cloak the identity of members of the family who may now be engaged in
honest pursuits. The family had its origin in the northern part of the
State of New York, and has rendered the place notorious by the unbroken
chain of crime which, link after link, binds the jail-bird of to-day
with the jolly and easy-living “Max” of a century ago, who drank well,
hunted well, and ended his days in the quiet enjoyment of animal peace.
He certainly was more intent on hospitable cares and the gratification
of his passing desires than on the welfare of his progeny; for no man
ever left behind him a more serried array of criminal descendants whose
name has become the synonym of every iniquity the tongue can utter or
the mind conceive. This man had two sons, married to two out of six
sisters whose reputation before marriage was bad. The eldest of the
sisters is called “Ada Juke” for convenience’ sake, though in the county
where the family lived her memory is unpleasantly embalmed as “Margaret,
the mother of criminals.” Ada had given birth before her marriage to a
male child, who was the father, grandfather, and great-grandfather of
the distinctively criminal line of descendants. She afterwards married,
and thus commingled in her person two generations exhibiting
characteristics essentially peculiar to each, though they often bear
leading features of resemblance. The sisters “Delia” and “Effie” married
the two sons of Max, and in this way, though somewhat obscurely, Mr.
Dugdale connects Max with the most criminal branch of the Jukes. We say
somewhat obscurely; for the reader is first inclined to believe that Ada
was married to one of Max’s sons, till on chart No. iv., page 49, he
quite casually lights on the remark “Effie Juke married X——, brother to
the man who married Delia Juke, and son of Max.” While acknowledging the
inherent difficulty of a lucid arrangement of facts so complicated and
bearing such manifold relations, we believe that a little more fulness
of statement would lead to at least an easier understanding of Mr.
Dugdale’s work. “Effie” became, through her marriage with the second son
of Max, the ancestress of one of the distinctively pauperized branches
of the family. The progeny of Delia inclined more to crime, and Ada thus
became the parent stem whence both the criminal and pauperized army of
the “Jukes” mainly sprang; for it is a circumstance deserving notice
that, whereas the offspring of “Ada” before marriage founded the
criminal line of the family, her offspring after marriage inclined
rather to pauperism than to crime. So likewise in the case of “Effie,”
whose known offspring was the result of marriage; we find few criminals,
but nearly all paupers, among her descendants.
In the first chart Mr. Dugdale exhibits a detailed history of the
illegitimate posterity of “Ada” throughout seven generations. The first
legitimate consanguineous union in the family took place between the
illegitimate son of “Ada” and a daughter of “Bell,” from which six
children resulted. The branch is considered illegitimate, as far as
“Ada” is concerned, so that Mr. Dugdale sets down each collateral branch
as either legitimate or illegitimate, according to the legitimacy or
illegitimacy of that child of the five sisters which stands at the head
of the list. Now, glancing along the column of the third generation, or
that exhibiting the six legitimate children of the illegitimate son of
“Ada” and a legitimate daughter of “Bell,” we find their history to be
as follows: The first, a male, lived to the age of seventy-five; was a
man of bad character, though inclined at times to be industrious, and
depended on out-door relief for the last twenty years of his life. The
sisters and brothers of this man strongly resembled him in character,
being all noted for their longevity, their propensity to steal, and
their habitual licentiousness. They were, moreover, exceedingly
indolent, with one exception, and were a constant burden on the
township. It is unnecessary to trace out the history of these or of
their descendants, except to present a few typical cases which will
enable us to understand the conclusion arrived at by Mr. Dugdale.
