Chapter III: Criminal Anthropology (physical) (1)

§ 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.

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.

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]

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.

The ear, it is well known, is very sensitive to vasomotor changes, slight changes serving to affect the circulation visibly; so that in pale, nervous people a trifling emotion will cause the ears to blush. Galton tells us of a schoolmistress who judges of the fatigue of her pupils by the condition of their ears. If the ears are white, flabby, and pendent, she concludes that the children are very fatigued; if they are relaxed but red, that they are suffering, not from overwork, but from a struggle with their nervous systems, rarely under control at the age of fourteen or fifteen. If this kind of sensitiveness is not common among criminals, a few of neurotic temperament, as well as some lunatics, possess the power, rare among normal persons, of moving the ear. Frigerio notes movements of the superior and posterior muscles, especially when touched; in apes the transverse muscle also acts. Frigerio connects this power of movement with perpetual fear, always on the look-out; many of the criminals with this peculiarity were recidivists, and three of the lunatics had delusions of persecution.

The interest of these investigations, now so actively carried on, into the malformations of the pinna among criminals is obvious. A few ingenious persons have sought to explain some of them by the influence of the headgear, pulling of the ears, etc.; but on the whole it is generally recognised that they are congenital. The study of them, therefore, is of distinct value in enabling us to fix the natural relationships of the criminal man. There is still need for careful series of observations on criminals, the insane, epileptics, and idiots, and every such series should be controlled by a similar series of observations, by the same observer, on ordinary subjects.

The criminal nose has been measured and studied with great care and enthusiasm by Ottolenghi.[25] He finds that the criminal nose in general is rectilinear, more rarely undulating, with horizontal base, of medium length, rather large and frequently deviating to one side, and he describes several varieties. Thus the typical thief’s nose is rectilinear, often incurved, short, large, and often twisted, with lifted base. The sexual offender presents the most rectilinear nose, though he shows the undulating profile of nose more frequently than any other group of criminals, of medium length and rather large. Ottolenghi believes that his observations help to show, both in the skeleton and in life, an anatomical relationship between criminals against the person and epileptics and monomaniacs; also a relationship between thieves and sexual offenders and cretins. His observations are full and interesting, but the matter needs further investigation; the anthropological importance of the nose has scarcely yet been fully realised.

Most writers on criminals speak of the pallor of the skin; this has been noted at a very remote period by Polemon, l’Ingegneri, and other early physiognomists. Marro has found it in 14 per cent. of his criminals, as against 3 per cent. among the ordinary population. He considers that it is related to habitual cerebral congestion. Pallor is also caused (as Colajanni points out, and testifies to from personal experience) by prolonged imprisonment, even under favourable circumstances. It is probable that the influence of this cause has not yet been eliminated with sufficient care.

Ottolenghi has investigated the wrinkles on the faces of 200 criminals as compared with 200 normal persons. He finds that they are much more frequent and much more marked in the criminal than in the non-criminal person, and this must have struck many persons who have seen a large number of criminals or photographs of criminals. The relative frequency is especially marked in zygomatic and genio-mental wrinkles, while the foreheads, even of youthful criminals, and when the face is in a state of repose, sometimes present a curiously marked and scored appearance. The precocity of these wrinkles is worthy of note. “We found young criminals of fourteen,” Ottolenghi remarks, “with wrinkles more evident and marked than are met with in many normal men above thirty. It is these precocious wrinkles which give to young criminals that aspect of premature virility which Lombroso and Marro have already noticed.” “It is worthy of note,” he remarks also, “that the part of the face which, by the prevalence of wrinkles, shows more active expression in criminals as in other degenerated persons, is that corresponding to the region of the nose and mouth--that is to say, the less contemplative, more material, part of the face; and, in fact, we see that, with the exception of some murderers, who have a surly look and corrugated forehead, the typical delinquent presents habitually in the more rational and contemplative part of his face the least degree of active expression, this corresponding to his limited psychical sensibility.”

§ 3. _Anomalies of the Hair._

The beard in criminals is usually scanty. As against 1.5 per cent. cases of absence of beard in normal persons, Marro found 13.9 per cent. in criminals, and a very large proportion having scanty beard. The largest proportion of full beards among criminals was found by Marro in sexual offenders.

