CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY (PHYSICAL).
§ 1. _Cranial and Cerebral Characteristics._
Considerably greater importance was formerly attributed to the shape and
measurements of the head than we can now accord to them, although the
subject still retains much interest. A vast quantity of data has
accumulated concerning the heads of criminals; some of the results are
contradictory, but certain definite conclusions clearly emerge.
The _average_ size of criminals’ heads is probably about the same as that
of ordinary people’s heads; but both small and large heads are found in
greater proportion, the medium-sized heads being deficient. The same is
true, as Tigges and others have shown, of the insane, though among these
the larger preponderate to a greater extent. Thieves more frequently have
small heads; the large heads are usually found among murderers.
Nothing very definite can be said of the cephalic indices save that they
are frequently an exaggeration of those of the race to which the criminal
belongs; those of long-headed race being sometimes very long, and those of
broad-headed race sometimes very broad; the Corsican criminal being often
very dolichocephalic, and the Breton criminal often very brachycephalic.
There is a generally recognised tendency to the pointed (oxycephalic) or
sugar-loaf form of head. Though this form is probably, as Benedikt points
out, an effort at compensation, it is an effort that testifies to
defective organisation. The opposite defect of low or flat-roofed skull is
also found among criminals, and is characteristic of degeneration.
Lauvergne, in his old book on criminals, has a vivid and picturesque
sketch of a variety of this kind of head, which he called the satanic
type, and which he found among many of the worst criminals: “Such are the
heads which painters throw into their pictures, and call ‘heads of the
other world.’ I have recognised them in mediæval pictures, and in all the
museums in which the products of early art are preserved. You will see
them on old cathedrals, in which devils play a part, or wherever the
artist has received some diabolical inspiration, as in the Campo Santo at
Pisa. One cannot, indeed, better represent the genius of evil, Satan, the
fallen angel, than by giving him such a head.... Behind the frontal bones
the head seems to have been tied with a band to compress it around and to
force the swelling of the hemispheres upwards and backwards. It is the
head vulgarly called sugar-loaf. When it is complete, that is to say, when
it presents a prominent base supporting an inclined pyramid, more or less
truncated, this head announces the monstrous alliance of the most eminent
faculty of man, genius, with the most pronounced impulses to rape, murder,
and theft.” Benedikt regards the bilateral elevation of the sagittal
suture as, though rare, “significant of profound perversity of brain
function.” He also regards disproportionate development of the occipital
part of the skull as a characteristic mark of degeneration.[17] It
appears that the posterior half of the skull varies much more in different
individuals than the anterior half.
The orbital capacity has been noted by Lombroso and others to be
frequently larger than normal (as among birds of prey and some savages),
especially among thieves. There is marked exaggeration of the orbital
arches and frontal sinuses which may be related, at all events in the
cases of individuals living in the country, with energy of the respiratory
system.
Receding foreheads, very commonly observed among criminals, have always
been regarded as evidence of low mental and moral organisation, not
without reason, though it must be remembered, as Ten-Kate and Benedikt
point out, that the breadth, vaulting, and general size of the head must
be taken into consideration. Many men of marked intellectual power have
had receding foreheads.
Tenchini has pointed out (and the observation has since been confirmed)
that the frontal crest is often stronger and more prominent in criminals.
In normal skulls he found it 3-4 millimetres in length; in criminals
frequently 5-6 mm. It is also larger in the insane and lower races, and
relatively larger in orang-outangs. It may signify precocious union of the
two parts of the frontal bone with consequent arrest of brain development.
The presence of a median occipital fossa has been specially noted by
Lombroso, sometimes in connection with hypertrophy of the vermis of the
cerebellum, as among the lower apes, in the human fœtus between the third
and fourth months, and in some lower races.
Lack of cranial symmetry is one of the most marked features of the
criminal skull, although it has not often at present been subjected to
exact measurement.[18] It must be remembered that every skull, criminal or
non-criminal, is deficient in strict symmetry (and, indeed, every part of
the body likewise), and that statistics therefore are here of little
value; it is simply a question of the amount of asymmetry; and two
observers going over the same series of skulls would almost certainly come
to different conclusions. They would probably, however, both find the
proportion of asymmetrical heads greater in the criminal than in the
ordinary series.
All these cranial abnormalities are found occasionally in ordinary
persons; very rarely are they found combined in normal persons to the
extent that they are found among instinctive criminals. Thus Lombroso,
when he examined the skull of Gasparone, a famous brigand of the beginning
of the century, whose name still lives in legends and poems, found
microcephaly of the frontal region, a wormian bone, eurigmatism, increase
in the orbital capacity, oxycephaly, and extreme dolichocephaly.
Mingazzini found that out of thirty criminals eight presented brains and
skulls of a weight and capacity only found in submicrocephalic subjects;
that several of these showed, either in brain or skull, or both, the union
of several anomalies; and that in the skulls of other six the abnormal
appearances were so manifold as to present an aspect which might be
called “completely teratologic.”[19] Most of these anomalies are found
much more frequently in the male than in the female skull. If, however,
the criminal woman is compared with the normal woman, she is found to
approach more closely to the normal man than the latter does; while the
corresponding character (feminility) is not found so often in the criminal
as in the normal man, except among pæderasts and some thieves. It may also
be mentioned that nearly all these anomalies are much more rarely found in
the insane.
In Plates I.-VI. will be found a series of convicts’ heads--concerning
which information may be found in Appendix A--illustrating in a very
remarkable manner many of the peculiarities noted in this and subsequent
sections. They are reproduced from sketches made by Dr. Vans Clarke,
formerly governor of Woking Prison. The thirty-six here reproduced I have
selected from 111 of a similar character in Dr. Clarke’s note-books. They
are, as Dr. Clarke remarks, exceptional rather than typical heads; but as
he discontinued making the sketches after he had seen about a thousand
men, the specimens given are evidently by no means very exceptional. They
represent at the least 10 per cent. of the criminals examined. “My
sketches,” he writes, “were taken at the ‘model prison’ of Pentonville,
where the duty of filling up the medical history-sheet of every convict on
his arrival devolved upon me, and I was prompted to use my sketch-book
during the physical examination, on the observation of remarkable
peculiarities in many of the heads and faces of the criminals. The
portraits were necessarily taken in haste, but they were true, and were
considered to be successful as likenesses. I may say that I was compelled
to make a selection rather from want of time than the lack of material. In
a less marked degree the instances of misshapen heads and repulsive facial
characters were very common.” Some of the cranial and facial
characteristics noted by criminal anthropologists are brought out in these
sketches in so well-marked a form that it may be as well to say that they
were taken some years ago, before the publication of Lombroso’s work, and
it was therefore impossible for Dr. Clarke to have been unconsciously
influenced by any preconceived notions on the subject.
As far back as 1836 Lélut weighed ten brains of criminals, and his results
show, according to Topinard, a result below that of the normal. Bischoff,
in 1880, published the results of an important series of observations he
had made on the weight of the brain in criminals. He weighed the brains of
137 criminals and 422 normal persons. He found that small-sized and
medium-sized brains were about equally common in criminals and in normal
subjects; while among the heavier brains, weighing from 1400 to 1500
grammes, the criminals were in the proportion of 24 per cent., the normal
persons of 20 per cent. Topinard, putting together the results of several
series of observations on the weight of the brain in criminals, and
comparing them with those of Broca for ordinary individuals of the same
age, finds that in criminals there is an inferiority of some 30 grammes.
There is some reason to suppose that the weight of the cerebellum in
criminals is often decidedly superior to the normal savage. It is clear,
on the whole, that little importance attaches to the weight of the brain
in criminals, a conclusion which harmonises with such a fact as that
Gambetta’s brain resembled in weight that of a microcephalic idiot.
[Illustration: PLATE I.]
[Illustration: PLATE II.]
[Illustration: PLATE III.]
[Illustration: PLATE IV.]
[Illustration: PLATE V.]
[Illustration: PLATE VI.]
There is more evidence in favour of attaching some importance to the shape
of the brain, to its relative development, to the condition and relations
of its convolutions. Broca, Topinard, and many other eminent
anthropologists and anatomists have attributed great value to these
relations. Gall was perhaps the first to suspect their significance.
Benedikt, in 1879, published some interesting generalisations on the
brains of criminals which he had examined. He found special frequency of
confluent fissures; that is to say, according to his own description, if
we imagine the fissures of the brain to be channels of water, a swimmer
might with ease pass through all these channels. Benedikt also found in
the brains of his criminals that the frontal lobe frequently presented
four convolutions, a peculiarity which he considered as a reversion to the
carnivorous type; the investigations of Hanot and Bouchard confirmed these
results. But Benedikt neglected to make an adequate comparison with the
normal brain, and Giacomini, Corre, Fallot, and Féré have shown that these
peculiarities are not very rare in ordinary subjects. The question of
confluent fissures had before this time attracted the attention of Broca,
and his conclusions may probably still be accepted:--“One or more of these
communications,” he said, “do not prevent a brain from being at once very
intelligent and very well balanced, but when they are numerous, and when
they affect important parts, they indicate defective development. They are
often seen in the small brains of the weak-minded and idiots, very
frequently also in the brains of murderers, with this difference, that in
the first case they are related to the smallness of the convolutions and
of the brain generally; while in the second case they coincide with
convolutions for the most part ample in size, and bear witness to
irregularity in cerebral development.” Flesch studied the brains of fifty
criminals, and found that every one presented some anomaly, sometimes of a
remarkable character, as incomplete covering of cerebellum by cerebrum. He
found two kinds of deviations common, one characterised by less richness
of convolution than is found usually in ordinary brains, the other
characterised by much greater richness of convolution than he had ever
observed in normal brains. On the whole we may agree with Hervé, that
“what the brains of criminals present, not characteristically but in
common with those of other individuals badly endowed though by no means
criminals, is a frequent totality of defective conditions from the point
of view of their regular functions, and which renders them inferior.”[20]
Although a very considerable mass of evidence is now accumulating, we know
considerably less of the brains of criminals than of their skulls. This is
in large measure due to the fact that there is at present insufficient
evidence regarding the condition of the normal and healthy brain, and
unless controlled by careful series of observations on normal persons,
observations on criminal brains cannot be interpreted.
The important matter of the vascular supply of the brain in criminals has
yet received little attention, but a variety of pathological features have
been found in the cerebral substance and membranes--pigmentation,
degenerating capillaries, cysts, thickened and adherent membranes, the
vestiges of old hyperæmia and hæmorrhages. Some of these conditions are
found with great frequency, much oftener than in the insane; meningitis,
for instance, being found, according to Lombroso’s experience, in 50 per
cent. of the cases examined; while Flesch has obtained very similar
results. The frequency of meningitis was noticed in some of the answers to
my Questions, especially by one prison surgeon who wrote of
“well-organised adhesions between the dura mater and vault of cranium,
localised but more extensive than one would expect to find.”
Unfortunately, he was unable to supply exact figures as to the frequency
of such signs. It must be added, as a point of considerable importance,
that in very few cases have these pathological lesions produced any
traceable symptoms during life.
