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Charles B. Goring, 1870—1919 
summit we know by the width of our prospect into all neighbouring spheres that 
we have attained it : 
" Qui veram habet ideam, .siiuul scit se veram habere ideani, nec de rei 
vei'itate potest dubitare." 
We ma_y now have to await that work for generations until another prison medical 
officer arises with Goring's scientific knowledge, discriminative sympathy and fine 
power of expression. Battling with a gaol epidemic of infiuenza, when he should 
himself have been in bed, Goi-ing fell an easy prey to pneumonia, which a strong 
will coupled with a spare and delicate frame cannot resist as their combination so 
often does many of Death's onsets. Goring died as he himself and his friends 
would have wished, doing his duty to the last at his post. His work was uncompleted 
as good men's work so often must be. He was studying at the time the influence 
of the war on the nature and frequency of crime— a subject on which much will no 
doid)t be said, but most probably with small scientific basis. How shall we estimate 
his work, now that he has left us We pass by the criticisms (^f men inside and 
outside the prison service, for they will leave neither in their own productions nor 
in their criticisms anything that will remain of permanent value to the new science 
of criminology as Goring outlined it ; those who have had like experience lack either 
his insight, or his logical mentality, or his power of expression. They were not 
trained in the same school, nor had they the penetralia mentis, or rather what 
" the Romans called ingeniuia," which through its very innateness carries mankind 
onward a step, assured, not doubtful or to be retraced. The contest between 
mediocrity and inspiration is as old as history and the creator, the poet, wins, if 
not in life, yet thereafter. The world has yet to realise that achievement in every 
field is the product of trained imagination alone. Truth in science as in art is not 
the product of mere computation or careful observation, but of these guided by 
fertility of imagination. The ci'eative mind has the potentiality of poet, artist 
and scientist within its grasp, and Goring's friends were never very certain in 
which category to place him. Perhaps the specification was as difficult and would 
be as unprofitable as it must ever be in the case of the Florentine, the master 
spirit of this type of mind. 
To the present writer fell the good fortune to be in close touch with Goring 
(and his keen co-worker, H. E. Soper) for that long period of two and a half years 
during which " The English Convict " was in process of creation. He observed 
Goring in times of difficulty when the intertwined skein would not unravel, and in 
times of achievement when the tangle loosened as by magic. He realised the 
quiet persistency with which Goring gi-appled with the most intricate problems 
and the gentle satisfaction he exhibited when assimilating and recording a new and 
striking point. When finally the great manuscript had gone to press, we who had 
been working alongside him at our own tasks knew one and all that while we were 
losing a cherished daily intimacy, we had still individually gained a life-long friend. 
We felt that had the world been rightly organised— which it ever fails to be — 
a post in our midst would have been found available for Charles Goring, for no 
