The Diseases of Society (the Vice and Crime Problem) (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Diseases of Society (the Vice and Crime Problem)

Twenty-five years ago I witnessed a legal murder, - the hanging of two unfortunate youths condemned for an illegal murder. Neither was over twenty-one years of age. The assassination was unprovoked, unpremeditated, and committed by stabbing. Neither man carried a weapon, the knife used being taken from a neighboring butcher-shop by the frenzied murderer, who, following an altercation with his victim, rushed after the weapon, returned, and killed him. Both of the men implicated in the killing were drunk on cheap whiskey - for the drinking of which society itself was indirectly responsible. They were ignorant toughs, bred in the Chicago stock-yards district. For their viciousness society was directly responsible, for it had made no effort to prevent them from becoming toughs and drunkards. The youths were poor and almost friendless. It was impossible that both could have been guilty; one must have been innocent. Each, however, accused the other of the stabbing. Society said, "They are of the better dead;" the law said, "Let no guilty man escape;" so both were hanged. I was much impressed by the judicial assassination, and ever after had a due and proper appreciation of the beauties of our penal system, and more especially of the occasional helplessness and fickleness of Justice, of which law is not always an intelligent agent.

Several years later I served for some time as Resident Surgeon to the Blackwell's Island Penitentiary, New York, where I had an unexampled opportunity to study the criminal and, in some measure, the absurdities of our criminal law and penal system. My interest in the crime question was thus excited early in my professional career.

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