The first son of “Ada,” just mentioned, married a non-relative of bad
repute, by whom he had nine children. This woman died of syphilis; and
it is well to note at what an early period this poisonous strain showed
itself in this the illegitimate branch of “Ada’s” descendants. These
nine children surpassed their father, their uncles, and their aunts in
criminal propensity. They were especially more violent, were frequently
imprisoned for assault and battery, and, though no more licentious than
their father, were especially addicted to licentiousness in its grosser
forms. They inherited the constitutional disease of which their mother
died, and with it the penalty of an early death, the oldest having died
at the age of fifty-one and the youngest at twenty-four. It will be
observed that they were not so constantly dependent on out-door relief
as the generation immediately preceding them; this fact being
attributable to the greater violence of their temper, which induced them
to acquire by robbery and theft the means of livelihood, while the
others preferred to beg. One aunt of these nine—viz., the second sister
of their father and fourth from him in birth—never married, but had four
children by a non-relative; and, for a purpose soon to be understood, we
will compare their career with that of their nine cousins, who, it must
be remembered, were born in wedlock. These four were illegitimate all
the way back to their grandmother, “Ada”; and if there be any force in
the statement that prolonged illegitimacy has an influence in the
formation of character, we here have an opportunity of verifying it. The
first of these, a male, was arrested at the age of ten; was arraigned
for burglary soon after, but acquitted; was indicted for murder in 1870,
and, though believed to be guilty, was again acquitted; was in the
county jail in 1870, and in 1874 was depending upon out-door relief. The
second, a female, began to lead a loose life at an early age, which
rapidly developed into a criminal one. The third, a male, was guilty of
nearly every known crime, and at last accounts was undergoing a term of
twenty years’ imprisonment in Sing Sing for burglary in the first
degree. The fourth, also a male, died at the age of nineteen, after
having spent three and a half years in Albany penitentiary. Thus, though
the record of the nine cousins is not very flattering, the vicious
proclivities of these four illegitimates are manifestly more marked and
decided.
If we now turn to the chart exhibiting the posterity of the legitimate
children of Ada Juke, we will find an order of things entirely
different. The husband of “Ada” was lazy, while her paramour, on the
contrary, was always industrious. Syphilis likewise showed itself at a
still earlier period than in the illegitimate branch; for whereas this
disease first appeared in the generation of the illegitimate line, Ada’s
first child by marriage became a victim to it at an early age, and her
two legitimate daughters are set down as harlots at an equally early
age. Ada’s first child, a son, married after the poisoned taint had got
into his blood, and transmitted the loathsome heritage to his eight
children. The immediate descendants of these eight were for the most
part blind, idiotic, and impotent, and those who were not so became the
progenitors of a line of syphilitics down to the sixth generation.
Moreover, the intermarriages between cousins were much more frequent
along this line than in the illegitimate branch. It is a noteworthy fact
that in this chart one of the “Juke” blood is, for the first and only
time, set down as being a Catholic—the only time, indeed, that reference
is made to the question of religion. Mr. Dugdale allows us to infer from
this exceptional allusion that he found but one Catholic in this
edifying family. We would recommend this fact to the consideration of
our rural friends who think that chiefly in the metropolis abound the
criminals, _quorum pars maxima_ they believe to be Catholics. The first
time these unco-pious people had the fierce light that beats upon a town
turned upon themselves, the spectacle thus revealed is not
over-pleasant. This _en passant_. Were we to examine the other
statistical exhibits of Mr. Dugdale, we would find pretty nearly the
same result made clear. Without, therefore, entering into details that
are painful in character and difficult to keep constantly in view, we
will give a summary of the conclusions which the detailment of facts
seems to justify:
1. The lines of intermarriage of the Juke blood show a minimum of crime.
2. In the main, crime begins in the progeny where the Juke blood has
married into X—— (non-Juke blood).
3. The illegitimate branches have chiefly married into X——.
4. The illegitimate branches produced a preponderance of crime.
5. The intermarried branches show a preponderance of pauperism.
6. The intermarried branches show a preponderance of females.
7. The illegitimate branches produced a preponderance of males.
8. The apparent anomaly presents itself that the illegitimate criminal
branches show collateral branches which are honest and industrious.
We here find a most curious and interesting history and an epitome of
conclusions which challenges serious consideration. That the family of
the “Jukes” was more vicious than their neighbors whose surroundings
were similar cannot be disputed, and the question arises, What was there
peculiar and exceptional in their case that made the fact to be such?
The habits of life of the immediate descendants of Max were bad in the
extreme, but partly forced upon them by environments. These people dwelt
in mud-built cabins, with but one apartment, which served all the
purpose of a tenement. Here they slept and ate, and of course privacy
was rendered entirely impossible. Decency and modesty were out of the
question, and the anomaly of whole families utterly bereft of all regard
for domestic morals began to exhibit itself. We will now lay down a
fundamental principle, by the light of which we hope to be able to solve
the knotty question of this intense perversity of a series of
blood-related generations, and Mr. Dugdale himself will furnish the
proofs.
