Miscellaneous Papers
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Charles Dickens >> Miscellaneous Papers
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For the instruction, and as a first step in the reformation, of such
unhappy beings, the Ragged Schools were founded. I was first
attracted to the subject, and indeed was first made conscious of
their existence, about two years ago, or more, by seeing an
advertisement in the papers dated from West Street, Saffron Hill,
stating "That a room had been opened and supported in that wretched
neighbourhood for upwards of twelve months, where religious
instruction had been imparted to the poor", and explaining in a few
words what was meant by Ragged Schools as a generic term, including,
then, four or five similar places of instruction. I wrote to the
masters of this particular school to make some further inquiries,
and went myself soon afterwards.
It was a hot summer night; and the air of Field Lane and Saffron
Hill was not improved by such weather, nor were the people in those
streets very sober or honest company. Being unacquainted with the
exact locality of the school, I was fain to make some inquiries
about it. These were very jocosely received in general; but
everybody knew where it was, and gave the right direction to it.
The prevailing idea among the loungers (the greater part of them the
very sweepings of the streets and station houses) seemed to be, that
the teachers were quixotic, and the school upon the whole "a lark".
But there was certainly a kind of rough respect for the intention,
and (as I have said) nobody denied the school or its whereabouts, or
refused assistance in directing to it.
It consisted at that time of either two or three--I forget which--
miserable rooms, upstairs in a miserable house. In the best of
these, the pupils in the female school were being taught to read and
write; and though there were among the number, many wretched
creatures steeped in degradation to the lips, they were tolerably
quiet, and listened with apparent earnestness and patience to their
instructors. The appearance of this room was sad and melancholy, of
course--how could it be otherwise!--but, on the whole, encouraging.
The close, low chamber at the back, in which the boys were crowded,
was so foul and stifling as to be, at first, almost insupportable.
But its moral aspect was so far worse than its physical, that this
was soon forgotten. Huddled together on a bench about the room, and
shown out by some flaring candles stuck against the walls, were a
crowd of boys, varying from mere infants to young men; sellers of
fruit, herbs, lucifer-matches, flints; sleepers under the dry arches
of bridges; young thieves and beggars--with nothing natural to youth
about them: with nothing frank, ingenuous, or pleasant in their
faces; low-browed, vicious, cunning, wicked; abandoned of all help
but this; speeding downward to destruction; and UNUTTERABLY
IGNORANT.
This, Reader, was one room as full as it could hold; but these were
only grains in sample of a Multitude that are perpetually sifting
through these schools; in sample of a Multitude who had within them
once, and perhaps have now, the elements of men as good as you or I,
and maybe infinitely better; in sample of a Multitude among whose
doomed and sinful ranks (oh, think of this, and think of them!) the
child of any man upon this earth, however lofty his degree, must, as
by Destiny and Fate, be found, if, at its birth, it were consigned
to such an infancy and nurture, as these fallen creatures had!
This was the Class I saw at the Ragged School. They could not be
trusted with books; they could only be instructed orally; they were
difficult of reduction to anything like attention, obedience, or
decent behaviour; their benighted ignorance in reference to the
Deity, or to any social duty (how could they guess at any social
duty, being so discarded by all social teachers but the gaoler and
the hangman!) was terrible to see. Yet, even here, and among these,
something had been done already. The Ragged School was of recent
date and very poor; but he had inculcated some association with the
name of the Almighty, which was not an oath, and had taught them to
look forward in a hymn (they sang it) to another life, which would
correct the miseries and woes of this.
The new exposition I found in this Ragged School, of the frightful
neglect by the State of those whom it punishes so constantly, and
whom it might, as easily and less expensively, instruct and save;
together with the sight I had seen there, in the heart of London;
haunted me, and finally impelled me to an endeavour to bring these
Institutions under the notice of the Government; with some faint
hope that the vastness of the question would supersede the Theology
of the schools, and that the Bench of Bishops might adjust the
latter question, after some small grant had been conceded. I made
the attempt; and have heard no more of the subject from that hour.
The perusal of an advertisement in yesterday's paper, announcing a
lecture on the Ragged Schools last night, has led me into these
remarks. I might easily have given them another form; but I address
this letter to you, in the hope that some few readers in whom I have
awakened an interest, as a writer of fiction, may be, by that means,
attracted to the subject, who might otherwise, unintentionally, pass
it over.
