were in the habit of using this substance in settling their differences with each other, even still more if they employed it by way of emphasising their disapproval of the jilting of sweethearts? That it should be employed by women in wreaking their vengeance on recalcitrant lovers seems a natural if not precisely a commendable action, in the eyes of a Sentimental Feminist public opinion, and one which, on the mildest hypothesis, “doesn't matter.” Hence a deadly substance may be freely bought and sold as though it were cod-liver oil. A very nice thing for dastardly viragoes for whom public opinion has only the mildest of censures! In any reasonable society the indiscriminate sale of corrosive substances would in itself be a crime punishable with a heavy term of imprisonment.
It is not only by men, and by a morbid public opinion inflamed by Feminist sentiment in general, that female criminals are surrounded by a halo of injured innocence. The reader can hardly fail to notice that such women have the effrontery to pretend to regard themselves in this light. This is often so in cases of assault, murder or attempted murder of lovers by their sweethearts. Such is, of course, particularly noticeable in the senselessly wicked outrages, of which more anon. The late Otto Weininger, in his book before quoted, “Geschlecht und Charakter” (Sex and Character), has some noteworthy remarks on this, remarks which, whether we
