Female criminality in the context of criminal anthropology. Foreword to the article by P. N. Tarnovskaya “Criminal anthropology and women’s criminality”

Introduction

Female crime is a variform phenomenon. Under the influence of various objective and subjective reasons, it attracts the attention of various segments of the population, and in the context of media activity – a significant proportion of researchers. One crime committed by a woman, if it is high profile (famous crimes) and stirs up society, is enough to dramatically raise interest in studying this phenomenon. The fashion, fueled by the media, to research women’s crime is becoming attractive to people who want not so much to reduce this type of crime as to gain personal popularity. However, among the researchers of women’s crime there were also those for whom such work was a means of self-expression or, as it is now customary to say, personal or professional growth, in which personal popularity was not the main goal. Among such specialists in the late 19^th – early 20^th century was our compatriot, a representative of a medical dynasty, a female doctor, Praskovya Nikolaevna Tarnovskaya. Her contribution to the development of criminology and the study of female criminality (Rafter, 2009. Pp. 178–182), as well as its individual types (Kowalski, 2021. Pp. 183–184) and some forms of deviance (Prechet et al., 2015. Pp. 61–73), is recognized as significant even today (Espinoza & Resendiz, 2025; White, 2020. Pp. 7–23; Huff-Corzine & Toohy, 2019. Pp. 18–21; Huff-Corzine & Toohy, 2023; Kamola, 2023. Pp. 59–74; Pignata, 2023. Pp. 85–99). A truly international recognition of P. N. Tarnovskaya as one of the leading researchers of female criminality occurred after the publication of her book entitled Étude anthropométrique sur les prostituées et les voleuses in 1889 by Paris Leerosnier and Bade Publishing House. The book was devoted to the anthropological measurement of Russian female criminals and prostitutes (Tarnowsky, 1889). The work was highly appreciated by representatives of various scientific schools not only in Europe, but also in North and South America; the results of her studies were published in the most prestigious European journals in the French, German, Italian and English languages. Hence, the book was republished by the same publisher in a significant amount of copies in 1892 (Tarnowsky, 1892). P. N. Tarnovskaya’s popularity increased dramatically after she made a series of reports on criminal anthropology and women’s crime at scientific events in Russia and abroad. The most significant was the report on female criminality in Russia Criminalite de la femme, made at the Fourth Geneva Congress of Criminal Anthropology (1896). This event was mentioned by both Russian specialists who participated in it (Serbskiy, 1896. Pp. 443–446; Rozenbakh, 1896. Pp. 177–179; Zakrevskiy, 1897. Pp. 67, 91–92; Nikolskiy, 1898. Pp. 33–34) and foreign criminologists (Marie, 1896. Pp. 176–178; Mais, 1896. P. 383; The Fourth international ..., 1896. Pp. 618–619; Nache, 1897. Pp. 85–88; Räcke, 1897. Pp. 390–394), including a young but already popular Italian criminologist, a disciple of C. Lombroso, a lawyer Rudolf Laschi (Laschi, 1896. Pp. 634–647). A summary of this report by P. N. Tarnovskaya was included in the Congress collection of works (Tarnowsky, 1897. Pp. 231–237). Numerous reviews of the 4^th Congress of Criminal Anthropology and a small volume of the report abstracts allowed Praskovya Nikolaevna to prepare extensive works on women’s crime and express some opinions on criminal anthropology as an independent field of scientific knowledge. Her first extensive work uniting the problems of criminal anthropology and female criminality was an article, published in 1897 in the seventh issue of Severny Vestnik Journal, entitled “Criminal anthropology and women’s criminality” (Tarnovskaya, 1897. Pp. 8–22). It is the significance of that work for subsequent research by P. N. Tarnovskaya and criminological science that we will discuss further.

The process and results of evaluating the work’s significance

P. N. Tarnovskaya’s article “Criminal anthropology and women’s criminality”, published a year after her report at the 4^thCongress of Criminal Anthropology in Geneva, structurally consists of two parts. The first part reveals the author’s judgments about criminal anthropology as a field of scientific knowledge and the methodological foundation for the study of a criminal’s personality; the second part reflects the results of her own empirical anthropological research of 160 Russian female murderers.

In the first part of her work, P. N. Tarnovskaya briefly examines the evolution of the Italian (Turin) school of criminal anthropology and the transformation of the views of its founder, Cesare Lombroso. The author briefly describes the contents of four international congresses of criminal anthropology held from 1885 to 1896, including critical remarks by opponents of this school. Among the opponents of the school, who actively argued against naming the scientific field “criminal anthropology”, she mentioned Paul Topinard, Secretary General of the Anthropological Society of Paris (in which she was a member), professor of the anthropological school, Doctor of Medicine, editor of the Revue d'Anthropologie journal. Also, she included in the article the opinion of Doctor of Medicine Leonce-Pierre Manouvrier, professor of the Anthropological School of Paris and later Secretary General of the Anthropological Society of Paris – an overt opponent of the Italian school of criminal anthropology, who claimed it to be ineffective.

