corpses of felons hung, rotting and bleaching in the light. Nor was crime supprest by this stringency of the law. Highwaymen rode into town at nightfall, coolly tying their horses to the palings of Hyde Park, and executed their plans of robbery in the very presence of the impotent protectors of the public peace. London was infested by gangs of youths, whose nightly pastime was to bludgeon inoffensive watchmen, and to gouge out the eyes of chance travelers. Dean Swift dared not go out after dark, and Johnson wrote:
Prepare for death, if here at night you roam,
And sign your will before you sup from home.
Ludgate Hill swarmed with mock parsons, and thousands of spurious marriages were celebrated every year.—W. J. Dawson, "The Makers of English Prose."
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Crime Prevented—See Science Preventing Crime. Crime Traced—See Misery an Educator. CRIME UNPROFITABLE "I have talked with murderers, train and stage robbers, burglars, pickpockets, hobos, yeggmen and others guilty of nearly every crime known," says Griffith J. Griffith, "yet I never found a prisoner but could easily be convinced that a criminal career does not pay. A sane young man so convinced can be reformed."
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Criminal Energy—See Dishonesty. Criminals Deficient in Conscience—See Conscience Benumbed. CRIMINALS, GAIT OF All evil traits probably carry with them some bodily signs. Soul and body are intimately related. Dr. Parrachia has made a curious study of the differences between criminals and law-abiding citizens, as exhibited by their walk. He not only has shown how we may distinguish criminals in general, but has laid the beginning of the differential diagnosis between various evil-doers. He found that in criminals in general (obtained from the study of forty criminals) the left pace was longer than the right, the lateral deviation of the right foot was greater than that of the left, and the angle formed by the axis of the foot with the straight line was greater on the left side than on the right. It would thus seem that, in general, the gait of a criminal betrays a marked preponderance of power of the left foot over the right—a true sinistrality. This also agrees with the discovery of Marro that criminals are often left-handed.—Public Opinion.
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CRIMINALS, TRACING
The tracing of counterfeit bills back to
the persons responsible for their issue is a
curious and exciting employment. The experts
assigned by the Government to this
work are among the most skilful members
of the Secret Service.
A bank clerk in Cleveland had detected a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill in the deposit of a small retail grocer. An expert was sent for and undertook the case.
He found that the grocer had received the bill from a shoe-dealer, who had it from a dentist, who had it from somebody else, and so on, until the Secret Service man finally traced the bad note to an invalid woman who had used it to pay her physician. When questioned, this woman said that the money had been sent her by her brother, who lived in New Orleans.
The sleuth looked up the brother's antecedents, and soon became convinced that he was the man wanted. The brother, however, soon proved to the satisfaction of the Secret Service man that his suspicions were unfounded. Indeed, it appeared that the money had been received by the New Orleans man in part payment of rent of a house he owned in Pittsburg. While the sleuth was a bit discouraged, he couldn't give over the case when he had gone so far, so he took the next train for Pittsburg.
The tenant of the house in Pittsburg proved to be a traveling oculist, who spent most of his time in the Middle West. The Secret Service man had the good luck, however, to catch him just as he had returned from a trip; and the man at once recognized the bad bill as one that had been given him by a patient in Cleveland, the very point whence the sleuth had started.
The patient was a boss carpenter. The Secret Service man got his address from the oculist and went right after the new clue. At this point he had a premonition that something was going to happen, and he wasn't disappointed.
The carpenter, an honest old fellow, said that he had received the bill from a certain