On the head the hair is usually, on the contrary, abundant. Marro has observed a notable proportion of woolly-haired persons, a character very rarely found in normal individuals. The same character has been noted among idiots. In contrast with what is found among the insane, baldness is very rare. Among criminal women remarkable abundance of hair is frequently noted, and it has sometimes formed their most characteristic physical feature, accompanied by an unusual development of fine hair on the face and body. Salsotto, who has given special attention to criminal women, finds a considerable distribution of hair between the pubes and the umbilicus (as in men) in 10 per cent. of the forty women he examined as to this character; such distribution among normal women only occurring (according to Schulze) in 5 per cent. cases. Salsotto also found abundant hair in seven out of the forty around the anus, a part in normal women rarely supplied with hair. The excess of down on the face is found with special frequency in women guilty of infanticide. It is worth while pointing out that (as Dr. Langdon Down notes) there are frequent anomalies in the development of hair among idiots. Some are hirsute over the entire body; 11 per cent. have continuous eye-brows.

This abundance of hair seems to be correlated with the animal vigour which is often so noticeable among criminals. It may at the same time be to some extent explained by arrest of development or atavism leading to the deficiency of beard which in its fully developed form marks, with few exceptions, only the highest human races. Strong sexual instincts are but the effervescence of this animal vigour; hence, perhaps, the connection between the presence of an unusual amount of hair and infanticide. In the case selected by Bucknill and Tuke as a typical example of insanity in women due to repressed sexual instinct, the chief physical characteristic noted was the amount of hair on the body; and in a case recorded by Dr. H. Sutherland (_West Riding Asylum Reports_, vol. vi.) of a girl whose illness and subsequent death were in his opinion due to “unsatisfied sexual desire,” the long fair hair, which she delighted in letting flow down to her knees, was specially noted. It was observed of the French writer, Restif de la Bretonne, of whose extraordinary and abnormal sexual proclivities, even at an early age, he has himself left ample evidence in his autobiographical book, _Monsieur Nicolas_, that his body was remarkably hairy.

In regard to colours, the proportion of dark-haired persons is considered greater among criminals than among the ordinary population in England, Italy, and Germany. An exception to this general rule in the case of sexual offenders (rape and pæderasty) appears to be well marked in Italy; though, so far as I have been able to ascertain, it has not been frequently observed in England. Marro associates the fair hair of sexual offenders with the precocious puberty of fair-haired women, as shown by the investigations of Professor Pagliani. The researches of Marro and Ottolenghi over a very considerable field give the following results for North Italy:--

Chestnut Hair. Fair. Black.

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

Ottolenghi notes that the prevailing fair colour is reddish.[26]

Grey hair was found by Ottolenghi to be vastly more frequent at an early age among ordinary working men and peasants than among the 200 male criminals he examined: thus, between the ages of 30 to 33 it was 60 per cent. for the former, only 12 per cent. for the latter. This does not hold true for criminal women, who become grey more quickly than ordinary women. The male criminal in this respect resembles the epileptic, and especially the cretin, in whom grey hair is seldom seen. Baldness, Ottolenghi shows, is very rare, comparatively, in the criminal, in relation not only to the normal man but even to the epileptic and the cretin. In this respect the criminal differs greatly from the ordinary professional man, in whom baldness is frequently found.[27]

To the existing statistics of the colour of hair among criminals, taken as a whole, it is not possible at present to attach much value. There is no uniform system of description and nomenclature; it is difficult to make full allowance for ethnic divergence, and there rarely exists an adequate standard of comparison for the normal persons of corresponding race. Of 129 persons “wanted” at Scotland Yard, I find that 45 have “dark brown” hair, and of these 17 (_i.e._, 37.7 per cent.) are described as “dangerous,” “desperate,” “expert,” or “notorious”; 46 have “brown” hair, and of these 14 (_i.e._, 30 per cent.) are “dangerous,” etc.; 11 are “dark” (9) or “black” (2), and of these 3 (_i.e._, 27.2 per cent.) are “dangerous”; 27 are described as “light brown,” “light,” “sandy,” “fair,” “auburn” (one, a woman), “red” (one, a man, who is “dangerous”), and of these 9 (_i.e._, 33.3 per cent.) are “dangerous,” etc. This gives a proportion of red-haired persons about the same, according to my observations, as is found among middle-class men in the city, but considerably lower than is found, according to Dr. Beddoe, the chief authority on this subject (in his _Races of Britain_), among the lower classes in London--_i.e._, about 4 per cent. This is the class from which the criminals in question were chiefly drawn, but they do not exclusively belong to London; many come from the northern towns, and in many of these, Leeds, for instance,[28] according to my observations, the proportion of red-haired persons is decidedly larger than in London, and certainly not smaller.