§ 2. _The Face._
Prognathism has frequently been noted as a prominent characteristic of the
criminal face, both in men and women. This is, however, a point that
requires further study; giving due weight to racial characteristics, to
the proportion of prognathous individuals among the general population,
and to method and uniformity in measurement.
There is little doubt that the lower jaw is often remarkably well
developed in those guilty of crimes of violence. The squareness and
prominence of the jaw are obvious to the eye, and this is verified by
weighing after death, as has been shown by Manouvrier. The average weight
of the Parisian criminal skull is, if anything, below that of the ordinary
Parisian, but while the average weight of the lower jaw in the latter is
about 80 grammes, it is about 94 grammes among murderers. In this respect
the criminal resembles the savage and the prehistoric man; among the
insane the jaw weighs rather less than the normal average. A type of
receding chin is also found frequently among petty criminals, the
occasional or habitual, who are criminals by weakness; such heads
Lauvergne called _têtes moutonnes_.
Prominence of the zigoma or cheek-bone has been noted by many observers,
especially in sexual offenders, among whom Marro found it in 30 per cent.
as against 22 per cent. in normal persons. This recalls a remark made many
years ago by Charles Kingsley: “I have generally seen with strong animal
passion a tendency to high cheek-bone;” but he confines this
generalisation to women, and to those who are dark-complexioned. Virchow
believes that the large development of the jaws and the cheek-bones (to
which powerful muscles are attached) is favoured by coarse and hard food
through many generations.
A few isolated observations have been made on the teeth of criminals by
Lombroso, Zuccarelli, and others, who have observed certain anomalies,
such as exaggerated or deficient development of the canines; and Dr.
Prascovia Tarnowskaia, in her one hundred women thieves, found defects of
the bony palate and undeveloped teeth among the most frequent anomalies.
So far as I know, however, no extensive and careful series of observations
has yet been made on the teeth of criminals. It is desirable that this
should be done. The course of dental evolution among the higher mammals is
now fairly well known. Atavism in dental anomalies is well recognised
among the races of man; a fourth molar, for instance, found generally
among the platyrhine apes, is occasionally found in man: in what
proportion is it found among criminals? What, again, is the relative
condition of the canine teeth? The wisdom-teeth are dying out; they are
only absent among lower races in 19 per cent. cases, while in the higher
races they are absent in 42 per cent. of the observed cases (Mantegazza).
How do criminals stand in this respect? The development of the teeth is
very closely related to the development of the nerves and brain. The
extraordinary frequency of dental and palatal anomalies in idiots was
pointed out in England in 1860 by Ballard and Langdon Down, and they have
been carefully studied of recent years by Dr. Talbot, of Chicago, and by
Dr. Alice Sollier at the Bicêtre in Paris. It is worth noting, in
reference to the undeveloped teeth so frequently found by Dr. Tarnowskaia
among women thieves, that Dr. Sollier found abnormally small teeth in 13
per cent. of her idiots. Among the insane dental anomalies are
comparatively rare.
[Illustration: 1. Darwinian tubercle and absence of helix. 2. Absence of
lobule and antitragus. (Féré and Séglas.)]
Even non-scientific observers have noted the frequency among criminals of
projecting or of long and voluminous ears. In the answers to my Questions
issued to medical officers of prisons I found that the prominent ears of
criminals were more generally recognised than any other abnormality. Thus
Dr. V. Clarke says--“The largely developed external ear is a common
feature;” others speak of “ears often large and outstanding,” etc.
Lombroso finds the ear _ad ansa_, as he calls it--the handle-shaped
ear--in 28 per cent. of his criminals; Knecht in 22 per cent.; Marro not
more frequently than among ordinary people. Ottolenghi, who has recently
examined the ears of nearly 600 criminals and of 200 normal persons, finds
that while among the latter it is found in 20 per cent., among the former
it is found in 39 per cent., the percentage varying from 35 among thieves
to 42 among those convicted of assault and wounding. This observation is
indeed by no means of recent date. In reading lately that curious treatise
of mediæval physiology, Michael Scott’s _De Secretis Naturæ_, I found that
a very bad character is given to those persons whose ears are uncommonly
long, or ample transversely; they are bold, vain, foolish, incapable of
work. To come down to comparatively recent times, Grohmann in 1820 noted
the prominent ear as a marked characteristic of the criminal. Morel
studied the abnormalities of the ear, especially in relation to heredity;
Foville, as Dr. Barnes informs me, was accustomed to point out their
significance in the insane; and in England Laycock fully appreciated their
value as indications of degeneration.[21] Dr. Langdon Down, working on the
same lines as Laycock, points out in _Mental Diseases of Childhood_ the
frequency of congenital ear deformities in idiots and the feeble-minded,
associated often with webbed toes and fingers; also an implantation of the
ears farther back than is normal, giving an exaggerated facial
development. In France, Italy, and Germany there has within the last two
or three years sprung up a considerable literature on the subject, of
which Frigerio’s little book, _L’Oreille Externe: Étude d’Anthropologie
Criminelle_ (Paris, 1888), is perhaps the most valuable. Dr. Frigerio, who
has devoted special attention to this feature both among criminals and the
insane, finds certain peculiarities very common, and also notes various
anomalies of movement in the pinna and its partial hyperæmia, especially
in neurotic subjects. From the examination of several hundred subjects, he
concludes that the auriculo-temporal angle (measured by a special otometer
from the edge of the pinna to the mastoid) undergoes a gradual progression
from below 90° in the normal person, above 90° among criminals and the
insane, up to above 100° among apes. He found the large angle very marked
in homicides; less so in thieves. The longest ear Frigerio has ever seen
in man or woman was in a woman convicted of complicity in the murder of
her husband; the left ear was 78 mm., the right 81 mm. (the normal being
50-60 mm.) in length. Her father, her two sisters, and three cousins all
possessed excessively large ears, and were all convicts. The degenerative
variations to which he attributes most importance are the Darwinian
tubercle--_i.e._, a pointed projection in the outer margin of the
ear--frequent among the insane and criminals, the doubling of the
posterior branch of the fork of the antihelix, and a conical tragus (very
frequent in childhood and among apes) often found among the insane and
criminals. Féré and Séglas,[22] who examined over 1200 subjects--healthy,
insane, idiot, and epileptic--found anomalies frequent among epileptics,
and especially so among idiots; but not notably more frequent among the
insane than among the sane. They especially noted the number of
abnormalities frequently found in the same subject; and also a connection
between defects in the ear and sexual abnormalities. The committee
appointed by the British Medical Association to investigate the
development and condition of brain function among the children in primary
schools, found that ear-defects were especially frequent in connection
with nerve-defects and mental weakness.[23]
[Illustration: 1. Darwinian tubercle. 2. Root of the helix dividing the
concha into two distinct cavities. 3. Adherent lobule. (Féré and Séglas.)]
The most common (so-called) atavistic abnormalities of the ear--_i.e._,
those most frequently and prominently seen among the anthropoid and other
apes--are the Darwinian tubercle,[24] absence of one of the branches of
the fork, absence of helix, effacement of antihelix, exaggerated
development of root of helix, absence of lobule. Adherent lobule may
frequently be observed in well-developed individuals; it is not found
among apes, and appears to have no special significance.
The projecting ear has usually been considered as an atavistic character,
and with considerable reason, as it is found in many apes, in some of the
lower races, and it corresponds to the usual disposition of the ear in the
fœtus. Marro prefers to regard it as a morbid character because it is so
frequently united with true degenerative abnormalities, and because it is
not always found in the lowest human races; Hartmann, for instance, having
found it frequently among the European peasants, and in Africa more
frequently among Turks, Greeks, and Maltese than among the indigenous
fellaheen, Berbers, and negroes of the Soudan. Among so low a race as the
Australians the ear is often, I have noticed, very well shaped. At the
same time the projecting ear frequently accompanies deaf-mutism, Dr.
Albertotti having found it in sixteen out of thirty-three deaf-mutes.
[Illustration: 1. Forking of the root of the helix. (Féré and Sêglas.)]
The ear, it is well known, is very sensitive to vasomotor changes, slight
changes serving to affect the circulation visibly; so that in pale,
nervous people a trifling emotion will cause the ears to blush. Galton
tells us of a schoolmistress who judges of the fatigue of her pupils by
the condition of their ears. If the ears are white, flabby, and pendent,
she concludes that the children are very fatigued; if they are relaxed
but red, that they are suffering, not from overwork, but from a struggle
with their nervous systems, rarely under control at the age of fourteen or
fifteen. If this kind of sensitiveness is not common among criminals, a
few of neurotic temperament, as well as some lunatics, possess the power,
rare among normal persons, of moving the ear. Frigerio notes movements of
the superior and posterior muscles, especially when touched; in apes the
transverse muscle also acts. Frigerio connects this power of movement with
perpetual fear, always on the look-out; many of the criminals with this
peculiarity were recidivists, and three of the lunatics had delusions of
persecution.
The interest of these investigations, now so actively carried on, into the
malformations of the pinna among criminals is obvious. A few ingenious
persons have sought to explain some of them by the influence of the
headgear, pulling of the ears, etc.; but on the whole it is generally
recognised that they are congenital. The study of them, therefore, is of
distinct value in enabling us to fix the natural relationships of the
criminal man. There is still need for careful series of observations on
criminals, the insane, epileptics, and idiots, and every such series
should be controlled by a similar series of observations, by the same
observer, on ordinary subjects.
The criminal nose has been measured and studied with great care and
enthusiasm by Ottolenghi.[25] He finds that the criminal nose in general
is rectilinear, more rarely undulating, with horizontal base, of medium
length, rather large and frequently deviating to one side, and he
describes several varieties. Thus the typical thief’s nose is rectilinear,
often incurved, short, large, and often twisted, with lifted base. The
sexual offender presents the most rectilinear nose, though he shows the
undulating profile of nose more frequently than any other group of
criminals, of medium length and rather large. Ottolenghi believes that his
observations help to show, both in the skeleton and in life, an anatomical
relationship between criminals against the person and epileptics and
monomaniacs; also a relationship between thieves and sexual offenders and
cretins. His observations are full and interesting, but the matter needs
further investigation; the anthropological importance of the nose has
scarcely yet been fully realised.
Most writers on criminals speak of the pallor of the skin; this has been
noted at a very remote period by Polemon, l’Ingegneri, and other early
physiognomists. Marro has found it in 14 per cent. of his criminals, as
against 3 per cent. among the ordinary population. He considers that it is
related to habitual cerebral congestion. Pallor is also caused (as
Colajanni points out, and testifies to from personal experience) by
prolonged imprisonment, even under favourable circumstances. It is
probable that the influence of this cause has not yet been eliminated with
sufficient care.
