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Title: The Criminal

Author: Havelock Ellis

Release date: December 24, 2013 [eBook #44500]
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Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRIMINAL
***

THE CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE SERIES.

Edited by HAVELOCK ELLIS.

THE CRIMINAL.

By the same
Author.

THE NEW
SPIRIT.
London: G. Bell
& Sons.

Frontispiece.

The Criminal.

BY

HAVELOCK ELLIS.

ILLUSTRATED.

SCRIBNER & WELFORD,
743 & 745 BROADWAY,
NEW YORK.
1890.

CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. PAGE

Introduction 1

CHAPTER II.
The Study of the Criminal 26

CHAPTER III.
Criminal Anthropology (Physical)—
§ 1. Cranial and Cerebral Characteristics 49
§ 2. The Face 63
§ 3. Anomalies of the Hair 72
§ 4. Criminal Physiognomy 78
§ 5. The Body and Viscera 88
§ 6. Heredity 90
§ 7. Tattooing 102
§ 8. Motor Activity 108
§ 9. Physical Sensibility 112

CHAPTER IV.
Criminal Anthropology (Psychical)—
§ 1. Moral Insensibility 124
§ 2. Intelligence 133
§ 3. Vanity 139
§ 4. Emotional Instability 142
§ 5. Sentiment 152

§ 6. Religion 156
§ 7. Thieves’ Slang 161
§ 8. Prison Inscriptions 169
§ 9. Criminal Literature and Art 176
§ 10. Criminal Philosophy 193

CHAPTER V.
The Results of Criminal Anthropology 202

CHAPTER VI.
The Treatment of the Criminal 233

CHAPTER VII.
Conclusions 283

Appendix—
A. Explanation of Plates 303
B. The Congress of Criminal Anthropology at Paris 307
C. The International Association of Penal Law 316
D. Some Cases of Criminality 318
E. Elmira 329

Index 335

PREFACE.
This little book is an attempt to present to the English reader a critical
summary of the results of the science now commonly called criminal
anthropology. In other words, it deals briefly with the problems connected
with the criminal as he is in himself and as he becomes in contact with
society; it also tries to indicate some of the practical social bearings of such
studies.
During the last fifteen years these studies have been carried on with great
activity. It seemed, therefore, that the time had come for a short and
comprehensive review of their present condition. Such a review of a young
and rapidly growing science cannot be expected to reveal any final
conclusions; yet by bringing together very various material from many
lands, it serves to show us how we stand, to indicate the progress already
made, and the nature of the path ahead. In these matters we in England have
of recent years fallen far behind; no book, scarcely a solitary magazine
article, dealing with this matter has appeared among us. It seemed worth
while to arouse interest in problems which are of personal concern to every
citizen, problems which are indeed the concern of every person who cares
about the reasonable organisation of social life.
I would willingly have given the task to abler hands. But I found no one in
England who was acquainted with the present aspects of these questions,
and was compelled, therefore, after considerable hesitation, to undertake a
task which had long appealed to me from various sides, medical,
anthropological, and social.
There is, I believe, nothing original in this book. It simply represents a very
large body of intelligent opinion in many countries. I have to acknowledge
with gratitude the assistance, always ungrudgingly rendered, which I have
received from very many directions. I would specially mention those
medical officers of prisons in Great Britain who answered my Questions
issued at the beginning of 1889, Dr. Hamilton Wey of the Elmira
Reformatory, Dr. Vans Clark, formerly Governor of Woking Prison,

Professor Lombroso of Turin, Dr. Antonio Marro, the Rev. J. W. Horsley,
Dr. Langdon Down, Dr. Hack Tuke, Dr. Francis Warner, etc. It would,
however, be impossible to enumerate all those to whom I am indebted. In
such a task as this the writer himself has the smallest part; the chief shares
belong to an innumerable company of workers, known and unknown.
H. E.

THE CRIMINAL.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.
Of criminals, actual or nominal, there are many kinds. It is necessary, first
of all, to enumerate the chief varieties.
There is the political criminal. By this term is meant the victim of an
attempt by a more or less despotic Government to preserve its own stability.
The word “criminal” in this expression is usually a euphemism to express
the suppression of a small minority by the majority. The aims of the
“political criminal” may be anti-social, and in that case he is simply an
ordinary criminal, but he is not necessarily guilty of any anti-social offence;
he simply tries to overturn a certain political order which may itself be anti-
social. Consequently the “political criminal” of our time or place may be
the hero, martyr, saint, of another land or age. The political criminal is, as
Lombroso calls him, “the true precursor of the progressive movement of
humanity;” or, as Benedikt calls him, the homo nobilis of whom the highest
type is Christ. From any scientific point of view the use of the word crime,
to express a difference of national feeling or of political opinion, is an abuse
of language. Such a conception may be necessary to ensure the supremacy
of a Government, just as the conception of heresy is necessary to ensure the
supremacy of a Church; the prison for political dissentients corresponds to
the stake for religious dissentients. A criminality which is regulated partly
by chronology, partly by longitude, does not easily admit of scientific
discussion.
We have, again, the criminal by passion. He is usually a man of wholesome
birth and of honest life, possessed of keen, even exaggerated sensibilities,
who, under the stress of some great, unmerited wrong, has wrought justice
for himself. Stung to sudden madness by some gross insult to his wife or
wrong to his daughter, he makes an attempt on the life of the offender. The
criminal by passion never becomes a recidivist; it is the social, not the anti-
social, instincts that are strong within him; his crime is a solitary event in
his life. Therefore he cannot figure as a serious danger to society; in some

respects he serves even to quicken the social conscience and to check anti-
social instincts. At the same time it is not to the advantage of society that a
private individual should in a moment of passion even wreak justice; and
the criminal by passion cannot complain that he in his turn becomes the
victim of a social reaction.
We have also the insane criminal; that is to say, the person who, being
already in a condition of recognisable mental alienation, performs some
flagrantly anti-social act. A very large number of crimes are committed by
persons who are impelled by delusions, or who have, before the
commission of the crime, been in a condition of mental alienation. Nearly a
hundred persons every year in this country are sent to prison to be found
insane on admission. The hanging of persons who are afterwards generally
regarded as insane has always, and is still, frequently carried on. In
Germany Dr. Richter has shown that out of 144 lunatics who were, as was
afterwards shown, at the date of their crimes in the highest degree insane,
only 38 were recognised as insane before the judge—i.e., 106 madmen
were, on account of their madness, condemned to severe punishment. Out
of 100 insane persons brought to the bar of justice only 26 to 28 are
recognised as insane.[1] The insane criminal is clearly in a category of his
own. He is only a criminal in the same sense as an infant or an animal who
performs some noxious act. The lunatic may be influenced by the same
motives that influence the sane person, but he is at the same time impelled
by other motives peculiar to himself, and to which we may have no means
of access. To bring all the solemn formalities of law to bear against a
madman, and to condemn him to severe punishment, is in a civilised
country unreasonable.
The political criminal may usually be recognised without difficulty when
we lay aside political prejudice; the criminal by passion can be recognised
at once when we know his history. There is not usually much difficulty in
ascertaining the insanity of the criminal who is insane in the strict and
perhaps the only legitimate sense of the word—i.e., intellectually insane.
But at this point we are no longer able to proceed with quite the same
clearness and certainty. We are approaching the criminal in the proper
sense, the criminal with whom we shall be chiefly concerned.

The uncertainty on this borderland may be illustrated by the following case.
W. T. is a boy of fifteen, a very small ugly-looking lad, with a small head,
low in the forehead, larger in the back, high narrow palate, heavy sullen
aspect, and slight external squint of left eye. His father and mother are
healthy and sober people; one of the father’s uncles died in an asylum, and
one of his aunts committed suicide. The boy had convulsions at the age of
eighteen months, and was very backward in walking and speaking; at the
age of twelve he could not dress himself. At school he was very dull, apt to
strike his companions if roused, solitary, fond of reading, but not
remembering what he had read. His schoolmaster, an experienced teacher,
had never known so peculiar a boy. But he was not a bad or untruthful lad,
and had no vices. When he left school his father tried to teach him his own
trade of shoemaking; but, though he had no special distaste for the work, he
could not learn even the most elementary part of the trade. Other boys made
fun of him, and he complained of his little sister, ten years of age, doing the
same. One day, when he had been left quietly sitting alone with this sister,
he took up his father’s hammer, which was at his feet, and struck her,
smashing in her skull. Then he locked the back door, as he always did on
leaving home, and went out, closing the front door after him. He returned in
an hour, wet from the rain which had begun to fall. He was taken to prison,
and from the first displayed no emotion; he ate and slept well, and was a
good, docile boy. The judge who tried him (Lord Coleridge) was evidently
in favour of a verdict of manslaughter. The jury fell in with this suggestion,
although the authority of Dr. Savage was in favour of insanity, and the boy
was condemned to ten years’ penal servitude.[2] Such a case shows very
well the inaccuracy of our hard and fast lines of demarcation. Here was a
person clearly of abnormal or degenerate character, and liable to sudden
violent impulses; he would nowhere be popularly recognised as insane, and
possibly it is not desirable that he should be so recognised. On the other
hand, he cannot correctly be termed an instinctive criminal; he is on the
borderland between the two groups, and a touch may send him in either
direction.
Let us take another illustration. Miss B., nineteen years of age, the daughter
of a captain in the army, is described as a tall robust-looking girl of lively
temperament. When a few months old she had an attack of meningitis. As a
child she was always wilful and troublesome. When she was eighteen years

old she developed new instincts of mischief. She would sometimes take off
her clothes, stuff them up the chimney, and set fire to them. When the
servants rushed in she would be sitting on the hearth clapping her hands:
“What a fine blaze!” She had frequently destroyed furniture, clothing, and
books; she liked to cut carefully the strings binding a book, so that it would
fall to pieces in the hands of the unsuspecting person who took it up. She
drenched a baby, and frequently her own room, with water, without any
reason. She once attempted to throttle the attendant in whose care she was
put. She was backward for her age, though her education had not been
neglected; she could not keep accounts, and was fond of reading children’s
books. There was a history of bad sexual habits, and she had a propensity to
fall in love with every man she saw. She was perfectly coherent and
rational, and accused others of doing the mischievous acts attributed to her.
After being sent to a clergyman’s house for some months she eventually
recovered.[3] Here there was, strictly speaking, no insanity; there were
vicious and criminal instincts which would no doubt have developed had
the girl been sent to prison instead of to a comfortable home, and there was
(as there very frequently is among instinctive criminals) a history of brain
mischief. How shall we classify her?
Let us take another example—this time from France—in which the
pathological element does not clearly appear. A gentleman named X., the
French paper informs us, has been passing the summer at his country house
with his daughter, aged twenty-two, and his son, aged twenty. From the
moment of his arrival devastations occurred everywhere on his property.
The shrubs were cut; garden plants and large branches of the birch trees
removed; the doors and walls of the house were soiled. The grounds and
dwellings of other persons in the neighbourhood were similarly treated.
Windows were broken; the emblems of religion were outrageously insulted;
the walls and doors of the church, the priest’s house, and even the altar,
were soiled with ordure. A drawing of the priest administering the
sacrament to a cow was found on the walls, and obscene letters, containing
also menaces of death and incendiarism, were received by M. X., the priest,
and others. Terror overspread the parish, and no one dared to go out by
night. At last M. X.’s son and daughter were discovered in the act. Alexis,
the least guilty, having been drawn on by his sister, confessed his part in
what had been done; he was the accomplice and confidant of his sister. She

denied everything, even that she had aided her brother. There was no motive
for these acts, save the pleasure of spreading terror through the country;
they had had no intention of accomplishing their threats. The girl carried
her impudence and imprudence so far as to send an insulting letter to the
magistrate who was investigating her misdeeds, and to break windows,
unperceived, in his presence.[4] This is an example of moral perversity,
showing itself in malevolent and unsocial acts. Possibly, if we possessed a
scientific history of the case, we might find a pathological element in it, but
as it stands it is but an extravagant example of anti-social instincts, on the
borderland of crime, which in a minor degree are far from uncommon.
I will now give, in some detail, the history of a more decisive and
significant example of this same moral insensibility. It is in a child, and I
take it from German records. Marie Schneider, a school-girl, twelve years
of age, was brought before the Berlin Criminal Court in 1886. She was well
developed for her age, of ordinary facial expression, not pretty, nor yet ugly.
Her head was round, the forehead receding slightly, the nose rather small,
the eyes brown and lively, the smooth, rather fair hair combed back. With
an intellectual clearness and precision very remarkable for her age, she
answered all the searching questions put by the President of the Court
without hesitation or shrinking. There was not the slightest trace of any
inner emotion or deep excitement. She spoke in the same quiet equable tone
in which a school-girl speaks to her teacher or repeats her lesson. And when
the questions put to her became of so serious a character that the judge
himself involuntarily altered his voice and tone, the little girl still remained
self-possessed, lucid, childlike. She was by no means bold, but she knew
that she had to answer as when her teacher spoke to her, and what she said
bore the impress of perfect truth, and agreed at every point with the
evidence already placed before the court. Her statement was substantially as
follows:—“My name is Marie Schneider. I was born on the 1st of May
1874, in Berlin. My father died long ago, I do not know when; I never knew
him. My mother is still living; she is a machinist. I also have a younger
brother. I lost a sister a year ago. I did not much like her, because she was
better than I, and my mother treated her better. My mother has several times
whipped me for naughtiness, and it is right that I should take away the stick
with which she beat me, and to beat her. I have gone to school since I was
six years old. I have been in the third class for two years. I stayed there

from idleness. I have been taught reading, writing, arithmetic, geography,
and history, and also religion. I know the ten commandments. I know the
sixth: it is, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ I have some playfellows at school and in
the neighbourhood, and I am often with a young lady [believed to be of
immoral life] who is twenty years old and lives in the same house. She has
told me about her childhood, and that she was just as naughty as I am, and
that she struck the teacher who was going to punish her. Some time ago, in
playing in the yard, I came behind a child, held his eyes, and asked him
who I was. I pressed my thumbs deep in his eyes, so that he cried out and
had inflamed eyes. I knew that I hurt him, and, in spite of his crying, I did
not let go until I was made to. It did not give me special pleasure, but I have
not felt sorry. When I was a little child I have stuck forks in the eyes of
rabbits, and afterwards slit open the belly. At least so my mother has often
said; I do not remember it. I know that Conrad murdered his wife and
children, and that his head was cut off. I have heard my aunt read the
newspapers. I am very fond of sweets, and have several times tried to get
money to buy myself sweets. I told people the money was for some one else
who had no small change. I know that that was deceit. I know too what theft
is. Any one who kills is a murderer, and I am a murderess. Murder is
punished with death; the murderer is executed; his head is cut off. My head
will not be cut off, because I am still too young. On the 7th of July my
mother sent me on an errand. Then I met little Margarete Dietrich, who was
three and a half years old, and whom I had known since March. I said to her
that she must come with me, and I took her hand. I wanted to take away her
ear-rings. They were little gold ear-rings with a coloured stone. I did not
want the ear-rings for myself, but to sell at a second-hand shop in the
neighbourhood, to get money to buy some cakes. When I reached the yard I
wanted to go somewhere, and I called to my mother to throw me down the
key. She did so, and threw me down some money too, for the errand that I
was to go on. I left little Margarete on the stairs, and there I found her
again. From the yard I saw that the second-floor window was half open. I
went with her up the stairs to the second floor to take away the ear-rings,
and then to throw her out of the window. I wanted to kill her, because I was
afraid that she would betray me. She could not talk very well, but she could
point to me; and if it came out, my mother would have beaten me. I went
with her to the window, opened it wide, and set her on the ledge. Then I
heard some one coming down. I quickly put the child on the ground and

shut the window. The man went by without noticing us. Then I opened the
window and put the child on the ledge, with her feet hanging out, and her
face turned away from me. I did that because I did not want to look in her
face, and because I could push her easier. I pulled the ear-rings out. Grete
began to cry because I hurt her. When I threatened to throw her out of the
window she became quiet. I took the ear-rings and put them in my pocket.
Then I gave the child a shove, and heard her strike the lamp and then the
pavement. Then I quickly ran downstairs to go on the errand my mother had
sent me. I knew that I should kill the child. I did not reflect that little
Grete’s parents would be sorry. It did not hurt me; I was not sorry; I was not
sorry all the time I was in prison; I am not sorry now. The next day a
policeman came to us and asked if I had thrown the child out of the
window. I said no, I knew nothing about it. Then I threw away the ear-rings
that I had kept hid; I was afraid they would search my pockets and find
them. Then there came another policeman, and I told him the truth, because
he said he would box my ears if I did not tell the truth. Then I was taken
away, and had to tell people how it happened. I was taken in a cab to the
mortuary. I ate a piece of bread they gave me with a good appetite. I saw
little Grete’s body, undressed, on a bed. I did not feel any pain and was not
sorry. They put me with four women, and I told them the story. I laughed
while I was telling it because they asked me such curious questions. I wrote
to my mother from prison, and asked her to send me some money to buy
some dripping, for we had dry bread.” That was what little Marie Schneider
told the judge, without either hesitation or impudence, in a completely
childlike manner, like a school-girl at examination; and she seemed to find a
certain satisfaction in being able to answer long questions so nicely. Only
once her eyes gleamed, and that was when she told how in the prison they
had given her dry bread to eat. The medical officer of the prison, who had
watched her carefully, declared that he could find nothing intellectually
wrong in her. She was intelligent beyond her years, but had no sense of
what she had done, and was morally an idiot. And this was the opinion of
the other medical men who were called to examine her. The Court, bearing
in mind that she was perfectly able to understand the nature of the action
she had committed, condemned Marie Schneider to imprisonment for eight
years. The question of heredity was not raised. Nothing is known of the
father except that he is dead.[5]

Marie Schneider differs from the previous cases, not merely by her apparent
freedom from pathological elements, but by her rational motives and her
intelligence. The young French woman intended nothing very serious by
her brutal and unfeeling practical jokes. Marie Schneider was as thorough
and as relentless in the satisfaction of her personal desires as the Marquise
de Brinvilliers. But she was a child, and she would very generally be
described as an example of “moral insanity.” It is still necessary to take a
further step, although a very slight one, to reach what every one would be
willing to accept as an instinctive criminal. The example I will select is an
Englishman, Thomas Wainewright, well known in his time as an essayist,
much better known as a forger and a murderer. R. Griffiths, L.L.D.,
Wainewright’s maternal grandfather—to take his history as far back as
possible—was an energetic literary man and journalist, whose daughter,
Ann, born of a young second wife when he was well past middle life, “is
supposed to have understood the writings of Mr. Locke as well as perhaps
any person of either sex now living” (said the Gentleman’s Magazine) and
who married one Thomas Wainewright, and died in child-bed at the age of
twenty-one, the last survivor, even at that age, of the second family. Thomas
Wainewright, the father, himself died very soon afterwards. Of him nothing
is known, though there is some reason to think that Dr. Griffiths regarded
him with dislike or suspicion.
The child seems then to have been born of a failing and degenerating stock.
He was clever, possessed of some means, and grew up in a literary and
artistic circle; but he was vain and unstable, “ever to be wiled away,” as he
says himself, “by new and flashy gauds.” When still a lad, he went into the
army for a time. Then, after a while, being idle in town, “my blessed Art
touched her renegade; by her pure and high influences the noisome mists
were purged,” and he wept tears of happiness and gratitude over
Wordsworth’s poems. “But this serene state was broken,” he wrote, several
years before his career of crime had commenced, “like a vessel of clay, by
acute disease, succeeded by a relaxation of the muscles and nerves, which
depressed me

—‘low
As through the abysses of a joyless heart
The heaviest plummet of despair could go,’—

hypochondriasis! ever shuddering on the horrible abyss of mere insanity!
But two excellent secondary agents—a kind and skilful physician, and a
most delicately affectionate and unwearied (though young and fragile)
nurse—brought me at length out of those dead black waters, nearly
exhausted with so sore a struggle. Steady pursuit was debarred me, and
varied amusement deemed essential to my complete revivification.” Then
he began to write his essays and criticisms, dealing chiefly with the later
Italian and the French artists, under the name of Janus Weathercock. He was
a man of many sentimentalities and super-refinements; he hated all
vulgarity and “sordid instincts.” His tastes were sensual in every respect.
Notwithstanding his means, they were not sufficient to satisfy his desires
for luxurious foods and drinks, for fine perfumes, for large jewels to wear.
He could not live without luxuries, just as little Marie Schneider could not
live without sweets. At about the date that his chief literary activities
ceased, and when he was about thirty years of age, he forged a power of
attorney with the names of his trustees, assigning to himself the principal of
£5000, of which he was enjoying the interest. This was then a capital
offence; it remained undetected for twelve years. He is described at this
time as “a smart, lively, clever, heartless, voluptuous coxcomb.” He was
tall, stooping slightly, of dark hair and complexion, deeply set eyes, stealthy
but fascinating, a large and massive head. He married a young lady who
was poor, but a gay and brilliant person, and she had a widowed mother and
two half-sisters. The young couple lived improvidently, and an uncle, Mr.
G. E. Griffiths, who was well off, offered them a home in his own house.
This welcome offer was accepted. A year after, Mr. G. E. Griffiths, after a
short illness, died very unexpectedly, leaving his mansion and property to
his nephew and niece. This money, however, also went rather fast; and now
too there were no longer any expectations from relatives. The stepmother
and her daughters, the Abercrombies, were poor, and their schemes to make
a living were not successful. The Abercrombies were obliged to come and
live with the Wainewrights in the large mansion they had inherited, and a
very few months after this Mrs. Abercrombie died, like old Mr. Griffiths,

very suddenly, in a fit of convulsions. No benefits, however, followed this
death; affairs continued to grow worse, and soon the bailiffs were in the
house, and there was a bill of sale on the furniture. The Wainewrights and
Abercrombies migrated to handsome lodgings in Conduit Street, near
Regent Street. They frequently went to the play, and one night, very soon
after their arrival, Helen Abercrombie, who wore the thin shoes that women
then always wore, got her feet wet, became ill, and was assiduously
attended by Wainewright and his wife, who held frequent consultations as
to her treatment by means of certain powders; in a few days she was dead,
with the same symptoms as her mother, the same symptoms as Mr. Griffiths
—“brain mischief,” the doctor called it. She died on the very day on which
the bill of sale became due, and after her death it was found that her life
had, during the same year, been insured, in various offices, for £18,000.
Helen Abercrombie was a beautiful and very healthy girl, and her death led
to suspicions, and gave rise to law-suits, which on the slighter but definite
ground of misrepresentation were in favour of the companies. In the
meanwhile Wainewright found it convenient to leave England (he had
separated from his wife after the death of Helen Abercrombie), and took
refuge with a rather impecunious gentleman who lived with his daughter at
Boulogne. He persuaded this gentleman to obtain money to effect a loan by
insuring his life. One night, after the policy had been effected, this
gentleman suddenly died. We next hear of Wainewright travelling in France,
doubtless for excellent reasons, under an assumed name. He fell into the
hands of the police, and not being able to give a good account of himself,
was imprisoned for six months. The French police found that he carried
about with him a certain powder, at that time little known, called
strychnine; this was put down to English eccentricity. At this time there was
a warrant out against Wainewright for forgery; he was lured over to
England by a detective, with the aid of a woman, and arrested. He was tried
for forgery, and condemned to transportation for life. At the same time the
suspicions of the doctor who attended Helen Abercrombie were roused, and
Wainewright himself, after his condemnation, admitted to visitors, with
extraordinary vanity and audacity, his achievements in poisoning, and
elucidated his methods. It is also said that he kept a diary in which he
recorded his operations with much complacency. The one thing that hurt
little Marie Schneider was the dry bread; the one thing that moved
Wainewright was being placed in irons in the hold of the ship. “They think

me a desperado! Me! the companion of poets, philosophers, artists, and
musicians, a desperado! You will smile at this—no, I think you will feel for
the man, educated and reared as a gentleman; now the mate of vulgar
ruffians and country bumpkins.” At Hobart Town on two occasions he
endeavoured to remove by poison persons who had excited his animosity.
He is described at this time by one who knew him well as “a man with a
massive head, in which the animal propensities were largely developed. His
eyes were deeply set in his head; he had a square solid jaw; he wore his hair
long, stooped somewhat, and had a snake-like expression which was at once
repulsive and fascinating. He rarely looked you in the face. His
conversation and manner were winning in the extreme; he was never
intemperate, but nevertheless of grossly sensual habits, and an opium-eater.
As to moral character, he was a man of the very lowest stamp. He seemed to
be possessed by an ingrained malignity of disposition which kept him
constantly on the very confines of murder, and he took a perverse pleasure
in traducing persons who had befriended him. He was a marked man in
Hobart Town—dreaded, disliked, and shunned by everybody. His sole
living companion was a cat, for which he evinced an extraordinary
affection.” He died of apoplexy in 1852, at the age of fifty-eight.[6]
Wainewright presents to us a perfect picture of the instinctive criminal in
his most highly developed shape, fortunately a rare phenomenon. It is this
instinctive propensity to crime which is sometimes called “moral insanity.”
This is, however, by no means a happy phrase, since it leads to much
fruitless disputation. It is wiser at present to apply to such an individual the
more simple term, instinctive criminal.[7] There is, however, distinct interest
in noting that at one period of his life Wainewright was on the verge of
insanity, if not, as is more likely, actually insane; it is extremely probable
that he never recovered from the effects of that illness. It may well be that if
we possessed a full knowledge of every instinctive criminal we should
always be able to put our hands on some definite organically morbid spot.
The instinctive criminal, in his fully developed form, is a moral monster. In
him the absence of guiding or inhibiting social instincts is accompanied by
unusual development of the sensual and self-seeking impulses. The
occasional criminal, as he is usually called, is a much commoner and more
normally constituted person. In him the sensual instincts need not be
stronger than usual, and the social elements, though weaker than usual,

need not be absent. Weakness is the chief characteristic of the occasional
criminal; when circumstances are not quite favourable he succumbs to
temptation. Occasional crime is one of the commonest forms of crime; it is
also that for whose existence and development society is most directly
responsible; very often it might equally well be called social crime. Here is
an example. Two lads of honest life, the sons of agricultural labourers,
being unable to obtain a scanty subsistence at home, start one day in a fit of
desperation for a distant town in search of work. Without food or shelter,
sleeping under a hedge, they reach a farm-house. Looking through a
window they see a plum-pudding; they open the window, seize the pudding,
and go a few yards off to devour it. In a few hours they are on the way to
the lock-up, to receive, later on, a sentence of six months’ imprisonment.
“At the close of it they were provided with an outfit and an introduction to
an employer of labour in Canada; and when we last heard of them they
were doing extremely well, with excellent prospects before them.”[8] This
sequel (which would have been better had it come before the seizure of the
plum-pudding) proves that we are not dealing with instinctive criminals.
Take another case mentioned by the same writer. A woman with a drunken
husband who spends his last penny in the public-house, is driven by actual
starvation to commit her first crime. She steals a small piece of meat to feed
her hungry children. She is sent to prison. “We heard of her afterwards
leading a most consistent and almost saintly life.” These persons, it is clear,
were not the criminals but the victims; society was the criminal. Now and
then, as in the cases just cited, it happens that the occasional criminal who
is thus recklessly flung into prison is assisted to live a human life. In the
great majority of cases he is ruined for life, familiarised with the prison,
introduced to bad company. We have, as well as we are able, manufactured
him into what is called the habitual criminal.
The steps by which the occasional criminal, aided on the one hand by
neglect, on the other by the hot-bed of the prison, develops into the habitual
criminal are slow and subtle; that is one of the tragedies of life. M. Joly has
recorded the experiences of the police concerning the thefts that take place
at the great Parisian shops, the Louvre, and the Bon-Marché. “This is the
beginning. From a gallery one sees a woman—rich or well-to-do-who buys
a certain number of objects and pays for them; but without asking
permission she takes some little, almost insignificant object—a little ribbon

to fasten a parcel, a more commodious paper-bag. No one will say that she
is stealing; no one will think of speaking to her or disturbing her. But she is
observed and even watched, for one expects to see her again some time
after taking, as she walks along, say, a flower worth twenty-five centimes.
A little later she will appropriate an article of greater value, and henceforth
she will take for the pleasure of taking. The inclination, which at the
beginning had in it nothing instinctive or fatal, will grow as all habits grow.
Another time a woman who had no intention of stealing, but whose
conscience is probably elastic, grows impatient at the delay in attending to
her wants. It is, let us suppose, a purse worth ninety-five centimes, and the
shopman is busy with purchasers of more expensive objects. Suddenly the
woman nervously yields to a swift temptation; she does not wish to wait
longer, but instead of replacing the purse on the counter she slips it into her
pocket and turns on her heels without paying. ‘From that moment,’ said the
inspector, ‘she is lost; she will come back to steal, but she will steal
intentionally and deliberately.’”[9]
The world and the criminal’s friends are startled some day by a great crime,
but that crime is linked on to a chain of slight, occasional, sporadic vices
and offences. Sometimes we can trace out these links. Barré and Lebiez
were two young French criminals who attracted attention some years ago.
They were both of good family, both very intelligent, the former about to
enter on a commercial life, the latter on the eve of becoming a doctor of
medicine. At this point they murdered an old woman to rob her, and cut up
the body to dispose of it. The crime was deliberate and carefully prepared;
there was nothing romantic or obviously morbid about it, and a few days
after the crime Lebiez delivered an able and eloquent lecture on Darwinism
and the Church. In each of these young men there were, M. Joly observes,
nine stages in the path of crime. Let us first note those of Barré:—1. His
employer is obliged to dismiss him on account of misconduct with a servant
girl. 2. He writes untruthful letters to his family, describing habits of work
which do not exist. 3. He acquires an extravagant taste for speculation on
the Stock Exchange. So far his course, though not exemplary, was one that
has often enough been traversed by persons who have never reached the
scaffold. 4. He speculates with the savings which two girls had entrusted to
him for investment. 5. To obtain money from his father, to whom he talks of
establishing himself, he forges letters. 6. He embezzles various sums of

money by an aggravated form of the same process. 7. He steals a watch
from a prostitute’s rooms. 8. He steals eight francs from the same. 9. He
decides on the murder of the old milk-woman with whom he has had
business relations, and whose savings, as he knows, are considerable.
Lebiez went through the following stages:—1. His violent language to his
mother is remarked. 2. He is, notwithstanding very small means, known to
be living with a mistress, and he procures obscene photographs. 3. On
account of irregularity he is sent away from an institution where he gave
lessons. 4. He speculates on the Stock Exchange, which, being poor, he
could only do by accepting profit and refusing to meet loss. 5. He steals
books from his friends and sells them. 6. He several times leaves his
lodgings clandestinely, without paying the rent. 7. He participates in the
theft of the watch by Barré. 8. He shares the profits of the second theft. 9.
They decide on the murder together. Such are the slow steps by which the
occasional criminal becomes the habitual criminal or the professional
criminal. It must be remembered that the lines which separate these from
each other, and both from the instinctive criminal, are often faint or
imperceptible. “Natural groups,” as Mr. Galton remarks, “have nuclei but
no outlines.” In the habitual criminal, who is usually unintelligent, the
conservative forces of habit predominate; the professional criminal, who is
usually intelligent, is guided by rational motives, and voluntarily takes the
chances of his mode of life; while in the instinctive criminal the impulses
usually appear so strong, and the moral element so conspicuously absent,
that we feel we are in the presence of a natural monster. It is not, however,
always possible to make these distinctions.
The professional criminal, though not of modern development, adapts
himself to modern conditions. In intelligence, and in anthropological rank
generally, he represents the criminal aristocracy. He has deliberately chosen
a certain method of earning his living. It is a profession which requires
great skill, and in which, though the risks are great, the prizes are equally
great.[10]
Lacenaire, a famous criminal of the beginning of the century, has
sometimes been regarded as the type of the professional criminal, and to
complete this classificatory outline it may be well to sketch his career. He
was born at Lyons about the beginning of the century, received a good
average education, and was very intelligent, though not distinguishing

himself at college. He was ambitious and, at the same time, incapable of
sustained work. He came to Paris to study law; but his father’s resources
were inadequate, and he became a clerk, frequently changing his situation,
growing tired of work at length, and engaging as a soldier. So far no offence
is recorded. When he returned to France his father, become bankrupt, had
fled. Some friends came to the young man’s help, and gave him 500 francs.
He hastened to Paris and spent it in enjoyment. Then he entered the literary
Bohemia, and wrote verses and political articles, fighting a duel with a
nephew of Benjamin Constant and killing him. He said, later on, that the
sight of his victim’s agony had caused him no emotion. Soon his love of
enjoyment outran his means of getting money, though these might have
been considerable had he cared to work steadily, and he obtained money by
theft and swindling. Condemned to prison, he soon formed connections
with professional criminals, and associated them in his schemes and joined
them in their orgies. He adopted false names, multiplied forgeries and
disguises, and preyed actively on society. After an orgy at this time he
committed a murder, and he attempted to murder a man who had won a
large sum from him in gambling. The crime and the attempt both remained
unpunished. Gifted with intelligence, and still more with vanity and
audacity, Lacenaire continued his career of systematic crime until finally he
met the guillotine. He was a professional criminal, but also, it will be seen,
he was something of an habitual, something of an instinctive criminal.[11]
We have glanced briefly at the circles of crime—circles that extend from
heaven to very murky depths of hell, and that yet are not far from any one
of us. It is still necessary to touch on the various ways in which the causes
and nature of this vast field of crime may be approached.
There are, first, the cosmic causes of crime; that is to say, all the influences
of the external inorganic world, the influence of temperature on crime, the
increase of crimes of violence in hot weather, the periodicity of other kinds
of crime, the influence of climate, the influence of diet.
Then there is the biological factor. Under this head we include the
consideration of all the personal peculiarities of the individual, anatomical,
physiological, psychological. These peculiarities may be atavistic, atypic, or
morbid.

Lastly, there is the social factor in crime. Criminal sociology deals with the
production of crime by social influences, and by economic perturbations.
Infanticide is nearly always related to the social factor; and the study of the
various social influences which promote or hinder infanticide is extremely
instructive. The relations between crimes against the person and the price of
alcohol, and between crimes against property and the price of wheat, also
belong to this department of the study of crime. Society prepares crimes, as
Quetelet said; the criminal is the instrument that executes them. “The social
environment,” Lacassagne has well said, “is the cultivation medium of
criminality; the criminal is the microbe, an element which only becomes
important when it finds the medium which causes it to ferment: every
society has the criminals that it deserves.”
It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of the social factor in
crime. To some extent it even embraces the others, and can be made to
regulate and neutralise them. But we cannot deal wisely with the social
factor of crime, nor estimate the vast importance of social influences in the
production or prevention of crime, unless we know something of the
biology of crime, of the criminal’s anatomical, physiological, and
psychological nature. This book is concerned with the study of the criminal
man.

CHAPTER II.

THE STUDY OF THE CRIMINAL.
When Homer described Thersites as ugly and deformed, with harsh or
scanty hair, and a pointed head, like a pot that had collapsed to a peak in the
baking—

ἄισχιστος δὲ ἀνὴρ ὑπὸ Ἴλιον ἦλθεν.
φολκὸς ἔην, χωλὸς δ’ ἕτερον πόδα. τὼ δέ οἱ ὤμω
κυρτώ, ἐπὶ στῆθος συνοχωκότε. αὐτὰρ ὕπερθεν
φοζὸς ἔην κεφαλὴν, ψεδνὴ δ’ ἐπενήνοθε λάχνη

—he furnished evidence as to the existence of a criminal type of man.
These physical characters of Thersites are among those which in these last
days have been submitted to scientific observation, and to statistics, and
have been largely justified. The epigrammatic utterances in which primitive
peoples crystallise and pass on their philosophy and science, include many
sayings which prove the remote period at which men began to perceive the
organic peculiarities which separate the criminal man from the average
man. There are some proverbs of this character, such as those indicating the
widespread dislike of the red-haired, for which no solid justification has yet
been found; but among various races, and in many countries, numerous
proverbs are in harmony with the results of modern research: A vultu vitium,
the old Roman saying; Au vis [visage] le vice, the old French saying;
“Salute from afar the beardless man and the bearded woman;” “Distrust the
woman with a man’s voice;” “A pale face is worse than the itch.” Such are a
few that might be easily increased.
At a very early period such popular generalisations as these were embodied
in that empirical science of physiognomy, which found many professors
among the Greeks and Romans. According to the well-known story, a Greek
physiognomist who examined Socrates’ face judged that the philosopher
was brutal, sensuous, and inclined to drunkenness; and Socrates declared to

his disciples that such, although he had overcome it, was his natural
disposition. He was himself a physiognomist; he disliked a certain man who
was of pale and dark complexion, such signs, he said, indicating envy and
murder; the peculiar dark and pallid complexion of the instinctive criminal
has of late years been frequently noted.
Aristotle, that great master of all the sciences, clearly recognised not merely
the physiognomic signs of habits, vices, and crimes, including many signs
that are in accordance with modern scientific observation, but he also
observed a connection between the shape of the head and the mental
disposition, and he recognised the hereditary character of vicious and
criminal instincts. Galen, who inaugurated the experimental study of the
brain, adopted the views of Aristotle, and pointed out the influence of the
abuse of alcohol in the production of crime; he was of opinion, also,
anticipating a modern doctrine, that when the criminal is a criminal by
nature he ought to be destroyed, not in revenge, but for the same reason that
scorpions and vipers are destroyed.[12]
Although these feeble beginnings of criminal anthropology received the
sanction of the highest scientific authorities, as well as of the people, and
later on a mediæval law declared that if two persons fell under suspicion of
crime the uglier or more deformed was to be regarded as more probably
guilty, they were not universally admitted, and some, like Pliny, regarded it
as absurd that the outward form could indicate the inward disposition.
Whatever art or science there was in the matter was left, then and long after,
to the physiognomists, of whom Polemon may be taken as a distinguished
example, and these were ready to supply the most elaborate physical signs
to correspond to any vicious or criminal disposition. Polemon wrote of the
criminal that he was of pallid complexion, with long hair, large ears, and
small eyes, and he proceeded to give the characteristics of various classes of
criminals, his observations often showing keen insight. This pseudo-science
was passed on from physiognomist to physiognomist, usually with added
absurdities, until in the sixteenth century we reach the Neapolitan Dalla
Porta, at once the greatest (and except Lavater the last) of the
physiognomists of the old school and the first of the new. He treated
judicial astrology with contempt, and at the same time wrote a treatise of
celestial physiognomy; he gathered up all that his predecessors had done,
and at the same time laid the foundations of a more scientific treatment.