It is interesting to compare these statistics of the hair of London criminals with a body of statistics concerning the colour of the hair of 1220 insane persons (omitting the grey-haired) in the New Brunswick Asylum; although as the racial mixture is certainly not quite identical, and the nomenclature probably varies, no strict comparison is possible. Of these 1220 insane persons the hair of 1050 is described as “dark,” “dark brown,” “brown,” while 170 have “light,” “auburn,” or “red” hair. One person in seven among the insane persons has fair hair, one in five among criminals; one person in fifty among the insane has red hair, one in 129 among the criminals; one in forty among the insane has auburn hair, one in 129 among the criminals. So that while the proportion of fair-haired is distinctly smaller among the insane, the proportion of red-haired and auburn-haired is very decidedly larger than among the criminals.

So far as exact evidence on the colour of the hair goes, it points chiefly to a relative deficiency of red-haired persons among criminals. This may perhaps be accounted for. There seems to be a lessened power of resistance to disease among persons of brilliant pigmentation. The extensive anthropological statistics of the American War showed a very marked inferiority on the part of fair persons. These statistics have been criticised by De Candolle, who believes, however, that even with deductions they may probably still be accepted. Our evidence as to the proportion of bright-haired people in lunatic asylums seems to point in this direction. These red-haired people, with their “sanguine” temperament of body, are peculiarly susceptible to zymotic disease; they take scarlet fever, for instance, very easily, and suffer from it severely. Among the manifold risks of a criminal life the brightly pigmented person, with his sensitive vascular system, seems to be soon eliminated.

§ 4. _Criminal Physiognomy._

The science of physiognomy is still in a vague and rudimentary condition, although the art has long been practised with more or less success. There are, for instance, a large number of proverbs in which some of the most recent results reached by the criminal anthropologists of to-day were long ages back crystallised by the popular intelligence. Such are the Roman saying, “Little beard and little colour; there is nothing worse under heaven;” the French, “God preserve me from the beardless man;” the Tuscan, “Salute from afar the beardless man and the bearded woman;” the Venetian, “Trust not the woman with a man’s voice.”

Many of the old physiognomists, especially the two greatest, Dalla Porta and Lavater, tell us how they immediately recognised criminals, although they sometimes ludicrously failed; and Lavater once mistook the portrait of an executed assassin for Herder’s. A criminal anthropologist of to-day, Professor Enrico Ferri, declares that out of several hundred soldiers whom he examined, he found one, and one only, whom his face declared to be a murderer; he was told that this man had, in fact, been found guilty of murder. Garofalo, the Neapolitan jurist, observes that he is scarcely deceived twice out of ten times. Nor is this acuteness of perception by any means confined to skilled observers. It is very commonly found among women. Many persons, on first meeting an individual, are conscious of an unfavourable impression which they succeed in out-living, but which is subsequently justified. Sometimes the revealing glance is found, perhaps with a shock of horror, in a face already familiar. It is a mistake to attempt to stifle such instinctive impressions as irrational. They are part of the organised experiences of the race, and, subject to intellectual control, they are legitimate guides to conduct.

Professor Lombroso tells us that his mother, who had always lived far from the world, was twice able to discover the criminal character of young people whom as yet no one had suspected. A more curious example, he goes on to remark, occurred in connection with the murderer Francesconi. There was nothing remarkable about him, nothing to indicate ferocity or a temper unlike that of other people; his beard was abundant and forehead high; one just perceived a slight degree of prognathism and some prominence of the frontal eminences. Yet years before his crime, a young girl of sixteen (afterwards the Countess della Rocca), who had never quitted the paternal home, and had no experience of life, refused to speak to him when every one welcomed him on account of his wit. When asked why she treated him as though he were a scoundrel, she replied: “If he is not a murderer he will become one.” When Lombroso afterwards asked her by what sign she was guided to this too speedily verified prophecy, she replied: “By his eyes.” Lombroso once asked an intelligent schoolmistress to submit to thirty-two young girls twenty portraits of thieves and twenty of great men. Eighty per cent. of these children recognised the first as bad people, the second as good. On another occasion he showed two hundred photographs of youths to three medical men, and they all selected one as of the criminal type; a little girl of twelve also selected the same. This youth had never appeared in a court of justice, but he had cruelly betrayed those who had assisted him to obtain a good position in life. He was not legally a criminal, but, as Lombroso remarks, he was so anthropologically.

