The Love Affair of George Vincent Parker

[The cases dealt with in this series of studies of criminal psychology
are taken from the actual history of crime, though occasionally names
have been changed where their retention might cause pain to surviving
relatives.]

THE student of criminal annals will find upon classifying his cases that
the two causes which are the most likely to incite a human being to the
crime of murder are the lust of money and the black resentment of a
disappointed love. Of these the latter are both rarer and more
interesting, for they are subtler in their inception and deeper in their
psychology. The mind can find no possible sympathy with the brutal greed
and selfishness which weighs a purse against a life; but there is
something more spiritual in the case of the man who is driven by jealousy
and misery to a temporary madness of violence. To use the language of
science it is the passionate as distinguished from the instinctive
criminal type. The two classes of crime may be punished by the same
severity, but we feel that they are not equally sordid, and that none of
us is capable of saying how he might act if his affections and his
self-respect were suddenly and cruelly outraged. Even when we indorse the
verdict it is still possible to feel some shred of pity for the criminal.
His offence has not been the result of a self-interested and cold-blooded
plotting, but it has been the consequence--however monstrous and
disproportionate--of a cause for which others were responsible. As an
example of such a crime I would recite the circumstances connected with
George Vincent Parker, making some alteration in the names of persons and
of places wherever there is a possibility that pain might be inflicted by
their disclosure.

Nearly forty years ago there lived in one of our Midland cities a certain
Mr. Parker, who did a considerable business as a commission agent. He was
an excellent man of affairs, and during those progressive years which
intervened between the Crimean and the American wars his fortune
increased rapidly.

He built himself a villa in a pleasant suburb outside the town, and being
blessed with a charming and sympathetic wife there was every prospect
that the evening of his days would be spent in happiness. The only
trouble which he had to contend with was his inability to understand the
character of his only son, or to determine what plans he should make for
his future.