Passing by Lavater, with his fine intuition and genial humanity, which
formed, however, no epoch in the scientific study of criminal anthropology,
at the beginning of the present century we reach Gall, a very great figure in
the history of science, and the representative of the most important moment
in the development of our knowledge of the brain.
Before speaking of Gall, however, it is necessary to give a word, in passing,
to Grohmann, who slightly preceded him, and who anticipated many of the
conclusions relative to facial and cranial characteristics reached by modern
criminal anthropologists. Thus, in 1820, he wrote:—“I have often been
impressed in criminals, and especially in those of defective development,
by the prominent ears, the shape of the cranium, the projecting cheek-
bones, the large lower jaws, the deeply-placed eyes, the shifty, animal-like
gaze.”
Gall thrust aside for ever the credulous fancies of the physiognomists; and
he has been described, not altogether without reason, as the founder of the
modern science of criminal anthropology. He was certainly its most brilliant
pioneer. Lavater believed in the homogeneity of the human organism, but
he was not a man of science, and he had been content to study the surface of
the body; Gall, with true scientific instinct, tried to get to the root of the
matter; following the great English anatomist, Willis, who had made some
attempt at cerebral localisation, he studied the brain, sought to differentiate
the functions of its various parts, and the effects of its varying development
on the skull.
For Gall the varying development of the brain was the cause of the
divergent mental and moral qualities of the individual; he was firmly
convinced that all the facts of psychical life are rooted in the physical
organisation; he wished to write the natural history of every primitive moral
and intellectual force, in health as well as in disease. To the best of his
ability he carried out this programme in detail, by an unceasing study of all
the varieties of the brain and of the living head that he could find; he
pursued his studies throughout Europe, in lunatic asylums and in prisons, as
well as among the ordinary population, and he foresaw the extent of the
applications of the science he was opening up to medicine and to law, to
morality and to education. While his work extended far beyond the borders
of what we should now call criminal anthropology,[13] he devoted much

attention to the problems of the criminal organisation, and even to its
varieties, many of his observations according well with the results of recent
investigation. More than this, following Galen and Diderot (who had
written, fifty years earlier, “The evil-doer is one whom we must destroy, not
punish”), he clearly advocated a method of dealing with the criminal which
is now widely regarded as the only right and reasonable method. “There can
be no question,” he said, “of culpability or of justice in the severe sense; the
question is of the necessity of society preventing crime. The measure of
culpability and the measure of punishment cannot be determined by a study
of the illegal act, but only by a study of the individual committing it.” In his
great work, Les Fonctions du Cerveau (1822), Gall has summed up his
conclusions.
It has been the misfortune of this great and truly scientific investigator to
give origin to an empiric art of phrenology which took the place of the old
art of physiognomy he had done so much to destroy. He has consequently,
until recent years, been popularly known chiefly by his mistakes, especially
perhaps by his localisation of the sexual instinct in the cerebellum—a
localisation, however, which he supported by a large body of evidence. The
influence of dubious phrenological doctrines hardened into a system
somewhat impairs the value of Lauvergne’s Les Forçats (1841), which
seems to have been the first book of any importance devoted entirely to the
study of convict nature, physical, moral, and intellectual. Lauvergne, who
was the chief medical officer to the hospital for convicts at Toulon, appears
to have been a man of humanitarian instincts, whose wit and bonhomie
enabled him to maintain friendly relations with the criminals he was
studying; he had little capacity for scientific analysis, but he wrote fully of
what he had seen and known, and his book contains many keen
observations which have been since verified. He fully recognises also the
importance of the social factor in the production of criminals.
Lauvergne had observed how many of his subjects were insane or diseased;
the students of the criminal who followed him all insisted on the
pathological element. Dally maintained that the criminal and the lunatic are
identical, and both equally irresponsible. Prosper Lucas, in his valuable
Traité philosophique de l’hérédite (1847), showed how deeply rooted in the
organism are the morbid tendencies of crime. Lélut compared the length
and breadth of head in criminals. Voisin noted their defects in cerebral

organisation. It was, however, Morel who, in his Des Dégénérescences
(1857), chiefly developed this aspect of criminality, and his influence is still
strong among French students of the criminal. Morel regarded crime as one
of the forms taken on by degeneration in the individual or the family; and
degeneration he defined as “a morbid deviation from the normal type of
humanity.” The causes of degeneration which he recognised were
intoxications, famines, social environment, industries, unhealthy
occupations, poverty, heredity, pathological transformations, moral causes.
“My principal aim,” he says, “has been the study of these causes, and of the
influences which they exercise, firstly on the constitution of individuals,
and afterwards on that of their descendants.” Among these causes he gives a
chief place to the manifold effects on the children of alcoholism in the
parents. In his pamphlet De la Formation du Type dans les variétés
dégénérés (1864), Morel proposed to give the name of morbid anthropology
to “that part of the natural science of man, the aim of which is to study the
characters due to certain special diseased influences, as well as to hereditary
transmissions of bad nature.”
Despine, by his great work, Psychologie Naturelle (1868), made a new and
important step in criminology. Leaving aside the study of the criminal’s
physical nature, he sought to make an exhaustive study of his mental nature.
No one has done more than Despine to prove that what we should now call
the instinctive criminal is, on the psychological side, a natural anomaly, a
mental monstrosity. He brought into clear relief the unforeseeing
imprudence, the entire lack of moral sensibility and of remorse, which
characterise the instinctive criminal. He recognised that the criminal is not
necessarily an insane or diseased person, and he showed that his
abnormality is not of the kind that intellectual education can remedy. “No
physiologist,” he said, “has yet occupied himself with the insanity of the
sane;” he considered the criminal as “morally mad,” and therefore
irresponsible. Maudsley, from an opposite philosophic standpoint, came to
very similar conclusions. Without bringing any fresh contribution of
importance, he re-affirmed emphatically the conclusions already reached.
Speaking in his Responsibility in Mental Disease (1872) of instinctive
criminals, he remarks, “It is a matter of observation that this criminal class
constitutes a degenerate or morbid variety of mankind, marked by
peculiarly low physical and mental characteristics.” Like Despine, he drew

from this the conclusion, since widely accepted, that the criminal, being
morally insane and usually incurable, should be treated in the same way as
the intellectually insane person. “If the matter be considered deeply, it may
appear that it would, perhaps, in the end make little difference whether the
offender were sentenced in anger and sent to the seclusion of prison, or
were sentenced more in sorrow than in anger, and consigned to the same
sort of seclusion under the name of an asylum. The change would probably
not lead to an increase or to a decrease in the number of crimes committed
in a year.” An artist as much as a man of science, master of a sombre and
weighty style, illumined by vivid flashes of imagination, Maudsley by his
numerous works popularised the new ideas, and is justly regarded abroad as
a pioneer of criminal anthropology.
Broca, who, by initiating the Anthropological Society of Paris in 1859, has
been regarded as the founder of the modern science of anthropology, gave
attention also to the special science of criminal anthropology by noting the
peculiarities of the skulls and brains of criminals. At the Exeter meeting of
the British Association in 1869, Dr. G. Wilson read a paper on “The Moral
Imbecility of Habitual Criminals as exemplified by cranial measurements.”
He had measured 464 heads of criminals, and found that habitual thieves
presented well-marked signs of insufficient cranial development, specially
anteriorly. “The cranial deficiency,” he observed, “is associated with real
physical deterioration. Forty per cent. of all the convicts are invalids, more
or less; and that percentage is largely increased in the professional thief
class.” He argued that a prisoner must be treated on reforming principles,
and not allowed unrestricted liberty until there was reasonable evidence to
show that he would not prove dangerous to society. About the same time,
also (in 1870), J. Bruce Thomson, Resident-Surgeon to the General Prison
for Scotland at Perth, published in the Journal of Mental Science a
summary of his observations on over 5000 prisoners. From the decisiveness
of his utterances and the large number of prisoners of whom he was able to
speak, this summary gave a stimulus to the study of the criminal throughout
Europe. Thomson enumerated some of the physical characteristics of the
instinctive criminal now generally recognised, pointed out the semi-
imbecility prevalent among the juvenile criminals under his observation, the
frequency of accumulated morbid appearances at post-mortem
examinations, and the large proportion of cases at Perth needing treatment

for mental diseases soon after admission, “apparently from congenital
causes.” Thomson’s facts and opinions were too curtly, and, probably, too
emphatically stated. Dr. Nicolson, writing also in the same journal from
1873 to 1875, dealt with the morbid psychology of the criminal, the
unstable, emotional element in him, his proneness to delusions, his
insensibility, and his weak-mindedness. Dr. Nicolson’s papers, all written
before the latest and most fruitful era of criminal anthropology began, were,
so far as I have been able to trace, the latest original contributions from the
scientific side made in England to the study of the criminal. Such
knowledge as has been furnished since has come from writers who have,
almost of necessity, dealt with what may be called the mental and social
symptomatology of criminals. Among the books which supply more or less
valuable or interesting information of this kind may be mentioned the Rev.
J. W. Horsley’s Jottings from Jail, Michael Davitt’s Leaves from a Prison
Diary, and the Scenes from a Silent World, by a Prison Visitor, which
appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine during 1889. An earlier book of this
class, Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor (vol. iv.), is perhaps
still the most valuable.
Italy is to-day the home of criminal anthropology, and not of criminal
anthropology only, but of all the sciences that are connected with crime and
the criminal; the Zanardelli criminal code, which has recently become law,
while by no means entirely satisfactory from the scientific point of view,
shows the influence of the new movement. In this respect Italy remains true
to traditions that are two thousand years old; in the sixteenth century Italy
was still the centre of studies in penal law, and, to keep to modern times, it
is enough to mention the great names of Beccaria, and, still more recently,
Romagnosi. It was under the auspices of Beltrani-Scalia, well known in
connection with prison reform, that the earlier Italian studies in criminal
anthropology were published, from 1870 onwards, in the Rivista delle
discipline carcerarie, a journal which continues to publish valuable
monographs. In this journal Lombroso published, in 1872, the results of
some investigations which he had made on prisoners at Padua.
Professor Cesare Lombroso, of Turin, occupies a position of such
importance in the development of criminal anthropology that it is necessary
to have a clear idea of his aims and methods and the nature of his
achievement. Born in 1836, of Venetian parentage, the various and restless

activities of Lombroso’s career are characteristic of the man who has been
all his life opening up new paths of investigation and enlarging the horizon
of human knowledge. At the age of eleven he composed romances, poems,
and tragedies in the manner of Alfieri; at twelve he developed a passion for
classical antiquity, and published two small works on Roman archæology.
At thirteen he was attracted to the study of sociology from a linguistic point
of view (chiefly, we are told, with relation to Greek, Hebrew, Chinese, and
Coptic); at the same time he was drawn to natural science, being interested
especially in the formation of crystals, and before entering the University he
had published two books of a somewhat evolutionary character. While a
student he was led, by the combined study of ancient religions and of
medicine, to the subject of mental diseases. He began with studies on
cretinism in Lombardy and Liguria, his conclusions being afterwards
adopted by Virchow and others. In the eventful year of 1859 he became first
a soldier, and afterwards a military surgeon. In 1862 he was in charge of the
department of mental diseases at Pavia University, and he initiated there an
institution for the insane, a psychiatric museum, and a series of researches
in the application of exact methods to the study of insanity. This last attempt
was at the time received with general derision; it was said that he was
studying madness with a yard measure; but his methods gradually made
progress, and slowly met with general adoption. After this he made some
important investigations into the causes of pellagra. Called to direct the
asylum at Pesaro, he reformed it, and established a journal, written and
managed by the insane. He then returned to Pavia, where he continued his
psychiatric work, investigated the influence of atmospheric conditions on
the mind, invented an instrument to measure pain, and engaged in a great
number of studies, marked by extraordinary ingenuity, patience, and insight.
Even as a youth Lombroso possessed the art of divining fruitful ideas,
which at the time appeared absurd to scientific men as well as to the public.
Every line of investigation he took up was at the time apparently opposed to
the tendency of thought, and only received general attention at a later date.
This was true, to some extent, even of the great achievement of his life.
In the year 1859—perhaps the most memorable of the century—Broca, who
had a decided influence on Lombroso, had inaugurated the naturalist
method of treating man with the Anthropological Society of Paris. The
illuminating genius of Virchow, and his prodigious energy, which has done

so much for anthropology and the methods of anthropology, also had its
influence on the Italian, in some respects a kindred spirit. And Darwin’s
Origin of Species, published in 1859, supplied, for the first time, an
indispensable biological basis, and furnished that atavistic key of which
Lombroso was tempted to make at first so much use, sometimes, it must be
added, so much abuse. These circumstances combined to render possible,
for the first time, the complete scientific treatment of the criminal man as a
human variety, while Lombroso’s own manifold studies and various
faculties had given him the best preparation for approaching this great task.
It was in 1859 that he first conceived this task; L’Uomo Delinquente was
not, however, finally published until 1876, while the second volume only
appeared in 1889.
The influence of L’Uomo Delinquente in Italy, France, and Germany seems
to have been as immediate and as decisive as that of The Origin of Species.
Despine’s Psychologie Naturelle, the greatest work on the criminal that had
appeared before Lombroso, was partial; the criminal was therein regarded
purely as a psychological anomaly. Lombroso first perceived the criminal
as, anatomically and physiologically, an organic anomaly. He set about
weighing him and measuring him, according to the methods of
anthropology. Even on the psychological side he gained new and more
exact results. He went back to the origins of crime among plants and
animals, among savages and children. He endeavoured to ascertain the
place of the criminal in nature, his causes, and his treatment. Lombroso’s
work is by no means free from faults. His style is abrupt; he is too
impetuous, arriving too rapidly at conclusions, lacking in critical faculty
and in balance. Thus he was led at the beginning to over-estimate the
atavistic element in the criminal, and at a later date he has pressed too
strongly the epileptic affinities of crime. His weaknesses have never been
spared rough handling from friendly or unfriendly hands. Thus Mantegazza,
while recognising his ingegno potentemente apostolico e geniale, denies
that Lombroso possesses any of the qualities of a scientific investigator, and
Dr. Napoleone Colajanni, who, from the socialistic left of the movement,
has, in his Sociologia Criminale (1889-90) and elsewhere, bestowed much
elaborate and often valuable criticism on the centre, compares Lombroso’s
indiscriminate collection of facts to Charles IX.’s famous order on St.
Bartholomew’s eve: “Kill them all; God will know His own.” But his work

has been so rich, so laborious, so various; it has opened up so many new
lines of investigation, and has suggested so many more, that it has
everywhere been received as marking a new epoch. He was, as he has
himself expressed it, the pollen-conveying insect, and the new science
which he fecundated has grown with extraordinary rapidity. A continuous
stream of studies—from books of the most comprehensive character down
to investigations into minute points of criminal anatomy or physiology—is
constantly pouring forth. It is still impossible to gather up this mass of
investigation, often necessarily discordant, into more than a tentative whole,
but its existence is sufficient to prove the vitality of the new science. It has
of course met with fierce antagonism, and Lombroso himself has declared
that perhaps not one stone will remain upon another, but that if this is to be
the fate of his work, a better edifice will arise in its place.
Two other Italians must be mentioned with Lombroso. Enrico Ferri,
Professor of Penal Law at Rome and a Deputy in the Italian Parliament,
while doing valuable work as a criminal anthropologist, has at the same
time studied the social bearings of criminality in his best-known book,
Nuovi Orizzonti del Diritto. He has occupied himself less with the
instinctive than with the occasional criminal, and his clear and philosophic
spirit has placed him at the head of criminal sociologists. Garofalo, a
Neapolitan lawyer, accepting generally the conclusions reached by
Lombroso and Ferri, has become the most distinguished jurist of the
movement, the pioneer in that reform of law through the methods of natural
science which must eventually become so fruitful. His Criminologie (the
new and enlarged edition is written in French) is marked by luminous yet
careful generalisation, and it contains many suggestions of wise reform.
Garofalo has brought into clear relief the inadequacy of legal maxims
founded on antiquated and unscientific conceptions, and he has shown that
not the nature of the crime, but the dangerousness (temibilità) of the
criminal constitutes the only reasonable legal criterion to guide the
inevitable social reaction against the criminal. This position is now
generally accepted as the legitimate outcome of the scientific study of the
criminal.
Among Italian workers in the department of criminal anthropology proper, a
very high place belongs to Dr. Antonio Marro, formerly surgeon to the
prison at Turin. I Caratteri dei Delinquenti (1887) contains the results of a

carefully-detailed and methodic examination of more than five hundred
prisoners, men and women, and of over one hundred normal persons
together with an investigation into their ancestry and habits. All the data are
presented in tabular form, and his excellent methods and judicious
moderation in drawing conclusions impart great value to his work. His
exactness and impartiality have been admired even by those whose instincts
and training have led them to dread the invasions of this department of
science. Dr. Marro has made interesting contributions to the differentiation
of various criminal types, and he has brought out very clearly the disastrous
tendency to degeneration among the children of parents who have passed
middle age. Other Italian studies, among many that might be mentioned, are
Virgilio’s, dating from 1874, Dr. P. Penta’s elaborate studies, the various
works of Zuccarelli, the energetic Neapolitan professor and editor of
L’Anomalo, V. Rossi’s work, Studio sopra una Centuria di Criminali,
Salsotto’s on women delinquents, and Ottolenghi’s investigations into the
senses of criminals. The Archivio di Psichiatria, a rich storehouse of
elaborate observations, founded in 1880, directed by Lombroso, Ferri,
Garofalo, and Morselli, edited by Rossi and Ottolenghi, remains at the head
of journals of criminal anthropology.
The first suggestion of an international congress of criminal anthropology
arose in Italy, and dates from the year 1882, when Salvatore Tommasi
published an important article in the Rassegna Critica. The first congress,
that of Rome, was not, however, actually held until 1885. It was attended by
all the most distinguished criminal anthropologists, criminal sociologists,
and jurists of the “positive” school, chiefly Italian, French, and German,
and its Actes are of great interest. The second international congress was
held in August 1889, in Paris. It was of a more cosmopolitan character than
the first, and of even greater interest.[14]
France has always been a laboratory for the popularisation of great ideas,
and Tarde’s La Criminalité Comparée is among the best of such attempts.
M. Tarde is a juge d’instruction, not an alienist or an anthropologist; he
touches on all the various problems of crime with ever-ready intelligence
and acuteness, and a rare charm of literary style, illuminating with
suggestive criticism everything that he touches. This easily accessible little
volume of the Libraire de Philosophie Contemporaine is the most
comprehensive introduction for those who would go down to the città

dolente by a rose-strewn path. Lacassagne, the eminent medico-legal expert
of Lyons, and editor of the valuable Archives de l’Anthropologie Criminelle,
stands perhaps at the head of French criminal anthropologists, although
beyond his monograph, Les Tatouages, he has published little. The judicial
qualities of his mind, and his power of expressing just and large
conceptions in felicitous and memorable phrases, impart value to all that he
writes, and his forthcoming work on the criminal man will, it is probable,
for all practical purposes, supersede other works. De la Criminalité chez les
Arabes, by A. Kocher, a pupil of Lacassagne’s, is a book of great interest,
and the names of Manouvrier, Bournet, Corre, Laurent, etc., are well known
in connection with criminal anthropology in France, while Féré ably
represents the French school which explains criminality by degeneration
alone.
In Germany the serious study of the criminal may be said to have begun
with Krafft-Ebing, the distinguished professor of psychiatry, now at Vienna,
who, by laying down clearly in his Grundzuge der Kriminal Psychologie
(1872), and other works, the doctrine of a criminal psychosis, and pointing
out its practical results, deserves, as Krauss remarks, to be regarded as an
important precursor of Lombroso. Knecht studied over 1200 prisoners
anthropologically. Dr. A. Krauss, who began with investigations into
criminal psychology, has since done much solid work in criminal
anthropology. Flesch made important observations on the morbid pathology
of criminals; Benedikt, known in connection with various interesting
investigations in criminal anthropology, began in 1879 with a remarkable
study of the criminal brain, in which he observed frequent confluence of the
fissures, as among some lower races, and also an additional convolution in
the frontal lobe, which he assimilated to that of the carnivora. His
conclusions in this difficult field of research were, however, considerably
shaken by Professor Giacomini, of Turin, and others, who showed that
similar anomalies are found, although not so frequently, in normal persons.
The brilliant Viennese professor has in his recently-published Kraniometrie
und Kephalometrie shown himself the most original and suggestive of
living students of the architecture of the skull.
In Holland, Professor Van Hamel, of Amsterdam, represents the new spirit
of approaching the problems of criminality.

In Belgium, where Quetelet’s great work, Physique Sociale, inaugurated
criminal sociology, and where prison reform, which has always attracted
much attention, is now ably represented by Professor Adolphe Prins, the
results of criminal anthropology have been received and discussed with
interest and sympathy, and various researches have been carried on.
Professor Héger and Dr. Semal of Mons should also be named here. In 1884
the Anthropological Society of Belgium nominated a commission for the
investigation of criminal anthropology. This led to various interesting
researches, none of them, however, of great importance.
In Spain and Portugal criminal anthropology is being prosecuted with much
zeal. Among its chief representatives may be named especially Vera and
Rafael Salillas (whose interesting book, La Vida Penal en España, gives a
very vivid picture of life in the Spanish prisons), and at Lisbon Bernardo
Lucas. D’Azevedo Castello Branco, sub-director of Lisbon prison, should
also be mentioned. In 1889, at a congress held in Lisbon, the relation of
criminal anthropology to penality, legal reform, and allied problems was
fully discussed.
In the rapidly-developing Spanish countries of South America, especially in
the Argentine Republic, criminal anthropology seems to be making great
progress. It is officially taught at the University of Buenos Ayres. Luis del
Drago, a judge in the Argentine Republic, with his Los hombres de Presa
(1888), an able study of criminality, which has rapidly reached a second
edition, thus showing the interest generally felt in these studies, and some
other workers, witness to the progress made in this country. On the
initiative of Dr. del Drago, with influential coadjutors, a society for the
promotion of criminal anthropology was founded in Buenos Ayres in 1888,
“to study the person of the criminal, to establish the degree of his
dangerousness and of his responsibility, and to effect the gradual and
progressive reform of penal law in accordance with the principles of the
new school.” In Brazil Professor Viejra de Aranjo of Pernambuco is the
chief representative of the science.
In Russia and Poland, although the study of criminal anthropology dates
from very recent years, it is making considerable progress. Bielakoff, in the
Archives of Psichiatry of Kharkoff, studied 100 homicides. Professor
Troizki, of Warsaw, published a careful study of 350 prisoners. Dr.

Prascovia Tarnowskaia examined 100 female thieves, whom she compared
with 150 prostitutes and 100 peasant women. On the legal side, Dimitri
Drill is engaged on a great work, of which one volume only is published at
present, in which he deals thoroughly with the organic factors of crime, and
with the social applications of criminal anthropology. The Russians seem to
be characteristically audacious in their applications of the new science, and
there is in Russia a feeling, not merely against imprisoning criminals, but
even against secluding them. In 1885 a young girl assassinated a Jewish
child to obtain possession for her lover of the money of the child’s father, a
rich usurer. Professor Babinski declared that she was not mad, but entirely
devoid of moral notions, that she was incurable, and that it would be quite
useless (useless, that is, from a medical point of view) to put her in an
asylum. She was acquitted.
In Great Britain alone during the last fifteen years there is no scientific
work in criminal anthropology to be recorded. When Dr. Coutagne
inaugurated, in 1888, a “Chronique Anglaise” in the Archives de
l’Anthropologie Criminelle, he could not conceal his embarrassment. While
the Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian summaries are founded on a
large series of works in criminal anthropology, in England there is
absolutely no centre for the scientific study of criminality. “Legal
medicine,” he remarks, “has there inspired no special publication, nor any
learned society. At the International Medical Congress of London, in 1881,
although so remarkably organised, it was less well treated than laryngology
or dentistry, and formed the object of no section, state medicine being
almost synonymous with hygiene. If we consult the scientific journals of
England dealing with allied subjects, our baggage will receive very few
additions.” In 1889 the International Association of Criminal Law was
founded by Professor G. A. Van Hamel of Amsterdam, Professor Fr. von
Liszt of Marburg, and Professor Adolphe Prins of Brussels. This
association, which has a great future before it, represents, from the
scientific and practical standpoint, the movement of reform in matters that
relate to the criminal. It maintains that criminality and the repression of
crime must be regarded as much from the social as from the legal point of
view. It endeavours to establish this principle and its consequences in the
science of criminal law as well as in penal legislation. The association
already numbers between three and four hundred members, and includes

well-known representatives from twenty-one different countries in Europe
and America. England is among the least well represented of all; the
English members rank in number with the Portuguese, Servian, and
Argentine members. Germany is more than twenty times better represented.
[15] No interest was felt in England in the International Congress of
Criminal Anthropology recently held in Paris. At this Congress official
delegates came from all parts of the civilised world, from Russia to Hawaii,
but although there were two from the United States, there was not one from
Great Britain. When some twelve months since I issued a series of
Questions, dealing with some of the main points in the investigation of the
criminal, to the medical officers of the larger prisons in Great Britain and
Ireland, the answers that I received, while sometimes of much interest—and
I am indebted to my correspondents for their anxiety to answer to the best
of their ability—were amply sufficient to show that criminal anthropology
as an exact science is yet unknown in England. Some of my correspondents,
I fear, had not so much as heard whether there be a criminal anthropology.
[16] England has, however, in the past been a home of studies connected
with the condition of the criminal. The centenary of John Howard, which
we have lately celebrated, is a brilliant witness to this fact. Fifty years ago
Englishmen sought to distinguish themselves by the invention of patent
improved tread-mills and similar now antiquated devices to benefit the
criminal. We began zealously with the therapeutics of crime; it is now time
to study the criminal’s symptomatology, his diagnosis, his pathology, and it
is scarcely possible to imagine that in these studies England will long
continue to lag so far behind the rest of the civilised world.

CHAPTER III.

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.

PLATE I.

PLATE II.

PLATE III.

PLATE IV.

PLATE V.

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.

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]

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.

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
Fair. Black.
Hair.

Normal per per
(900) 90.78 9.22
persons cent. cent.
Criminals (1620) 93.83 " 6.17 "
Sexual 1.48 per
(100) 81.85 " 16.67 "
offenders 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.

PLATE VII.

Larger Image

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.

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.

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.

PLATE VIII.

Larger Image
Right arm of G., French thief, M. J., French sailor and deserter;
etc., the nature of his crime is
expelled from France, and unknown.
wandered (Lombroso.)
in Africa and Australia.
(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.

CHAPTER IV.

CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY (PSYCHICAL).
§ 1. Moral Insensibility.

The moral insensibility of the instinctive and habitual criminal, his lack of
forethought, his absence of remorse, his cheerfulness, had been noted long
before they were exhaustively studied by Despine. In the argot of French
criminals, conscience is la muette, and to induce any one to lead a dishonest
life is l’affranchir. This moral insensibility is, indeed, a commonplace of
observation with all who have come in close contact with criminals. Gall
remarked: “If criminals have remorse, it is that they have not committed
more crimes, or that they have let themselves be caught.” Dostoieffsky,
speaking from his intimate and sympathetic acquaintance with convicts in
Siberia, said: “During so many years I ought to have been able to seize
some indication, however fugitive, of regret, of moral suffering. I have
perceived positively nothing. Seclusion and excessive work only develop
among those people a profound hatred, the thirst of forbidden pleasures, and
a terrible indifference.” He goes on to tell of a parricide who remarked
carelessly, in the course of conversation: “Take my father, for example; he
was never ill up to the day of his death.” “Scenes of heartrending despair
are hardly ever witnessed among prisoners,” observes Dr. Wey of Elmira;
“their sleep is disturbed by no uneasy dreams, but is easy and sound; their
appetites, also, are excellent.”[54] “It is a most singular thing,” remarks Mr.
Davitt, “that I have met very few individuals in prison who gave evidence
in appearance or talk of being truly miserable, no matter what the length of
their sentence, amount of extra punishment, or contrast between their
previous and their convict life may have been.”[55] Mr. Davitt seems
inclined to attribute this sinister contentment to a sort of heroic fortitude
providentially implanted in the criminal breast. He refers, however, to one
man who never smiled during the time he was in Dartmoor. “His existence
seemed to be one perpetual sorrow, and he formed altogether the most
striking exception to the rule of non-despairing prisoners which came under

my notice during my long intercourse with Dartmoor’s criminal
population.” Now this man was a Swansea stone-mason who had come
home one Saturday evening “a little fresh,” but not drunk, to find his wife
in tears, and on learning that she had been insulted by a man who lived on
the other side of the street, he rushed out, chisel in hand, to the man’s house
and left him desperately wounded. It is clear that this man, who was
sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude, was not an instinctive criminal,
or an habitual criminal at all; it was the strength of his social, and not of his
anti-social, instincts which had caused his crime. He was merely a criminal
by passion, and his case forms, therefore, no exception to the general rule.
On the whole we may conclude that the practice of the instinctive and
habitual criminal corresponds very closely with the faith of that religious
sect who in Commonwealth days held “that heaven and all happiness
consists in the acting of those things which are sin and wickedness,” and
“that such men and women are most perfect and like to God or eternity
which do commit the greatest sins with least remorse.”
Despine, in his Psychologie Naturelle (1868), studied this question on the
largest scale in order to obtain exact results. “I addressed myself for this
purpose,” he tells us, “to the collection of the Gazette des Tribunaux, going
back to 1825, and I soon acquired certainty that this psychical peculiarity is
an invariable rule among these criminals.... I acquired the certainty that
those who premeditate and commit crime in cold blood never experience
moral remorse. I found also that those who manifest acute sorrow and real
remorse after a criminal act, have committed that act either under the
influence of a violent passion which has momentarily stifled the moral
sense, or by accident, without intention.” He concludes that the two great
psychical conditions for crime are moral insensibility and perversity, with
two accessory moral anomalies, imprudence and lack of foresight.
“You premeditated your crime?” said the judge. “Yes, for eighteen months.”
“But that is monstrous.” “I know; I ought to have done it in April, but
having no money, I arranged it for January.” A murderer, after receiving
sentence, was led out in the midst of a crowd who hurled imprecations at
him. He saw a comrade and shouted to him, almost laughing—“Hallo! I’ve
just been condemned to death.” An Albanian, after having killed a traveller
to rob him, lamented that the expense of the shot amounted to five paras; he

had only found four paras on the victim; that was his one regret. An assassin
after his crime passed two days eating and drinking with a comrade; “he
was as gay as a lark,” said the latter. “But,” said the judge to the accused,
“one fact indicates remorse on your part: you were about to cut your throat
when arrested.” “That was that I might not be taken to prison.”
Wainewright unblushingly avowed his atrocities. How could he kill such an
innocent and trustful creature as Helen Abercrombie, he was asked once.
After a moment’s reflection he replied, “Upon my soul I don’t know, unless
it was because she had such thick legs.”
It would be easy to give many similar stories exhibiting the moral
insensibility of the instinctive criminal, frequently manifested in brutal
bravado. They are, however, easily accessible and of sufficient notoriety. It
is enough to give one more. A corporal at Paris killed an old woman, the
landlady of an inn, in order to rob her. He was condemned to death without
any hope that his penalty would be commuted. He knew this, but was not
disturbed, and was proud of his calmness and sangfroid; he talked to his
warders on the most various subjects, without reference, however, to his
crime; read books from the prison library, and finally devoted himself to
what he called the literary labours of his last hours. He had a taste for verse,
and wrote a drama concerning his crime. “Death!” he often said to those
around him; “I cannot fear it either as a soldier or as a philosopher. Yet it is
overtaking me in my youth and strength. It is a terrible thing, but I am
prepared, and I shall go to my execution courageously and with head erect.”
The acts of this Socratic criminal agreed with his words. He slept
peacefully, rose and dressed himself with a smile on his lips, glad, as he
said, to find himself still in this world, where it is, after all, so pleasant to
live. His appetite was always good, and he joked with the warder who
attended him about the small amount of food supplied to him. “Patience!”
he exclaimed, “à la guerre comme à la guerre.”
An executioner told Lombroso that all the highwaymen and murderers went
to their deaths joking. It would, however, be a mistake to trace moral
insensibility in the tranquil avocations and bon-mots of men who, whatever
their crimes, are about to pay the extreme forfeit for them. One criminal
occupied his last hours with arranging his unpublished literary works;
another gave lessons in hygiene to the warders; a third remarked to those

who sought to hurry him to the place of execution, “Do not be disturbed;
they will not begin without me.” Such stories have, however, been recorded
of the most eminent political offenders in all countries.

PLATE IX.

Dr. Corre, in his interesting work, Les Criminels, has investigated the
historic and judicial documents relative to the last moments of 88 criminals
condemned to death, of whom 64 were men and 24 women. Of the men 25
died in a cowardly manner, already half-dead with fear, or else after a
despairing struggle with the executioner. These were more than two-fifths
of the whole number, and included many of the chief criminal celebrities,

some of them educated men, doctors and priests. Four accepted their fate in
a state of extreme nervous excitement, accompanied by loquacity. Twelve
maintained to the end a cynical and theatrical attitude; these were vain
individuals, often with some pretensions to literary ability; Lacenaire is the
type of them. Five died with indifference, an impassivity which recalls the
insensibility of the brute or the unconsciousness of the madman. Eighteen
went out of the world with a calm and resigned courage, often repentant,
and prepared by the exhortations of the priest. They belonged to various
social classes. Those of the lower classes were generally more sincere, and
publicly avowed their guilt, holding themselves up as warnings to others;
those belonging to the middle classes, anxious to leave behind a doubt as to
their guilt, declared themselves innocent; others were silent. Of the 24
women, only 5 (about one-fifth) showed cowardice. Only one, a poisoner,
showed “revolting cynicism.” The rest, 18 in number, were self-possessed
and resigned, frequently repentant, and generally consoled by religious
administrations. In this category is included the Marquise de Brinvilliers,
who for a long quarter of an hour was exposed to an immense crowd nearly
naked—“mirodée, rasée, dressée et redressée par le bourreau,” wrote Mme.
de Sevigné—with unshaken firmness. Three-fourths of the women, little
more than one-fourth of the men, are among those who died with resigned
self-possession. The cynicism, cowardice, and brutal passivity of the others
alike testify to moral insensibility.
Out of more than 400 murderers Bruce Thomson had known, only three
expressed remorse. Of the 4000 criminals who have passed through Elmira,
36.2 per cent. showed on admission positively no susceptibility to moral
impressions; only 23.4 per cent. were “ordinarily susceptible.” Dr. Salsotto,
in his recent study of 130 women condemned for premeditated
assassination or complicity in such assassination,[56] was only able to
recognise genuine penitence in six. He is careful to point out that precise
statistics on this point are of no great value, unless they are associated with
a very intimate knowledge of individual criminals; the assumed penitence is
seldom real, and the real penitence is not obtrusive. Dostoieffsky, the most
profound student of the human heart who has ever studied criminals
intimately, has noted this fact—“In one prison there were men whom I had
known for several years, whom I believed to be savage beasts, and for
whom, as such, I felt contempt; yet at the most unexpected moment their

souls would involuntarily expand at the surface with such a wealth of
sentiment and cordiality, with such a vivid sense of their own and others’
suffering, that scales seemed to fall from one’s eyes; for an instant the
stupefaction was so great that one hesitated to believe what one had seen
and heard.”
The moral insensibility of the instinctive criminal is the cause of his cruelty,
a cruelty which he frequently displays from his childhood. Rossi found in
ten of his 100 criminals an exaggerated and precocious cruelty; one of
them, as a child, used to take young birds, pull out their feathers, and roast
them alive; another revenged himself on birds for the punishments imposed
on him by his parents. A certain amount of cruelty is, however, almost
normal in healthy children. The instinctive criminal is more distinctively
marked by his continuance of the same practices throughout life. At Buenos
Ayres a man killed his father in order to rob him, and not finding the money,
he placed his mother’s feet on the fire to make her confess that of which she
was ignorant. Another, after killing an entire family, played with the corpses
of the children by throwing them in the air and catching them alternately.
Another, mentioned by Lombroso, when shown a photograph of his wife
whom he had murdered, testified to the identity without the tremor of an
eyelid, tranquilly adding that after inflicting the fatal wound he had asked
for forgiveness, which had not been granted. A little nursemaid poisoned the
twin children under her care with the phosphorus from a box of matches, in
order to procure the excitement of going out to the doctor’s and the
chemist’s.[57]
In India no motive for murder seems too unnatural or too far-fetched to be
occasionally true. “A village schoolmaster in Aligarh (1881) killed one of
his pupils; and a stepfather in the same district threw his two stepsons into
the Ganges because he was tired of them. A man in Jhansi (1885) killed his
daughter because his neighbour had slandered her, in order that the girl’s
blood might be upon the neighbour’s head. A master murdered his servant
(1881) and threw the body before his enemy’s door, solely in order to bring
a false charge against the latter. A similar case occurred in Azamgarh five
years later: a boy was murdered by his grandfather and uncle; they threw
the body into a sugar-cane field, and then charged the owner with the crime.
A still stranger story comes from the Mutha District: Randbir, a Jat, who
had once been a thriving man in Randbirpur, fell into the hands of the

moneylenders, lost his property and his house, and became for some
crooked reason embittered against his old fellow-villagers. He made up his
mind to bring them into trouble. Taking his chopper with him, he met a little
Chamar girl, whom he took into a temple in Bahadurpur. There he cut her
throat and slightly wounded himself, and then brought a charge of dacoity
and murder against the people of his old village.”[58]
Such moral insensibility is, no doubt, intimately related to the physical
insensibility already noted, and is of an equally morbid or atypical
character. It passes far beyond that of the savage with which the moral
insensibility involved in deliberately killing or injuring a fellow-creature
may fairly be compared. “How you snore!” said one person to another. “Do
it again, and I kill you.” An hour afterwards he killed him. Lord Gifford
mentions an Australian woman of the Muliana tribe who admitted having
killed and eaten two of her own children, who annoyed her by crying. (The
Australian aborigines are, however, usually very tender to their children.) A
Maori chief said to Mr. Tregear—“If I go out for a morning walk with my
spear, and I see a man, and I push my spear through him, that isn’t murder
—that is ‘killing.’ But if I invite him to my home, give him food, tell him to
sleep, and then kill him, that is ‘murder.’”[59] Such a clear-cut distinction as
this testifies to a considerable degree of moral insensibility. It must be
noted, however, that while in this respect the criminal approximates to the
savage, he is at the same time related to those more or less civilised persons
who tolerate killing with equanimity when it is called war.

§ 2. Intelligence.

The two most characteristic features in the intelligence of the average
criminal are at first sight inconsistent. On the one hand he is stupid, inexact,
lacking in forethought, astoundingly imprudent. On the other hand he is
cunning, hypocritical, delighting in falsehood, even for its own sake,
abounding in ruses. These characteristics are fully illustrated in the
numerous anecdotal books which have been written concerning crime and
criminals.
Several attempts have been made to attain accurate figures as to the relative
intelligence of criminals, but there must be a considerable element of guess-
work in such calculations. Dr. Marro, a reliable observer, detected a notable

defect of intelligence in 21 cases out of 500. He found that incendiaries and
then murderers yielded the largest proportion of individuals with defective
intelligence; then came vagabonds, sexual offenders, those convicted of
assault, highwaymen, and those convicted of simple theft. The fraudulent
class, as well as pickpockets and burglars, showed no instances of defective
intelligence. That is to say that criminals against the person show a much
lower level of intelligence than criminals against property.
The stupidity and the cunning of the criminal are in reality closely related,
and they approximate him to savages and to the lower animals. Like the
savage, the criminal is lacking in curiosity, the foundation of science, and
one of the very highest acquisitions of the highly-developed man. He is
constantly compared in this respect to animals. Macé, a former chief of the
Parisian police de sûreté, remarks: “In spite of the cunning and tricks,
which are too gratuitously credited to thieves, their stupidity generally is
scarcely credible; they nearly all resemble the ostrich who, when his head is
hidden behind a leaf, thinks that he is not seen because he cannot see.” Dr.
Corre remarks: “There is something feline in the criminal: like the cat,
indolent and capricious, yet ardent in the pursuit of an aim, the anti-social
being knows only how to satisfy his impulsive instincts.” Dr. Wey of Elmira
says: “It is a mistake to suppose that the criminal is naturally bright. If
bright, it is usually in a narrow line and self-repeating. Like the cunning of
the fox, his smartness displays itself in furthering his schemes, and personal
gratification and comfort.” “Many criminal illiterates,” he remarks
elsewhere, “are so densely stupid as to be unable to tell the right hand from
the left.” M. Joly, discussing the criminal’s delight in ruse, adds: “Animals
are of all living things fondest of ruse when their special instincts are in
action. Idle and untrained children, resolved to deceive their teachers and to
amuse themselves at all risks, are more rusé than their comrades at the head
of the class. Women make use of ruse much more than men.” I will quote,
finally, on this point some words of Dr. A. Krauss[60]:—“The specialists say
that criminals are more astute than intelligent. But what is this astuteness? It
is an instinctive, innate faculty, which does not depend on real intelligence,
and which is already found precociously perfected in children, in the lowest
savages, in women, and also in imbeciles; although experience comes to its
aid, it is never capable of artificial culture. It is essentially a faculty limited
to the consideration of concrete cases, and which is chiefly concerned with

the deception of others. The mental inertia so often combined with this
faculty is recognised in this, that a criminal, in planning a crime, does not
calculate all the possible eventualities, and immediately after the success of
his action he loses all caution, as if the energy of his mind directed to the
project and its execution was exhausted at one stroke. Beside this
instinctive faculty, intelligence is a faculty of infinite variety, which matures
slowly, and gradually affects language and questions of abstract culture. It
needs to be cultivated with diligence, and with the help of a happy
organisation of the nervous centres. It often develops late even in highly-
gifted men.”
At the same time men of undoubted intellectual power are sometimes found
among criminals. Villon, one of the truest, if not one of the greatest of
poets, was a criminal, a man perpetually in danger of the gallows; it does
not seem to me, however, by any means clear that he was what we should
call an instinctive criminal. Vidocq, a clever criminal who became an
equally successful police official, and wrote his interesting and instructive
Memoirs, may not have been, as Lombroso claims, a man of genius, but he
was certainly a man of great ability. Eugene Aram is now generally
recognised as a comparative philologist who foresaw and to some extent
inaugurated some of the later advances of that science.

PLATE X.

Jonathan Wild is an interesting example of a criminal of great practical
ability, a man whose genius for organisation would have made him equal to
any position in which he might have been placed. “In the republic of the
thieves’ guild”—I quote Mr. Pike’s excellent summary of his career[61]
—“Jonathan Wild became as it were a dictator; but like many of the great
men of the middle ages, he owed his greatness to double dealing. From
small beginnings he became, in London at least, the receiver-in-chief of all
stolen goods. He acquired and maintained this position by the persistent
application of two simple principles: he did his best to aid the law in
convicting all those misdoers who would not recognise his authority, and he
did his best to repair the losses of all those who had been plundered and
who took him into their confidence. By degrees he set up an office for the
recovery of missing property, at which the government must, for a time,

have connived. Here the robbed sought an audience of the only man who
could promise them restitution; here the robbers congregated like workmen
at a workshop, to receive the pay for the work they had done. Wild was, in
some respects, more autocratic than many kings, for he had the power of
life and death. If he could reward the thief who submitted to him, he could
hang the robber who omitted to seek his protection. If he could, for a
sufficient fee, discover what had been lost, he could, when his claims were
forgotten, make the losers repent their want of worldly wisdom. He was not
above his position, and never allowed such a sentiment as generosity to
interfere with the plain rules of business. He carried a wand of office, made
of silver, which he asserted to be an indication of authority given to him by
the government. Valuable goods he carefully stowed away in some of his
numerous warehouses; and when there was no market for them in England,
through the apathy of the persons robbed, or the dangers to dishonest
purchasers, he despatched them on board a ship of his own to Holland,
where he employed a trustworthy agent. Like barbarian monarchs, he gave
presents when he wished to express a desire for friendship and assistance;
and in order that the recipients of these favours might not be compromised,
he retained a staff of skilled artizans, who could so change the appearance
of a snuff-box, a ring, or a watch, that not even the real owner could
recognise it. When satisfied with the good service of any of his subordinates
who might be in danger, he gave them posts in his own household, with
money and clothing, and found employment for them in clipping and
counterfeiting coin. He did not even restrict his operations to London, but,
in imitation of other great conquerors and pillagers, or perhaps through the
independent working of his own intellect, he divided England into districts,
and assigned a gang to each; each had to account to him, as the counties of
old to the king, for the revenue collected. And as a well-appointed army has
its artillery, its cavalry, and its infantry, so among Jonathan Wild’s retainers
there was a special corps for robbing in church, another for various
festivities in London, and a third with a peculiar aptitude for making the
most of a country fair. The body-guards of a sovereign are usually chosen
for their appearance, or for tried valour in the field. Wild’s principle of
selection was somewhat different. He considered that fidelity to himself
was the first virtue in a follower, and that fidelity was certain only when
there was absolute inability to be unfaithful. For this reason the greatest
recommendation which any recruit could possess was that he had been a

convict, had been transported, and had returned before the time of his
sentence had expired. Such a man as this not only had experience in his
profession, but was legally incapable of giving evidence against his
employer. Through his actions he was always in the power of Wild, who, as
the law stood, could never be in his power. Thus Wild’s authority was in
two ways supreme. Nor was he the first man who ever abused such
authority. He did what political parties had done in earlier times. He used
without stint or scruple all the means at his disposal, either to ensure his
own safety, or to crush any one whom he suspected. It was necessary,
according to the public opinion of his time, that a considerable number of
thieves and robbers should be hanged; he satisfied at once the popular
notions of justice and his own principles by bringing to the gallows all who
concealed their booty, or refused to share it with himself. When required, he
provided also a few additional victims in the form of persons who had
committed no offence whatever. Sometimes he destroyed them because they
were unfortunately in possession of evidence against himself, sometimes
only because a heavy reward had been offered for the conviction of any one
who might have perpetrated a great crime, and because, with the gang at his
back, it was quite as easy to prove the case against the innocent as against
the guilty, and not less convenient.” Wild’s greatness had a sudden fall. He
was arrested for coming to the rescue of a highwayman near Bow, and his
enemies at once took courage. He was speedily overwhelmed with
evidence, and was hanged in 1725.

