but whose black hair was of truly remarkable length. She wore it
flowing down her shoulders and loins. Men often followed her in
the street to touch or kiss the hair. Others would accompany her
home and pay her for the mere pleasure of touching and kissing
the long black tresses. One, in consideration of a relatively
considerable sum, desired to pollute the silky hair. She was
obliged to be always on her guard, and to take all sorts of
precautions to prevent any one cutting off this ornament, which
constituted her only beauty as well as her livelihood." (E.
Laurent, _L'Amour Morbide_, 1891, p. 164; also the same author's
_Fetichistes et Erotomanes_, p. 23.)

The hair despoiler (_Coupeur des Nattes_ or _Zopfabschneider_)
may be found in any civilized country, though the most carefully
studied cases have occurred in Paris. (Several medico-legal
histories of hair-despoilers are summarized by Krafft-Ebing, _Op.
cit._, pp. 329-334). Such persons are usually of nervous
temperament and bad heredity; the attraction to hair occasionally
develops in early life; sometimes the morbid impulse only appears
in later life after fever. The fetich may be either flowing hair
or braided hair, but is usually one or the other, and not both.
Sexual excitement and ejaculation may be produced in the act of
touching or cutting off the hair, which is subsequently, in many
cases, used for masturbation. As a rule the hair-despoiler is a
pure fetichist, no element of sadistic pleasure entering into his
feelings. In the case of a "capillary kleptomaniac" in Chicago--a
highly intelligent and athletic married young man of good
family--the impulse to cut off girls' braids appeared after
recovery from a severe fever. He would gaze admiringly at the
long tresses and then clip them off with great rapidity; he did
this in some fifty cases before he was caught and imprisoned. He
usually threw the braids away before he reached home. (_Alienist
and Neurologist_, April, 1889, p. 325.) In this case there is no
history of sexual excitement, probably because no proper
medico-legal examination was made. (It may be added that
hair-despoilers have been specially studied by Motet, "Les
Coupeurs de Nattes," _Annales d'Hygiene_, 1890.)

The stuff-fetiches are most usually fur and velvet; feathers, silk, and
leathers also sometimes