HANG OR TRAIN?

THE criminal class seems within the last week or two to have

been bent on driving to an extreme the question,—whether crime can be traced to an absolute turpitude in human nature which must be driven out by retributive justice, or whether it does not spring from an individual deficiency which is as much the mis- fortune of the criminal as if he were born deformed ? The cata- logue of crimes of cruelty has been unusually numerous, less, we are convinced, because the examples of cruelty have been newly imitated than because the examples of detection have been taken up. In more than one instance, neighbours who have seen some youthful victim suffering under continuous violence have inter- fered and appealed to justice, evidently being prompted to do so by the example of the Eastbourne case. And it is difficult to say whether that case has been equalled or excelled in some instances. If we exonerate Mr. Hopley from malignity, we must equally ex- onerate persons who have been guilty of more wanton cruelty ; while, on the other hand, some who have not carried their perse- cution to the extent of death, can scarcely be let off with the le- nient view that has been extended to him.

The worst sequel to the Hopley case was that investigated before Mr. Maude last week. A child was led into a court, a girl eight years old. She wore a shade to protect eyes so in- flamed that she had some difficulty in seeing ; her face was swelled and scarred. When her clothes were loosened, her back was seen to be bruised, blackened all over,—broken, and lacerated. Her elbows were wounded with an indistinguish- able sore, prodaced by burning. It turned out that these in- juries had been inflicted upon her by Mary Allen, who had beaten her with the hooked end of a cane, had her in other ways, and had stricken her on the elbows with a hot iron. The child, Caroline Lefevre was the daughter of a labouring man at Barclay's Brewery ; she had been entrusted to Mrs. Allen, " as a sort of companion," said the father; she was employed as a domestic drudge, paid with food and instruction. We are still without Mrs. Allen's defence; but there is nothing in the case which suggests the idea of diabolical malignity. One can easily understand that Caroline Lefevre, eight years old, may have had the caprices of childhood, the indolence of humanity

generally ; the inexperience belonging to the age of eight, the in- efficiency proper to a very low state of training, and that alto- gether she may have been rather an exasperating servant, parti- culaily to a mistress living in some outpost of Gravel Lane ham- pered with narrow means, compelled to earn a very scanty sub- sistence by the teaching ef very poor children in a very poor at- mosphere, and altogether disposed, at forty years of age, to take a somewhat harsh and hopeless view of existence in that world of Gravel Lane. The child had as much food as she wished ; she

seems, indeed, to have shared her mistress's board without stint, and to have monopolized the effects of her mistress's temper; for there is no complaint from the scholars that they were ill treated.

Formerly the Royal Family used to keep a whipping boy," who is said to have undergone the castigation intended for the

heir-apparent of the British throne ; the faults falling. to the share

of the Prince, the canings to the share of the whipping boy. It is a sort of distribution by no means uncommon in society, and maintained in Gravel Lane with a more conservative spirit than in the palace. But the perseverance of the institution does not prove that Mary Allen had originally any diabolical element in her temper. Even the blow or blows with the hot iron—which she was using, and which struck the child " accidentally "—im- ply no settled diabolism. The whole facts only show that Mary Allen herself had gone through a sort of schooling which led to these brutal, squalid, despairing results. The child lived in terror of the mistress,—but God help the human soul destined to live from day to day in persecuting a poor, helpless, squalid, and shrieking child; so " aggravating," and so injured ; so odious— so beaten out of all humanity without being made a ministering angel by the trial. If we can imagine a fate more horrible than the tortured child, it is that of the torturer. The case seems to have unfolded itself gradually without ex- citing any wonder in the neighbourhood. Lefevre, a labourer, had left the matter to his wife, Caroline's step-motLr • the step-

mother had left the child to iirs. Allen ; and the child made no oomplaints,—standing in a well-developed dread of her mistress.