I have no desire to praise the system pursued in the Ragged Schools;
which is necessarily very imperfect, if indeed there be one. So far
as I have any means of judging of what is taught there, I should
individually object to it, as not being sufficiently secular, and as
presenting too many religious mysteries and difficulties, to minds
not sufficiently prepared for their reception. But I should very
imperfectly discharge in myself the duty I wish to urge and impress
on others, if I allowed any such doubt of mine to interfere with my
appreciation of the efforts of these teachers, or my true wish to
promote them by any slight means in my power. Irritating topics, of
all kinds, are equally far removed from my purpose and intention.
But, I adjure those excellent persons who aid, munificently, in the
building of New Churches, to think of these Ragged Schools; to
reflect whether some portion of their rich endowments might not be
spared for such a purpose; to contemplate, calmly, the necessity of
beginning at the beginning; to consider for themselves where the
Christian Religion most needs and most suggests immediate help and
illustration; and not to decide on any theory or hearsay, but to go
themselves into the Prisons and the Ragged Schools, and form their
own conclusions. They will be shocked, pained, and repelled, by
much that they learn there; but nothing they can learn will be one-
thousandth part so shocking, painful, and repulsive, as the
continuance for one year more of these things as they have been for
too many years already.
Anticipating that some of the more prominent facts connected with
the history of the Ragged Schools, may become known to the readers
of The Daily News through your account of the lecture in question, I
abstain (though in possession of some such information) from
pursuing the question further, at this time. But if I should see
occasion, I will take leave to return to it.
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
I will take for the subject of this letter, the effect of Capital
Punishment on the commission of crime, or rather of murder; the only
crime with one exception (and that a rare one) to which it is now
applied. Its effect in preventing crime, I will reserve for another
letter: and a few of the more striking illustrations of each aspect
of the subject, for a concluding one.
The effect of Capital Punishment on the commission of Murder.
Some murders are committed in hot blood and furious rage; some, in
deliberate revenge; some, in terrible despair; some (but not many)
for mere gain; some, for the removal of an object dangerous to the
murderer's peace or good name; some, to win a monstrous notoriety.
On murders committed in rage, in the despair of strong affection (as
when a starving child is murdered by its parent) or for gain, I
believe the punishment of death to have no effect in the least. In
the two first cases, the impulse is a blind and wild one, infinitely
beyond the reach of any reference to the punishment. In the last,
there is little calculation beyond the absorbing greed of the money
to be got. Courvoisier, for example, might have robbed his master
with greater safety, and with fewer chances of detection, if he had
not murdered him. But, his calculations going to the gain and not
to the loss, he had no balance for the consequences of what he did.
So, it would have been more safe and prudent in the woman who was
hanged a few weeks since, for the murder in Westminster, to have
simply robbed her old companion in an unguarded moment, as in her
sleep. But, her calculation going to the gain of what she took to
be a Bank note; and the poor old woman living between her and the
gain; she murdered her.
On murders committed in deliberate revenge, or to remove a stumbling
block in the murderer's path, or in an insatiate craving for
notoriety, is there reason to suppose that the punishment of death
has the direct effect of an incentive and an impulse?
A murder is committed in deliberate revenge. The murderer is at no
trouble to prepare his train of circumstances, takes little or no
pains to escape, is quite cool and collected, perfectly content to
deliver himself up to the Police, makes no secret of his guilt, but
boldly says, "I killed him. I'm glad of it. I meant to do it. I
am ready to die." There was such a case the other day. There was
such another case not long ago. There are such cases frequently.
