INDEX

[1]. The family name, originally pronounced Lumbroso, shows clearly that the family belonged to the Spanish Jews who were expelled from Spain and settled in North Africa. The name is a Spanish adjective in common use, denoting “clear” or “illuminating.”

[2]. Bartolomeo Panizza—in 1812–13 army surgeon attached to the grande armée in Russia; in 1815 professor of anatomy at Pavia—discovered the characteristic of the crocodile to which Brücke gave the name of foramen Panizzæ; widely known as a teratologist and comparative anatomist; in 1856 published his “Osservazioni sperimentali sul nervo ottico,” based upon the method of secondary degeneration of the medullary sheath, subsequently applied by Gudden with such valuable results.

[3]. I have not been able to ascertain precisely to what extent Lombroso was influenced by Quetelet. The writings of this investigator did not reach him directly, but they probably influenced him indirectly by way of von Oettingen’s “Moral Statistik.”

[4]. “Ricerchi sul cretinesimo in Lombardia,” Gazz. Medica Italiana Lombarda, No. 13, 1859.

[5]. Together with Mantegazza, his colleague (as experimental pathologist) in Pavia from 1861 to 1866, Lombroso was the founder of anthropology in Italy. Of anthropology in the modern sense it is possible to speak only since, in the year 1859, Broca founded the Parisian Anthropological Society. Previously the term had denoted, as Kant’s “Anthropology” shows, empirical descriptive psychology. From the first the doctrine of the important varieties of human beings (insanity, cretinism, criminality, genius, degeneration) was for Lombroso a chapter of general anthropology. From the first also he regarded a knowledge of the environment as of the greatest importance for an understanding of the origin of these varieties (vide infra).

[6]. In Pavia, in 1871, he was appointed, in addition, lecturer on forensic medicine and hygiene.

[7]. Lombroso, as professor of forensic medicine, was also a member of the legal faculty. From 1896 onwards he held, in addition, the position of professor-in-ordinary of psychiatry and superintendent of the psychiatric clinic. As early as 1891 he had received the appointment of professor-extraordinary of psychiatry. In the year 1900, the Minister of Education (L. Bianchi) appointed him professor-in-ordinary of criminal anthropology, whilst he retained the professorship of psychiatry.

[8]. The title given by the author, then only nineteen years of age, to this study of important relations of correlation, does not give an adequate notion of the real contents of the essay.

[9]. These two works, with two publications regarding criminal lunatics (1871), and the “Antropometria di 400 delinquenti veneti” (R.C. dell’ Istituto Lombardo, fasc. 12) form the nucleus of his subsequent work on “L’ uomo delinquente.”

[10]. A. Baer, one of the fiercest opponents of criminal anthropology, pushes his criticism so far as to maintain in his leading work “that the formation of the skull is in no way dependent upon that of the brain.” The book, upon p. 12 of which will be found this monumental nonsense, is entitled by Baer “Der Verbrecher in anthropologischer Beziehung” (“The Criminal from the Anthropological Standpoint”), Leipzig, 1893.

[11]. “Iets over criminelle Anthropologie,” Haarlem, 1896; P. H. J. Berends, “Eenige Schedelmaten van Recruten, Mordenaars, Paranoisten, Epileptici, en Imbecillen,” Nymegen, 1896.

[12]. The “Inca bone” will be found figured in Toldt’s “Atlas of Human Anatomy” (London: Rebman, Limited), p. 100, fig. 218, where it is described as “a large Wormian bone in the uppermost part of the lambdoid suture.”

[13]. Certain peculiarities are discoverable in the brains of criminals which are not yet explicable on comparative anatomical considerations. I have described these as atypical, and in my “Natural History of the Criminal” I have collected and discussed them. Since the date of publication of this work (1893) only one extensive investigation of the brains of criminals has been undertaken, and in this the number of brains dealt with was about equal to the number examined in all the previous investigations put together. In so far as it furnishes any new particulars, this investigation confirms the doctrine of criminal anthropology, a fact of especial interest for the reason that the brains examined were chiefly those of women (Leggiardi-Laura, Rivista di sc. biologiche, ii., 4–5, 1900; ibid., Giorn. de le R. Accademia di Torino, 1900, fasc. 5).

[14]. The ear-point, or tubercle of Darwin, is a small prominence on the edge of the helix, an atavistic vestige of the former point of the ear. It is sometimes called Woolner’s tip, Darwin’s attention having been drawn to this prominence by the sculptor Woolner (Toldt’s “Atlas of Human Anatomy,” London, Rebman, Limited).

