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.
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._ § 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.
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