Beautiful faces, it is well known, are rarely found among criminals. The prejudice against the ugly and also against the deformed is not without sound foundation. What Hepworth Dixon wrote in 1850 on this point is still of general application in all civilised countries:--“The population of Millbank is always numerous and always changing; but its character remains substantially the same. Year after year the visitor might drop in and see no difference. There is a certain monotony and family likeness in the criminal countenance which is at once repulsive and interesting. No person can be long in the habit of seeing masses of criminals together without being struck with the sameness of their appearance. A handsome face is a thing rarely seen in a prison; and never in a person who has been a law-breaker from childhood. Well-formed heads, round and massive, denoting intellectual power, may be seen occasionally, but a pleasing, well-formed face, never.”

In looking through the large number of photographs in Lombroso’s great work, _L’Uomo Delinquente_, very few pleasant faces can be found. The two or three attractive ones are those of women in whom the glow of youth, plumpness, and abundant hair serve as a disguise to features that will scarcely bear examination. The proportion of good-looking faces among the excellent photographs in Inspector Byrnes’ _Professional Criminals of America_, is much larger. As the able chief of the Detective Department of New York, who, however, distinctly recognises a criminal type of face, remarked to a visitor: “Look through the pictures in the Rogues’ Gallery and see how many rascals you find there who resemble the best people in the country. Why, you can find some of them, I daresay, sufficiently like personal acquaintances to admit of mistaking the one for the other.” Those, however, belong to the aristocracy of crime; they are criminals by calculation; they have achieved a certain amount of success, and a passable face is part of their stock-in-trade. Yet even among these the proportion of faces that will bear examination is by no means large.

Émile Gautier, who was with Prince Krapotkine in the Lyons prison, remarks that he is not acquainted with the anatomical peculiarities of criminals, but that he knows that prisoners are not like the rest of the world. “Their cringing and timid ways, the mobility and cunning of their looks, a something feline about them, something cowardly, humble, suppliant, and crushed, makes them a class apart. One would say, dogs who had been whipped; hardly, here and there, a few energetic and brutal heads of rebels.”

A curious fixed look of the eye has often been considered a characteristic mark of, more especially, the instinctive criminal, a mark which cannot be disguised. “I do not need to see the whole of a criminal’s face,” said Vidocq, “to recognise him as such; it is enough for me to catch his eye.” Lombroso finds that the eyes of assassins resemble those of the feline animals at the moment of ambush or struggle; he has often observed it when the man has been making a muscular effort, as in compressing a dynamometer. Sometimes this feline and ferocious glance alternates with a gentle, almost feminine gaze; this combination giving them a strange power of fascination which has often been exercised on women.

Insistence on the feline aspect is very frequent among those who describe criminals. Thus, for instance, Professor Sergi:--“I have had occasion lately to observe a homicide, aged fifteen, who three months before committing this murder had attempted another, and at another time showed his ferocious nature by attacking a cow with a bill-hook and wounding it in several places. He has been condemned to eleven years’ imprisonment, is well developed for his age, and apparently has no morphological abnormalities, but he is prognathous, his nose is depressed, and all the lower part of the face, from the upper jaw down, has a savage cast. What most distinguishes him is his look; his eye is cruel and feline in the true sense of the word. Reserved, taciturn, even when he was free, now that he is in prison he has the appearance of a wild beast, the glance of a tiger.”

An interesting point in connection with the criminal physiognomy is that it is to a large extent independent of nationality. The German criminal is not very unlike the Italian, nor is the French unlike the English criminal. M. Joly remarks, “I should say that in M. A. Bertillon’s office I was shown nearly sixty photographs of Irish, English, and American thieves. It would have been difficult in many cases to discern the Anglo-Saxon rather than any other physiognomy.”