Early impurity beyond all other causes warps the moral sense, blunts the
delicacy of womanly modesty, dims the perception of the difference
between right and wrong—in a word, is quickest to sear the conscience.
Crimes of violence, crimes of any sort, which are not traceable to this
origin are outbursts of momentary distemper; but impurity of the sort
mentioned lays the foundation of an habitual aptitude to commit the
worst crimes, as though the tendency to do so were inborn and natural.
Let us examine the facts as exhibited in the history of the Jukes
family. Throughout the six generations studied by Mr. Dugdale he found
162 marriageable women, including, as facts required him to do, some of
very tender years. Of these 84 had lapsed from virtue at some time or
other. This is an enormous percentage compared with the police returns
of our most crowded seaboard cities. Among the Jukes women 52.40 per
cent. were fallen women. In New York, London, Paris, and Liverpool the
highest calculation does not exceed 1.80. If such was the moral _status_
of the female portion of the family, it is not difficult to conceive
what a low ebb morals among the males must have reached. The more
closely we look into the facts recorded by Mr. Dugdale, the more
irresistible becomes the conclusion that these moral pariahs yielded
themselves up without restraint to every excess from the moment sexual
life dawned upon them, and blushed not to commit crimes which do not
bear mention. In the record of their lives we meet at every line
expressions which brand these people as the modern representatives of
the wicked ones who 3,700 years ago shrivelled in the fire of God’s
anger on the plains of the Dead Sea. Indeed, the fact that the infamous
practices which made the “Jukes” family notorious are the beginning of
an utter loss of conscience has been long recognized by Catholic
theologians, who, while admitting that loss of faith is a more serious
loss than that of purity, contend that the latter is more degrading,
more profoundly disturbs the moral nature of man, and speedily blinds
him to the perception of every virtue. Many more facts might be adduced
in support of this proposition, both from the pages of Mr. Dugdale and
the various reports of our reformatory and punitive institutions, but
what has been said will no doubt be deemed sufficient.
If, then, it be admitted that a corrupt life begun in early youth and
continued for a long time is the broadest highroad to crime, it is
interesting to enquire how far so-called criminal heredity is influenced
by the transmission of impure propensities. It has become the fashion of
late days to allow to hereditary influence a vast importance in the
discussion and management of crime, so that there is danger even that
the criminal will be led to look upon himself as naturally, and
consequently unavoidably, vicious, and that society ought not to visit
upon him the penalty of his misdeeds any more than it should punish the
freaks of a madman. Dr. Henry Maudsley, in his recent work entitled
_Responsibility in Mental Disease_, holds language startling enough to
make every inmate of Sing Sing to-day regard himself as one against whom
the grossest injustice had been done. He says:
“It is certain, however, that lunatics and criminals are as much
manufactured articles as are steam-engines and calico-printing
machines, only the processes of the organic manufactory are so
complete that we are not able to follow them. They are neither
accidents nor anomalies in the world, in the universe, but come
by law and testify to causality; and it is the business of
science to find out what the causes are and by what laws they
work. There is nothing accidental, nothing supernatural, in the
impulse to do right or in the impulse to do wrong—both come by
inheritance or by education; and science can no more rest
content with the explanation which attributes one to the grace
of heaven and the other to the malice of the devil than it could
rest content with the explanation of insanity as a possession by
the devil. The few and imperfect investigations of the personal
and family histories of criminals which have yet been made are
sufficient to excite some serious reflections. One fact which is
brought strongly out by these inquiries is that crime is often
hereditary; that just as a man may inherit the stamp of the
bodily features and characters of his parents, so he may also
inherit the impress of their evil passions and propensities; of
the true thief, as of the true poet, it may indeed be said that
he is born, not made. That is what observation of the phenomena
of hereditary [_sic_] would lead us to expect; and although
certain theologians, who are prone to square the order of nature
to their notions of what it should be, may repel such doctrine
as the heritage of an immoral in place of a moral sense, they
will in the end find it impossible in this matter, as they have
done in other matters, to contend against facts.”
We have quoted the words of Dr. Maudsley at some length, in order to
show to what unjustifiable lengths the recent advocates of heredity are
inclined to go.
