“My name is Joseph Kürper and I was born at H. in the Palatinate on June 14, 1849. I was an illegitimate child and I spent my early years with my mother. When I was four years old, she went to service and I, thrown on my own resources, was forced to beg for broken victuals from door to door. Sometimes I was driven away with hard words or the dogs were set on me. I cannot remember ever having owned a pair of shoes, and as a child I had no bed to sleep in. I suffered all kinds of hardships. When the time came for me to go to school, my troubles increased. As I was dressed in evil smelling rags and tatters, I was kept apart, treated like a leper and an outcast, and if I played truant I was cruelly beaten. Nevertheless, I managed to evade instruction almost entirely and did not learn much more than the alphabet. My life was that of a poor waif forsaken by God and man. “At first I bore no ill-will to the well-to-do, and I had no quarrel with those who had treated me so harshly. Gradually, however, I realised my grievance against society and began to wage war on it by acts of pilfering, the first of which I committed in the house of a small farmer where my mother was in service. Tormented by hunger, I got in through a window and stole a loaf of bread and a few kreutzers. This was my first theft and it had bad results for me, for, when taxed with it, I confessed and was cruelly flogged by the farmer. Out of revenge I killed one of his fowls every day. Presently my mother again gave birth to an illegitimate child, a girl, and when the little thing was just able to toddle, she sent us out to beg in company, preferring this mode of support to that of working herself. We were beaten if we returned empty-handed to our hovel, so I became an expert thief in order to avoid the stick. My mother applauded me and my success was my ruin.