THE STUDY OF THE CRIMINAL.
When Homer described Thersites as ugly and deformed, with harsh or scanty
hair, and a pointed head, like a pot that had collapsed to a peak in the
baking--
ἄισχιστος δὲ ἀνὴρ ὑπὸ Ἴλιον ἦλθεν.
φολκὸς ἔην, χωλὸς δ’ ἕτερον πόδα. τὼ δέ οἱ ὤμω
κυρτώ, ἐπὶ στῆθος συνοχωκότε. αὐτὰρ ὕπερθεν
φοζὸς ἔην κεφαλὴν, ψεδνὴ δ’ ἐπενήνοθε λάχνη
--he furnished evidence as to the existence of a criminal type of man.
These physical characters of Thersites are among those which in these last
days have been submitted to scientific observation, and to statistics, and
have been largely justified. The epigrammatic utterances in which
primitive peoples crystallise and pass on their philosophy and science,
include many sayings which prove the remote period at which men began to
perceive the organic peculiarities which separate the criminal man from
the average man. There are some proverbs of this character, such as those
indicating the widespread dislike of the red-haired, for which no solid
justification has yet been found; but among various races, and in many
countries, numerous proverbs are in harmony with the results of modern
research: _A vultu vitium_, the old Roman saying; _Au vis_ [_visage_] _le
vice_, the old French saying; “Salute from afar the beardless man and the
bearded woman;” “Distrust the woman with a man’s voice;” “A pale face is
worse than the itch.” Such are a few that might be easily increased.
At a very early period such popular generalisations as these were embodied
in that empirical science of physiognomy, which found many professors
among the Greeks and Romans. According to the well-known story, a Greek
physiognomist who examined Socrates’ face judged that the philosopher was
brutal, sensuous, and inclined to drunkenness; and Socrates declared to
his disciples that such, although he had overcome it, was his natural
disposition. He was himself a physiognomist; he disliked a certain man who
was of pale and dark complexion, such signs, he said, indicating envy and
murder; the peculiar dark and pallid complexion of the instinctive
criminal has of late years been frequently noted.
Aristotle, that great master of all the sciences, clearly recognised not
merely the physiognomic signs of habits, vices, and crimes, including many
signs that are in accordance with modern scientific observation, but he
also observed a connection between the shape of the head and the mental
disposition, and he recognised the hereditary character of vicious and
criminal instincts. Galen, who inaugurated the experimental study of the
brain, adopted the views of Aristotle, and pointed out the influence of
the abuse of alcohol in the production of crime; he was of opinion, also,
anticipating a modern doctrine, that when the criminal is a criminal by
nature he ought to be destroyed, not in revenge, but for the same reason
that scorpions and vipers are destroyed.[12]
Although these feeble beginnings of criminal anthropology received the
sanction of the highest scientific authorities, as well as of the people,
and later on a mediæval law declared that if two persons fell under
suspicion of crime the uglier or more deformed was to be regarded as more
probably guilty, they were not universally admitted, and some, like Pliny,
regarded it as absurd that the outward form could indicate the inward
disposition. Whatever art or science there was in the matter was left,
then and long after, to the physiognomists, of whom Polemon may be taken
as a distinguished example, and these were ready to supply the most
elaborate physical signs to correspond to any vicious or criminal
disposition. Polemon wrote of the criminal that he was of pallid
complexion, with long hair, large ears, and small eyes, and he proceeded
to give the characteristics of various classes of criminals, his
observations often showing keen insight. This pseudo-science was passed on
from physiognomist to physiognomist, usually with added absurdities, until
in the sixteenth century we reach the Neapolitan Dalla Porta, at once the
greatest (and except Lavater the last) of the physiognomists of the old
school and the first of the new. He treated judicial astrology with
contempt, and at the same time wrote a treatise of celestial physiognomy;
he gathered up all that his predecessors had done, and at the same time
laid the foundations of a more scientific treatment.
