"Moral Imbecile"

When New York State passed its Baumes Laws under which four-time felons are automatically imprisoned for life, some States copied this severe code, while others watched critically its operation as a penological experiment. Only executive clemency could save convicts from the machine-like precision of these criminal statutes. Last week other States saw New York send its first woman to jail for life under their stiff provisions. She was Ruth St. Clair, 30, kleptomaniac. Her fourth offense was stealing from Manhattan's John Wanamaker store $121 worth of dresses and baby ware for which she had no need.

Because of her youth, her good looks, her sharp wit, because of the relative triviality of her four larcenies and the fact that she had committed no crime of violence, many officials and citizens declared the penalty was unjustly harsh. Public pity welled up for her.

Just before she went to prison widespread sympathy for her was dampened by a 500-page report on her life history submitted to Governor Roosevelt by Chairman John C. Maher of the New York Parole Commission.

The Past. The daughter of a Russian Jew buttonhole maker in Manhattan's lower East Side slums, Ruth Laeger, sexually precocious at 8, had been raped by a 55-year old grocer when she was 11. At 14 her mother took her into Children's Court for her continued relations with this man. She spent a year in a reformatory, left with a very bad behavior record. She worked as a department store salesgirl, was arrested for stealing merchandise, received a suspended sentence. Two months later she repeated her offense, went to prison. Released on parole, she consorted with thieves, burglars, drug addicts.

Periodically she went to prison for shoplifting. Between her first arrest in 1914 and her last in 1930, she had spent eight years in jail. Between sentences she married Jaffray Davis, drug addict, who gave her the narcotic habit. Other men kept her living in style while she worked in a burlesque chorus. When in prison, she would send well-written logical letters to her benefactors, deploring her lack of gratitude, begging for "another chance." Once free, she immediately relapsed to her old habits.

Officials who examined her found that she was an incorrigible from the start, a "moral imbecile" and "definitely anti-social," but too intelligent for an institution for the feebleminded.

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