It is true only 11 per cent. of these
offences were of a serious nature--the remainder being more or less
trivial, but, even after taking this circumstance into consideration,
the unwelcome fact remains that Scotch women commit a higher
percentage of crimes in proportion to men than the female population
of any other country in Europe. The proportion of English female
offenders to male is not half so high; it was only 17 per cent. in
1888, and is showing a tendency to decrease, being as high as 20 per
cent. for the twenty years ended 1876. The proportion of female
offenders in Scotland to the total criminal population is moving in an
opposite direction. The late Professor Leone Levi, in a paper read
before the Statistical Society in 1880, stated that Scotch women
formed 27 per cent. of the persons tried before the criminal courts;
they now form 37 per cent., a most alarming rate of increase.

[27] According to prison statistics of the Greek Government for
1889, out of a total prison population of 5,023 only 50 were
women. See _Revista de Discipline Carcerarie_, Nov. 30th, 1890,
page 667.

It hardly admits of doubt that the high ratio of female crime in
Scotland is to be attributed to the social status of women. In no
other country of Europe do women perform so much heavy manual work;
working in the fields and factories along with men; depending little
upon men for their subsistence; in all economic matters leading what
is called a more emancipated life than women do elsewhere; in short,
resembling man in their social activities, they also resemble him in
criminal proclivities. Scotch criminal statistics are thus a striking
confirmation of the general law revealed by the study of criminal
statistics as a whole; namely, that the more women are driven to enter
upon the economic struggle for life the more criminal they will
become. This is not a very consoling outlook for the future of
society. It is not consoling, for the simple reason that the whole
drift of opinion at the present time is in the direction of opening
out industrial and public life to women to the utmost extent possible.
In so far as public opinion is favouring the growth of female
political leagues and other female organisations of a distinctly
militant character, it is undoubtedly tending on the whole to lower
the moral nature of women. The combative attitude required to be
maintained by all members of such organisations is injurious to