Passing by Lavater, with his fine intuition and genial humanity, which
formed, however, no epoch in the scientific study of criminal
anthropology, at the beginning of the present century we reach Gall, a
very great figure in the history of science, and the representative of the
most important moment in the development of our knowledge of the brain.
Before speaking of Gall, however, it is necessary to give a word, in
passing, to Grohmann, who slightly preceded him, and who anticipated many
of the conclusions relative to facial and cranial characteristics reached
by modern criminal anthropologists. Thus, in 1820, he wrote:--“I have
often been impressed in criminals, and especially in those of defective
development, by the prominent ears, the shape of the cranium, the
projecting cheek-bones, the large lower jaws, the deeply-placed eyes, the
shifty, animal-like gaze.”
Gall thrust aside for ever the credulous fancies of the physiognomists;
and he has been described, not altogether without reason, as the founder
of the modern science of criminal anthropology. He was certainly its most
brilliant pioneer. Lavater believed in the homogeneity of the human
organism, but he was not a man of science, and he had been content to
study the surface of the body; Gall, with true scientific instinct, tried
to get to the root of the matter; following the great English anatomist,
Willis, who had made some attempt at cerebral localisation, he studied
the brain, sought to differentiate the functions of its various parts, and
the effects of its varying development on the skull.
For Gall the varying development of the brain was the cause of the
divergent mental and moral qualities of the individual; he was firmly
convinced that all the facts of psychical life are rooted in the physical
organisation; he wished to write the natural history of every primitive
moral and intellectual force, in health as well as in disease. To the best
of his ability he carried out this programme in detail, by an unceasing
study of all the varieties of the brain and of the living head that he
could find; he pursued his studies throughout Europe, in lunatic asylums
and in prisons, as well as among the ordinary population, and he foresaw
the extent of the applications of the science he was opening up to
medicine and to law, to morality and to education. While his work extended
far beyond the borders of what we should now call criminal
anthropology,[13] he devoted much attention to the problems of the
criminal organisation, and even to its varieties, many of his observations
according well with the results of recent investigation. More than this,
following Galen and Diderot (who had written, fifty years earlier, “The
evil-doer is one whom we must destroy, not punish”), he clearly advocated
a method of dealing with the criminal which is now widely regarded as the
only right and reasonable method. “There can be no question,” he said, “of
culpability or of justice in the severe sense; the question is of the
necessity of society preventing crime. The measure of culpability and the
measure of punishment cannot be determined by a study of the illegal act,
but only by a study of the individual committing it.” In his great work,
_Les Fonctions du Cerveau_ (1822), Gall has summed up his conclusions.
It has been the misfortune of this great and truly scientific investigator
to give origin to an empiric art of phrenology which took the place of the
old art of physiognomy he had done so much to destroy. He has
consequently, until recent years, been popularly known chiefly by his
mistakes, especially perhaps by his localisation of the sexual instinct in
the cerebellum--a localisation, however, which he supported by a large
body of evidence. The influence of dubious phrenological doctrines
hardened into a system somewhat impairs the value of Lauvergne’s _Les
Forçats_ (1841), which seems to have been the first book of any importance
devoted entirely to the study of convict nature, physical, moral, and
intellectual. Lauvergne, who was the chief medical officer to the hospital
for convicts at Toulon, appears to have been a man of humanitarian
instincts, whose wit and _bonhomie_ enabled him to maintain friendly
relations with the criminals he was studying; he had little capacity for
scientific analysis, but he wrote fully of what he had seen and known, and
his book contains many keen observations which have been since verified.
He fully recognises also the importance of the social factor in the
production of criminals.
