A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

exterminated, and that therefore he had nothing to live for. Emotionally, he was in a vacuum. Yet
this is clearly an unnatural state for any human being, particularly for one like Panzram. The
autobiography reveals that he has the makings of a ‘self-actualiser’. Lesser was surprised to find
that he had read most of the major works on prison reform - no doubt stimulated by Warden
Murphy; Panzram also read philosophy in jail, including Schopenhauer and Kant. (He seems to
have borrowed his pessimism from Schopenhauer.) Yet this man, whose self-esteem was so high
that he would allow himself to be tortured for days without giving way, had never achieved the
most basic levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs - for ‘security’ and for ‘belongingness’.
“In a sense, therefore, Lesser’s present of the dollar was the cruellest thing he could have done. It
testified that there was decency and kindness in the world. And this in turn meant that Panzram
might, if he had made the effort, have achieved some kind of fulfilment in life. The mechanics of
conversion demand that the sinner should make a full confession; and this is what Panzram
immediately proceeded to do. Yet with twenty murders on his conscience, many of them children,
he knew there could be no absolution. It was too late, far too late. He had thrown away his chances.
The implication of Abbott’s book is that people like himself and Panzram never had a chance from
the beginning. But is this true? Panzram had at least one chance, under Warden Murphy. Abbott
had at least one chance, when his book was accepted. Both threw them away. The real problem
seems to date from their original assumption that life had no intention of treating them fairly.
According to Panzram, he was cuffed and kicked as a child and came to hate his mother. ‘Before I
left [home] I looked around and figured that one of our neighbours who was rich and had a nice
home full of nice things, he had too much and I had too little.’ So he burgled the house and landed
in reform school. There again, he claims, ‘everything I seemed to do was wrong’, so he was
punished and struck back viciously. ‘Then I began to think that I would have my revenge... If I
couldn’t injure those who had injured me, then I would injure someone else.’ This weird logic of
revenge was already fully formed by the age of thirteen. And it was clearly based on self-pity, on
the notion that ‘the world’ had treated him badly. So instead of using his considerable intelligence
and willpower to achieve success - and in that age he might have become anything from a circus
stunt man to a movie star - he wasted himself in crimes of petty resentment.
Panzram also implies that he was in some way not to blame for his crimes - that if the tiger cub is
badly treated it can be expected to turn savage. There is an obvious element of truth in this; but it
manages to leave out of account the whole question of free choice: the decision ‘to be out of
control’ that seems common to violent criminals.
Panzram’s pattern of revolt is not unique; it can be seen in many criminals whose background and
upbringing were completely unlike his. A case in point is the English ‘acid bath murderer’ John
Haigh, executed in 1949 for six murders. A few years before this, Bernard Shaw and his secretary
Blanche Patch were lunching at the Onslow Court Hotel, where Miss Patch lived, and Haigh was at
the next table. A child sitting nearby dropped one of those toy bombs containing an explosive cap,
and Haigh leaned over and snarled: ‘If you do that again I’ll kill you.’ According to Miss Patch,
who told me this story in 1956, Shaw then commented that Haigh would end on the gallows. It
seems as if he had instinctively recognised the ‘decision to be out of control’ that is characteristic
of the violent criminal.
Yet in every other respect, Haigh and Panzram were as unlike as possible. Haigh was the son of
fond parents, of strong religious inclination; he was a brilliant musician who won a scholarship to a
grammar school and became a choirboy. He loved good clothes and fast cars, and in due course a