In the first part of the article, P. N. Tarnovskaya clearly formulates her vision of the place of criminal anthropology (which studies the personality of a criminal) as a new independent branch of biology, and calls Italian professor Cesare Lombroso the founder of this branch. According to P. N. Tarnovskaya, with whom many criminologists agreed, C. Lombroso, using numerous diverse scientific studies (psychology, anatomy, phrenology), united separate data about criminals into one field – criminal anthropology. Describing the achievements of criminal anthropology, P. N. Tarnovskaya noted that in the process of its development, studies appeared indicating the influence of heredity on crime and drunkenness. In addition, during the development of criminal anthropology, the social conditions of crime were discovered and investigated: poverty, unemployment, neglected childhood, lack of upbringing, and the presence of a “bad example” (imitation). At the end of the first section, she outlines the objective and tasks of criminal anthropology: to study, from the physical and moral side, the criminals who commit crimes due to their weakened organization and mental abnormalities, both congenital and acquired; to separate the sick from the healthy; to treat the sick, to correct the healthy.

The humanistic concept of criminal anthropology presented by P. N. Tarnovskaya as a biological field in the study of criminals largely coincided with the results of her scientific research and the views of a significant number of European criminologists (Kurella, 1893; Bär, 1893). This is confirmed by the fact that shortly after her death, large studies by criminal anthropologists appeared under the name of “criminal biology” (Lenz, 1925). Currently, within the framework of world criminological science, a field is developing that studies the role of biological factors in the etiology of criminal behavior, called “biocriminology” (Walby & Carrier, 2010. Pp. 261–285).

The second part of the work was devoted to the study of female criminality as a form of illegal behavior. The author noted that, according to research by foreign and Russian scientists, the ratios of male and female criminality are different – the criminal activity of men is significantly higher. Indeed, this had been noted earlier in the works of reputable foreign and Russian experts (Näcke, 1894. Pp. 8–9; Lombroso & Ferrero, 1894. Pp. 24–26; Fojnickij, 1893. Pp. 3; Tarnovskiy, 1893. Pp. 33–64). At the same time, the author noted that women commit more crimes under the influence of various emotions (jealousy, revenge, anger, love, marital discord, sexual aversion) than crimes motivated by self-interest. After analyzing information about convicted female murderers and thieves, P. N. Tarnovskaya concluded that women were more likely to commit crimes in the family circle, including mariticide. The author referred to information about the reasons for the criminal behavior of Russian mariticide poisoners, provided in a report of February 20, 1893, by a lawyer and later Head of the General Authority of the Russian Prison – Sergei Stepanovich Khrulev (Khrulev, 1893). The report was made at a joint meeting of the criminal section of the St. Petersburg Law Society and the St. Petersburg Society of Psychiatrists. P. N. Tarnovskaya named the main causes of mariticide: a) physiological aversion to husbands; b) beatings from husbands; c) drunkenness of husbands; d) inability to leave the husband; e) blunting of the moral sense (self-love, selfishness).

In the presented work by P. N. Tarnovskaya, of special value is her criminological grouping of female murderers into six categories:

a) murderers out of self-interest;

b) murderers out of passion;

c) murderers motivated by marital discord and sexual aversion;

d) murderers motivated by a partial blunting of the moral sense;

e) accidental murderers;

f) mentally ill murderers.

Moreover, for the first time in Russian legal science, medicine, and criminal anthropology, P. N. Tarnovskaya divided outwardly homogenous crimes – infanticides – into two categories based on the motivation of criminal behavior:

1) infanticide caused by emotional movements: shame, fear, despair, that is, referring to group b) as murders motivated by passion.

2) infanticide due to self-interest: inability to find a working place with an infant, unwillingness to care for the baby and fear of unnecessary trouble and expense, as well as cases of repeated infanticide, were classified in group d), i.e. murders motivated by a partial blunting of the moral sense.

This classification of infanticide has proved demanded in criminological doctrine and is now widely used in research.

To illustrate her conclusions and suggestions, P. N. Tarnovskaya turned to materials from anthropological measurements of convicted female murderers, content analysis of convicts’ personal files, her own sociological surveys and interviews with female murderers in transit prisons, pre-trial detention facilities (stockades) before sending them for execution to places of imprisonment in Siberia and to Sakhalin.

Later, the results of the criminological and anthropological study of female murderers from the article “Criminal anthropology and women’s criminality” were used with some changes and additions in P. N. Tarnovskaya’s monograph “Female murderers”, which was published in St. Petersburg in 1902 (Tarnovskaya, 1902), then revised and republished in the French language in Paris. This translated monograph also used the results mentioned in the article that we now present (Tarnowsky, 1908). Our comparison of this article with P. N. Tarnovskaya’s 1902 and 1908 monographic studies on female murderers (Bikeev and Kabanov, 2025. Pp. 65–84) indicates that the article became an integral part of those works, albeit in a slightly modified form. The main changes in the content of the monographs were caused primarily by editorial corrections, as well as by the peculiarities of translating the Russian-language scientific text into French.