Lauvergne had observed how many of his subjects were insane or diseased;
the students of the criminal who followed him all insisted on the
pathological element. Dally maintained that the criminal and the lunatic
are identical, and both equally irresponsible. Prosper Lucas, in his
valuable _Traité philosophique de l’hérédite_ (1847), showed how deeply
rooted in the organism are the morbid tendencies of crime. Lélut compared
the length and breadth of head in criminals. Voisin noted their defects in
cerebral organisation. It was, however, Morel who, in his _Des
Dégénérescences_ (1857), chiefly developed this aspect of criminality, and
his influence is still strong among French students of the criminal. Morel
regarded crime as one of the forms taken on by degeneration in the
individual or the family; and degeneration he defined as “a morbid
deviation from the normal type of humanity.” The causes of degeneration
which he recognised were intoxications, famines, social environment,
industries, unhealthy occupations, poverty, heredity, pathological
transformations, moral causes. “My principal aim,” he says, “has been the
study of these causes, and of the influences which they exercise, firstly
on the constitution of individuals, and afterwards on that of their
descendants.” Among these causes he gives a chief place to the manifold
effects on the children of alcoholism in the parents. In his pamphlet _De
la Formation du Type dans les variétés dégénérés_ (1864), Morel proposed
to give the name of morbid anthropology to “that part of the natural
science of man, the aim of which is to study the characters due to certain
special diseased influences, as well as to hereditary transmissions of
bad nature.”
Despine, by his great work, _Psychologie Naturelle_ (1868), made a new and
important step in criminology. Leaving aside the study of the criminal’s
physical nature, he sought to make an exhaustive study of his mental
nature. No one has done more than Despine to prove that what we should now
call the instinctive criminal is, on the psychological side, a natural
anomaly, a mental monstrosity. He brought into clear relief the
unforeseeing imprudence, the entire lack of moral sensibility and of
remorse, which characterise the instinctive criminal. He recognised that
the criminal is not necessarily an insane or diseased person, and he
showed that his abnormality is not of the kind that intellectual education
can remedy. “No physiologist,” he said, “has yet occupied himself with the
insanity of the sane;” he considered the criminal as “morally mad,” and
therefore irresponsible. Maudsley, from an opposite philosophic
standpoint, came to very similar conclusions. Without bringing any fresh
contribution of importance, he re-affirmed emphatically the conclusions
already reached. Speaking in his _Responsibility in Mental Disease_ (1872)
of instinctive criminals, he remarks, “It is a matter of observation that
this criminal class constitutes a degenerate or morbid variety of mankind,
marked by peculiarly low physical and mental characteristics.” Like
Despine, he drew from this the conclusion, since widely accepted, that the
criminal, being morally insane and usually incurable, should be treated in
the same way as the intellectually insane person. “If the matter be
considered deeply, it may appear that it would, perhaps, in the end make
little difference whether the offender were sentenced in anger and sent
to the seclusion of prison, or were sentenced more in sorrow than in
anger, and consigned to the same sort of seclusion under the name of an
asylum. The change would probably not lead to an increase or to a decrease
in the number of crimes committed in a year.” An artist as much as a man
of science, master of a sombre and weighty style, illumined by vivid
flashes of imagination, Maudsley by his numerous works popularised the new
ideas, and is justly regarded abroad as a pioneer of criminal
anthropology.
Broca, who, by initiating the Anthropological Society of Paris in 1859,
has been regarded as the founder of the modern science of anthropology,
gave attention also to the special science of criminal anthropology by
noting the peculiarities of the skulls and brains of criminals. At the
Exeter meeting of the British Association in 1869, Dr. G. Wilson read a
paper on “The Moral Imbecility of Habitual Criminals as exemplified by
cranial measurements.” He had measured 464 heads of criminals, and found
that habitual thieves presented well-marked signs of insufficient cranial
development, specially anteriorly. “The cranial deficiency,” he observed,
“is associated with real physical deterioration. Forty per cent. of all
the convicts are invalids, more or less; and that percentage is largely
increased in the professional thief class.” He argued that a prisoner must
be treated on reforming principles, and not allowed unrestricted liberty
until there was reasonable evidence to show that he would not prove
dangerous to society. About the same time, also (in 1870), J. Bruce
Thomson, Resident-Surgeon to the General Prison for Scotland at Perth,
published in the _Journal of Mental Science_ a summary of his observations
on over 5000 prisoners. From the decisiveness of his utterances and the
large number of prisoners of whom he was able to speak, this summary gave
a stimulus to the study of the criminal throughout Europe. Thomson
enumerated some of the physical characteristics of the instinctive
criminal now generally recognised, pointed out the semi-imbecility
prevalent among the juvenile criminals under his observation, the
frequency of accumulated morbid appearances at _post-mortem_ examinations,
and the large proportion of cases at Perth needing treatment for mental
diseases soon after admission, “apparently from congenital causes.”