It is the commonest first exclamation on being seized. Now, what is
this but a false arguing of the question, announcing a foregone
conclusion, expressly leading to the crime, and inseparably arising
out of the Punishment of Death? "I took his life. I give up mine
to pay for it. Life for life; blood for blood. I have done the
crime. I am ready with the atonement. I know all about it; it's a
fair bargain between me and the law. Here am I to execute my part
of it; and what more is to be said or done?" It is the very essence
of the maintenance of this punishment for murder, that it does set
life against life. It is in the essence of a stupid, weak, or
otherwise ill-regulated mind (of such a murderer's mind, in short),
to recognise in this set off, a something that diminishes the base
and coward character of murder. "In a pitched battle, I, a common
man, may kill my adversary, but he may kill me. In a duel, a
gentleman may shoot his opponent through the head, but the opponent
may shoot him too, and this makes it fair. Very well. I take this
man's life for a reason I have, or choose to think I have, and the
law takes mine. The law says, and the clergyman says, there must be
blood for blood and life for life. Here it is. I pay the penalty."
A mind incapable, or confounded in its perceptions--and you must
argue with reference to such a mind, or you could not have such a
murder--may not only establish on these grounds an idea of strict
justice and fair reparation, but a stubborn and dogged fortitude and
foresight that satisfy it hugely. Whether the fact be really so, or
not, is a question I would be content to rest, alone, on the number
of cases of revengeful murder in which this is well known, without
dispute, to have been the prevailing demeanour of the criminal: and
in which such speeches and such absurd reasoning have been
constantly uppermost with him. "Blood for blood", and "life for
life", and such like balanced jingles, have passed current in
people's mouths, from legislators downwards, until they have been
corrupted into "tit for tat", and acted on.
Next, come the murders done, to sweep out of the way a dreaded or
detested object. At the bottom of this class of crimes, there is a
slow, corroding, growing hate. Violent quarrels are commonly found
to have taken place between the murdered person and the murderer:
usually of opposite sexes. There are witnesses to old scenes of
reproach and recrimination, in which they were the actors; and the
murderer has been heard to say, in this or that coarse phrase, "that
he wouldn't mind killing her, though he should be hanged for it"--in
these cases, the commonest avowal.
It seems to me, that in this well-known scrap of evidence, there is
a deeper meaning than is usually attached to it. I do not know, but
it may be--I have a strong suspicion that it is--a clue to the slow
growth of the crime, and its gradual development in the mind. More
than this; a clue to the mental connection of the deed, with the
punishment to which the doer of that deed is liable, until the two,
conjoined, give birth to monstrous and misshapen Murder.
The idea of murder, in such a case, like that of self-destruction in
the great majority of instances, is not a new one. It may have
presented itself to the disturbed mind in a dim shape and afar off;
but it has been there. After a quarrel, or with some strong sense
upon him of irritation or discomfort arising out of the continuance
of this life in his path, the man has brooded over the unformed
desire to take it. "Though he should be hanged for it." With the
entrance of the Punishment into his thoughts, the shadow of the
fatal beam begins to attend--not on himself, but on the object of
his hate. At every new temptation, it is there, stronger and
blacker yet, trying to terrify him. When she defies or threatens
him, the scaffold seems to be her strength and "vantage ground".
Let her not be too sure of that; "though he should be hanged for
it".
Thus, he begins to raise up, in the contemplation of this death by
hanging, a new and violent enemy to brave. The prospect of a slow
and solitary expiation would have no congeniality with his wicked
thoughts, but this throttling and strangling has. There is always
before him, an ugly, bloody, scarecrow phantom, that champions her,
as it were, and yet shows him, in a ghastly way, the example of
murder. Is she very weak, or very trustful in him, or infirm, or
old? It gives a hideous courage to what would be mere slaughter
otherwise; for there it is, a presence always about her, darkly
menacing him with that penalty whose murky secret has a fascination
for all secret and unwholesome thoughts. And when he struggles with
his victim at the last, "though he should be hanged for it", it is a
merciless wrestle, not with one weak life only, but with that ever-
haunting, ever-beckoning shadow of the gallows, too; and with a
fierce defiance to it, after their long survey of each other, to
come on and do its worst.
Present this black idea of violence to a bad mind contemplating
violence; hold up before a man remotely compassing the death of
another person, the spectacle of his own ghastly and untimely death
by man's hands; and out of the depths of his own nature you shall
assuredly raise up that which lures and tempts him on. The laws
which regulate those mysteries have not been studied or cared for,
by the maintainers of this law; but they are paramount and will
always assert their power.
Out of one hundred and sixty-seven persons under sentence of Death
in England, questioned at different times, in the course of years,
by an English clergyman in the performance of his duty, there were
only three who had not been spectators of executions.
