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).
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.
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.