The idle, loafing criminal has no attraction for me. I like him not, and have neither time nor effort to waste on him; but for the intelligent and industrious criminal I feel some degree of pity. I speak with such men, and find that they not only know right from wrong, but they can also weigh the consequences of their crime; moreover, they know perfectly well that criminality does not pay, and never will pay them. Further, many of them, in spite of repeated conviction, have earnest desires to do right. Again, a frightful tragedy is compressed into the life of a human being who earnestly wishes to do right, and yet is compelled by some inward power to do wrong, absolutely wrong, even to the perpetration of serious crime. Take the case of a really industrious man, who has trained ability that enables him to lead a comfortable life, and who, moreover, respects himself, and enjoys the respect of others, a man who loves Nature and liberty, and likes to do kind actions and good turns to other people. When such a man foregoes business, home, comfort, liberty, and the opportunity of doing kind deeds for the sake of indulgence in one particular crime, especially when that crime--if undetected--can bring him but trumpery gain, what doubt can there be but that the criminal is possessed of some kind of mania?
Kleptomania, dipsomania, and homicidal mania by no means exhaust the category of criminal manias that affect humanity. I have noticed for years that many criminals are charged again and again with a repetition of one kind of offence. Some people are born thieves, and will steal on any and every occasion possible anything they can lay their hands on; but the men and women I have in mind are altogether of a different class, and limit their thefts to one particular article, never stealing any other, and, what is more important, never feeling any inclination or temptation to steal any other article or class of goods.
Only a short time back an exceedingly well-dressed man stood in the dock at North London charged with stealing a watch from a jeweller’s shop. He was of middle age, and quite intellectual in appearance. His frock-coat with silk facings, his silk hat, gloves, etc., all combined to make him as unlike a criminal as possible; yet when arrested with the watch in his possession, he told the police at once that he was well known at Scotland Yard; and so it proved, for there were nine convictions against him. He had been at liberty for over two years, and had lived honestly. His father, who was exceedingly well-to-do, and was much respected in his profession before he retired from business, allowed him sufficient money monthly to live upon. In conversation with him, I learned his father’s address and the address where he himself had been living. I wrote to his father, and the reply I got was full of pity and love. He had no hard words of condemnation to say about his son; he was very sorry, but he could not understand his son’s inexplicable mania for stealing watches. There was no necessity for him to steal a watch. His father had provided him with one, and allowed him a sufficiency of money, for he was not in poverty. I saw the people with whom he lodged, and they spoke in the highest terms of him. For two years he had lived with them, and had won their esteem and love; they had not the least idea that he had ever been convicted. Yet eight times he had been convicted for watch-stealing. His first offence was stealing a watch when quite a young man. After his discharge, his friends got him an appointment on a ship making long voyages, and he was away two years. No sooner does he come back to England, than again he is in trouble for watch-stealing, an offence that he has repeated so often that now, when over forty years of age, he finds himself in prison for the ninth time for the same offence. He sat crying in the cell after his last conviction, when I called him to me and begged of him to tell me why he stole watches. He could not speak for a time, and then he said: ‘I don’t know, indeed I don’t. Yesterday I was a happy man, and now I am here.’ ‘But tell me how it happened.’ ‘All I can tell you,’ he said, ‘is that as I was going along the street and passing the jeweller’s shop, something said to me, “Go in and get a watch! Go in and get a watch!” and I had to go in and get one.’ But he got it in such an unspeakably clumsy and blundering way that it was impossible for him to escape arrest.