Ottolenghi has investigated the wrinkles on the faces of 200 criminals as
compared with 200 normal persons. He finds that they are much more
frequent and much more marked in the criminal than in the non-criminal
person, and this must have struck many persons who have seen a large
number of criminals or photographs of criminals. The relative frequency is
especially marked in zygomatic and genio-mental wrinkles, while the
foreheads, even of youthful criminals, and when the face is in a state of
repose, sometimes present a curiously marked and scored appearance. The
precocity of these wrinkles is worthy of note. “We found young criminals
of fourteen,” Ottolenghi remarks, “with wrinkles more evident and marked
than are met with in many normal men above thirty. It is these precocious
wrinkles which give to young criminals that aspect of premature virility
which Lombroso and Marro have already noticed.” “It is worthy of note,” he
remarks also, “that the part of the face which, by the prevalence of
wrinkles, shows more active expression in criminals as in other
degenerated persons, is that corresponding to the region of the nose and
mouth--that is to say, the less contemplative, more material, part of the
face; and, in fact, we see that, with the exception of some murderers, who
have a surly look and corrugated forehead, the typical delinquent presents
habitually in the more rational and contemplative part of his face the
least degree of active expression, this corresponding to his limited
psychical sensibility.”
§ 3. _Anomalies of the Hair._
The beard in criminals is usually scanty. As against 1.5 per cent. cases
of absence of beard in normal persons, Marro found 13.9 per cent. in
criminals, and a very large proportion having scanty beard. The largest
proportion of full beards among criminals was found by Marro in sexual
offenders.
On the head the hair is usually, on the contrary, abundant. Marro has
observed a notable proportion of woolly-haired persons, a character very
rarely found in normal individuals. The same character has been noted
among idiots. In contrast with what is found among the insane, baldness is
very rare. Among criminal women remarkable abundance of hair is frequently
noted, and it has sometimes formed their most characteristic physical
feature, accompanied by an unusual development of fine hair on the face
and body. Salsotto, who has given special attention to criminal women,
finds a considerable distribution of hair between the pubes and the
umbilicus (as in men) in 10 per cent. of the forty women he examined as to
this character; such distribution among normal women only occurring
(according to Schulze) in 5 per cent. cases. Salsotto also found abundant
hair in seven out of the forty around the anus, a part in normal women
rarely supplied with hair. The excess of down on the face is found with
special frequency in women guilty of infanticide. It is worth while
pointing out that (as Dr. Langdon Down notes) there are frequent anomalies
in the development of hair among idiots. Some are hirsute over the entire
body; 11 per cent. have continuous eye-brows.
This abundance of hair seems to be correlated with the animal vigour which
is often so noticeable among criminals. It may at the same time be to some
extent explained by arrest of development or atavism leading to the
deficiency of beard which in its fully developed form marks, with few
exceptions, only the highest human races. Strong sexual instincts are but
the effervescence of this animal vigour; hence, perhaps, the connection
between the presence of an unusual amount of hair and infanticide. In the
case selected by Bucknill and Tuke as a typical example of insanity in
women due to repressed sexual instinct, the chief physical characteristic
noted was the amount of hair on the body; and in a case recorded by Dr. H.
Sutherland (_West Riding Asylum Reports_, vol. vi.) of a girl whose
illness and subsequent death were in his opinion due to “unsatisfied
sexual desire,” the long fair hair, which she delighted in letting flow
down to her knees, was specially noted. It was observed of the French
writer, Restif de la Bretonne, of whose extraordinary and abnormal sexual
proclivities, even at an early age, he has himself left ample evidence in
his autobiographical book, _Monsieur Nicolas_, that his body was
remarkably hairy.
In regard to colours, the proportion of dark-haired persons is considered
greater among criminals than among the ordinary population in England,
Italy, and Germany. An exception to this general rule in the case of
sexual offenders (rape and pæderasty) appears to be well marked in Italy;
though, so far as I have been able to ascertain, it has not been
frequently observed in England. Marro associates the fair hair of sexual
offenders with the precocious puberty of fair-haired women, as shown by
the investigations of Professor Pagliani. The researches of Marro and
Ottolenghi over a very considerable field give the following results for
North Italy:--
Chestnut Hair. Fair. Black.
Normal persons (900) 90.78 per cent. 9.22 per cent.
Criminals (1620) 93.83 " 6.17 "
Sexual offenders (100) 81.85 " 16.67 " 1.48 per cent.
Ottolenghi notes that the prevailing fair colour is reddish.[26]
Grey hair was found by Ottolenghi to be vastly more frequent at an early
age among ordinary working men and peasants than among the 200 male
criminals he examined: thus, between the ages of 30 to 33 it was 60 per
cent. for the former, only 12 per cent. for the latter. This does not hold
true for criminal women, who become grey more quickly than ordinary women.
The male criminal in this respect resembles the epileptic, and especially
the cretin, in whom grey hair is seldom seen. Baldness, Ottolenghi shows,
is very rare, comparatively, in the criminal, in relation not only to the
normal man but even to the epileptic and the cretin. In this respect the
criminal differs greatly from the ordinary professional man, in whom
baldness is frequently found.[27]
To the existing statistics of the colour of hair among criminals, taken as
a whole, it is not possible at present to attach much value. There is no
uniform system of description and nomenclature; it is difficult to make
full allowance for ethnic divergence, and there rarely exists an adequate
standard of comparison for the normal persons of corresponding race. Of
129 persons “wanted” at Scotland Yard, I find that 45 have “dark brown”
hair, and of these 17 (_i.e._, 37.7 per cent.) are described as
“dangerous,” “desperate,” “expert,” or “notorious”; 46 have “brown” hair,
and of these 14 (_i.e._, 30 per cent.) are “dangerous,” etc.; 11 are
“dark” (9) or “black” (2), and of these 3 (_i.e._, 27.2 per cent.) are
“dangerous”; 27 are described as “light brown,” “light,” “sandy,” “fair,”
“auburn” (one, a woman), “red” (one, a man, who is “dangerous”), and of
these 9 (_i.e._, 33.3 per cent.) are “dangerous,” etc. This gives a
proportion of red-haired persons about the same, according to my
observations, as is found among middle-class men in the city, but
considerably lower than is found, according to Dr. Beddoe, the chief
authority on this subject (in his _Races of Britain_), among the lower
classes in London--_i.e._, about 4 per cent. This is the class from which
the criminals in question were chiefly drawn, but they do not exclusively
belong to London; many come from the northern towns, and in many of these,
Leeds, for instance,[28] according to my observations, the proportion of
red-haired persons is decidedly larger than in London, and certainly not
smaller.
It is interesting to compare these statistics of the hair of London
criminals with a body of statistics concerning the colour of the hair of
1220 insane persons (omitting the grey-haired) in the New Brunswick
Asylum; although as the racial mixture is certainly not quite identical,
and the nomenclature probably varies, no strict comparison is possible. Of
these 1220 insane persons the hair of 1050 is described as “dark,” “dark
brown,” “brown,” while 170 have “light,” “auburn,” or “red” hair. One
person in seven among the insane persons has fair hair, one in five among
criminals; one person in fifty among the insane has red hair, one in 129
among the criminals; one in forty among the insane has auburn hair, one in
129 among the criminals. So that while the proportion of fair-haired is
distinctly smaller among the insane, the proportion of red-haired and
auburn-haired is very decidedly larger than among the criminals.
So far as exact evidence on the colour of the hair goes, it points chiefly
to a relative deficiency of red-haired persons among criminals. This may
perhaps be accounted for. There seems to be a lessened power of resistance
to disease among persons of brilliant pigmentation. The extensive
anthropological statistics of the American War showed a very marked
inferiority on the part of fair persons. These statistics have been
criticised by De Candolle, who believes, however, that even with
deductions they may probably still be accepted. Our evidence as to the
proportion of bright-haired people in lunatic asylums seems to point in
this direction. These red-haired people, with their “sanguine” temperament
of body, are peculiarly susceptible to zymotic disease; they take scarlet
fever, for instance, very easily, and suffer from it severely. Among the
manifold risks of a criminal life the brightly pigmented person, with his
sensitive vascular system, seems to be soon eliminated.
§ 4. _Criminal Physiognomy._
The science of physiognomy is still in a vague and rudimentary condition,
although the art has long been practised with more or less success. There
are, for instance, a large number of proverbs in which some of the most
recent results reached by the criminal anthropologists of to-day were long
ages back crystallised by the popular intelligence. Such are the Roman
saying, “Little beard and little colour; there is nothing worse under
heaven;” the French, “God preserve me from the beardless man;” the Tuscan,
“Salute from afar the beardless man and the bearded woman;” the Venetian,
“Trust not the woman with a man’s voice.”
Many of the old physiognomists, especially the two greatest, Dalla Porta
and Lavater, tell us how they immediately recognised criminals, although
they sometimes ludicrously failed; and Lavater once mistook the portrait
of an executed assassin for Herder’s. A criminal anthropologist of to-day,
Professor Enrico Ferri, declares that out of several hundred soldiers whom
he examined, he found one, and one only, whom his face declared to be a
murderer; he was told that this man had, in fact, been found guilty of
murder. Garofalo, the Neapolitan jurist, observes that he is scarcely
deceived twice out of ten times. Nor is this acuteness of perception by
any means confined to skilled observers. It is very commonly found among
women. Many persons, on first meeting an individual, are conscious of an
unfavourable impression which they succeed in out-living, but which is
subsequently justified. Sometimes the revealing glance is found, perhaps
with a shock of horror, in a face already familiar. It is a mistake to
attempt to stifle such instinctive impressions as irrational. They are
part of the organised experiences of the race, and, subject to
intellectual control, they are legitimate guides to conduct.
Professor Lombroso tells us that his mother, who had always lived far from
the world, was twice able to discover the criminal character of young
people whom as yet no one had suspected. A more curious example, he goes
on to remark, occurred in connection with the murderer Francesconi. There
was nothing remarkable about him, nothing to indicate ferocity or a temper
unlike that of other people; his beard was abundant and forehead high; one
just perceived a slight degree of prognathism and some prominence of the
frontal eminences. Yet years before his crime, a young girl of sixteen
(afterwards the Countess della Rocca), who had never quitted the paternal
home, and had no experience of life, refused to speak to him when every
one welcomed him on account of his wit. When asked why she treated him as
though he were a scoundrel, she replied: “If he is not a murderer he will
become one.” When Lombroso afterwards asked her by what sign she was
guided to this too speedily verified prophecy, she replied: “By his eyes.”
Lombroso once asked an intelligent schoolmistress to submit to thirty-two
young girls twenty portraits of thieves and twenty of great men. Eighty
per cent. of these children recognised the first as bad people, the second
as good. On another occasion he showed two hundred photographs of youths
to three medical men, and they all selected one as of the criminal type; a
little girl of twelve also selected the same. This youth had never
appeared in a court of justice, but he had cruelly betrayed those who had
assisted him to obtain a good position in life. He was not legally a
criminal, but, as Lombroso remarks, he was so anthropologically.
Beautiful faces, it is well known, are rarely found among criminals. The
prejudice against the ugly and also against the deformed is not without
sound foundation. What Hepworth Dixon wrote in 1850 on this point is still
of general application in all civilised countries:--“The population of
Millbank is always numerous and always changing; but its character remains
substantially the same. Year after year the visitor might drop in and see
no difference. There is a certain monotony and family likeness in the
criminal countenance which is at once repulsive and interesting. No person
can be long in the habit of seeing masses of criminals together without
being struck with the sameness of their appearance. A handsome face is a
thing rarely seen in a prison; and never in a person who has been a
law-breaker from childhood. Well-formed heads, round and massive, denoting
intellectual power, may be seen occasionally, but a pleasing, well-formed
face, never.”
