral” character, because it is recognized that these have a tendency to corrupt the mind of youth—and age too—nothing whatever is done to restrain the daily increasing evil of pictorial placards displayed on every boarding, and of highly wrought scenes produced at nearly all the theatres, which not only direct the thoughts, but actively stir the passions of the people in such way as to familiarize the average mind with murder in all its forms, and to break down that protective sense of “horror” which nature has given us, with the express purpose, doubtless, of opposing an obstacle to the evil influence of the exemplification of homicide It cannot be disguised that even the most sensitive nature is to some extent brutalized by the display of these pictures.

We are none of us as shocked at the spectacle of a knife driven into the chest of a young woman, and do not recoil as violently from the idea of this form of murder, as before the display on all sides of an elaborate, nearly life size picture of the deed. Nor do two men grappling, together and stabbing each other, or one man shooting another with a revolver, strike us as presenting spectacled of such hideous enormity as they would have done had we not been familiarized with these scenes by impressive placards staring us in the face at every turn. It does seem strange—passing strange—that this murder culture by the educationary use of the pictorial art has not been checked by public authority.

We have no wish to make wild affirmations, but knowing what we do, as observers of development, we can have no hesitation in saying that the increasing frequency of horribly brutal outrages is by no means unaccountable. The viciously inclined are, in a sense, always weak minded—that is to say, they are especially susceptible of influences moving them in the direction their passions incline them to take; and when the mind (or brain) impressed through the senses, and particularly the area of sight, in such manner as to produce menial pictures, either in waking thought or dreams, of homicide, the impulsive organism is, as it were, prepared for the performance of the deeds which form the subjects of the consciousness. We are, of course, writing technically, but the facts are indisputable, and we trust they will be sufficiently plain. It is high time that this ingenious and persistent murder culture should cease.— Lancet

Boston Detectives—So Called.

(From the New York Herald, November 5, 1875.)

Boston Detectives—So Called.

A Startling Record of their Inefficiency—
When Did They Ever Work Up a Murder Case to a Successful Issue?

Boston, Nov. 4, 1875

The recent failure of the so-called Boston detectives—the pets of the daily press of the “Hub”—in the handling of the Langmaid murder case in New Hampshire, recalls their inefficiency in and around Boston. In the matter of the score of horrible murders which have been committed in the city and vicinity it is difficult, if not absolutely impossible to single out a solitary instance where they have worked a case to a successful issue. Even the case of Jesse Pomeroy, who committed two murders, the smartest of them were baffled by the shrewd youth and final detection was owing the accidental discovery of Katie Curran’s body in the cellar of a house once occupied by his mother by some workmen who were digging for a new foundation. In the case of Pemberton, who was hung a few weeks since the murder of the Bingham woman, in East Boston, their stupidity was equally prominent. Some rings taken from her finger were described to the so-called detectives, and the information was treasured by them as sacred. The Boston Herald accidentally got hold of and published a description of the rings. A man in Salem who bought them of the murderer saw the account, followed up the assassin, had him arrested, and trial, conviction and hanging followed in quick succession. Thus the press served the ends of justice in this as in the Langmaid case, and in spite of the so-called detectives. In the case of Piper, who is charged with the murder of Mabel Young in a church belfry, he was first apprehended by citizens, then turned over to the Boston officers, since which time his case has slumbered. Over in the Bunker Hill district a man named Kimball killed his wife and daughter, and as promptly apprehended; but such a circumstance would probably never have occurred if the murderer had fled instead of committing suicide. A man named Jones who killed Mrs. Barry, his paramour in the immediate vicinity of the Kimball horror, also aided the so-called detectives materially by killing himself in the same room. Then there is the murder of the Joyce children in Buzzy’s woods, the case where a prominent man was found beheaded in a floating barrel in the Charles River, The Bridget Landergan horror, the Dennahy tragedy and the mysterious shooting of a Boston merchant in the door of his own residence in the Dorchester district. All of these  cases and others of less renown are as much shrouded in mystery to-day as they were at the moment of their discovery. In view of such a record it is no more than justice to accord the so-called detectives of Boston the championship of inefficiency.

Spiritualism as a Witness in a Murder Case.

