University of Virginia Library

THE NEW CRIME.

Legislation Needed.

MARK TWAIN.

This country, during the last thirty or forty years, has produced some
of the most remarkable cases of insanity of which there is any mention in
history. For instance, there was the Baldwin case, in Ohio, twenty-two
years ago. Baldwin, from his boyhood up, had been of a vindictive,

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malignant, quarrelsome nature. He put a boy's eye out once, and never
was heard upon any occasion to utter a regret for it. He did many such
things. But at last he did something that was serious. He called at a
house just after dark, one evening, knocked, and when the occupant came
to the door, shot him dead, and then tried to escape but was captured.
Two days before, he had wantonly insulted a helpless cripple, and the man
he afterward took swift vengeance upon with an assassin bullet had
knocked him down. Such was the Baldwin case. The trial was long
and exciting; the community was fearfully wrought up. Men said this
spiteful, bad-hearted villain had caused grief enough in his time, and now he
should satisfy the law. But they were mistaken. Baldwin was insane
when he did the deed—they had not thought of that. By the arguments
of counsel it was shown that at half-past ten in the morning on the day of
the murder, Baldwin became insane, and remained so for eleven hours and
a half exactly. This just covered the case comfortably, and he was acquitted.
Thus, if an unthinking and excited community had been listened
to instead of the arguments of counsel, a poor crazy creature would have
been held to a fearful responsibility for a mere freak of madness. Baldwin
went clear, and although his relatives and friends were naturally incensed
against the community for their injurious suspicions and remarks, they
said let it go for this time, and did not prosecute. The Baldwins were
very wealthy. This same Baldwin had momentary fits of insanity twice
afterward, and on both occasions killed people he had grudges against.
And on both these occasions the circumstances of the killing were so aggravated,
and the murders so seemingly heartless and treacherous, that if
Baldwin had not been insane he would have been hanged without the shadow
of a doubt. As it was, it required all his political and family influence to
get him clear in one of the cases, and cost him not less than 10,000 dollars
to get clear in the other. One of these men he had notoriously been
threatening to kill for twelve years. The poor creature happened, by
the merest piece of ill-fortune, to come along a dark alley at the very
moment that Baldwin's insanity came upon him, and so he was shot in the
back with a gun loaded with slugs.

Take the case of Lynch Hackett, of Pennsylvania. Twice, in public,
he attacked a German butcher by the name of Bemis Feldner, with a cane,
and both times Feldner whipped him with his fists. Hackett was a vain,
wealthy, violent gentleman, who held his blood and family in high esteem,
and believed that a reverent respect was due his great riches. He brooded
over the shame of his chastisement for two weeks, and then, in a momentary
fit of insanity, armed himself to the teeth, rode into town, waited a
couple of hours until he saw Feldner coming down the street with his wife
on his arm, and then, as the couple passed the doorway in which he had
partially concealed himself, he drove a knife into Feldner's neck, killing
him instantly. The widow caught the limp form and eased it to the earth.
Both were drenched with blood. Hackett jocosely remarked to her that
as a professional butcher's recent wife she could appreciate the artistic
neatness of the job that left her in a condition to marry again, in case she
wanted to. This remark, and another which he made to a friend, that
his position in society made the killing of an obscure citizen simply an
“eccentricity” instead of a crime, were shown to be evidences of insanity,
and so Hackett escaped punishment. The jury were hardly inclined to
accept these as proofs, at first, inasmuch as the prisoner had never been

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insane before the murder, and under the tranquillising effect of the butchering
had immediately regained his light mind—but when the defence came-to
show that a third cousin of Hackett's wife's stepfather was insane, and
not only insane, but had a nose the very counterpart of Hackett's, it was
plain that insanity was hereditary in the family, and Hackett had come by
it by legitimate inheritance. Of course the jury then acquitted him.
But it was a merciful providence that Mrs H.'s people had been afflicted as
shown, else Hackett would certainly have been hanged.

However it is not possible to recount all the marvellous cases of insamty
that have come under the public notice in the last thirty or forty years.
There was the Durgin case in New Jersey three years ago. The servant
girl, Bridget Durgin, at dead of night, invaded her mistress's bedroom, and
carved the lady literally to pieces with a knife. Then she dragged the
body to the middle of the floor, and beat and banged it with chairs and
such things. Next she opened the feather beds and strewed the contents
around, saturated everything with kerosene, and set fire to the general
wrock. She now took up the young child of the murdered woman in her
blood-smeared hands, and walked off, through the snow, with no shoes on,
to a neighbor's house a quarter of a mile off, and told a string of wild,
incoherent stories about some men coming and setting fire to the house;
and then she cried piteously, and without seeming to think there was anything
suggestive about the blood upon her hands, her clothing, and the baby,
volunteered the remark that she was afraid those men had murdered her
mistress! Afterward, by her own confession and other testimony, it was
proved that the mistress had always been kind to the girl, consequently
there was no revenge in the murder; and it was also shown that the girl
took nothing away from the burning house, not even her own shoes, and
consequently robbery was not the motive. Now the reader says, “Here
comes that same old plea of insanity again.” But the reader has deceived
himself this time. No such plea was offered in her defence. The judge
sentenced her, nobody persecuted the Governor with petitions for her
pardon, and she was promptly hanged.

There was that youth in Pennsylvania, whose curious confession was
published a year ago. It was simply a conglomeration of incoherent drivel
from beginning to end—and so was his lengthy speech on the scaffold
afterward. For a whole year he was haunted with a desire to disfigure a
certain young woman, so that no one would marry her. He did not love
her himself, and did not want to marry her, but he did not want anybody
else to do it. He would not go anywhere with her, and yet was opposed
to anybody else's escorting her. Upon one occasion he declined to go to a
wedding with her, and when she got other company, lay in wait for the
couple by the road, intending to make them go back or kill the escort.
After spending sleepless nights over his ruling desire for a full year, he at
last attempted its execution—that is, attempted to disfigure the young
woman. It was a success. It was permanent. In trying to shoot her
cheek (as she sat at the supper table with her parents and brothers and
sisters) in such a manner as to mar its comeliness, one of his bullets wandered
a little out of the course, and she dropped dead. To the very last
moment of his life he bewailed the ill luck that made her move her face
just at the critical moment. And so he died apparently about half persuaded
that somehow it was chiefly her own fault that she got killed.
This idiot was hanged. The plea of insanity was not offered.

Insanity certainly is on the increase in the world, and crime is dying
out. There are no longer any murders—none worth mentioning, at any
rate. Formerly, if you killed a man, it was possible that you were insane
—but now if you (having friends and money) kill a man it is evidence that
you are a lunatic.

In these days, too, if a person of good family and high social standing
steals anything, they call it kleptomania, and send him to the lunatic
asylum. If a person of high standing squanders his fortune in dissipation
and closes his career with strychnine or a bullet, “Temporary Abberration”
is what was the trouble with him.

Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so
common that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every
criminal case that comes before the courts? And is it not so cheap, and so
common, and often so trivial, that the reader smiles in dirision when the
newspaper mentions it? And is it not curious to note how very often it wins
acquittal for the prisoner? Lately it does not seem possible for a man to
so conduct himself before killing another man, as not to be manifestly
insane. If he talks about the stars he is insane. If he appears nervous
and uneasy an hour before the killing he is insane. If he weeps over a
great grief, his friends shake their heads and fear that he is “not right.”
If, an hour after the murder he seems ill at ease, pre-occupied, and excited,
he is unquestionably insane.

Really, what we want now is not laws against crime but a law against
insanity. There is where the true evil lies.