Kleptomania

Extract

The injudicious defence of two lady thieves on the plea that they were subject to that form of mental unsoundness to which Mathey and Marc have given the sounding title of kleptomania, has attracted public attention to this form of mental disease, and has given rise to a considerable amount of written and spoken nonsense upon the subject. Even “our facetious contemporary” has had his jests and his caricatures thereupon, and in the slang of the day a burglar has become a kleptomaniac, and a prison a kleptomaniac hospital. Alienist physicians have of course received their full share of sarcastic remarks, as theorisers not over-wise nor over-useful to society, who would willingly provide for every crime a decent veil, by referring it to some strange form of mental disease. Now there is such a tiling as theft which is the result of mental disease; and also, let us boldly avow our conviction, though we write within the precincts of a madhouse, that there is such a thing as theft which is simply a crime, an attack made by the selfishness of one individual upon the rights of another. Let us even take the broader ground, and avow our profound conviction that insanity and crime are distinct and separate entities, wide as the poles asunder in all instances where their distinctive characters are well marked; although undoubtedly there are instances which are divided by partitions as thin as those which Dryden places between wit and madness, or rather instances in which the qualities of crime and insanity are so intimately combined that the task of analysing the nature of the act becomes no easy one either to jurist or physician.