[15]. The Germans speak of thieves as being langfingerig, “long-fingered,” in the same sense in which we in England speak of them as “light-fingered.”—Translator.

[16]. “La Donna Delinquente, la Prostituta, e la Donna Normale.”

[17]. Havelock Ellis confirms this statement, as the result of a most laborious investigation (“Man and Woman,” 4th edition, London, 1904, chap. xvi, and appendix).

[18]. Aschaffenburg also writes: “I believe that in some instances we are entitled to regard the prostitute as the equivalent of the criminal; but, notwithstanding this, I believe that the complement to the prostitute is to be looked for, not in the thief, the pickpocket, or the forger, but rather in the beggar and the vagrant.”

Translator’s Note.—Lombroso’s views regarding the prostitute are disputed by many who accept the greater part of his teachings in the matter of criminal anthropology. Prostitution is largely a socially-caused phenomenon, and therefore prostitutes, in so far as they are the complements of criminals will be mainly complementary to socially-caused and occasional “criminals,” not to habitual and instinctive criminals. Thus, Bloch (“The Sexual Life of Our Time,” London, Rebman, Ltd., 1909, p. 401), while admitting that the world of crime is very near to that of prostitution—because the prostitute has need of a man to whom she is not simply a chattel, to whom she can be something from the personal point of view, and also because she shares with the criminal the life of the social pariah—goes on to say: “Lombroso’s doctrine that prostitution is throughout equivalent to criminality is certainly not justified. It is only by the outward circumstances of their life that the bulk of prostitutes are driven into intimate relations with criminality.” For a careful consideration of the pros and cons of this profoundly important question, with reference to leading authorities, see Havelock Ellis, “Sex in Relation to Society,” pp. 266–269.

[19]. In Germany in the year 1899 (“Statistik des Deutschen Reichs,” vol. xxxii., II., 50–65), for every 100 men condemned for the offences specified below, there were of women convicted of the like offence:

Crime and misdemeanour in general19·3
Breaches of the peace12·0
Perjury14·6
False accusation35·8
Procurement164·6
Procuring abortion375·9
Infant exposure400·0
Fraud20·0
Injury to property6·0
Simple assault11·8
Aggravated assault7·9
Petty larceny37·9
Major thefts13·3

[20]. Compare Walter Bagehot’s phrase, “the pain of a new idea,” which will be found in his brilliant little volume on “Physics and Politics” (p. 163).—Translator.

[21]. Compare also Havelock Ellis, “Studies in the Psychology of Sex,” vol. vi., “Sex in Relation to Society,” where this fundamental and profoundly important paradox is most thoughtfully expounded. After explaining the difference between traditional morality and ideal morality, the former being concerned with the accepted standards of social conduct, the latter embodying an attempt to reform those standards, and showing how the two moralities are of necessity opposed each to the other, Ellis goes on to say (op. cit., p. 368): “We have to remember that they are both equally sound and equally indispensable, not only to those who accept them, but to the community which they continue to hold in vital theoretical balance. We have seen them both, for instance, applied to the question of prostitution; traditional morality defends prostitution, not for its own sake, but for the sake of the marriage system, which it regards as sufficiently precious to be worth a sacrifice, while ideal morality refuses to accept the necessity of prostitution, and looks forward to progressive changes in the marriage system which will modify and diminish prostitution.”—Translator.

[22]. Translated as “The Man of Genius.” London: Walter Scott.

[23]. This brilliant expert has given the best summary of his own aims in the speech which he delivered in the year 1870 in Cincinnati, at the Congress for Prison Reform. He said: “When the chains have been removed, when corporal punishment has been abolished, when the treatment of prisoners has become something altogether different from what it has been in the past, when, in a word, in penology severity has been replaced by mildness and consideration, still it will not be easy to say if and to what extent this humane spirit will have dammed the spreading flood of crime, nor should I find it easy to determine precisely the grounds by which we have been guided to a decision whether severity or mildness is to be preferred.

“To study the criminal, this is the first and the greatest need. After so many years filled with work and discussion we have arrived at the point from which we ought to have started, precisely because, after taking such an infinity of trouble, we have discovered nothing but emptiness.”

[24]. “Pensieri sui processo Steinheil,” Archivio di psichiatria, etc., vol. xxx., p. 87, 1909.