In looking through the large number of photographs in Lombroso’s great
work, _L’Uomo Delinquente_, very few pleasant faces can be found. The two
or three attractive ones are those of women in whom the glow of youth,
plumpness, and abundant hair serve as a disguise to features that will
scarcely bear examination. The proportion of good-looking faces among the
excellent photographs in Inspector Byrnes’ _Professional Criminals of
America_, is much larger. As the able chief of the Detective Department of
New York, who, however, distinctly recognises a criminal type of face,
remarked to a visitor: “Look through the pictures in the Rogues’ Gallery
and see how many rascals you find there who resemble the best people in
the country. Why, you can find some of them, I daresay, sufficiently like
personal acquaintances to admit of mistaking the one for the other.”
Those, however, belong to the aristocracy of crime; they are criminals by
calculation; they have achieved a certain amount of success, and a
passable face is part of their stock-in-trade. Yet even among these the
proportion of faces that will bear examination is by no means large.
Émile Gautier, who was with Prince Krapotkine in the Lyons prison, remarks
that he is not acquainted with the anatomical peculiarities of criminals,
but that he knows that prisoners are not like the rest of the world.
“Their cringing and timid ways, the mobility and cunning of their looks, a
something feline about them, something cowardly, humble, suppliant, and
crushed, makes them a class apart. One would say, dogs who had been
whipped; hardly, here and there, a few energetic and brutal heads of
rebels.”
A curious fixed look of the eye has often been considered a characteristic
mark of, more especially, the instinctive criminal, a mark which cannot be
disguised. “I do not need to see the whole of a criminal’s face,” said
Vidocq, “to recognise him as such; it is enough for me to catch his eye.”
Lombroso finds that the eyes of assassins resemble those of the feline
animals at the moment of ambush or struggle; he has often observed it
when the man has been making a muscular effort, as in compressing a
dynamometer. Sometimes this feline and ferocious glance alternates with a
gentle, almost feminine gaze; this combination giving them a strange power
of fascination which has often been exercised on women.
Insistence on the feline aspect is very frequent among those who describe
criminals. Thus, for instance, Professor Sergi:--“I have had occasion
lately to observe a homicide, aged fifteen, who three months before
committing this murder had attempted another, and at another time showed
his ferocious nature by attacking a cow with a bill-hook and wounding it
in several places. He has been condemned to eleven years’ imprisonment, is
well developed for his age, and apparently has no morphological
abnormalities, but he is prognathous, his nose is depressed, and all the
lower part of the face, from the upper jaw down, has a savage cast. What
most distinguishes him is his look; his eye is cruel and feline in the
true sense of the word. Reserved, taciturn, even when he was free, now
that he is in prison he has the appearance of a wild beast, the glance of
a tiger.”
An interesting point in connection with the criminal physiognomy is that
it is to a large extent independent of nationality. The German criminal is
not very unlike the Italian, nor is the French unlike the English
criminal. M. Joly remarks, “I should say that in M. A. Bertillon’s office
I was shown nearly sixty photographs of Irish, English, and American
thieves. It would have been difficult in many cases to discern the
Anglo-Saxon rather than any other physiognomy.”
There is, in the opinion of many of the Italian criminal anthropologists,
a special physiognomy for different crimes, though this statement is
qualified by the well-known fact that quite different crimes may be
committed by the same person. Dr. Marro, in his _Caratteri dei
Delinquenti_, describes no fewer than eleven different classes of
criminals, though the distinctions are not all physiognomical. Professor
Lombroso’s descriptions are however the most vigorous and picturesque,
though it is scarcely possible to receive them without qualification.
Thieves he describes as frequently remarkable for the mobility of their
features and of their hands; the eyes are small and very restless; the
eyebrows thick and close; the nose often crooked or incurved; the beard
thin; the forehead nearly always narrow and receding; the complexion pale
or yellowish, and incapable of blushing. In those guilty of sexual
offences Lombroso finds the eyes nearly always bright; the voice either
rough or cracked; the face generally delicate, except in the development
of the jaws, and the lips and eyelids swollen; occasionally they are
humpbacked or otherwise deformed. Sometimes in incendiaries Lombroso has
noted a peculiar delicacy of the skin, an infantile aspect, and abundance
of hair, occasionally resembling a woman’s. The eye of the habitual
homicide is glassy, cold, and fixed; his nose is often aquiline, beaked,
reminding one of a bird of prey, always voluminous; the jaws are strong;
the ears long; the cheek-bones large; the hair dark, curling, abundant;
the beard often thin; the canine teeth much developed; the lips thin;
nystagmus frequent; also spasmodic contractions on one side of the face,
by which the canine teeth are exposed. The forger and sharper, on the
other hand, has frequently a singular air of _bonhomie_, a kind of
clerical appearance, which is indeed necessary in his business, because it
inspires confidence. Some have angelic faces; others are small, pale, and
haggard. The poisoner also frequently has a peculiarly benevolent aspect.
“In general,” Lombroso concludes, “born criminals have projecting ears,
thick hair, a thin beard, projecting frontal eminences, enormous jaws, a
square and projecting chin, large cheek-bones, and frequent gesticulation.
It is, in short, a type resembling the Mongolian, or sometimes the
Negroid.”
It is very interesting to compare this concluding remark with some
observations made by Dr. Langdon Down, who has carefully studied and
endeavoured to classify the facial characteristics of idiots. Dr. Down
finds a resemblance between feeble-minded children and the various ethnic
types of the human family; he specially refers both to a Mongolian and a
Negroid type. Just as Professor Lombroso finds the Mongolian type most
common among his criminals, so Dr. Down finds it most common among his
idiots: “more than 10 per cent. of congenital feeble-minded children are
typical Mongols. Their resemblance is infinitely greater to one another
than to the members of their own families.” Their characteristics are very
marked: the hair is brownish (not black, as in the Mongol), straight, and
sparse, the face flat and broad, the cheeks rounded and widened laterally,
the eyes obliquely placed, and the fissure between the eyelids very
narrow, the forehead wrinkled transversely, the lips large and thick, the
nose small, the skin tawny. In Dr. Down’s Negroid type of idiot there are
characteristic cheek-bones, prominent eyes, puffy lips, retreating chins,
woolly but not black hair, and no pigmentation of skin. These points of
resemblance are of considerable interest if we are of opinion that the
instinctive criminal is best defined as a moral idiot.
As to the causes and indelibility of the criminal expression there is much
divergence of opinion. Certain writers have spoken too incautiously on
this point. Thus Professor Sergi, in the description of the homicidal lad,
already quoted in part, goes on to remark: “In him nothing is acquired,
everything is congenital.” And Maudsley, in a sombre and powerful
description of the criminal physiognomy which has often been quoted,
speaks of it as branded by the hand of nature. “Everything is congenital,”
says Professor Sergi; yet we rarely hear of a baby who looks round from
its mother’s breast with fierce and feline air. We have to distinguish
between the anatomical physiognomy and the expression or _mimique_. To the
ordinary observer the latter is far more striking; he notices at once if a
countenance is sad or merry, angry or good-tempered, cowed or elate; he
does not so readily observe the shape of the jaws, or the cut of the ears,
or the lines of the forehead, yet such marks as these are alone strictly
organic and can safely be called congenital.
M. Joly cites some interesting examples of discrepancy in the descriptions
of the same criminal under varying conditions, even when the descriptions
are the work of good observers. Some years ago a youth of nineteen, named
Menesclou, was executed for having violated and killed a little girl, whom
he afterwards cut up and burnt. A journalist on the staff of the _Figaro_,
whose reports are considered very exact, thus described him at the trial:
“Imagine a sort of abortion, bent and wrinkled, with earthy complexion,
stealthy eyes, a face gnawed by scrofula, of cunning, dissipated, and
cruel aspect. The forehead is low, the beard sparse and slovenly; the
hair, black and thrown backwards, reaches to the shoulders; it is a head
absolutely repulsive.” On the other hand, the chaplain of the prison, the
Abbé Crozes, thus wrote:--“Menesclou by no means resembles the portraits
which the journalists have drawn of him. Far from being repulsive,
hideous, repugnant, he had a sympathetic and prepossessing physiognomy,
the air of a young man who has been well brought up, a gentle, honest,
_naïve_ face; he looked, to me, like a page in a good house.”
In another example the varying descriptions have the advantage of being
written by the same person, the Abbé Moreau, successor to the Abbé Crozes
as chaplain to the Roquette Prison, and author of the valuable and
interesting book, _Le Monde des Prisons_. “At the trial of Campi,” he
wrote, “I had only perceived a coarse demoniac, brutal, cynical, making
violent repartees. His repellant head was photographed on my memory; a
slovenly beard framing a yellow, bilious face, the muscles of a beast of
prey, and, lighting up the livid features with sinister gleam, two small
piercing mobile eyes, of a ferocity which I could scarcely bear to see.
Campi left on me the most melancholy impression; his head had appeared to
me enormous; his shoulders of extraordinary breadth.” Here is another
portrait by the same hand of Campi as he appeared in prison:--“I had now
before me a young man of ordinary size, slim rather than broad, with a
calm face lighted by a good-natured smile; the eyes had lost their
ferocity. He approached me with a certain timidity, holding his cap in his
hand; and waited respectfully until I spoke to him.”
It is clear that several factors go to make up our impressions of
physiognomy. It is well known that it is difficult to estimate the
dimensions of an individual seen alone at a distance, whether a criminal
at the bar or an actor on the stage. An actor off the stage is as
commonplace as a criminal in the streets. Add to this the horror of the
spectator, to whose mental vision the crime is present, and the probable
perturbation of the criminal whose fate is being argued. Would the
conscientious reporter of the _Figaro_ have written such a description had
he simply met Menesclou as a stranger in the streets? And would the worthy
Abbé’s impression of Campi have changed so greatly if the latter had not,
when in complete command of himself, chosen to appear in an attitude of
respectful humility?
In the Middle Ages there was a law by which, when two persons were
suspected of a crime, the ugliest was to be selected for punishment. At
the present day judges are, consciously or unconsciously, influenced by
physiognomy, and ordinary human beings, who also in a humble way sit in
judgment on their fellows, are influenced in the same manner. The modern
criminal anthropologists, with all their minute and patient
investigations, have not yet, however, succeeded in making criminal
physiognomy a very exact science, and the more criminal amongst us may
still find consolation in the reflection that there are no unfailing
criteria by which our crimes may be read upon our faces.
§ 5. _The Body and Viscera._
Notwithstanding their agility and spasmodic activity, the muscular system
of criminals is generally feeble. Such few observations as have yet been
made show that muscular anomalies are found with remarkable frequency.
Thus the investigations of Guerra on the bodies of 12 normal persons and
18 criminals, showed 11 anomalous muscular conditions in the latter as
against 5 in the former.
