Studies of French Criminals of the Nineteenth Century

by H. B. Irving

Overview

We agree that the root of all real crime is selfishness, indifference to the sufferings of others; insensibility to the feelings of surrounding life. And Mr. Irving gives us a glimpse of an ideally bad sample of humanity in his opening chapter. This interesting specimen was Lacenaire; a man of considerable capacity although apparently wanting in balance and application, for he tried his hand at several sorts of employment but stuck to none of them. And going through the other cases in the book we find much evidence of that subtle "something wrong" which might explain and may excuse so much. Campi, the double murderer, hides his head like an ostrich in the bedclothes to avoid arrest; Troppmann writes to the wife of one of his victims that he had given her husband the great sum of £20,000, which from a young man of his class was surely not a probable event. Euphrasie Mercier lived with two mad sisters and an insane brother-a truly ghastly household-for these she worked and strove and ultimately committed murder; who knows her responsibility? We cannot agree that there is to the English mind something "a little comic" about sentimental considerations of mother and birthplace, sanity, environment, temptation, and all the items that lead up, or down, to action. To hate is the luxury of the ignorant or the unimaginative; we may remember Cardinal Manning's thought that the worst criminal was once a little child.

-Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art, Vol. 92

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781663579713
Publisher:	Barnes & Noble Press
Publication date:	10/06/2020
Pages:	366
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.82(d)

About the Author

H. B. Irving (5 August 1870 – 17 October 1919), was a British stage actor, actor-manager, and author; the eldest son of Sir Henry Irving and his wife Florence (née O'Callaghan), and father of designer Laurence Irving and actress Elizabeth Irving. During World War I, Irving withdrew from the theatre and returned to the law, writing the study for which he is now most famous, "A Book of Remarkable Criminals," originally published in 1918, which examined the lives, motivations and crimes of some infamous murderers, "Life of Judge Jeffreys," "French Criminals of the 19th Century" and other papers on the subject. After spending twenty years of his life dedicated to the theatre, his greatest success came from being what it was intended he should be, a legal expert.

He was also a founding member of Our Society with Arthur Conan Doyle, Arthur Diosy, J.B. Atlay, and the Coroner Ingleby Oddie (among others). Our Society is the still flourishing "Murder" Club in London, where old crimes are discussed at regularly held dinners.