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This 1907 article from The Independent employs a number of unusual phrases such as 'carnival of crime' and 'psychic epilepsy'
while attempting to prove that 'unnatural crime' is caused by an unrecognized 'psychic contagion' comparable to a 'contagious disease'.
Yikes.
Best regards, Archaic
>The Independent, 1907:
The Contagion of Unnatural Crime
A Wave of hideous crime has swept over New York City in the past month that has given a thrill of horror to the country.
When the first reports appeared people were apt to dismiss the thought of the horrors with the reflection that it was the work of unbalanced minds, and that while it was sad that it should be so, and supremely lamentable for the sake of the victim, yet that these things need not be taken too seriously or as indicative of depths of depravity in human nature.
Such a reflection is entirely justified from certain standpoints. When in the course of days after the first report succeeding crimes of similar nature found their way before the public, the thought aroused was likely to be that somehow sufficient care was not being exercised by people with regard to the putting under surveillance of individuals of lowered mentality, whose irresponsibility was more or less recognized, yet whose evil tendencies had been allowed to culminate in the horrible events recorded.
Such reflections palliate for the moment the awfulness of the crimes in as far as they might be concluded to be evidence of human depravity, yet the explanation is not oversatisfying to the ordinary mind, and one wonders what is to come eventually out of conditions that are capable of evolving such criminals in the numbers at present noted.
In the usual figurative language of the newspaper reporter such a carnival of crime is sometimes spoken of as an epidemic. Commonly we are not accustomed to think of the word epidemic in this case as employed in any serious sense as indicating the possible contagiousness of such crimes, and the whole question of psychic contagion as a rule is dismissed by people with the thought that the term is highly metaphoric and not to be taken literally.
It seems possible that in this a grave error is being committed, and that the absolute epidemicity or contagiousness of crime especially in its unnatural forms, must be taken as something to be seriously considered in the hope that thus some added mode of prophylaxis against the awful evil may be secured. Any remedial measure, even tho its promise may be but insecure or, at least, not clear to all, can scarcely fail to be eagerly grasped under the present appalling conditions.
It is almost incomprehensible now that for so many hundreds of years intelligent men saw the ravages of real contagious disease without recognizing that it was spread by the contact of individual with individual, and that the disease might be prevented by segregation. Old-time thinkers could not bring themselves to the thought that disease might be so easily prevented. It is scarcely more than a couple of hundred years, however, since even such diseases as smallpox, which are so manifestly contagious, were acknowledged to be anything more than manifestations of particular phases of natural disturbances of the atmosphere. Men would not believe in contagion.
We are prone to laugh, or at least to think very little of our forbears of two or three centuries ago for their failure to recognize this contagiousness and consequent failure to appreciate the possibilities of disease prevention. Is it not possible that we will be laughed at with quite as good reason by the generations of the next century, because we have neglected the influence of psychic contagion?
There is no doubt now that when minds of lower resistive vitality are brought in contact with the details of certain unnatural crimes these seem to constitute an almost irresistible temptation to commit them. It is very probable that in such minds thoughts of these crimes have occurred before, but have been shrunk from with horror. When the news of one having been actually committed reaches them, however, this natural abhorrence that for the moment was the only thing that stood in the way is broken down, and the result is the crime is committed.
Unfortunately, between the saving of lives of lowered vitality which has come with improvement in sanitation, and the effect of the over-strenuous life of our large cities, there are many more tottering intellects in our population than used to be the case. Any of these are likely to be affected unfavorably by the reading of the details of sensational crime, and unnatural crime seems to have a special attraction for them.
"Ripper" crimes and strangulations, and the violation of children are especially prone to be contagious. If one of them is committed anywhere in the world and the story of its hideous details flashed abroad, experience shows that it is almost sure to be imitated within a few days or a week. Sometimes the individuals who commit these crimes are not quite conscious of the acts they do. Psychic epilepsy is not a mere figment of the imagination of the legal expert at murder trials, but it is an awful specter that haunts the thoughts even of the conservative alienist.
Stevenson's "Jekyll and Hyde" is not entirely fiction, and is a wonderfully expressive symbol of what actually happens in life at times. The thought of certain forms of crime leads some men by an uncontrollable impulse into a loss of rational equilibrium, and hurries them to the commission of awful deeds, at which they themselves would be most horrified in their normal state, and of which sometimes they are utterly unconscious in their ordinary condition and even unmindful once the moment of impulse has past.
Of course it may be said that our newspapers cannot be published always with the thought of their abnormal readers in mind. Just in the same way it might be said that only those of lowered resistive vitality in the physical order are likely to contract contagious disease and that the rest of us must not be expected to submit to burdensome sanitary regulations for the sake of them.
As a matter of fact we submit placidly to our health departments because we know that if those of lower resistive vitality are attacked by disease in numbers, the epidemic gains such strength in its course that after a time the contagion is sufficient to bring down even the strong and the healthy.
The possibility of something of the same kind in the moral order must not be forgotten. At the present time we are permitting every possible incitement to crime to find its way into print. The very fact that most of the criminals escape only adds to the subtle temptation contained in these detailed descriptions. Undoubtedly our sensational newspapers must be held responsible for no small influence in these periodic epidemics of foulest crime that break over our communities.
If legal regulation cannot be secured to prevent their criminal suggestions and connivance, at least the honest effort of every decent man must be aroused to prevent as far as possible the evil they are doing.
If every man in the community who objects to sensational newspapers were from today to refuse to have anything to do with them, to discourage advertising in them, to use his personal influence against them, we would have the beginning of a movement that, felt in the pockets of proprietors, would do more to reform newspapers than all the legal regulations that could be concocted. Now is the accepted time.
while attempting to prove that 'unnatural crime' is caused by an unrecognized 'psychic contagion' comparable to a 'contagious disease'.