There is, in the opinion of many of the Italian criminal anthropologists, a special physiognomy for different crimes, though this statement is qualified by the well-known fact that quite different crimes may be committed by the same person. Dr. Marro, in his _Caratteri dei Delinquenti_, describes no fewer than eleven different classes of criminals, though the distinctions are not all physiognomical. Professor Lombroso’s descriptions are however the most vigorous and picturesque, though it is scarcely possible to receive them without qualification. Thieves he describes as frequently remarkable for the mobility of their features and of their hands; the eyes are small and very restless; the eyebrows thick and close; the nose often crooked or incurved; the beard thin; the forehead nearly always narrow and receding; the complexion pale or yellowish, and incapable of blushing. In those guilty of sexual offences Lombroso finds the eyes nearly always bright; the voice either rough or cracked; the face generally delicate, except in the development of the jaws, and the lips and eyelids swollen; occasionally they are humpbacked or otherwise deformed. Sometimes in incendiaries Lombroso has noted a peculiar delicacy of the skin, an infantile aspect, and abundance of hair, occasionally resembling a woman’s. The eye of the habitual homicide is glassy, cold, and fixed; his nose is often aquiline, beaked, reminding one of a bird of prey, always voluminous; the jaws are strong; the ears long; the cheek-bones large; the hair dark, curling, abundant; the beard often thin; the canine teeth much developed; the lips thin; nystagmus frequent; also spasmodic contractions on one side of the face, by which the canine teeth are exposed. The forger and sharper, on the other hand, has frequently a singular air of _bonhomie_, a kind of clerical appearance, which is indeed necessary in his business, because it inspires confidence. Some have angelic faces; others are small, pale, and haggard. The poisoner also frequently has a peculiarly benevolent aspect. “In general,” Lombroso concludes, “born criminals have projecting ears, thick hair, a thin beard, projecting frontal eminences, enormous jaws, a square and projecting chin, large cheek-bones, and frequent gesticulation. It is, in short, a type resembling the Mongolian, or sometimes the Negroid.”

It is very interesting to compare this concluding remark with some observations made by Dr. Langdon Down, who has carefully studied and endeavoured to classify the facial characteristics of idiots. Dr. Down finds a resemblance between feeble-minded children and the various ethnic types of the human family; he specially refers both to a Mongolian and a Negroid type. Just as Professor Lombroso finds the Mongolian type most common among his criminals, so Dr. Down finds it most common among his idiots: “more than 10 per cent. of congenital feeble-minded children are typical Mongols. Their resemblance is infinitely greater to one another than to the members of their own families.” Their characteristics are very marked: the hair is brownish (not black, as in the Mongol), straight, and sparse, the face flat and broad, the cheeks rounded and widened laterally, the eyes obliquely placed, and the fissure between the eyelids very narrow, the forehead wrinkled transversely, the lips large and thick, the nose small, the skin tawny. In Dr. Down’s Negroid type of idiot there are characteristic cheek-bones, prominent eyes, puffy lips, retreating chins, woolly but not black hair, and no pigmentation of skin. These points of resemblance are of considerable interest if we are of opinion that the instinctive criminal is best defined as a moral idiot.

As to the causes and indelibility of the criminal expression there is much divergence of opinion. Certain writers have spoken too incautiously on this point. Thus Professor Sergi, in the description of the homicidal lad, already quoted in part, goes on to remark: “In him nothing is acquired, everything is congenital.” And Maudsley, in a sombre and powerful description of the criminal physiognomy which has often been quoted, speaks of it as branded by the hand of nature. “Everything is congenital,” says Professor Sergi; yet we rarely hear of a baby who looks round from its mother’s breast with fierce and feline air. We have to distinguish between the anatomical physiognomy and the expression or _mimique_. To the ordinary observer the latter is far more striking; he notices at once if a countenance is sad or merry, angry or good-tempered, cowed or elate; he does not so readily observe the shape of the jaws, or the cut of the ears, or the lines of the forehead, yet such marks as these are alone strictly organic and can safely be called congenital.

