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.”