Brief conclusions on the work presented

The presented work by P. N. Tarnovskaya “Criminal anthropology and women’s criminality” is a full-fledged empirical comprehensive criminological and anthropological scientific research. It is composite in structure, which includes two interrelated parts: the author’s ideas about the dialectic of the criminal anthropology development, its main directions and place in the system of scientific knowledge – a branch of biology; the results of her empirical studies of convicted Russian female murderers and their criminological and anthropological classification based on the motivation of criminal behavior.

The presented work by P. N. Tarnovskaya is of great scientific value: it allows us to evaluate the process of preparation, processing and reprocessing, obtaining and interpreting empirical data on female murderers during the author’s monographic study “Female murderers”, which received well-deserved recognition as one of the best works on the criminology of female crime of the 20^th century. Apparently, the influence of this work on modern research in this field persists and even receives a new impetus in the process of forming historical criminology.

APPENDIX

P. Tarnovskaya

Criminal anthropology and criminality of women

Translated into the modern Russian language by A. G. Khoroshavina,
translated into English by E. N. Belyaeva

Criminal anthropology is still a young science, but every year it develops more and more and acquires “civic rights”.

One may rightly assume that the father of criminal anthropology is Cesare Lombroso¹, a professor from Turin. Since the 70s², he attracted the attention of doctors and lawyers from all over the world by his works about a criminal person (l’uomo delinquente). As a highly talented innovator creating a school, C. Lombroso has ardent opponents who fiercely criticize his sometimes too rapid conclusions and generalizations. He also has hardworking students and supporters who develop the science he created, which, during a quarter of a century, has been continuously enriched by himself with new fruitful thoughts and scientific discoveries. His victories are not easy for him – he has been and is being sharply criticized by opponents, who carefully emphasize his mistakes and weaknesses, consisting mainly in too hasty generalizations caused by his intelligence, as well as by extraordinary vivacity and brightness of thought. However, C. Lombroso’s highly humane doctrine about the need to study a criminal person more deeply, not contenting with an abstract consideration of the crime they committed, has already penetrated so much into the minds that the 3^rd Congress of Anthropologists (Brussels, 1892) discussed the need to introduce compulsory courses of criminal anthropology at law and medical faculties of universities.

This formulation of the question involuntarily makes us look back and recall in the most general terms the main provisions put forward at the first two Congresses on criminal anthropology.

As is known, the 1^st Congress took place in Rome in the autumn of 1886. It became a triumph of C. Lombroso’s teachings. At that Congress, Professor P. Topinard³ for the first time raised an objection to the term “criminal anthropology”. However, the Congress participants noted that as long as a criminal person exists, the science that considers them its area would have a legitimate reason to flourish and be called “criminal anthropology”.

The reason I am dwelling on this issue is that since 1885, P. Topinard’s attempt to speak out against this term has been repeated many times (and always unsuccessfully) by opponents of this new branch of biology.

At the Congress in Rome, C. Lombroso passionately and convincingly argued, based on numerous autopsies of criminals, that in most cases their brain volume is reduced, and the cerebellum volume is often increased in comparison with the norm. At the same time, C. Lombroso observed an insufficient or abnormal distribution of cerebral gyri and furrows in criminals, which abounded mainly in the right hemisphere. At the autopsy of criminals, C. Lombroso also often observed various pathological processes in their brains: the inflamed condition of the membranes, their fusion, softening of the brain matter, changes in the skull bones, and also often encountered diseases of the heart, vasomotor system, liver, etc. Studies of living criminals convinced C. Lombroso that they have no fewer anatomical signs of degeneration compared to deviations from the norm in the mental sphere. Based on the totality of these data, C. Lombroso fervently defended his theory of a criminal person, and he won at that Congress.

His opponents took revenge at the II Congress of Criminal Anthropology (Paris, 1889). C. Lombroso’s theories about atavism, a criminal person, as well as the idea of parallels between a criminal, an epileptic and a morally insane person were subjected to fierce and not always impartial criticism. One of the most strident C. Lombroso’s opponents was a French scientist, Professor L. P. Manouvrier⁴, who attempted to prove that criminals, from an anatomical point of view, have no distinguishing features in comparison with honest people and that crime is much more closely related to sociology than to physiology.

As always happens with an overly passionate attitude to the matter, at the Paris Congress, C. Lombroso’s teachings were subjected to too harsh attacks from his opponents, sometimes tinged with mockery, which, of course, is incompatible with the impartiality inherent in science. This was partly the reason why not only C. Lombroso himself, but also all his students refrained from participating in the 3^rd Congress (Brussels, 1892), which did not include representatives of the Italian school at all.