It would scarcely be safe as a general thing to trust the intervention of spiritual powers for the detection of crime and for the evidence sufficient to convict its perpetrators. But in a murder case in Connecticut a grand juror, an able counsel, a learned judge and we know not how many others seem bound to convict a person of the capital offense of murder on the strength of revelations made to a pretended spiritual medium. The story is told by the Herald’s special correspondent in another column. We are assured on the authority of one of the prosecuting lawyers that all the circumstances attending the cruel murder of poor Mary Stannard were minutely described to a member of the Grand Jury by the medium, even to the description of the weapons used and the words spoken during the enactment of the tragedy. An interview between our correspondent and the clairvoyant confirms the wonderful tale. Exactly how the evidence is to be used on the trial of the Rev. Mr. Hayden, who has been rearrested, is not explained. Perhaps the medium is to be induced to pass into the clairvoyant state and describe the murder after the fashion of Hamlet’s players. But then how is the oath to be administered that is necessary to make the testimony legal? What is to become of the right of the defense to a cross-examination? Who is to vouch for the credibility of the witness when the mediums themselves do not seem to know whether they are used by good spirits or bad spirits—by truthful spirits or lying spirits? Many such legal difficulties suggest themselves in such a case. Even should they be overcome, who can vouch that the jury will not be composed of men of common sense, who will remember that the medium’s wonderful disclosures were made after he had enjoyed the opportunity to examine the spot, measure the distances and arrange blood-stained stones at his pleasure, and so make up their minds that he is an arrant humbug?

It would be fortunate for the accused if more material circumstances had not occasioned his second arrest. Should it be proved that he purchased arsenic on the morning of the murder, and that the poison was found in the stomach of the victim, it will not need a spiritual medium to convict him of the cruel crime,  nor will any efforts of Spiritualism save him from the full penalty of the law.

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Reprinted from “Spiritualism as a Witness in a Murder Case,” New York Herald, October 10, 1878.

Murder as a Luxury.

(From Puck , November 11, 1879)

Murder as a Luxury.
 The Expense of Trying Every Murderer Ever so Many Times.

The mania for murder seems to spread like an epidemic in tropics. It attacks all classes, both sexes, and even children are etting it hard. Now, murder is very disagreeable to the victim, and to the perpetrator, also when he is solemnly marched on to be hanged; yet murder seems to be one of the fashionable excitements of the day. It is a luxury, and must be paid for. Our 4-in-hand, and Polo clubs pay for their little fun; our yachtsmen draw upon their own back accounts for the expenses of their skimmers of the sea; Mr. Lorillard pockets his winnings and pays his losses at horse racing without troubling the public about it; then why should A. B., because he wants to indulge in the luxury of letting out the life blood of C. D., call upon the country in which he does the deed to pay the expenses of trying him therefore?

Now-a-days it takes generally two or three trials to convict, acquit or half acquit a party charged with murder. All the first-class chemists, experts in poisons, and microscopists, are brought, with their expensive apparatus, into court to utterly flabbergast a most miserable jury. Detectives, at great expense, are employed for months; the local prosecutor engages additional counsel who are granted an “allowance” of the most liberal kind by the court; witnesses are summoned form all sorts of distance, and the clerk is kept busy in reckoning up mileages, attendance expenses, and everything the cumbrous machinery of the law can grind out of the pockets of the poor tax-payers. The bill against the county in which the case is tried becomes enormous.

And what is the result?

Generally a miscarriage of justice, in a disagreement of the jury; or the ordering of a new trial from some legal mistake that neither lawyer, judges, nor the press discovered until the trial was over and all the expenses incurred.

Look at it! Greenfield was tried three times; Bishop and Kate Cobb twice; Buchholtz is going to have a second trial; Hayden is now undergoing a second trial; Saratoga county in this state, would doubtless give Mr. Jessie Billings another trial only that taxpayers growl at the enormous expense of the previous one; Cove Bennett and Mrs. Smith are soon to undergo a second trial. In some counties the expense of bringing murderers to justice is a heavier burden on the taxpayers than ll the expense of making and repairing roads, caring for the county buildings, etc. Now, all this is wrong. Either people must stop committimg murder or, if the will murder, they should guarantee the county against pecuniary loss.

If John Kelly is elected governor, as he now says he expects to be, we will call upon him to tackle this subject in his inaugural message. Let him demand the passage of a law that no man, woman or child in this noble old state shall be allowed to commit murder unless he, she or it first covers into the treasury money sufficient to pay the cost of his, her or its trial.

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"Murder as a Luxury." Puck  11 Nov 1879.

Crime’s Worshippers.

How murder becomes a virtue and misfortune a misdeed—two suggestive tableaus which every jail in the country has seen enacted.