Lacassagne some years ago pointed out the remarkable length of the
extended arms (_la grande envergure_). Although many observers refer to
this peculiarity, and in many isolated cases it is marked and doubtless
connected with the agility of criminals, as among some lower races and the
apes, I am not acquainted with any extended series of observations in
which criminals and normal persons are fairly compared in this respect.
Marro’s series, although the normal persons are in too small number, as he
himself points out, is as reliable as any, and does not in the average
show any preponderance of long-armed individuals among criminals. There
is, however, reason to believe that individuals with exceptionally long
arms are more often met with among criminals.
“Among the inmates of the Elmira Reformatory,” remarks Dr. H. Wey, “the
greatest physical deficiency and least resistive power is found in the
respiratory apparatus. Pigeon-breasts, imperfectly developed chests, and
stooping shoulders abound. During a period of eight years, with 26 deaths,
13, or 50 per cent., were from diseases of the chest, not including
affections of the heart.”
In his answers to my Questions a prison surgeon remarks, “Many men have
large nipples and large well-marked areolæ. This is often very
remarkable.” I am not aware that this has been noticed by any other
observer, and the point deserves further examination.
Heart disease is common among criminals. Out of 54 examined by Flesch, 20
per cent. died of heart disease, 50 per cent. showed affections of the
heart. Valvular insufficiency and cardiac atrophy seem to be remarkably
prevalent. Penta found endarteritis and atheroma in 82 of his 184
instinctive criminals, _i.e._ 44 per cent., although many of them were
young. The condition, he says, was diffused and pronounced; 20 of these 82
showed aortic insufficiency. It may be noted that arterial anomalies are
extremely frequent. Thus Guerra found 14 arterial anomalies in his 18
criminals as against 4 in his 12 normal persons. Heart disease is also
common among the insane. Its tendency to produce mental alterations has
often been noted; pride, egotism, and an inclination to violence are
found, especially (according to Witkowski) among those affected with
ventricular hypertrophy; with aortic disease, neurotic and hysterical
states; with mitral disease, melancholy and attacks of violence. This is
not surprising when we remember the intimate connection that subsists
normally between the heart and the brain, the vascular system forming, as
it were, the basis of the brain.
The sexual organs in women criminals very frequently reveal pathological
conditions. Undescended testis has been frequently found by one of the
medical officers who answered my Questions. Unusual size of penis by
another. It is interesting to note in this connection that Drs.
Bourneville and Sollier found exaggerated development of the glans penis
extremely common among the idiots at the Bicêtre, and that among 728
individuals examined they found no fewer than 262 presenting anomalies of
the sexual organs, an enormous proportion when compared with the ordinary
population.[29] Ottolenghi believes that “on the whole anomalies of the
genital organs have in sexual offenders no small diagnostic importance,
especially when united to other characters which distinguish them from the
honest and from criminals in general--as the greater frequency of fair
hair, of malformed ears, of bichromatism of the iris, of blue eyes, of
twisted noses, of facial asymmetry, of voluminous lower jaws, and of
various neuroses, especially epilepsy.”[30]
It may be noted here that Marro and Ottolenghi have recently studied
metabolism in criminals. The chief point that comes out is an augmented
elimination of phosphoric acid in the urine. The same has been observed in
chronic alcoholism. These researches will, no doubt, be continued.[31]
§ 6. _Heredity._
The detailed study of criminal heredity and of criminal habit, or
recidivism, scarcely forms part of criminal anthropology. It is an
important branch of criminal sociology. But the facts of heredity form
part of the evidence in favour of the reality of the criminal
anthropologist’s conclusions, and it is not possible to ignore them here
entirely. Moreover, the attitude of society towards the individual
criminal and his peculiarities must be to some extent determined by our
knowledge of criminal heredity.
The hereditary character of crime, and the organic penalties of natural
law, were recognised even in remote antiquity. They were involved in the
old Hebrew conception, which seems to have played a vital part in Hebrew
life, of a God who visited the sins of the parents upon the children unto
the third and fourth generation. We know also the story in Aristotle of
the man who, when his son dragged him by his hair to the door,
exclaimed--“Enough, enough, my son; I did not drag my father beyond this.”
And Plutarch puts the doctrine of heredity in a shape that is both ancient
and modern--“That which is engendered is made of the very substance of the
generating being, so that he bears in him something which is very justly
punished or recompensed for him, for this something is he.” Or
again--“There is between the generating being and the generated a sort of
hidden identity, capable of justly committing the second to all the
consequences of an action committed by the first.”
There are two factors, it must be remembered, in criminal heredity, as we
commonly use the expression. There is the element of innate disposition,
and there is the element of contagion from social environment. Both these
factors clearly had their part in Sbro ... who is regarded by Lombroso as
the classical type of “moral insanity.” His grandfather had committed
murder from jealousy; his father, condemned for rape, had killed a woman
to test a gun. He in his turn killed his father and his brother.
Practically, it is not always possible to disentangle these two factors; a
bad home will usually mean something bad in the heredity in the strict
sense. Frequently the one element alone, whether the heredity or the
contagion, is not sufficient to determine the child in the direction of
crime. A case given by Prosper Lucas seems to show this: “In November 1845
the Assize Court of the Seine condemned three members out of five of a
family of thieves, the Robert family. This case presented a circumstance
worthy of remark. The father had not found among all his children the
disposition that he would have desired; he had to use force with his wife
and the two younger children, who up to the last were rebellious to his
infamous orders. The eldest daughter, on the other hand, followed, as if
by instinct, her father’s example, and was as ardent and violent as he in
attempting to bend the family to his odious tastes. But in one part of the
family the instinct was lacking; they inherited from their mother.”
The influence of heredity, even in the strict sense of the word, in the
production of criminals, does not always lie in the passing on of
developed proclivities. Sometimes a generation of criminals is merely one
stage in the progressive degeneration of a family. Sometimes crime seems
to be the method by which the degenerating organism seeks to escape from
an insane taint in the parents. Of the inmates of the Elmira Reformatory,
499, or 13.7 per cent., have been of insane or epileptic heredity. Of 233
prisoners at Auburn, New York, 23.03 per cent. were clearly of neurotic
(insane, epileptic, etc.) origin; in reality many more. Virgilio found
that 195 out of 266 criminals were affected by diseases that are usually
hereditary. Rossi found 5 insane parents to 71 criminals, 6 insane
brothers and sisters, and 14 cases of insanity among more distant
relatives. Kock found morbid inheritance in 46 per cent. of criminals.
Marro, who has examined the matter very carefully, found the proportion 77
per cent., and by taking into consideration a large range of abnormal
characters in the parents, the proportion of criminals with bad heredity
rose to 90 per cent. He found that an unusually large proportion of the
parents had died from cerebro-spinal diseases, and from phthisis. Sichard,
examining nearly 4000 German criminals in the prison of which he is
Director, found an insane, epileptic, suicidal, and alcoholic heredity in
36.8 per cent. incendiaries, 32.2 per cent. thieves, 28.7 per cent. sexual
offenders, 23.6 per cent. sharpers. Penta found among the parents of 184
criminals only 4 to 5 per cent. who were quite healthy.
Even when well-marked disease is absent in the parents, exhausting and
debilitating influences, age at time of conception and overwork, may play
a disastrous part. Dr. Langdon Down (_Mental Diseases of Childhood_) has
shown how the same influences play a part in the production of idiocy;
how, for instance, a man may during periods of strain and overwork
conceive idiot children, and at other periods healthy children. Marro has
made some interesting investigations into the ages of the father at the
period of conception of criminals, as compared with ordinary persons and
with the insane. He divided the fathers into three groups, according to
age at conception: the first included those in the period of immaturity,
which he reckoned as below 25 years of age; the second was the period of
maturity from 26 to 40; the third from 41 onwards, the period of
decadence. Plate VII. represents in a graphic form the percentage of
fathers belonging to each period in various groups; the first column in
each group representing the proportion of fathers belonging to the period
of immaturity, the second those belonging to the period of maturity, the
third those belonging to the period of decadence. It will be seen that the
largest proportion of immature parents is among the class of thieves,
although among the insane the proportion is still larger. More remarkable
is the abnormally large proportion of criminals with parents belonging to
the period of decadence. It is most marked among the murderers, 52.9 per
cent. of whose fathers had passed the period of maturity; but it is very
large also, exceeding the insane among those convicted of assault and
wounding (not represented in the Plate), and among sharpers. Sexual
offenders have the largest proportion of mature fathers, the smallest of
youthful fathers. Suspecting that among idiots a very large proportion of
elderly fathers would be found, I applied to Dr. Langdon Down, who has
kindly gone through the notes of one thousand cases, and confirmed this
suspicion. He finds that in 23 per cent. cases there has been a disparity
of age of more than ten years at the birth of the idiot child, the father
in nearly every case being the elder, and that in many cases this
disparity has reached more than 25 years. It appears, then, Dr. Down adds,
that the disparity of age is a factor in the production of idiocy. It may
be added that the elderly parent, by dying and leaving his children
young and unprotected, has also a social influence in the creation of
criminals.
[Illustration: PLATE VII.
RELATION OF AGE OF PARENTS IN NORMAL PERSONS, THE INSANE AND CRIMINAL.]
It is interesting to compare these results with those of Korosi, Director
of the Hungarian Statistical Bureau, on the ordinary population. He has
investigated 24,000 cases, and found that the children of fathers below 20
are of feeble constitution; that fathers aged from 25 to 40 produce the
strongest children, and that above 40 fathers tend to beget weak children.
The most healthy children have a mother below the age of 35; the children
born between 35 and 40 are 8 per cent. weaker; after 40, 10 per cent.
weaker. The children born of old fathers and young mothers, it should,
however, be added, are generally of strong constitution. If the parents
are of the same age the children are less robust.
Such hereditary influences as these seem to have played a part in the
production of that typical criminal by instinct, T. G. Wainewright, who
appears to have had no criminals or lunatics among his ancestry. The
often-quoted case of the criminal family, first mentioned by Despine in
his _Psychologie Naturelle_, is interesting in this connection. Three
brothers, the sons of one Jean Chrétien, had children and grandchildren as
under--
{Jean-François, thief.
{Bénoît.
{Claire, thief.
Jean Joseph {Marie-Renée, thief.
{Marie-Rose, thief.
{Victor, thief.
{Victorine. ---- Victor, murderer.
{François, murderer.
Thomas {Martin, murderer ---- (son, thief).
Pierre--Jean-François, thief and murderer.
Nothing is told us of the man and his three sons who produced this awful
brood, save that they were not themselves condemned criminals; but
whatever the influence was, it existed in all three of the brothers, who
each begat murderers and thieves. It is by subtle hereditary influences,
as well as by the instinctive habits of a lifetime, that we must explain
the influence of criminal contagion on men of honest life and clean
record. M. Émile Gautier, a political prisoner with Prince Krapotkine and
a number of French working-men in the great prison of Clairvaux, has
recorded an experience which is of interest in this connection. “Out of
fifty political prisoners,” he writes in his interesting and thoughtful
impressions published in the _Archives de l’Anthropologie Criminelle_ in
1888, “belonging to the average, or even the _élite_, of the working-class
population of a large town like Lyons, a good half-dozen will be found who
feel themselves at home in prison, and go immediately towards the
criminal-law prisoners, assuming at once, in virtue of I do not know what
equivocal predestination, their language, their appearance, their habits,
their mental dispositions, even the same negative morality, savagery,
treachery, artfulness, rapacity, and unnatural vice.”