M. Joly cites some interesting examples of discrepancy in the descriptions of the same criminal under varying conditions, even when the descriptions are the work of good observers. Some years ago a youth of nineteen, named Menesclou, was executed for having violated and killed a little girl, whom he afterwards cut up and burnt. A journalist on the staff of the _Figaro_, whose reports are considered very exact, thus described him at the trial: “Imagine a sort of abortion, bent and wrinkled, with earthy complexion, stealthy eyes, a face gnawed by scrofula, of cunning, dissipated, and cruel aspect. The forehead is low, the beard sparse and slovenly; the hair, black and thrown backwards, reaches to the shoulders; it is a head absolutely repulsive.” On the other hand, the chaplain of the prison, the Abbé Crozes, thus wrote:--“Menesclou by no means resembles the portraits which the journalists have drawn of him. Far from being repulsive, hideous, repugnant, he had a sympathetic and prepossessing physiognomy, the air of a young man who has been well brought up, a gentle, honest, _naïve_ face; he looked, to me, like a page in a good house.”

In another example the varying descriptions have the advantage of being written by the same person, the Abbé Moreau, successor to the Abbé Crozes as chaplain to the Roquette Prison, and author of the valuable and interesting book, _Le Monde des Prisons_. “At the trial of Campi,” he wrote, “I had only perceived a coarse demoniac, brutal, cynical, making violent repartees. His repellant head was photographed on my memory; a slovenly beard framing a yellow, bilious face, the muscles of a beast of prey, and, lighting up the livid features with sinister gleam, two small piercing mobile eyes, of a ferocity which I could scarcely bear to see. Campi left on me the most melancholy impression; his head had appeared to me enormous; his shoulders of extraordinary breadth.” Here is another portrait by the same hand of Campi as he appeared in prison:--“I had now before me a young man of ordinary size, slim rather than broad, with a calm face lighted by a good-natured smile; the eyes had lost their ferocity. He approached me with a certain timidity, holding his cap in his hand; and waited respectfully until I spoke to him.”

It is clear that several factors go to make up our impressions of physiognomy. It is well known that it is difficult to estimate the dimensions of an individual seen alone at a distance, whether a criminal at the bar or an actor on the stage. An actor off the stage is as commonplace as a criminal in the streets. Add to this the horror of the spectator, to whose mental vision the crime is present, and the probable perturbation of the criminal whose fate is being argued. Would the conscientious reporter of the _Figaro_ have written such a description had he simply met Menesclou as a stranger in the streets? And would the worthy Abbé’s impression of Campi have changed so greatly if the latter had not, when in complete command of himself, chosen to appear in an attitude of respectful humility?

In the Middle Ages there was a law by which, when two persons were suspected of a crime, the ugliest was to be selected for punishment. At the present day judges are, consciously or unconsciously, influenced by physiognomy, and ordinary human beings, who also in a humble way sit in judgment on their fellows, are influenced in the same manner. The modern criminal anthropologists, with all their minute and patient investigations, have not yet, however, succeeded in making criminal physiognomy a very exact science, and the more criminal amongst us may still find consolation in the reflection that there are no unfailing criteria by which our crimes may be read upon our faces.

§ 5. _The Body and Viscera._

Notwithstanding their agility and spasmodic activity, the muscular system of criminals is generally feeble. Such few observations as have yet been made show that muscular anomalies are found with remarkable frequency. Thus the investigations of Guerra on the bodies of 12 normal persons and 18 criminals, showed 11 anomalous muscular conditions in the latter as against 5 in the former.

Lacassagne some years ago pointed out the remarkable length of the extended arms (_la grande envergure_). Although many observers refer to this peculiarity, and in many isolated cases it is marked and doubtless connected with the agility of criminals, as among some lower races and the apes, I am not acquainted with any extended series of observations in which criminals and normal persons are fairly compared in this respect. Marro’s series, although the normal persons are in too small number, as he himself points out, is as reliable as any, and does not in the average show any preponderance of long-armed individuals among criminals. There is, however, reason to believe that individuals with exceptionally long arms are more often met with among criminals.

“Among the inmates of the Elmira Reformatory,” remarks Dr. H. Wey, “the greatest physical deficiency and least resistive power is found in the respiratory apparatus. Pigeon-breasts, imperfectly developed chests, and stooping shoulders abound. During a period of eight years, with 26 deaths, 13, or 50 per cent., were from diseases of the chest, not including affections of the heart.”

In his answers to my Questions a prison surgeon remarks, “Many men have large nipples and large well-marked areolæ. This is often very remarkable.” I am not aware that this has been noticed by any other observer, and the point deserves further examination.