The argument employed by Dr. Maudsley is very weak—happily so, indeed;
for were his conclusions correct man’s misdeeds would be neither
punishable nor corrigible, any more than the blast of the tempest which
strews the shore with wrecks and desolation. They would be the necessary
outcome of his constitution. The trouble is that Dr. Maudsley pushes to
excess a doctrine which has in it much that is true. We do not deny the
doctrine of hereditary impulses; we know that some are more prone to
evil than others, that the moral lineaments are often transmitted from
parent to child to no less an extent than physical traits and
resemblances; but we know that free will remains throughout, and that,
no matter how strong the impulse to do a certain act may be, the power
to resist is unquestionable. Habit and association may render the will
practically powerless, but, unless a man has lost the attributes of his
race, he never becomes absolutely irreclaimable. The allusion to grace
and diabolical temptation is, to say the least, stupid. Dr. Maudsley
knows as much about the matter, to all appearances, as the inhabitants
of Patagonia. No theologian deserving the name ever asserted that man is
swayed to good by grace alone, or equally moved to evil by the spirit of
darkness, without any will-activity. The doctrine would be just as
subversive of free-will and moral order as Dr. Maudsley’s, and
consequently as absurd. The truth is that man’s will has been weakened
by his fall (_labefactata ac debilitata_), is weaker in some than in
others, but never becomes extinct, unless where the abnormal condition
of insanity occurs. We regret that Mr. Dugdale accepts Dr. Maudsley as
an authority and quotes approvingly the following words:
“Instead of mind being a wondrous entity, the independent source
of power and self-sufficient cause of causes, an honest
observation proves incontestably that it is the most dependent
of all natural forces. It is the highest development of force,
and to its existence all the lower natural forces are
indispensably prerequisite.”
This is simply scientific jargon. It conveys no meaning, and in reality
substitutes new and more obscure terms for old and well-understood ones.
We are told to reject the “wondrous entity” mind, and to consider
instead all so-called mental operations as the outcome of force. In a
previous article[9] we pointed out the great diversity of meanings
annexed to the word force, and proved that none of those who so glibly
use it have a clear conception of what it signifies. Mr. Dugdale further
accepts the recent materialistic doctrine of Hammond, Vogel, and the
so-called modern school of physiologists, who make will a mere matter of
cerebral activity and cell-development.
His system of psychology is exceedingly brief and meaningless, and
invites the social reformer to deal with the criminal as the watchmaker
would deal with a chronometer out of repair, or as a ship-calker would
attend to a vessel that had felt and suffered from the hard buffets of
the ocean. Now, while we utterly repudiate the doctrine which views the
criminal as a mere machine, we do not wish to reject any doctrine or
theory which facts sustain, and we accept the doctrine of heredity in
the sense we shall shortly mention, and contend that the facts justify
its acceptance to no further extent.
In the first place, most people of good sense will admit that
environment is a far more potent criminal factor than heredity, and that
the constant similarity of environments where heredity exists
disqualifies the observer for ascertaining the exact extent to which the
latter operates. The children of the vicious for the most part grow up
amid the surroundings which made their parents bad, and no child born of
the most depraved mother will fail to respond to healthful influences
early brought into play, unless an obviously abnormal condition exists.
The advocates of heredity in the ordinary sense point to the vast army
of criminals propagated from one stock, and claim this to be an
incontestable proof of their doctrine. But right in the way of this
argument is the fact that it ignores similarity of environment, and that
it overlooks the diversity of crimes. If the law of heredity were
strictly as stated by many writers, then the burglar would beget
children with burglarious instincts, the pickpocket ditto, and so
throughout the whole range of crime. But nothing of this sort is the
case. The vicious descendant of a sneak-thief is as likely to be a
highwayman or a housebreaker as to follow the safer paternal pursuits.
No special propensities to commit crime are transmitted, but appetites
are transmitted, and appetites beget tendencies and habits. Now, the two
appetites which prove to be of most frequent transmission are the erotic
and the alcoholic. The erotic precedes the alcoholic, and, indeed,
excites it to action. Mr. Dugdale says (p. 37): “The law shadowed forth
by this scanty evidence is that licentiousness has preceded the use of
ardent spirits, and caused a physical exhaustion that made stimulants
grateful. In other words, that intemperance itself is only a secondary
cause.” And again: “If this view should prove correct, one of the great
points in the training of pauper and criminal children will be to pay
special attention to sexual training.”
