Pathology of Lying, Accusation, and Swindling: A Study in Forensic PsychologyHealy, William
Science
Pathology of Lying, Accusation, and Swindling: A Study in Forensic Psychology
Healy, William
Criminal psychology; Swindlers and swindling
Just at this time a wealthy eastern girl, Agnes W., was missing
from her home, and the police everywhere were on the lookout for
her. A detective who was ordered to visit the boarding club
showed a picture of Agnes W. to the matron, who instantly
discerned a likeness to Inez and informed him of her recent
arrival. Inez was questioned, but could or would give no
satisfactory response concerning her own home. She maintained
she was just 17 and had come to Chicago to make her own way in
the world. After some account of herself, the details of which
were somewhat contradictory, it was inferred that she might be
Agnes W. She vehemently denied it, but being the same age and
some likeness being discerned, the questioning was continued.
Various matters of Agnes W.'s antecedents were gone into and
after a time Inez burst out with, ``Well, if you must have it so,
I am Agnes W.'' The girl was thereupon taken in charge by the
police authorities, and she herself registered several times as
Agnes W. After the family of the latter had been communicated
with, however, it was ascertained that Inez was not the lost
heiress.
She now said that anyhow she really was a runaway girl. She had
left her adopted parents because they were cruel and immoral. It
was her unhappy brooding over her own affairs that led her to lie
about being the other girl. She insisted she was sorry for the
many lies she had told various officers, but felt, after all,
they were to blame because their obvious desire to have her tell
that she was Agnes W. led her on. They deceived her first
because they misrepresented themselves and did not say they were
police officials. Nevertheless, she makes much of how she hates
her false position, being registered under a false name and
figuring as a deceiver.
The significant points in the long story of Inez, as told to us
in the days of our first acquaintance with her, are worth giving.
(At this period she was with us thoroughly consistent; at all
times she has appeared self-possessed and coherent.) Inez states
she is 17 and has just come from a town in Tennessee where she
has been living for a couple of years with some people by the
name of B. who adopted her. At first they were very good to her
and she loved them dearly. She was quite unsophisticated when
she went to them and did not realize then that they were not good
people. She met them at an employment agency in St. Louis where
she had gone after leaving the Smiths, the people who had brought
her up. At that time the B.'s appeared fairly well-to-do, but
Mr. B. had been running up debts that later carried him into
bankruptcy. Inez was sick and exhausted now from having worked
so hard for them. She finally ran away from that town because
the B.'s wanted to go elsewhere, leaving her in a compromising
position with a young man who rented their house. She first
tried boarding in two places, however, before she ventured to go.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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