At the Brussels Congress, however, the scientific prestige of C. Lombroso was somewhat restored, despite the report by L. P. Manouvrier, who again opposed C. Lombroso’s theory. L. P. Manouvrier argued that it is useless to observe and study criminals in prisons, since only those criminals who are caught are in prisons, while the most of the cleverest fraudsters are at liberty. In addition, L. P. Manouvrier noted, among educated people, there are many who enjoy not only freedom, but even a certain honor, engaging in various kinds of immoral activities: stock trading, creating joint-stock companies seeking easy enrichment at the expense of gullible victims, etc. That is why it is difficult to establish criteria for who should be considered a criminal. Despite L. P. Manouvrier’s paradoxical report, the Brussels Congress once again expressed the desire to introduce compulsory teaching of criminal anthropology at medical and law faculties.

After the “civil rights” of C. Lombroso’s anthropology were restored, many of his students and followers took part in the 4^th Congress on Criminal Anthropology (Geneva, 1896). Their participation was brilliant, as the main interest of the Geneva Congress focused around the ideas of C. Lombroso and his talented student Professor E. Ferry⁵.

1. Lombroso’s propensity to generalize isolated facts, his desire to consider proven the issues that still require scientific confirmation, have been discussed a lot and often; therefore, I consider it superfluous to dwell on this issue any more. I will just take the liberty to mention two points before concluding the conversation about the certainly interesting personality of C. Lombroso. Despite all his shortcomings, one should not forget about his enormous scientific contribution, which consists in creating a new branch of biology – criminal anthropology. He proved the need for a comprehensive study of a criminal; before him, only the crime had been considered, while the personality of the law violator often completely receded into the background, and the form prevailed over the content.
2. Lombroso is often blamed for largely changing his original scientific views on the identity of a criminal, on atavism, and on the exceptional role of epilepsy in crime. However, I may note that it is easier to persist in one’s mistakes than to frankly admit them; in the field of thought, only those who do nothing do not error.

Of course, long before C. Lombroso, we knew that there were lunatics among criminals; and before him, there were many works and indications of various kinds of anomalies and defects. For example, the physical signs of degeneration were described in the 50s⁶ by a famous French psychiatrist B. A. Morel⁷. The famous English physician J. C. Prichard⁸ wrote about “moral insanity”. Around the same time, P. Despine⁹ published his volumous work, Psychologie Naturelle¹⁰. There were also others. But C. Lombroso managed to bring into a system all those isolated works on psychiatry, fragmentary observations and remarks on anatomy, phrenology, physical signs of degeneration and other anomalies caused by adverse hereditary influences – all those deviations from the normal development. He managed to apply that system to a criminal and prove that among the criminals there were not only the insane, obvious to everyone, but also people with numerous shades of morbid conditions, with undoubted deviations in the mental sphere; as a result, these people, committing violations of the law, were less responsible for their actions than other healthy people were.

Further works on criminal anthropology demonstrated the undoubted importance of unfavorable heredity, which is the soil on which many crimes grow and develop. The hereditary transmission of insanity, epilepsy, hysteria and various other nervous diseases, which has long been established by psychiatrists, has found wide application in the etiology of many crimes. Over the past 20 years, the extremely harmful effects of parental drunkenness on the descending generation have also been established. A number of brilliant works by colleagues, including works on alcoholism by V. Magnan¹¹, as well as the fundamental works by P. M. Legrain¹² (a student of V. Magnan), present carefully collected statistical data on the harmful effects of drunkenness on the descendants of alcoholics.

Children of alcoholic parents suffer the English disease¹³, bone softening, developmental arrest, anemia; they are extremely often and easily subjected to seizures and often die from the so-called “convulsions” – eclampsia¹⁴. According to recent studies by P. M. Legrain, the mortality rate of children of alcoholics is huge. Those children who survive are often weakened organisms, with poor nutrition, with extremely easy nervous excitability, with a certain kind of impulsivity – the desire to instantly fulfill a desire that has appeared, and a complete inability to counteract their selfish aspirations with reason and willpower. Such people suffer from a weakening of their restraining centers and, in their quest to satisfy their selfish urges, do not hesitate to remove by violence the obstacles standing between them and their desires. They are the ones who become criminals.

Thanks to further works on criminal anthropology, a large number of causes that increase crime have been identified. Among them, in addition to hereditary and acquired diseases, various social conditions play a significant role: poverty, unemployment, neglected childhood, lack of upbringing, and, finally, a bad example, which often pushes poorly balanced people to violate the laws.

This brief list of reasons influencing crime is sufficient to quite clearly see that criminal anthropology is far from claiming that all criminals are necessarily sick, insane or epileptic, as it is often reproached by its opponents. The very goal and task of criminal anthropology is, by comprehensively studying the criminal, to separate those persons who, due to their incorrect, weakened organization and mental abnormalities (congenital or acquired), commit crimes as irresponsible people – by studying them not only from the physical, but also from the moral side; to separate the sick from the healthy (treating the sick and putting the healthy people in proper working conditions – this is the only condition that gives them the opportunity to improve and become useful members of society again).