§ 3. Vanity.

The vanity of criminals is at once an intellectual and an emotional fact. It
witnesses at once to their false estimate of life and of themselves, and to
their egotistic delight in admiration. They share this character with a large
proportion of artist and literary men, though, as Lombroso remarks, they
decidedly excel them in this respect. The vanity of the artist and literary
man marks the abnormal element, the tendency in them to degeneration. It
reveals in them the weak points of a mental organisation, which at other
points is highly developed. Vanity may exist in the well-developed ordinary
man, but it is unobtrusive; in its extreme forms it marks the abnormal man,
the man of unbalanced mental organisation, artist or criminal.

George Borrow, who was so keen a student of men, has some remarks on
the vanity of criminals in regard to dress:—“There is not a set of people in
the world more vain than robbers in general, more fond of cutting a figure
whenever they have an opportunity, and of attracting the eyes of their
fellow-creatures by the gallantry of their appearance. The famous Sheppard
of olden times delighted in sporting a suit of Genoese velvet, and when he
appeared in public generally wore a silver-hilted sword at his side; whilst
Vaux and Hayward, heroes of a later day, were the best-dressed men on the
pavē of London. Many of the Italian bandits go splendidly decorated, and
the very gipsy robber has a feeling for the charms of dress; the cap alone of
the Haram Pasha, a leader of the cannibal gipsy band which infested
Hungary towards the conclusion of the last century, was adorned with gold
and jewels to the value of four thousand guilders. Observe, ye vain and
frivolous, how vanity and crime harmonise. The Spanish robbers are as
fond of this species of display as their brethren of other lands, and, whether
in prison or out of it, are never so happy as when, decked out in a profusion
of white linen, they can loll in the sun, or walk jauntily up and down.” He
then describes the principal features of Spanish robber foppery.[62]
More significant and even more widely spread is the moral vanity of
criminals. “In ordinary society,” said Vidocq, “infamy is dreaded; among a
body of prisoners the only shame is not to be infamous; to be an escarpe
(assassin) is the highest praise.” This is universally true among every group
of murderers or of thieves; the author of a large criminal transaction is
regarded by all his fellows as a hero, and he looks down upon the others
with contempt; the man who has had the misfortune to be imprisoned for a
small or, in the opinion of criminal society, disreputable offence, represents
himself as the author of some crime of magnitude.
A Russian youth of nineteen killed an entire family. When he heard that all
St. Petersburg was talking of him, he said: “Now, my schoolfellows will see
how unfair it was of them to say that I should never be heard of.” It is this
same weak-minded desire to excite interest and sympathy which leads
young men and women of ill-balanced mental organisation to commit
suicide in some public and startling fashion. The same feeling, and also,
doubtless, the need for expression, leads to the frequency with which
criminals keep diaries. The Marquise de Brinvilliers wrote a minute account
of her vices and crimes which was brought up in evidence against her;

Wainewright appears to have kept a diary of this kind which also fell into
other hands; John Wilkes Booth, the shallow-brained young actor who
killed President Lincoln, had, with his stagy patriotism, some of the
characteristics of the instinctive criminals, showing themselves especially in
his morbid vanity. The chief suffering he felt after the deed was to his
vanity. He wrote in his diary: “I struck boldly, and not as the papers say; I
walked with a firm step through thousands of his friends; was stopped, but
pushed on. A colonel was at his side. I shouted Sic Semper before I fired. In
jumping broke my leg. I passed all the pickets. Rode sixty miles that night,
with the bone of my leg tearing the flesh at every jump.” And again he
writes: “After being hunted like a dog through swamps, woods, and last
night chased by gun-boats till I was forced to return, wet, cold, and starving,
with every man’s hand against me, I am here in despair. And why? For
doing what Brutus was honoured for—what made Tell a hero.” And again:
“I am abandoned, with the curse of Cain upon me, when, if the world knew
my heart, that one blow would have made me great.”
The excessive vanity of the criminal sometimes leads him to commit the
imprudence of talking about his plans beforehand, and so courting
detection. Before killing three rich men, a murderer was heard to say, “I
want to do something great: oh, I shall be talked about!” We hear of
Wainewright’s “insatiable and morbid self-esteem.” He enjoyed the respect
paid to him in prison, and insisted upon being treated as a gentleman. A
prisoner concluded a letter to her accomplice, “Your Lucrezia Borgia.”
Sometimes the vanity of the criminal shows itself in the artistic or dramatic
representations which he makes of his crime. Perhaps the most curious and
audacious attempt is that recorded by Lombroso, who gives a representation
of it: three assassins had themselves photographed as they appeared with
knives in their hands and looks of resolute villainy, when about to commit
the deed.
The Abbé Moreau has described the reception of a great criminal by his
fellows at the prison of La Grande Roquette. He is immediately surrounded,
though the curiosity remains respectful; “he is a king in the midst of his
subjects; envious looks are cast at those privileged individuals who have
succeeded in placing themselves near him; they listen eagerly for his
slightest word; they do not speak their admiration for fear of interrupting
him, and he knows that he dominates and fascinates them.”

§ 4. Emotional Instability.

The criminal everywhere is incapable of prolonged and sustained exertion;
an amount of regular work which would utterly exhaust the most vigorous
and rebellious would be easily accomplished by an ordinary workman. He
is essentially idle; the whole art of crime lies in the endeavour to avoid the
necessity of labour. This constitutional laziness is therefore one of the chief
organic bases of crime. Make idleness impossible and you have done much
to make the criminal impossible. It is not without reason that French
criminals call themselves pègres (from pigritia), the idle. Lemaire, a
notorious French criminal of the beginning of the century, was speaking for
all his class when he said to his judges: “I have always been lazy; it is a
shame, I admit, but I am not adapted for work; to work one needs an effort,
and I am incapable of it; I only have energy for evil; if one must work I do
not care about life; I would rather be condemned to death.”
While he is essentially lazy, and exhibits this even in his general neglect of
personal cleanliness (though sometimes dressed outwardly as an ordinary
man of the world), the criminal is capable of moments of violent activity.
He cannot, indeed, live without them; they are the chief events of his
spiritual life.
Louis Desprez, an unfortunate littérateur, imprisoned at Saint-Pélagie for a
literary offence, “summed up the psychology of criminals,” remarks M.
Émile Gautier, “in one picturesque formula: They see the world under the
aspect of an immense gaol alternating with an immense brothel. And this is
true. For them imprisonment is the normal condition. Liberty is their
holiday, an occasional transitory holiday, during which they wallow in the
far niente and debauch, like sailors who consume in three days the earnings
of eighteen months, but a holiday which will have an end, a foreseen and
expected end.”
The criminal craves for some powerful stimulus, excitement, uproar, to lift
him out of his habitual inertia. That is why the love of alcohol is in all
countries so strong among criminals. The man who is organised as we have
seen the criminal to be must have some powerful stimulant to take him out
of himself, to give him a joy which is otherwise beyond his grasp, and
alcohol is the stimulant which comes easiest to hand. When, as frequently

happens, he is the child of alcoholic parents, the craving for drink soon
obtains morbid intensity. Crime and drink are intimately bound together,
although we must beware of too unreservedly setting down drink as the
cause of crime. Both crime and drink are the morbid manifestations of
organic defects which for the most part precede birth. The abuse of alcohol
is not, however, universal among criminals, at all events when any
intellectual ability is required. “It would not do to drink in our business,”
said a sharper to Lombroso.
The criminal finds another strong form of excitement in gambling. The love
of cards is even more widely spread among criminals than the love of drink.
It frequently becomes a passion. Lauvergne tells of a band of criminals who
played for two days without intermission. We hear of a French prisoner who
gambled away his meagre rations of bread and wine and at last died of
starvation; of another who in the excitement of the game forgot his
approaching execution.
To all forms of sexual excitement, natural and unnatural, criminals of both
sexes resort, often from a very early age. The prison, in which the criminal
is confined alone, or with persons of the same sex, serves to develop
perverted sexual habits to a high degree. Prince Krapotkine, speaking of the
moral influence of prisons on prisoners in France, writes:—“The facts
which we came across during our prison life surpass all that the most
frenzied imagination could invent. One must have been for long years in a
prison, secluded from all higher influences and abandoned to one’s own and
that of a thousand convicts’ imaginations, to come to the incredible state of
mind which is witnessed among some prisoners. And I suppose that I shall
say only what will be supported by all intelligent and frank governors of
prisons, if I say that the prisons are the nurseries for the most revolting
category of breaches of moral law.”[63] There is unquestionable evidence
that the same practices exist, notwithstanding all discipline, in English
prisons.
Such practices grow up chiefly as a means of excitement and diversion in
vacuous lives. Love, in its highest and strongest forms, seems to be
extremely rare. This is true even when love is the cause of the crime. The
love, even when strong, remains rather brutal. When a man was asked if he

really loved the woman for whose sake he had murdered her husband, he
replied: “Oh, if you had seen her naked!”
The craving for excitement, for intoxication, for uproar, finds its chief
satisfaction in the love of orgy, which is now almost confined, at all events
in its extreme forms, to the criminal and his intimate ally, the prostitute. The
orgy is the criminal’s most sacred festival; here he attains his highest
experiences of forgetful exhilaration. Vidocq, still a criminal at heart, even
after he had become a police official, has described the orgy in his
Memoirs:—“Imagine a rather large square hall, with walls, once white, now
blackened by exhalations of every kind: such is, in all its simplicity, the
aspect of a temple of Bacchus and Terpsichore. At first by a very natural
optical illusion, one is only struck by the smallness of the place, but when
the eye succeeds in piercing the atmosphere, thick with a thousand vapours
which are not inodorous, the size becomes manifest by the details which
escape from the chaos. This is the moment of creation; everything clears up;
the mist dissipates, becomes peopled and animated; there is movement,
agitation, not of empty shadows but of substantial forms which cross and
interlace in every direction. What beatitude! What a joyous life! Never for
epicureans were so many felicities gathered together as here for those who
love to wallow in mire. Around, rows of tables, on which, without their ever
being cleaned, disgusting libations are renewed a hundred times a day, serve
to frame in a space which is reserved for what are called the dancers. At the
end of this infectious den rises, supported by four worm-eaten pillars, a
kind of platform, its construction hidden by two or three fragments of old
tapestry. On this hencoop the musicians are perched, two clarinettes, a
fiddle, a loud trombone, and a deafening drum.... In this receptacle one
finds none but prostitutes and their bullies, sharpers of all kinds, swindlers
of the lowest sort, and a good many of those disturbers of the night whose
lives are divided into two parts, one consecrated to rowdyism, the other to
robbery.”
More interesting than this resort to external sources of stimulus, and more
significant of emotional instability, are the spontaneous outbursts of
excitement common among criminals, curious self-evolved intoxications
springing from mysterious and incalculable depths of the organism.
Dostoieffsky has studied these outbursts and admirably described them. “A
prisoner has lived tranquilly,” he tells us,[64] “for several consecutive years,

and his conduct has been exemplary. All at once, to the great astonishment
of his guardians, he mutinies and recoils before no crime, even murder or
rape. Every one is astonished. This unexpected explosion is the anguished,
convulsive manifestation of personality, an instinctive melancholy, a desire
to affirm the degraded ego, an emotion which obscures the judgment. It is
like a spasm, an access of epilepsy; the man who is buried alive and who
suddenly awakes strikes in despair against his coffin-lid; he strives to push
it back, to raise it; his reason convinces him of the uselessness of all his
efforts, but reason has nothing to do with his convulsions. It must not be
forgotten that nearly every manifestation of the personality of the prisoner
is considered a crime; also that the question whether the manifestation is
important or insignificant is perfectly indifferent to the prisoner. Risk for
risk, it is better to go to the extreme, even to murder. It is only the first step
that costs; little by little the man is carried away and can no longer be held
in.” The prison has much to answer for in the development of these
emotional outbreaks, and it is only in prison that there is opportunity of
studying them. It would, however, be rash to conclude that they are entirely
due to prison conditions. They are in harmony with all that we know of
criminal psychology, and it is not alone under prison conditions that they
are the causes of crime.
In Germany these periodic explosions (known as Zuchthaus-Knall) have
been described by Delbrück and Krafft-Ebing. In Italy they have been noted
by Lombroso, especially in very hot weather and at such times as epileptic
attacks are most frequent, and he regards them as fresh proof of a close
relationship between the instinctive criminal and the epileptic. In England
they appear to be rare in men, but, on the other hand, common in women
who have, in prison language, “broken out.” This wild fit of maniacal
violence which from time to time seizes on the women confined in prisons,
and might almost be regarded as an exaggerated or vicarious form of orgy,
has been studied with some care in England. Here as well as abroad it is
frequently supposed to be a voluntary insubordination deserving
punishment.
A lady superintendent thus described the “breaking out” to Mayhew:
—“Sometimes they know when the fit is coming on, and will themselves
ask to be locked up in the refractory wards. When they’re in these fits
they’re terribly violent indeed; they tear up and break everything they can

lay their hands on. The younger they are the worse they behave. The most
violent age, I think, is from seventeen to two or three and twenty;—indeed
they are like fiends at that age very often.” The medical officer told him that
“4 per cent. of the whole of the prisoners, or 20 in 600, were subject to such
fits of violent passion, and these were almost invariably from fifteen to
twenty-five years of age.” “Women,” he added, “seldom injure themselves
or those around them, though they will break their windows, and even
occasionally tear their own clothing to ribbons.”[65]
Miss Mary Carpenter, in her Female Life in Prison, reproduces what she
tells us is a characteristic dialogue:—
“‘Miss G., I’m going to break out to-night.’
“‘Oh, nonsense; you won’t think of any such folly, I’m sure.’
“‘I’m sure I shall.’
“‘What for?’
“‘Well, I’ve made up my mind, that’s what for. I shall break out to-night—
see if I don’t.’
“‘Has any one offended you or said anything?’
“‘N-no. But I must break out. It’s so dull here. I’m sure to break out.’
“‘And then you’ll go to the “dark” [cell].’
“‘I want to go to the “dark.”’
“And the breaking out often occurs as promised; the glass shatters out of the
window frames; strips of sheets and blankets are passed through or left in a
heap in the cell; the guards are sent for, and there is a scuffling and fighting
and scratching and screaming that Pandemonium might equal, nothing
else.”
Dr. Nicolson has made an interesting observation as to the periods when
these “breakings-out” are most liable to occur. “At dates corresponding with
the menstrual period there is a greater likelihood of their occurrence.
Besides having verified this in several cases myself, I have the testimony of

experienced prison matrons to the same effect.” These maniacal outbursts
of hysteria may be compared to the somewhat similar effects observed
especially at the menstrual periods among the epileptic, the insane, and the
imbecile. Thus Dr. H. Sutherland (West Riding Asylum Reports, vol. ii.),
from observations on 500 inmates of the West Riding Asylum, remarks that
in epileptic insanity the fits are generally increased in number, and the
patients generally become excited at the catamenial period; while the mania
exacerbations usually occur at this time. He notes the frequency of
excitement, violence, indecent language, tearing up clothes, etc., among
insane women generally at this period. In a girl with congenital imbecility,
who became violent, cruel, and capricious at puberty, Dr. Langdon Down
noted that the monthly period was always marked by insubordination,
violent language, rude gestures, and untruthfulness. In ordinary healthy
young girls the onset of the monthly period is often marked by a fit of
unusual boisterousness.
The period of the year seems also to have some influence on the emotional
instability. Miss Carpenter remarks that “the prisoners are always the most
ill-behaved at Christmas time,” perhaps because this period has, even
before the days of Christianity, been associated with excesses. Among the
men at Elmira, judging from the charts given by Dr. Wey, there is a
tendency to insubordination in the autumn, and also in the spring. In
Spanish prisons, it appears from Salillas’s Vida Penal en España, quarrels
and arrests are much more common in spring and summer than at any other
season. Thus, to take one record: March-May, 8; June-Aug., 9; Sept.-Nov.,
4; Dec.-Feb., 3. Two suicides both occurred in September.
Very interesting is the instinctive and irresistible character of criminal
impulses, as shown by evidence which there is no good reason to impeach.
Casanova, speaking of his clever schemes of fraud, says: “When I put into
execution a spontaneous idea which I had not premeditated, it seemed to me
that I was following the laws of destiny, and yielding to a supreme will.”
Several pickpockets have said to Lombroso: “You see, in those moments of
inspiration (sic) we cannot restrain ourselves, we have to steal.” “I did try
very hard, Miss,” the women will sometimes say to the matron, remarks
Miss Carpenter, “but it wasn’t to be. I was obliged to steal, or to watch
some one there was a chance of stealing from. I did try my best, but it
couldn’t be helped, and here I am. It wasn’t my fault exactly, because I did

try.” A pickpocket said to Marro: “When I see any one pass with a watch in
his pocket, even though I have no need of money, I feel a real need to take
it.” Dostoieffsky, giving a minute account of one of the convicts who was
most feared, but who was sincerely devoted to him, says: “He sometimes
stole from me, but it was always involuntary; he scarcely ever borrowed
from me, so that what attracted him was not money or other interested
motive.” Once it was a Bible which he sold to obtain drink. “Probably he
felt a strong desire for drink that day, and when he felt a strong desire for
anything it had to be satisfied. I endeavoured to reproach him as he
deserved, for I regretted my Bible. He listened to me without irritation, very
peacefully; he agreed with me that the Bible is a very useful book, and he
sincerely regretted that I no longer possessed it, but he felt no repentance,
not even for an instant, for having stolen it; he looked at me with such
assurance that I immediately ceased to scold him. He bore my reproaches
because he judged that it could not be otherwise, that he deserved to be
blamed for such an action, and that I ought to abuse him, in order to relieve
myself, as a consolation for the loss; but privately he esteemed it a folly, a
folly which a serious man would have been ashamed to speak of. I even
think he regarded me as a child, an urchin who does not understand the
simplest things in the world.”
Precisely the same instinctive and involuntary impulses, unaccompanied by
shame, are found among various lower races. Of the natives of British New
Guinea, for instance, it has been said, “They are inveterate thieves, but they
experience no sense of shame when they are discovered. They frequently
say that they can feel an irresistible power which compels them to put out
their hand and close it upon some article which they covet, but which does
not belong to them.”[66]

§ 5. Sentiment.

It may seem a curious contradiction of what has already been set down
concerning the criminal’s moral insensibility, his cruelty, and his incapacity
to experience remorse, when it is added that he is frequently open to
sentiment. It is, however, true. Whatever refinement or tenderness of feeling
criminals attain to reveals itself as what we should call sentiment or
sentimentality. Their cynicism allies itself with sentiment in their literary

productions. Their unnatural loves are often sentimental, as revealed in the
character of the tattoo marks. Two interesting examples of criminal
sentiment have recently been recorded by Dr. Lindau. A German criminal (it
is perhaps as well to note that he was a German), having murdered his
sweetheart most cruelly, went back to her house to let out a canary which
might suffer from want of food. Another, after having killed a woman,
stayed behind to feed her child which was crying. Lacenaire, on the same
day that he committed a murder, risked his own life to save that of a cat.
Eugene Aram was very indulgent to animals. Wainewright was always very
fond of cats; in his last days “his sole companion was a cat for which he
evinced an extraordinary affection.” One of the chief characters of
Wainewright’s essays is their sentimentality. Himself, when in prison, he
described as the possessor of “a soul whose nutriment is love, and its
offspring art, music, divine song, and still holier philosophy.”

PLATE XI.

All prisoners make pets of birds, or animals, or flowers, if they get the
chance. This is simply the result of solitude, and has no connection
whatever with criminal psychology. It is found, if anything, more frequently
among non-criminal prisoners. No one has described better than
Dostoieffsky, in his Recollections of the Dead-House, the part that animals
play in the lives of prisoners. He describes at length the goat, the horse, the
dogs, the ducks, the eagle. No one who has once read it may forget the
history of the eagle. The eagle would not be tamed; solitary and
inconsolable he refused all food; at last his mournful despair aroused the
sympathy of the convicts; they resolved to liberate him, bore him to the
ramparts on the cold and grey autumn afternoon, and stood long and
wistfully watching him as he winged his way across the steppes, free.

Family affection is by no means rare among criminals. Often indeed, as is
well known, it constitutes the motive for the crime. It is very rare to find a
prisoner who is not touched by an allusion to his mother. Inspector Byrnes,
of New York, says: “Remember that nearly all the great criminals of the
country are men who lead double lives. Strange as it may appear, it is the
fact that some of the most unscrupulous rascals who ever cracked a safe, or
turned out a counterfeit, were at home model husbands and fathers. In a
great many cases wives have aided their guilty partners in their villainy, and
the children too have taken a hand in it. But in as many all suggestions of
the criminal’s calling was left outside the front door. There was George
Engles, the forger. His family lived quietly and respectably, mingled with
the best of people, and were liked by all they met. George Leonidas Leslie,
alias Howard, who was found dead near Yonkers, probably made away with
by his pals, was a fine-looking man, with cultured tastes and refined
manners. Billy Porter and Johnny Irving were not so spruce, but they would
pass for artisans; and Irving is said, in all his villainy, to have well provided
for his old mother and his sisters. Johnny the Greek paid for his little girls’
tuition at a convent in Canada, and had them brought up as ladies, without
even a suspicion of their father’s business reaching them. I know this same
thing to be done by some of the hardest cases we have to contend with.”
Inspector Byrnes also mentions a celebrated burglar and forger of America,
called by the fraternity “the Prince of Thieves,” on account of his great
liberality; “it is a well-known fact that he has always contributed to the
support of the wives and families of his associates when they were in
trouble.”
The criminal appreciates sympathy. Dostoieffsky tells how immediately the
convicts responded to a governor who was affable and good-natured, and
treated the prisoners as equals: “They did not love him, they adored him.... I
do not remember that they ever permitted themselves to be disrespectful or
familiar. On the contrary. When he met the governor the convict’s face
suddenly lighted up; he smiled largely, cap in hand, even to see him
approach.” Prince Krapotkine quotes and confirms the observations of Dr.
Campbell, an experienced prison surgeon. By mild treatment, says Dr.
Campbell, “with as much consideration as if they had been delicate ladies,
the greatest order was generally maintained in the hospital.” He was struck
with that “estimable trait in the character of prisoners—observable even

among the roughest criminals; I mean the great attention they bestow on the
sick. The most hardened criminals,” he adds, “are not exempt from this
feeling.”
Such sentiment as this—limited, imperfect, fantastic, as it may sometimes
seem—is the pleasantest spot in criminal psychology. It is also the most
hopeful. In the development of this tenderness lies a point of departure for
the moralisation of the criminal. What a ruined fund of fine feeling, for
instance, was concealed in the young thief, recorded by Lombroso, who
committed suicide by hanging, having first set his shoes on the bed between
two straw crosses, as though to say, “I am going; pray for me.” “If one
thinks of it,” adds Lombroso, “it is a pathetic poem.”

§ 6. Religion.

In all countries religion, or superstition, is closely related with crime. The
Sansya dacoits, in the Highlands of Central India, would spill a little liquor
on the ground before starting on an expedition, in order to propitiate Devi.
“If any one sneezed, or any other very bad omen was observed, the start
was postponed. If they heard a jackal, or the bray of the village donkey,
their hearts were cheered; but a funeral or a snake turned them back. They
were also very superstitious about their oil. The vessel was not allowed to
touch the ground until the oil had been poured upon the torch, and then it
was dashed on the earth; and from that moment until the job was finished
no water touched their lips.”[67]
Among 200 Italian murderers Ferri did not find one who was irreligious. “A
Russian peasant,” remarks Mr. Kennan, “may be a highway robber or a
murderer, but he continues nevertheless to cross himself and say his
prayers.” Dostoieffsky also notes the religious ardour with which the
convicts gave candles and gifts to the church. All those who live by
unlawful methods, said Casanova, confide in the help of God. Naples is the
most criminal city in Europe for crimes against the person; the number of
murderers there is about 16 in 100,000, while in Italy generally it is 8.12;
and in Ireland (the least criminal land in Europe) it is about 5. Naples is also
the most religious city in Europe. “No other city,” observes Garofalo,[68]
“can boast of such frequent processions; no other, perhaps, is so zealous an
observer of the practices of the church. But unfortunately—as an illustrious

historian [Sismondi], speaking of the Italians of his day, wrote—‘the
murderer, still stained with the blood he has just shed, devoutly fasts, even
while he is meditating a fresh assassination; the prostitute places the image
of the Virgin near her bed, and recites her rosary devoutly before it; the
priest, convicted of perjury, is never inadvertently guilty of drinking a glass
of water before mass.’ Those words of Sismondi’s,” Garofalo adds, “are as
true to-day as when they were written.” Of Marro’s 500 criminals, 46 per
cent. were regular frequenters of church, 25 per cent. went irregularly.
Among sexual offenders the proportion of frequenters rose to 61 per cent. A
man of sixty, known to Marro, imprisoned for rape on a child of eight, was
much scandalised at the irreligious talk of some of his companions. “I do
not imitate them,” he said; “morning and evening I say my prayers.”
Among women, the governor of Saint Lazare remarked to M. Joly, it is
especially the criminals by passion who are superstitious, thieves very
slightly so; they are practical women.
It must not be supposed that there is insincerity or hypocrisy in the religion
of criminals. For the man of low culture the divine powers lend themselves
easily to the succour of the individual, and it is always as well to propitiate
them. German murderers believe they can do this crudely, according to
Casper, by leaving their excrement at the spot of the crime. A rather higher
grade of intelligence will effect the same end by prayer. A wife who was
poisoning her husband wrote to her accomplice:—“He is not well ... if God
wished it. Oh, if God would have pity on us, how I would bless Him! When
he complains [of the effects of the poison] I thank God in my heart.” And he
answers, “I will pray to Heaven to aid us.” And she again, “He was ill
yesterday. I thought that God was beginning His work. I have wept so much
that it is not possible God should not have pity on my tears.” Lombroso
found 248 tattooed prisoners out of 2480 bearing religious symbols, while
the slang of criminals witnesses to a faith in God, in the immortality of the
soul, and in the church. When a woman who had strangled and
dismembered a child, in order to spite its relations, heard her sentence of
death pronounced, she turned to her advocates and said, “Death is nothing.
It is the salvation of the soul that is everything. When that is safe, the rest is
of no account.”

It is clear how easily religious beliefs and religious observances, especially
in Catholic countries, lend themselves to the practices of the ignorant
criminal, and it very rarely happens that the criminal condemned to death
fails to avail himself of the ministrations of the chaplain (only once in more
than thirty years at La Roquette), and frequently to respond to them with
gratifying eagerness. In religion his primitive emotional nature, with its
instability and love of sentiment, easily finds what it needs. A French
chaplain of experience and intelligence told M. Joly that he had “more
satisfaction” with his prisoners than with people of the world. The Rev. E.
Payson Hammond, who has conducted many missions to prisoners, finds
very great aptitude for conversion among them. Of the convicts of the State
Prison of Jefferson City, in the United States, for instance, he remarks:
—“Many hearts were melted to tears, and I believe that a very large number
were converted.” “Convicts at their last hour,” wrote Lauvergne, “nine
times out of ten die religiously. Whatever the enormity of their crimes, they
all leave durable recollections in the heart of the priest who assists them. He
sees them long afterwards in his dreams, beautiful and happy.”
When the criminal is not superstitiously devout, he is usually stupidly or
brutally indifferent. Maxime du Camp, during a visit to the prison of Mazas,
at service time on Sunday, had the curiosity to look into thirty-three
cellules, to observe the effect of the ceremony: three were reading the mass;
one stood up, with covered head, looking at the altar; one was on his knees;
one displayed a prayer-book, but was reading a pamphlet; one wept with
head buried in his arms; twenty-six sat at their tables, working or reading.
It seems extremely rare to find intelligently irreligious men in prison. The
sublime criminals whom we meet with in Elizabethan dramas, arguing
haughtily concerning Divine things and performing unheard-of atrocities,
are not found in our prisons. Free-thinkers are rarely found. A trifle will
induce the prisoner to inscribe himself as Protestant, instead of Catholic, or
vice versâ, or to change from one side to the other; but out of 28,351
admissions to three large metropolitan prisons, remarks the Rev. J. W.
Horsley, only fifty-seven described themselves as atheists, and this number,
he adds, must be further reduced as containing some Chinese and
Mahommedans. It should be noted that a profession of atheism would
deprive the prisoner of no advantage or privilege open to the others. Mr.
Horsley once resolved to keep notes of the first twelve consecutive cases of

those who on entrance described themselves either positively as atheists or
negatively as of no religion. The results were interesting: 1 was a thief, a
rather ignorant person, whose chief reason for being an infidel was that his
parents had “crammed religion down his throat.” 2 an ex-soldier, a heavy
drinker, and when asked why he had described himself as an atheist, “he
said he only called himself mad;” he was actually insane. 3 a burglar, who
said he meant that he never attended church because he had seen so much
hypocrisy among professing Christians; in a few days he gave up the
designation of atheist. 4 was a swindler, a great liar, and probably insane. 5
was a lad of nineteen, of very little intellect, who had deserted from the
army; his father had been “a follower of Bradlaugh.” 6 a German Jew, who
frequented Christian churches, but not having been baptised, simply did not
know how to describe himself. 7 an intemperate schoolmaster, charged with
deserting his family; he meant that he had ceased to attend religious
worship because he was conscious that his religion was merely formal; his
“atheism” was simply a form of penitent self-abnegation. 8 a conceited lad
of seventeen who had assaulted his guardian, and had adopted atheism to
justify his spirit of revenge. 9 a young man who had robbed his employer;
he was brought up under religious influences, but having attracted attention
by objecting to revealed religions, became a Secularist lecturer. 10 a
prostitute and dipsomaniac with 150 convictions; always called herself an
atheist when she was in a bad temper or drunk. 11 a young baker who had
taken poison; called himself an atheist under influence of laudanum; goes
regularly to a Congregational Chapel. 12 a girl of fifteen; she meant that she
rarely, if ever, attended any place of worship. So that only in two or three,
or at most four cases out of the twelve, was there profession of atheism in
any legitimate sense of the word.

PLATE XII.

§ 7. Thieves’ Slang.

Every profession, every isolated group of persons, almost every family
possesses a more or less extended set of words and phrases which are
unintelligible to strangers. This dialect is termed in English slang, in French
argot, in Italian gergo. The most highly developed and the most widely
extended slang of this kind is that used by habitual criminals. Every country
has its own thieves’ slang, but within the bounds of that country the slang is
generally intelligible; the Lombard thief, Lombroso remarks, can
understand the Calabrian; Parisian argot is intelligible at Marseilles. The
use of criminals’ slang marks the recidivist. “When a man talks argot,” said
the Abbé Crozes, “he is registered in the army of evil-doers.”

“I was jogging down a blooming slum in the Chapel, when I butted a reeler,
who was sporting a red slang. I broke off his jerry, and boned the clock,
which was a red one, but I was spotted by a copper, who claimed me. I was
lugged before the beak, who gave me six doss in the Steel. The week after I
was chucked up I did a snatch near St. Paul’s, was collared, lagged, and got
this bit of seven stretch.” That is a pickpocket’s history of his arrest as
narrated to Mr. Davitt. Here is the translation:—“As I was walking down a
narrow alley in Whitechapel, I ran up against a drunken man, who had a
gold watch-guard. I stole his watch, which was gold, but was seen by a
policeman, who caught me and took me before the magistrate, who gave me
six months in the Bastille [the old House of Correction, Coldbath Fields].
When I was released I attempted to steal a watch near St. Paul’s, but was
taken again, convicted, and sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude.”
Mr. Horsley has an interesting passage on English thieves’ slang, which I
will transcribe at length:—“Of multifold origin, it is yet mainly derived
from Romany or gipsy talk, and thereby contains a large Eastern element, in
which old Sanskrit roots may readily be traced. Many of these words would
be unintelligible to ordinary folk, but some have passed into common
speech. For instance, the words bamboozle, pal (companion, a friend), mull
(to make a mull or mess of a thing), bosh (from the Persian), are pure gipsy
words, but have found some lodging, if not a home, in our vernacular. Then
there are survivals (not always of the fittest) from the tongue of our
Teutonic ancestors, so that Dr. Latham, the philologist, says—‘The thieves
of London’ (and he might still more have said the professional tramps) ‘are
the conservators of Anglo-Saxonisms. Next there are the cosmopolitan
absorptions from many a tongue. From the French bouilli we probably get
the prison slang term ‘bull’ for a ration of meat. ‘Chat,’ thieves’ term for
house, is obviously château. ‘Steel,’ the familiar name for Coldbath Fields
Prison, is an appropriation and abbreviation of Bastille; and he who ‘does a
tray’ (serves three months’ imprisonment) therein, borrows his word from
our Gallican neighbours. So from the Italian we get casa for house, filly
(figlia) for daughter, donny (donna) for woman, and omee (uomo) for man.
The Spanish gives us don, which the universities have not despised as a
useful term. From the German we get durrynacker, for a female hawker,
from dorf, a village, and nachgehen, to run after. From Scotland we borrow
duds for clothes, and from the Hebrew shoful for base coin. Purely of native

manufacture, however, and entirely artificial, are the two classes of rhyming
and back-slang which mingle with cant to make a whole. By the former, any
word that rhymes with the one you mean to use is put in its place, and
gradually becomes accepted. This has the merit of unintelligibility when it
is desired not to let chance passers-by know of what we are speaking, which
naturally occurs not seldom in the days of detectives and plain-clothes
constables. Suppose I have ‘touched’ (i.e., been successful in some
robbery), and feel inclined for some relaxation in company with my
sweetheart (or one of them), I might address her thus—‘Come, cows and
kisses, put the battle of the Nile on your Barnet Fair, and a rogue and villain
in your sky-rocket; call a flounder and dab with a tidy Charing Cross, and
we’ll go for a Bushey Park along the frog and toad into the live eels.’ This
would apparently be but a pendant to the celebrated bit of nonsense
extemporised by Foote, but, as a matter of fact, to a master or mistress of
rhyming slang it would at once be understood as—‘Come, missus, put a tile
(hat) on your hair, and a shilling in your pocket; call a cab with a tidy horse,
and we’ll go for a lark along the road into the fields.’ And the second class
of manufactured slang is that largely patronised by costermongers. It is
called back-slang, and simply consists of spelling (more or less accurately)
words backwards. Thus—‘Hi, yob! kool that enif elrig with the nael ekom.
Sap her a top o’ reeb and a tib of occabot,’ is only, ‘Hi, boy! look at that fine
girl with the lean moke (donkey). Pass her a pot of beer and a bit of
tobacco.’ The art or merit of this form of slang consists in the rapidity, often
remarkable, with which such words can be reversed. Thus a gentleman,
wishing to test the skill of a professor of the art with a word not in common
use in the market, asked his coster friend what was the back slang for
hippopotamus. At once he answered, ‘Summatopoppy,’ the y being
euphoniously put for ih.”[69] Mr. Davitt thus describes a form of slang
(“thieves’ Latin”) commonly used by professional burglars and the superior
order of thieves:—“Its chief peculiarity consists in reversing the position of
the syllables of a word containing more than one syllable, and making two
syllables of all words having only one in ordinary pronunciation, by adding
a vowel or liquid consonant to the first or second part of such word. By the
application of this simple rule to slang words, the ‘lingo’ becomes too
complicated for any but the initiated to understand. For instance, if two
thieves were hunting for game, and one were to see a policeman, he would
shout to his comrade—‘Islema! Ogda the opperca!’ which in slang is

—‘Misle! Dog the copper!’ Otherwise—‘Vanish! See the policeman!’”[70]
Very similar practices prevail in the thieves’ slang of France, Italy, Spain,
and India. It is doubtless, indeed, universal. Closely allied is the kind of
slang called largongi, by which, for example, macaroni becomes
lacaronimique, and vache, lachevane.
The chief interest of the slang of habitual criminals is psychological. It
furnishes us with a curious insight into the mental processes of those who
invent and use it; it is itself an embodiment of criminal tendencies; in Victor
Hugo’s vigorous phrase, “C’est le verbe devenu forçat.” It is full of
metaphorical expressions, of objects named after their attributes. Nearly
everything is degraded, sometimes with coarse and fantastic wit. “While the
imagination of the poet gives a soul to animate objects,” remarks M. Joly,
“the imagination of the criminal transforms living forms into things,
assimilates man to animals.” Thus the skin for them is leather, the face un
mufle, the mouth un bec, the arm un aileron. The body is called the corpse,
and to eat is to put something in one’s corpse. The woman who supports a
bully is called his saucepan (marmite), a friend un poteau; ne pas être
méchant means to be a fool. Everything is thus vulgarised. The criminal
instinctively depreciates the precious coinage of language, just as to his
imagination money is at Paris “zinc,” and in the Argentine Republic “iron.”
The soul in French argot is significantly called la fausse, and the
conscience la muette; shame is simply la rouge. In English slang, as Mr.
Horsley remarks, “the delicate expression ‘fingersmith’ is descriptive of a
trade which a blunt world might call that of a pickpocket. Or, again, to get
three months’ hard labour is more pleasantly described as getting thirteen
clean shirts, one being served out in prison each week. The tread-wheel
again is more politely called the everlasting staircase, or the wheel of life,
or the vertical care-grinder. Penal servitude is dignified with the appellation
of serving her Majesty for nothing, and an attempt is even made to lighten
the horror of the climax of a criminal career by speaking of dying in a
horse’s night-cap—i.e., a halter.” So that while the better things of life are
degraded, there is a tendency to elevate those that truly indicate
degradation.
The criminal slang of France and Italy has been studied in its psychological
bearings much more thoroughly than the English, by Mayor, Lombroso, and

others. Lombroso considers that the most marked and most curious
characteristic of criminal slang is that already noted by which a thing is
designated by its most salient qualities from the criminal point of view.
Thus the advocate becomes the blanchisseur or imbiancatore (washerman);
the juge d’instruction, the curicux or the père sondeur; the sermon,
l’ennuyeuse or tediosa; the purse is la santa; the court, la juste. “The
guillotine,” remarks M. Joly, “is designated without imprecation, without
contempt, without hatred, but with a wealth of expressions and with a
resignation, one might almost say a fatalistic humour, which is not
reassuring for them—or for others. The executioner himself is called the
juge de la paix.”
Etrangler un perroquet is to drink a glass of absinth, the allusion being to
the colour (green), and also, it is said, to the sensation in swallowing the
absinth, and to other minute points. A prostitute is the hôtel du besoin, a
Louis-quinze, and also the bourre-de-soie, in allusion, it is said, to
murmured offers and a silk dress; the brothel is le cloaque. In Venetian
slang a promise is called a shadow. In Bavarian cant a playing card is
karzerweg—the road to prison.
Very strange, remote, and bizarre are some of these slang synonyms, full of
coarse ironies and jests. Paradouze = paradis (douze instead of dise);
saucisse = moi (by way of moi-s-aussi); crottard = trottoir; blanchir du foie
= to intend betrayal (play on foi); perdreau = pederaste (pedro-pédero);
herbe sainte = absinthe; être dans l’infanterie = to be pregnant (enfanter);
moulin à vent = derrière; pape = verre de rhum (Rome); veronique =
lanterne (verre); vert-de-gris = absinthe (play on vert and verre, with
allusion to its deleterious properties); demoiselle du Pont-neuf (that all may
go over) = prostitute; apaier = to assassinate; boire dans la grande tasse =
to drown oneself; a knife is a lingre (from Langres, the French Sheffield);
the souteneur (a prostitute’s bully) is called by the English word fish, or
some similar name (poisson, goujon, baraillon, maquereau); the prostitute
is called morue, and Banc de Terre-Neuve is applied to that portion of the
Parisian boulevards lying between the Madeleine and the Porte Saint-Denis.
Sometimes the slang of criminals, like that of the rest of the world,
commemorates an historical fact. To dethrone in France is juilletiser. The
sun is le grand Jablo, Jablochoff’s electric lamps having been the first used

to illuminate Paris. A coup de Raguse is a defection, in allusion to the Duke
of Ragusa. In Italy a drunkard is called a Frenchman, a beggar a Spaniard, a
card-sharper a Greek. In Spain a thief is called a Murcio, from the province
of Murcia.
Words are frequently abbreviated. As examples, Lombroso mentions tra =
travail; ces mess = ces Messieurs = the police; chand = marchand; lubre =
lugubre; abs = absinthe; avoir ses aff = avoir ses affaires (menstrues); mac
= maquereau = souteneur, of a prostitute.
Very curious are the large number of foreign words, in more or less
corrupted form generally, which are to be found in criminal slang. In the
German cant Hebrew words are numerous; German and French in Italian;
German and English in French; Italian and Romany in English. “Hebrew, or
rather Yiddish,” Lombroso observes, “supplies the half of Dutch slang, and
nearly a fourth of German, in which I counted 156 out of 700, and in which
all the terms for various crimes (except band-spicler for a cheater at dice)
are Jewish.” The presence of archaisms, classical and mediæval, is also
curious.
It is more interesting to find a revelation of the things in which the criminal
is most intimately interested by noting the wealth and variety of synonyms
for certain words. Thus Cougnet and Righini found 17 words for warders or
police; 9 for the act of sodomy; 7 for plunder. French cant has 44 synonyms
for drunkenness, besides 20 for drinking, and 8 for wine, in all 72; while
there are only 19 for water and 36 for money.
This slang is largely of ephemeral life, but a considerable proportion is
permanent. Its tendency is, however, to die out. The modern professional
criminal avoids slang as he avoids tattooing.

PLATE XIII.

§ 8. Prison Inscriptions.

