Anthropology tells us that there was a time when women were only won by blows, force and robbery; and it is quite possible that the relation between love and pain is, to some extent at least, as asserted by Schäfer, atavistic. The pleasure, indeed necessity, of battle, murder and rape, in the animal world, makes it extremely probable that sadistic outbreaks such as the terrible Whitechapel outrages, Lom-broso's case of the man, Philippe, who, arrested for strangling prostitutes, after intercourse with them, said, "I am fond of women, but it's sport to choke them afterwards,"8 and many others, of similar character, are only lingering remnants of a primitive law. However that be, there is scarcely a doubt that many, if not all, of the modern lust-murders of children are of sadic origin.

The "Menesclou Case"

The Menesclou case is fairly typical of these. "Menesclou was arrested on a charge of abducting a four-year-old girl from her parents' residence; and, when taken into custody, the forearm of the child was found in his pocket. The head and entrails, in a half-burned condition, were discovered in the stove, but the genitals of the girl could not be found, being probably secreted and used by him for sexual purposea." "Thesecircumstances, as well as the finding of a lewd poem in his pocket, left no doubt that he had violated the child, and then murdered her."1

Alton's Case

Another, that of the clerk Alton, is distinctly sadistic. He was a professed violator and murderer of little girls, luring them into thickets, and vacant buildings; and, on his arrest, entries like the following were found in his note-book: "Killed a young girl today; it was fine and hot."* "Jack the Ripper," of Whitechapel fame; Holmes, who was executed in Philadelphia in 1896, convicted of the murder of nearly twenty women, and Johann Hoch, the Chicago Bluebeard, hanged in Feb., 1906, for more than an equal number of female murders, furnish remarkable instances of the same sexual perversion.

Verzeni's Case

The confession of the pellagrous vampire, Verzem, is interesting as affording an example of sadistic anthropopagy. "I had an unspeakable delight in strangling women," he remarks, "experiencing during the act erections, and intense sexual pleasure. It was a pleasure even to smell female clothing. The feeling of pleasure while strangling them was much greater than that which I felt when masturbating. I took great delight in drinking their blood, and in pulling the pins out of the hair of my victims. My mother first came to suspect me from noticing the spots of semen on my shirt, after each murder. I never touched the genitals of the women. It satisfied me sexually to just seize them by the neck and suck their blood. During the strangling, I pressed myself against the entire body, but did not think of one part more than another."

He further states that he came to his perverse condition entirely independently of outside influences, his first experience of sexual pleasure coming from the wringing of chickens' necks.

That active sexuality is not at the bottom of all outrages, however, is well shown by the case of the Spaniard, Gmyo, who, while physically impotent, still continued his horrible deeds, strangling no fewer than six women in ten years. He covered his tracks with such care that, for the above period, he remained undetected, choking his victims, who were usually prostitutes, and tearing out their kidneys and intestines through the vagina.1

Tarnowsky tells of a physician who, while ordinarily capable of normal intercourse, found that, when excited with wine, he was compelled to prick the woman's buttocks, and see blood, before he could have ejaculation, or obtain satiety of his lust; and Demme records the ease of a man who was led from masturbation by, and sodomy upon, little girls, to lust-murder by the haunting thought of how pleasant it would be to stab a young and pretty girl m the region of the genitals, while having intercourse with her, and see the blood running from the knife.3