However, let us leave these general considerations aside and move on to the issue of female criminality. All researchers agree that female criminality is significantly smaller in numbers than male one. A quarter of a century ago, at the very beginning of the 70s¹⁵, a Belgian scientist L.A.J. Quételet¹⁶, based on very extensive statistical data, deduced the ratio of female and male crime, designating it as 1:5. This ratio is still recognized as correct. A remarkable work of a famous criminologist I. Ya. Fojnickij¹⁷ “A Criminal Woman” mentions that “in all cultured countries, women’s participation in crimes is significantly weaker than men’s, ranging between one tenth (Russia) and one fifth (Prussia, England) and giving an average of one sixth (Italy, France, Austria)”. However, one should not conclude from this that women are five times more virtuous than men. Undoubtedly, the smaller number of crimes committed by women is largely balanced by prostitution, which is the “younger sister” of crimes, and partly by the fact that in many cases, according to I. Ya. Fojnickij’s fair remark, a woman remains a hidden participant in the crime. Even if she does not take a direct part in it, she is often its instigator. There is no doubt that many crimes are committed by men at a woman’s indirect instigation or to please a woman. In such cases, the woman enjoys the fruits of the crime. Of course, everyone remembers not only the cases when men embezzled funds entrusted to them in banking offices, at the cash desks of various commercial institutions, as well as cases of arson, poisoning and murders in which women were the instigators.

While fully admitting the existence of a certain percentage of crimes in which a woman remained a hidden participant or the initiator, we must recognize as an irrefutable fact the lower level of criminal activity among women compared to men. Undoubtedly, one of the reasons for this phenomenon is the lower physical strength of a woman. Let us note in passing that according to the misdemeanor statistics, the number of women committing petty thefts is no less than the number of men. Another reason is that the activities of a large number of women take place in a domestic environment, where there are incomparably fewer external collisions and impressions than in the activities of men who work mainly outside the home and, therefore, have incomparably more reasons for accidental collisions, quarrels and fights. Thirdly, and finally, alcoholism is significantly less common among women than among men. Therefore, women’s crime does not include a huge percentage of accidental homicides committed by men under the influence of intoxication. Perhaps because of the peculiarities of her physical organization, as well as due to the age-old peculiar upbringing of women, their emotionality and sensitivity are much more developed than the rationality prevailing in men. A man has a greater ability to extrapolate, think faster and generalize. Everyone knows how easily women succumb to both generous, noble impulses and outbursts of anger. With easier excitability, women show less development of inhibitory centers, which is why they more easily succumb to impulsive motives and find it more difficult to struggle with themselves in all those cases when their own well-being collides with the worldly interests of others. This is especially noticeable in crimes against person. In women’s criminal offenses, the number of crimes committed under the influence of various emotions is significantly higher than the number of crimes motivated by self-interest (for example, burglaries, robberies, counterfeiting of banknotes, etc.). At the Geneva Congress (1896), I touched upon this issue in my report and provided the following data: out of 160 of my observations on female murderers, in 70 cases the murders occurred under the influence of various emotional or passionate motives – jealousy, revenge, anger, love, marital discord, sexual aversion; and only in 32 cases murder it was caused by selfish goals. A woman did not always have the initiative; her role was often limited to aiding and abetting a murder planned by her husband or, more often, her lover. On the contrary, in crimes against person committed under the influence of emotional or passionate motives, a woman not only initiates the murder, but in most cases commits it with her own hands and rarely has accomplices. A woman very often resorts to taking life by poisoning, as if instinctively aware of her lesser physical strength, to which in such cases she opposes cunning and deception – these are the usual weapons of the enslaved. This method of taking life is especially common among representatives of the peasant population, from among whom I mainly took research objects.

Here, I will outline the main points of my Geneva report, then highlight some of the everyday features of peasant marriages that I think affect female crime, which, however, I did not consider appropriate to expand on in Geneva:

1) Female crime differs from male crime as much as the female character in general, the female habitus¹⁸ differs from the male one, but in general, the motives are the same.

2) There is, however, one crime that is unique to each gender: fetal etching for women; rape for men.

3) All other crimes are committed equally by men and women, but, as already mentioned, their numbers are different for both sexes.

Among women’s criminal offenses, the first place is occupied by family crimes, i.e. those directed against one of the family members – of these, mariticide is most often committed in the peasant environment. The reason for this probably lies in some of the living conditions of a peasant family. We are well aware of how marriages are arranged among peasants: as soon as a girl reaches the age of 16, her parents find her a groom and marry her off, often against her will and consent. Entering her husband’s family, she becomes dependent on her mother-in-law, who in most cases is lavish of work and is always critical of a new family member. It goes without saying that a young woman is in complete obedience not only to her husband, but also to her mother-in-law. It also happens that a 16-year-old girl gets married before puberty. Menstruation, as is known, is established in rural girls somewhat later than in urban ones. Urban women start menstruating between the ages of 14 and 16, while rural women between the ages of 16 and 18. Thus, a significant percentage of peasant girls get married before puberty, which they have to go through after they begin to perform marital duties, which is completely contrary to the laws of nature. In such cases, a teenage wife experiences nothing but physical suffering when living with her husband. The more her husband forces her, the more she is burdened by his caresses, which she cannot share. Quarrels begin, the husband reproaches his wife that she does not love him; her disgust turns into hatred – she wants to get out of this painful situation at all costs. If the conflict is not resolved in any way, the wife begins to think more and more about how to get rid of these caresses, which turn into violence, in some cases reaching the thought of poisoning her husband, which sometimes results in execution of the thought. In his report to the Law Society several years ago, S. S. Khrulev¹⁹ perfectly and in detail analyzed this reason for the poisoning of husbands by very young teenage wives and supported it with numerous examples from his previous judicial practice.

