Great True Crime Stories: Women

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Although many women have been found guilty of petty crime, among murderers and arch-criminals there are fewer women than men.

There may be several reasons for woman's comparative reluctance to dabble in violent crime, but it has often been said that, when she does so, her cruelty and viciousness rank with the very worst. Generally speaking a woman does not possess the physical strength to attempt murder other than by poison. Many of the women whose crimes are related in this book were poisoners, and in most cases it must be said that they displated astonishing calmness and callousness as they watched their victims die - often, indeed, prolonging their suffering over a period of months. Others have won their sex a reputation for performing the most unsavoury mutilations upon the corpses of their victims. This gave rise to the widely supported theory that the undetected murderer known as Jack the Ripper was none other than a woman.

Whereas petty criminals, those who thieve and defraud, are nearly always from the poorer classes, the women who have been accused of murder have often come of very good family. Generally a woman will murder for love - to rid herself of an unwanted husband or an unwanted lover. There are not many cases of another motive. But beyond this I doubt if any other generalisation can be made.

I have tried here to introduce crimes as varied as they are famous. Most of them have taken place within the last two hundred years, but I should not like this to be taken as an indication that our times are more criminal than any other.

The nature of crime is not fixed. The history of the world has shown many changes and variations, and our own ideas are of comparatively recent origin, so cannot be applied to deeds which, committed in another age and society, were neither considered nor chronicled as crimes. That such deeds were done there can be no doubt, but we lack the records of them.