Women and Crime: Three Essays

By Read & Co. Great Essays

While it is generally agreed amongst criminologists that the world of crime is predominantly the domain of men, women played a much larger role than they do today before the twentieth century. “Women and Crime” contains a fascinating collection of three classic essays by various authors on the subject of women and crime, examining the relationship between the two in the nineteenth century and looking at what differences there were in things like urbanisation and public lifestyles that caused women to be more involved in crime in the past. The essays include: “Criminal Woman, By Miss Helen Zimmern”, “The Relations of Women to Crime, By Ely Van De Warker, M. D.”, and “The Relations of Sex to Crime, By Ely Van De Warker, M. D.”. This volume offers fantastic insights into nineteenth-century attitudes towards crime and the sexes, making it highly recommended for those with an interest in criminology, sociology, and history. Read & Co. Great Essays is proudly publishing this brand new collection of classic articles now for the enjoyment of a new generation of readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read & Co. Great Essays
• Release date: Jun 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781528792301

Book preview

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WOMEN

AND CRIME

THREE ESSAYS

By

VARIOUS

Copyright © 2020 Read & Co. Great Essays

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an imprint of Read & Co.

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Contents

CRIMINAL WOMAN

By Miss Helen Zimmern

THE RELATIONS OF WOMEN TO CRIME

By Ely Van De Warker, M. D.

THE RELATIONS OF SEX TO CRIME

By Ely Van De Warker, M. D.

CRIMINAL WOMAN

By Miss Helen Zimmern

THE school of criminal anthropologists is making great strides in Italy. New works are continually pouring from the press which record the observations of students of this modern science, all of them striving to establish the data on which to base the phenomena of crime and degeneration. The world-famed name of Prof. Cesare Lombroso constantly appears on new works, which are fresh guides to science. La Donna Delinquente (Criminal Woman) is the title of his latest book, which is a joint work written together with one of his pupils, Prof. G. Ferrero. This book completes his previous admirable study entitled L'Uomo Delinquente (Criminal Man). This new study on abnormal woman is a very important work, which offered much greater difficulties in the way of research and observation than that on man. Indeed, Lombroso writes in his preface: The chief results of our first investigations were in opposition to the usual premises; even individual and partial observations seemed to clash; so that if one wished to be logical one was obliged to hesitate as to definite conclusions. We were, however, faithful to the maxim that we have always pursued; we followed facts blindly, even when they appeared to contradict each other and seemed taking a false turning. And we were not wrong: in the end the facts which seemed most opposed, fitted into their places like the pieces of a mosaic and formed a uniform and perfect design, although at first it seemed as if we were groping in the dark and that it was difficult to collect them. When at last we reached the desired goal, we tasted the bitter delight of the hunter who seizes his prey after scouring rocks and precipices, and feels the joy of his success redoubled by the losses and fatigues his conquest has cost him.

In this quotation is given truly the keynote to the whole volume. It explains to the reader what difficulties the authors have had to surmount, in order to draw a precise and certain conclusion, and to determine the characteristics of female criminals, just as other similar works written by modern savants define those of male offenders. The work is divided into four principal parts: 1. Normal Woman. 2. Female Crime. 3. Pathological and Anthropometrical Anatomy of Female Criminals and Prostitutes. 4. Biology and Psychology of Female Delinquents and Prostitutes. The first part is full of observations on normal women, and is a contrast to the second, which treats of female criminals in all their different changes of organism and mental attitude. In the section devoted to normal women, Lombroso treats of the women of primitive nations and compares them with those of civilized peoples. The study is minute, subtle, and valuable. Nor does Lombroso hesitate even to make comparisons with female animals. This attitude, which might be called a want of respect, Lombroso explains in his preface, saying: "Those who, writing about women, are not content with the close logic of facts, but continue or rather counterfeit the traditions of the middle ages and use chivalry toward the gentle sex, will think that we have often been wanting in respect to them in our work. But if we have not respected our most cherished preconceived ideas, such as the idea of the 'reo nato' (born criminal), neither have we been afraid of the apparent contradictions which to ordinary eyes might have seemed deleterious to our work. How could we become followers of a conventional and unscientific untruth, which only acquired shape in order to lose it directly?"

And truly science can not feed on rhetoric, and Lombroso's books are not those of a poet or novelist, but those of a scientific man, who believes in his work and who devotes himself seriously to its exigencies, no matter whither its necessary conclusions land him. In his study on criminal woman he brings before us women in every condition of life; he makes a minute study of their good qualities and of their defects, analyzing both, and only speaking when he can draw conclusions from what he has observed and studied. Hence his work is a powerful contribution to that affirmation of modern theories on crime which are destined to change entirely the theories of penal law which have ruled up to the present time.

The first portion of Lombroso's work is divided into chapters which treat of the females of the zoölogical world; of the anatomy and biology of women; of the senses and mind of women; of their cruelty, pity, and maternity; of their love, ethics, vanity, and intelligence. These chapters are so many monographs and present normal woman from every point of view. She is described as always inferior to man, because hey faculties are less developed. Strange to say, according to Lombroso, she has less feeling than man. This seems a direct contradiction of all legends and traditions. And is it not woman, rather than man, who is the most ardent opponent to all useless suffering; is it not women who have been the chief promoters of anti-cruelty societies, no matter if this cruelty be practiced on human beings or on animals? But the contradiction is explained, according to Lombroso, by the greater excitability of women and their lesser inhibition. As soon as the primitive barbarities of sexual selection began to be mitigated, men chose as wives the prettiest and gentlest instead of the strongest women, so paying tribute to beauty and the moral qualities that are associated with it. Thus women