Out of my 160 observations of female murderers, I have documented 18 such cases of murders and attempted murders of husbands due to the physiological disgust experienced by teenage wives. In one such case, poisoning attempts failed; with the onset of menstruation, the couple reconciled, the wife got pregnant, and the husband followed her into exile.

Another reason for the mariticide is the husband’s mistreatment, beatings and drunkenness, while it is completely impossible for the wife to leave him. In cases of constant family quarrels, the wife’s quarrelsome character, or the husband’s infatuation with another woman, a man always has the opportunity to leave his disgusted wife and get together with another woman. Finally, he can simply go to earn money in a provincial city or the capital. A wife cannot do anything like that. This clearly shows the advantages that men have appropriated to themselves: a wife cannot leave her husband’s house in case of his disagreement – the husband has the right to return her by resorting to the help of the police. On the other hand, divorce is associated with too many difficulties and, one might say, is not practiced at all among rural residents. No matter how difficult a woman’s family life may be, she must inevitably endure it patiently. In desperate cases, she sometimes resorts to the extreme measure – suicide, but more often – to mariticide and mainly by poisoning.

There is one more significant reason that motivates many wives to commit this crime. This urge is not one of the emotional movements of the soul – it is not dependent on love, jealousy, revenge, or an outburst of anger – all these states of our psychological sphere, which, although they do not justify crimes, still make it understandable to some extent. There is no impulse, no infatuation, no passion here – on the contrary, everything is thought out in advance and precisely calculated, every chance is provided to refute any suspicions that may arise, establish one’s alibi at the time of the victim’s death, and in every possible way prove one’s noninvolvement in the atrocity. Here, the predominant and inspiring feeling is selfishness (egoism) in its highest manifestation, forcing a woman to boldly step over any obstacles standing in her way in order to improve her living conditions, to eliminate them at all costs by violence, even by sacrificing someone else’s life. Fortunately for humanity, it is completely incomprehensible and completely impossible for most people to accept the point of view of a person who commits murder for personal gain and to improve their own living conditions. It is unthinkable for each of us to eliminate by murder or poisoning a person whose death will benefit us or improve our social or property status. Each of us will prefer to continue to endure unpleasant, painful living conditions that block the path to material well-being, but not for a minute will think about the possibility of changing all this by killing – an act that is organically repugnant to the consciousness of every normal, balanced person.

Women who kill their husbands or relatives in order to improve their, property or social, living conditions are distinguished by one feature: a partial blunting of moral sense, lack of altruistic motives and ethical restrictions. I said “partial” blunting of the moral sense, since some of these women, killing their husbands in order to acquire property or social benefits, sometimes scant, showed at the same time love for their children, for whom they were willing to endure various restrictions and make sacrifices. Consequently, they showed altruistic motives towards children.

Assumingly, the term “blunting of the moral sense” is very extensive, it contains many shades and degrees, and, of course, could be a theme of a separate work. I will not expand on this further, but I will allow myself to reinforce what has been said above with an example – the story of a criminal offense where a woman, to some extent well-off, completely free (her husband gave her the full opportunity to live wherever she pleased and completely dispose of herself), decided to commit mariticide by poisoning her husband in order to legitimize, through an official marriage, her relationship with a wealthy man, who, for his part, did not require this at all.

