That this resemblance is not merely superficial, but that some perversity or arrest of development sometimes produces an individual inapt to our civilisation, but apt to a lower civilisation which we have outgrown, and which we call criminal, we have had occasion to observe repeatedly in our brief summary of the facts of criminal anthropology. It is by no means an extraordinary fact; it is not so extraordinary as that human beings should occasionally be born with cervical auricles or supernumerary breasts—reversions to very far more ancient days. It is not easy to gather up into one statement the various real or apparent atavistic anatomical peculiarities noted among criminals. Perhaps the most general statement to be made is that criminals present a far larger proportion of anatomical abnormalities than the ordinary European population. Now this is precisely the characteristic of the anatomy of the lower human races: they present a far larger proportion of anatomical abnormalities than the ordinary European population. It is true that our knowledge of the anatomy of the lower human races is still incomplete, but the evidence so far as it goes is perfectly clear. It will be sufficient to quote the distinguished anatomist to whom were entrusted the skulls collected during the most important scientific expedition of modern times. Sir William Turner, summing up the Challenger Report concerning these crania, writes:—“Although their number is certainly too limited to base any broad generalisation on, as to the relative frequency of occurrence of particular variations in the different races, there is obviously a larger proportion of important variations than would occur in a corresponding number of skulls of the white races.”[78]
PLATE XV.
Our survey of the psychical characteristics of criminals showed that they constantly reproduce the features of savage character—want of forethought, inaptitude for sustained labour, love of orgy, etc. It may not be out of place to remark that we must not attribute these to the direct influence of atavism. When an original vice of organic constitution has thrown an individual into a more primitive and remote strata of society, the influence of environment will itself simulate the effects of atavism and exaggerate its significance. If the organic impulses of a man’s constitution have led him to throw in his lot with brigands, he will not fail to live as a brigand lives—that is, as a barbarian lives. This is not atavism, though it may be the outcome of atavism, or arrest of development.[79]
(b) The development of crime is precocious. Rossi ascertained at what age 46 of his 100 criminals commenced their criminal career. Of these 46, no less than 40 began before the age of twenty—i.e., 1 at four years of age, 2 at seven, 6 at eight, 1 at nine, 5 at ten, 1 at eleven, 3 at twelve; and so on.[80] The evidence from France, from England, and from America gives very similar results. Children may even become expert professional criminals, and not in Europe alone. Thus, in India, where of recent years professional poisoning has assumed great development, and to a large extent taken the place of thuggi, “a Brahman boy at Bahraich, in May 1885, drugged a party of men travelling with the agent of the Rajah of Mohsan. Although only twelve years old, this was his fifth appearance in the dock. Another boy, a few months later, cooked some pulse for three pilgrims from Gaya; and the pilgrims were picked up shortly afterwards insensible near the railway yard at Allahabad. This boy had been charged with committing a similar offence in the May previous, but had got off because the complainants, impatient of the law’s delay, changed their story, and attributed their delirium to the heat of the sun.” The Sonorias, again, in the north-west provinces of India, are wonderfully expert pickpockets, and they train up their children in the same paths. “A Sonoria boy of ten or twelve years, with his pretty innocent face and his clean silk clothes, is a most attractive little object of villainy. His hand slides into a pocket, and he hands over the contents to a man behind him, who in his turn makes them over to a third, and returns to watch over the urchin. If caught, the boy cries and protests his innocence, but his volubility is against him, for no honest native child can talk like a Sonoria boy.”[81]
It is more interesting to note that there is a certain form of criminality almost peculiar to children, a form to which the term “moral insanity” may very fairly be ascribed. This has been described by Krafft-Ebing, Mendel, Savage, and others, and is characterised by a certain eccentricity of character, a dislike of family habits, an incapacity for education, a tendency to lying, together with astuteness and extraordinary cynicism, bad sexual habits, and cruelty towards animals and companions. It shows itself between the ages of five and eleven, and is sometimes united with precocious intellectual qualities. There can be no doubt that many of these develop into instinctive criminals. Sometimes these characters only appear at puberty, together with exaggerated sexual tendencies, in children who have previously been remarkable only for their mental precocity, but whose energy seems now to be thrown into a new channel.
It is a very significant fact that these characters are but an exaggeration of the characters which in a less degree mark nearly all children. The child is naturally, by his organisation, nearer to the animal, to the savage, to the criminal, than the adult. Although this has frequently been noted in a fragmentary manner, it is only of recent years that the study of childhood, a subject of the gravest importance, has been seriously taken up by Perez and others.
The child lives in the present; the emotion or the desire of the moment is large enough to blot out for him the whole world; he has no foresight, and is the easier given up to his instincts and passions; our passions, as Hobbes said, bring us near to children. Children are naturally egoists; they will commit all enormities, sometimes, to enlarge their egoistic satisfaction. They are cruel and inflict suffering on animals out of curiosity, enjoying the manifestations of pain. They are thieves for the gratification of their appetites, especially the chief, gluttony, and they are unscrupulous and often cunning liars, not hesitating to put the blame on the innocent when their misdeeds are discovered. The charm of childhood for those who are not children lies largely in these qualities of frank egotism and reckless obedience to impulse.
Most people who can recollect their own childhood—an ability which does not, however, appear to be very common—can remember how they have sometimes yielded to overmastering impulses which, although of a trivial character, were distinctly criminal. The trifling, or even normal character of such acts in childhood is too often forgotten by those who have to deal with children. Mayhew, writing in 1862, when these childish “crimes” were still taken seriously to a terrible extent, remarks:—“On our return from Tothill Fields, we consulted with some of our friends as to the various peccadilloes of their youth, and though each we asked had grown to be a man of some little mark in the world, both for intellect and honour, they, one and all, confessed to having committed in their younger days many of the very “crimes” for which the boys at Tothill Fields were incarcerated. For ourselves, we will frankly confess, that at Westminster School, where we passed some seven years of our boyhood, such acts were daily perpetrated; and yet if the scholars had been sent to the House of Correction, instead of Oxford or Cambridge, to complete their education, the country would now have seen many of our playmates working among the convicts in the dockyards, rather than lending dignity to the senate or honour to the bench.”