[25]. The monumental work of the Public Prosecutor, E. Wulffen (Berlin, 1909), offers a notable exception to this generalization.

[26]. The born criminal is, invariably, utterly destitute of the feeling that he is doing wrong. Murderers frequently describe their misdeeds as trifles, as pardonable errors of youth, and they are astonished and indignant that they are so severely punished. To the true criminal, the pangs of conscience are entirely unknown, and a brutish indifference to death is a most frequent manifestation. This is shown very clearly in the turns of phrase met with in the jargon of criminals in relation to the punishment of execution. One of the most sensational trials in recent days—the trial of Heinze and of the prostitute with whom he lived—served to acquaint the general public with the phrase “cut the cabbage” for decapitation. The expression “to sneeze in the sack” corresponds to this (the guillotined head, when severed by the falling knife, is received in a sack); and there are many others. Lombroso gives numerous examples of a perfect equanimity persisting up to the very moment of death. One of his reports (Archivio di psichiatria, 1891, Section 4) tells us of a murderer who, whilst awaiting his execution, drew caricatures of the spectators. Allied to this indifference, appears to be the puzzling impulse of professional murderers before the commission of a crime to speak openly of their plans, and even to describe the actual details of the proposed murder. Troppmann, although he lied in court during the trial, while confined in his cell made drawings of the way in which he had committed the murder.

[27]. Cf. F. Max Müller, “The Science of Thought,” 1887, pp. 270, 271: “If the science of language has proved anything, it has proved that every term which is applied to a particular idea or object, unless it be a proper name, is already a general term. Man meant originally anything that could think; serpent, anything that could creep; fruit, anything that could be eaten.”—Translator.

[28]. Very various significations are attached to the term “criminal psychology.” Some denote by it a general theory of responsibility; some, an account of the mental disorders which have forensic importance; some, the theory of the will, of purpose, of deliberation, of design, of resolve, of the associations with and the aids to crime; some, the developmental history of individual criminals, or a description of the means by which they have been led to commit some particular crime, or which they have adopted in the course of its performance; some, finally, denote by the term a classification of the world of criminals in accordance with character, after the manner of Benedikt and Krauss. The teaching of Lombroso is concerned solely with the elements of the criminal nature which possess an anthropological interest, just as the ethnologist endeavours to elucidate the natural character of a race.

[29]. “Naturgeschichte des Verbrechers” (“The Natural History of the Criminal”), pp. 230–246.

[30]. See above, p. [42], the observations of Professor Ranke.

[31]. In Lombroso’s “Palimsesti del carcere” (1891) are to be found extremely interesting histories of the childhood of criminals, to which, in my German edition of the work, I have added certain observations of my own (Hamburg, 1900).

[32]. Lombroso’s syllogism: “All criminals are morally insane, all epileptics are morally insane, therefore all criminals are epileptics,” should have been stated in the hypothetical rather than in the categorical form.

[33]. “Il delitto politico e le rivoluzioni,” Turin, Fratelli Bocca, 1890. (A French translation of this work has been published.)

[34]. Archivio di psichiatria, vol. vi., p. 148, 1884.

[35]. See p. [33].

[36]. The fundamental biogenetic law runs as follows: “The history of the fœtus is a recapitulation of the history of the race, or, in other words, ontogeny is a recapitulation of phylogeny.”—Haeckel, “The Evolution of Man,” Popular English Edition, p. 2.

[37]. For the reason that in such a moral scheme the true social instinct is lacking.

[38]. In his earliest great imaginative work, “The Time Machine,” Mr. H. G. Wells imagines in the distant future of our race such a differentiation into two types; the “Morlocks,” the underground race, who had taken to preying on the above-ground moiety, were the descendants of our present proletarians.—Translator.

[39]. In 1899 he was chosen as municipal councillor by one of the working-class quarters of Turin, and sat for some years. In this position, however, he attracted public attention only by his successful resistance to a proposed large municipal loan for the purpose of building a great electric power station, to be driven by water-power.

[40]. Of parliamentary government he writes (“Delitto politico,” p. 531): “Parliamentary government, which has with justice been stigmatized as the greatest superstition of modern times, offers greater and ever greater obstacles to the introduction of a good method of government, so that, whilst the electors lose sight more and more of the high ideals of the State, some of the elected representatives obtain a freedom from responsibility which tends to the advantage of crime—which may, indeed, make of them occasional criminals, if they have not inherited the criminal nature. For five centuries Italy has fought for the abolition of the privileges of priests, feudal lords, and kings; and now in the name of freedom we endow 500 kinglets with inordinate privileges, and even free them from liability to prosecution for ordinary crime!”