In June 188*, Evgenia Aleksandrovna Sh., the owner of a fashion store in the city of V., located on one of the distant outskirts of our country, arrived in the city of Kh. Fifteen years had passed since Evgenia left the city of Kh., leaving her husband, an urban commoner Sergei Fedorovich Sh., because of family differences. She had been married to him for only 2 years. After returning to her homeland after such a long absence, Evgenia stayed at her father’s house and immediately began looking for her husband, to whom she offered to give her a formal divorce, promising him 50 rubles for it. Evgenia’s husband agreed to this. After a few days, Eugenia invited her husband to her house, telling him through a messenger that he should obligatorily come to her in the evening on business. When her husband arrived, she pretended to be unwell and asked him to go to the pharmacy to buy Epsom salt²⁰, which he did. After receiving the medicine, Evgenia brought vodka, a teacup and small glasses; in the cup and a glass, she stirred salt for herself and her stepmother, and offered her husband to drink this “medicine”, too. The husband “foolishly” agreed. Then Evgenia took a shot glass from somewhere, put Epsom salt into it, forced Sergei to pour vodka and drink it. As soon as he swallowed a shot glass of this mixture, his mouth burned, his throat constricted and he felt sick. In the twilight, Sergei could not see if there was anything else at the bottom of the shot glass. Eugenia first laid him on her bed, and then, hiring a cab for him, sent him home, where he returned with clear signs of acute poisoning. Sergey Sh. left his house completely healthy, saying that he was going to visit his wife to sign papers on the divorce. A few hours later, he returned completely sick, fell down in the yard and began to cry for help; he had severe vomiting, “the insides were burning”. He explained to his kin that, in all likelihood, his wife had poisoned him. Sergei’s kin began to give him milk, but as his condition worsened, they took him to the hospital, where poisoning was confirmed. After suffering for several days, Sergei died. Upon autopsy, mercury poisoning was found. The morning after the poisoning, Evgenia was arrested. She was found to have money receipts and correspondence with her partner in the city of V., to whom she pretended to be a widow and went to her hometown under the pretext of having to take documents for marriage.

I studied the personality of Evgenia Sh. in detail since the very moment of her marriage at a very young age. Her husband, a weak-willed and immoral man, married Evgenia and continued his former relationship with his older brother’s wife. He did it almost in front of his young wife. Evgenia’s natural desire was to leave her husband, who continued his relationship with his sister-in-law after she had twice forgiven him and reconciled with him. Both brothers and their wives lived in the same house. The eldest wife, an arrogant and domineering woman, treated young Eugenia cruelly and generously endowed her with ridicule, suppressing her with her superiority in life experience. In the end, Evgenia asked her husband to visit her family, but instead secretly left with an engineer’s family for Vladivostok, hired as a housemaid and dressmaker by them. Evgenia’s future turned out well: her husband did not bother her, leaving her to live wherever she wanted. A good-looking, lively, energetic woman soon became the best milliner²¹, had many orders, and lived happily and comfortably. She gained admirers, from whom she eventually chose a partner and decided to marry him. After carefully considering her plan of action, Evgenia went to her hometown, pretended to reconcile with her husband, convinced him to agree to a divorce, and then took his life a few days later, hoping to explain his death by the consequences of drunkenness, which he often indulged in. For Eugenia, her husband’s death was not the only option that wives sometimes choose in the cases of beatings, abuse, and drunkenness of their husbands that I mentioned earlier. Sergey Sh. did not interfere with her life, giving her complete freedom for many years. Evgenia poisoned her husband in order to improve her own life both financially and in terms of vanity.

Investigating the life of this woman, we can say with full confidence that she committed a crime, actually guided solely by selfish motives. She very cheaply estimated the life of a person who stood in the way of achieving great worldly benefits for her. In criminal practice, the so-called “family crimes” are committed out of such motives, caused by a partial blunting of the moral sense, or rather, a peculiar assessment of crimes incompatible with the usual manifestations of conscience.

At the Geneva Congress, I expressed ideas about the need to delve deeper into the motives that cause each particular crime. This can be achieved only with a more detailed, comprehensive study of the convicts’ personalities.

As is known, crimes in criminal law are divided, among other things, into three main groups:

1) crimes against person;

2) family crimes;

3) crimes against property (property crimes).

Each of these main groups is divided into numerous subgroups.

The first two main groups refer to all types of attacks on person and life, intentional and unintentional murders, negligent homicide, infanticide, bodily injury, and others.

The third group refers to all types of theft: light theft, burglary, robberies, and more.

In accordance with these qualifications of crimes, the degree of punishment is also assigned, which for persons who have committed, for example, burglary, will be heavier than for those who have committed simple theft. Therefore, a person who is motivated by hunger and breaks a window in a bakery to steal a loaf commits burglary, and, according to the letter of the law, should be punished more severely than a professional pickpocket who steals watches and wallets in a crowd day after day.

Crimes against person resulting in deprivation of life or attempted murder are punishable, according to our laws, by exile to hard labor. There are several degrees of punishment, a greater or lesser number of years of hard labor, lifelong exile, and the like. The motivations for committing murder can be different: murder for a self-interest and infanticide committed by a mother under the influence of shame and despair are very different in motives. The gradual poisoning of a person who insured his life, in order to receive the insurance premium, of course, has little to do with murder committed under the influence of a sudden outburst of anger, jealousy, or revenge. No matter how different the motives that caused these crimes are, they result in the death of a person, and according to our laws, all are equally punished by exile to hard labor for a certain number of years.

There is no doubt that the psychological factors under the influence of which a person can become a murderer are very numerous and different. The Italian School of Criminal Anthropology has attempted to classify crimes based on the motives that caused them. This attempt did not interest lawyers; it was countered by the difficulty of determining the actual motive in many crimes. However, any classification is a conditional thing, only to a certain extent facilitating the review of phenomena and meeting the needs of the actual state of a given science. No classification can immediately gain a complete form, and only life will reveal those amendments and changes that can shorten it or, conversely, supplement, improve, and make it more accurate.