Alcoholism in either of the parents is one of the most fruitful causes of
crime in the child. To the drunkenness of Jupiter when Vulcan was
conceived the Romans attributed the deformity of that god; in the words of
the old Latin poet:--
“Quis nescit crudo distentum nectare quondam
Indulsisse Jovem Junoni; atque inde creatum
Vulcanum turpem, coelique ex arce ruendum?”
There is to-day no doubt whatever that chronic alcoholism as well as
temporary intoxication at the time of conception modifies profoundly the
brain and nervous system of both parent and offspring. Some of the most
characteristic cases of instinctive criminality are solely or chiefly due
to alcoholism in one of the parents. When insanity and alcoholism are
combined in the parents, a rich and awful legacy of degeneration is left
to the offspring. Thus, one among many instances, Morel quotes a case in
which the father was alcoholic, the mother insane, and of the five
children one committed suicide, two became convicts, one daughter was mad,
and another semi-imbecile. Carefully-drawn statistics of the 4000
criminals who have passed through Elmira, New York, show drunkenness
clearly existing in the parents in 38.7 per cent., and probably in 11.1
per cent. more. Out of seventy-one criminals whose ancestry Rossi was able
to trace, in twenty the father was a drunkard, in eleven the mother. Marro
found that on an average 41 per cent. of the criminals he examined had a
drunken parent, as against 16 per cent. for normal persons.
Nor is it necessary that the alcoholism should be carried so far as to
produce great obvious injury to the parent. The action of the poison may
be slow and carried on from generation to generation. The fathers eat sour
grapes; the children’s teeth are set on edge.
The relation of alcoholism to criminality is by no means so simple as is
sometimes thought; alcoholism is an effect as well as a cause. It is part
of a vicious circle. For a well-conditioned person of wholesome heredity
to become an inebriate is not altogether an easy matter. It is facilitated
by a predisposition, and alcoholism becomes thus a symptom as well as a
cause of degeneration. The conclusions of Dr. Crothers, who has devoted
considerable study to this subject, are worthy of attention. He believes
that we do not sufficiently study the origin of inebriety. His conclusions
are--(1) that inebriety is itself evidence of more or less unsoundness;
(2) in a large proportion of cases it is only a sign of slow and insidious
brain disease; (3) when crime is committed by inebriates, the probability
of mental disease is very strong; (4) using spirits to procure
intoxication for the purpose of committing crime is evidence of the most
dangerous form of reasoning mania. The crime and the inebriety are only
symptoms of disease and degeneration, “whose footprints can be traced back
from stage to stage.”[32] It may be added that the danger of alcoholism,
from the present point of view, lies not in any mysterious prompting to
crime which it gives, but in the manner in which the poison lets loose the
individual’s natural or morbid impulses, whatever these may be.
If we set aside these slow and subtle causes and symptoms of
degeneration--causes which, while they may have long been recognised, are
only now beginning to be understood--there is no doubt whatever that the
criminal parent tends to produce a criminal child. There are, as Vidocq
said, families in which crime is transmitted from generation to
generation, and which seem to exist merely in order to prove the truth of
the old proverb: _bon chien chasse de race_. The investigations at Elmira
showed that in 51.8 per cent. the home was “positively bad,” and only
“good” in 8.3 per cent. A large number of the criminals investigated by
Rossi (_Studio sopra una Centuria di Criminali_) belonged to criminal
families. Two typical examples may be given:--N. N., condemned for fraud
and violence; father, alcoholic, convicted of fraud; mother, healthy; six
brothers, died young; one brother, a monster; another brother, born with
webbed fingers; another brother, highway-robber; another brother,
convicted of wounding; two sisters, one insane, the other a prostitute. R.
S., a thief, camorrista, convicted of wounding, etc; father, convicted of
wounding; paternal uncle, a thief; mother, a drunkard, convicted for fraud
and wounding; maternal grandfather, insane; maternal uncles, camorrista;
one brother, pickpocket, who five times feigned madness; another brother,
camorrista, convicted of fraud; another, thief; another, receiver;
another, camorrista and thief; a sister, honest and healthy.
Sometimes the criminal tradition is carried on through many generations
and with great skill, a kind of professional caste being formed. The
Johnson family of counterfeiters in America is an example of this. The
grandfather was a famous counterfeiter in his day; the next generation
were well known to the police; in the third generation criminal audacity
and skill appear to have reached a very high degree in seven brothers and
sisters, one of them, especially, being considered one of the most expert
counterfeiters of the day; he has spent a large part of his life in
various prisons.
The so-called “Jukes” family of America is the largest criminal family
known, and its history, which has been carefully studied, is full of
instruction.[33] The ancestral breeding-place of this family was in a
rocky inaccessible spot in the state of New York. Here they lived in log
or stone houses, sleeping indiscriminately round the hearth in winter,
like so many radii, with their feet to the fire. The ancestor of the
family, a descendant of early Dutch settlers, was born here between 1720
and 1740. He is described as living the life of a backwoodsman, “a hunter
and fisher, a hard drinker, jolly and companionable, averse to steady
toil,” working by fits and starts. This intermittent work is
characteristic of that primitive mode of life led among savages by the men
always, if not by the women, and it is the mode of life which the
instinctive criminal naturally adopts. This man lived to old age, when he
became blind, and he left a numerous, more or less illegitimate, progeny.
Two of his sons married two out of five more or less illegitimate sisters;
these sisters were the “Jukes.” The descendants of these five sisters have
been traced with varying completeness through five subsequent generations.
The number of individuals thus traced reaches 709; the real aggregate is
probably 1200. This vast family, while it has included a certain
proportion of honest workers, has been on the whole a family of criminals
and prostitutes, of vagabonds and paupers. Of all the men not twenty were
skilled workmen, and ten of these learnt their trade in prison; 180
received out-door relief to the extent of an aggregate of 800 years; or,
making allowances for the omissions in the record, 2300 years.[34] Of the
709 there were 76 criminals, committing 115 offences. The average of
prostitution among the marriageable women down to the sixth generation was
52.40 per cent.; the normal average has been estimated at 1.66 per cent.
There is no more instructive study in criminal heredity than that of the
Jukes family.
§ 7. _Tattooing._
The practice of tattooing is very common among criminals, and is
frequently carried to an extraordinary extent, twenty or thirty designs
being occasionally found on the same subject. Lombroso was the first to
point out the full biological and psychical significance of this practice.
[Illustration: Arms of criminal whose whole body was more or less
tattooed. (Lombroso.)]
Alborghetti found 15 per cent. of the inmates of the prison at Bergamo
tattooed. Lombroso examined 100 children at the reformatory at Turin, and
found 40 of them tattooed. Among 235 other youthful criminals he found 32
per cent. tattooed. Among the ordinary population tattooed children are
very rarely seen. Rossi found 23 tattooed among the 100 criminals whom he
has so carefully studied. Lacassagne among 800 convicted French soldiers
found 40 per cent. tattooed.[35]
The designs vary in character, but certain emblems are frequently
repeated. Tardieu out of 160 designs found 20 relating to love, 20 to war,
8 to religion, 8 to occupation, 6 to obscene practices.
[Illustration: A French glazier, thief, deserter from army; had been in
Africa. The chief figure on breast is St. George. (Lombroso.)]
Dr. Greaves, the medical officer of Derby Prison, has kindly noted details
of the tattoo marks observed on the prisoners received there during three
months. Out of 555 persons admitted, 41 (40 men and one woman) were
tattooed; _i.e._, 7.3 per cent. The tattooed individuals were chiefly
soldiers, with a few miners and sailors. The favourite devices were
flags, ships, anchors, female figures, bracelets, and initials. There were
two inscriptions, “Love” and “Jesus wept”; and among the less common
devices were a crucifix, Maltese crosses, a ballet girl, a mermaid, and
Chinese flower-pots. The most numerous and complex figures were all found
on soldiers.
The designs most frequently found by Rossi among his 23 tattooed criminals
were--portrait of mistress or nude woman (8); initials, either of self,
mistress, or friend (9); a transfixed heart, an emblem sometimes of love,
sometimes of vengeance (5); flowers, comets, swords, serpents, etc.
Tattooed inscriptions, as noted by Lacassagne, who has given special
attention to this matter, are frequently characteristic of the criminal’s
mental attitude; here are a few of the commonest: “Son of misfortune,” “No
luck,” “Death to unfaithful women,” “Vengeance,” “Son of disgrace,” “Born
under an unlucky star,” “Child of joy,” “The past has deceived me.”
The favourite position for tattooing, among the ordinary population, is
the front of the forearm; to a less degree the shoulders, the chest
(especially sailors), or the fingers. All who are tattooed on the back or
the sexual organs (according to Lombroso) have without exception either
been among the Pacific islands or sojourned in a prison. The greater
number of tattooed criminals are naturally found among recidivists and
instinctive criminals, especially those who have committed crimes against
the person. The fewest are found among swindlers and forgers, the most
intelligent class of criminals. There is evidence that criminals
frequently refrain from tattooing themselves because they know these
marks form an easy method of recognition in the hands of the police. It
appears that, in Italy at all events, the connection between tattoo marks
and crime has been of late recognised by the common soldiers. In 1848 the
soldiers of the Piedmontese army considered tattooing a mark of virility.
Recently, when Lombroso asked a soldier why he was not tattooed, he
replied: “Because those are the things that lead to the galleys;” and an
army doctor assured Lombroso that tattooed men were considered _a priori_
as bad soldiers.
[Illustration: PLATE VIII.
Right arm of G., French thief, etc., expelled from France, and wandered in
Africa and Australia. (Lombroso.)
M. J., French sailor and deserter; the nature of his crime is unknown.
(Lombroso.)]
The causes that produce tattooing are doubtless of a complex kind.
Religion, formerly and still among some races a chief cause of the
practice, was up to 1688 practised at Bethlehem by the Christian pilgrims,
and still survives at Loretto. Of 102 tattooed criminals, 31 bore
religious emblems. Vengeance frequently leads to it among criminals, and
among the feebler ones the spirit of imitation. Idleness often explains it
among prisoners, shepherds, and sailors.[36] Vanity is almost as powerful
a cause among criminals as among savages. “The more one is tattooed,” said
a Neapolitan soldier to Rossi, “the more one is esteemed and feared by
one’s companions, because it shows greater progress in the path of
crime.” Higher emotions always play a considerable part; and recollections
of childhood and the memory of loved friends are thus recorded. Lacassagne
attributes considerable importance to tattooing as a species of heraldry
used by uneducated people, analogous to the banners and seals of
corporations. Erotic passion is a very frequent--probably the most
frequent--cause of tattooing. All sorts of symbols of love, from the
initials of the loved one to the grossest emblems of unnatural passion,
are very common. The tattoo designs among prostitutes are usually of this
character; and such emblems are common among pæderasts and tribades. Among
savages nudity is of course one of the predisposing causes, and the same
cause acts among sailors and prostitutes. Lombroso attaches prime
importance to atavism. In the strict sense of the word, however, I doubt
very much whether we can legitimately accept the atavistic explanation.
