In the second part, these prison inscriptions are compared with the remarks commonly found scribbled in the streets, on school benches, and on the walls of public buildings of all kinds—courts of justice, places of worship, and even those edifices in which the legislation of the State is framed. All the inscriptions are classified according to the sentiments they express and the sex of the writer, distinction being made between the writings of prisoners and those of the ordinary public.
The book closes with practical suggestions regarding the use to which similar collections might be put, as critical hints on the present methods of dealing with criminals and as an aid in investigating the characters of accused persons.
All offenders, except the most degenerate types, born criminals or the morally insane, desire work or occupation of some kind, and books of an interesting character. This demand emanates from innumerable inscriptions on the walls of cells and the margins of prison books: "How unbearable is enforced idleness for a man who has always been accustomed to work and study, and in whom activity and the desire of some ennobling pursuit are not quite extinct!" ... "The nun of Cracow cried, 'Bread, bread!' but my voice pleads from my solitary cell, 'Work, work!'"
"If jurists would leave their desks and libraries," says my father in conclusion, "put aside all pre-conceived notions, enter the prisons and study the problem of criminality not on the walls of the cells, but on the living documents they enclose, they would speedily realise that all reforms evolved and applied without the aid of practical experience are only dangerous illusions."
VII
Ancient and Modern Crimes (Delitti Vecchi e Delitti Nuovi)
"This volume contains a collection of facts, sometimes valuable, at other times merely curious, that I was able to glean during long years of study in the field of criminal anthropology and psychiatry. They all tend to show the great difference that exists between ancient and modern crimes."
With these words my father begins the preface to this book, in which cases of recent crimes are described and compared with those committed in by-gone ages.
It is divided into three parts. The first part contains a comparative and statistical study of criminality in Europe, Mexico, the United States, and Australia.
The second part describes the careers of typical criminals of former times, such as the Tozzis of Rome, a family of anthropophagous criminals, and Vacher, Ballor, and other assassins of the Jack-the-Ripper type, whose perverted sexual instincts prompted them to murder a number of women and mutilate the corpses in a horrible fashion.