Yikes.
Best regards, Archaic
>The Independent, 1907:
The Contagion of Unnatural Crime
A Wave of hideous crime has swept over New York City in the past month that has given a thrill of horror to the country.
When the first reports appeared people were apt to dismiss the thought of the horrors with the reflection that it was the work of unbalanced minds, and that while it was sad that it should be so, and supremely lamentable for the sake of the victim, yet that these things need not be taken too seriously or as indicative of depths of depravity in human nature.
Such a reflection is entirely justified from certain standpoints. When in the course of days after the first report succeeding crimes of similar nature found their way before the public, the thought aroused was likely to be that somehow sufficient care was not being exercised by people with regard to the putting under surveillance of individuals of lowered mentality, whose irresponsibility was more or less recognized, yet whose evil tendencies had been allowed to culminate in the horrible events recorded.
Such reflections palliate for the moment the awfulness of the crimes in as far as they might be concluded to be evidence of human depravity, yet the explanation is not oversatisfying to the ordinary mind, and one wonders what is to come eventually out of conditions that are capable of evolving such criminals in the numbers at present noted.
In the usual figurative language of the newspaper reporter such a carnival of crime is sometimes spoken of as an epidemic. Commonly we are not accustomed to think of the word epidemic in this case as employed in any serious sense as indicating the possible contagiousness of such crimes, and the whole question of psychic contagion as a rule is dismissed by people with the thought that the term is highly metaphoric and not to be taken literally.
It seems possible that in this a grave error is being committed, and that the absolute epidemicity or contagiousness of crime especially in its unnatural forms, must be taken as something to be seriously considered in the hope that thus some added mode of prophylaxis against the awful evil may be secured. Any remedial measure, even tho its promise may be but insecure or, at least, not clear to all, can scarcely fail to be eagerly grasped under the present appalling conditions.
It is almost incomprehensible now that for so many hundreds of years intelligent men saw the ravages of real contagious disease without recognizing that it was spread by the contact of individual with individual, and that the disease might be prevented by segregation. Old-time thinkers could not bring themselves to the thought that disease might be so easily prevented. It is scarcely more than a couple of hundred years, however, since even such diseases as smallpox, which are so manifestly contagious, were acknowledged to be anything more than manifestations of particular phases of natural disturbances of the atmosphere. Men would not believe in contagion.
We are prone to laugh, or at least to think very little of our forbears of two or three centuries ago for their failure to recognize this contagiousness and consequent failure to appreciate the possibilities of disease prevention. Is it not possible that we will be laughed at with quite as good reason by the generations of the next century, because we have neglected the influence of psychic contagion?
There is no doubt now that when minds of lower resistive vitality are brought in contact with the details of certain unnatural crimes these seem to constitute an almost irresistible temptation to commit them. It is very probable that in such minds thoughts of these crimes have occurred before, but have been shrunk from with horror. When the news of one having been actually committed reaches them, however, this natural abhorrence that for the moment was the only thing that stood in the way is broken down, and the result is the crime is committed.
Unfortunately, between the saving of lives of lowered vitality which has come with improvement in sanitation, and the effect of the over-strenuous life of our large cities, there are many more tottering intellects in our population than used to be the case. Any of these are likely to be affected unfavorably by the reading of the details of sensational crime, and unnatural crime seems to have a special attraction for them.
"Ripper" crimes and strangulations, and the violation of children are especially prone to be contagious. If one of them is committed anywhere in the world and the story of its hideous details flashed abroad, experience shows that it is almost sure to be imitated within a few days or a week. Sometimes the individuals who commit these crimes are not quite conscious of the acts they do. Psychic epilepsy is not a mere figment of the imagination of the legal expert at murder trials, but it is an awful specter that haunts the thoughts even of the conservative alienist.
Stevenson's "Jekyll and Hyde" is not entirely fiction, and is a wonderfully expressive symbol of what actually happens in life at times. The thought of certain forms of crime leads some men by an uncontrollable impulse into a loss of rational equilibrium, and hurries them to the commission of awful deeds, at which they themselves would be most horrified in their normal state, and of which sometimes they are utterly unconscious in their ordinary condition and even unmindful once the moment of impulse has past.
Of course it may be said that our newspapers cannot be published always with the thought of their abnormal readers in mind. Just in the same way it might be said that only those of lowered resistive vitality in the physical order are likely to contract contagious disease and that the rest of us must not be expected to submit to burdensome sanitary regulations for the sake of them.
As a matter of fact we submit placidly to our health departments because we know that if those of lower resistive vitality are attacked by disease in numbers, the epidemic gains such strength in its course that after a time the contagion is sufficient to bring down even the strong and the healthy.
The possibility of something of the same kind in the moral order must not be forgotten. At the present time we are permitting every possible incitement to crime to find its way into print. The very fact that most of the criminals escape only adds to the subtle temptation contained in these detailed descriptions. Undoubtedly our sensational newspapers must be held responsible for no small influence in these periodic epidemics of foulest crime that break over our communities.
If legal regulation cannot be secured to prevent their criminal suggestions and connivance, at least the honest effort of every decent man must be aroused to prevent as far as possible the evil they are doing.
If every man in the community who objects to sensational newspapers were from today to refuse to have anything to do with them, to discourage advertising in them, to use his personal influence against them, we would have the beginning of a movement that, felt in the pockets of proprietors, would do more to reform newspapers than all the legal regulations that could be concocted. Now is the accepted time.