Whenever the average human being is secluded for any considerable length
of time from his fellows, he experiences the need of embodying some
literary or artistic expression of himself. This instinct seems to be deeper
and more wide-spread than that which induces some people to leave their
names or other sign manual—the frothiest efflorescence of vain moments—
on the places they visit. There is no vanity here, and it is an instinct from
which no individual, whatever his degree of culture, is exempt; it is indeed
scarcely distinguishable from the instinct which leads to the production of
heroic works of art. The expression must vary with the individual. I knew a
room, the residence of a long succession of medical students during certain

weeks of seclusion involved by hospital duty, of which the walls were
covered by inscriptions, humorous or broadly witty, cleverly artistic
sketches, happy lines from the classics. Each person’s inscription is after his
kind: Mgr. Darboy, the Archbishop of Paris, writes in the form of a cross,
“O crux, mentis robur, ave;” Bill Sykes at Clerkenwell writes, “Lads, your
only friend here is your brown lofe and pint of thick.”
In general, it seems, the lower the order of culture the more complete and
trustworthy is the inscription as an expression of individual peculiarities.
“The child loves to speak to himself,” as Dr. Corre remarks; “the negro, and
especially the negress, think aloud; and if from restraint or distrust the
criminal keeps silent his most intimate thoughts, he feels himself compelled
to fix them wherever he may find himself, on the walls of his prison, or on
the books that are lent to him. It is for himself, for himself alone, that he
writes what he cannot or dare not say, and these revelations are very curious
for the psychologist.” His desires and lusts, his aspirations, his coarse
satires and imprecations, his bitter reflections, his judgments of life, are all
recorded in these prison inscriptions on whitewashed walls, cell doors,
margins of books, tin knives, and the bottoms of skilly cans and dinner tins.
In Italy they have been studied in reference to their psychological
significance with characteristic thoroughness by Lombroso; and in England
Mr. Horsley and Mr. Davitt have recorded a considerable number.[71] The
Italian inscriptions, on the whole, are marked by a greater preponderance of
the sentimental, reflective, and imprecatory elements; the English are
generally very practical and material, dealing with food questions, or giving
a concise statement of the event which led to the individual’s incarceration,
with occasional tendency to moral aspiration and didactic exhortation. Mr.
Horsley notes that comparatively few inscriptions are found on the
women’s side, but that these are obscene much more frequently than on the
men’s side. I conclude from Lombroso’s very comprehensive collection that
this remark also holds good of the Italian inscriptions. It should be added
that every inscription is an infringement of prison regulations; it is “a vulgar
question of bread and water to the hungry author,” and the impulse which
produces it must therefore be of considerable strength.
Here are a few terse English examples of exploits, probably the work of old
hands, and recorded by Mr. Davitt and Mr. Horsley:—

“A burst in the City. Copped while boning the swag. 7 stretch, 1869. Roll
on 1876. Cheer up, pals.”
“Little Dicky from the New Cut. 10 and a ticket. Put away by a Moll” (i.e.,
sold by a prostitute).
“Fullied for a clock and slang” (i.e., committed for trial for stealing watch
and chain).
“Poor old Jim, the lob crawler, fell from Racker, and got pinched” (i.e.,
James and Racker having gone out to commit till robberies, the former was
apprehended, and the latter escaped).

“For seven long years have I served them,
And seven long years I have to stay,
For meeting a bloke in our Alley,
And taking his ticker away.”

“The judge he seven years gave me,
Transported to Van Diemen’s Land,
Far away from my friends and relations,
And the girl with the dark velvet band.”

The last writer was at Dartmoor, and introduced Van Diemen’s Land
because of the exigencies of rhyme.
The delights of food inspire much verse, and dissatisfaction with its quality
or quantity a large number of remarks:—

“I had for my dinner, ochone! ochone!
One ounce of mutton and three ounce of bone!”

“Here’s luck to the pint of skilly!”
“Lord save me from starvashun!”

“One more month then out we go,
Then for feed of hot Coco;
Fried Bread and steak, Plenty of Beer,
Better luck than we get here.”

“Cheer up, boys, down with sorrow,
Beef to-day, Soup to-morrow.”

“O for a pot of beer!”
“Love is a great thing,” writes an Italian philosopher, “but hunger surpasses
everything.”

“O who can tell the panes I feel,
A poor and harmless sailor,
I miss my grog and every meal;
Here comes the blooming jailer.”

A poet, Crutchy Quinn by name, known to Mr. Davitt, and who was himself
acquainted with seven of the prisons he characterises, wrote as follows with
a nail on the bottom of a dinner can:—

“Millbank for thick shins and graft at the pump;
Broadmoor for all laggs as go off their chump;
Brixton for good toke and cocoa with fat;
Dartmoor for bad grub but plenty of chat;
Portsmouth, a blooming bad place for hard work;
Chatham on Sunday gives four ounce of pork;
Portland is worst of the lot for to joke in—
For fetching a lagging there’s no place like Woking.”

Quinn, in spite of his name, was not an Irishman, but two-thirds of the
prison-poets, Mr. Davitt found, are Irish.
From the more miscellaneous group of sentimental, religious, moral,
didactic, and reflective sayings may be quoted the following:—

“The heart may breake, yet may brokenly live on.”

Mr. Davitt found a book at Newgate with “Good-bye, Lucy dear,” written
throughout it, and at the end—

“Good-bye, Lucy dear,
I’m parted from you for seven long year.
Alf. Jones.”

A poet of a more caustic school had added beneath this—

“If Lucy dear is like most gals,
She’ll give few sighs or moans,
But soon will find among your pals
Another Alfred Jones.”

Remarks against women are by no means rare, as the following given by
Lombroso—
“La donna è un essere inutile; io la stima soltanto quando la ch...
Napoleone I. empereur.”
And another Italian writes—
“He is a poor deluded fool who believes in the love and honour of women.”
But the women reciprocate this sentiment, and in an Italian illustrated
magazine a woman writes—
“In this stormy sea which is called the world I have only found fleeting
pleasures and cruel disillusions. And if I felt any happiness I had to pay for
it with bitter tears. Never believe in the love of men: for them love is a
pastime. When you have sacrificed for them honour, family, religion,
interest, youth, they will turn their shoulders to you with contempt, in
search of other loves. That is the kind of thing that man is.”

But the same woman writes passionately to her accomplice in murder,
robbery, and adultery—

“Questo foglio dal cuor ti mando,
L’ho scritto ieri sera lacrimando,
L’ho scritto avante cena,
Senza inchiostro e senza penna.
La punta del mio cuore era la penna,
Il sangue delle mia vene era l’ inchiostro,
Se penna e calamaio poco ti costa,
Se merito pietà ti prego d’ una riposta.
Addio, Addio,
Addio, mio bene,
Addio, mio amore,
Tu sei il mio cuore,
Per ti morirò.
1886.”

Another woman’s inscription is a pathetic recollection of an old ballad—

“I wish to God my baby was born,
And smiling on its father’s knee,
And I, poor girl, lay in my grave,
The green grass growing over me.”

Beneath a design of a funeral monument a thief wrote this inscription
(translated from Lombroso)—
“Here lies the body of poor Tulac Who, tired of stealing in this world, Goes
to steal in another. His happy relatives have erected this memorial.”
Very significant of mental vacuity in solitude are some inscriptions given by
Mr. Horsley:—
“21,000 times have I walked round this cell in a week.”
“3330 bricks in this cell.”

“131 black tiles, 150 red tiles in this cell.”
Good resolutions and moral exhortations are not uncommon:—
“It’s no good crying, you have got to do it, then after you have done it don’t
do it any more; I wont.”
“Cheer up, girls; it’s no use to fret.”
“Brethren in adversity, turn your heart to God and be happy.”
“Good-bye all. Give up drink.”
“½ pint whisky brought me here—took the pledge for 2 years—renewable
for ever.”
“The Lord saith, It is good to be here.”
“The Almighty for master, the devil for servant. Amen.”
“Fear God and scorn the Devil, then you will not be here again.”
The Italian inscriptions supply a more dubious exhortation:—
“O thieves! our profession is ruined by those rascally judges. But courage!
Forward!”
This brief account would not be complete if I neglected to give some
specimens of the imprecations, crude erotic aspirations, and perverse
instincts which occupy some considerable space in Lombroso’s collection. I
will leave them untranslated:—
“Abbasso il direttore delle carcere e il capo-guardia, che sono due avanzi di
galera. A morte le gafe [warders] e tutti le spie, a morte il capo-guardiano
delle carcere, a morte l’Arca che sono la rovina di tanti giovani.”
“Mia adorata stella, quando potrô ch...?”
“Pensare che in questo stesso luogo vi sono tante bighe [women] che hanno
volontà di farsi infilzare e non possono e tanti p... che infilzerebbero un
cane altro che una f... e non possono farlo.”

“Pare impossible. Che si possa stare tanto tempo senza piantare il membro
in una f... od in un culo. Eppure sono già 22 mesi che me lo meno due volte
ogni quattro giorno e non sono ancora tisico.”
The last I will give was written by a woman in a religious book, and is
translated by Lombroso from the Piedmontese dialect—
“La Marietta del taglio salute le sue amiche che fanno la porca come lei, e
saluta tutti i giovanotti che l’hanno ch... Menatevi una volta l’uccello al mio
gusto, che io me la meno al vostro, e quando sarô libera venite a trovarmi
che ce l’ho sempra calda e stretta tanto che volete. Allegri!”

§ 9. Criminal Literature and Art.

M. Joly has made some interesting investigations (which he has recorded
recently in the Archives de l’Anthropologie Criminelle) concerning the
favourite reading of French prisoners. He found that such criminals do not
read either Molière or Voltaire. Nor do they care for the psychological novel
of character and analysis; they have no taste and no capacity for
introspection; they prefer the rococo style, and an old romance in five or six
volumes called Épreuves du Sentiment is a great favourite at La Grande
Roquette. This is what we should expect from that sentimentalism which
has already been noted. But among the favourite prison novelists Alexandre
Dumas is facile princeps. We must not seek to explain this by finding in
Dumas a response to specific criminal instincts. In this matter prisoners are
at one with a very large body of non-prisoners, with George Sand, Tolstoï,
and Rossetti at their head. It is the universally human quality in the prolific
novelist, the anodyne of his entrancing and unflagging interest, the
satisfaction which he offers to the love of adventure, by which Dumas
fetters the criminal as well as the man of genius. The female prisoners at
Saint Lazare, unlike the male prisoners, are constantly asking for Voltaire’s
books, which, however, the sisters are not able to supply. They are very
fond of Henri Conscience, the Flemish Walter Scott, a preference which is
also by no means shared by the men, and they delight in all sorts of
innocent and sentimental love-stories, although their marginal annotations
to these do not always admit of reproduction.

If the favourite reading of those whose criminal career is decided is of so
innocent a character, the same cannot always be said of the literature read
by the immature. There is ample and unquestionable evidence to show that
a low-class literature in which the criminal is glorified, as well as the
minute knowledge of criminal arts disseminated by newspapers, have a very
distinct influence in the production of young criminals.[72] Tropmann, a
notorious French murderer, was influenced by novels. The famous criminal
Lacenaire, who glorified himself and was glorified by others, has had an
influence in the production of crime down to our own day. After every
celebrated or startling crime, some weak-minded and impressionable
persons go and commit the like, or give themselves up to the police under
the impression that they have been guilty of the crime. It is youths and
children who are especially prone to the imitation of criminal events from
books or from real life. After the murders associated with the name of Jack
the Ripper several murders by young children took place throughout the
country.
It is not, usually, until he is in prison that the criminal tries to find literary
expression for himself. This expression takes chiefly the form of verse,
nearly always of a rude character, often affected or boastful, but not seldom
vigorous or pathetic. A criminal has been known to declaim from the
scaffold a poem on his own death; another asked and obtained permission to
present his defence in verse. It would be difficult to give stronger proof of a
predilection for verse forms.
A song, of which this is a translation, was heard in a Russian prison:—
“In this spot where infamy has placed for ever her dwelling, two angels
pant, having in their hands a cross.... But at night, with measured steps,
slowly, slowly, watching the prison, the sentinels turn. Within these walls
are sadness and terror. Without are life, gold, and liberty.... But the black
echo of that slow, slow step warns me: Thou shalt stay, stay.” This was
written and most sweetly sung by a man who had cruelly murdered his
wife.
The poetic productions of English criminals, however numerous, are of no
great interest; they seem to appear at their best in the inscriptions already
given. Mr. Davitt has a chapter on “Prison ‘Poets,’” but what he has to say

of them is not encouraging, although he tells us that Portsmouth has the
reputation of being “a community of imprisoned songsters,” and such a
specimen as the following does not produce much desire for more—

“’Twas one fine morning I left Wakefield Jail,
Myself and comrades we did cry our fill,” etc.

One could write as well as that without being a convict.
Lamb and other good judges thought well of Thomas Wainewright, the
forger and poisoner. As a man of letters he enjoyed considerable reputation
as a critic, and was certainly a man of refined artistic tastes.[73] It is to-day
not easy to detect in him many signs of critical insight or fine literary
ability. He was one of the writers of that “Dandy and Silver Fork School” of
whom Hazlitt says:—“Macassar Oil, Eau de Cologne, Hock and Seltzer
Water, Atta of Roses, Pomade Divine, glance through the page in
inexhaustible confusion, and make your head giddy.” His writing is but the
vain froth of a nauseous life. The following extract is fairly characteristic:
—“It appears to us that the time requireth not the hand of genius to give it a
gusto for the tastes and feelings of what are called the lower orders,—rather
the reverse! We want more macaroni and champagne, less boxing and bull
beef. Now, Mr. Drama [Hazlitt] of the London seems determined to show
his readers that his stomach is hearty—that he can relish bread and cheese
and porter, which certainly are very fine things in the country, and—when
we can get nothing else—and so far, all this is very well. But surely, in the
centre of fashion, we might be now and then indulged with more elegant
fare,—something that would suit better with the diamond rings on our
fingers, the antique cameos in our breast-pins, our cambric pocket-
handkerchief breathing forth Attargul, our pale lemon-coloured kid gloves!
some chicken fricaseed white, for instance; a bottle of Hock or Moselle, and
a glass of Maraschino.” These things and the like of these were for
Wainewright the only things in the world that seemed desirable, and his
passion for them lay at the root of his crimes.
In Italy we meet with a genuine, and often traditional body of criminal
songs which is of great interest. It is found in chief perfection in Italy and
the large neighbouring islands, Sardinia, Corsica, and especially Sicily,

where the civilisation is more primitive, and the level of criminality much
higher. In the Canti Siculi of the able and enthusiastic folklorist, Pitré, there
are twenty-seven which he describes as Prison Songs; with others rather
similar in the same collection, the total amounts to forty-one (4 per cent. of
the whole), mostly declarations of vengeance, laments for lost liberty,
imprecations against judges and police. Some are in praise of prison, as the
following:—

“Carcere, vita mia, cara, felice!
Lo starmi entro di te come mi piace!
Se spiechi il capo a quel che mal ne dice,
O pensa che far perdere la pace.
Qua sol travi i fratelli e qua gli amici,” etc.

There are also fine notes of despair, and sweet recollections of the absent
mother or sweetheart. Sardinia, a land of brigandism and assassination, has
produced numerous criminal songs of interest. “The Corsican songs
collected by Tommaseo,” remarks Lombroso, “might be said to be almost
all the creation of brigands. Nearly all breathe vengeance for a slain friend,
or hatred against an enemy, and admiration for murder.” A ferocious
Corsican brigand, named Peverone, who used to leave his mark behind by
covering his victim with capsicums (peperoni), wrote verses which, says
Lombroso, “would not be unworthy of Laura’s sweet singer.” In such a case
as that of Corsica, we must, however, be very cautious how we use the word
“criminal.” In that land barbarous conceptions still rule; a child is brought
up from its earliest days in an atmosphere of robbery and bloodshed; what
in a more civilised country we call “crime” is there to a large extent the
normal social state. It is in Corsica that a parish may vote a pension to a
brigand (the commune of Ciammance, for example, in 1886); that more than
half the persons liable to serve as jurymen in an arrondissement (4400 out
of 8000 in one instance) may themselves have appeared behind the bar; and
where a mayor (arrondissement of Sartène) may issue a proclamation in the
following terms:—“Art. I. The carrying of arms is formally forbidden on
the territory of the commune of Levie. Art. II. Exception is made in the case
of persons notoriously in a state of enmity.”

As a specimen of French criminal literature I will give a poem by Lebiez,
the young murderer spoken of in Chapter I.; it is addressed to a young girl’s
skull:—

“De quelque belle enfant restes froids et sans vie,
Beau crâne apprêté par mes mains,
Dont j’ai sali les os et la surface blanchie
D’un tas de noms grecs et latins,
Compagnon triste et froid de mes heures d’étude,
Toi que je viens de rejeter
Dans un coin, ah! reviens tromper ma solitude,
Réponds à ma curiosité.
Dis-moi combien de fois ta bouche s’est offerte
Aux doux baisers de ton amant;
Dis-moi quels jolis mots de ta bouche entr’ ouverte
Dans des heurs d’égarement ...
Insensé!... Tu ne peux répondre, pauvre fille;
Ta bouche est close maintenant,
Et la mort, en passant, de sa triste faucille
A brisé tes charmes naissants.
Triste leçon pour nons, qui croyons que la vie
Peut durer pendant de longs jours!
Et jeunesse, et bonheur, et beauté qu’on envie,
Tout passe ainsi que les amours!
Aussi, quand, vers le soir, âpre et dur à la tache,
Je travaille silencieux,
Mon esprit suit le monde et, tout inquiet, s’attache
A des pensers plus sérieux,
Je rêve au temps qui passe ... alors je te regarde,
Et, songeant aux coups de destin,
Sur ton front nu je crois lire en tremblant: ‘Prends garde,
Mortel, ton tour viendra demain.’”

When his papers were returned to him by the police, Lebiez wrote on the
margin of this: “Poor verses! but, bad as they are, they are a faithful picture
of the state of my mind in moments of solitude. In the world I am amiable

and gay. I am taken for a wild fellow, who mocks at everything; but if they
knew my character thoroughly, if they were aware that when I laugh and
joke I have just come out of a solitude of despair and tears! If they knew
that there are sobs at the bottom of my heart when smiles cover my lips,
they would not say that I mock at everything. My gaiety is only a mask
which hides the anguish which has for so long torn my heart.”
There are one or two examples of newspapers written and conducted by
prisoners. The Abbé Crozes, in his Souvenirs de la Petite et de la Grande
Roquette, gives us specimens and a facsimile page of one of these, the Tam-
Tam, which, however, only lasted a very short time. Here are a couple of
fragments from this remarkable journal:—
Fable Express.

“Un grand tambour-major, pressé par la famine,
Dinait d’une maigre sardine
Et s’en régalait sur ma foi!
Morale.—On a souvent besoin d’un plus petit que soi.”

Echos et Bruits.
“Nons apprenons avec plaisir à nos lecteurs le projet formé par la Société
Agricole de France, de se servir des oreilles de Transparent, pour se livrer à
des essais sur la culture des champignons.
L’abondance et la qualité du fumier que contiennent ces vastes esgourdes,
leur grandeur, leur système d’aération promettent aux amateurs de cèpes les
résultats les plus satisfaisants.”
Very different from the Tam-Tam is the Summary, a newspaper published at
the Elmira Reformatory, New York. This newspaper, largely written by
prisoners and, at one time at all events, edited by a prisoner, contains,
besides original contributions and the news of the Reformatory, a summary
of general news; and by its tone and its method of selection, it compares
favourably, as it has been said, with many newspapers published outside
prison-walls. The following contribution to the Summary is from “a bright

young burglar,” about eighteen years old, and is entitled “God and the
Robin”; it has an allegorical and personal significance:—
“Early in the morning, long before the lazy cock crows, you may hear the
robin singing his welcome to the sun. He has been watching through the
darkness for the first rays of coming day, and as they appear he pours forth
the melody as an expression of his joy. All is quiet till his music rends the
air, and as you listen you are inspired with thoughts of Him who made the
robin and you. Perhaps the sweet song is a prayer of thanks to God for
sheltering him from the dangers of the night. Do they know of God? Who
can tell? Perhaps He is the cause of what we in our ignorance call instinct.
Once as I listened to their music I fell asleep, and dreamt of a house near
the sea. It had a lawn in front, on which was a robin hopping in search of
food for her young. But as she hopped about the sky seemed to grow darker.
I knew that a storm was approaching, and when it came I saw the robin
cling to the tree for shelter. But the wind was fierce, and it tore her from the
branch, and in spite of all her efforts it bore her away out over the ocean,
farther and farther from the land, till at last, when its energy was spent, its
fury gone, it left her on the ocean with no land in sight to guide her to her
home; and as she flew she thought of her little ones at home, and of her
mate. She thought she was flying to them, but every little effort was taking
her farther away, though she knew it not. When at last she began to tire, she
looked at the restless waters, but they offered her no relief; and in her
frightened cry I seemed to hear her say, ‘O where shall I rest my weary
wing?’ But in the murmuring of the ocean she heard no reply, so she could
but fly on till darkness came, when, utterly exhausted, she fell upon the
cruel waves and died. And He who made her will receive her when the
course of life is past. Cannot the little robin find in that house of many
mansions a place to rest her weary wing? Is heaven made for man alone?
Are not these little creatures who never offend God, but worship Him with
the purity and happiness of their little hearts, entitled to the joys of
hereafter? Who can doubt it?”
The following interesting dialogue in the Socratic manner—“An Imaginary
Conversation between two Members of the Casuistry Class”—is also by a
very young criminal, who was also something of a poet:—

“Did you not agree last Sunday with the member of our class who said that
life in prison is a state of slavery?
No, I did not. In fact, I am astonished at your question. I rather think it is
not a state of slavery.
That is a very curious belief.
It may appear to be; but I think it can be proved to be logical. You say that
imprisonment for wrong-doing is slavery; but what is slavery?
I should define it to be the involuntary subjection of one person to the will
of another.
But cannot a person be a slave to passion and to other qualities of mind as
well as to persons?
Yes.
Then your definition is obviously incorrect. I would define slavery as a state
in which one’s actions are regulated by some power over which he has no
control. Would you agree with me?
Well, I think I would.
Very well. Having agreed upon a definition of slavery, we will discuss
whether life in prison is slavery. Now, let me ask, why are men sent to
prison?
Usually for violating the law.
Well, do you believe that men steal, for instance, voluntarily?
Undoubtedly.
Your tone is rather confident, so I daresay you can tell me why men steal?
In order to get certain articles that will enable them to live more
comfortably, or which they desire to have.
That is, you mean that they have certain feelings—such as laziness, love of
gain, etc.—which they wish to gratify?

Well, yes.
But if a man had not these feelings he would not steal?
I think not.
Then these feelings regulate his conduct in stealing?
It seems so.
But you agreed that he whose conduct is regulated by some power other
than his own free will is a slave.
Well, I am afraid you have caught me again.
But do you admit it?
I do.
Then he who prevents this man from stealing is emancipating him, not
enslaving him?
I see you are right.
Then one who is in prison for wrong-doing is a free man, not a slave?
Yes. But suppose that the man has been sent to prison unjustly; what then?
To answer your question, I should have to know what your conception of
true freedom is. True freedom is, as it appears to me, the triumphing of the
spirit or better part of man over the flesh or weaker part; that is, acting
according to one’s highest conception of what is right. Do you agree with
me?
I do.
Then do you not think that the truly righteous man, be he in prison or out, is
free? Do you not see that a man who does right, even though he lose fortune
or life by doing so, is freer than the one who allows his conduct to be
regulated by fear, malice, or other passions? Remember that a man may be
free in a dungeon and bound down with chains, and that he may be an
abject slave and be clothed in purple.”

The Summary perhaps does something to encourage priggishness, but
priggishness, it need scarcely be said, indicates a far higher moral level than
the vacuous brutality which lies behind so large a proportion of prison
inscriptions.
So far we have been dealing with writers who are first and above all
criminals. It is necessary to mention a few artists and men of letters who,
while distinctly criminals, are not primarily criminals. Villon is generally
named at the head of these, and with good reason, as he has himself
supplied the evidence by which he must be counted a criminal. But Villon
was a poet, and a great poet; his crimes never degraded his art. It is worth
noting that almost the only passage[74] which Lombroso quotes to prove
such degradation is, on independent grounds and apparently with good
reason, regarded by Jannet, Villon’s editor, as spurious.
Cellini, as self-revealed in his wonderful autobiography, bears more distinct
marks than Villon of instinctive criminality. Crime is, however, rare among
great sculptors; on the other hand it has been, as Lombroso points out, very
common among painters; numerous are the examples of murder, cruelty,
theft, sexual offences, among distinguished painters; alcoholism is also very
common.
Casanova, a man of various and extraordinary abilities, has in his Memoirs,
of which the strict historical accuracy is now generally accepted, produced
one of the most valuable and interesting records of the eighteenth century,
and at the same time a most complete and complaisant history of his own
criminal offences. It is difficult to say whether in him the criminal or the
man of genius is most prominent.
A living poet of some eminence, M. Paul Verlaine, furnishes an interesting
example of the man of genius who is also distinctly a criminal. M. Verlaine
is the chief of the so-called “Decadant” school. The precise rank that he will
ultimately take as a poet is not yet clear; while on the one hand he has been
unduly neglected, on the other he has been unduly extolled. At his best he
excels in delicate passages of vague and mystic reverie, in sudden lines of
poignant emotion. His style, a curious mixture of simplicity and obscurity,
is studded with words borrowed from the criminal’s argot. His latest
volume[75] contains poems which well show his curious power of

expressing the most delicate nuances of sentiment side by side with the
crudest, most unabashed impulses of cynical depravity, self-revelations of
sexual perversity, which might have earned for the book a title in a line of
its own, “L’embarquement pour Sodome et Gomorrhe.” I do not propose to
quote any of these but from a short but interesting series written during an
imprisonment of several years at Brussels. Here is a poem describing the
life of the prisoner:—

“La cour se fleurit de souci
Comme le front
De tous ceux-ci
Qui vont en rond
En flageolant sur leur fémur
Debilité
Le long du mur
Fou de clartè.

Tournez, Samsons sans Dalila,
Sans Philistin,
Tournez bien la
Meule au destin.
Vaincu risible de la loi,
Mouds tour à tour
Ton cœur, ta foi
Et ton amour!

Ils vont! et leurs pauvres souliers
Font un bruit sec,
Humiliés,
La pipe au bec.
Pas un mot ou bien le cachot,
Pas un soupir.
Il fait si chand
Qu’on croit mourir.

J’en suis de ce cirque effaré,
Soumis d’ailleurs
Et préparé
A tous malheurs.
Et pourquir si j’ai contristé
Ton vœu tetu,
Société,
Me choierais tu?

Allons, frères, bons vieux voleurs,

, , ,
Doux vagabonds,
Filons en fleur,
Mes chers, mes bons,
Fumons philosophiquement,
Promenons-nous
Paisiblement:
Rien faire est doux.”
I do not know any more interesting document in criminal literature than one
poem, Læti et Errabundi, contained in this volume. Fully to understand the
significance of this remarkable poem, it is necessary to state that Verlaine’s
imprisonment was due to an attempt on the life of his comrade in sexual
perversity, himself also a poet of some note. The latter left Europe, and it is
not now known whether he is alive or dead. To him Læti et Errabundi is
addressed.
I quote the concluding lines:—

“On vous dit mort, vous. Que le Diable
Emporte avec qui la colporte
La nouvelle irrémédiable
Qui vient ainsi battre ma porte!

Je n’y veux rien croire. Mort, vous,
Toi, dieu parmi les demi-dieux!
Ceux qui le disent sont des fous.
Mort, mon grand péché radieux.

Tout ce passé brûlant encore
Dans mes veines et ma cervelle
Et qui rayonne et qui fulgore
Sur ma ferveur toujours nouvelle!

Mort tout ce triomphe inouï
Retentissant sans frein ni fin
Sur l’air jamais évanoui
Que bat mon cœur qui fut divin!

Quoi le miraculeux poème
Et la toute-philosophie,
Et ma patrie et ma bohème
Morts? Allons donc! tu vis ma vie!”

Verlaine’s very remarkable head, though large, is the head of a criminal
much more than of a man of genius, with its heavy jaw, projecting orbital
arches and acrocephalic occiput, with central ridge—the head which the
acute Lauvergne called Satanic, and which, in its extreme form, he believed
to announce the monstrous alliance of the most eminent faculty of man,
genius, with the most pronounced tendencies to crime. M. Verlaine has long
been a victim to chronic alcoholism, and the author of the Fêtes Galantes
and of some of the most tender lines written in our day is now most often
found within the wards of Parisian hospitals.

“Je compte parmi les maladroits.

J’ai perdu ma vie et je sais bien
Que tout blâme sur moi s’en va fondre:
A cela je ne puis que répondre
Qui je suis vraiment né Saturnien.”

A few words may be added concerning criminal art as shown in design.
Lombroso reproduces numerous drawings, etc., made in prison. They are
generally very rough and slight, never beautiful, but frequently expressive,
rendering character, now and then, in face and attitude, with ease and
felicity. Scenes of murder or robbery, law courts, men hanging from the
gallows, women, mostly nude, with huge or pendent breasts, men or women
in extravagantly perverse sexual attitudes—these are the visions which
come to the criminal in prison, and to which he seeks, by such means as
may be within his reach, to give artistic expression. Sexual imagery, not
beautiful but gross and ugly, undoubtedly has the chief part in these
designs; but it is scarcely necessary to point out that the artificial conditions
under which the prisoner lives is largely responsible for this characteristic
of his art, although not for its generally deliberate ugliness.
Dr. Laurent, in his work, Les Habitués des Prisons, has treated this matter
more completely than any other writer known to me, and has reproduced
some very characteristic and instructive examples of this art, although he
has not dared to reproduce the more extravagant designs which he
describes. What has chiefly impressed him among the large number of
drawings by prisoners which have passed through his hands is the absence
of any elevated thought, of any noble sentiment. In the erotic designs there
is occasionally an imaginative audacity, but love is always regarded as a
purely physiological act, and everywhere else the design is pathetically
commonplace; it is naturalistic in the lowest sense of the word, adding
nothing, suppressing nothing; and these drawings have therefore a
remarkable family likeness. If there is any great artist of whom they ever
remind us it is Ostade, with his perpetual research of the mean and
degraded, physically and morally, in humanity. Dr. Laurent draws special
attention to a design which appears to represent some winged angel of

hope; there is something in the bold, predaceous face of this vulgar fairy, in
the coarse firm attitude, so suggestive of the things that alone have left a
firm impress on the artist’s mind, that is very pathetic. In one of those
designs only is it possible to catch a glimpse of the ideal; it is the figure of a
woman by a clerk of some education, and possessed of personal qualities
which brought him into relation with women of a somewhat superior type.
The face in this drawing has a tender and melancholy air; even here,
however, the body is drawn in too crude and realistic a manner. Where these
artists succeed best is in the photographic delineation of commonplace or
unpleasant human types, such as may be seen in large cities, especially after
nightfall. There is usually something hard, cynical, degraded in these types,
in their whole bodies as well as their faces; they remind us of what was said
of portraits executed by Wainewright, that he had contrived to put the
expression of his own wickedness into them.
These artists also do not succeed in caricature, and rarely attempt it. To be
successful here involves some judgment, delicacy, and insight, and these the
prison artists do not appear to possess.
In the nude, as I have already mentioned, prison artists take great delight,
and they even achieve a certain amount of success. There is a certain
Hogarthian vigour and ease with which the faces and forms of these coarse,
low-browed, animal, energetic women, with their large pendent breasts, are
brought before us. The only prison sketch I have seen showing anything
more than a crude sense of beauty, any real appeal to the imagination, or
distinct science of form and composition, is a group of nude women in
extravagant attitudes, which Dr. Laurent reproduces; he says nothing of the
artist, except that he was probably a Saint Anthony by necessity, who, in
this scene as of a Sabbath of witches, has given expression to the dreams
that tormented him. It is a genuine piece of fantastic art, and seems to recall
certain designs of the Belgian artist, Félicien Rops. This design escapes to
some extent—and to some extent only—from the judgment which Dr.
Laurent pronounces on the treatment of sex by criminals:—“Sex is not for
them a sacred and mysterious thing, a mystic rose hidden beneath the
obscure vault of the body, like a strange and precious talisman enclosed in a
tabernacle. For them it is a thing of ugliness, which they drag into the light
of day and laugh at.”

§ 10. Criminal Philosophy.

One of the most interesting and instructive departments of criminal
literature is that dealing with the criminal’s mental attitude towards crime.
In considering the problems of crime, and the way to deal with them, it is of
no little importance to have a clear conception of the social justification for
crime from the criminal’s point of view. Not only is he free from remorse;
he either denies his crime or justifies it as a duty, at all events as a trifle. He
has a practical and empirical way of his own of regarding the matter, as
Dostoieffsky remarks, and excuses these accidents by his destiny, by fate.
“What contributes to justify the criminal in his own eyes is that he is quite
certain that the public opinion of the class in which he was born and lives
will acquit him; he is sure that he will not be judged definitely lost unless
his crime is against one of his own class, his brothers. He is secure on that
side, and with so good a conscience he will never lose his moral assurance,
which is the main thing. He feels himself on solid ground, and by no means
hates the knout which is administered to him. He looks upon it as
inevitable, and consoles himself by thinking that he is not the first nor the
last to receive it. Does the soldier hate the Turk who sabres him? By no
means!”
To be caught is the foolish part of the business. “You are a lot of fools to get
in here, myself included,” is one of the prison inscriptions noted by Mr.
Horsley. “Had God wished me to be different, He would have made me
different,” said Goethe. In the same spirit is the philosophy of crime set
forth by a man known to Lombroso: “If God has given to us the instinct to
steal, He has given to others the instinct to imprison us; the world is an
amusing theatre!” It is rare, however, for the criminal to take so lofty a
standpoint as this; more usually he bases the justification for his own
existence on the vices of respectable society—“the ignorance and cupidity
of the public,” as one prisoner expressed it—that he is shrewd enough to
perceive; “it is a game of rogue catch rogue,” a convict told Mr. Davitt. A
youthful French brigand in the days of Charles IX., as he impassively
ascended the scaffold, declared that he was innocent, because he had never
robbed poor people but only princes and lords, the greatest robbers in the
world. “We are poor rogues, and so hanged, while others, no less guilty in
another way, escape,” pleaded Captain Bartholomew Roberts’s fifty-two

pirates, executed at the beginning of the eighteenth century. “Law for the
rich but none for the poor,” is a modern English prison inscription which
would probably have expressed its writer’s meaning better if it had been
transposed. Quels gredins les honnêtes gens!
An Italian criminal wrote in a book of “Moral Maxims” by Tommaseo:
“When you have read this book become a priest or a master; if not it will be
of no use to you. There are fine maxims in this book, but maxims are no
good in this world, where the god of gold reigns alone. He who has money
is brave and virtuous; all the maxims of Tommaseo are of no use to him
who has none; he will still be treated with contempt.” A Milanese thief said
to Lombroso: “I do not rob; I merely take from the rich their superfluities;
and, besides, do not advocates and merchants rob? Why accuse me rather
than them?” “Knowing,” wrote the murderer Raynal, “that three-fourths of
the social virtues are cowardly vices, I thought that an open assault on a rich
man would be less ignoble than the cautious combinations of fraud.” J. G.
Wainewright, when in prison, said to a visitor: “Sir, you city men enter
upon your speculations and take the chances of them. Some of your
speculations succeed, and some fail. Mine happen to have failed.” An
Italian thief, one Rosati, said: “I am proud of my deeds; I have never taken
small sums; to attack such large sums I consider a speculation rather than a
theft.” Another Italian thief said that there were two kinds of justice in the
world: natural justice, that which he himself practised when he shared the
proceeds of his thefts with the poor; and artificial justice, that which is
protected by social laws. The criminal is firmly convinced that his
imprisonment is a sign that the country is going to the dogs. A prison
inscription quoted by Lombroso runs: “I am imprisoned for stealing half-a-
dozen eggs; Ministers who rob millions every day are honoured. Poor
Italy!” “We are necessary,” a brigand chief said proudly to his judges; “God
has sent us on the earth to punish the avaricious and the rich. We are a kind
of divine scourge. And for the rest, without us what would you judges do?”
This conviction of the criminality of the honest is engrained in the criminal
mind, and one meets it at every turn. “Who doesn’t deserve the galleys?”
was a remark often heard by Dr. Lauvergne at the convict establishment at
Toulon, and the same idea was cynically expressed by Lacenaire:—

“Buvons à la sagesse,
A la vertu qui soutient!
Tu peux sans crainte d’ivresse,
Boire à tous les gens de bien.”

Most people must have observed, in talking with persons of vicious
instincts, the genuine disgust which these so often feel for the slightly
different vices of others and their indifference to their own. So the man in
prison feels indulgence for his own offence and contempt for his more
cautious brother outside who continues to retain the respect of society,
feelings which the latter heartily reciprocates. Every individual, whatever
his position, feels the need of a certain amount of amour propre. “I may be
a thief, but, thank God, I am a respectable man.”
Among the criminal songs still found in Sardinia there is one (quoted by
Lombroso from Bouillier’s Les Dialectes et les Chants de la Sardaigne) that
may be quoted here. “Tell me,” asks Achea of the priest, “if I have nothing
to eat, and if I find wherewith to appease my hunger, may I take the goods
of another?” “Believe me, if you have nothing to eat, and you meet with
something, you would be a fool not to take it.” “That is a good counsel, but
here is a difficulty: what I have taken in this way, ought I to return it?” “No.
The observance of the law would subject you to a fast too severe; you are a
great fool if you do not understand that in the face of necessity all things
belong to all.” That is the morality of a lawless and primitive society, but it
has points of contact with some of the latest and highest developments of
social morality. Tolstoï would justify it; as, to a certain extent, a respected
archbishop has justified it.
“The laws of society,” remarked an educated convict to Mr. Davitt, “are
framed for the purpose of securing the wealth of the world to power and
calculation, thereby depriving the larger portion of mankind of its rights and
chances. Why should they punish me for taking by somewhat similar means
from those who have taken more than they had a right to? My dear sir,” said
he, “I deny your contention that there is any such thing as honesty in the
world at all.” This man, who had a considerable acquaintance with literature
and philosophy, maintained soberly that “thieving was an honourable
pursuit,” and that religion, law, patriotism, and bodily disease were the real

and only enemies of humanity. “Religion,” he would observe, “robbed the
soul of its independence, while society’s social laws, in restraining the
desires and faculties given by Nature to men for the purpose of
gratification, declared war against the manifest spirit of the law of our
being.” Patriotism he termed “the idolatry of an idea, in the stupid worship
of which the peace of the world, and the wellbeing of its inhabitants, were
sacrificed by the lawmakers and others who profit thereby.”
Lombroso found the following note written with a piece of iron in a
politico-economical work, under the chapter of “Considerations on the Co-
operative spirit”: “The best governed nation is that which has fewest
thieves. Do you want to abolish thieves? See to it that the working man and
the peasant have work to do, and are better paid for it; then they will be
content, and will have nothing to say against the government; in
consequence they will do their duty, and will not be forced to do evil.”
Another, reading a book about an official who had been removed from the
administration of taxes, wrote: “I advise you all to be public thieves, and
then you will be free citizens and men who are useful to society, and will be
decorated with medals and crosses. This man here was a public thief; but I
am only a private robber; if I had been a public one I should not have been
here.” Again: “Why are those who wear coarse breeches treated in one way,
and those who are dressed finely and wear yellow gloves treated in another?
Why are the first called thieves while the others are said to have committed
undue appropriation? Have not both classes broken the commandment
which says simply ‘Thou shalt not steal’?” In a confession made to Gisquet,
the prefect of police, a different standpoint is taken up; the criminal justifies
himself, not on moral grounds, but as a man of the world: “You regret the
robbery that I have committed, and you call it a bad action; the insignificant
act for which I have been condemned is the first link in a chain which will
not, I hope, finish so soon. If I were not a thief by vocation, I would be one
by calculation. I have faced all the good and the evil of other occupations,
and I find that this is the best. What would have become of me among
honest men? A bastard, with no one to take care of me, what could I do?
Become a shopman, earn at the most six hundred francs a year, and having
sweated all my life, grow old and ill and finish at a hospital. Take men in
the mass and you will find them all humiliated, slaves, disgraced; it is never

talent and honesty that are recompensed; vice prospers more often than
virtue.
“In our profession we depend on nobody; we enjoy the fruits of our
experience and ability. I know well that we may end in prison; but out of
the 18,000 thieves in Paris not one-tenth are in prison, so that we enjoy nine
years of freedom against one of prison. Besides, where is the working man
who is not sometimes without work? For the rest, the working man has to
pledge his things at the pawn-shop, while we, when we are free, want for
nothing, and lead a life of constant feasting and pleasure.
“The fear of being arrested, and the pretended remorse that people talk of,
are things to which one soon gets accustomed, and which finish by giving a
pleasurable emotion.
“And then, if we are arrested, we live at the expense of others, who clothe
us, feed us, and warm us, all at the cost of those whom we have robbed!
“I will say more. During our detention in prison we think out and prepare
new means of success.
“If I regret anything, Mr. Prefect, it is that I am condemned to only a year. If
it had been for five I should have been sent to a central prison, where I
should have met some old hands, who would have taught me some new
trick, and I should have returned to Paris clever enough to live without
working.
“They talk of thieves as of persons always in misery, and who always finish
their lives in prison; but they think of those whom they have seen in their
apparent state when arrested. They do not consider that many have secret
resources, and that most of them are clever enough to get on without ever
having anything to do with justice.” This man, it is clear, had aspirations
and ideals which, though they found satisfaction by a different method,
were much the same as those of ordinary persons. He represents the
professional criminal.
“Ah! too often it is forgotten,” wrote G. Ruscovitch, a prince among
forgers, the accomplished student of science, the perfect master of half-a-
dozen languages, “too often it is forgotten that criminals are members of
society. All these bodies, sometimes abandoned by all except the satellites

charged to guard them, are not all opaque; some of them are diaphanous and
transparent. The vulgar sand which you tread under foot becomes brilliant
crystal when it has passed through the furnace. The dregs may become
useful if you know how to employ them; to tread them under foot with
indifference and without thought is to undermine the foundations of society
and to fill it with volcanoes. The man who has not visited the caverns, can
he know the mountain well? The lower strata, for being situated deeper and
farther from the light, are they less important than the external crust? There
are deformities and diseases among us to make one shudder; but since when
has horror forbidden study, and the disease driven away the physician?”

CHAPTER V.