The depraved taste of a certain class of humanity is very well shown in the way they run after criminals. The greater the crime the greater the hero. Cases of this kind can be cited from the story of any jail or prison in the country. The brutal wife murderer finds an army of sympathizers, while the poor, betrayed young mother who, in a fit of madness, has made away with the pledge of her fall from virtue, is abandoned by her sex to her despair and her doom. Our artist has effectively pictured the contrast. The shame is that such a contrast exists to be pictured.

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Reprinted from "Crime's Worshipers." National Police Gazette 15 Dec 1883.

Our Current Record of Rowdyism and Murder.

`

Little Murders

(From New York Herald, New York, New York, June 19, 1873)

Our Current Record of Rowdyism and Murder.

Four murders signalize the opening of the present week. A sad commentary, truly, on our boasted civilization! Four brutal, inexcusable, fiendish murders are added to the list of deeds of blood that disgrace our criminal calendar. The week opened with an affray between brothers-in-law in a tenement house, during which one of the parties undertook to explain matters to the other with a hatchet. On the same evening a man was fatally stabbed in a drunken affray in a liquor store. After midnight the proprietor of another drinking saloon was desperately wounded by a knife at the hand of a man to whom he refused liquor. But the saddest case of all was the murder of Mrs. Gillen, at the age of eighteen years, by her husband, a worthy representative of the corner loafer class. This last mentioned tragedy is of such an atrocious character that it calls for grave reflection. A beautiful young girl, employed at a store, forms the acquaintance of a good-looking but dissipated young man, whose principal occupation seems to have been loafing. She foolishly consents to marry this wretch, contrary to the wishes of her father, and quickly ascertaining her terrible mistake, leaves her worthless husband and takes refuge with her parents. The husband killed her for this on Sunday night.

We cannot speak too often of this frightful epoch of murder which seems to be now at its zenith in this city. It is useless to argue more on the inefficiency of the law on this subject. When murderers become the especial protégés of the Court and every obstacle is thrown before the wheels of justice we can only wait patiently until such a monstrous outrage to civilization is removed from the statute book. The last session of the State Legislature was spent in purely political schemes, and nothing was done to secure the speedy punishment of assassins. Once in the Tombs the murderer finds numerous advocates, and the plain, unvarnished story of his cowardly crime, when it is place before the jury, becomes a tangled labyrinth of sophistry and irredeemable nonsense. When the jury find him guilty convenient judges and technical errors give him another lease on life. Trial after trial may take place until the public forgets the crime, and the execution takes place when the very object for which it is intended is no longer in the memory of the people.

But in the murder of this girl-wife the pernicious element of corner loaferism comes in to prominence. There is a class of young men—we may call them boys—in this city, whose principal occupation consists of profanity, drunkenness and, occasionally, murder. Unhappily this class is very large, and is constantly increased by willing recruits. Parents are too often to blame for the existence of such wretches, as they make poor attempts to curb nascent depravity. The police willingly, or in despite of themselves, allow a gang of ruffians to fester into crime at every prominent corner. The marriage law is so lax in its provisions that any weak-minded girl may be persuaded into wedding one of these scoundrels. The natural result of such a marriage is shown by Sunday night’s tragedy. The remedy for disgraceful conditions of affairs in society is plain. A criminal law, unencumbered with vexatious delays and miserable subterfuges; stern uncompromising action on the part of the police toward corner loafers, and a more rigid enforcement of the laws should protect the sacred institution of matrimony, will be found efficient checks the present avalanche of murder in this city.

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"Our Current Record of Rowdyism and Murder." New York Herald, June 19,1873.

Concerning Popular Sympathy.

In January 1892, Carlyle W. Harris was convicted of murdering his wife, nineteen-year-old, Helen Potts Harris. It was a particularly ugly story—Harris had bragged about his amorous conquests, saying he had gone so far as to marry a girl to get her into bed, then dump her later. This appeared to be the case with his marriage to Helen Potts; they eloped, kept the marriage a secret, and at his insistence they used assumed names at the ceremony. When Helen’s mother found out and demanded they make the marriage public, Harris decided to murder Helen instead. In spite of an elaborate plot to make the death appear to be accidental poisoning, Harris was convicted and sentenced to the electric chair. The whole story can be found here: The Six Capsules.

Recent Homicides—The Murder Mania.

(From New York Herald, January 28, 1872)

Recent Homicides—
The Murder Mania.