I believe that the attempt to classify crimes based on their underlying motives was condemned too soon and deserved a little more attention: in most cases, a thorough investigation of the crime reveals its motives at the very beginning. Unfortunately, they are currently not receiving enough attention; it is considered to be most important to establish the crime ritual or the manner in which it was committed: how did the criminal kill, with what weapon, how many blows were made, what is the size and shape of the wound, in what position was the body found, what was the victim wearing? If we are talking about poisoning, then it is established first with what kind of poison, with what kind of food or drink? Of course, such an investigation of the external side of the crime is also necessary and helps to explain it, but it also happens that in the pursuit of these smallest details, a thread slips away that could lead to the actual, valid motive for the crime. Its meaning remains an unsolved mystery, although the exterior of the crime is precisely defined to the smallest detail.

A closer acquaintance with the suspect’s personality and its comprehensive examination not only from the outside, but also of their inner life, their past, in many difficult cases, would make it easier to find out the motives for committing the crime. I believe that only such a thorough acquaintance with the motivating causes underlying crimes would help to reduce the disparity in punishment for crimes caused by different motives.

Visiting prisons, stockades, and the central Moscow transit prison, where hundreds of women convicted of murder are held before being sent to Sakhalin and Siberia, I used to have long conversations with them during anthropometric and functional studies. I noticed the fact that the punishment for murders motivated by completely different motives was the same.

The accumulated material that I had at my disposal, I divided, according to the motives, into the following groups:

a) murderers out of self-interest;

b) murderers out of passion;

c) murderers motivated by marital discord and sexual aversion;

d) murderers motivated by a partial blunting of the moral sense;

e) accidental murderers;

f) mentally ill murderers.

Homicides that are homogeneous from the outside have to be classified into different groups. For example, I divided infanticides into 2 groups:

1) infanticide caused by emotional movements: shame, fear, despair, that is, brought under group b as murders motivated by passion.

2) infanticide for personal gain: the inability to find a working place with an infant, unwillingness to care for the baby and fear of unnecessary trouble and expense, as well as cases of repeated infanticide, are classified in group d), i.e. murders motivated by a partial blunting of the moral sense.

Among the women sentenced to hard labor, I rarely met accidental murderers – there were only five of them. There were eight women who committed murder or attempted murder under the influence of mental disorders.

I ended my speech at the Geneva Congress by remarking that it the opponents of criminal anthropology should not make such categorical demands on it, which it currently cannot yet answer. There is no specific type of a criminal, since crime is a complex phenomenon consisting of many negative factors in a person’s life, including unfavorable heredity, poverty, bad example, parental drunkenness, neglected childhood and lack of any upbringing that teaches a person from an early age to restrain selfish instincts and passionate urges.

Criminal anthropology also does not deserve the reproach that, by overly caring about the correction of criminals, it forgets about the needs of honest and working people who have more rights to the care of society. By developing techniques for a comprehensive study of a criminal, not only from an anatomical point of view, but also from the mental and moral sides, anthropology is getting closer and closer to the causes underlying most crimes. So to speak, it becomes similar to a doctor who needs to find out the cause of a disease before treating it based on its symptoms alone.

By popularizing its theories and spreading them in society, anthropology teaches how to deal with unfavorable heredity and reduce its harm through proper upbringing. It explains the danger of marriages between close relatives, between people suffering from nervous diseases, syphilis, consumption²²; it warns against alcoholism and other excesses leading to the weakening and degeneration of the descending generation, which under such unfavorable conditions is born with insufficient resistance for the life struggle. By studying a criminal in all details and delving into the causes of crime, anthropology works for the benefit of not only criminals, but also of all mankind, as it points to preventive measures that contribute to the recovery, education and improvement of the moral level of the masses. In this way, anthropology strives to prevent and reduce the number of crimes. We should not forget that criminal anthropology does not at all claim that all criminals are sick and crazy, but it encourages and teaches us to separate the sick from the healthy, to distinguish between intermediate forms that are on the border between illness and health and give rise to abnormal, poorly balanced people who more often than others violate the laws.

One also should not accuse criminal anthropology of treating criminals cruelly. On the contrary, it rebels against the doctrine of retribution, which contradicts the true spirit of Christianity, and teaches a humane attitude towards a criminal – fraternal assistance to the fallen, support for the unbalanced and healing of the sick.

Author's contribution

The author confirms sole responsibility for all aspects of the work.

Вклад автора

Автор подтверждает, что полностью отвечает за все аспекты представленной работы.

Conflict of Interest / Конфликт интересов

The author is a member of the Editorial Board of the Russian Journal of Economics and Law. The article has been reviewed on the usual terms / Автор является членом редколлегии журнала Russian Journal of Economics and Law. Статья прошла рецензирование на общих основаниях