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
``One of my sisters is adopted, but my father does not know it.
She ain't real. It was this way. When my pa was out west for a
year ma asked me to look in the papers for a baby and I looked
and found an advertisement about one. Ma said she must not be
redheaded because that ain't like the family. We went and got
her and ma went to bed for nine days and pretended it was her
baby. She took a shawl and gave the nurse $25 and made out
adoption papers. She took me with her. It was a month old. She
made me go and tell my aunt I had a little sister. My aunt said
it looked kind of big for 3 days old, but ma said she had been
keeping it in an incubator. She had padded herself out before,
and pretended it was her own child. Pa came home when it was six
months old and he loved the baby just like his own. I ain't
jealous, but it makes me sick to hear such lies.''
This alleged fact, reiterated to us and testified to in the
court, was in itself a source of the whole case being farther
followed up. The nurse was found who took care of Edna's
``mother'' during her confinement and it was found that Edna's
whole story was quite untrue. It was evidently an elaborate
fabrication representing the facts as they might have been about
Edna herself. The only part of it that was true was that one of
the younger children had been for a time in an incubator.
``Since I was 10 years old I have known about that. I have known
I was not her child. She said something that sounded queer to me
once when I ran away. It made me think she was not my mother.
``Why do I tell lies? I got started at it when I was small. She
used to make me tell lies to my father. I began to steal when I
was about 8 years old. My little sister has started to take
things already. She is only 4. I was trying to break her and
mother said, `Let her alone.'
``She's had about nine different servants. She never can keep
any. She used to make me forge letters. She made me sign a
girl's name to a receipt for wages which the girl never received.
The girl had no case against her because she had the receipts.
The poor girl lost it.
``I am going to tell the truth. There's going to be lots of
things come out. I am going to tell the judge I lied when I told
him I did not steal the things. Why did I lie? Well, she gave
me just one look and I knew what she would do to me when I got
home. Everything I told you about my father is the truth. Where
else would I get that disease? I was never allowed to go out
with boys.''
At another time when we inquired what bothered or worried her
more than anything else we obtained an account of her sex
repressions. Of course there would always be difficulty in
knowing just how true the details were but probably she gave us
the main factors in her mental life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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