The community is at present in the midst of a series of shocking murders which seem at undefined intervals to sweep over the face of our civilization, darkening it with a tinge of blood. Homicide appears for a while to be epidemic, and men talk gallows philosophy with a tinge of ferocity in sentiment which indicates all the more how the blood-spilling mania seizes mankind in some form or other, whether under the form of murder or killing for murder. Two days ago a wretch named Botts expiated the shooting of “Pet” Halsted, in Newark—moving cause jealousy. In California, Mrs. Fair, is under sentence for killing a man who was about to return to a long-neglected, much-injured wife; jealousy the cause here, too. Stokes killed Fisk—cause, jealousy indirectly; not Stokes’ but Fisk’s jealousy. Two days ago within the very hour that the murderer Botts was hurried out of the world, a girl of eighteen—a Mrs. Hyde—shot her seducer dead. Yesterday in front of St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, a German, named Henry Hepner, deliberately shot and killed his own son, and afterwards attempted suicide. And so the cases move out into ghastly prominence, with some hellish distortion of the divine passion, love, at their root. If gallows medicine is the only specific for this epidemic of murder, why is it so rarely administered? At the time that the crimes surge in upon society each murderer and murderess is hanged in imagination, and there only. When homicide fever passes away for a while the murder virus seems to leave the public mind too, and the criminal is forgotten with the crime. The jealous murders, or those founded on sentiment, no matter how morbid, flabby or maudlin, always find their apologists among decent people, who never saw the gashed, riddled or jellied corpse of the victim. These people illustrate the mania by applause of the murder.

The theory of a murder mania is true also of the more brutal classes of crime, such as the car-hook murder, or those that arise out of vulgar brawls in the dens of vice. Awakening unanimous condemnation at the time, they pass into oblivion, and the example idea of the law is frustrated. While in most of the murders which come to light the slayer is found at once or clearly traceable on account of the incidents of passion which were part of the murdered being’s lie, there is the class of murder which is the accompaniment of robbery. The failure to trace this class of criminal is a notorious and deplorable commentary on the efficiency of the police, whose sensibilities alone appear to be in no way quickened by the sudden increase of crime. The Rogers and Nathan murders are as much wrapped in mystery now as at the time of their committal, and the murder of the unfortunate Professor Panormo, a couple of nights ago, seems as if about to be sent to keep company with the other two mockeries of our system of detection of crime, as they all three shake our belief in the police as a protective or preventive force. There must be no effort spared to bring the assassins of Panormo to justice; but the ignorance; sloth and blundering of the Brooklyn police give us little hope of the result. As in the Rosenzweig case, some of the most important links in the chain of evidence have already been worked up by the press writers, and if so-called detectives will only follow the trail public vengeance may yet be satisfied.

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"Recent Homicides-the Murder Mania." New York Herald 28 Jan 1872.

Inartistic Murder.

Inartistic Murder.
 

A marked difference between science and art, that has escaped the attention of writers upon intellectual development as manifested in human handiwork, is that while science is all embracing, art confines itself largely to trivialities. Science is continually announcing endeavors and successes so vast that the ordinary eye needs to be about as far distant as the moon in order to take them in, whereas art is often satisfied with efforts so tiny and vague that only the feeblest mind can see anything in them. We have artistic door knobs, fire shovels and spittoons in bewildering abundance, but he who yearns to see art reach forth in a grandly sympathetic way and supplement human action in the greater phases of live must take it out in yearning. For instance, there is murder. No one will deny that taking of human life is a deed of momentous import to the killer and the killed; yet what has modern art done for murder? Nothing, except to make sickening and inaccurate pictures of an occasional sanguinary taking off. After twenty-five centuries of art development there is no absolutely new method of slaughter except that of shooting, and of two murders reported yesterday one was committed with a bedpost and the other with a poker! To the truly artistic mind many sightly substitutes for these commonplace weapons suggest themselves. The persons whose lives were doomed might have been killed with equal success and almost as much celerity by being compelled to stare at blue china, or listen to certain musical compositions, or try to make themselves comfortable in artistic chairs, or be confined in a room decorated entirely of Japanese fans, but these means are not at the command of every one. Art will not have done its duty by murder until it has devised tasteful and cheap appliances with which to help a man out of the world. An aesthetic flatiron, or a decorative bootjack, or a gracefully turned club with a tasteful obituary suggestion engraved upon it in early English letter might be made cheap enough to be within the means of the poorest, and any public spirited rumseller should be willing to have within reach of his customers an antique dagger with “Hark, from the Tombs!” etched upon its blade. Let art awake to a sense of its responsibilities to the more important departments of human effort.