The criminal is exposed to many of the influences which lead the savage to
adopt the practice, the chief of which have been already enumerated; this
is a sufficient explanation of the similarity of habit, and it seems
scarcely accurate to describe it as atavism. It is better described as a
survival. “I regard it,” Lacassagne well says in his instructive work,
_Les Tatouages_, “as the uninterrupted and successive transformation of an
instinct. The construction and material expression of metaphor and
emblematic language were first adopted by the most elevated classes, who
had no other means of communicating or materialising their thoughts.
Little by little this method took refuge with those lower classes who
have as yet no better means of expressing what they feel and experience.
It is in these classes also that vanity, or the need of approbation,
predominates, and this has a marked influence in maintaining the custom.”
Tattooing is exceedingly rare among women. Out of 300 women criminals at
Turin, Gamba found only five tattooed. Soresina, who examined 1000
prostitutes at Milan, did not find one tattooed. Lombroso, out of 200
criminal women, found only one tattooed; she came from Chioggia, was an
adultress who had killed her lover from jealousy, and she had associated
much with sailors.[37]
Among the insane tattooing does not seem always to be uncommon. In the
lunatic asylum at Ancona, we learn from Dr. Riva,[38] out of 184 men and
147 women no fewer than 16.30 per cent. of the former, and 6.80 of the
latter, were tattooed. It is worthy of note that it was chiefly among the
more severe and incurable cases of mental degeneration (dementia,
alcoholism, epilepsy, congenital mental weakness) that these signs were
found. In character and position they differed from those usually found
among criminals, by being exclusively worked on the arms and hands, and
consisting only of religious symbols, especially the Madonna of Loretto.
§ 8. _Motor Activity._
Extraordinary and ape-like agility has frequently been noted among
criminals. Every one is familiar with the daring feats of agility by which
prisoners frequently escape scatheless from the hands of their guardians.
This characteristic appears to be sometimes favoured by unusual length of
arm. A thief, incendiary, violator, and murderer, examined by Marandon de
Monthyel, showed little abnormal or criminal in his physical character,
except an extraordinary agility.
Left-handedness has, by instinct or from accurate observation, been
regarded with disfavour in the proverbial sayings of many nations. It is
decidedly common among criminals. Examining 81 normal persons, Marro found
70 right-handed, 7 left-handed, and 4 ambidextrous. Examining 190
working-men, he only found 6 left-handed. Altogether the proportion of
normal left-handed and ambidextrous persons was 6.2 per cent. Among
criminals, on the other hand, with the single exception of highwaymen, the
proportion of left-handed and ambidextrous persons was in every case
higher. Among 40 assassins in 17.5 per cent.; among 7 incendiaries in 28.5
per cent.; among 44 burglars in 18.1 percent. This corresponds with a
greater sensory obtuseness, which has also been observed on the right
side among criminals. It is also interesting to note the ambidextrous
tendency among children, savages, and idiots.
With the dynamometer, also, there appears to be a slightly greater
prevalence of excess of the left hand over the right, judging from Marro’s
experiences. It may be of interest to note here that among normal persons
the proportion in which the left hand is stronger than the right is by no
means small. Thus at the International Exhibition in London in 1884
observations made under Mr. Galton’s superintendence on 400 male
adults--artisans, clerks, professional men, etc.--between the ages of
twenty-three and twenty-six, showed that in 253 cases the right hand was
stronger than the left in squeezing power; in 147 the left was stronger;
in 28 both hands were equal. If we divide the individuals thus examined
according to occupation the results vary curiously. Of 18 chemists, in 12
the right hand was stronger, in 5 the left, in 1 both were equal. Of 9
carpenters and joiners, in 4 the right hand was stronger, in 3 the left,
in 2 both were equal. Of 87 clerks, in 52 the right hand was stronger, in
29 the left, in 6 both were equal. Of 9 medical men, in 5 the right hand
was stronger, in 4 the left. Of 7 clergymen and ministers, in 3 the right
hand was stronger, in 3 the left, in 1 both were equal. The high
proportion of right-handed squeezers among the chemists is no doubt due to
the effects of occupation, to the constant practice of gripping heavy
bottles with the right hand. Occupation also, no doubt, among the
carpenters and joiners, favours squeezing power in the left hand. The
factor of occupation is less obvious among clerks, but would no doubt
favour the right hand, and among these the proportion keeps very close to
the average among the 400. The doctors are almost as left-handed in this
respect as the carpenters, though the result can scarcely be influenced by
occupation; while the clergymen, who are certainly most free from the
influence of occupation in this respect, are the most left-handed of all,
although here the figures are too small to allow of any very reliable
results.
It seems that sufficient care has not yet been taken to determine what
constitutes left-handedness. The relative strength of the two hands is not
enough to decide this, for mancinism, or left-sidedness, is a matter of
relative skill as well as of relative strength. It is quite possible for a
person to be left-handed in some respects, right-handed in others; thus
(as happens to be the case with the present writer) he may be right-handed
in regard to all those actions which are exercised habitually and
socially, or which are the result of training, and left-handed in all
other respects. In such a case there appears to be a natural tendency to
left-sidedness, which is controlled and concealed by training, but which
takes every opportunity to assert itself in more unguarded directions. It
appears to me that the act of throwing a stone, an act requiring delicate
nervous adjustment as well as muscular force, and which is not subjected
to the influence of artificial training, is for practical purposes the
most convenient and accurate test for determining left-handedness. This
was the test adopted by Clapham and Clarke; they found that 6 per cent. of
the 500 criminals examined were left-handed.[39]
Ottolenghi has recently investigated the anatomical mancinism of
criminals. At the suggestion of Lombroso, he has measured with Bertillon’s
instruments, which give the maximum of precision, the length of the hands,
the middle fingers, and the feet in 100 criminals and 50 normal persons.
Differences of less than a millimetre he disregarded. He found that while
the right hand was longer in 14 per cent. of the normal persons, it was so
in only 5 per cent. of the criminals generally, and in none of the thieves
and pickpockets. In 35 per cent. of the pickpockets the left hand was
longer as against 11 per cent. in the normal persons. Very similar results
came out in regard to the fingers. In 38 per cent. of the normal persons
the right foot was longer, in only 27 per cent. of the criminals; in this
respect, however, the pickpockets (35 per cent.) most nearly approach the
normal, while those convicted of wounding, who in regard to the hand are
nearest to the normal, are in this respect farthest from the normal. In 15
per cent. of the normal persons the left foot was longer, in 35 per cent.
of the criminals, including 55 per cent. of the cases for wounding, and in
56 per cent. of the sexual offenders. It should be added that this
anatomical mancinism is not necessarily related with motor mancinism.[40]
Anomalies of the tendon reflex of the knee are very common among
criminals; they are either exaggerated or, very frequently, absent.
Lombroso found feeble tendon reflexes especially common among thieves, and
a very large proportion of exaggerated tendon reflexes among sexual
offenders. Marro also found the highest proportion of exaggerated
reflexes (the enormous proportion of 40 per cent.) among sexual offenders.
There was an alcoholic or insane parentage among 79 per cent. of those
with exaggerated reflexes.
§ 9. _Physical Sensibility._
The extent to which tattooing is carried out among criminals, sometimes
not sparing parts so sensitive as the sexual organs, which are rarely
touched even in extensive tattooing among barbarous races, serves to show
the deficient sensibility of criminals to pain.[41] The physical
insensibility of the criminal has indeed been observed by every one who is
familiar with prisons. In this respect the instinctive criminal resembles
the idiot to whom, as Galton remarks, pain is “a welcome surprise.” He may
even be compared with many lower races, such as those Maoris who did not
hesitate to chop off a toe or two, in order to be able to wear European
boots. Dr. Felkin found the maximum distance at which two points of a
compass could be distinguished at the tip of the tongue was in an average
European 1.1 mm., in a Soudanese 2.6 mm., in a negro 3 mm.
Lauvergne mentions a convict, imprisoned for life, who smiled with
pleasure when, moxas having been applied to him, he saw his skin burning
and heard it crack. Sbro ... (who killed his brother and his father),
Lombroso’s favourite typical case of “moral insanity,” was found by
Tamburini and Seppilli to be without perception of pain when tested with
a needle. Other criminals have been found very deficient in sensibility to
the electric current. Dr. Nicolson remarked: “They are comparatively free
from that agitation and tremulousness which are so apt to arise under
circumstances involving suspense and painful foreboding. The prisoner with
the knowledge of a probable flogging on the morrow, instead of giving way
to restlessness and anxiety, maintains a calm and stolid behaviour.” It is
not uncommon to read in the newspapers of criminals who hold out their
hands to be handcuffed without the slightest trembling, and who eat
heartily on the eve of execution, or even while the jury above are still
deliberating on their fate.
One of Rossi’s hundred criminals received when a child his father’s blows
“as caresses,” and he was able to walk with a dislocated foot from Genoa
to Novi (some thirty miles); another wounded himself severely and declared
that it gave him no pain. Dr. Penta, in the course of his elaborate
researches, found that the majority of his 184 instinctive criminals at
Santo Stefano were insensible to the pain of punctures, burns, cuts, and
even grave surgical operations. “I have extirpated tumours,” he remarks,
“of considerable size, in the back and the neck, without the necessity of
producing anæsthesia, and without causing pain; in a case of feigned
epilepsy ammonia to the nose caused no reflex phenomenon, and deep
puncture and burning of the skin produced no painful contraction.”
This insensibility shows itself also in disvulnerability, or rapid
recovery from wounds, first pointed out by Benedikt, which appears to be a
frequently observed phenomenon among criminals; thus it had been noticed
by several of the medical officers of prisons who answered my
Questions.[42] In this respect the instinctive criminal resembles the
lower animals as well as the lower races of man; among the Egyptians,
Chinese, and Annamites, and other races, wounds heal much more rapidly
than in Europe. Thus Mr. Tregear remarks:--“I have seen a Maori speared
with a big rafting-spear (an iron-shod pole thicker than the wrist), the
point driven through the breast, just under the collar-bone, and coming
out at the back. In a week’s time he walked fifteen miles, crossing a
mountain range, the wound being healed.”[43] Benedikt speaks of a brigand
who, in a revolt of prisoners, had several vertebræ broken; all his wounds
healed, and the giant of former days became a dwarf, but he could work at
the forge with a heavy hammer with all his old vigour. Lombroso knew a
thief whose frontal bone was cloven laterally with a hatchet; in fifteen
days he was cured without any relapse. He speaks also of a murderer who,
when working as a mason, was reproved for some fault; he threw himself
from the third storey into the court; every one supposed he was killed,
but he got up, smiling, and asked to be allowed to continue work. A
pregnant woman performed on herself Cæsarean section with a kitchen knife,
subsequently killing the child; she recovered without dressings and
without fever. We hear also of a criminal with a fractured rib and
pleurisy who could hew wood and travel in a cart over rough mountain
roads. “Individuals who possess this quality,” Lombroso remarks, “consider
themselves privileged, and treat with contempt those who appear delicate
and sensitive. It is a pleasure to such men to torment others whom they
regard as inferior beings.”
