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Whilst holding this position she had the honour of receiving, among those entrusted to her charge, another Gabrielle, murderess, Gabrielle Bompard, the history of whose crime is next to be related. Eyraud and Bompard "L'Affaire Gouffe" by Dr. Lacassagne, Lyons, 1891, and Goron "L'Amour Criminel" may be consulted.
Nevertheless, it is true in a certain sense, as Lacassagne says, that "every society has the criminals it deserves;" that is, every society could, by taking proper means, practically eliminate crime and the criminal class. This would have to be done, however, by something more radical than a mere reorganization of human society in an industrial way.
Lacassagne, the eminent medical jurist of the Lyons School of Medicine. He was able to pronounce with certainty that the remains were those of the bailiff, Gouffe. An injury to the right ankle, a weakness of the right leg, the absence of a particular tooth and other admitted peculiarities in Gouffe's physical conformation, were present in the corpse, placing its identity beyond question.
He quotes Quetelet and Lacassagne, the former looking upon society as the preparer of crime, and the criminals as instruments that execute them. The most "prosperous" industrial period makes it impossible for the worker to earn enough to keep up health and vigor. And as prosperity is, at best, an imaginary condition, thousands of people are constantly added to the host of the unemployed.
He had travelled much, especially in London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, where he had studied the amazing growth abroad of the new criminal science. Already I knew something, by hearsay, of the men he had seen, Gross, Lacassagne, Reiss, and the now immortal Bertillon.
The true cause for the increase of the numbers of the criminal is to be found in sociological and not in biological truth. As Lacassagne says: "Society has the criminals that it deserves." Dr MacDonald, W.S. Expert in Criminology, writes to the author, "As to tubo-ligature, or the like, it would not be supported by scientists."
This second post-mortem revealed furthermore an injury to the thyroid cartilage of the larynx that had been inflicted beyond any doubt whatever, declared Dr. Lacassagne, before death. There was little reason to doubt that Gouffe had been the victim of murder by strangulation. But by whom had the crime been committed? It was now the end of November.
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