A History of Female Criminality
A Visit to an Exhibition
by Susanne Querfurth
Back the 19th century the scientific theory on criminals in general was as simple as it was faulty. Physical features allowed one to determine quite clearly the character of a person. So from measuring skull circumference, length of nose and shape of ears common determinators were evolved, enabling to label someone a thief, a whore or a potential murderer. Finally anthropology developed a highly stylistic and racist set of „criminal types“, making it possible to judge and condemn individuals on first sight. A few decades later, the Nazis really went to town with ideas like that.
To ask with Professor Higgins: “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” Interestingly, along similar lines of “scientific” reasoning as above, based on their physical features women were thought to be prone to committing certain misdeeds or crimes rather than others. On the one hand they were by nature determined for motherhood and therefore at the same time capable of and victimized by much more intense and raw emotion than men. In other words: deeply loving but a bit unstable and not to be trusted. Also, to be able to give birth they would clearly feel less physical pain than men. Any physical discomfort of theirs could therefore be disregarded as hysterics. One scientist compared women to “big children”, with more “bad traits” than men.
According to his theory, women were rather leaning to crimes like prostitution than to more violent acts.
A similar bias quite likely led to a spectacular court ruling in the case of Lizzie Borden, defendant in an American axe murder trial, says the crime psychologist Lydia Benecke. One argument in Borden’s acquittal was that such a crime would not have been in her nature as a woman. Futile but interesting it might be to speculate about the outcome of the ruling, had the means of the murder been poison – widely regarded as a “female” weapon.
A different case of a woman who committed atrocious crimes is that of the Hungarian Countess Elisabeth Báthory in the 17th century. She tortured and killed a number of young women, aided by her staff of equally cruel and loyal servants. A century after her death a male cleric invented a completely fictitious tale about the Countess having once punished a servant girl whereby a droplet of blood fell on her hand. Because she afterwards perceived the spot as rejuvenated she started to kill young women and bathed in their blood to stay young. This story about the “Vampire Countess” is still being recounted today although it is nothing more than a fairytale.
In both cases the gender of the perpetrator influenced the perception of their guilt. Either it was unthinkable that a woman could have committed an atrocious murder, or she had to be demonized to explain the deed. And in both cases modern psychology can well explain the psychopathological personality traits that might have led to the respective murders, very much regardless of gender.
Throughout the exhibition I learned that gender is the main factor influencing society’s judgment of deviant behaviour of women.
During the Nazi rule in Germany we find a rising criminalization of political actions and opinions. One means of repression was to let more and more perpetrations fall under the death penalty.
Women had emancipated from the role model of the late 19th century and the German Empire during and after WW I. National Socialism aimed to reverse this development – independent and self assured women did not fit the Nazi ideal of womanhood.
This led to criminalization and in many cases even euthanasia of those who did not fit within the narrow definition of “normal”. Among others the exhibition portraits two artists who were committed to mental
institutions and concentration camps.
Painter Eva Schulze-Knabe was found guilty of supporting both communists and the resistance and was incarcerated, while her husband was sentenced to death. She managed to continue drawing self portraits on scraps of paper, thus working as an artist throughout the ordeal and giving insights into the brutal reality of her prison. Her artist friend Hildegard Seemann-Wechler suffered from a mental illness and was committed to an institution, sterilized and finally killed in 1940.
That the husband, Herr Schulze, was executed while his wife went to prison aligns with a then common tendency to judge the deeds of women not independently but rather as actions of loyalty to or influenced by their spouses than deeds of their own volition. Overall, men tended to be prosecuted for criminal offences, women for behaviour against social norms which often also covered aspects of mental illness or sexual behaviour.
Prostitution as a crime makes up another substantial part of the exhibition. The wide spread opinion in the 19th and early 20th century was divided between two theories that were logically not completely compatible. It was understood that social problems like poverty, broken families or alcoholism made prostitution the only means of income available to many women. Then again, it was seen as a decision, an act of free will to succumb to those pressures or temptations and prostitute oneself. And girls, being the weaker gender and suffering worse under the bad social circumstances than boys did, would therefore not be educated or morally strong enough to make better decisions for their lives. Their weakness lead them into crime.
What about the other person involved in the deal, the punter, one might ask? He was rather seen as being seduced and not as a party in a criminal act. Unsurprisingly, double standards are applied here as well. We can finally suggest an answer to Professor Higgins’ question: because society won’t allow her to be.
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Criminal Women. Eine Geschichte der weiblichen Kriminalität. Museum LA8 Baden-Baden, May 5, 2023 –February 29, 2024Volume accompanying the exhibition: Jadwiga Kamola, Sabine Becker, Ksenija Chochkova Giese (Hg.):Criminal Women. Eine Geschichte der weiblichen Kriminalität, Verbrecher Verlag Berlin 2023C. Lombroso und C. Ferrero: Das Weib als Verbrecherin und Prostituierte, Hamburg 1894.
Germany. Her short story about an incident on a commuter train won a prize at a Crime Festival although it leaves open whether a crime has been committed at all. Susanne loves to read any genre but especially adores the great female crime writers. She works in HR and lives with her husband and a tortie cat in a wine region often dubbed the German Tuscany.
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