Mary Allen is described as a decent-looking woman, and who had

established her respectability, by the teaching of poor children so as to win the confidence of the parents, and at least the forbear-

ance of her scholars. If there is any charge to be made against Mrs. Allen, many others seem to be also chargeable for at least a sort of negative complicity. The wickedness—if wickedness there is—is wide spread. Perhaps, however, if we look into the case more closely, we shall find that the aspect of wickedness fades away by degrees, and in its place we shall discover nothing worse than the struggle for existence amid untoward circum- stances, including the most untoward of all—born deficiency un- qualified by training. It is an exemplification of Hopley oases in a lower grade, and confirms the accusation which we last week noted against Society at large. They manage these things better in the United States. Not that they have attained perfection in the Transatlantic Republic ; but they have at least attained public schools to which any child may be sent. There is no occasion in the United States to maintain the tribe of Aliens and, what is

more, in that Republic the tribe of Allen is likely to have been by

this time taught out of all existence by those same schools. We have criminals there, but produced by other causes. We have not the desponding struggle amidst every depressing and debasing circumstance of ignorance, pauperism, and established squalidity. The Walworth murder looks like a crucial experiment in the crime problem. We have not yet arrived at ajudicial decision upon the case, and after the many instances of deceptive appearances

recorded in more than one collection of "causes celebres, we are debarred from assuming that the accused is guilty. Conjectu-

rally, we might imagine more than one sequel to the story as it stands. One might be to find that the prisoner's explanation is true. Another, that he was guilty of his act under an impulse of insanity. And even the guilty motive would not disprove the homicidal mania; for we remember well the story of the French traveller who, on going to his friend's bedside under such an im- pulse, found the man already murdered. If we take this last case according to the plain appearances, it is one of the most cold- blooded on record ; and some of the attendant circumstances in- crease the revulsion caused by the first story. As long ago as February or March, 1859, William Youngman was writing those very letters which have been produced in court, to a young woman, urging her to marry him and to let him insure her life. Impatient to obtain possession of booty, Youngman stole his mas- ter's plate, was seized, convicted, and made to undergo the penalty of a year's imprisonment. He comes out of prison, and obtains a situation as a private servant ; and again we find him writing the same love-letters to another young woman, urging her to marry him, and to let him insure her life. On the 28th of July, he is still engaged in the composition of these commercial love-letters ; on the 30th of July, the couple arrive at the house of the man's parents ; the next morning the young woman and three other persons are found killed. In the course of his love-letters, Youngman had several times urged his sweetheart to bring

away with her from her parents' house certain small trifles which might be thought conducive to his comfort, with,. his own letters. A suspicion that he meant her no gook crossed the minds of her friends, and had been expressed ; but sh was led away, by his seductive language ; and she went to he death. The obvious suggestion of the evidence is, that Young man had planned to get the girl into his power, aiter effecting policy of insurance on her life, in order that he might thus r

ceive the 1001. for which the policy was taken- out. So far the case for the prosecution closely resembles that of Wainwright, who will still be remembered as having been seen sometimes in Charles Lamb's circle. Ill educated, Youngman was proportion- ately crude in his scheme, which was in its nature certain of de- tection. While he thought that he was inveigling the girl, he was still more certainly running his own head into the noose. If for a moment we endeavour to analyze the ideas which must have been habitual with William Youngman, if we search out his motives and trace the feelings by which he was actuated, we cannot but arrive at the perception that life to him was a blank, the ideas which usually give savour and value to existence being replaced by the coldest, deadest, and most revolting phantoms that could haunt the brain of a depraved fool. In a purely abstract point of view, it is evident that William Young- man is an object more to be pitied than Mary Streeter. Still, the nature indicated by such a case seems so wholly devoid of any- thing good, that really it would not be worth while to preserve it. On the contrary, there appears to be a positive advantage in dissolving such a composition to its original elements ; it would be of more value as oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon, for recomposition into other forms organic or inorganic, than it has been as the wretched failure signalized in the criminal records of the week. We are, therefore, left wholly to the question of ex- ample, and the problem to be solved is, whether for the instruc- tion of classes typified by Youngman, there is a greater advan- tage in suspending him in order to such dissolution, or whether we cannot show even creatures of such a wholly worthless nature that they must submit to be drilled and trained into conduct at least resembling that of decent people ? Upon the whole, perhaps, —subject to the exigency of despatching such creatures flagrante delicto,—we may consider the example by discipline better than the example by hanging.