Though loud in their complaints of trivial ailments, they are often
unconscious of severe illness. At Chatham, in 1888, a prisoner dropped
down dead on returning from labour; both lungs were found in an early
stage of pneumonia, and death was probably due to syncope; he had made no
complaints to any one. Prisoners will inflict severe injuries on
themselves in order to gain some very trifling object. At Chatham, in
1871-72, 841 voluntary wounds or contusions are recorded; 27 prisoners
voluntarily fractured a limb, and 17 of them had to submit to amputation;
62 tried to mutilate themselves, and 101 produced wounds by means of
corrosive substances. Lombroso found the general sensibility decreased in
38 out of 66. Working with Du-Bois Reymond’s electrical apparatus, in
conjunction with Marro, he found the sensibility of the criminals much
inferior to that of the normal persons examined. Swindlers possessed much
greater sensibility than murderers and thieves. Marro found sensibility,
measured by an esthesiometer, most obtuse in murderers and incendiaries.
Similar results were obtained by Ramlot, in reference to tactile
sensibility; he examined 103 criminals and 27 normal persons, and found
obtusity in 44 per cent. of the former, and in only 29 per cent. of the
latter.[44] It should be noted that cases of excessive sensibility, due
either to extreme pusillanimity, or to some morbid condition of the skin
or brain, are also found among criminals.
The eyesight of criminals was found by Bono to be superior to the normal.
He examined 190 youthful delinquents, and compared them with over 100
youths of similar age in an agricultural institute, the examination in all
cases being made under the same conditions. The visual acuity of 49 per
cent. of the criminals was superior to 1.5 Snellen; only 31 per cent. of
the honest youths possessed an equal acuteness.
Ottolenghi obtained similar results.[45] He examined 100 criminals with
Snellen’s types in the open air, using various precautions to ensure
uniformity and accuracy. The results were--
Visus (average) for 82 thieves = 1.8
" " 18 homicides = 2.2
" " 100 criminals = 2.0
In one of the homicides sight was exceedingly keen (V = 3). He examined 15
warders, between the ages of 27 and 45, under the same conditions, and
found vision = 1.5. Further observations on this point are needed, as
previous observers (Bielakoff, for instance) have found the sight of
criminals inferior to the normal. If Ottolenghi’s results are confirmed by
extended observation, there is an interesting analogy on this point
between criminals and many lower races. Thus examinations by Seggel in
1881 yielded the following results--
Terra del Fuegians V = 5
Nubians V = 3
Georgians V = 1¾
while among German and Russian soldiers the average varied between 1⅖ and
0.95.
Ottolenghi also found colour-blindness very rare; he met with one case
(green-blindness) among 460 criminals tested with Holmgren’s wools. This
result also corresponds with examinations of lower races, such as
Samoyeds, Lapps, Esquimaux, Nubians, etc. It should be added that this
result also needs confirmation, as it does not correspond with other
observations. Thus Holmgren found that colour-blindness existed in 5.60
per cent. of 321 criminals, while among 32,000 of the ordinary population
the proportion was scarcely 3.25 per cent. Dyschromatopsia has been found
common, a fact of great significance, since this disorder is so frequently
connected with grave disturbance of the nervous system.
The healthiness of eye in criminals, if confirmed, may be compared with a
similar condition in imbeciles. In a study of twenty young adult male
imbeciles of a minor degree than idiocy, Dr. Oliver found vision normal
and colour perception apparently normal, and the eyes singularly free from
the slight morbid changes so common in the eye. This condition, “which is
shown by a proper balance of muscular action, a persistence of congenital
hypermetropia, and an abnormally healthy appearance of the eye-ground
(presenting a picture that is almost identical to the one seen during
infantile existence), may be considered as significant of a type of
unused, healthy, adult human eye.”[46]
The hearing of criminals is relatively obtuse, and they are prone to
disease of the ear. Thus Dr. Gradenigo, at the request of Lombroso,
undertook a series of researches into the matter,[47] in 110 instinctive
and occasional criminals. Of the 82 criminal men he examined, 55 (67.3 per
cent.) proved to be inferior to the normal. Of these 82, there were 40 who
were instinctive criminals, and of these 29 (72.5 per cent.) had defective
hearing. Of the 28 women, 15 (53.5 per cent.) possessed hearing inferior
to the normal. Four of the women, however, possessed hearing much superior
to the normal average.[48] Gradenigo found that the defective hearing was
due in the great majority of cases to inflammatory affections of the
middle and internal ear. He found no constant relation between defective
hearing and obtusity of touch, taste, and smell, frequently found among
criminals.
Ottolenghi has examined the olfactory acuteness of 80 instinctive
criminals (50 men and 30 women) and 50 normal persons of the middle and
lower classes. He constructed a kind of osmometer consisting of twelve
acqueous solutions of essence of cloves, contained in similar bottles in
similar quantities. The solutions were graduated from 1/50000 to
1/100.[49] Beginning with the weakest solution he noted when olfactory
sensation commenced; and he also used the method of Nichols and Bailey,
inviting the subject to arrange the bottles in order of intensity. The
result, unlike what he had expected, was to show distinctly that the
olfactory sense is less developed in the criminal than in the normal
person, and slightly less in the criminal women than in the criminal men.
Among normal persons (as Nichols and Bailey had previously found) the
olfactory sense of women is less keen than that of men. Among the 80
criminals, 8 (6 men and 2 women) possessed no olfactory sensibility; in 2
of these there was entire absence of perception, in 6 absence of specific
sensation.
Ottolenghi has also investigated the sense of taste in criminals.[50] He
examined 60 instinctive criminals, 20 occasional criminals, 20 normal
persons of the lower class, 50 students and professional men, 20 criminal
women and 20 normal women, all healthy and robust, and for the most part
between the ages of twenty and fifty. The three test substances used were
sulphate of strychnia, saccharine, and common salt; various precautions
(attention to uniformity of amount of solution used, temperature of
solution, cleanliness of mouth, etc.) were adopted in order to make a
series of experiments, full of practical difficulties, as reliable as
possible. From these experiments, it appeared that the sense of taste is
more developed in the normal man than in the criminal, and more developed
in the occasional criminal than in the instinctive criminal. He found
gustatory obtuseness in 38.3 per cent. of the instinctive criminals, in 25
per cent. of the lower class men examined, and in 14 per cent. of the
professional men. The criminal women also showed a larger proportion of
gustatory obtuseness than the normal women. He noted, however, that the
women who passed as normal, but who were given to vice and prostitution,
showed an even larger percentage of gustatory obtuseness than criminal
women. The defect in gustatory acuteness seemed to him generally to be
rather of a qualitative than quantitative character. The generic
excitation was produced in a large number of cases as soon as in the
normal person, but the specific sensation was very retarded. The subject
was conscious of a taste, but could not tell of what kind it was; that is
to say, the defect was situated centrally, in the cerebral cortex, rather
than in the sensorial apparatus.
It is worthy of note that criminals begin to use tobacco at an early age.
Thus among a population which normally begins to smoke before the age of
thirty only in the proportion of 14 per cent. (and the insane 7.2 per
cent.), 22 per cent. of criminals smoke before the age of thirty, and
nearly all (279 out of 300 males and 32 out of 32 women) before entering
prison. Venturi[51] found tobacco used by 14.3 per cent. of normal men,
1.5 of normal women; 45.8 of criminal men, 15.9 of criminal women.
Marambat[52] concluded that the love of tobacco was the first passion that
rooted itself in the youthful criminal. Out of 603 juvenile delinquents,
between the ages of eight and fifteen, 51 per cent. had acquired the
custom of using tobacco before their detention.
Lombroso notes that the sensibility of criminals to the weather appears to
be greater than that of the ordinary population. He found it in 29 out of
112. There were 9 who became quarrelsome shortly before storms, and one
of these remarked that his companions always foretold bad weather when he
sought to quarrel. Dostoieffsky observed that quarrels and disturbances
were particularly common among the convicts in the spring. What is true of
the Russian prisoners in Siberia seems also to be true of American
prisoners at New York. From some tables given by Dr. Wey of Elmira it
appears that marks for bad conduct are specially numerous in the spring,
and also, to some extent, in the autumn.
_Vaso-motor Sensibility._--Inability to blush has always been considered
the accompaniment of crime and shamelessness. Blushing is also very rare
among idiots and savages; the Spaniards used to say of the South American
Indians: “How can one trust men who do not know how to blush?” From the
investigations of Amadei, Tonnini, and Bergesio, it appears that if we
compare lunatics and criminals, twice as many of the latter are incapable
of blushing. Pasini, in his examinations of women, noted blushing in 21
per cent. of murderers, 20 per cent. of poisoners, 18 per cent. of
infanticides, and only 10 per cent. of thieves. It was not at the mention
of their offences that they blushed, but when questioned concerning their
menstrual functions. Out of 130 criminal women examined by Salsotto, 50
blushed when spoken to concerning their offences. Dr. Andronico of Messina
communicated to Lombroso some interesting, though too general,
observations concerning the prostitutes and young female criminals in
prison under his charge. “Among the inscribed prostitutes,” he remarks,
“none blushed when questioned concerning their occupation. I have seen
some of them blush when reproached for unnatural practices. I have noted
that female homicides narrate their deeds ingenuously and without
blushing; those who have poisoned their husbands blush, but partially.
Among female prisoners condemned for theft, blushing shows itself first on
the ears, then on the face; those who are condemned for excitation to
prostitution do not blush.”
In order to test the vaso-motor reactions of the criminal to various
thoughts and emotions, Lombroso made a series of very interesting
experiments, during the course of a year, with the sphygmograph and with
Mosso’s ingenious and valuable instrument, the plethysmograph. With the
sphygmograph (or, rather, the hydrosphygmograph) he observed the degree of
excitement produced on various individuals by the sight of wine, cigars,
food, money, and photographs of nude women. The plethysmograph is a
delicate instrument for measuring mental excitement, depending on the fact
that the slightest emotion causes an alteration in the amount of blood
present in any part of the body.[53] With the plethysmograph Lombroso
found that the strongest impressions (superior to the normal) were
produced by cowardice, fear of the judge, some favourite mode of
excitement (wine or women), but above all, by vanity. It is not, however,
easy to generalise from his observations; it is necessary for such
observations to be carried on during a long period on a great number of
persons, normal as well as criminal, and to be carefully controlled. They
are of very great interest, for they enable us to penetrate into the most
secret recesses of the mind, and to measure the force of the motives that
move it. It is to be hoped that they will be conducted on a much larger
scale than they have hitherto been.
All these researches into the physical sensibilities of the criminal are
of the first importance, and it is necessary that they should be greatly
extended and carefully checked. So far they nearly all converge to show
that the criminal is markedly deficient in physical sensibility. On this
physical insensibility rests that moral insensibility, or psychical
analgesia, as it has been called, which is, as we shall see, the
criminal’s most fundamental mental characteristic.