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"Inartistic Murder." New York Herald 4 Jan 1882.

Murder in San Francisco.

Murder in San Francisco. 

 

In response to the question, “Why cannot Murder be punished in San Francisco,” the Oakland Enquirer makes the following pertinent remarks:

“One most important reason why it is hard to punish murder in San Francisco is that in a great number of cases the majority of the people do not want it punished. They rather approve of murder in certain contingencies, and consider it the best redress for injuries that cannot be righted through the courts.

The Horrible Murder in Division Street.

 An editorial on ruffianism from the New York Herald, June 11, 1872:

The Horrible Murder in Division Street.

 

 

We are becoming so used to the reign of ruffianism that it requires some outrage of unusual barbarity to thoroughly arouse our indignation. But even the meekest citizen will be of opinion that the murder of Augustus Brown, on Saturday night, ought to be followed by vigorous action looking towards the suppression of rowdyism.It will not do to allow gangs of loafing ruffians to assemble at street corners and insult peaceable passers-by. As we have before pointed out, these assemblages are constantly leading to murder and robbery. The judicial authorities are as much to blame in this matter as are the police, for the cure for this crying evil is very simple. Instead of allowing members of gang to come into court and swear an alibi, every man known to have been present at the time of a murder ought to  be held as an accessory, unless he give such information as will aid the cause of justice. So long as ruffians can find immunity from the law by swearing for each other the respectable classes of the community will always be at the mercy of the scum of our population. Murder succeeds murder with alarming rapidity in our midst and unless the law can afford the citizen better protection than it does at present the citizen will be forced in self-defense to take action independent of the authorities.

We have constantly urged the suppression of the corner loafer gangs, and this last murder, by its cold-blooded atrocity, must bring home to every man the necessity which exists for the course we have strenuously recommended. The best was of striking terror into the gangs of rowdies by whom we are beset is by making every individual responsible for the crimes of his companions. There can be no just objection to such a course; it is followed in all cases of crime against property, and ought to be enforced with double stringency incases of crime against the person. If one of a gang rob a house the whole gang may be punished, and if one of a gang commit murder his companions and encouragers ought also to be exposed to the action of the law. If the judges and juries would act on this principle for six months and  decline to be influence by representations of politicians, the violence and aggressiveness of our rowdy population would soon cease.

 

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"The Horrible Murder in Division Street." New York Herald 11 Jun 1872: 7.

How to Abolish Murder.

In 1869 H. H. Bingham, agent of the Michigan State Prison, issued a pamphlet analyzing the effect of Michigan’s abolition of the death penalty some twenty-two years earlier.  In place of hanging, Michigan sentenced capital offenders to solitary imprisonment for life (though the longest anyone actually stayed in solitary confinement was five years). Bingham concluded that, though the number of criminal convictions in Michigan increased during that period “…there is no evidence in the increased convictions that there is an increase of crime beyond the ratio of increase in population.” In fact, the number of convicted murderers, as a percentage of total convictions, actually decreased.

About five years later the information in the pamphlet was summarized in a number of mid-western newspapers. Bingham’s conclusions were greeted with a good deal of skepticism as illustrated by this sarcastic editorial in the Cincinnati Daily Gazette:

HOW TO ABOLISH MURDER.

A correspondent writing from Michigan says the abolition of capital punishment in that State has diminished the murder rate. What an anomaly is human nature! Persons inclined to murder find that in Michigan they can not enjoy the privilege of being hanged for it; so they resolve they won’t play. Probably they go off to other States where hanging is allowed, to do their business. We presume that equally trustworthy statistics would show that murder has increased in the adjoining States since Michigan abolished Hanging. If this diminution of the terror of the penalty for murder has diminished murder in Michigan, it follows logically and morally that if she should abolish all penalties, murder would cease entirely in that State for want of encouragement. There are persons of equal intelligence of human nature who think that if the common people are permitted to see a public hanging, they will incontinently be seized with a propensity to go and murder somebody in order to play a star part in so attractive a spectacle.
 

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Sources:

Collections of the Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan. Lansing: Wynkoop Hallenbeck Crawford Company, 1907.

"How to Abolish Murder." Cincinnati Daily Gazette 15 Oct. 1875.