Thomson’s facts and opinions were too curtly, and, probably, too
emphatically stated. Dr. Nicolson, writing also in the same journal from
1873 to 1875, dealt with the morbid psychology of the criminal, the
unstable, emotional element in him, his proneness to delusions, his
insensibility, and his weak-mindedness. Dr. Nicolson’s papers, all written
before the latest and most fruitful era of criminal anthropology began,
were, so far as I have been able to trace, the latest original
contributions from the scientific side made in England to the study of the
criminal. Such knowledge as has been furnished since has come from writers
who have, almost of necessity, dealt with what may be called the mental
and social symptomatology of criminals. Among the books which supply more
or less valuable or interesting information of this kind may be mentioned
the Rev. J. W. Horsley’s _Jottings from Jail_, Michael Davitt’s _Leaves
from a Prison Diary_, and the _Scenes from a Silent World_, by a Prison
Visitor, which appeared in _Blackwood’s Magazine_ during 1889. An earlier
book of this class, Mayhew’s _London Labour and the London Poor_ (vol.
iv.), is perhaps still the most valuable.
Italy is to-day the home of criminal anthropology, and not of criminal
anthropology only, but of all the sciences that are connected with crime
and the criminal; the Zanardelli criminal code, which has recently become
law, while by no means entirely satisfactory from the scientific point of
view, shows the influence of the new movement. In this respect Italy
remains true to traditions that are two thousand years old; in the
sixteenth century Italy was still the centre of studies in penal law, and,
to keep to modern times, it is enough to mention the great names of
Beccaria, and, still more recently, Romagnosi. It was under the auspices
of Beltrani-Scalia, well known in connection with prison reform, that the
earlier Italian studies in criminal anthropology were published, from 1870
onwards, in the _Rivista delle discipline carcerarie_, a journal which
continues to publish valuable monographs. In this journal Lombroso
published, in 1872, the results of some investigations which he had made
on prisoners at Padua.
Professor Cesare Lombroso, of Turin, occupies a position of such
importance in the development of criminal anthropology that it is
necessary to have a clear idea of his aims and methods and the nature of
his achievement. Born in 1836, of Venetian parentage, the various and
restless activities of Lombroso’s career are characteristic of the man who
has been all his life opening up new paths of investigation and enlarging
the horizon of human knowledge. At the age of eleven he composed
romances, poems, and tragedies in the manner of Alfieri; at twelve he
developed a passion for classical antiquity, and published two small works
on Roman archæology. At thirteen he was attracted to the study of
sociology from a linguistic point of view (chiefly, we are told, with
relation to Greek, Hebrew, Chinese, and Coptic); at the same time he was
drawn to natural science, being interested especially in the formation of
crystals, and before entering the University he had published two books of
a somewhat evolutionary character. While a student he was led, by the
combined study of ancient religions and of medicine, to the subject of
mental diseases. He began with studies on cretinism in Lombardy and
Liguria, his conclusions being afterwards adopted by Virchow and others.
