“They think me a desperado! Me! the companion of
poets, philosophers, artists, and musicians, a desperado! You will smile
at this--no, I think you will feel for the man, educated and reared as a
gentleman; now the mate of vulgar ruffians and country bumpkins.” At
Hobart Town on two occasions he endeavoured to remove by poison persons
who had excited his animosity. He is described at this time by one who
knew him well as “a man with a massive head, in which the animal
propensities were largely developed. His eyes were deeply set in his head;
he had a square solid jaw; he wore his hair long, stooped somewhat, and
had a snake-like expression which was at once repulsive and fascinating.
He rarely looked you in the face. His conversation and manner were winning
in the extreme; he was never intemperate, but nevertheless of grossly
sensual habits, and an opium-eater. As to moral character, he was a man of
the very lowest stamp. He seemed to be possessed by an ingrained malignity
of disposition which kept him constantly on the very confines of murder,
and he took a perverse pleasure in traducing persons who had befriended
him. He was a marked man in Hobart Town--dreaded, disliked, and shunned
by everybody. His sole living companion was a cat, for which he evinced an
extraordinary affection.” He died of apoplexy in 1852, at the age of
fifty-eight.[6] Wainewright presents to us a perfect picture of the
instinctive criminal in his most highly developed shape, fortunately a
rare phenomenon. It is this instinctive propensity to crime which is
sometimes called “moral insanity.” This is, however, by no means a happy
phrase, since it leads to much fruitless disputation. It is wiser at
present to apply to such an individual the more simple term, _instinctive
criminal_.[7] There is, however, distinct interest in noting that at one
period of his life Wainewright was on the verge of insanity, if not, as is
more likely, actually insane; it is extremely probable that he never
recovered from the effects of that illness. It may well be that if we
possessed a full knowledge of every instinctive criminal we should always
be able to put our hands on some definite organically morbid spot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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