THE RESULTS OF CRIMINAL
ANTHROPOLOGY.
So far I have been summarising the chief results obtained in the
investigation of the criminal up to the present date by many workers in
various lands. There is not very much doubt about the results here recorded;
even when they do not agree among themselves, it is still generally possible
to account for the divergency by the special character of the group to which
the individuals examined belong. But when we come to consider the
significance of the facts we are no longer on such safe and simple ground.
There is, however, no reason here for surprise when we remember how
youthful a science criminal anthropology is. Even the related science of
general anthropology is still young, and much of our progress in it still lies
in the unlearning of our errors, so that, as Virchow recently remarked, we
know considerably less about anthropology to-day than we knew some
years ago. The same is true of another related science, the study of insanity.
If therefore my conclusions as to the place of the criminal in nature may
seem to be somewhat cautious and tentative, it must be remembered that we
are still slowly feeling our way to firm ground. Few as are the general
conclusions which we may boldly assert, they are yet sufficient to throw a
flood of new light on the nature of the criminal, and on his treatment and
prevention.
I purpose to touch briefly on certain relationships of crime and the criminal,
the consideration of which will lead us naturally to a clearer view of the
criminal’s position. We will glance at (a) the biological beginnings of crime,
(b) crime among children, (c) the criminal woman as distinct from the
criminal man, (d) the relation of crime to vice, (e) crime as a profession, (f)
the relations of crime to epilepsy and insanity.
(a) The biological beginnings of crime have been examined by Lombroso,
Lacassagne, and Ferri; and by some have even been traced as far back as

the vegetable world. Thus Lombroso seems to claim those insectivorous
plants studied by Darwin and others as belonging to the category of
criminals. I doubt whether by any tenable definition of the criminal such a
classification can be upheld, and Lomboso himself speaks with less than his
usual decision. An act which is common to a whole species cannot
reasonably be described as criminal. It may be unjust, even cruel, but it
does not thereby necessarily become criminal. If the Dionea Muscipula that
eats an insect is a criminal, much more must the European man who eats
beef or mutton be a criminal. To be criminal the deed must be exceptional
in the species, and must provoke a social reaction among the other members
of that species. We can scarcely hope to find genuine vegetable criminals,
even amongst the parasites.
When we are dealing with the criminality of animals, concerning which a
large body of evidence has now accumulated, it is necessary to
discriminate. It is well recognised by veterinary surgeons that certain horses
are inclined to be undisciplined and revengeful, and that these
characteristics are associated with distinct cranial anomalies; the Arabs
believe these qualities to be hereditary. There is here certainly a very close
analogy to the instinctive criminal; but we are dealing with an animal
greatly modified by man, and these vices are not recorded as exercised
against their own species so much as against man. The case (apparently
well authenticated) of the horse who pretended to be lame, to avoid going
on military exercise, can scarcely be called criminal; from a horse’s point of
view this might be regarded as a justifiable ruse. The same may be said of
the action of the dog who, finding his favourite place occupied by another
dog, went outside and set up such a furious barking that the usurper came
out to see what was the matter, when the rightful owner immediately
pounced on his old corner. Such a ruse, even though perpetrated against one
of the same species, is not anti-social. It is only when we are dealing with
animals of the very highest order of intelligence that we find any
manifestations that can be at all fairly described as criminal. Thus among
the highly intelligent castors, the lazy castor is pitilessly chased away by his
fellows, to die of hunger, alone, far from the colony. Idleness, as we know,
is a very fundamental characteristic of the criminal, and the strongly
marked social reaction that we see here shows that the castors have
recognised this. Something of the same kind is seen among elephants.

Certain elephants, called rogues, lead a solitary and unnatural life, and are
lacking in the humane and gentle disposition peculiar to elephants
generally. The anti-social character of these elephants is recognised by their
fellows, and when the solitary elephant endeavours to penetrate into the
family life of the ordinary elephant he is everywhere repulsed, and naturally
grows still fiercer and more anti-social. Such examples as these are the
nearest approaches among animals to what we call criminality.

PLATE XIV.

We have to realise clearly what constitutes criminality when we turn to the
lower human races. To say, as has been asserted, that among savages
criminality is the rule rather than the exception, is to introduce confusion.
Among many savages infanticide, parricide, theft and the rest, far from
being anti-social, subserve frequently some social end, and they outrage,
therefore, no social feeling. These acts are not anti-social; and many recent

investigations, such as those of Élie Reclus, show that there is under the
given conditions a certain reasonableness in them, although among us they
have ceased to be reasonable, and have become criminal. On the other hand,
many acts which the needs or traditions of a barbarous society have caused
to be criminal become in a higher phase of society trivial or beneficial.
Tarde remarks, that of the ten crimes which the Hebraic law punished with
stoning, nine have even ceased to be offences in our modern European
societies, and the tenth (rape) has only remained a crime by entirely
changing its character; it has become a crime against the person instead of a
crime against property. He observes also that in a savage society one of the
chief criminal types would be that of the delicate and artistic natures,
sensuous and sensitive, ill adapted for pillaging neighbouring tribes. Such
individuals would be chased away relentlessly, as the industrious castors
chase away the lazy castor, and for the same reasons. In our societies we
have found a use for these people; they minister to our pleasures, and we
render them nothing but homage. But if we are wise we shall be very tender
in arousing our indignation against the social habits of lower races, even
when these involve such an act as parricide, for the distance between
ourselves and even the lowest races is quite measurable. Our social code is
not far removed from that of the Maori who considered that it was murder
to kill the man to whom he had given hospitality, but not murder to run his
spear through the stranger whom he met on his morning walk. We to-day
regard it as a great crime to kill our own fathers or children; but even the
most civilised European nation—whichever that may be—regards it as
rather glorious to kill the fathers and children of others in war. We are not
able yet to grasp the relationship between men. In the same way, while we
resent the crude thefts practised by some lower races, we are still not
civilised enough to resent the more subtle thefts practised among ourselves
which do not happen to conflict with the letter of any legal statute.
Criminality, therefore, cannot be attributed indiscriminately even to the
lowest of races. It consists in a failure to live up to the standard recognised
as binding by the community. The criminal is an individual whose
organisation makes it difficult or impossible for him to live in accordance
with this standard, and easy to risk the penalties of acting antisocially. By
some accident of development, by some defect of heredity or birth or
training, he belongs as it were to a lower and older social state than that in

which he is actually living. It thus happens that our own criminals
frequently resemble in physical and psychical characters the normal
individuals of a lower race. This is that “atavism” which has been so
frequently observed in criminals and so much discussed. It is the
necessarily anti-social instinct of this lowlier organised individual which
constitutes the crime. This accounts for the fact that, while in those districts
where brigandage is opposed to popular feeling brigands are often
abnormally constituted individuals, in other districts where there is no
social feeling against brigandage (as in some outlying parts of Italy) the
brigand may present no unusual characteristic, mental or physical. The
social environment exerts no selective influence; there is nothing to thrust
the abnormal person into brigandage rather than into any other occupation.
To admit, therefore, in the criminal, a certain psychical and even physical
element belonging to a more primitive age is simple and perfectly
reasonable. It has been observed over and over again, independently and
apart from any special theory of criminality. Thus Mr. L. Owen Pike, the
historian of crime in England, who is not an alienist or an anthropologist,
writes:—“Of a very great number of modern habitual criminals it may be
said that they have the misfortune to live in an age in which their merits are
not appreciated. Had they been in the world a sufficient number of
generations ago, the strongest of them might have been chiefs of a tribe....
With the disposition and the habits of uncivilised men which he has
inherited from a remote past, the criminal has to live in a country where the
majority of the inhabitants have learned new lessons of life, and where he is
regarded more and more as an outcast as he strives more and more to fulfil
the yearnings of his nature.”[76] Tarde, the cautious juge d’instruction, has
expressed the same idea in almost the same words: “Some of them at least
would have been the ornament and the moral aristocracy of a tribe of Red
Indians.”[77] Again, Professor Prins of Brussels, only slightly varying the
same formula, remarks: “The criminal of to-day is the hero of our old
legends. We put in prison to-day the man who would have been the dreaded
and respected chief of a clan or a tribe.” The energy with which Lombroso
has advocated the atavistic element in the criminal is well known; while
Colajanni, in many respects an opponent of Lombroso, remarks: “How
many of Homer’s heroes would to-day be in a convict prison, or at all
events despised as violent and unjust.”

That this resemblance is not merely superficial, but that some perversity or
arrest of development sometimes produces an individual inapt to our
civilisation, but apt to a lower civilisation which we have outgrown, and
which we call criminal, we have had occasion to observe repeatedly in our
brief summary of the facts of criminal anthropology. It is by no means an
extraordinary fact; it is not so extraordinary as that human beings should
occasionally be born with cervical auricles or supernumerary breasts—
reversions to very far more ancient days. It is not easy to gather up into one
statement the various real or apparent atavistic anatomical peculiarities
noted among criminals. Perhaps the most general statement to be made is
that criminals present a far larger proportion of anatomical abnormalities
than the ordinary European population. Now this is precisely the
characteristic of the anatomy of the lower human races: they present a far
larger proportion of anatomical abnormalities than the ordinary European
population. It is true that our knowledge of the anatomy of the lower human
races is still incomplete, but the evidence so far as it goes is perfectly clear.
It will be sufficient to quote the distinguished anatomist to whom were
entrusted the skulls collected during the most important scientific
expedition of modern times. Sir William Turner, summing up the
Challenger Report concerning these crania, writes:—“Although their
number is certainly too limited to base any broad generalisation on, as to
the relative frequency of occurrence of particular variations in the different
races, there is obviously a larger proportion of important variations than
would occur in a corresponding number of skulls of the white races.”[78]

PLATE XV.

Our survey of the psychical characteristics of criminals showed that they
constantly reproduce the features of savage character—want of forethought,
inaptitude for sustained labour, love of orgy, etc. It may not be out of place
to remark that we must not attribute these to the direct influence of atavism.
When an original vice of organic constitution has thrown an individual into
a more primitive and remote strata of society, the influence of environment
will itself simulate the effects of atavism and exaggerate its significance. If
the organic impulses of a man’s constitution have led him to throw in his lot
with brigands, he will not fail to live as a brigand lives—that is, as a
barbarian lives. This is not atavism, though it may be the outcome of
atavism, or arrest of development.[79]
(b) The development of crime is precocious. Rossi ascertained at what age
46 of his 100 criminals commenced their criminal career. Of these 46, no
less than 40 began before the age of twenty—i.e., 1 at four years of age, 2 at
seven, 6 at eight, 1 at nine, 5 at ten, 1 at eleven, 3 at twelve; and so on.[80]
The evidence from France, from England, and from America gives very
similar results. Children may even become expert professional criminals,

and not in Europe alone. Thus, in India, where of recent years professional
poisoning has assumed great development, and to a large extent taken the
place of thuggi, “a Brahman boy at Bahraich, in May 1885, drugged a party
of men travelling with the agent of the Rajah of Mohsan. Although only
twelve years old, this was his fifth appearance in the dock. Another boy, a
few months later, cooked some pulse for three pilgrims from Gaya; and the
pilgrims were picked up shortly afterwards insensible near the railway yard
at Allahabad. This boy had been charged with committing a similar offence
in the May previous, but had got off because the complainants, impatient of
the law’s delay, changed their story, and attributed their delirium to the heat
of the sun.” The Sonorias, again, in the north-west provinces of India, are
wonderfully expert pickpockets, and they train up their children in the same
paths. “A Sonoria boy of ten or twelve years, with his pretty innocent face
and his clean silk clothes, is a most attractive little object of villainy. His
hand slides into a pocket, and he hands over the contents to a man behind
him, who in his turn makes them over to a third, and returns to watch over
the urchin. If caught, the boy cries and protests his innocence, but his
volubility is against him, for no honest native child can talk like a Sonoria
boy.”[81]
It is more interesting to note that there is a certain form of criminality
almost peculiar to children, a form to which the term “moral insanity” may
very fairly be ascribed. This has been described by Krafft-Ebing, Mendel,
Savage, and others, and is characterised by a certain eccentricity of
character, a dislike of family habits, an incapacity for education, a tendency
to lying, together with astuteness and extraordinary cynicism, bad sexual
habits, and cruelty towards animals and companions. It shows itself
between the ages of five and eleven, and is sometimes united with
precocious intellectual qualities. There can be no doubt that many of these
develop into instinctive criminals. Sometimes these characters only appear
at puberty, together with exaggerated sexual tendencies, in children who
have previously been remarkable only for their mental precocity, but whose
energy seems now to be thrown into a new channel.
It is a very significant fact that these characters are but an exaggeration of
the characters which in a less degree mark nearly all children. The child is
naturally, by his organisation, nearer to the animal, to the savage, to the
criminal, than the adult. Although this has frequently been noted in a

fragmentary manner, it is only of recent years that the study of childhood, a
subject of the gravest importance, has been seriously taken up by Perez and
others.
The child lives in the present; the emotion or the desire of the moment is
large enough to blot out for him the whole world; he has no foresight, and is
the easier given up to his instincts and passions; our passions, as Hobbes
said, bring us near to children. Children are naturally egoists; they will
commit all enormities, sometimes, to enlarge their egoistic satisfaction.
They are cruel and inflict suffering on animals out of curiosity, enjoying the
manifestations of pain. They are thieves for the gratification of their
appetites, especially the chief, gluttony, and they are unscrupulous and often
cunning liars, not hesitating to put the blame on the innocent when their
misdeeds are discovered. The charm of childhood for those who are not
children lies largely in these qualities of frank egotism and reckless
obedience to impulse.
Most people who can recollect their own childhood—an ability which does
not, however, appear to be very common—can remember how they have
sometimes yielded to overmastering impulses which, although of a trivial
character, were distinctly criminal. The trifling, or even normal character of
such acts in childhood is too often forgotten by those who have to deal with
children. Mayhew, writing in 1862, when these childish “crimes” were still
taken seriously to a terrible extent, remarks:—“On our return from Tothill
Fields, we consulted with some of our friends as to the various peccadilloes
of their youth, and though each we asked had grown to be a man of some
little mark in the world, both for intellect and honour, they, one and all,
confessed to having committed in their younger days many of the very
“crimes” for which the boys at Tothill Fields were incarcerated. For
ourselves, we will frankly confess, that at Westminster School, where we
passed some seven years of our boyhood, such acts were daily perpetrated;
and yet if the scholars had been sent to the House of Correction, instead of
Oxford or Cambridge, to complete their education, the country would now
have seen many of our playmates working among the convicts in the
dockyards, rather than lending dignity to the senate or honour to the bench.”
In many persons the impulses of childhood persist in a more or less subdued
form in adult age. The impulses are not yielded to so readily, or at all, but

they are still felt. The examples have often been quoted of the distinguished
alienist, Morel, who, as he narrates himself, seeing a workman leaning over
one of the Seine bridges, felt so strong an impulse to throw the man into the
river, that he had to rush away from the spot; and of Humboldt’s nurse,
who, at the sight and touch of the new-born child’s rosy flesh, felt the
temptation to kill it, and was obliged to entrust it to some one else. These
morbid impulses are perhaps more closely related to insanity than to
criminality, but it is on a borderland that is common to both. Both child and
criminal are subject to such impulses.
In the criminal, we may often take it, there is an arrest of development. The
criminal is an individual who, to some extent, remains a child his life long
—a child of larger growth and with greater capacity for evil. This is part of
the atavism of criminals. Mental acuteness is often observed among
criminal children; it is rare among criminal adults. There is evidently arrest
of development at a very early age, probably a precocious union of the
cranial bones. Among savages, also, the young children are bright, but
development stops at a very early age. All who have come very intimately
in contact with criminals have noted their resemblance to children. Thus
that profound and sympathetic observer, Dostoieffsky, in his Recollections
of the Dead-House, summing up some of the light-hearted, easy-going
characters of the convicts, says: “In one word they were children, true
children, even at forty years of age.” And elsewhere he quotes a saying
concerning the exile: “The convict is a child; he throws himself on
everything that he sees.”
(c) It is interesting to consider the sexual variations of criminality. Women
are everywhere less criminal than men. The proportion varies, however,
greatly in different countries. In France it is usually about 4 to 1; in the
United States it is about 12 to 1; in Italy and Spain the proportion of women
is very small. In Great Britain, on the other hand, the proportion of criminal
women is, except during the last year or two (owing probably to changes in
police regulations), extremely large, especially for the greater crimes. There
has indeed been on the whole a steady increase in the proportion of women
criminals in England; in 1834 they were less than 1 in 5; of recent years
they have been more than 1 in 4. The greater tendency to recidivism in
women has everywhere been noted, and is extremely well marked in
England, where it is rapidly increasing, and is associated, it seems, with

growing habits of alcoholism. Of incorrigible recidivists a very large
proportion in Great Britain are women; and 40 per cent. of the women
committed to prison during 1888 had been previously committed more than
ten times.[82] Even among the juvenile offenders discharged from
reformatory and industrial schools as incorrigible, it appears that the
proportion of girls is double that of boys.
While men criminals are everywhere in a more or less marked majority,
there are certain crimes which both sexes commit about equally, and these
are usually the most serious. Thus, as Quetelet remarked, nearly as many
women are poisoners as men, and of parricides 50 per cent. are women. The
crimes of women are essentially domestic, against fathers and husbands and
children. A very large proportion are, directly or indirectly, of a sexual
character. It is curious in this connection to note that Marro finds marked
physical resemblances between women criminals generally and the class of
male criminals guilty of sexual offences; such are less length of arms and
hands, less cranial capacity and greater extension of the transverse curve of
the head.
It is worth while to enumerate briefly the probable causes of the sexual
variation in criminality. There are perhaps five special causes acting on
women: (1) physical weakness, (2) sexual selection, (3) domestic seclusion,
(4) prostitution, (5) maternity.
There are firstly the physical and psychical traditions of the race embodied
in the organisation of men and women. The extreme but rather spasmodic
energy of men favours outbursts of violence, while the activities of women
are at a lower but more even level, and their avocations have tended to
develop the conservative rather than the destructive instincts. Apart from
this, even if women were trained in violence, the superior strength of men
would still make crimes of violence in women very hazardous and
dangerous. Under existing circumstances, when a woman wants a crime
committed, she can usually find a man to do it for her.
I have already frequently had occasion to note the approximation of
criminal women in physical character to ordinary men. This has always
been more or less carefully recorded, both in popular proverbs and in the
records of criminal trials. Thus Sarah Chesham, a notorious wholesale

poisoner, who killed several children, including her own, as well as her
husband, was described as “a woman of masculine proportions;” and a girl
called Bouhours, who was executed at Paris at the age of twenty-two, for
murdering and robbing several men who had been her lovers, is described
as of agreeable appearance, and of sweet and feminine manners, but of
remarkable muscular strength; she dressed as a man; her chief pleasure was
to wrestle with men, and her favourite weapon was the hammer.
Marro has recently suggested that sexual selection has exerted a marked
influence in diminishing the criminality of women. Masculine, unsexed,
ugly, abnormal women—the women, that is, most strongly marked with the
signs of degeneration, and therefore the tendency to criminality—would be
to a large extent passed by in the choice of a mate, and would tend to be
eliminated. It seems likely that this selection may have, at all events to
some extent, existed, and exerted influence; it is, however, not universally
accepted.
The domestic seclusion of women is an undoubted factor in the
determination of the amount of women’s criminality. In the Baltic provinces
of Russia, where the women share the occupations of the men, the level of
feminine criminality is very high. In Spain, the most backward of the large
countries of Europe, where the education of women is at a very low level,
and the women lead a very domesticated life, the level of feminine
criminality is extremely low; the same is true, to a less extent, of Italy. In
England, on the other hand, which has taken the lead in enlarging the sphere
of women’s work, the level of feminine criminality has for half a century
been rising. Reference may perhaps also here be made to the fact that there
is much more criminality among Irishwomen in England than among
Irishwomen at home who lead a more domestic life. It is a very significant
fact that Marro found among his women criminals, in marked contrast to
the men, a very large proportion (35 out of 41) who possessed some more
or less honourable occupation; a large proportion of the women also were
possessed of some property. It may not be out of place to observe that the
growing criminality of women is but the inevitable accident of a beneficial
transition. Criminality, we must remember, is a natural element of life,
regulated by natural laws, and as women come to touch life at more various
points and to feel more of its stress, they will naturally develop the same
tendency to criminality as exists among men, just as they are developing the

same diseases, such as general paralysis. Our efforts must be directed, not
to the vain attempt to repress the energies of women, but to the larger task
of improving the conditions of life, and so diminishing the tendency to
criminality among both sexes alike.
Prostitution exerts an undoubted influence in diminishing the criminality of
women, in spite of the fact that the prostitute generally lives on the
borderland of crime. If, however, it were not for prostitution there would be
no alternative but crime for the large numbers of women who are always
falling out of the social ranks. As it is, in those families in which the
brothers become criminals, the sisters with considerable regularity join the
less outcast class of prostitutes; sometimes in league with their criminal
brothers, but yet possessing a more recognised means of livelihood. There
will be something more to say on this point a little later on.
The strongest barrier of all against criminality in women is maternity. The
proportion of criminals among young women with children is very small.
Among men criminals the celibates are in a very large majority, but among
women maternity acts as a still greater deterrent. Not only are young
married women comparatively free from crime, but among married women,
as Bertillon pointed out, those with children are distinctly less criminal than
those without children. Of Marro’s 41 criminal women, although all but one
(who was undeveloped and ugly) confessed to having had sexual
relationships, 12 had never been married, 10 were widows, 14 were
married, but of these 7 (50 per cent.) were separated from their husbands.
There is some significance, doubtless, also in the fact that while in men the
maximum of criminality falls at about the age of 25, in women this is not
so. That is the age of maximum child-bearing; the age of maximum
criminality in women is delayed until nearly the age of 35. In the 130
women condemned for premeditated murder, and studied by Salsotto, the
average age was 34. Marro found that for nearly every class of criminals the
average age of the women was much higher than that of the men. It is clear
that the woman without children is heavily handicapped in the race of life;
the stress that is upon her is written largely in these facts concerning
criminality.[83] One might suspect this beforehand. Crime is simply a word
to signify the extreme anti-social instincts of human beings; the life led
most closely in harmony with the social ends of existence must be the most
free from crime.

It may be said—to sum up our brief discussion of this large question of
women’s criminality—that certain great barriers, partly artificial, partly
natural, have everywhere served to protect women from crime. It is not
possible absolutely to prove this conclusion, because women cannot be put
strictly under the same conditions as men; a woman who lived under the
same conditions as men, it need scarcely be said, would no longer be a
woman. But it is made probable by the considerations here brought forward,
and by statistics. Thus let us take the statistics for one year in a country
where crime is so largely developed, and so carefully studied as Italy; an
average year, 1886, may be selected. It will be found that a hundred
condemned persons of each sex may be arranged according to age as
follows:—

Men. Women.
Below 14 1.29 per cent. 1.41 per cent.
From 14 to 18 6.04 " 6.02 "
" 18 " 21 13.39 " 10.65 "
" 21 " 35 46.91 " 39.38 "
" 35 " 50 23.29 " 30.94 "
" 50 " 70 8.40 " 11.63 "
Above 70 0.68 " 0.57 "

Thus below puberty the relative criminality of girls is rather greater than
that of boys, to become about equal at puberty; then during the earlier and
chief period of child-bearing the criminality of women falls suddenly,
becoming level with that of men at about the time of the cessation of the
child-bearing period; after this the criminality of women becomes relatively
much greater than that of men, becoming again about the same, and in some
years exceeding it, at the age of 70.
(d) One is inclined on first approaching the subject to make the clear line of
demarcation between crime and vice, which is necessary in practical life.
From the anthropological point of view, however, it appears on closer
examination impossible to draw this clear line.
In the course of Lombroso’s investigations he was surprised to find in the
examination of supposed normal persons certain individuals who presented
in a marked form those anthropologic signs of a low and degenerate type

which he had usually found among criminals. On further inquiry it appeared
that those individuals were of vicious character. Again, it is a remarkable
fact that prostitutes exhibit the physical and psychic signs associated
usually with criminality in more marked degree than even criminal women.
While criminal women correspond on the whole to the class of occasional
criminals, in whom the brand of criminality is but faintly seen, prostitutes
correspond much more closely to the class of instinctive criminals. Thus
their sensory obtuseness has been shown to be extreme, and it is scarcely
necessary to show that their psychical sensitiveness is equally obtuse.
Several valuable series of observations recently made on prostitutes in Italy
and elsewhere have brought out interesting results in this respect. Thus, for
example, Dr. Praskovia Tarnovskaia examined at St. Petersburg fifty
prostitutes who had been inmates of a brothel for not less than two years,
and she also examined, for the sake of comparison, fifty peasant women of
so far as possible the same age and intellectual development. She found (1)
that the prostitutes presented a shortening, amounting to half a centimetre,
of the anterior, posterior, and transverse diameters of skull; (2) 84 per cent.
showed various signs of physical degeneration—irregular skull, asymmetry
of face, anomalies of hard palate, teeth, ears, etc.; (3) 82 per cent. had
parents who were habitual drunkards; (4) 18 per cent. were the last
survivors of a large family of eight to thirteen children who had died early.
Prostitutes may fairly be compared to the great class of vagabonds among
men, who also live on the borderlands of criminality, and who also present a
larger proportion of abnormalities than even criminals. Dugdale, in his
valuable and thorough study of the “Jukes” family of criminals in America,
shows that while the eldest sons in a criminal family carry on the criminal
tradition, the younger sons become paupers or vagabonds, and the sisters
become prostitutes. Of 250 recidivists condemned five times at Paris nearly
all have begun by vagabondage. Mendel has examined 58 vagabonds in the
workhouse at Berlin. He found 6 absolutely mad; 5 weak-minded; 8
epileptics; 14 with serious chronic disease; in the remaining 25 there was
without exception pronounced mental weakness. We see here the organic
root of the hopelessly idle, vicious character of the vagabond class. A
philanthropic gentleman at Paris offered employment of various kinds, with
payment at four francs a day, to all those who came to him complaining that
they were dying of hunger and could get no work. 545, out of 727, did not
even present themselves; some came and disappeared after the first half-

day, having claimed their two francs; only 18, or 1 in 40, continued to work.
It is not sufficiently known that these poor creatures, who form such an
extensive recruiting field for crime, are already, by the facts of their
physical organisation, cut off from the great body of humanity. They need
much more intelligent treatment than the antiquated workhouse is able to
supply.
We must be careful not to confuse vice and crime. At the same time we
have to recognise that they both spring from the same root. The criminal is
simply a person who is, by his organisation, directly anti-social; the vicious
person is not directly anti-social, but he is indirectly so. The criminal
directly injures the persons or property of the community to which he
belongs; the vicious person (in any rational definition of vice) indirectly
injures these. They are both anti-social because they are both more or less
unfitted for harmonious social action, both, from organic reasons, more or
less lazy. Criminals and prostitutes, as Féré remarks, have this common
character, that they are both unproductive. This is true also of vagabonds,
and of the vicious and idle generally, to whatever class they belong. They
are all members of the same family.
(e) We saw in Chapter I. that there is a fairly well-marked class of
professional criminals. They are the élite of the criminal groups; they
present a comparatively small proportion of abnormalities; their crimes are
skilfully laid plots, directed primarily against property and on a large scale;
they never commit purposeless crimes, and in their private life are often of
fairly estimable character. They flourish greatly in a civilisation of rapidly
progressing material character, where wild and unprincipled speculation is
rife, as in the United States; their own schemes have much of the character
of speculations, with this difference, that they are not merely unprincipled
but are against the letter of the law; notwithstanding the ability and daring
they require, they are a relatively unskilled kind of speculation.
Tarde, and perhaps one or two writers following him, have endeavoured to
show that all crime is professional, and that every physical and psychic
characteristic of the criminal may be explained by the influence of
profession. Tarde’s always alert and intelligent advocacy makes it necessary
to take note of this position, although in this unqualified shape it has not
met with much adhesion at the hands of scientific investigators. I am

persuaded, he says, that every large social class has its own characteristics.
“If one examined hundreds or thousands of judges, lawyers, labourers,
musicians, taken at random and in various countries, noting their different
characters, craniometric, algometric, sphygmographic, graphologic,
photographic, etc., as Lombroso has examined hundreds and thousands of
criminals, it is extremely probable that we should ascertain facts not less
surprising; thus, for instance, we might succeed in finding instinctive
lawyers—born to defend instinctive criminals.... I should like to see the
instinctive criminal opposed to the instinctive man of science, or the
religious man, or the artist. It would be curious to see him compared to the
moral man, and to learn if the latter is the antipodes of the criminal
physically as well as morally.”[84]
Tarde has again more recently stated his position: “One knows that at the
first glance at a woman a skilful observer infallibly divines her habits of
prostitution.... Among the innumerable varieties of human nature which
appear at the surface of a race and proceed perhaps from its lowest depths
(for the variations of a theme are, I believe, its true raison d’être, and not
vice versâ), every social or anti-social profession operates a selection to its
own profit; it attracts the organisms most adapted to the kind of life which it
leads, and to the end which it pursues, so that if one submitted to
anthropometric measurement lawyers, doctors, priests, merchants,
especially those who have the most decided vocation for their profession,
we should not fail to find for each category the proportional preponderance
of a certain number of peculiarities, morphologic or physiologic, elsewhere
in less proportion. It must inevitably be so whether a career is open to every
one or shut up as a caste, for in the latter case hereditary accumulation of
acquired aptitudes from the use of the same functions transmitted from
generation to generation produces an analogous effect, even with superior
intensity.”[85] The recent investigations of Bertillon at the Paris Prefecture
of Police have shown that by large photographs of the hand it is possible to
detect the worker at a large number of crafts. By such acquirement as this,
as well as by a process of natural selection, the men of every class develop
a special set of psychic and physical peculiarities; thus Tolstoï, in his Death
of Ivan Ilyitch, has admirably described the special attitude and manner
common to professional men generally, and in this general professional
class there are subdivisions, so that every professional man instinctively

recognises his fellows. It is so among criminals. Mr. Davitt sketches, for
instance, the special class of “hooks,” or professional pickpockets, “so well
outlined in gait, constant use of slang, furtive looks, almost total want of
tact in their ordinary conduct, with an instinctively suspicious manner in
almost all their actions, that they are as easily distinguishable from the other
criminals of a prison as they are recognisable to their constant pursuers, the
police, when abroad in the world.”
If we were to look at the matter in a rather more thorough and scientific
manner, there can be no doubt that the previsions of Tarde would be
justified, and that men would fall into certain natural anthropologic groups,
according to their habitual modes of feeling and thinking and acting, the
nature of each person, to some extent, “subdued to what it works in, like the
dyer’s hand.” In each class there would be different degrees in sensory
perception, in cranial shape and size, in muscular development. Such
investigations will no doubt be systematically carried out in time. At
present, owing to the extraordinary apathy of anthropologists, and
consequently the general indifference to the importance of studies
connected with the development and varieties of men, scarcely anything is
known regarding the matter.
But important as professional selection is, it cannot account for everything.
Indeed no serious attempt has been made to substantiate it by reference to
the details of criminal anthropology. M. Tarde is a magistrate; no scientific
man would have attempted to account for all the facts that have now
accumulated by professional selection and acquired habits.
It is interesting to note that Topinard, the distinguished anthropologist, who
has bestowed some severe and not unmerited criticism on portions of
Lombroso’s work,[86] while accepting the professional theory of crime, by
no means considers that it is sufficient to explain the whole of the facts;
remembering the teaching of Lélut and Baillarger, under whom he had
studied mental disease, he calls in the aid of the morbid element:
—“Criminals constitute a special professional category in society, in the
same way as men of letters, men of science, artists, priests, the labouring
classes, etc., but a complex category in which the most diverse elements
enter: the insane or those predisposed to insanity, epileptics and those
predisposed to epilepsy, the alcoholic, the microcephalic, the

macrocephalic, those predisposed by some vice of organisation or of
development, anterior or posterior to birth, betraying itself sometimes by
very evident anatomical anomalies, those who are predisposed by family
traditions and inclinations, those whose moral instincts are perverted by
individual education and social environment, and finally those who are
criminals by accident, without preparation or predisposition.”[87]
Professional characters will carry us a long way when we are seeking to
account for natural social groups. But in the anti-social groups another and
more morbid element enters. It is indeed largely the presence of morbid
elements which gives these groups their anti-social character.
(f) The morbid element in criminality has sometimes been too strongly
emphasised, but it would be idle to attempt to deny its importance. The
frequency with which insanity appears among criminals, even when the
influence of imprisonment may with considerable certainty be excluded, is
well ascertained. Of recent years also the close connection between
criminality and epilepsy and general paralysis has often been shown. I have
several times pointed out that the resemblances between criminals
considered as a class and the insane so considered are by no means great; at
many points they are strongly contrasted. The resemblances with epileptics,
on the other hand, are anthropologically very marked, as Lombroso was the
first to point out in detail. He has also observed that those regions of Italy
which produce most epileptics produce also most criminals. Epilepsy has a
certain relationship to insanity; it tends naturally to weak-mindedness,
although some of the world’s greatest men have been epileptics; and there is
in epilepsy a tendency to the development of brutal, unnatural, and
bloodthirsty instincts. The slighter and more concealed forms of epilepsy
offer also a very fruitful field for investigation in this respect.[88]
But the roots of criminality are not only deeper than professionalism, they
are deeper also than any merely acquired disease. I have frequently had
occasion to note the remarkable resemblances between criminals and idiots.
There is the same tendency to anatomical abnormalities of the muscles,
arteries, bones, etc.; in both the muscular system is weak; there is the same
tendency also to small and weak hearts, with valvular defects. There is,
again, the same sensory obtuseness, with the same exception in the case of
sight, which is remarkably good, with rarity, it seems, of colour-blindness.
Criminality, like idiocy, tends to run in the line of the eldest sons, and in

both the hereditary influences are frequently bad. Cranial asymmetry is
common in idiots as well as among criminals; and while meningitis is a
common cause of idiocy, such evidence as we possess shows that it is also
common in criminals. Tubercular disease is again common in both.
Epilepsy, to which so much importance has of late been attached in
connection with criminality, is notoriously common among idiots, being
found among nearly 25 per cent.[89] The relations of criminality to idiocy
have not yet been sufficiently studied.
The criminal is, however, by no means an idiot. He is not even a merely
weak-minded person. The idiot and the feeble-minded, as we know them in
asylums, rarely have any criminal or dangerous instincts. Another term is
frequently used to denote vicious or criminal instincts in a person who is,
mentally, little if at all defective; he is said to be “morally insane.”
The term “moral insanity” was originated nearly half a century ago by an
Englishman, Dr. Prichard, who in his Treatise on Insanity declared that
insanity exists sometimes with an apparently unimpaired state of the
intellectual faculties; and the conception has been developed by Krafft-
Ebing, Maudsley, and many others. The term itself is an unfortunate one;
the condition described by no means falls in easily as a subdivision of
insanity, and it is moreover frequently of a congenital character. There is
now a very general tendency to drop the expression “moral insanity,” and to
speak instead of “moral imbecility.”
The condition in question, by whatever name it is called, is described by
alienists as an incapacity to feel, or to act in accordance with, the moral
conditions of social life. Such persons, it has been said, are morally blind;
the psychic retina has become anæsthetic. The egoistic impulses have
become supreme; the moral imbecile is indifferent to the misfortunes of
others, and to the opinions of others; with cold logic he calmly goes on his
way, satisfying his personal interests and treading under foot the rights of
others. If he comes in contact with the law then his indifference changes
into hate, revenge, ferocity, and he is persuaded that he is in the right.
Although so defective on the moral side, these persons are well able to
make use of the abstracted intellectual conceptions of honour, morality,
philanthropy; such words are indeed frequently on their lips, and it is quite
impossible to convince them of the unusual character of their acts. They are

absolutely and congenitally incapable of social education, systematically
hostile to every moralising influence. Being themselves morally blind, it is
their firm conviction that all others are in the same condition; they
disbelieve in the possibility of virtue, and being often possessed of
considerable intellectual ability, maintain anti-social theories with much
skill.
“Moral insanity” does not probably stand for any definite morbid condition.
It is used as a convenient term to describe a certain group of psychic
symptoms which are not found in a developed condition in the normal man.
It is obvious that these symptoms closely resemble those we have already
described as characterising the criminal in his most clearly-marked form—
the instinctive criminal. The morally insane person has been identified with
the instinctive criminal by Lombroso, Marro, Ferri, Benedikt, Colajanni,
and many others. The fusion has, however, been rejected by some—by
Binswanger and Kraepelin, for instance. There can, however, be little doubt
that the two groups overlap in very large part.
The group of instinctive criminals therefore still stands fairly apart among
the other groups of criminals, approximating, but not fusing with, these
various morbid and atypical groups. The outlines blend, but each group is
distinct at the centre. It will be the work of the future to arrange, and if
necessary to re-form, these various groups.
It is much to be able to see, even so clearly as we do to-day, the human
classes of arrested or perverted development who lie in the dark pool at the
foot of our social ascent. Even our present knowledge is sufficient to serve
as the justification for a certain amount of social action. We owe this to the
labours of a succession of physiologists, alienists, anthropologists, and
criminologists during the past century.
Up to recent times the criminal has been regarded as a kind of algebraic
formula, to use Professor Ferri’s expression; the punishment has been
proportioned not to the criminal but to the crime. We are now learning to
regard the criminal as a natural phenomenon, the resultant of manifold
natural causes. We are striving to attain to scientific justice. We are seeking
in every direction to ascertain what is the reasonable treatment of the

eccentric and abnormal members of society, in their interest, and in the still
higher interests of the society to which we belong.
To seek for light in the fields of biology and psychology, of anthropology
and sociology, has seemed to many a discouraging task. The results are
sometimes so obscure; sometimes, it even seems, contradictory. In practice,
it is said, such considerations count for nothing. Law must only concern
itself with absolute certainties, with abstract formulæ, with geometrical
routine. But human nature will not fit in with formulæ; when men and
women are geometrical figures, an abstract legal system will answer all
their needs. If the path lies through a jungle, what is the use of the best and
straightest of roads that leads astray? If a critic were to point out to a
biologist—to take another illustration from Ferri—the limitations of the
microscope, he would be entitled to reply—But excuse me, however
imperfect the microscope may be, would it be better to dispense with the
microscope? Much less when we are dealing with criminals, whether in the
court of justice or in the prison, or in society generally, can we afford to
dispense with such science of human nature as we may succeed in attaining.

CHAPTER VI.