In the eventful year of 1859 he became first a soldier, and afterwards a
military surgeon. In 1862 he was in charge of the department of mental
diseases at Pavia University, and he initiated there an institution for
the insane, a psychiatric museum, and a series of researches in the
application of exact methods to the study of insanity. This last attempt
was at the time received with general derision; it was said that he was
studying madness with a yard measure; but his methods gradually made
progress, and slowly met with general adoption. After this he made some
important investigations into the causes of pellagra. Called to direct the
asylum at Pesaro, he reformed it, and established a journal, written and
managed by the insane. He then returned to Pavia, where he continued his
psychiatric work, investigated the influence of atmospheric conditions on
the mind, invented an instrument to measure pain, and engaged in a great
number of studies, marked by extraordinary ingenuity, patience, and
insight. Even as a youth Lombroso possessed the art of divining fruitful
ideas, which at the time appeared absurd to scientific men as well as to
the public. Every line of investigation he took up was at the time
apparently opposed to the tendency of thought, and only received general
attention at a later date. This was true, to some extent, even of the
great achievement of his life.
In the year 1859--perhaps the most memorable of the century--Broca, who
had a decided influence on Lombroso, had inaugurated the naturalist method
of treating man with the Anthropological Society of Paris. The
illuminating genius of Virchow, and his prodigious energy, which has done
so much for anthropology and the methods of anthropology, also had its
influence on the Italian, in some respects a kindred spirit. And Darwin’s
_Origin of Species_, published in 1859, supplied, for the first time, an
indispensable biological basis, and furnished that atavistic key of which
Lombroso was tempted to make at first so much use, sometimes, it must be
added, so much abuse. These circumstances combined to render possible, for
the first time, the complete scientific treatment of the criminal man as a
human variety, while Lombroso’s own manifold studies and various faculties
had given him the best preparation for approaching this great task. It was
in 1859 that he first conceived this task; _L’Uomo Delinquente_ was not,
however, finally published until 1876, while the second volume only
appeared in 1889.
The influence of _L’Uomo Delinquente_ in Italy, France, and Germany seems
to have been as immediate and as decisive as that of _The Origin of
Species_. Despine’s _Psychologie Naturelle_, the greatest work on the
criminal that had appeared before Lombroso, was partial; the criminal was
therein regarded purely as a psychological anomaly. Lombroso first
perceived the criminal as, anatomically and physiologically, an organic
anomaly. He set about weighing him and measuring him, according to the
methods of anthropology. Even on the psychological side he gained new and
more exact results. He went back to the origins of crime among plants and
animals, among savages and children. He endeavoured to ascertain the place
of the criminal in nature, his causes, and his treatment. Lombroso’s work
is by no means free from faults. His style is abrupt; he is too impetuous,
arriving too rapidly at conclusions, lacking in critical faculty and in
balance. Thus he was led at the beginning to over-estimate the atavistic
element in the criminal, and at a later date he has pressed too strongly
the epileptic affinities of crime. His weaknesses have never been spared
rough handling from friendly or unfriendly hands. Thus Mantegazza, while
recognising his _ingegno potentemente apostolico e geniale_, denies that
Lombroso possesses any of the qualities of a scientific investigator, and
Dr. Napoleone Colajanni, who, from the socialistic left of the movement,
has, in his _Sociologia Criminale_ (1889-90) and elsewhere, bestowed much
elaborate and often valuable criticism on the centre, compares Lombroso’s
indiscriminate collection of facts to Charles IX.’s famous order on St.
Bartholomew’s eve: “Kill them all; God will know His own.” But his work
has been so rich, so laborious, so various; it has opened up so many new
lines of investigation, and has suggested so many more, that it has
everywhere been received as marking a new epoch. He was, as he has himself
expressed it, the pollen-conveying insect, and the new science which he
fecundated has grown with extraordinary rapidity. A continuous stream of
studies--from books of the most comprehensive character down to
investigations into minute points of criminal anatomy or physiology--is
constantly pouring forth. It is still impossible to gather up this mass of
investigation, often necessarily discordant, into more than a tentative
whole, but its existence is sufficient to prove the vitality of the new
science. It has of course met with fierce antagonism, and Lombroso himself
has declared that perhaps not one stone will remain upon another, but that
if this is to be the fate of his work, a better edifice will arise in its
place.
