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Page 21
[18] DISTRIBUTION OF SUICIDES IN LONDON BY MONTHS OF EQUAL
LENGTH PER 10,000, 1865-84:--
January, 732. July, 905.
February, 714. August, 891.
March, 840. September, 705.
April, 933. October, 772.
May, 1003. November, 726.
June, 1022. December, 697.
Dr. Ogle, vol. xlix., 117. _Statistical Society's Journal_.
The influence of temperature is, however, much less powerful on crime
than it is on suicide. It has the effect of raising by one third the
number of persons to whom life becomes an intolerable burden, but
according to the diagram in the Prison Commissioners' Reports the
highest increase in crime between summer and winter does not amount to
more than one twelfth. In other words, between six and eight per cent.
of the crime committed in this country in summer may with reasonable
certainty be attributed to the direct action of temperature. This is
a most important result and I should almost hesitate to state it if
it were supported by my investigations only. But this is far from
being the case. In an important paper contributed to the Revista di
Discipline Carcerarie for 1886, Dr. Marro, one of the most
distinguished students of crime in Italy, has arrived at similar
conclusions. He has shown that in the Italian prisons in the four
hottest months of the Italian summer--May, June, July and
August--there are also the greatest number of offences against prison
discipline. This is a result which coincides in every particular with
what has already been pointed out as holding good in English prisons,
and the attempts of Dr. Colajanni in the second volume of his work,
"La Sociologia Criminale," to explain it away are not by any means
successful. It is hardly possible to conceive a more suitable form of
test for estimating the effect of temperature on human action than the
one afforded by a comparison of the offences committed against prison
regulations at the different seasons of the year. Such a comparison
amply bears out the contention that the seasons are a factor which
must not be overlooked in all enquiries respecting the origin of
crime, and the best methods of dealing with it.
In what way does a rise in temperature act on the individual so as
to make him less capable of resisting the criminal impulse? This is
a question of some difficulty, deserving more attention from
physiologists than it has yet received. It is a satisfactorily
established conclusion that the higher temperature of the summer
months has a debilitating effect on the digestive functions; it is
also believed that these months have an enervating effect on the
system generally. In so far as the heat of summer produces disease, it
at the same time tends to produce crime. Persons suffering from any
kind of ailment or infirmity are far more liable to become criminals
than are healthy members of the community. The intimate connection
between disease and crime is a matter which must never be forgotten.
In the present instance, however, the closeness of this connection is
not sufficient to account for the growth of crime in summer. According
to the Registrar General's report for 1889 the death rate in the
twenty-eight large towns is less in the six months from June to
November than in the six months which follow. There is, therefore,
less disease at the very time when there is most crime. In the face of
this fact it cannot be contended that disease, generally, pushes the
population into criminal courses in summer.
But while this is so, it may yet be true that some special enfeeblement
(generated by the rise of temperature) which does not assume the acute
form usually implied in the name, disease has the effect of
stimulating impulses of a criminal character, or of weakening the
barrier which prevents these impulses from breaking out and carrying
all before them. It is a perfectly well-established fact that a high
temperature not only produces physical enfeeblement, but that it also
impairs the usual activity and energy of the brain. In other words,
a high temperature is invariably accompanied by a certain loss of
mental power. In most persons this loss is comparatively trifling, and
has hardly any perceptible effect on their mode of life and conduct;
in others, it assumes more serious proportions. In some who are
susceptible to cosmical influences, and for one reason or another are
already on the borderland of crime, the decrease of mental function
involved in a rise of temperature becomes a determining factor, and a
criminal act is the result. Through the agency of climate the mental
forces which are normally capable of holding the criminal instincts in
check, lose for a time their accustomed power, and it is whilst this
temporary loss endures that the person subject to it becomes most
liable to be plunged into disaster. It is in this manner, in my
belief, that temperature deleteriously operates upon human conduct.
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