And of universal suffrage he writes: “In the general view, universal suffrage works for the abolition of class distinctions, but in the hands of the corrupt and the uncultured it may be directly subversive of freedom.

“Let us therefore advocate everything that can be for the advantage of the common people, but let us at the same time give these latter only so much power as may be necessary to wring from the upper classes the concessions needful for the good of the commonalty” (“L’uomo delinquente: Cause e rimedii,” 1897, pp. 442, 443).

[41]. “L’uomo delinquente.”

[42]. See also R. Sommer, Kriminalpsychologie, 1904, p. 6 et seq. It may be mentioned that Sommer, in the spirit of positive science, has discovered methods by which psychomotor processes, some of which possess great crimino-psychological importance, may be rendered objectively cognizable.

[43]. “Della pene” (R. Instituto Lombardo, Rendic, second series, vol. viii., pp. 993–1005, 1875); “Sull’ incremento del delitto in Italia e sui mezzi di arrestarlo,” Turin, 1879; Troppo presto. “Appunti al nuovo pregetto di codice penale,” Turin, 1888; “Il delitto politico e le rivoluzioni,” Turin, 1890. In addition, there was founded in the year 1880, in association with Ferri and Garofalo, the Archivio di psichiatria, “Scienze penali ed antropologia criminale” (Turin, E. Loescher).

[44]. See above, p. [124] et seq.

[45]. In view of the fact that shortly after the death of Lombroso it was widely asserted both in the medical and the lay Press of this country and of the United States that Lombroso’s views regarding the nature of pellagra had recently been shown to be erroneous, I wrote to Dr. Kurella for further information. He replied as follows: “On receipt of your letter, I wrote to an Italian colleague to inquire of him what were the views presently held regarding the etiology of pellagra. He informs me that the majority of experimental pathologists in Italy remain convinced of the truth of Lombroso’s views. He also refers me to this year’s (1910) Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, No. 23, p. 963, where there is an article by Raubitschek, an Austrian experimenter, who claims to have confirmed Lombroso’s theory by means of experiments on rats.”

Unquestionably, therefore, numerous investigators, both in Italy and elsewhere, hold fast by one form or other of the zeist theory of the etiology of pellagra, which Lombroso believed himself to have established beyond the possibility of refutation. But during the past year this theory has, nevertheless, been largely discredited. In the Lancet of February 12, 1910, will be found the report of the Pellagra Investigation Commission, in which some of the alternative hypotheses are discussed. Dr. Sambon was despatched by this Commission in charge of the Pellagra Field Commission in Italy, and in an editorial note in the British Medical Journal of May 21, we are told that a telegram had been received from Dr. Sambon, under date of May 13, stating “The Commission has definitely proved that maize is not the cause of pellagra; the parasitic conveyor is the Simulium reptans.” It is probable that the matter will soon be definitely settled, and it cannot be denied that pellagra presents many analogies with other endemic disorders due to protozoal infection conveyed by the bite of a blood-sucking insect.—Translator.

[46]. See the translation of Count Tolstoy’s pamphlet, “The Hanging Czar,” published by the Independent Labour Party.—Translator.

[47]. In view of this advice, it is interesting to note that I have just received a medical periodical published in the United States, from which I learn that during the winter of 1909–1910 the Romance and Slav population of the towns of the Mississippi States has been extensively ravaged by pellagra. As late as the year 1908, in the great American textbook, Osler’s “Principles and Practice of Medicine,” we learn that pellagra “has not been observed in the United States!”

Translator’s Note.—Dr. Kurella writes to me to the following effect: “I remember twenty-five years ago, in asylums both in Pennsylvania and in Illinois, finding cases of pellagra, with the characteristic skin-lesions, in addition to the mental disorder. But my American colleagues then ridiculed my diagnosis.”

[48]. Among other tributes to Lombroso may be mentioned those which he received at the International Congress of Criminal Anthropology, held at Turin in the year 1906.

[49]. English translation in Scott’s Contemporary Science Series.

[50]. Milan, 1878. A volume of the International Scientific Series.

[51]. Pure nominatives, such as anyone could extract from a dictionary in default of all knowledge of the language.

[52]. See note to page [152].

[53]. Annales des Sciences Psychiques, 1904.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

  1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
  2. Anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.