Two other Italians must be mentioned with Lombroso. Enrico Ferri,
Professor of Penal Law at Rome and a Deputy in the Italian Parliament,
while doing valuable work as a criminal anthropologist, has at the same
time studied the social bearings of criminality in his best-known book,
_Nuovi Orizzonti del Diritto_. He has occupied himself less with the
instinctive than with the occasional criminal, and his clear and
philosophic spirit has placed him at the head of criminal sociologists.
Garofalo, a Neapolitan lawyer, accepting generally the conclusions reached
by Lombroso and Ferri, has become the most distinguished jurist of the
movement, the pioneer in that reform of law through the methods of natural
science which must eventually become so fruitful. His _Criminologie_ (the
new and enlarged edition is written in French) is marked by luminous yet
careful generalisation, and it contains many suggestions of wise reform.
Garofalo has brought into clear relief the inadequacy of legal maxims
founded on antiquated and unscientific conceptions, and he has shown that
not the nature of the crime, but the dangerousness (_temibilità_) of the
criminal constitutes the only reasonable legal criterion to guide the
inevitable social reaction against the criminal. This position is now
generally accepted as the legitimate outcome of the scientific study of
the criminal.
Among Italian workers in the department of criminal anthropology proper, a
very high place belongs to Dr. Antonio Marro, formerly surgeon to the
prison at Turin. _I Caratteri dei Delinquenti_ (1887) contains the results
of a carefully-detailed and methodic examination of more than five hundred
prisoners, men and women, and of over one hundred normal persons together
with an investigation into their ancestry and habits. All the data are
presented in tabular form, and his excellent methods and judicious
moderation in drawing conclusions impart great value to his work. His
exactness and impartiality have been admired even by those whose instincts
and training have led them to dread the invasions of this department of
science. Dr. Marro has made interesting contributions to the
differentiation of various criminal types, and he has brought out very
clearly the disastrous tendency to degeneration among the children of
parents who have passed middle age. Other Italian studies, among many that
might be mentioned, are Virgilio’s, dating from 1874, Dr. P. Penta’s
elaborate studies, the various works of Zuccarelli, the energetic
Neapolitan professor and editor of _L’Anomalo_, V. Rossi’s work, _Studio
sopra una Centuria di Criminali_, Salsotto’s on women delinquents, and
Ottolenghi’s investigations into the senses of criminals. The _Archivio di
Psichiatria_, a rich storehouse of elaborate observations, founded in
1880, directed by Lombroso, Ferri, Garofalo, and Morselli, edited by Rossi
and Ottolenghi, remains at the head of journals of criminal anthropology.
The first suggestion of an international congress of criminal anthropology
arose in Italy, and dates from the year 1882, when Salvatore Tommasi
published an important article in the _Rassegna Critica_. The first
congress, that of Rome, was not, however, actually held until 1885. It was
attended by all the most distinguished criminal anthropologists, criminal
sociologists, and jurists of the “positive” school, chiefly Italian,
French, and German, and its _Actes_ are of great interest. The second
international congress was held in August 1889, in Paris. It was of a more
cosmopolitan character than the first, and of even greater interest.[14]
France has always been a laboratory for the popularisation of great ideas,
and Tarde’s _La Criminalité Comparée_ is among the best of such attempts.
