550 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 



have to deal, namely, the punishment and treatment of habitual 

 criminals. This question is occvipyinf^j the attention of many 

 earnest and learned men outside of the judicial arena. One of the 

 most able efforts to solve the difficulty I have seen is the plan pro- 

 posed in the paper read by Dr. S. A. K. Strahan before the British 

 Association at Cardiff, in August, 1891. Dr. Strahan is apparently 

 well qualified to speak upon it. He is not only a doctor of 

 medicine ; he is also a barrister-at-law, and a member of several 

 learned societies. He therefore can and does treat the subject 

 both from its medical and legal aspect. The title of his paper is 

 " Instinctive Criminality : its* True Character and Rational Treat- 

 ment." Few will peruse it without a feeling of astonishment and 

 sadness — astonishment at the mass of facts gathered within so small 

 a compass, and the apparently irresistible scientific deductions to 

 be drawn from them — sadness at the thought that if these deduc- 

 tions are warranted, how many of our kind seem doomed to be 

 crimiiials. I do not wish to be imderstood as indorsing such con- 

 clusions ; I do not pretend to the ability to either refute or support 

 them. 



Dr. Strahan confines his remarks to the habitual, or, as he calls 

 him, the '^instinctive crimitial.^' He says the class referred to as 

 instinctive criminals does not include those Avho have become 

 criminal from passion, poverty, or temptation, or even from 

 example and education alone. It is composed solely of individuals 

 who take to anti- social ways by instinct or nature, and who murder 

 and steal, and lie and cheat, not. because they are driven to do so by 

 force of adverse circumstances, but because they are drawn to such 

 a course by an instinct which is born in them, and which is too 

 strong to be resisted by their weak volitional power had they the 

 desire lo resist, which they have not. He adds: — To this class 

 belong fully two-thirds of our whole criminal population, in- 

 cluding offenders of all grades, from the murderer to the petty 

 thief. He says that physically and mentally they are a degenerate 

 class, and quotes statistics of a startling character as to the 

 number of them that are insane, or become so, and on the 

 hereditary transmission of criminal instincts. His extracts from 

 the report laid before the House of Lords in June, 1891, show 

 that there are annually in the United Kingdom a quarter of a 

 million commitments, which are believed to represent only 145,000 

 individuals, viz., 112,000 men and 33,000 women. Of these 

 33,00ii women, 11,000, or 33 per cent., had ten imprisonments and 

 upwar(!s recorded against them; and of the 112,000 men, 16,250, 

 or 14'5 per cent., had suffered the like number of punishments. 

 Dealing with this report. Lord Herschel said : — " Whether the 

 punishment inflicted was regarded as a deterrent or as a ])reventive, 

 or for reformatory purpose, these figures showed that the existing 

 system had completely broken down, and was really a disastrous 

 failure." Dr. Strahan admits that upon the criminal from passion 