We come, now, to the consideration of those murders which are
committed, or attempted, with no other object than the attainment of
an infamous notoriety. That this class of crimes has its origin in
the Punishment of Death, we cannot question; because (as we have
already seen, and shall presently establish by another proof) great
notoriety and interest attach, and are generally understood to
attach, only to those criminals who are in danger of being executed.
One of the most remarkable instances of murder originating in mad
self-conceit; and of the murderer's part in the repulsive drama, in
which the law appears at such great disadvantage to itself and to
society, being acted almost to the last with a self-complacency that
would be horribly ludicrous if it were not utterly revolting; is
presented in the case of Hocker.
Here is an insolent, flippant, dissolute youth: aping the man of
intrigue and levity: over-dressed, over-confident, inordinately
vain of his personal appearance: distinguished as to his hair,
cane, snuff-box, and singing-voice: and unhappily the son of a
working shoemaker. Bent on loftier flights than such a poor house-
swallow as a teacher in a Sunday-school can take; and having no
truth, industry, perseverance, or other dull work-a-day quality, to
plume his wings withal; he casts about him, in his jaunty way, for
some mode of distinguishing himself--some means of getting that head
of hair into the print-shops; of having something like justice done
to his singing-voice and fine intellect; of making the life and
adventures of Thomas Hocker remarkable; and of getting up some
excitement in connection with that slighted piece of biography. The
Stage? No. Not feasible. There has always been a conspiracy
against the Thomas Hockers, in that kind of effort. It has been the
same with Authorship in prose and poetry. Is there nothing else? A
Murder, now, would make a noise in the papers! There is the gallows
to be sure; but without that, it would be nothing. Short of that,
it wouldn't be fame. Well! We must all die at one time or other;
and to die game, and have it in print, is just the thing for a man
of spirit. They always die game at the Minor Theatres and the
Saloons, and the people like it very much. Thurtell, too, died very
game, and made a capital speech when he was tried. There's all
about it in a book at the cigar-shop now. Come, Tom, get your name
up! Let it be a dashing murder that shall keep the wood-engravers
at it for the next two months. You are the boy to go through with
it, and interest the town!
The miserable wretch, inflated by this lunatic conceit, arranges his
whole plan for publication and effect. It is quite an epitome of
his experience of the domestic melodrama or penny novel. There is
the Victim Friend; the mysterious letter of the injured Female to
the Victim Friend; the romantic spot for the Death-Struggle by
night; the unexpected appearance of Thomas Hocker to the Policeman;
the parlour of the Public House, with Thomas Hocker reading the
paper to a strange gentleman; the Family Apartment, with a song by
Thomas Hocker; the Inquest Room, with Thomas Hocker boldly looking
on; the interior of the Marylebone Theatre, with Thomas Hocker taken
into custody; the Police Office with Thomas Hocker "affable" to the
spectators; the interior of Newgate, with Thomas Hocker preparing
his defence; the Court, where Thomas Hocker, with his dancing-master
airs, is put upon his trial, and complimented by the Judge; the
Prosecution, the Defence, the Verdict, the Black Cap, the Sentence--
each of them a line in any Playbill, and how bold a line in Thomas
Hocker's life!
It is worthy of remark, that the nearer he approaches to the
gallows--the great last scene to which the whole of these effects
have been working up--the more the overweening conceit of the poor
wretch shows itself; the more he feels that he is the hero of the
hour; the more audaciously and recklessly he lies, in supporting the
character. In public--at the condemned sermon--he deports himself
as becomes the man whose autographs are precious, whose portraits
are innumerable; in memory of whom, whole fences and gates have been
borne away, in splinters, from the scene of murder. He knows that
the eyes of Europe are upon him; but he is not proud--only graceful.
He bows, like the first gentleman in Europe, to the turnkey who
brings him a glass of water; and composes his clothes and hassock as
carefully, as good Madame Blaize could do. In private--within the
walls of the condemned cell--every word and action of his waning
life, is a lie. His whole time is divided between telling lies and
writing them. If he ever have another thought, it is for his
genteel appearance on the scaffold; as when he begs the barber "not
to cut his hair too short, or they won't know him when he comes
out". His last proceeding but one is to write two romantic love
letters to women who have no existence. His last proceeding of all
(but less characteristic, though the only true one) is to swoon
away, miserably, in the arms of the attendants, and be hanged up
like a craven dog.
