Proceeding from quantity to quality we find that although females commit much fewer crimes in proportion than males, the offences they do commit are frequently of a more serious nature than the crimes to which men are addicted.  According to the investigations of Guerry and Quetelet, women in France commit more crimes of infanticide, abortion, poisoning, and domestic theft than men.  They are addicted equally with men to the perpetration of parricide, and are more frequently convicted than men for the ill-treatment of children.  English criminal statistics also show that the proportion of women to men rises with the seriousness of the offence.  The proportion of women to men summarily proceeded against is 17 per cent., the proportion proceeded against for murder and attempts to murder is as high as 36 per cent.  Women are also more hardened criminals than men.  According to the statistics of English prisons, women who have been once convicted are much more likely to be reconvicted than men,[26] and the prison returns of Continental countries tell the same tale.

[26] In 1889-90 the recommitted males were 44.3 per cent. of the total number of males committed (exclusive of debtors and naval and military offenders); the recommitted females 65.8 per cent. of the total number of females committed exclusive of debtors.

The facts relating to female crime having been stated, it will now be our business to inquire why women, on the whole, commit fewer crimes than men.  The most obvious answer is that they are better morally.  The care and nurture of children has been their lot in life for untold centuries; the duties of maternity have perpetually kept alive a certain number of unselfish instincts; those instincts have become part and parcel of woman’s natural inheritance, and, as a result of possessing them to a larger extent than man, she is less disposed to crime.  It is very probable that there is an element of truth in the idea that the care of offspring has had a moralising effect upon women, and that this effect has acquired the power of a hereditary characteristic; at the same time, it must be remembered that other causes are also in operation which prevent women figuring as largely in criminal returns as men.

Among the most prominent of these causes is the want of physical power.  In all crimes requiring a certain amount of brute strength, such as burglary, robbery with violence, and so on, the proportion of women to men is small.  A woman very rarely possesses the animal force requisite for the perpetration of crimes accompanied with much personal violence.  But where the element of personal violence does not come conspicuously to the front the proportion of female criminals to male immediately rises, and in such crimes as poisoning, child murder, abortion, domestic theft, women are more criminally disposed than men.  Undoubtedly the lack of power has as much to do with keeping down female crime as the want of will.