M. Tarde is a _juge d’instruction_, not an alienist or an anthropologist;
he touches on all the various problems of crime with ever-ready
intelligence and acuteness, and a rare charm of literary style,
illuminating with suggestive criticism everything that he touches. This
easily accessible little volume of the Libraire de Philosophie
Contemporaine is the most comprehensive introduction for those who would
go down to the _città dolente_ by a rose-strewn path. Lacassagne, the
eminent medico-legal expert of Lyons, and editor of the valuable
_Archives de l’Anthropologie Criminelle_, stands perhaps at the head of
French criminal anthropologists, although beyond his monograph, _Les
Tatouages_, he has published little. The judicial qualities of his mind,
and his power of expressing just and large conceptions in felicitous and
memorable phrases, impart value to all that he writes, and his forthcoming
work on the criminal man will, it is probable, for all practical purposes,
supersede other works. _De la Criminalité chez les Arabes_, by A. Kocher,
a pupil of Lacassagne’s, is a book of great interest, and the names of
Manouvrier, Bournet, Corre, Laurent, etc., are well known in connection
with criminal anthropology in France, while Féré ably represents the
French school which explains criminality by degeneration alone.
In Germany the serious study of the criminal may be said to have begun
with Krafft-Ebing, the distinguished professor of psychiatry, now at
Vienna, who, by laying down clearly in his _Grundzuge der Kriminal
Psychologie_ (1872), and other works, the doctrine of a criminal
psychosis, and pointing out its practical results, deserves, as Krauss
remarks, to be regarded as an important precursor of Lombroso. Knecht
studied over 1200 prisoners anthropologically. Dr. A. Krauss, who began
with investigations into criminal psychology, has since done much solid
work in criminal anthropology. Flesch made important observations on the
morbid pathology of criminals; Benedikt, known in connection with various
interesting investigations in criminal anthropology, began in 1879 with a
remarkable study of the criminal brain, in which he observed frequent
confluence of the fissures, as among some lower races, and also an
additional convolution in the frontal lobe, which he assimilated to that
of the carnivora. His conclusions in this difficult field of research
were, however, considerably shaken by Professor Giacomini, of Turin, and
others, who showed that similar anomalies are found, although not so
frequently, in normal persons. The brilliant Viennese professor has in his
recently-published _Kraniometrie und Kephalometrie_ shown himself the most
original and suggestive of living students of the architecture of the
skull.
In Holland, Professor Van Hamel, of Amsterdam, represents the new spirit
of approaching the problems of criminality.
In Belgium, where Quetelet’s great work, _Physique Sociale_, inaugurated
criminal sociology, and where prison reform, which has always attracted
much attention, is now ably represented by Professor Adolphe Prins, the
results of criminal anthropology have been received and discussed with
interest and sympathy, and various researches have been carried on.
Professor Héger and Dr. Semal of Mons should also be named here. In 1884
the Anthropological Society of Belgium nominated a commission for the
investigation of criminal anthropology. This led to various interesting
researches, none of them, however, of great importance.
In Spain and Portugal criminal anthropology is being prosecuted with much
zeal. Among its chief representatives may be named especially Vera and
Rafael Salillas (whose interesting book, _La Vida Penal en España_, gives
a very vivid picture of life in the Spanish prisons), and at Lisbon
Bernardo Lucas. D’Azevedo Castello Branco, sub-director of Lisbon prison,
should also be mentioned. In 1889, at a congress held in Lisbon, the
relation of criminal anthropology to penality, legal reform, and allied
problems was fully discussed.
In the rapidly-developing Spanish countries of South America, especially
in the Argentine Republic, criminal anthropology seems to be making great
progress. It is officially taught at the University of Buenos Ayres. Luis
del Drago, a judge in the Argentine Republic, with his _Los hombres de
Presa_ (1888), an able study of criminality, which has rapidly reached a
second edition, thus showing the interest generally felt in these studies,
and some other workers, witness to the progress made in this country. On
the initiative of Dr. del Drago, with influential coadjutors, a society
for the promotion of criminal anthropology was founded in Buenos Ayres in
1888, “to study the person of the criminal, to establish the degree of his
dangerousness and of his responsibility, and to effect the gradual and
progressive reform of penal law in accordance with the principles of the
new school.” In Brazil Professor Viejra de Aranjo of Pernambuco is the
chief representative of the science.