Is not such a history, from first to last, a most revolting and
disgraceful one; and can the student of it bring himself to believe
that it ever could have place in any record of facts, or that the
miserable chief-actor in it could have ever had a motive for his
arrogant wickedness, but for the comment and the explanation which
the Punishment of Death supplies!
It is not a solitary case, nor is it a prodigy, but a mere specimen
of a class. The case of Oxford, who fired at Her Majesty in the
Park, will be found, on examination, to resemble it very nearly, in
the essential feature. There is no proved pretence whatever for
regarding him as mad; other than that he was like this malefactor,
brimful of conceit, and a desire to become, even at the cost of the
gallows (the only cost within his reach) the talk of the town. He
had less invention than Hocker, and perhaps was not so deliberately
bad; but his attempt was a branch of the same tree, and it has its
root in the ground where the scaffold is erected.
Oxford had his imitators. Let it never be forgotten in the
consideration of this part of the subject, how they were stopped.
So long as attempts invested them with the distinction of being in
danger of death at the hangman's hands, so long did they spring up.
When the penalty of death was removed, and a mean and humiliating
punishment substituted in its place, the race was at an end, and
ceased to be.
II
We come, now, to consider the effect of Capital Punishment in the
prevention of crime.
Does it prevent crime in those who attend executions?
There never is (and there never was) an execution at the Old Bailey
in London, but the spectators include two large classes of thieves--
one class who go there as they would go to a dog-fight, or any other
brutal sport, for the attraction and excitement of the spectacle;
the other who make it a dry matter of business, and mix with the
crowd solely to pick pockets. Add to these, the dissolute, the
drunken, the most idle, profligate, and abandoned of both sexes--
some moody ill-conditioned minds, drawn thither by a fearful
interest--and some impelled by curiosity; of whom the greater part
are of an age and temperament rendering the gratification of that
curiosity highly dangerous to themselves and to society--and the
great elements of the concourse are stated.
Nor is this assemblage peculiar to London. It is the same in
country towns, allowing for the different statistics of the
population. It is the same in America. I was present at an
execution in Rome, for a most treacherous and wicked murder, and not
only saw the same kind of assemblage there, but, wearing what is
called a shooting-coat, with a great many pockets in it, felt
innumerable hands busy in every one of them, close to the scaffold.
I have already mentioned that out of one hundred and sixty-seven
convicts under sentence of death, questioned at different times in
the performance of his duty by an English clergyman, there were only
three who had not been spectators of executions. Mr. Wakefield, in
his Facts relating to the Punishment of Death, goes into the
working, as it were, of this sum. His testimony is extremely
valuable, because it is the evidence of an educated and observing
man, who, before having personal knowledge of the subject and of
Newgate, was quite satisfied that the Punishment of Death should
continue, but who, when he gained that experience, exerted himself
to the utmost for its abolition, even at the pain of constant public
reference in his own person to his own imprisonment. "It cannot be
egotism", he reasonably observes, "that prompts a man to speak of
himself in connection with Newgate."
"Whoever will undergo the pain," says Mr. Wakefield, "of witnessing
the public destruction of a fellow-creature's life, in London, must
be perfectly satisfied that in the great mass of spectators, the
effect of the punishment is to excite sympathy for the criminal and
hatred of the law. . . I am inclined to believe that the criminals
of London, spoken of as a class and allowing for exceptions, take
the same sort of delight in witnessing executions, as the sportsman
and soldier find in the dangers of hunting and war. . . I am
confident that few Old Bailey Sessions pass without the trial of a
boy, whose first thought of crime occurred whilst he was witnessing
an execution. . . And one grown man, of great mental powers and
superior education, who was acquitted of a charge of forgery,
assured me that the first idea of committing a forgery occurred to
him at the moment when he was accidentally witnessing the execution
of Fauntleroy. To which it may be added, that Fauntleroy is said to
have made precisely the same declaration in reference to the origin
of his own criminality.
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