THE TREATMENT OF THE CRIMINAL.
If, as now scarcely admits of question, every truly criminal act proceeds
from a person who is, temporarily or permanently, in a more or less
abnormal condition, the notion of “punishment” loses much of its
foundation. We cannot punish a monstrosity for acting according to its
monstrous nature. Moreover, who among us is perfectly normal, and what
tribunal is entitled to punish? The verdict of science is one with that of
Christianity—“Judge not.”
Some such argument as this has weighed with those thinkers and
investigators who have of late shown a disinclination to talk of punishment,
and have instead spoken of the “social reaction against crime.” The old
conception of punishment was founded on the assumption of the normality
of the criminal; he was a normal person who had chosen to act as though he
were not a normal person—a vine, as it were, that had chosen to bring forth
thorns—and it was the business of the penologist to apportion the exact
amount of retribution due to this extraordinary offence, with little or no
regard to the varying nature of the offender; he was regarded as a constant
factor. Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, not many years ago, “when
addressing,” says the Rev. J. W. Horsley, “in our hearing, an assemblage of
those who had all belonged to the criminal class, expatiated, somewhat to
their astonishment and much to their gratification, on the iniquity of giving
a severe punishment for a theft that was petty, even though it had been
preceded by many thefts and convictions.” Obviously the punishment was
directed at the offence; it was not necessary to consider the offender at all.
This conception, formulated by theorists who delighted in abstract notions,
has been shown to lead directly into devious paths of metaphysics and
ethics; it has, consequently, been fertile of much vain disquisition. On the
whole, the results of this have not contributed to confirm the credit of the
notion, and it has seemed better—at once sounder theoretically and more
convenient practically—to dispense with this antiquated conception of

punishment. Whenever one person trespasses on the rights of another
person, or of the community to which he belongs, there is an inevitable
social reaction against the person who has committed the anti-social deed.
Society says to the individual who has violated its social feelings—Here,
my fine fellow, we are not going to stand this conduct of yours; we must
have an end of this: and it proceeds to act in accordance with the varying
measure of its wisdom. This is the basis of all legal action against the
criminal; in its crudest form it is Lynch law; in its highly developed form it
shows itself in the elaborate training bestowed on the criminal at Elmira.
Such social action is a solid and permanent fact, independent of all
metaphysical theories; and it is this we are concerned with when we
approach the question of the treatment of the criminal.
At a very early period in the development of every barbarous race there
arise two institutions for dealing with the criminal—the prison and another,
still more decisive, appearing in various forms, the cross, the stake, the
gallows, the axe.
I do not propose to give more than a few words to the question of capital
punishment, because it does not seem to be any longer a question of much
magnitude or importance. A century, even three-quarters of a century, ago it
was a different matter. In England especially capital punishment seems to
have flourished luxuriantly. A writer in Elizabeth’s reign says that in Henry
VIII.’s time seventy-two thousand thieves and vagabonds were hanged. The
statement is set down on hearsay evidence only, but is sufficient to show
that the number must have been very large. About a century ago more
criminals, it is said, were put to death in England than in any other part of
Europe; many persons still living remember the days of wholesale hanging,
and even the execution of a child of twelve for rioting. It is less than half a
century since a child of nine was condemned to death for stealing paint,
value twopence-halfpenny, and since men were hanged for stealing sheep
and postoffice letters.
There can be little doubt that capital punishment is dying out. In
Switzerland, in England, in Italy, for example, the tendency is very clearly
marked. Whether its complete extinction is altogether a matter for rejoicing
is a question concerning which there is not complete unanimity among
those whose opinions carry most weight. An impressive body of opinion is

in favour of putting instinctive criminals to death, not out of revenge, but in
the spirit in which Galen and Seneca advocated the destruction of
incorrigible offenders against social life, regarding them as diseased
members to be removed for the advantage of the whole social body.
Garofalo, the distinguished Neapolitan lawyer, is perhaps the chief advocate
of capital punishment among those who are working for legal reform. He
points out that the death penalty is the only one the criminal really dreads,
and tells of offenders who committed their crimes under the impression that
capital punishment had been abolished, and that they were to be provided
with food and shelter for the rest of their lives. On the other hand, it has
also been shown that the éclat and public interest involved in a trial for life
or death serves as an incentive to the morbid vanity of criminals. Such a
penalty as burning “for example of others, as hath been accustomed,”
according to the phrasing of Henry VIII.’s statute, has been an example
often enough in another sense than the statute intended.
On the whole, we may perhaps be well satisfied that capital punishment
—“the shameful practice,” as it has been epigrammatically styled, “of
hiring for a guinea an assassin to accomplish a sentence which the judge
would not have the courage to carry out himself”—is threatened with
extinction in civilised countries. It has the disadvantage of being
irrevocable. There would be little chance of mistake if it were only applied
to recidivists; but these are a class to whom it is rarely applied. It is certain
that mistakes have occurred when in the opinion of the judge the evidence
of guilt was absolutely convincing. It is true that the chief cause of this
extinction in democratic countries is not the benefit of the criminal, or even
the welfare of society; it is a tender regard for the sentiments of the general
public. “To punish murder by lifelong imprisonment,” as Sir Robert
Rawlinson observed, “is a far severer fate than sudden death, but it is not so
revolting.” We have to see to it that our substitutes for the death penalty are
of a humane and rational character, and that they afford an equal protection
to society. It should never be possible to address to society the words which
the daring Duc de Montausier addressed to Louis XIV. concerning a
criminal who was finally executed after committing twenty murders: “This
man has only committed one murder, the first, and it is you who, by letting
him live, have committed the other nineteen.” But, as Benedikt well
observes, to kill the criminal is never satisfactory, because we do not kill his

accomplices, bad social conditions and defective institutions; we leave
untouched the false social sentiments that urged the unmarried girl to kill
her own child, or the rigid marriage system that made it easier for the man
to kill his wife than to leave her or to allow of her leaving him. Moreover, it
must be said that murderers, whom alone it is considered justifiable to
eliminate by death, are not usually the most degraded of criminals or the
most dangerous to society. In Russia, where capital punishment for
common-law offences was abolished more than a century ago, murderers
are condemned to hard labour for a period of years, after which they are
settled in Siberia. “Eastern Siberia is full of liberated assassins,” remarks
Prince Krapotkine, “and, nevertheless, there is hardly another country
where you could travel and stay with greater security; while the unceasing
robberies and murders of which Siberia complains now, take place precisely
in Tomsk and throughout Western Siberia, whereto no murderers and only
minor offenders are exiled. In the earlier part of this century it was not
uncommon to find at an official’s house that the coachman was a liberated
murderer, or that the nurse who bestowed such motherly care upon the
children bore imperfectly obliterated marks of the branding-iron.”[90] Mr.
Davitt, speaking from an extensive acquaintance with criminals, says:
—“The really hardened, irreclaimable criminal will never commit a
murder.... The most heinous of all offences—murder deliberately intended
and planned before commission—is, ordinarily, the offspring of the
passions of revenge and jealousy, or the outcome of social or political
wrongs; and is more frequently the result of some derangement of the
nobler instincts of human nature than traceable to its more debased orders
or appetites.”[91] Again, Miss Carpenter, in her Female Life in Prison,
wrote:—“Some women are less easy to tame than the creatures of the
jungle.... And yet these women are not always in for the worst crimes: there
are few, if any, murderers amongst them; they have been chiefly convicted
of theft after theft, accompanied by violence.” These observations are
entirely in accord with the results of criminal anthropology; the murderer
belongs very frequently to the class of criminals by passion, the least anti-
social of all, and is at other times frequently the subject of some morbid
impulse, epileptic or insane.
Perhaps the most powerful reason in favour of the probable disappearance
of capital punishment is the humanising influence that would be exerted on

the community generally. The unreasoning outbursts of ferocity in which,
especially among young and emotional democracies, some morbid and
distracted creature who fires at a political personage is hurried with glee to
the scaffold, or some half-witted human thing who commits a rape is
perhaps actually torn to pieces, are not wholesome manifestations of the
social spirit. They are far less excusable than the deeds by which they are
aroused, for the reason that they arise in more normally constituted persons.
So long as capital punishment is legitimate there is, however, at least the
appearance of an excuse for the development of these brutalising outbursts.
All that is finest in civilisation is bound up with a self-restraint and
humanity, as well as a more intelligent insight, which, while admitting a
more chastened social reaction, makes ferocity impossible.
Let us turn to the prison. During the last century a vast amount of care and
enthusiasm, philanthropic and administrative, have been expended on the
elaboration and development of prisons. It is needless to sketch the history
of this development, which seems now to have come to a standstill; it has
often been done, and is easily accessible. It is however very interesting and
instructive to take note of the deliberate opinions expressed during the last
few years, from various points of view, by those who have had the
opportunity of studying most intimately the modern developed prison.
A curious fate has befallen this ancient institution. In its more primitive
form it now arouses universal disgust and horror. The Russian prisons of
Siberia are, for instance, a by-word of reproach. The physical and mental
torture which they inflict, wholesale and indiscriminately, on men and
women, on political suspects as well as on the lowest criminals, have been
described over and over again, from within and from without, during the
last fifty years, in Dostoieffsky’s Recollections of the Dead-House, by
Maximoff, and by Krapotkine, and still, when Mr. Kennan repeats the old
story, a wave of indignation passes across the civilised world. Elsewhere on
the fringe of European civilisation the primitive prison is still scarcely
changed. The Spanish prisons are often filthy and overcrowded, and the
inmates are maintained in laziness. In the Spanish prison of Ceuta, in
Morocco, there are 3000 convicts, mostly for life, and crowded together, so
that 112 sleep in one room.[92] The native prisons of Morocco are the
abodes of oppression, starvation, and filth, where the innocent and guilty
are thrown in together, without any kind of work, and allowed to die slowly.

“The horrors of these places are indescribable. Often they are underground,
damp, and pestilential; always filthy. They are frequently very crowded, and
a dozen or more poor wretches may be fastened in one chain by their necks,
with heavy irons on their wrists and ankles, unable to stir a foot away from
one another for any purpose all night, and often all day.”[93] “On the highest
authority,” says Mr. Cook, “I am able to say that the prison population of
the city of Morocco equals the free population.” In the interior, where there
is no dread of European influence, things are naturally much worse. In
Egypt the prisons are filthy and filled with untried prisoners. In Greece the
prisoners are, “if possible, dirtier than those of Egypt, no work, no books,
and but little food. Some of the rooms containing ten prisoners were less
than twelve feet square.” Many of the prisons of South Africa are in a
wretched condition, and some of those in the United States are little better.
A century ago most of the prisons of England could fairly have been
included in any such enumeration as that I have just attempted. “They are
ironed,” wrote Howard of the English convicts of 1773, “thrust into close,
offensive dungeons, and there chained down, some of them without straw
or other bedding. They continue in winter sixteen or seventeen hours out of
the twenty-four in utter inactivity, and immersed in the noxious effluvia of
their own bodies. Their diet is at the same time low and scanty; they are
generally without firing; and the powers of life soon become incapable of
resisting so many causes of sickness and despair.” There was not, as a
recent writer remarks, so much consideration for prisoners in Britain as
there had been in the reign of the Emperor Constantine, for the Romans of
the fourth century did not permit the imprisonment of men in the same
room with women. Howard found a girl locked up all day with two soldiers
in the Bridewell at St. Albans, and in many of the gaols there was
insufficient provision for the separation of the sexes.
We have changed all that. The best prisons of England, France, the United
States, Belgium, Italy, and some other countries, are models of ingenuity,
cleanliness, and routine. It cannot be said, indeed, that we have succeeded
in hindering communication between prisoners, or in preventing an illicit
traffic in tobacco, etc., or even the practice of unnatural intercourse; and we
do not trouble ourselves too much to reform the prisoner. Yet even these
laxities of discipline have added materially to the prisoner’s comfort; and if
we have not reformed the prisoner we have at least reformed the prison, an

easier task, and one which shows more tangible results. “The prisoner of the
present day is well cared for,” remarks Dr. Gover, the medical inspector, in
a recent Report of the Directors of Convict Prisons; “he is supplied with all
the necessaries, and not a few of the comforts of life; and his existence is, to
say the least, rendered very endurable. The labour exacted from him is not
irksome in its character, and he is not subjected to any depressing
punishment unless it be for idleness or for serious misconduct.” But the
work is not of an exhausting character, so that there is no very strong
motive to laziness. “Hard labour,” Mr. Horsley remarks, “is such that no
prisoner could get a living outside if he did not work harder.” It is not
surprising that under these circumstances the prisoner flourishes. “In our
prisons now there is,” says Dr. Richardson, “a lower mortality and probably
a lesser sickness than in the most luxuriously appointed and comfortable
houses in the commonwealth.” And what, he asks, is more natural when we
find “epidemic poisons shut out of our prisons; famine shut out; luxury shut
out; drink shut out; exposure to cold and wet shut out; the acute and most
destructive kinds of mental worry shut out; the hungry strain for to-
morrow’s bed and board shut out; the baneful association with criminal life
at large shut out!”
And yet we are dissatisfied! This comfortable, easy-going routine of the
modern prison is viewed with scarcely more approval by the thoughtful
investigator of to-day than the horrors of the primitive prison. It is deeply
interesting and suggestive to take note of the opinions expressed during
recent years by those most intimately acquainted with the modern prison.
“Why are our prisons failures?” asks Mr. Horsley, who is as impressed as
much as any one by the material progress of prisons. “Men are asking, and
will more loudly ask, ‘Why are our prisons such utter failures?’ In the face
of the phenomena of recidivism, and men and women with hundreds of
convictions, it is absurd to imagine that they are as deterrent as they should
be.” The prisoner is, he points out, but temporarily suspended from habits
of crime by circumstances not under his own control: “He may even boast
of his intentions, but out he must go, with as much safety to the State as if
all mad dogs were muzzled for twenty-four hours and then all unmuzzled,
because it had been found that in that period a certain proportion ceased to
be dangerous; or as if all small-pox patients were discharged from hospital
so many weeks after reception, whether cured or not.”[94] Another prison

chaplain (Rev. C. Goldney), speaking from an experience of twelve years,
writes still more recently:—“I say, unhesitatingly, that if a society for the
manufacture of criminals were set on foot, that society could in no better
way further its aims than by pressing for the imprisonment of every little
boy and girl who could, on any decent pretext, be brought before a bench of
magistrates. Prison officials well know the hardening influence of gaol life
on the young, and statistics show how unlikely it is that the first term of
imprisonment will be the last in the case of children of tender years. They
learn the secret which should jealously be kept from them—that a short
imprisonment is after all no such very terrible punishment.” Mr. Michael
Davitt has learnt by actual experience the realities of English convict life at
Dartmoor, Portsmouth, and Portland, and the valuable book in which he has
summed up those experiences is full of wise and fruitful suggestions. After
pointing out that philanthropic intentions on the part of the heads of a
department are no guarantee for their administration at the hands of warders
and assistant-warders, he continues[95]:—“Penal servitude has become so
elaborated that it is now a huge punishing machine, destitute, through
centralised control and responsibility, of discrimination, feeling, or
sensitiveness; and its non-success as a deterrent from crime, and complete
failure in reformative effect upon criminal character, are owing to its
obvious essential tendency to deal with erring human beings—who are still
men despite their crimes—in a manner which mechanically reduces them to
a uniform level of disciplined brutes. There is scarcely a crime possible for
man to be guilty of, short of murder, which should not, in strict justice, be
expiated by seven years’ infliction of a punishment that has been brought to
such a nicety of calculation that there is the closest possible surveillance of
every one undergoing it night and day, together with an unceasing conflict
between every feeling in the prisoner that is superior to a mere condition of
animal existence and the everlasting compulsion to refrain from almost all
that it is natural for man to do, and to do what it is to the last degree
repugnant for any rational being to consent to perform. Yet wretches who
have had a London gutter or a workhouse for their only moral training-
school, and who have been subsequently nurtured in crime by society’s
other licensed agencies of moral corruption, receive ten, fifteen, and
sometimes twenty years for thefts and crimes which should, in justice, be
expiated by a twelve months’ duration of such punishment. It is these
horribly unjust penalties that beget many of the desperadoes of Portland,

Chatham, and Dartmoor, the murderers of warders, the malingerers, and the
partial maniacs, and which implant in the minds of convicts that ferocious
animosity against law and society which turns so many of them into
reckless social savages.” Prince Krapotkine has also had practical
acquaintance with prisons, and his conclusions also are deserving of study.
In his very interesting book, In Russian and French Prisons, after
describing the routine of the Maison Centrale at Clairvaux, one of the best-
arranged of modern prisons, he adds:—“Such is the regular life of the
prison, a life running for years without the least modification, and which
acts depressingly on man by its monotony and its want of impressions; a
life which a man can endure for years, but which he cannot endure—if he
has no aim beyond this life itself—without being depressed and reduced to
the state of a machine which obeys but has no will of its own; a life which
results in an atrophy of the best qualities of man, and a development of the
worst of them, and, if much prolonged, renders him quite unfit to live
afterwards in a society of free fellow-creatures.” And again he remarks:
—“The real cause of recidivism lies in the perversion due to such infection-
nests as the Lyons prison is. I suppose that to lock up hundreds of boys in
such infection-nests is surely to commit a crime much worse than any of
those committed by any of the convicts themselves.”[96] M. Émile Gautier,
a companion of Prince Krapotkine’s, who has written a series of remarkable
articles on this subject,[97] calls the prison a hot-house for poisonous plants.
He points out what has often been remarked by others (Mr. Davitt, for
instance), the great difference between the “bon détenu” and the “bon
sujet.” “The recidivists are always the most easy to manage, the most
supple—or the most hypocrital—and therefore the favourites with the
officials. The misfortune is that this ‘bon détenu,’ according to the formula,
soon becomes under this régime as incapable of resisting his comrades,
instinctive criminals or professional evil-doers, as the warders, and as little
refractory to temptation, to unwholesome stimulus, to the attraction of an
illicit gain, or to the contagion of bad example, as to discipline. He can only
obey—no matter whom!” And elsewhere he says: “It is well to remark that
there is not one of the passions, natural or factitious, of man, from
drunkenness to love, which cannot find in prison at least a semblance of
satisfaction.... It need not be said that the prisoner afterwards carries out
with him into the world all these abnormal vices in a more developed form.
The prison indeed, as it is organised, is a sewer throwing out into society a

continuous flood of purulence, the germs of physiological and moral
contagion. It poisons, brutalises, depresses, and corrupts. It is a manufactory
at once of the phthisical, the insane, and the criminal.” Dr. Napoleone
Colajanni, the eminent criminal sociologist of Naples, confirms from
personal experience the evidence given by Prince Krapotkine and M.
Gautier. A writer who is peculiarly well informed as to the manners and
customs of the criminal classes in England writes:—“Looking at our
present system of dealing with thieves, examining it from every side, it is
clear that nothing can be more clumsy and inefficient—except for evil. Let
any one of robust health fancy himself a prisoner within four walls,
employed day after day in severest labour, without a face to look at except
that of the tyrant warder or the scowling criminal, without relaxation or
kindly intercourse of any kind; with nothing, in short, to subdue the darker
feelings, but with everything to nourish them. Let any one of robust health
fancy himself enduring this year after year—for a fifth, a fourth, or even
half of a life—and then say what sort of creature he would probably
become. Then there is the expense of a system which does not reform nor
get rid of the thief—in old days gaol fever did the latter when the halter
failed—but merely hoards him up for a while to turn him loose on society
more wolfish than ever. As we deal with the thief he is our most costly
national luxury.”[98] The courts of Paris and of Bourges have not hesitated
to declare that the chief cause of recidivism is to be found in the prison and
its régime.[99] In one of the foremost American States, Ohio, an influential
committee, including the Governor of the State, has reported: “With less
than half-a-dozen exceptions, every gaol in Ohio is a moral pest-house and
a school of crime.” The Lord Chief Justice of England (Lord Coleridge) is
reported as saying, in 1885, that “there were few things more frequently
borne in upon a judge’s mind than the little good he could do the criminal
by the sentence he imposed. These sentences often did nothing but unmixed
harm, though he was sure that throughout the country the greatest pains had
been taken to make our prisons as useful as possible in the way of being
reformatories. But, as a matter of fact, they were not so.”
M. Laloue, inspector-general of prisons in France, stated before a
commission that “with our existing system, twenty-four hours’
imprisonment suffices, under certain circumstances, to ruin a man.” The
following conversation ensued. M. Tailhand: “There is perhaps some

exaggeration in the statement that twenty-four hours’ imprisonment can ruin
a man.” M. Laloue: “I do not exaggerate. I say what I have seen. The
prisoner meets a corrupt recidivist; they appoint a rendez-vous outside, and
that man is lost.” M. Tailhand: “He must be a man of very weak character.”
M. d’Havssonville: “It is such characters that succumb.”
Professor Prins, inspector-general of Belgian prisons, and the chief
authority in Belgium on these questions, writes:—“What is the advantage,
unless the necessity is absolute, of putting into prison the head of a family
to devote him to infamy, to compromise him in the eyes of his fellow-
workmen, of his wife, and of his children? Is it not to condemn these latter
to abandonment, misery, and mendicity? Is it not to join to the wretchedness
which is the act of destiny, a wretchedness which is the act of law? Is it not,
in short, to degrade and ruin the delinquent, thus to deliver him over to the
suggestions of despair, and to risk making him a recidivist?”[100]
Garofalo, the eminent Neapolitan lawyer, certainly one of the most
sagacious of those who have in recent years studied the treatment of the
criminal, writes:—“Suppose that in some legendary country an austere king
forbade all flirtation with married ladies, and that the punishment threatened
to the guilty one should be a prohibition to leave during several weeks a
certain club, a magnificent hotel, with gardens and terraces, where this
gentleman would find his best friends, his old comrades at board and game,
who, far from blaming him, would be glad to do the same. In this
sympathetic environment we may be sure they would treat with much
contempt the absurd law and the punishment it inflicted. Who would not
laugh to think that it should be pretended that after such a punishment this
individual would not recommence his ordinary life and commit again the
very offences for which he has been punished?”[101]
“Imprisonment,” affirms Reinach, in his often-quoted work, Les
Récidivistes, “especially if short, is an excitation to crime.” “As to the
reformation of the criminal,” remarks Dr. Paul Aubrey, in a recent and able
study, Le Contagion du Meutre, “that is a myth; the prison is still the best
school of crime which we possess.” “The houses of correction are much
more houses of corruption,” said a young Italian thief. “Clever robberies are
arranged in prison,” a thief told the Abbé Moreau; “the prisoners all know
each other; once at liberty they can find one another.” “I have seen young

men enter the Grande Roquette,” the Abbé observes elsewhere, “guilty, but
not corrupted, who went out decided to commit crimes which a few months
before they would have regarded with horror.”
It is unnecessary, I trust, to accumulate further evidence on this point; it is a
melancholy though far from a difficult task. It must be sufficiently clear that
the modern prison, with its monotonous routine of solitary confinement,
varied by bad company, is fruitful of nothing but disaster to the prisoner and
to the society on which he is set loose. Such mitigation of its influence as
may be found is chiefly due to voluntary charitable agency.
There is one group apart from the chorus of damnation which has of late
years greeted the modern developments of the prison. Unfortunately it is a
sinister and terrible group of exceptions. The prison is an incubator for
those who are young in crime, a place of torture for those who possess the
finer feelings of humanity, that is precisely the class of people, usually, who
ought not to be sent to prison; but to habitual offenders, the confirmed
recidivists, precisely the class of people on whom the prison ought to work
as at once a reforming and deterring influence, it is simply a welcome and
comfortable home. It is a well-known fact that the prison is preferred to the
workhouse. “Whole classes,” as Mr. Horsley truly remarks, “are brought to
consider that, from several points of view, the prison is preferable to the
workhouse.” “Amidst the mass of our fallen sisters in gaol,” a prison
matron observes (Female Life in Prison), “there are these strange practical
philosophers—women who have weighed all the chances between the
workhouse and the prison, and who, being compelled to choose between
one and the other, strike the balance in favour of the gaol. A little less
liberty, but more kindness and attention; better food and more friendly faces
—only the key turned upon them, and their sleeping chamber called a cell!”
“It is a painful fact,” remarks Mr. F. W. Robinson, “that the ordinary female
convict considers herself above the woman in the Union. ‘Look at these
shawls,’ was said once by an indignant prisoner upon a new style of shawl
being introduced into the service; ‘do they take us for those poor workhouse
wretches, I should like to know!’” The author of Five Years’ Penal
Servitude says—“A farm-labourer has told me frequently that he worked far
harder for his eleven shillings a week than ever he had at stone-quarrying or
anything else in prison. When at home he seldom, if ever, had meat of any
sort, and his bed was but a poor affair compared to his prison couch. Here

in prison, comparatively speaking, he fared sumptuously every day, and I
can assure the reader he considered the living luxurious compared to what
he had at home.” “There can be no doubt,” as Beltrani-Scalia remarks, “that
the life of a prison is superior, from a material point of view, to that which
most prisoners are accustomed to lead in liberty.” To the habitual criminal
that is everything. The perpetration of offences for the purpose of obtaining
admission to prison is far from uncommon, and the criminal slang of
various nations with its friendly synonyms for the prison is very significant
on this point. There is a popular Sicilian song which says: “He who speaks
evil of the Vicaria [prison of Palermo] ought to have his face cut. He who
says that prison punishes, how he is deceived, poor devil!”[102] And again:
“Here only will you find your brothers and friends, money, good cheer, and
a peaceful time; outside you are always in the midst of your enemies, and if
you cannot work you will die of hunger.”[103] Reinach mentions a mason
who at the beginning of winter committed a small offence in order to spend
the winter comfortably in a warm prison. The prison of Vienne (Isère) has,
it is said, long been a favourite place of resort during the winter. Several of
the hundred prisoners studied by Rossi had sought in prison a winter refuge.
One who had frequently been in prison before for short terms, said—“Now
I’ve had the good luck to get six months.” A German criminal, who had just
been released from prison, attempted rape. He received a sentence of eight
years’ imprisonment. He rose, thanked the court for the sentence, regretting,
however, that it was not for a longer period, and adding that he had only
committed the offence as an agreeable way of returning to prison, where
alone he found pleasant society and a life free from care. Manduca speaks
of a man, advanced in years, who had just completed a long term of hard
labour, and finding himself without means of subsistence, killed without
any cause an old friend of his childhood. Bretignères de Courtelles found
that 17 out of 115 prisoners entered prison in order to restore their health.
The habitual criminal who has grown accustomed to prison life cares for no
other, and is suited for no other. “I have seen men,” said Lauvergne, “almost
dying from home-sickness because they must soon leave the prison.” Jules
Vallès spoke of l’air vénérable of the old convict; Émile Gautier calls it
l’air reposé. Prison, he adds, is a kind of nirvana, and he tells of an old
convict who possessed in a high degree this air vénérable, closely
resembling Thiers, who, at the end of five years’ sentence passed at

Clairvaux, wrote as follows to the director:—“Sir, you know me. You know
who I am, what I am worth, and what services I can render you. Now I am
about to be thrown up again into the world, where I shall not know what to
do. As soon as I have consumed my allowance in having a good time I shall
immediately get myself arrested. May I beg of you to have the extreme
kindness, as soon as I am again condemned to several years’ imprisonment,
to claim me for Clairvaux? I will inform you as to time and place, and in the
meanwhile kindly reserve my place. Neither you nor I will have to repent of
this agreement.” That letter, more pathetic than amusing, is the logical
outcome of our prison system quite as much as of our social system.
The haphazard fashion in which the period of a prisoner’s detention is fixed
on beforehand is quite in harmony with the unsatisfactory character of the
results obtained. It is well known that the criminal courts are prevented
from awarding any sentence between two years, the longest period of
imprisonment, and five years, the shortest legal sentence of penal servitude.
Yet, as the Directors of Convict Prisons point out, “now that penal servitude
is always carried out in prisons at home, there is no fundamental distinction
between the two classes of punishment.” On the 31st of March 1888 there
were in English convict prisons 6970 persons. Of these, 3034 were
undergoing penal servitude for 5 years, the lowest term permitted by law; in
the case of one solitary individual the exact period of 6½ years was
required, while 1387 needed 7 years of prison treatment. Only 6 persons
had been guilty of an iniquity equal to 9 years’ penal, but no fewer than
1022 had committed an offence equivalent to 10 years’ penal servitude,
while 1 person only in England, having managed to just surpass this sum of
iniquity, was in for 11 years. There were 240 in for 20 years, but only 3 for
21 years, and to 1 individual had been meted out exactly 29 years. It would
be interesting to know by what delicate and complicated considerations this
precise sum of guiltiness was reached. If we turn to the statistics of the
United States at the same period we shall find the same peculiarities, though
the variations in the periods doled out to long-term prisoners are spread
over a wider field; they begin at 1 year, and include 18 for 50 years, and 82
for 99 years. “The favourite sentence,” as Mr. Wines remarks, “seems to be
two years; then five, then three, then one, then four, then ten. There is
throughout a tendency apparent to choose sentences, the numbers
representing which terminate in the figure five or a cypher.”[104] In England

the decimal unit is held in chief favour by judges, whether or not they
realise what it may mean to the man who afterwards thus tells his
experience:—“There on my cell wall was the card; it bore my name and my
sentence—20 years. No wife to cheer, no children to prattle at my knee; 20
years! O God! will it ever end? 20 years,—240 months,—1040 weeks; oh,
this dread future!” The sentence may be just or not, but, whether he will or
not, the judge must fix on some definite term, with such results as we see.
When Pantagruel arrived at Myrelingues, he found that Judge Bridoye, after
carefully considering all the facts of a case, was accustomed to decide it by
means of dice; and Pantagruel fully admitted the humility, piety, and
impartiality of this method. If our judges, before pronouncing sentence,
were first to determine the years to be awarded by a solemn casting of dice,
the result might be as good as those reached by the not very dissimilar
system now adopted. “Are prisons necessary?” asks Prince Krapotkine, and
the question has been variously and timidly echoed in modified forms.
Necessary or not, the institution is still so deeply rooted in civilised
societies that it is idle yet to talk of overturning it. In spite of its
acknowledged inutility we are content to pay very large sums in
maintaining it, and no other method of treatment could be suddenly
substituted. In England in 1889 there were 6405 persons undergoing
sentence of penal servitude; in the United States there were recently 31,000
long-term prisoners; the various species of prisons in Italy contain some
70,000 persons, including 5000 incarcerated for life; in Germany, during six
years, according to Professor Liszt, no fewer than 10,000,000 persons are
imprisoned or fined. It is clearly idle to talk yet of the abolition of so
flourishing an institution: can we give it real social utility?
The key to the failure of the prison, and a chief clue in its reform, lies in the
system of administering definite and predetermined sentences by judges
who, being ignorant of the nature of the individual before them, and
therefore of the effect of the sentence upon him, and of its justice, are really
incompetent to judge. Enough has been said of long sentences, the justice of
which, it is obvious, must be quite a matter of chance. But the short-term
imprisonments reveal quite as clearly the inadequacy of the system. The
newspapers constantly tell of old offenders who have been in prison for
over a hundred short periods. In a recent report of the Prisons Board of
Ireland, the case of a woman is mentioned who was committed to

Grangegorman prison thirty-four times during 1888, and never received a
sentence for a larger term than fourteen days. This woman had been
committed 146 times in previous years, so that she has undergone in all 180
imprisonments.
Society must say, in effect, to the individual who violates its social instincts:
So long as you act in a flagrantly anti-social manner, I shall exercise
pressure on you, and restrain, more or less, the exercise of your freedom. I
will give you a helping hand, because the sooner you begin to act socially
the better it will be for both of us. I shall be glad to leave you alone, and the
sooner the better; but so long as I see that you are a dangerous person, I
shall not entirely leave my hold on you.
That is the only attitude towards the criminal which is at once safe,
reasonable, and humane. If, holding this lamp, we turn to our prison, we see
at once how incompatible with such an attitude is the system of determining
beforehand the exact period of the delinquent’s detention. Many a man
imprisoned for life, to his own misery, the ruin of his family, and the cost of
the State, might with absolute safety to the community be liberated to-day;
it is unnecessary to speak further of the thousands for whom society, inside
or outside prison, has done nothing, and whom it liberates, with full
knowledge that they proceed at once to prey upon itself. The great fault of
our prison system is its arbitrary character. It is a huge machine working by
an automatic routine. The immense practical importance of criminal
anthropology lies in this: that it enables us to discriminate between criminal
and criminal, and to apply to each individual case its appropriate treatment.
The first reform necessary is the total abolition of the definite and
predetermined sentence. The indefinite sentence is no longer new, either in
principle or practice; all that is needed is its systematic extension. It has
been adopted by several of the American states, such as Massachusetts,
Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Kansas, and it was introduced at the famous state
reformatory of New York at Elmira, by an Act passed in 1877. This Act
took from the courts the power of definitely fixing the period of
confinement in prisons until, in the opinion of the managers of the
Reformatory, they may be let out on parole for a probationary period of six
months. No imprisonment was to exceed the maximum term provided by
law for the offence for which the prisoner was convicted. Several thousand

criminals have passed through Elmira, and only a small percentage prove
recidivists. Before a prisoner is paroled a suitable situation is, if possible,
arranged for him. To an Englishman, Frederick Hill, belongs the honour of
first suggesting this fruitful reform, the indeterminate sentence, and his
brother, Matthew Devonport Hill, vigorously supported the principle. In
1880 Garofalo—independently, it appears—advocated indefinite
imprisonment in a pamphlet entitled Criterio positiva della penalità,
published at Naples, and in his great work, La Criminologie, he wisely and
consistently advocates the abolition of the definite sentence of
imprisonment. In Germany it was advocated in 1880 by Dr. Kraepelin, a
well-known authority on these matters (Die Abschaffung des Straffmasses.
Leipzig), and in 1882 Professor von Liszt, of Marburg, supported it with the
weight of his authority. This fruitful reform, which sprang up almost at the
same time, and with apparent spontaneity among the Anglo-Saxon, Latin,
and Teutonic races, although of such recent growth, needs little advocacy. It
is so eminently reasonable that to state it seems sufficient to ensure its
acceptance. When its advantages are generally known and realised it will
undoubtedly spread in the same way that it has already begun to spread in
the United States.
While the indeterminate sentence is an absolutely essential reform, if our
prison system is to be redeemed from the charges that now weigh so heavily
upon it, it is still only a preliminary step.
One of the first and most obvious consequences is the necessity of
reorganising—or, rather, of organising—the prison staff. It is unnecessary to
show here, for it has often enough been shown by those who are familiar
with the inside of a prison, that practically the prisoner is always at the
mercy of the warder. The philanthropic head of the department, at a
distance, must always count for less than the warder, philanthropic or
otherwise, on the spot. Whatever educative and socialising influences the
prison may possess must pass chiefly through the hands of the warders with
whom the prisoner comes chiefly in contact. It is not necessary to
investigate the character and conduct of the average warder. Those who
appoint him and are satisfied with him are the responsible parties. It is
enough to say that the prison warder of to-day is about as well fitted for the
treatment of criminality as the hospital nurse of a century ago was fitted for
the treatment of disease. Every one now recognises the immense

importance for the inmate of a hospital of good nursing by a trained nurse;
the doctor himself is the first to proclaim the essential nature of skilful and
intelligent nursing. Yet the criminal, in all his manifold variations, with his
ruses, his instinctive untruthfulness, his sudden impulses, his curiously
tender points, is just as difficult to understand and to manage as the hospital
patient, and unless he is understood and managed there is no hope of
socialising him. In Italy, France, Belgium, and Switzerland there are, I
believe, institutions for the training of prison attendants, but as yet they
have been of little effect, as they have not apparently been conducted in
connection with the prison, nor on a scientific basis. Their establishment is
a pressing necessity; no person should be appointed to any position
involving the care of criminals who has not been qualified by training in
such a school. He would here become acquainted with the peculiarities of
the various classes of criminals; he would learn to work with them and to
instruct them; and, not least, he would learn to rate at its proper value the
difficult and important profession on which he was entering. It is this sense
of a noble social function, full of privileges as well as responsibilities,
which has raised nursing to its present high position and has brought into
the ranks of nurses so large a leaven of capable and refined women.
At the same time the education of the criminal need not be entirely in the
hands of officers the greater part of whose time is passed within the prison.
There is considerable force in the remark of Dr. Wey, the able physician of
the Elmira Reformatory, concerning the advantage of the prisoner having
highly skilled teachers, fresh from the outside world and mingling daily in
the affairs of men. The barrier which has, in most civilised countries, been
set up between the criminal and the outside world must be to some extent
broken down. This is necessary in the interests of both parties. The criminal
cannot be too carefully secluded from his fellow-criminals, neither can he
have too much of outside socialising influence, if he is to be won back from
the anti-social to the social world. In some of the colonies, it is said, good
results have come of voluntary visiting. It is necessary, however, that this
should be judiciously regulated so as to exclude fanatical, inexperienced,
and merely curious persons. Mr. Tallack tells us some amusing stories
concerning the results of allowing ignorant and foolish visitors. Thus a
gentleman, by talking of hell-fire, succeeded in so thoroughly exasperating
a prisoner that the latter seized him, and exclaiming, “I have hell enough

here already without you bringing me more of it,” would have administered
summary chastisement had not a warder appeared. It is obvious that the
more we restrict the intercourse of criminals in prison between themselves
the more necessary it becomes to supplement the limited staff by assistance
from without, which, while carefully chosen, must be chiefly voluntary. On
the other hand, if we are to learn to know the criminal thoroughly, so as to
learn at once how to treat him and how to protect ourselves from him, we
must have a certain amount of access. “The time has now come,” as Dr.
Maudsley has well said, “when we ought to use our prisons as we do our
hospitals, not for the care and treatment of their inmates, but for the
advancement of knowledge and the improvement of man’s estate.”[105] And
M. Tarde, speaking, as a juge d’instruction, from a different point of view,
insists in his well-known work, La Criminalité Comparée, on the need of
every law student completing his course by an obligatory attendance of six
months at the Clinique Criminelle of a prison.
When we have caught our criminal we put him at once into solitary
confinement. If rigidly carried out this plan has the advantage of secluding
the criminal from his fellows. Regarded as a rational method of treatment,
cellular confinement is a curious monument of human perversity. That it
should have been established shows the absolute ignorance of criminal
nature which existed at the time; that it should still persist shows the present
necessity for a widespread popular knowledge of these matters. It may be
possible to learn to ride on a wooden horse, or to swim on a table, but the
solitary cell does not provide even a wooden substitute for the harmonising
influences of honest society. To suppose that cellular confinement will tend
to make the criminal a reasonable human being is as rational as to suppose
that it will tend to make him a soldier or a sailor, a doctor or a clergyman.
The mistake here is the old one that has vitiated so much of human action
where the criminal is concerned—the mistake, that is, of supposing that at
all points he is an average human being. Solitary confinement on a refined
and cultured human being may produce a deep and lasting impression; a
period of solitude, indeed, is for every intellectual person of immense value
in helping him to know himself; though even here, if compulsory and
unbroken, it can scarcely be without demoralising effect. But the case is
quite different when we turn to the vacuous-minded, erratic, and animal
person who is usually the criminal. Solitude produces in him, as Professor

Prins remarks, no intellectual activity, and no searching of conscience; it
serves merely to deepen his mental vacuity and to deliver him over to
unnatural indulgence in the one animal appetite of which he cannot be
deprived.[106] Professor Prins points out, as does Prince Krapotkine, that the
cell excludes all the bracing influences of struggle; the morality of the cell
is submission, punctuality, quietness, politeness to warders. A moral life
shut up in such a frame has nothing in common with social morality.
Beltrani-Scalia, formerly Inspector-General of Prisons in Italy, is of the
same opinion, and remarks that “the cellular system looks upon man as a
brother of La Trappe.”
Dr. Wey, of Elmira, states the rational method of treatment when he remarks
—“Education means occupation, either mental or physical. The time of the
convict should be so employed in his shop-work and school duties as to
leave him no leisure moments in which to revive the past, and live over
again in memory his criminal days or plan for the future; but each hour
should bring to him its employments and engross his attention till the time
for sleep.”[107]
The experiments in the treatment of the criminal which are being carried on
at Elmira are probably of more wide-reaching significance than any at
present carried on elsewhere. It is worth while to consider them somewhat
in detail. I select an experience carried on during 1886 and recorded by Dr.
Wey, who had charge of it. On June 5th, 1886, Dr. Wey selected eleven
dullards between the ages of nineteen and twenty-nine. For a period of one
to two years previously these men had made no progress. “In physiognomy
they presented features indicative of criminal tendencies. Not one had
learned a trade, but all had made a precarious living as common labourers,
tramps, hostlers, and street-loafers. One was convicted for assault in the
first degree; five for burglary in the third degree; one for grand larceny in
the first degree; three for grand larceny in the second degree; one for rape,
and one for attempted rape. The environment of most of the men previous
to conviction was bad, many of them confessing to have had intemperate
parents, while one told of an insane, and another of an epileptic mother.”
All however were well nourished, and their functions, save that of the skin
(five had acne and one ichthyosis) well performed. “An idea of their mental
attainments can be formed from the fact that one could neither read nor
write; one barely do either; four understood the successive steps necessary

to work an example in long division, but never could obtain the correct
answer; while the balance came to grief upon the shoals of rudimentary
arithmetic from notation to simple division. Their stock of information was
surprisingly small, being generally limited to a slight knowledge of the
things they liked to eat and the work they preferred to do.”
The treatment adopted included a special dietary, bathing, massage,
gymnastics, and a continuation of the usual school-work. The daily
industries of the shop, etc., were suspended.
The food was varied each day, and was sufficient in quantity without being
excessive; it was weighed out to each, and provided at a common table,
instead of, as usual, in the cells, in unrestricted quantity. The experience at
Elmira shows that better results are obtained when the amount of food is
restricted than when it is unlimited in quantity. Dr. Wey is strongly in favour
of a diet consisting chiefly of milk and bread and butter.
The bathing and massage formed a very important part of the treatment.
The routine, after several trials, resolved itself into three baths a week—i.e.,
one tub and two vapour baths one week, followed the next week by two tub
baths and one vapour. “The tub bath consisted in placing a man in a tub of
water heated to about 100° F., and leaving him there to rub and soap himself
for fifteen minutes or longer. From the tub he was placed upon a marble
slab, where he was drenched with hot and cold water and sponged. After
this the body was spatted until the skin was in a glow, the muscles pinched
and kneaded, passive motions of the joints employed, followed by a brisk
rubbing with a coarse wash-towel or Turkish bathing mitten, all this being
done by a professional trainer, who was available at the time. Being obliged
to make use of the facilities at hand, the vapour bath was the moist instead
of the dry or heated air, and consisted of turning steam into a room, and
maintaining an atmosphere of 115° F.” This was followed by massage as
before. After the bath the men usually slept until dinner time.
After dinner they were put through two hours or more of active physical
exercise. In the beginning this consisted of the drill employed in the case of
raw recruits, supplemented by dumb-bell exercises. At first they were an
awkward squad, slow to comprehend an order and deliberate in its

execution. It was some weeks before they were able to march in line and to
keep step.
On November 7th the class was discontinued, and the men were assigned to
various shops and employments.
The results of this treatment were in every respect remarkable. As they
slowly advanced in their studies an increased mental activity was noted, and
the workings of the mind were less forced and laborious than at the
beginning. In mental arithmetic they made progress, and were able, with
comparative ease and rapidity, to add three or four single numbers. “The
drill and discipline they were subjected to wrought an improvement in their
physical condition. The baths and stimulation of the cutaneous system
brought the skin to the highest degree of functional activity, overcoming the
integumentary disorders of five noted in the beginning. The daily drill and
dumb-bell exercises hardened and developed muscles that previously were
soft and flabby, and the entire muscular system acquired firmness and
power. The setting-up drill improved the carriage and conferred a rapidity
of action not before indulged in. The aimless shuffling gait gave way to a
carriage inspired by elastic muscles and supple joints. The faces parted with
the dull and stolid look they had in the beginning, assuming a more
intelligent expression, while the eye gained a brightness and clearness that
before was conspicuous by its absence. With physical culture and
improvement there came a mental awakening, a cerebral activity never
before manifested in their prison life. The purely animal man with his ox-
like characteristics seemed to recede before the intellectual. Their progress
in school-work was not steadily onward, but intermittently progressive.”
Whereas in the six months before the class was formed the men had
obtained less than 10⁄11 of a mark (for demeanour, labour, and school) per
man each month, during the six months that followed the breaking-up of the
class the number of marks earned was 77⁄16 per month per man. There was a
simultaneous and rapid improvement, moral, physical, and intellectual—an
improvement that was common to all, although more pronounced in some,
and which was very encouraging, considering the material of which the
class was formed. A year later several had been released on parole, and
were demonstrating their ability to maintain themselves honestly, while
only two of them, still in prison, were not doing well.[108]

The results of this and similar experiments have been so satisfactory that a
fully-equipped gymnasium and Turkish bath are now in course of erection
at Elmira. “Here,” Dr. Wey tells me, “we propose to treat those who are in
arrears both in body and mind, and prepare them for work and study in the
schools of letters and trades. By this plan it is possible to impress later the
mind to a greater degree than could be done by taking up its cultivation at
the time the man comes to us.”
In 1888, when the Yates bill became law, the productive prison industries of
Elmira had to be suspended. “Within less than a month,” writes Dr. Wey,
“from the passage of the bill, all the men who previously were employed in
productive industries (industries yielding revenue) were being drilled in
military evolutions and tactics. In other words, idleness was avoided by
turning the prison into a military school. The men received from four to six
hours of drill daily, which was sufficient to prevent them from rusting in
their cells. By this means the health of the men was maintained, and
opportunity was afforded for increasing the scope of school-work, trades,
and letters. A drum corps was formed, and instruction given others in
instrumental music, with the sequence that to-day [29th October 1889] we
have a drum and fife corps of about twenty, and a band composed of twenty
or more wind instruments.[109] Two afternoons a week are devoted to
military work, the balance being devoted to technical instruction. The effect
of the military drill and discipline was so good in the way of a health
measure and in improving the carriage of the men that I doubt if it will soon
be discontinued. It was another phase of the application of physical
training.” The report of the able superintendent of Elmira, Mr. Z. R.
Brockway, fully confirms these conclusions.
Just now the industries of New York prisons are partially re-established.
The Fassett bill, passed in the spring of 1889, enabled various industries to
be apportioned to the various prisons, one prison not to compete with
another, and the number of men engaged in any one industry in a prison not
to exceed five per cent. of the total number engaged in the same industry
throughout the entire state. The question of productive prison industry is
still, however, far from settled.
The physical and industrial education is not the whole of the training given
at Elmira. A third, and scarcely less important, factor is the moral and