In Russia and Poland, although the study of criminal anthropology dates
from very recent years, it is making considerable progress. Bielakoff, in
the _Archives of Psichiatry_ of Kharkoff, studied 100 homicides. Professor
Troizki, of Warsaw, published a careful study of 350 prisoners. Dr.
Prascovia Tarnowskaia examined 100 female thieves, whom she compared with
150 prostitutes and 100 peasant women. On the legal side, Dimitri Drill is
engaged on a great work, of which one volume only is published at present,
in which he deals thoroughly with the organic factors of crime, and with
the social applications of criminal anthropology. The Russians seem to be
characteristically audacious in their applications of the new science, and
there is in Russia a feeling, not merely against imprisoning criminals,
but even against secluding them. In 1885 a young girl assassinated a
Jewish child to obtain possession for her lover of the money of the
child’s father, a rich usurer. Professor Babinski declared that she was
not mad, but entirely devoid of moral notions, that she was incurable, and
that it would be quite useless (useless, that is, from a medical point of
view) to put her in an asylum. She was acquitted.
In Great Britain alone during the last fifteen years there is no
scientific work in criminal anthropology to be recorded. When Dr. Coutagne
inaugurated, in 1888, a “Chronique Anglaise” in the _Archives de
l’Anthropologie Criminelle_, he could not conceal his embarrassment. While
the Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian summaries are founded on a
large series of works in criminal anthropology, in England there is
absolutely no centre for the scientific study of criminality. “Legal
medicine,” he remarks, “has there inspired no special publication, nor any
learned society. At the International Medical Congress of London, in 1881,
although so remarkably organised, it was less well treated than
laryngology or dentistry, and formed the object of no section, state
medicine being almost synonymous with hygiene. If we consult the
scientific journals of England dealing with allied subjects, our baggage
will receive very few additions.” In 1889 the International Association of
Criminal Law was founded by Professor G. A. Van Hamel of Amsterdam,
Professor Fr. von Liszt of Marburg, and Professor Adolphe Prins of
Brussels. This association, which has a great future before it,
represents, from the scientific and practical standpoint, the movement of
reform in matters that relate to the criminal. It maintains that
criminality and the repression of crime must be regarded as much from the
social as from the legal point of view. It endeavours to establish this
principle and its consequences in the science of criminal law as well as
in penal legislation. The association already numbers between three and
four hundred members, and includes well-known representatives from
twenty-one different countries in Europe and America. England is among the
least well represented of all; the English members rank in number with the
Portuguese, Servian, and Argentine members. Germany is more than twenty
times better represented.[15] No interest was felt in England in the
International Congress of Criminal Anthropology recently held in Paris. At
this Congress official delegates came from all parts of the civilised
world, from Russia to Hawaii, but although there were two from the United
States, there was not one from Great Britain. When some twelve months
since I issued a series of Questions, dealing with some of the main points
in the investigation of the criminal, to the medical officers of the
larger prisons in Great Britain and Ireland, the answers that I received,
while sometimes of much interest--and I am indebted to my correspondents
for their anxiety to answer to the best of their ability--were amply
sufficient to show that criminal anthropology as an exact science is yet
unknown in England. Some of my correspondents, I fear, had not so much as
heard whether there be a criminal anthropology.[16] England has, however,
in the past been a home of studies connected with the condition of the
criminal. The centenary of John Howard, which we have lately celebrated,
is a brilliant witness to this fact. Fifty years ago Englishmen sought to
distinguish themselves by the invention of patent improved tread-mills and
similar now antiquated devices to benefit the criminal. We began zealously
with the therapeutics of crime; it is now time to study the criminal’s
symptomatology, his diagnosis, his pathology, and it is scarcely possible
to imagine that in these studies England will long continue to lag so far
behind the rest of the civilised world.