It would appear, then, from this that heredity chiefly affects the
erotic appetite, and through it the entire character. The impure beget
the impure, subject to improvement through grace and will-power, and,
despite of changed environments, the diseased appetite of the progenitor
is apt to assert itself in the descendant, though it is not, of course,
so apparent in the matter of the erotic passion as in the alcoholic.
These are the facts so far as they justify the view of crime as a
neurosis. This conclusion, while harmonizing with the data of
observation, renders the solution of the question, What shall we do with
criminals? comparatively easy, and points to the best mode of treatment.
Until society holds that the virtue of purity is at the bottom of public
morality, and that the custom to look indulgently on the wicked courses
of young men is essentially pernicious, we cannot hope to begin the work
of reform on a sound basis. _Corrumpere et corrumpi sœclum vocatur_ is
as true to-day as eighteen hundred years ago, only now we call it
“sowing wild oats.” And how is this change to be wrought? By education?
Yes, by education, which develops man’s moral character—by that
education which gives to the community a Christian scholar, and not a
mere intellectual machine. Mr. Richard Vaux, ex-mayor of Philadelphia,
who is a believer in Maudsley, and consequently an unsuspected
authority, speaks in these significant terms:
“Without attempting to discuss the value of popular
instruction for the youth, or to criticise any system of
public or private education, we venture to assert that there
are crimes which arise directly out of these influences, and
which require knowledge so obtained to perpetrate. If the
former suggestion be true, that the compression of the social
forces induces to crime, then those offences which come from
education are only the more easily forced into society by the
possessed ability to commit such crimes. _If facts warrant
this suggestion, then education—meaning that instruction
imparted by school-training—is an agent in developing
crime-cause...._ It is worthy of notice that a far larger
number of offenders are recorded as having attended ‘public
schools’ than those who ‘never went to school.’”[10]
This is a startling exhibit, upheld, it seems, by undeniable figures. Is
it possible that the state is engaged in “developing crime-cause,” and
that it is for this purpose oppressive school-taxes are imposed? Alas!
it is too true. The majority of those who get a knowledge of the three
“Rs” in our public schools come forth with no other knowledge. God is to
them a distant echo, morality a sham, and they finish their education by
gloating over the blood-curdling adventures of pirates and cracksmen in
the pages of our weekly papers. Mr. Dugdale proposes some excellent
means for the reclamation and reformation of the criminal, but they come
tainted, and consequently much impaired, by his peculiar psychical
theories. On page 48 he says:
“Now, this line of facts points to two main lessons: the value
of labor as an element of reform, especially when we consider
that the majority of the individuals of the Juke blood, when
they work at all, are given to intermittent industries. The
element of continuity is lacking in their character; enforced
labor, in some cases, seems to have the effect of supplying this
deficiency. But the fact, which is quite as important but less
obvious, is that crime and honesty run in the lines of greatest
vitality, and that the qualities which make contrivers of crime
are substantially the same as will make men successful in honest
pursuits.”
These remarks are full of significance and point unmistakably to the
necessity of supplying work to the vicious. Hard work is the panacea for
crime where healthful moral restraints are absent. The laborer expends
will-force and muscular force on his work, and has no inclination for
deeds of violence or criminal cunning. But how absurd it is to suppose
that, as an educational process, its whole effect consists in the
changed development of cerebral cells, and not, as is obviously true, in
the fatigue which it engenders! Mr. Dugdale thus sets forth the
philosophy of his educational scheme for the reformation of the criminal
(p. 49):
“It must be clearly understood, and practically accepted, that
the whole question of crime, vice, and pauperism rests strictly
and fundamentally upon a physiological basis, and not upon a
sentimental or a metaphysical one. These phenomena take place,
not because there is any aberration in the laws of nature, but
in consequence of the operation of these laws; because disease,
because unsanitary conditions, because educational neglects,
produce arrest of cerebral development at some point, so that
the individual fails to meet the exigencies of civilization in
which he finds himself placed, and that the cure for unbalanced
lives is a training which will affect the cerebral tissue,
producing a corresponding change of career.”