æsthetic training. There is no official chaplain at Elmira. “There is,” says
Mr. Brockway, “in the minds of men, as observed during imprisonment, an
unexplained but actual repugnance to professional, official, and stereotyped
religious phrases, while for the noble character of the practical Christian, in
common affairs, unheralded and unnamed, there is among prisoners a quick
and favourable response.” Although there are no resident chaplains, various
ministers and others—Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish—attend frequently,
and hold services, lectures, classes, etc. The class in Practical Morality,
originated a few years ago by Professor Collin, has been judiciously
managed, and has proved a valuable feature in the work. The æsthetic
culture has been chiefly carried on by means of the systematic study of
literature. The results in this department have been unexpectedly
encouraging. At first the men met the attempt with sullen stupidity as a new
task imposed upon them. Gradually this impression was conquered; the men
slowly began to acquire an eager appetite for Chaucer and Shakespeare, for
Emerson and Browning. The applications for admission to the English
Literature class became very numerous, and at one time there was so great a
run on Jowett’s Plato at the Reformatory library that a special regulation
had to be made concerning its issue. It is satisfactory to learn that this taste
has, in many cases at all events, survived incarceration, as a wholesome
recreation for leisure hours. “In my work with the class in English
Literature,” writes the instructor in that department, Mr. Douglas, “I
proceed on the basis that the earnest obligatory study—let me emphasise
the word study—of mental and moral beauty developes or creates the
mental and moral faculty of appreciation; and, furthermore, that mental and
moral habits may be formed just as certainly as physical habits, and without
any more conscious co-operation of the individual than is required in
physical practice.” It has been mentioned already that a newspaper, the
Summary, is published within the Reformatory; it contains both local and
general news, as well as passages from good authors; the inmates contribute
to this paper, and at one time it was ably edited by a prisoner. It has been
said, with justice, that the Summary compares favourably with the average
American newspaper published outside prison walls.
The prison, as Professor Collin remarks, must be “a moral hospital.” As Sir
Thomas More said long ago, the end of punishment is “nothing else but the
destruction of vices and the saving of men.” Mr. Brockway, and those who

are working with him, have clearly realised this; the training they give is
rational and scientific, and hence its success. During the thirteen years from
the opening of the Reformatory to the end of 1889, nearly 4000 prisoners
were received at Elmira on an indefinite sentence. Over 2300 of these were
paroled, and of these 15.2 per cent. only are estimated as having “probably
returned to criminal practices and contact.”
Elmira is at present the most promising direction in which we can turn for
light on the treatment of the criminal. Its wholesome and improving
discipline stands in favourable contrast to the lax indulgence and shameful
neglect of the criminal which coexist generally in the United States. The
system is not perfect, and it has been unfavourably reported on by some
observers. It is undoubtedly a defect that the prisoner must be released,
whatever his condition, at the expiring of his legal maximum sentence; this
is, however, an inevitable compromise. Notwithstanding all defects, Elmira
is full of encouragement, for it shows us a community awakening to an
active sense of its duties, so long forgotten, towards those weaker members
who, if neglected, become so dangerous to themselves and to others. “It is
an interesting sight,” remarks Dr. Wey, “when the school is in session, to
see a group of men, felons every one, gathered about an instructor, intently
listening as he makes clear some step in the work in hand not fully or
clearly understood, going through the various processes, one by one, and
explaining until the dullest mind can comprehend. It is not expected that,
with the comparatively limited time for instruction, these men will become
skilled mechanics. But rather the idea has been to train the hand and eye,
and teach the use of tools, to awaken an ambition to pursue a lawful calling,
and appreciate the value of a practical knowledge of a trade, so that when
the time shall come that they pass beyond the prison doors, and again come
into contact with society, they will not be handicapped by the same
conditions that formerly operated to their detriment; but with increased
resources of mind and body will be enabled to occupy a higher and more
self-respecting place.”[110] The example of Elmira is spreading in America;
in Ohio, for instance, youthful criminals are being brought up on the broad
basis of manual training, and among the branches of industry taught are
farming, fruit-growing, carpentry, shoemaking, painting, tailoring, baking,
laundring, housework, vocal and band music, telegraphy and printing. On
the continent of Europe—especially, perhaps, in Germany—the system is

beginning to attract attention; and while it would be too sanguine to
conclude that Elmira has solved the question of the treatment of the
criminal, there can be no doubt as to the value of its contribution to this
difficult problem.[111]
It can scarcely be necessary to say that in any effectual treatment flogging
can have no part. It would not have been necessary to say a word on this
point if within very recent times an English Parliament had not been found
so lamentably ignorant of historic evolution in this matter, of the results of
experience, and of rational principles, as to pass a Corporal Punishment
Bill. The objections to flogging are by no means of a sentimental character.
We have seen that the instinctive criminal, although often cowardly enough,
is by no means peculiarly sensitive to pain. Flogging is objectionable
because it is ineffectual (as was shown long since), and because it brutalises
and degrades those on whom it is inflicted, those who inflict it, and those
who come within the radius of its influence. These facts are well known to
those who have more than a superficial acquaintance with the insides of
prisons, and should have been ascertained by those individuals who
presume to legislate, before they voted in the face of reason and experience.
To flog a man for whatever offence, however brutal, is to sanction his
brutality. Capital punishment, which is brutal like flogging, is
comparatively free from the brutalising influence of flogging. The method
of flogging is so obviously unfit to humanise and socialise any human
being, that the impulse to inflict it can only spring from a relic of savagery
of the same kind as that which inspires the criminal, without his excuse of a
morbid or defective organisation. It can only be said in excuse of those who
advocate it that they have no experience in the matter. Those who have
witnessed it have, however, recorded their experiences. Thus, to mention
one instance, Sir Robert Rawlinson, after giving a vivid account of flogging
as he has himself seen and heard it, adds:—“I will strive in my mind to
judge those members of Parliament who now advocate the revival of
corporal punishment charitably, by considering that they have never seen it
as I have feebly attempted to describe it: the degraded man lashed to the
triangles, the white clean skin of an Englishman exposed to the cool
morning air, to be scored, cut up, and scarred into a pulpy, blood-smeared
lump of living human flesh. Take the vision away: it is too hideous even to
remember.” Even if there were less evidence as to the ineffectual character

of flogging as a deterrent, and to its bad influence on the morale of a prison,
we cannot afford to flog any human being. It is well to meditate on the
words of Dostoieffsky, who was familiar with the various forms of
flogging, and has recorded his convictions in his Recollections of the Dead-
House. After giving his opinion that “the rods are the most terrible
punishment in use among us,” and speaking of the demoralising influence
of flogging on those who inflict it, he concludes:—“Let me add that the
possibility of such a licence acts contagiously on the whole of society: such
a power is seductive. A society which regards these things with an
indifferent eye is already infected to the bone. The right accorded to a man
to punish his fellows corporally is one of the sores of our society; it is the
surest method of annihilating the spirit of citizenship.” Flogging has not yet
reached among us the extension which it then had in Russia and in Siberia,
but its character and influence remain the same, and the warning seems to
be still needed.
With the indeterminate sentence must always be associated conditional
liberation—i.e., liberation by ticket-of-leave or on parole, liable to
revocation in case of misbehaviour. It is not, however, necessary to insist on
this, as the principle has long been practically recognised in England and
elsewhere. It exists in Belgium, some of the American states, Hungary,
Saxony, Switzerland, the Grand Duchy of Baden, etc.
A very desirable accompaniment to any system of dealing with criminals is
a sound system for their registration and recognition. The method originated
by M. Alphonse Bertillon is now adopted in France, Russia, Japan, Spain,
Italy, the Argentine Republic, and some parts of Germany, and it is being
adopted in several of the United States. By this method the height, the
length and width of head, the measurements of left foot, of outstretched
arms, of trunk when seated, of fourth finger of left hand, of left arm, length
of ear, colour of eyes, and any marks are recorded, together with the
photograph, profile and full face. The method of classifying the
photographs in its simplest form was thus generally described by M. A.
Bertillon a few years ago (Revue Politique et Littéraire, 28 April 1883).
Suppose we have 80,000 photographs. They are first divided according to
the sex, the men on one side, the women on the other. These latter do not
reach 20,000. The 60,000 men who remain are divided into three classes
according to height; the short numbering about 20,000, the middle-sized

numbering about 20,000, and the tall 20,000. Each of these divisions is
divided into three series according to length of head. These new divisions,
to the number of nine, contain rather more than 6000 each. Each of these
sub-divisions is then divided into three groups according to length of foot,
each group containing about 2000 photographs. Each of these groups is
again sub-divided into three, according to length of outstretched arms
(grande envergure). Each of these groups contains about 600, and they are
further sub-divided with reference to age, colour of eyes, and length of
middle finger. Thus by means of four new anthropological characters (sex,
height, age, and colour of eyes have long been noted) 80,000 photos can be
easily divided into groups of 50. The measurements can be taken in two or
three minutes, and require no special intelligence. When an individual
stands as regards height at the border of two classes, he is put into both.
Thrusting a man into prison, when everything is said, is a measure only to
be taken with the utmost circumspection, after consideration of the
individual’s antecedents, and a clear conception of the ends to be attained
by imprisoning him. To relegate almost indiscriminately to prison the
miscellaneous army that file through a police court is an ignorant and
dangerous policy; there is little hope of good result, and a considerable
chance of evil result. If the period is for a few weeks only no permanent
beneficial end can be anticipated, even under the best of conditions; while
during so short a period no useful work can be commenced, so that there is
a direct incitement to idleness. When the prison has been decided on, the
period of detention must be indefinite, according to the results attained in
the opinion of those competent officers specially appointed to form such
decisions, and the liberation will be conditional.
It is a wholesome sign of progress that in so many European countries
substitutes for the prison, in the case of minor offenders (i.e., occasional
criminals), are being anxiously sought and gradually adopted. One cannot
avoid seeing how many individuals are unnecessarily condemned even to
penal servitude. In our convict prisons there exists a very excellent plan,
entirely in accordance with rational principles, of forming what is called a
“Star” class of convicts—that is, a “special class of those not versed in
crime.” The authorities “cannot speak too highly of the general tone and
behaviour” of these men, their “decidedly good disposition,” “keen anxiety
to gain a knowledge of some sort of trade,” sense of “the moral degradation

in which they have placed themselves,” etc. Their industry and freedom
from prison offences are so marked, “and the special reports on the subject
have been so uniformly to the same effect, that it is no longer necessary to
call for such reports.” This is all very gratifying, but it is not at all clear that
these men should have been convicts at all. There are other and more
satisfactory methods of dealing with such persons.
It is not possible here to do more than touch slightly on the various methods
of dealing with occasional criminals. The one that approaches most nearly
to imprisonment is the method of pronouncing suspended sentences of
imprisonment to hang over the inculpated individual during a limited
period, at the end of which period, if his behaviour is good, the sentence
lapses. Imprisonment is thus, as Mr. Tallack remarks, commuted into
liability to imprisonment. This plan, applied to minor offences, was adopted
in Belgium in 1888, and is in use in some of the United States. In England
the First Offenders’ Act enables the magistrate to accept the prisoner’s own
recognisances to come up for judgment if called upon, but the law does not
seem to be applied so frequently as is desirable. The old English system of
recognisances, in which the guilty party deposits a sum of money, is an
excellent guarantee to society against his recidivism, and is deserving of
extension to all those cases to which it may prove adapted. This plan has
been adopted in the United States and in Denmark. A very large proportion
of small offenders can be dealt with adequately by means of a fine. This
should not be of too trifling a character when the offence has been
frequently repeated, and the means of the offender are ample. Nor does it
appear desirable that the offender should be allowed at will to choose
between fine and imprisonment. The notion of reparation should be
combined with the fine when possible, the offender, as Garofalo proposes,
paying an indemnity to the injured person, and a fine to the community.
With our abstract and impersonal method of dealing with crime, we are
much too apt to forget the recompense that is due to the injured person. Féré
has suggested that the State ought to undertake this reparation; the
community, he argues, has failed in its duty of protecting one of its
members, and it ought therefore to repair the injury which it has not known
how to prevent. Crime being largely the result of social conditions, the
damage it causes should be supported socially by the society which
generated the individual. A more practical first step, however, seems to be a

recognition that the criminal should be bound to repair the damage he had
caused. This reparation should be on a very liberal scale, and with due
regard to the anxiety or suffering inflicted on the injured party. When the
offender is not in a position to pay money, there should, as Prins points out
(and Sir Thomas More long before him), be suitable provision to enable
him to give so many days of his labour to work out his penalty and
reparation. In several European countries imprisonment for mendicity,
vagabondage, and other minor offences, has been abolished, and
compulsory work substituted: this is a reasonable change.
In the slightest cases of all, every end of social protection should be attained
by a formal “caution.” The publicity which this involves is itself, under
modern conditions of life, a sufficient safeguard.
The special and very numerous class of habitual drunkards must be dealt
with by special methods. The method, if method it can be called, of treating
such cases by a few days’ imprisonment is glaringly ineffective. It is a
waste of public time and money, as well as a danger to the individual
himself and to society. Habitual inebriates can only be dealt with fairly
when they are recognised as diseased persons, to be treated on rational
principles, and to be saved, whether they will or not, from doing injury to
society and to themselves. It is incomprehensible that in so drunken a
country as England this question should not before now have had serious
attention, instead of being left to voluntary agency. To leave habitual
alcoholism and its results to voluntary agency is as reasonable as it would
be to leave the care and control of the insane to voluntary agency. The case
for the control and treatment of the inebriate is, indeed, considerably
stronger than that for controlling the insane.
To sum up briefly the points in the treatment of the criminal which have
been reviewed in this chapter:—
Capital punishment is disappearing. There is, however, no reason to hasten
unduly its complete extinction, because lifelong imprisonment, under
existing conditions, is frequently less humane, and is not of greater value
for purposes of social protection.
The prison needs to be made a far more active and thorough instrument of
social reformation than it is at present. Great circumspection must be shown

in selecting the individual whom it is desirable to send to prison, but when
selected he must be retained until there is reasonable presumption that he
will no longer be dangerous to society. In place of mere routine and
surveillance, he must be subjected to intelligent and energetic treatment.
While he should usually be guarded from contact with his fellow-prisoners,
it is desirable, with due restrictions, to promote his intercourse with selected
persons of the outside world. His conditional liberation should be delayed
until he can be placed in some situation which will enable him to earn his
own living. The plan of fixing beforehand the period of the prisoner’s
detention appears to have nothing to recommend it, and should be entirely
abolished.
In dealing with occasional criminals whom it is not necessary or desirable
to put into prison, liability to imprisonment should be substituted. The
system of recognisances and of fines to the community, together with
reparation to the injured individual, should be developed and extended to all
cases to which it may suitably be applied. When the offender is unable to
pay a pecuniary fine, he should not be imprisoned, but compelled to give
his work.
The class of habitual drunkards requires special and compulsory treatment
in special asylums.

CHAPTER VII.

CONCLUSIONS.
We have now seen, in its main outlines, the present condition of this question of the nature and treatment
of the criminal. We have seen that criminality is a natural phenomenon, to be studied gravely and
carefully according to natural methods; and that by natural and reasonable methods alone can the
problem of its elimination be faced with any chance of success.
A simple and obvious conclusion it seems. Yet it is a conclusion not even yet generally accepted, and
which is only beginning to find expression in our social life. It is still quite usual to find that crime is
regarded as an abstract matter, not to be treated seriously unless the criminal himself is ignored. On the
other hand, when the criminal comes in for discussion it is merely as a subject for sensational excitement,
or unwholesome curiosity, as a creature to be vituperated or glorified without measure.
The criminal has always been the hero, almost the saint, of the uncultured. That attitude of unbounded
reverence for the lunatic, as for an inspired being, and unquestioning submission to his wildest acts which
to-day can scarcely be found in Europe outside Turkey, has by no means died out where the criminal is
concerned, even in the most civilised country. The same reverence or amazement that the educated feel
for the man of genius, the uneducated feel for the criminal.
The Romans gave the name of Hercules to great criminals after death, and dedicated a distinct cult to
them. If we go back to a still more primitive phase of life as preserved in folk-lore, and still to some
extent perpetuated, we find that all that belongs to an executed criminal brings luck. A finger or other
small bone kept in the purse will preserve it from ever being empty. It also keeps away vermin, and
protects a thief from his victim. Buried beneath the threshold it brings perpetual blessing, and to have a
thief’s thumb among his goods is an excellent thing for a shopkeeper. The people came for the Marquise
de Brinvilliers’s bones the day after her execution; they regarded her as a kind of saint, says Mme. de
Sevigné. When at Breslau the old Rabenstein (the gallows) was broken down, a great trade was done by
the workmen in the bones found beneath. Precious above all is the blood of a criminal; even a few drops
on a rag are most costly. Such blood, when drunk, heals fevers and other diseases, just as the blood of
gladiators was among the old Romans a cure for epilepsy. It must be drunk fresh, if possible warm. Bread
dipped in this blood and eaten is good against the gout. The halter with which a criminal has been hanged
has much power and brings luck. When it is struck three times on the threshold, the house is preserved
from lightning. The same put into a beer cask with a criminal’s thumb has an excellent influence on the
beer. In Franconia the fat of criminals is sometimes inquired for at the druggist’s, and a substance, so
called, is handed over. When in Prussia executions took place in public, there was always friction
between the armed guards and the crowd of women, who at all costs pressed forward with spoons, cups,
and dishes to catch some of the blood. At the execution of a murderer at Hanau in 1861, several men leapt
on to the scaffold and drank the steaming blood. At the execution of two murderers in Berlin in 1864, the
executioner’s assistants dipped numbers of white handkerchiefs in the blood, and received two thalers for
each. The bystanders even call upon the criminal for his most powerful intercession in Heaven.
According to Pitré, there is still in Sicily a fetichistic adoration for the souls of the beheaded. The
criminal is a person endowed with divine force, to be treated with awe and reverence, and whose blood
and flesh have something of the old sacramental power of infusing the divine one’s energy into the body
of him who eats of it.[112]

Lacenaire.

In a less crude form, and among persons who lay claim to a somewhat higher degree of culture, the same
veneration has long existed and still exists. Appert, writing immediately after the execution of Lacenaire
at Paris, says:—“His portraits were displayed on quays and boulevards. From all sides exquisite meats
and delicate wines reached his cell, while, two steps away, miserable creatures driven to crime by hunger
ate the black and hard bread of the gaol. Every day some man of letters visited him, carefully noting his
sarcasms, his phrases composed in drunkenness or studiously calculated for effect; women, young,
beautiful, and elegantly attired, solicited the honour of being presented to him, and were in despair at his
refusal; a noble countess, the mother of a family, addressed verses to him, and drew upon herself a reply
at which no doubt she blushed. He himself mocked at the infatuation he excited. ‘They come to me,’ he
said, ‘as they would ask a ticket from M. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire to see the elephants’ den.’” When
Cartouche was in prison he was visited by many distinguished ladies and overwhelmed by their
attentions. The Abbé Crozes tells us that Tropmann, the brutal murderer, when in prison received a great
number of letters from ladies, full of anxiety in regard to his spiritual welfare, and asking for the most
minute details concerning him. Some of these letters were reproduced in the Figaro. I have not seen
them, but Dr. Corre says: “Their perusal stupefies one; they witness, among women who have been well
brought up, to an ill-defined obsession, of the nature of which they are even themselves unaware, and
which perhaps had its origin in an unavowable sentiment of love, born of mystery and the unknown.” It is
not only women in whom this ancient worship of the criminal still survives. In a recent newspaper I read
concerning a murderer: “One of the saddest sights we have ever witnessed was the prison van going
along Waterloo Place at midnight under the beautiful moonlight with a great crowd running after it
cheering loudly the poor wretch within—cheering that never ceased till the van disappeared inside the
prison gate. The crowd was composed chiefly of young men, many of them well dressed, and not a few
accompanied by their sweethearts. The scene suggested a convoy by the students of a favourite singer
rather than that by the youth of even the lowest class in Edinburgh of a brutal murderer of a harmless
English gentleman.” And, again, in another newspaper: “On Monday many visitors were in Seaham for
Bank Holiday and the flower show. Those who visited the cavern where the girl is supposed to have been
murdered were ten times more numerous than those who went to the flower show. Nearly all were
strangers to the town, and had journeyed thither for the express purpose of viewing the scene of the
tragedy. Many took a memento of some sort, either a chipping of rock, a pebble, or a stone from the cave.
Some went so far as to take water from the pool where deceased was found, away with them in bottles.”

It is well known that when a woman has murdered her husband it is by no means unusual for a number of
letters to be sent to her, before the issue of the trial is known, containing offers of marriage.
It is not possible to regard the criminal as a hero or a saint after we have once seriously begun to study his
nature. He is simply a feeble or distorted person to whom it has chanced—most often, perhaps, from lack
of human help—to fall out of the social ranks. It is as unreasonable and as inhuman for a whole nation to
become excited over him, and to crave for the minutest details concerning him, as we now deem it to
expose the miseries of any other abnormal person—man of genius or idiot, leper or lunatic—to the
general and unmerciful gaze. Not that any of these may not be studied; they must be studied, but not
delivered over to unrestrained curiosities, sentimentalities, cruelties. No external force can change this
attitude; no censorship of newspapers will avail. Only the slow influences of education, and a rational
knowledge of what criminality means, can effect a permanent change. But until this has been effected,
one of the most fertile sources of crime, what has been well called the contagion of crime, will remain, as
it is to-day, a danger in all civilised countries, a danger which is suggesting heroic remedies. The minute
details of every horrible crime are to-day known at once by every child in remotest villages. The recital of
it stirs up all the morbid sedimentary instincts in weak and ill-balanced natures; and whenever a large
community grows excited over a crime, that community becomes directly responsible for a whole crop of
crimes, more especially among young persons and children.[113]
We have, then, to reform our emotional attitude towards the criminal. On the other hand, we have yet
something to do in reforming our rational attitude towards crime. “There are no crimes; there are only
criminals.” That saying of Lacassagne’s indicates the direction in which practical changes must develop.
“All progress in penal jurisprudence,” as Salillas well says, “lies in giving consideration to the man.” The
question of legal methods, criteria, and tribunals is one of considerable importance from this point of
view, and it is one to which sufficient attention has not yet been given. It is unfortunate that, in this
country at all events, there seems to be a tendency to antagonism or divergence between, on the one hand,
the medical and scientific side and, on the other, the judicial and executive side in the treatment of the
criminal.[114] Whether this divergence is due chiefly to the lawyers or to the doctors is not quite clear, but
it is essential that it should come to an end. Both lawyers and doctors exist for the sake of society, and are
the servants of society; society, in its own interests, must see to it that they agree quickly. But so long as
society allows antiquated laws and methods to prevail, there must be disagreement—disagreement which
is disastrous to social interests. We need, before everything else, an enlightened public opinion.
A question which is constantly arising, and constantly leading to direct divergence between the exponents
of science and the exponents of law, is the question of insanity. Under existing conditions it is frequently
a matter of some moment whether a criminal is insane or not. Now whether a man is insane or not is
largely a matter of definition. Even with the best definition we cannot always be certain whether a given
person comes within the definition, but it is still possible to have a bad definition and a good definition.
The definition which lawyers in England are compelled to accept is of the former character. The ruling
still relied on is that of the judges in the MacNaghten case, many years ago: “That to establish a defence
on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that at the time of committing the act the accused was
labouring under such a defect of reason from disease of the mind as not to know the nature and quality of
the act he was doing, or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.” That this
metaphysical and unpractical test will not do has been clearly recognised by some of the most eminent
lawyers, who are quite in agreement with medical men. “The test of insanity which commends itself to
medical men,” says Sir J. Crichton-Browne, “was never more clearly and succinctly expressed than by
Lord Bramwell when in the Dove case he asked, ‘Could he help it?’ Could he help it? That is the real
practical question at issue in any case in which the defence of insanity is set up.”[115] It should be added
that Lord Bramwell has not always been able to maintain this position. “It ought to be the law of
England,” says Mr. Justice Stephen, a very great authority, “that no act is a crime if the person who does
it is at the time when it is done prevented by defective mental power, or by any disease affecting his
mind, from controlling his conduct, unless the absence of the power of self-control has been produced by

his own default.” A reasonable doctrine to lay down, no doubt, and one which medical men generally
would accept; but one asks oneself at once: How many persons guilty of serious crimes—the only class
in regard to whom the question is of practical importance—are to be counted sane?
The point on which we must fix our attention, however, is that it should make so much difference
whether a criminal is insane or not. Our law is still in so semi-barbaric a condition that the grave interests
of society and of the individual are made to hinge on a problem which must often be insoluble.
Practically it cannot make the slightest difference whether the criminal is sane or insane. Sane or insane,
he is still noxious to society, and society must be protected from him. Sane or insane, it is still our duty
and our interest to treat him humanely, and to use all means in our power to render him capable of living
a social life. Under any system, at once fairly humane and fairly rational, the question of insanity, while
still of interest, can make little practical difference, either to society or to the criminal. It is unreasonable
and anti-social to speak of insanity as a “defence.” It is an explanation, but, from the social point of view,
it is not a defence. Suppose we accept the definition of insanity which, as we have seen, is now widely
accepted by medical men and favoured by many eminent lawyers, that insanity is a loss of self-control,
the giving way to an irresistible impulse. It cannot be unknown to any one that self-control may be
educated, that it may be weakened or strengthened by the circumstances of life. If we define insanity as a
loss of self-control and accept that as a “defence,” we are directly encouraging every form of vice and
crime, because we are removing the strongest influence in the formation of self-control. When a
“defence” of kleptomania was brought before an English judge in a case of theft he is said to have
observed: “Yes, that is what I am sent here to cure.” We need not hesitate to accept this conception of the
function of the court, provided always that the treatment is scientific, effectual, and humane.
The fact that to-day it is not so, and that lawyers and doctors are helpless to make it so, is a glaring proof
of the necessity which exists for society, in its own interests and in those of its weaker members, to take
intelligent cognisance of these matters, and to pave the way for reasonable action. In the first chapter of
this book I noted, without calling any special attention to it, the curiously divergent way in which
somewhat similar cases were treated. One girl was treated kindly and sent to a clergyman’s house: she
“recovered.” Little Marie Schneider was sent to prison for eight years, the years during which she will
develop into a woman. What will she be fit for when she comes out at the age of twenty? She may come
out a human tigress, or merely the crushed and helpless product of prison routine. In either case what
intelligent principle guided the society that condemned her to spend those eight years in prison? The lad
who killed his little sister was sent to penal servitude for ten years. What will he be good for when he
comes out? “In any case,” as Dr. Savage remarks, “the boy is pretty certain to end his days either as a
lunatic or a confirmed criminal, and I fancy the best course has been taken to make him the latter. So
society will suffer the more, and the boy himself will be none the better.”
These problems are unknown to the law, but they are beginning to stir among the community. A girl of
twelve not long since murdered a child of four, as she herself subsequently confessed, in much the same
manner as Marie Schneider murdered Margarete Dietrich. The jury acquitted her. They acted in defiance
of the evidence and of the law. It is clear that what they said to themselves was this: The law will send
this girl to prison for some ten or fifteen years. We do not believe in the advantage of that, and we prefer
to deliver her from the law altogether. They were, as the judge said, a very merciful jury. But it is not by
shuffling evasions of law that civilisation progresses. We need just and reasonable laws, not merciful
juries. It is not to the advantage of society that young murderesses should wander at large, though it may
very possibly be better than throwing them into the prison as at present constituted. The “merciful” jury,
as in the south of Italy, becomes the hysterical and too often venial jury. We cannot be too grateful for the
courage and honesty with which, as a rule, English juries and judges fulfil their functions; it is to this
adherence to law that many intelligent foreign observers attribute the fact that criminality in England is in
some respects less serious than one might be led to expect. If, however, this attitude is to be maintained,
and we are to avoid the dangers of lying and cowardly verdicts, we must see to it that our law keeps pace
with our knowledge and with our methods of social progress.

The institution of the jury is well rooted in England, and on the whole very efficient. There is not likely to
be any agitation for some time to come for its abolition, as there has been in Italy and France and
Switzerland. But there is at all events one modification in our criminal courts which is urgently required.
It is entirely opposed to the interests of justice, and therefore of society, that the scientific conclusions in
a case should be thrust into a partisan position. Experts will often differ as lawyers often differ, but the
lawyer is not more competent to decide on the science of the expert than the expert is competent to
decide on the law of the lawyer. It is not for the interests of justice that one expert, representing perhaps
only his own opinion, should weigh against another representing perhaps the general body of scientific
opinion on that subject. It is not calculated for the ends of justice that the judge, however quick and
intelligent, should have to pronounce on matters concerning which he can only speak as a layman, and
necessarily falls into frequent errors of judgment. Special points involving special knowledge or skill
must be submitted to a commission of experts, and the verdicts of the commission on these special points
must be accepted by the court, though subject to an appeal to a supreme medico-legal tribunal. Some
such method as this is now being widely demanded by intelligent opinion in the interests of justice. At the
International Congress on Forensic Medicine, held in Paris in 1889, this tendency came out very clearly,
and was formulated in the following proposition which the Congress adopted:—“To guarantee the
interests of society and of the accused in all medico-legal investigations, at least two experts shall be
employed. These shall be appointed by the judge.” It is to be hoped, in the interests of justice, that the
pressure of public opinion will hasten the adoption of this reasonable and moderate reform in criminal
procedure.
Our courts of justice are still pervaded by the barbaric notion of the duel. We arrange a brilliant
tournament, and are interested not so much in the investigation of truth as in the question of who will
“win.” We cannot hope for any immediate radical change in this method, but it is our duty to do all that
we can to strengthen those elements in our courts which are concerned, not with the gaining of a cause,
but with the investigation of truth. This and all other reforms in our methods of dealing with the criminal,
as I have already pointed out, and would again insist, cannot be attained by a mere administrative fiat; nor
is it desirable that they should be. Before any reform can be safely embodied in the law it must first be
embodied in the popular consciousness. We need here, as in so many other fields of our social life, a
strong body of intelligent and educated opinion. This must accompany that revival, under the inspiration
of the methods of natural science, of that science of jurisprudence which is at present the most stationary
and scholastic of all the sciences.
These problems are every day becoming more pressing. The level of criminality, it is well known, is
rising, and has been rising during the whole of the present century, throughout the civilised world. In
France, in Germany, in Italy, in Belgium, in Spain, in the United States, the tide of criminality is
becoming higher steadily and rapidly. In France it has risen several hundred per cent.; so also for several
kinds of serious crime in many parts of Germany; in Spain the number of persons sent to perpetual
imprisonment nearly doubled between 1870 and 1883; in the United States the criminal population has
increased since the war, relatively to the population, by one-third. There is, no doubt, room for fallacy in
many of these statistics; various circumstances serve to modify such figures—a greater or less intolerance
of crime, more or less success in capturing criminals, and variations in the methods of dealing with them.
On the whole, however, there seems to be a general agreement that the increase is real.
Insular Great Britain alone appears to be relatively unsubmerged by the rising tide of criminality; but
even here there is a real increase, in proportion to the population, in the more serious kinds of crime.
Crimes of passion are rarer among the Anglo-Saxon race in England, Scotland, and America than
anywhere else; but crimes of interest are proportionately more common than elsewhere. The decrease is
in minor offences, and is due in large measure, no doubt, to reasons connected with the police. The
anomaly of the comparative freedom of Great Britain from crime has been explained by foreign
observers in several ways—by the former frequency of hanging and of transportation in England, thus
eliminating a large number of criminals,[116] and by the firmness with which sentences are executed. It is

probable that the great stream of emigration from Great Britain, carrying away much of the finest, but
also much of the most turbulent elements (the two are often connected), has had a very marked influence
in this respect.
Criminality, like insanity, waits upon civilisation. Among primitive races insanity is rare; criminality, in
the true sense, is also rare. Conservatism and the rigid cult of custom form as distinct a barrier against
crime as they do against progressive civilisation. As the methods of enlarging and multiplying the uses of
our lives increase, so do the abuses of these methods. In an epoch of stress, and of much change and
readjustment in the social surroundings and relations of individuals, ill-balanced natures become more
frequent, and the anti-social and unlawful instincts are more often called out than in a stagnant society.
The criminality of the Irish in England is far greater than that of the Irish at home, and it is a significant
fact that while the Americans are more criminal than the English, the criminality of the English-born in
the United States is more than double that of the native American whites. Like insanity,[117] criminality
flourishes among migrants, and our civilisation is bringing us all more or less into the position of
migrants.
But the problem of criminality is not thereby rendered hopeless. Rather it is shown to be largely a social
fact, and social facts are precisely the order of facts most under our control. The problem of criminality is
not an isolated one that can be dealt with by fixing our attention on that and that alone. It is a problem
that on closer view is found to merge itself very largely into all those problems of our social life that are
now pressing for solution, and in settling them we shall to a great extent settle it. The rising flood of
criminality is not an argument for pessimism or despair. It is merely an additional spur to that great task
of social organisation to which during the coming century we are called.
It is useless, or worse than useless, to occupy ourselves with methods for improving the treatment of
criminals, so long as the conditions of life render the prison a welcome and desired shelter. So long as we
foster the growth of the reckless classes we foster the growth of criminality. So long as there are a large
body of women in the East of London, and in other large centres, who are prepared to say: “It’s Jack the
Ripper or the bridge with me. What’s the odds?”[118] there will be a still larger number of persons who
will willingly accept the risks of prison. “What’s the odds?” Liberty is dear to every man who is fed and
clothed and housed, and he will not usually enter a career of crime unless he has carefully calculated the
risks of losing his liberty and found them small; but food and shelter are even more precious than liberty,
and these may be secured in a prison. As things are, the asylum and the workhouse, against which there is
a deep prejudice, ingrained and irrational, would have a greater deterring influence than the prison. There
are every morning at Paris 50,000 persons who do not know how they will eat or where they will sleep.
[119] It is the same in every great city; for such the prison can be nothing but a home. It is well known that
the lot of the convict, miserable as it is, with its dull routine and perpetual surveillance, is yet easier, less
laborious, and far more healthy than that to which thousands of honest working men are condemned
throughout Great Britain. The fate reserved for a French convict is one that might well be the reward of
honesty. He is sent to New Caledonia, to marry, to settle, perhaps to become rich. “I do not know,” an ex-
deputy, sent out to report on the condition of the convicts, is said to have declared, “any struggling
peasant or small proprietor in France who would not gladly exchange his lot for that of a convict of the
first class in New Caledonia.” “The working classes,” as Professor Prins, one of the most able and
thoughtful students of this subject, remarks, “badly housed, badly nourished, vegetate at the mercy of
economic crises.[120] The worker is always on the borders of vagabondage; the vagabond is always on the
borders of crime. The entire working classes are thus exposed in the first line, and whether it is a question
of disease or of crime, it is they who succumb first.”[121] Crime would be much commoner than it is if it
were not for the communistic practice of mutual helpfulness which rules so largely among the poorest
classes, and mitigates the stress of misery. All the more thoughtful students of the criminal, among whom
Ferri in this respect stands first, have seen the direct bearing on criminality of what Colajanni has called
Social Hygiene. We may neglect the problems of social organisation, but we do so at our peril.

It was at one time thought that the great panacea for the prevention of crime was education. Undoubtedly
education has an important bearing on criminality, but we now know that the mere intellectual rudiments
of education have very little influence indeed in preventing crime, though they may have a distinct
influence in modifying its forms. Such education merely puts a weapon into the hands of the anti-social
man. The only education that can avail to prevent crime in any substantial degree must be education in
the true sense, an education that is as much physical and moral as intellectual, an education that enables
him who has it to play a fair part in social life. The proportion of criminals with some intellectual
education is now becoming very large; the proportion of criminals who are acquainted with any trade still
remains very small; the proportion of criminals engaged in their trade at the time of the crime is smaller
still. We seem to be approaching a point at which it will become obvious that every citizen must be
educated to perform some useful social function. In the interests of society he must be enabled to earn his
living by that function. If we close the social ranks against him he will enter the anti-social ranks, and the
more educated he is the more dangerous he will then become.
All education must include provision for the detection and special treatment of abnormal children. We
cannot catch our criminals too young. Taverni has found that criminals in childhood are marked
especially by their resistance to educative influences. It is our duty and our interest to detect such
refractory and abnormal children at the earliest period, to examine them carefully, and to ensure that each
shall have the treatment best adapted to him. It is much easier, and much cheaper, to do that, than to wait
until he has brought ruin on himself and shame on his friends. This is beginning to be recognised and
acted upon in those countries that are most alive to the meaning of education; in Sweden, for instance,
there is a careful medical supervision of schools, by medical officers who are not subordinate to the
teachers, although this supervision is confined to the physical condition and capacities of the child. It is
indispensable, if we are to deal effectually with the criminal, that we should be able to refer to the record
of his physical, mental, and moral dispositions during childhood. In England recently a committee,
consisting of the most eminent medical men specially qualified for the task, was appointed to examine
into the condition of children in primary schools. This committee, owing chiefly to the enthusiasm and
labour of Dr. Francis Warner, accomplished much valuable work, but the London School Board refused
to allow any access to its schools. The London School Board consists, one may suppose, of intelligent
persons, genuinely interested in education, and representing the sense of the community, yet they refused
to consider one of the most serious problems that the educator has to face. So true it is that every society
has only the criminals that it deserves.
While a wise modification of the educative influences is here of the greatest importance, we must not
forget that to a very large extent the child is moulded before birth. There is no invariable fatalism in the
influences that work before birth, but it must always make a very great difference whether a man is well
born and starts happily, or whether he is heavily handicapped at the very outset of the race of life;
whether a man is born free from vices of nature, or buys freedom, if at all, at a great price. There is
evidence to show how much of the welfare of the child depends on the general physical and emotional
health of the parents, and that the child’s fate may be determined by some physical weakness, some
emotional trouble at conception or during pregnancy. No legislation can step in here, save at the most
very indirectly. We can, however, quicken the social and individual conscience. The making of children is
the highest of all human functions, and that which carries the most widespread and incalculable
consequences. It is well to remember that every falling away from health, every new strain and stress, in
man or woman, may lay an additional burden on a man or woman yet unborn, and perhaps wreck a life or
a succession of lives.
This is not the place to develop these various consequences which flow from our consideration of the
nature and treatment of the criminal. It seemed well, however, to indicate them, if only to show how large
a problem is this of criminality. Perhaps every social problem, when we begin to look into it and to turn it
round and to analyse it, will be found not to stand alone, but to be made up of fibres that extend to every
part of our social life.

APPENDIX A.

Explanation of Plates.

FRONTISPIECE.
Composite photograph of twenty criminals—“dullards”—in the Elmira Reformatory. It may be compared
with Plates XIV. and XV. I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. Hamilton Wey for these photographs.

PLATE I.
1. S. E., age 32. Life sentence. Third time a convict, and he says “all for the same man.” His story is that
he was flogged by the mate of his ship at Callao, that he jumped with the mate into the water, and after a
chase on shore he stabbed him. He speaks of the mate as his lifelong enemy. Height 6ft. 0¼ in. without
boots. Very powerful. A most determined villainous expression, but a massive forehead. Small
compressed mouth. Attempted suicide at Millbank. Lost left arm at Woking from disease of elbow joint.
2. T. W., murderer.
3. G. W., gardener, age 86; seven years for uttering counterfeit coin. Three previous short sentences.
4. J. C., farm labourer, from Nottingham, age 62; ten years’ sentence; petty thefts many times. Fourth
time a convict.
5. A. J., from Paisley, age 50; cattle stealing; two years a soldier; “could not learn the bugle-calls or
anything.” Weak-minded; most of life in prison; three terms of penal servitude; eleven shorter sentences.
6. P. J., charcoal burner and collier, from Hereford, age 36; unlawfully and maliciously wounding; “low
type of intellect.” Very troublesome at Chatham, and among the weak-minded at Millbank. One previous
sentence of penal servitude.

PLATE II.
1. T. C., chemist, from Portsea, age 21. Paid his addresses to girl whose mother objected; attempted to
murder latter by administering prussic acid. Eight years’ penal servitude. Valvular disease of heart after
rheumatic fever.
2. G. H., farm labourer, from Leeds, age 50; “very low type;” twenty years for shooting wife.
3. J. H., soldier and navvy, from Durham, age 60; conspiring to murder.
4. J. C., from Liverpool, fifteen years for manslaughter.
5. E. L., dock labourer, from Bristol. Life sentence for murdering wife’s paramour; genitals undeveloped;
fatty tumours on scapula.
6. W. G. H., from Lincoln, age 12. Manslaughter; fifteen years. Second and third toes webbed.

PLATE III.
1. R. W., dock labourer, from Paisley, age 18. Assault and robbery; ten years. Previous conviction for
theft.
2. E. S. J., farm labourer, age 38; seven years for horse-stealing and other thefts; four previous
convictions.
3. W. W., stone-masons’ labourer, from Kirkdale, age 21; seven years and flogged for robbery with
violence. Three previous shorter sentences.
4. G. W., puddler, from Salford, age 21; five years for wounding.
5. W. S., cook and steward, from Liverpool; ten years for larceny; five years previously for ditto.
6. W. C., age 25. Robbery with violence; ten years. Two shorter sentences.

PLATE IV.
1. J. J., hawker, from Hull; seven years for theft.
2. J. M., age 28; eight years a tailor, “rest of life a thief.” Seven years for larceny, housebreaking, and
receiving.
3. V. M., maker of pearl ornaments, from Birmingham, age 20. Thief chiefly; twelve times in prison.
4. J. W., collier, from Durham; seven years for felony; seven shorter sentences previously. Right eye
destroyed.
5. W. T., farm labourer, from Hereford, age 21; ten years for receiving stolen goods.
6. N. K., collier, from Gloucester; seven years for receiving joint of a sheep, stolen and cut up by another;
previous conviction for stealing fellow-labourer’s dinner. “Low type; history told as if it was all a joke.”

PLATE V.
1. J. H., from Chester, age 21; five years for burglary. In reformatory and seven times in prison. “Very
prominent forehead; small eyes nearly concealed by upper lid.”
2. J. C. E., age 25; seven years for housebreaking. “Low type.”
3. S. P.. age 35; weaver, from Wakefield; ten years’ penal servitude for felony; five years previously.
4. J. P., costermonger; seven years; house and general thief.
5. D. M., a Greek, age 16; letter sorter; five years for stealing parcels. His father had been in penal
servitude for stealing bonds.
6. H. S., letter-sorter, age 21. Five years for stealing a letter.

PLATE VI.
1. V. S., age 17; rape on girl of 13; “very low type.”

2. W. W., age 45; coal miner and stoker, from Stafford; rape on child of 10. “Strong, villainous
expression.”
3. H. O., groom and jockey, from Leeds, age 57. Bestiality; fifteen years’ penal servitude; conspiracy by
servant girl, he says. Threatened to destroy himself. “Eyes very close to the nose; small head; low type.”
4. W. M., age 32, from Manchester; nine years a soldier, farm labourer before and since; ten years for
crime contra naturam.
5. T. R., age 16; farm labourer, from Worcester; ten years for rape; “monkey face.”
6. W. B., age 23, from Manchester; height 5ft. 0½ in.; seven years for arson; intellect feeble.

PLATE VII.
Relation of the age of Fathers in normal subjects, criminals, and the insane (adapted from Marro).

Sexual
Normal. Criminals. Murderers. Thieves. Sharpers. Insane.
Offenders.
per cent. per cent. per cent. per cent. per cent. per cent. per cent.
Period of
8.8 10.9 2.9 2.7 15.5 2.8 17.0
immaturity
" maturity 66.1 56.7 44.1 66.6 57.2 60.0 47.0
" decadence 24.9 32.2 52.9 30.5 27.1 37.1 36.0

PLATE VIII.
Tattooed criminal from Lombroso’s Uomo Delinquente. A French sailor, a deserter, previously
condemned for an unknown crime. The various inscriptions and designs bear witness to his vicious and
criminal tastes. The heart’s case, for instance, is common among pæderasts.

PLATE IX.
The eight heads in this and the following Plate have been chosen, intentionally, almost at random, in
order to show the average types of criminal with whom the London police at Scotland Yard have to deal.
1. F. C., age 61. A well-known London burglar; tattooed.
2. C. D., age 31. Housebreaker. “A dangerous character.” Many scars on head, body, and limbs.
3. H. A. G., age 36. “A very clever swindler,” “of gentlemanly appearance, and good address.” Speaks
French and German.
4. W. A., age 42. “A desperate burglar, and will assuredly use firearms.” A smith, native of Middlesex.
Several scars.

PLATE X.
1. J. C., age 32. Shoemaker by trade, native of London. “A daring burglar; will probably use firearms.”
Tattooed.

2. M. A. L., age 28. Factory hand, born at Sheffield. “A dangerous thief,” who has had eight years’ penal
servitude for assault and robbery.
3. W. K., age 40. “A dangerous thief, with several convictions.”
4. R. W., age 23. Born at Hartlepool. “A dangerous man.” Larceny.

PLATE XI.
The heads in this and the following Plate are chiefly Italian, and taken from Lombroso’s Uomo
Delinquente.
1. Desroues, poisoner.
2. Cartouche.
3. B. S., Piedmontese forger.
4. Incendiary (and cinæedus) of Pesaro, nicknamed “the woman.”

PLATE XII. Italian Brigands.
1. A Calabrian brigand.
2. Carbone, a brigand chief.
3. A Basilicata brigand.
4. Venafro di Caspoli, brigand.

PLATE XIII. French Criminals (from Corre’s Les Criminels).
1. Tropmann, an Alsatian mechanic, aged 19, who assassinated a family of eight persons.
2. Pranzini, thief, and murderer of three persons.
3. Oillic, age 27, Breton sailor, leader in the murder of the officers of the Fœderis Arca. Hair black,
laughs continually, very energetic, very intemperate “without ever losing his head.”
4. Carbuccia, age 26, a Corsican, who co-operated very actively in the same tragedy. Abandoned in
childhood; very intelligent and very violent. Intemperate; handwriting tremulous like that of an old man.

PLATE XIV.
Composite photograph of eleven criminals undergoing physical training at Elmira.

PLATE XV.
Composite photograph of thirty-eight criminals undergoing physical training at Elmira.

APPENDIX B.

The Congress of Criminal Anthropology at Paris.
The second International Congress of Criminal Anthropology was held in August 1889 at Paris, in the
large amphitheatre of the Faculty of Medicine. A very considerable audience assembled here during the
week over which the Congress extended. Many distinguished representatives of science, law, medicine,
and the administrative world came from very various countries, and official representatives were present
from France, Italy, Russia, Holland, Belgium, the United States, Denmark, Sweden, Roumania, Servia,
Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Paraguay, and Hawaii. Great Britain, it will be observed, was only conspicuous by
its absence. Among those who took part in the proceedings of the Congress may be mentioned M.
Thévenet, the Minister of Justice, Dr. Brouardel, the Dean of the Medical Faculty of Paris, and President
of the Congress, MM. Théophile Roussel, Lombroso, Ferri, Garofalo, Moleschott, Lacassagne, Demange,
Van Hamel, Semal, Ladame, Benedikt, Tarde, Wilson, Tenchini, Motet, Manouvrier, Alphonse Bertillon,
Bournet, Féré, Coutagne, Letourneau, Mme. Clémence Royer, Drill, Clark Bell, Magnan, Topinard,
Delasiauve, and the General Secretary of the Congress, Dr. Magitot.
In his opening discourse Dr. Brouardel remarked that the Italian school had the great merit of taking up
again the study of a question with which philosophy, law, and medicine have always been occupied.
Every time in the history of a country that philosophic studies have free expansion, the desire to
safeguard society, the spirit of toleration, the methods for ameliorating the fate of the guilty, of protecting
them from themselves, and of taking them out of the environment which educates them to crime, have
been the object of the meditation and study of great thinkers; and their conceptions have eventually
conquered public opinion. It has been the honour of the Italian school—in the land where Roman law, the
foundation of all law, was born—that it has again put into the crucible this problem of criminality, and
that it has proceeded to the analysis of that problem by the only truly scientific method—by studying the
psychology of criminals, and their pathological abnormalities. It will be its distinction to have declared
against illusory enthusiasms, and to have founded a science which will contribute to the more efficacious
protection of society.
The first communication came from Lombroso, as the recognised chief of the Italian school. He
summarised what he believed to be the most important abnormal physical characteristics found among
criminals—the presence of cranial and facial asymmetry, precocious synostosis, unusual frequency of
left-handedness, large orbits, prominence of zygoma, large median occipital fossa, frequency of tattooing,
etc. These characters, he considered, were all due to pathological causes. The discussion was at once
commenced by M. Manouvrier. He began by declaring that he was by no means an antagonist of the
Italian school. He granted that it had been proved that physical abnormalities are more common among
criminals than among the ordinary population, but he claimed due consideration for the influence of
environment; crime is a sociological matter much more than a physiological matter. M. Dimitri Drill said
that, strictly speaking, there is no criminal type; there are, as Morel had shown, organic conditions of
defect and degeneration, but criminality remained above all a social question. MM. Pugliese and
Garofalo expressed very similar opinions. M. Lacassagne pointed out that we too often forget the factor
of misery in the production of crime; he meant not merely social misery, but physiological misery, of
which the origin was intra-uterine. As regards poverty, M. Garofalo could not share Lacassagne’s views;
his investigations had shown that the number of criminals furnished by the middle classes is,
proportionately, quite equal to that furnished by the lower classes, while for some kinds of crime the
upper classes gave a higher figure than the lower. Mme. Clémence Royer called attention to the
importance of hybridism in the genesis of crime. The recrudescences of criminality, she remarked,
correspond to the great epochs of the mingling of races. Benedikt spoke of the relation between insanity

and crime; the criminal is a diseased person, he held, or a lunatic, and we must consider the molecular
troubles of the cerebral substance as well as the external physical signs. After M. Tarde, speaking as a
juge d’instruction, had admitted the existence both of the organic predispositions to crime, and the
influence of the social environment, M. Brouardel joined in the discussion. Crime should not, he said, be
regarded as the result of any single isolated cause, physical, moral, or social, but of all those causes at
once. The diagnosis of the criminal must be subordinated to the same rules as the diagnosis of a disease;
that is to say, it is made up of related and simultaneous conditions. A single sign is insufficient to reveal
the criminal, just as a single symptom will not prove typhoid fever. Professor Ferri well summed up the
morning’s discussion. Crime, he admitted, is a very complex phenomenon; it is a sort of polyhedron, of
which every one sees a special side. All the points of view maintained that day were, at the same time,
true and incomplete. Lombroso had brought to light the biological side of crime, but that was not the
whole of it. Drill, Dekteren, and Manouvrier had shown the social side; Pugliese the legal side, which is a
more special aspect of the social side. Tarde, the sympathetic critic of criminal anthropology, had not left
out of sight the physiological side of crime. We must, like Moleschott and Brouardel, proceed
synthetically, for crime is at once a biological and a social phenomenon. He recalled a saying of
Lacassagne’s at the previous Congress, that the criminal is a microbe which only flourishes in a suitable
soil. Without doubt it is the environment which makes the criminal; but, like the cultivation medium,
without the microbe it is powerless to germinate crime. Both biological and social aspects are
fundamental in criminality, and they constitute the two essential data of criminal anthropology.
Dr. Semal, Director of the Mons Lunatic Asylum, and the official delegate of the Belgian Government,
presided at the afternoon session, when various communications of a somewhat miscellaneous character
were brought forward.
On the following morning Professor Van Hamel, of Amsterdam, presided, and M. Manouvrier brought
forward again the question of anatomical criminal characteristics and their illusory character. M.
Lombroso defended himself with his usual energy and spirit, pointing out the distinction between the
instinctive criminal and the occasional criminal. He explained that he had himself given so much
attention to the biological factor in criminality, although he was, above all, an alienist, because it had
previously been entirely neglected. He admitted that his conclusions had sometimes been too rash,
although founded on the observation of now nearly 27,000 individuals by himself and others, but he had
always been ready to give up an indefensible position. The atavism of criminals, he now believed, may
largely be explained by morbid causes. The discussion was carried on by other members, and was
sufficient, in the opinion of M. Garofalo, to show that the divergence of ideas was more apparent than
real; those who far off seem adversaries, are found on nearer view to be partisans. On his proposition, it
was decided by the Congress that it is desirable to continue on the largest scale the comparative study of
criminals and normal persons, subjecting them to a severe and minute examination, in order to ascertain
the physical differences which separate them. On the proposition of M. Lacassagne, it was unanimously
agreed that access to prisons ought to be made easier, and that the bodies of executed criminals should be
available for scientific study.
At the afternoon session, presided over by Professor Ferri, Dr. Coutagne read a paper on “The Influence
of Professions on Criminality.” Mr. Wilson followed on “The Statistics of Crime in the United States,” in
which he referred to the necessity of creating international criminal statistics, permitting of the
comparative study of crime among different nations. M. Laschi brought forward an interesting
communication on “Political Crime from the point of view of Anthropology,” in which he spoke of the
bearing of race on politics, and also on genius; and M. Giampietro dealt with “The Moral Responsibility
of Deaf-mutes in relation to Legislation.”
On Wednesday morning Baron Garofalo read an important paper on the question whether, when an
individual’s guilt has been recognised, the class of criminals to which he belongs can be determined by
criminal anthropology. This question was discussed from, necessarily, a somewhat legal point of view,
with Garofalo’s customary ability and clearness. He was not concerned, he said, with the recognition of

the criminal, but with his classification, and in criminal anthropology we must give the first place to
psychology. He insisted on the necessity for the careful psychical examination of the criminal, although it
is necessary also to consider his physical nature; while sometimes even the character of the crime is
sufficient to class the criminal. Uniformity of punishment is a manifest absurdity; and he referred to the
progress already made in France by the recognition of the gravity of incorrigible recidivism. The old
criminal law only recognised two terms, the offence and the punishment. The new criminology recognises
three terms, the crime, the criminal, and the method of repression. Criminal law, he concluded, must not
be treated as a detached and isolated science; it must be subordinated to psychology and to anthropology,
or it will be powerless to interpret and to determine, in any enlightened legislation, the true classification
of criminals. M. Alimena, a young Italian lawyer, thought that the considerations brought forward by
Garofalo furnished presumptions only, and not judicial certainties. After a lively episode between M.
Benedikt and M. Lombroso, M. Brouardel, bringing the discussion back to the point, remarked that the
problem proposed by Garofalo—the classification of criminals—can only be resolved by the totality of
the evidence. The complete investigation of the criminal can alone enlighten justice. The crime by itself
is insufficient to class the criminal, just as the most senseless act is not enough to characterise a lunatic.
The morning session was closed by some remarks from M. Herbette, the official director of the
Administration Pénitentiaire. The Administration, he observed, were following the results of criminal
anthropology with close attention, ready to adopt all conclusions that were proved, as they had already
adopted some. While recommending zeal and confidence in the pursuit of these studies, he urged that the
conclusions should be as mature and as assured as possible, or criminal anthropology would risk its
authority and prestige.
At the afternoon session, presided over by Professor Ladame (Geneva), M. Ferri read a paper on the
determining conditions of crime—individual, physical, and social—and their relative value. M. Ferri is
one of the most accomplished and philosophic advocates of the new criminal anthropology, and his paper,
and its subsequent eloquent elucidations, were listened to with great attention. Crime, he said, is at once
biological and social. Out of 100 persons living in the same conditions of misery and abandonment, 60
commit no crimes; of the other 40, 5 commit suicide; 5 become insane, 5 are beggars, 25 commit crimes;
therefore the social environment is not the exclusive cause of crime. But, again, we must not neglect the
social environment, for, to mention one piece of evidence only, the maximum of crimes against property
is reached in winter. And, again, the most delicate biological modifications must be considered, for rapes
and crimes of violence are most common when the temperature is high, and climate and barometrical
pressure play a certain part. If the thermometer had marked ten degrees less, or the barometer a few
millimetres more, perhaps such and such a crime would not have been committed. The conclusion is that,
on the one hand, we must ameliorate social conditions for the natural prevention of crime, and on the
other hand exercise measures of temporary or perpetual elimination of individuals, according as the
biological conditions in each case seem more or less curable. M. Alimena attached great importance to
education, especially to its hereditary effects. The criminal ought not to be able to say to his judge: “Why
have you not made me better?” He agreed with the words of Lacassagne at the former Congress at Rome:
“Societies have the criminals that they deserve.” M. Manouvrier considered that Ferri did not attach
enough importance to the social factor; no two persons lived in the same social environment. This was
also the opinion of M. Drill. M. Tarde expounded his views as to the characteristics of criminals being
due to the professional exercise of crime. M. Féré would not believe in any professional type until it had
been established by precise measurements. The discussion on the whole showed that, as M. Van Hamel
said, society to defend itself must have an eye on every side.
On Thursday the members of the Congress visited Sainte-Anne, where M. Magnan demonstrated the
subject of degeneration. They also visited the Prefecture of Police, where M. Alphonse Bertillon showed
his anthropometrical method of identifying criminals in action, and M. Moleschott succeeded with little
trouble in identifying a man who had given a false name.

On Friday morning M. Tarde presided, and M. Pugliese, of Trani (Italy), read a report on the criminal trial
from the sociological point of view. The evidence which demonstrates the existence of a crime and of a
criminal can only be duly weighed by a magistrate possessing much technical knowledge. It is not
enough for him to be a judge or a jurist; he must be well acquainted with anthropological and sociological
science; he must know the environment in which crime is produced, and the people who are born to live
and die in this environment. He advocated the establishment by the State of a college for the education of
magistrates. At present there is great confusion, and the magistrate is called upon to decide complex
questions of which he is quite ignorant. The duty of the judge to demand the decision of science with the
power to tread it under foot was a manifest contradiction. It was not reasonable that a medico-legal
judgment should be over-ridden by a jury, and it was time to reverse the ancient maxim that the judge is
the expert of experts. When it is a question of legal medicine, the medico-legal expert must be the judge.
There should be a medico-legal commission, whose duty it would be not to express opinions, but to give
decisions. That is the only way to avoid many scandals. M. Brouardel, from the medico-legal standpoint,
said he was not able to accept the present which Pugliese offered him. Every trial had issues which were
not medical, and here the medico-legal expert would be incompetent. Apart from this, he would be
cautious as to using anthropological data at all. It was still premature, and to go too fast was to risk
compromising everything. M. Benedikt agreed with M. Brouardel, and advocated the scientific education
of lawyers, which M. Lacassagne also considers desirable.
The next paper was by MM. Taverni and Magnan on the childhood of criminals, and the natural
predisposition to crime. M. Taverni had made a number of investigations on children in reformatories—a
study which he called pedagogic biology—and had traced backwards the childhood of criminals, and
forwards the career of unpromising children. The chief indications he had found in the childhood of
criminals were inaptitude to education, resistance to family order, and the revolt against social
conventions. Among adult criminals one found in childhood the same characters of inaptitude and
resistance. For M. Magnan the child was often already a complete criminal, as the result of physical and
moral degeneration, due to nervous, insane, or alcoholic heredity. He regarded the matter as a purely
clinical one (following Moreau, of Tours, and Morel). He brought forward many interesting examples,
and pointed out that in all of them sexual aberration played a very prominent part. An interesting
discussion followed. MM. Motet, Dalifol, Roussel, and Herbette regretted that the State did not undertake
the care of children at an earlier age, when there was greater hope of the favourable influence of physical,
moral, and intellectual education. M. Lombroso, while expressing his great esteem for M. Magnan (the
Charcot of alcoholism, as he called him), was not able to agree with him. What he had himself said about
children was founded on the observations of Perez, Taine, and Spencer. Moral sense was often lacking in
the child. He was an embryonic criminal. MM. Moleschott and Van Hamel spoke in defence of the child
who is unconscious. He was not chaste, because he had no ideas of modesty. He had no respect for truth,
and the destructive instinct is strong in him. M. Moleschott referred to the anecdote in which Goethe
recorded the delight with which, as a child, he once produced a terrible carnage among the crockery. But
we must not confuse a phase of evolution with the conditions of disease or criminality. M. Rollet, the
advocate who pleads before the tribunals at Paris the cause of all children who are arrested (about 20 to
30 boys and 8 to 10 girls every day), said that he always pleaded irresponsibility, and demanded an
acquittal. The child was then either handed over to its parents, or to the philanthropic society of which
Th. Roussel is president. If the child appeared vicious, he demanded that he should be sent to a
reformatory until the age of 20. He judged by the physiognomy and the history, but thought it would be a
great advantage to have the competent advice of a criminal anthropologist. This wish was immediately
satisfied. M. Manouvrier offered to come to the Palais de Justice every day. Mme. Pigeon said that in her
experience she had never met a child of five or six, however perverted and vicious, who was refractory to
education. It was, however, a task requiring great care and devotion. The regeneration of the child, M.
Eschenauer said, could only be by love. M. Roussel, who has devoted his life to the cause of the
disinherited children of society, spoke of the progress that had been made, and said that the tendency was
to enlarge more and more the sphere of the State.

At the afternoon session, presided over by M. Drill, M. Brouardel called the attention of the Congress to
troubles of development appearing at puberty. He drew a vivid picture of lively and intelligent Paris
gamins whose precocious development is arrested at puberty, both physically and mentally. The sexual
organs do not develop, hair does not appear on the body. Instead of this, at 16 or 18 they become plump
and feminine in appearance and manners, and there is sexual impotence. Previously brilliant at school,
they now become lazy, and incapable of sustained attention or effort. In later life they may become
artists, poets, or painters, if born in easy circumstances, but their work does not give proof of the higher
artistic qualities. Their devotion to those who surround them is often of almost feminine tenderness. The
chief factors in producing this acquired degeneration are complex, such as overwork, unhealthy
dwellings, precocious sexual habits, and early alcoholism. M. Herbette then described the efforts of the
French Government in what he described as moral orthopædics. They endeavoured to remove from the
child every idea of fatalism. M. Bérillon said he had been very successful in treating vicious children by
suggestion, and had succeeded in curing bad sexual habits at one sitting.
M. Tarde then gave a summary of his report on the old and the new foundations of moral responsibility.
In this interesting and ingenious paper, of a somewhat metaphysical character, he tried to show how
moral responsibility harmonises at once with the human conscience and with contemporary science.
Responsibility rests on identity, and by identity he meant individual identity and social identity. This
responsibility rests on the determination of our actions, and is only relative. Mme. Clémence Royer
replied from a strictly scientific standpoint. All our acts are determined by our physical nature. M.
Coutagne refused to enter the domain of metaphysics. The question was a practical one, and every
individual, sane or insane, must be treated as responsible. M. Motet said the question was a clinical one.
If the individual is normal, his responsibility is complete; if he is abnormal or degenerated, his
responsibility is limited; if he is insane, his responsibility is nil. M. Manouvrier would reject metaphysics
absolutely. M. Ferri said that we must not accept the conceptions of merit and demerit. All men are
responsible before society, but society has no right to punish. It has only the right to protect itself. M.
Tarde, in a spirited speech, defended his position. He protested against the confusion of the criminal and
the insane. There is a profound reason for the fibres of indignation and contempt that is rooted in us, and
as long as they persist we shall turn them against the criminal who acts in accordance with his native and
not morbid character.
On Saturday morning Professor Lombroso presided. A proposition declaring that it is desirable that every
Government should adopt Bertillon’s anthropometric method for the identification of recidivists was
unanimously adopted. M. Semal then read a paper on conditional liberation and conditional detention.
The beginnings of these have already appeared in several countries, but to carry them on safely on a more
extended scale it is necessary to practise the most careful physical and psychical examination of the
prisoner. This would create, under the shield of medical science, a clinical field of the bar. It would also
necessitate the spread of knowledge which is now lacking, and a re-organisation of the administration and
medical inspection of prisoners. M. Bertillon trusted that anthropological considerations would not lead
the prison administration to neglect its duties of moral reformation. M. Benedikt said that prison
chaplains agreed with medical men in recognising the incorrigibility of certain criminals. M. Drill
thought that we must clearly distinguish judgment from punishment. Reference had been made to the
sentiments of hatred and revenge, but those sentiments were the outcome of habit or atavism. Formerly
they were exercised in the same way against the insane. The change of feeling towards the insane is due
to a true appreciation of the nature and causes of insanity. We do not sufficiently consider the conditions
under which criminals are placed. It is not without reason that our Russian people speak of prisoners as
“unfortunates.” M. Vesnitch (the official representative of Servia) desired that the legal side of the
question should not be lost sight of. The study of anthropology and of law ought to be compulsory for all
those who desire to become governors of prisons.
M. Sarraute then read a paper on the judicial applications of criminal sociology. Law students should be
examined in criminal anthropology and legal medicine. Imprisonment should be for an indefinite period,

and the prisoner carefully observed and examined. The jury should be modified. M. Tarde observed that
advocates were already using the results of criminal anthropology, and it was necessary that magistrates
should be in a position to appreciate the bearings of such arguments.
M. Taladriz then read a paper on “Criminality in its relations with Ethnography,” drawing his illustrations
largely from Spain, where crime differs greatly in different parts of the peninsula. He desired the
establishment of an international penal code, protecting the rights of nationalities.
In the afternoon Professor Benedikt presided, and M. Van Hamel read his report on the “Cellular System
from the point of view of Biology and of Criminal Sociology.” He concluded that there should be a very
careful selection of cases for cellular isolation, subject to psychical and medical examination. The results
depended quite as much on the treatment adopted during the cellular confinement as on the confinement
itself.
On the proposition of M. Garofalo a commission was appointed to carry on a series of observations on
100 criminals and 100 honest persons whose antecedents were perfectly well known. On the proposition
of M. Semal, the Congress affirmed the necessity of a psycho-moral examination of the prisoner as a
preliminary to conditional liberation. It was resolved also that it is desirable that law students should be
instructed and examined in legal medicine; and, on the proposition of M. Eschenauer, that the direction
and instruction of young children in reformatories should be confided to experienced women.
In his closing discourse Professor Brouardel remarked how various and complex are the issues raised by
criminal anthropology. They were dealing with one of the most interesting and profound of all problems
—a problem which had in all ages exercised the human mind. The Congress had brought together some
of the materials for a future edifice, although they were not yet able to raise it.
The Archives de l’Anthropologie Criminelle was the official journal of the Congress, and the number for
September 1889 was entirely devoted to its proceedings. The next Congress will be held at Brussels in
1892.

APPENDIX C.

The International Association of Penal Law.
This association was founded in 1889 on the initiative of Professor von Liszt. Its success was immediate,
especially among lawyers, professors of law, and magistrates; and this success is a remarkable proof of
the great movement for penal reform which is now everywhere making itself felt. Nearly twenty
countries in Europe and America are represented by the association. It is truly international; no attempt is
made to discuss national modifications, or to advocate the doctrine of any school. The conditions of
membership involve adhesion to the following propositions:—
I.—The mission of penal law is to combat criminality regarded as a social phenomenon.
II.—Penal science and penal legislation must therefore take into consideration the results of
anthropological and sociological studies.
III.—Punishment is one of the most efficacious means which the state can use against criminality. It is
not the only means. It must not, then, be isolated from other social remedies, and, especially, it must not
lead to the neglect of preventive measures.
IV.—The distinction between accidental criminals and habitual criminals is essential in practice as well as
in theory; it must be the foundation of penal law.
V.—As repressive tribunals and the penitentiary administration have the same ends in view, and as the
sentence only acquires value by its mode of execution, the separation, consecrated by our modern laws,
between the court and the prison is irrational and harmful.
VI.—Punishment by deprivation of liberty justly occupying the first place in our system of punishments,
the association gives special attention to all that concerns the amelioration of prisons and allied
institutions.
VII.—So far as short imprisonments are concerned, the association considers that the substitution of
measures of equivalent efficacity is possible and desirable.
VIII.—So far as long imprisonments are concerned, the association holds that the length of the
imprisonment must depend not only on the material and moral gravity of the offence, but on the results
obtained by treatment in prison.
IX.—So far as incorrigible habitual criminals are concerned, the association holds that, independently of
the gravity of the offence, and even with regard to the repetition of minor offences, the penal system
ought before all to aim at putting these criminals for as long a period as possible under conditions where
they cannot do injury.
“The association,” it is elsewhere stated, “starts from this point of view, that in order to combat
criminality we must know criminality.” As Professor von Liszt said, “That which guides us and brings us
together is the conviction that penal science must rest on the firm basis of facts, must attach itself to the
realities of social and individual life, and not be content with the purely intellectual development of
purely legal notions.” This is the only sound and rational foundation for criminal law, and it is because
the association has adopted this foundation that I desire to call special attention to its valuable and fruitful
work.

The first session was held at Brussels, in August 1889. Berne was selected for the second, in 1890. The
bulletins of the association (printed both in French and German) contain the reports presented at these
meetings, as well as the subsequent discussions. They may be obtained, for a small sum, from the
publisher, J. Guttentag, Berlin, or from C. Muquardt, Librairie Européenne, Brussels. The annual
subscription is four shillings, and is payable to Professor G. A. Van Hamel, Amsterdam, Holland.

APPENDIX D.

Some Cases of Criminality.
I have here brought together a few cases of fairly ordinary and representative criminality, chiefly in order
to show how such cases are generally investigated. It has not seemed desirable to lay down any definite
system of examination. Elaborate schemes have been prepared; it is more difficult to settle on a definite
scheme on a small scale. At present it seems best to leave much to the judgment of the individual
investigator. The six cases here given will serve to show how criminality is usually investigated, and may
be useful as a guide.
I.—B. A., aged 18, carpenter; weight, kilog. 69.3; height, m. 1.77. Complexion pale. In various parts of
body scars from wounds by knife, dagger, stones, and glass, received in various quarrels. Head also
covered by scars. Hair on head very abundant; entirely without beard. Prominent superciliary arches.
Enormous frontal sinuses, lower jaw voluminous; lemurian appendix present; forehead low and narrow;
head normal.
Esthesiometer: left, 1½ right, 1¼; tongue, 1½. Dynamometer: left, 42; right, 40½. Tendon reflexes
normal. General sensibility: right, 52; left, 50. Sensibility to pain: right, 28; left, 30. Slow to distinguish
colours.
Drunkard; began at age of 12, led on by his mother. Has thieved frequently, but only found out once at
the end of two years, and condemned. Is irreligious.
When he is drunk feels melancholy. Has epileptic convulsions, in which he falls down, and is frequently
wounded. He has had similar fits for six years; they are followed by complete amnesia. The first came on
in an educational institute, after being compelled to take a cold bath in January.
Three or four hours before the fit he is so stupid that he cannot reckon two coppers that he holds in his
hand; and that he cannot recognise the people around him, though he may have known them for some
time.
After the fit he does not know where he is, and for two or three days cannot drink water or bathe, on
account, he says, of the cold bath that brought on his disorder.
Is not easily affected; has no aspirations; does not concern himself with politics.
Cannot say anything of his parents, except that his mother was a drunkard. (V. Rossi.)
II.—D., age 18, of Turin, smith. A woman’s head tattooed on his right arm, and the beginning of a name
(record of love); in epigastric region a transfixed heart (to recall a revenge to be accomplished). A scar in
left frontal region; cannot, or will not, say how he got it, but has ever since suffered from giddiness.
Complexion very pale; vasomotor reaction more marked on the left; pupils react slowly; facial
asymmetry; ears prominent. Hair sparse, dry, and very dark. Fingers very long and slender. Has tremors;
suffers from hypertrophy of heart. Head acrocephalic, flattened at the nape.
Cranial measurements: longitudinal diameter, 177; transverse, 151; longitudinal curve, 360; transverse,
300; maximum circumference, 530. Dynamometer: both hands, 34; right, 14; left, 17. Esthesiometer:
right, 1.8; left, 1.2; tongue, 0.4. Topographic sensibility erroneous in both hands. General electrical
sensibility: right, 49; left, 43. Sensibility to pain: right, 20; left, 27. (Normal person gives: general, 53; to
pain, 38.) Temperature in axilla, 37°5. Slow to distinguish colours.

Vicious from a child; very precocious sexual habits.
At eight years commenced at school to steal certificates of merit in order to get a prize. At fourteen, at the
invitation of a friend who was a thief, robbed a jeweller; from that time committed numerous robberies
whenever he could. Willingly gets drunk, but his chief passion is travel.
In politics he would prefer a Republic, but without police or prisons; but confesses that in winter, when
work is scarce, “it is not bad in prison.”
His parents affirm they are honest, but not the other relations. Mother suffers from palpitation of the
heart. One sister is leading a bad life; another is very religious. A maternal cousin was in prison. (V.
Rossi.)
III.—Certa Fil, condemned to four years’ imprisonment for thefts of fur cloaks and similar articles. Age
56. Circumference of head, 545. Right eye placed rather low. Tendon reflexes normal.
From a child she has suffered from illness caused by fear, owing to a fall into the water. From fifteen to
thirty suffered from frequent headaches. Eight years ago, about three years before thefts, had typhoid
fever, and also contracted syphilis from her husband. She had frequent and severe pain in the temples. No
children. Her mother suffered from arthritis, which caused melancholy, which is said to have contributed
to her death. She had fourteen children, mostly twins, who all died at birth except one, who is very
extravagant and dissolute.
Sensibility.—With esthesiometer: on the hand, 3 mm. on left, 2 mm. on right; head, 16 mm.; tongue, 9
mm. With faradic current: general sensibility, 70 mm.; on the hands, while a student has pain on palm at
55, on dorsum at 60, she has pain on right palm at 50, left at 50; right dorsum at 60, left at 55. Strength
with dynamometer slight: right, 28 cg.; left, 38 cg.; with both hands, 58 cg.
Psychological Examination.—Married at age of nineteen, she lived happily with husband for twenty
years, i.e., until age of thirty-nine. Then the husband began to lead a dissolute life, and infected his wife
with syphilis. Driven wild by her husband’s continual ill-treatment, she began to steal furs and other
articles from a neighbouring shop. She was always afraid of being discovered, and experienced remorse
which took away sleep and appetite, and she planned methods for restoring the things without being
discovered.
During her four years of imprisonment she did not learn the gergo or prisoner’s slang, would not
associate with her companions, and was always crying. She blushed slightly when questioned concerning
her periods.
Diagnosis.—This woman, under the stress of illnesses and need of money, was drawn to theft; she was
not, however, predisposed to crime, and (excepting the dissolute conduct of one brother) there were no
marked signs of hereditary degeneration. When we add that she was never given to orgies, that she did
not care to associate with her criminal companions, that she did not learn the gergo, that she blushed
when spoken to without due consideration, we must conclude that she is an occasional criminal. If she
had been in a comfortable social condition, and in good relation with her husband, she would probably
not have become a delinquent. (Giuseppe Abradi, Archivio di Psichiatria, vol. x. Fasc. I.)
IV.—R. S., of Naples, age 23; height, m. 1.68; weight, kilog. 82.5. Soldier.
Traces on skin of wounds from fire-arms and knives; one on the abdomen given him by a woman.
Colour of skin is dark.
Tattoo marks on legs and arms: initials, daggers in memory of revenges to be accomplished, arrows as
records of love; on his hand a sun; also bears the signs of the camorra, of which, but only as a great
secret, he revealed the significance.

He declares that for him, and for the camorrista in general, tattooing is “a passion, an ambition, like that,
for example, of students for their collars and ties.” “The more one is tattooed,” he said, “the more one is
esteemed and feared by comrades, because it shows how far one has gone in the road of crime.”
Hair on head thick and dark; complete absence of beard. Prognathism: forehead small and narrow (165 ×
48), lower jaw voluminous; eyes small and very mobile; frontal sinuses prominent. Has a certain air of
bonhomie in his face which contrasts with the cynicism with which he narrates his criminal
achievements.
Cranial measurements: longitudinal diameter, 187; transverse, 150; longitudinal curve, 364; transverse,
310; maximum circumference, 557. Dynamometer: with both hands, 84; with right, 54; with left, 43.
Supports with extended arm a weight of kilog. 5 for fourteen minutes. Esthesiometer: right, 3.5; left, 4.5.
Electrical sensibility: right, 40; left, 45. Sensibility to pain: right, 0; left, 0. Slow to distinguish colours,
confusing blue and green. Thermometer: right, 37°5; left, 37°9.
Fond of wine; vicious since he was a child. Natural and unnatural sexual habits.
Except venereal disorders and a cyst, which he had as a child, has never been ill.
He has indeed been sent to a hospital as insane, but it was feigned, as he was then under trial, in order to
obtain “attenuating circumstances.”
By him and his family religion is regarded as merely imposture, and politics does not exist. In the
newspapers he only reads the police news, as that which alone concerns him.
At age of 10 was “sent to college” (i.e., house of correction), because he was found taking the impression
of a lock. There he was initiated in the camorra, exercised by the lads clandestinely.
On coming out, he committed numerous offences, of which more than one remained unpunished. He
wounded a prostitute whom he found with another lover. Thieved with dexterity, and was once
condemned to twenty-five months’ imprisonment. He robs from houses, and when opportunity offers
picks pockets. At a penal establishment he joined with others to rob the director. He confesses that in his
family, except one sister who is honest, all are rogues of his own stamp.
Maternal grandfather died at 60 in the hospital. Mother is healthy, but drinks; lost all her hair at 50;
condemned for fraud and wounding. Father had five years’ imprisonment for attempting to wound his
brother, a priest, who refused to give him money; also drinks, and when drunk is very lively. A paternal
uncle was condemned for “qualified” robbery. The maternal uncles are all camorristi.
He has five brothers and one sister. One, G., was four times in hospital, because when he committed a
grave offence he feigned madness; so far this game has always succeeded, and he has been acquitted or
punishment diminished. When he has money he is an angel, says R. S., but when he has none, he flies
from him like the plague, for he becomes furious. He is a drunkard, and once when drunk severely
wounded his mistress without cause.
Another brother, G., is a camorrista and sharper.
Another brother, E., does the elegant, and steals from “aristocrats”; suffers from dizziness, especially in
summer, or when near a fire.
A brother, N., calls himself an artist, takes impressions of locks, and makes false keys, for which he
demands a more or less elevated price, according to the amount of the booty. Also studies padlocks, and
makes facsimiles; does not rob on his own account, nor is he camorrista; and does not use the knife even
when drunk.

The last of the brothers, Gia., has been condemned more than once for robbery and picking pockets. Is
camorrista. (V. Rossi.)
V.—The following carefully-taken case (by Professor Angelo Zuccarelli, of Naples) of incorrigible
insubordination in a soldier is translated from L’Anomalo of January 1889, and is a model of careful and
systematic examination:—
Habitual conduct in the army, from 1881-1888, both on and off duty, is reported as bad; frequently guilty
of theft, insubordination and destruction of military effects. [Details here given of 59 offences, with
resulting punishments, during this period.]
The following facts are all that can be obtained as to his family and previous history:—
Among the ancestors of his parents some eccentricity.
Mother hysterical, with nymphomania, and deafness due to chronic otitis.
Father, a drunkard and irascible.
One sister imbecile, and another scrofulous.
A brother, instinctive thief, imprisoned for “qualified” theft.
All the family given to thieving.
Our subject, now 28 years old, had no education from his parents; was a shoemaker at Stilo (Reggio,
Calabria), his native place, where he had a bad reputation for idleness and thieving.

PHYSICAL EXAMINATION.
Head.
Inspection and Palpation.—A considerable depression in the lambdoid region.
External occipital protuberance scarcely perceptible.
Markedly plagiocephalic on the right side, anteriorly; with plagio-prosopia on the same side.
Ears small; the right planted further back.
Prognathism of the superior maxilla.
Absence of the two upper middle incisor teeth, from a fall in childhood. Inferior dental arch, with
parabolic and oblique margin to the right; depressed on the right.
Colour of face, yellowish, pale.
Beard thin.

Measurements.—Circumference at the base cent. 54
Anterior semi-circumference " 28½
Posterior " " " 25½
Antero-posterior curve " 31
Transverse " " 31½
Approximate cranial capacity (results of three curves), 1165.

Maximum antero-posterior diameter mill. 182
" transverse diameter " 147
Cephalic index, 80.76 (cranial type, sub-brachycephalic).
Bi-auricular diameter mill. 128
Bi-mastoid " " 126
Maximum frontal diameter " 104
Bi-orbital " " 108
Bi-maxillary " " 102
Height of the forehead " 56
" " face " 128
Length of nose (to tip) " 54½
Width " (base) " 32

Trunk and Limbs.
Body slender. Height medium.
Left mammary region depressed, and nipple lower than on right side. Posteriorly the left base of the
thorax rather less developed than the right.
Hands thin, with long and pointed fingers.
Tattoo marks on the two fore-arms: on the right a transfixed heart, a woman’s head, the letters F. and B.;
on the left two stars, one large, the other small, the letters L. and A. (his initials), a cross, and nearer the
wrist an indistinct sign ending in a B.
On the feet the two little toes are small, especially the left, out of proportion to the development of the
rest of the foot.
Hair sparse.
Superficial veins healthy, but varicose in left popliteal region. Genital organs little developed.

PHYSIOLOGICAL EXAMINATION.
Dynamometer.—Right hand, 90; left hand, 85.
Tactile sensibility.—On the tongue the two points of the esthesiometer are perceived only at a distance of
five mill. In general the sensibility is very feeble. Localisation very inaccurate; impressions on one side
often referred to the other.
Sensibility to pain.—Advanced hypoalgesia, while reiterated punctures fetching blood are felt as slight
touches. Burns with a lighted cigar are little if at all felt; but there is some dissimulation on the part of the
subject.
Thermal and meteoric sensibility.—Apparently abolished.
There has been no opportunity for electrical examination.
Sight.—Does not distinguish colours well; sees red best. Pupils react imperfectly.

Hearing.—On the right side says he cannot hear a watch in immediate contact; on the left only at a short
distance. In other ways his hearing has been found to be defective.
Smell.—Does not distinguish odours, of which in many cases he has no knowledge. Ammonia alone,
deeply inhaled for a few seconds, causes slight lachrymation on the right side.
Taste.—Perceives vinegar, but not salt, bitter or sweet substances. On offering him half a glass of
decoction of cinchona, and telling him that it is wine, and then another of vinegar, he swallows it all
eagerly without any indication of disagreeable sensations. On giving him a bitter substance, and telling
him it is sweet, he repeats that it is sweet, and vice versâ.
Appetite voracious; digestive functions normal. Circulation and respiration weak.

PSYCHICAL EXAMINATION.
Ideas very limited. No imagination or æsthetic sense. Memory very weak, limited to the most elementary
and primitive cognitions. Will feeble, in the absence of any morbid impulse.
Moral and affective sentiments almost entirely absent.
No disposition to occupy himself in any way; tendency to idleness and vagabondage.
Unrestrained onanism, to which he formerly gave way four or five times a day, now only about twice a
day, because, as he says, he is no longer strong enough. He confesses this without the least shame, with
complacency, almost with pleasure.
He is not without a certain shrewdness, which is, however, easily discovered. He seems to have learnt
from fellow-prisoners to pretend to feel nothing, and to be ready for anything.
He is capable of dissimulation, and of simulating at certain moments a state of feebleness beyond what he
feels.
In his cell he usually walks up and down with short, bent head, and surly look. He is only aroused in
moments of anger and violent impulsion.
He is often discontented with his food, and throws it away, breaking out into howls rather than cries, and
destroying everything—table, stools, etc. In this condition any opposition only renders him more savage.
Gentle methods often succeed better, especially when the stage of exhaustion sets in.
At other times the cause is some limitation to his tendency to free vagabondage. The animal-like howls
are set up; then comes the destruction of everything that surrounds him, and violences of all sorts.
When he is interrogated in his calmer moments as to the reason of this, he replies that it is what they do
in his country.

DIAGNOSIS.
Advanced physical and psycho-physical degeneration. Phrenasthenia. Moral idiocy. Instinctive
criminality.

MEDICO-LEGAL AND SOCIAL CONSIDERATIONS.