Broca, who, by initiating the Anthropological Society of Paris in 1859, has been regarded as the founder of the modern science of anthropology, gave attention also to the special science of criminal anthropology by noting the peculiarities of the skulls and brains of criminals. At the Exeter meeting of the British Association in 1869, Dr. G. Wilson read a paper on “The Moral Imbecility of Habitual Criminals as exemplified by cranial measurements.” He had measured 464 heads of criminals, and found that habitual thieves presented well-marked signs of insufficient cranial development, specially anteriorly. “The cranial deficiency,” he observed, “is associated with real physical deterioration. Forty per cent. of all the convicts are invalids, more or less; and that percentage is largely increased in the professional thief class.” He argued that a prisoner must be treated on reforming principles, and not allowed unrestricted liberty until there was reasonable evidence to show that he would not prove dangerous to society. About the same time, also (in 1870), J. Bruce Thomson, Resident-Surgeon to the General Prison for Scotland at Perth, published in the Journal of Mental Science a summary of his observations on over 5000 prisoners. From the decisiveness of his utterances and the large number of prisoners of whom he was able to speak, this summary gave a stimulus to the study of the criminal throughout Europe. Thomson enumerated some of the physical characteristics of the instinctive criminal now generally recognised, pointed out the semi-imbecility prevalent among the juvenile criminals under his observation, the frequency of accumulated morbid appearances at post-mortem examinations, and the large proportion of cases at Perth needing treatment for mental diseases soon after admission, “apparently from congenital causes.” Thomson’s facts and opinions were too curtly, and, probably, too emphatically stated. Dr. Nicolson, writing also in the same journal from 1873 to 1875, dealt with the morbid psychology of the criminal, the unstable, emotional element in him, his proneness to delusions, his insensibility, and his weak-mindedness. Dr. Nicolson’s papers, all written before the latest and most fruitful era of criminal anthropology began, were, so far as I have been able to trace, the latest original contributions from the scientific side made in England to the study of the criminal. Such knowledge as has been furnished since has come from writers who have, almost of necessity, dealt with what may be called the mental and social symptomatology of criminals. Among the books which supply more or less valuable or interesting information of this kind may be mentioned the Rev. J. W. Horsley’s Jottings from Jail, Michael Davitt’s Leaves from a Prison Diary, and the Scenes from a Silent World, by a Prison Visitor, which appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine during 1889. An earlier book of this class, Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor (vol. iv.), is perhaps still the most valuable.
Italy is to-day the home of criminal anthropology, and not of criminal anthropology only, but of all the sciences that are connected with crime and the criminal; the Zanardelli criminal code, which has recently become law, while by no means entirely satisfactory from the scientific point of view, shows the influence of the new movement. In this respect Italy remains true to traditions that are two thousand years old; in the sixteenth century Italy was still the centre of studies in penal law, and, to keep to modern times, it is enough to mention the great names of Beccaria, and, still more recently, Romagnosi. It was under the auspices of Beltrani-Scalia, well known in connection with prison reform, that the earlier Italian studies in criminal anthropology were published, from 1870 onwards, in the Rivista delle discipline carcerarie, a journal which continues to publish valuable monographs. In this journal Lombroso published, in 1872, the results of some investigations which he had made on prisoners at Padua.
Professor Cesare Lombroso, of Turin, occupies a position of such importance in the development of criminal anthropology that it is necessary to have a clear idea of his aims and methods and the nature of his achievement. Born in 1836, of Venetian parentage, the various and restless activities of Lombroso’s career are characteristic of the man who has been all his life opening up new paths of investigation and enlarging the horizon of human knowledge. At the age of eleven he composed romances, poems, and tragedies in the manner of Alfieri; at twelve he developed a passion for classical antiquity, and published two small works on Roman archæology. At thirteen he was attracted to the study of sociology from a linguistic point of view (chiefly, we are told, with relation to Greek, Hebrew, Chinese, and Coptic); at the same time he was drawn to natural science, being interested especially in the formation of crystals, and before entering the University he had published two books of a somewhat evolutionary character. While a student he was led, by the combined study of ancient religions and of medicine, to the subject of mental diseases. He began with studies on cretinism in Lombardy and Liguria, his conclusions being afterwards adopted by Virchow and others. In the eventful year of 1859 he became first a soldier, and afterwards a military surgeon. In 1862 he was in charge of the department of mental diseases at Pavia University, and he initiated there an institution for the insane, a psychiatric museum, and a series of researches in the application of exact methods to the study of insanity. This last attempt was at the time received with general derision; it was said that he was studying madness with a yard measure; but his methods gradually made progress, and slowly met with general adoption. After this he made some important investigations into the causes of pellagra. Called to direct the asylum at Pesaro, he reformed it, and established a journal, written and managed by the insane. He then returned to Pavia, where he continued his psychiatric work, investigated the influence of atmospheric conditions on the mind, invented an instrument to measure pain, and engaged in a great number of studies, marked by extraordinary ingenuity, patience, and insight. Even as a youth Lombroso possessed the art of divining fruitful ideas, which at the time appeared absurd to scientific men as well as to the public. Every line of investigation he took up was at the time apparently opposed to the tendency of thought, and only received general attention at a later date. This was true, to some extent, even of the great achievement of his life.
In the year 1859—perhaps the most memorable of the century—Broca, who had a decided influence on Lombroso, had inaugurated the naturalist method of treating man with the Anthropological Society of Paris. The illuminating genius of Virchow, and his prodigious energy, which has done so much for anthropology and the methods of anthropology, also had its influence on the Italian, in some respects a kindred spirit. And Darwin’s Origin of Species, published in 1859, supplied, for the first time, an indispensable biological basis, and furnished that atavistic key of which Lombroso was tempted to make at first so much use, sometimes, it must be added, so much abuse. These circumstances combined to render possible, for the first time, the complete scientific treatment of the criminal man as a human variety, while Lombroso’s own manifold studies and various faculties had given him the best preparation for approaching this great task. It was in 1859 that he first conceived this task; L’Uomo Delinquente was not, however, finally published until 1876, while the second volume only appeared in 1889.
The influence of L’Uomo Delinquente in Italy, France, and Germany seems to have been as immediate and as decisive as that of The Origin of Species. Despine’s Psychologie Naturelle, the greatest work on the criminal that had appeared before Lombroso, was partial; the criminal was therein regarded purely as a psychological anomaly. Lombroso first perceived the criminal as, anatomically and physiologically, an organic anomaly. He set about weighing him and measuring him, according to the methods of anthropology. Even on the psychological side he gained new and more exact results. He went back to the origins of crime among plants and animals, among savages and children. He endeavoured to ascertain the place of the criminal in nature, his causes, and his treatment. Lombroso’s work is by no means free from faults. His style is abrupt; he is too impetuous, arriving too rapidly at conclusions, lacking in critical faculty and in balance. Thus he was led at the beginning to over-estimate the atavistic element in the criminal, and at a later date he has pressed too strongly the epileptic affinities of crime. His weaknesses have never been spared rough handling from friendly or unfriendly hands. Thus Mantegazza, while recognising his ingegno potentemente apostolico e geniale, denies that Lombroso possesses any of the qualities of a scientific investigator, and Dr. Napoleone Colajanni, who, from the socialistic left of the movement, has, in his Sociologia Criminale (1889-90) and elsewhere, bestowed much elaborate and often valuable criticism on the centre, compares Lombroso’s indiscriminate collection of facts to Charles IX.’s famous order on St. Bartholomew’s eve: “Kill them all; God will know His own.” But his work has been so rich, so laborious, so various; it has opened up so many new lines of investigation, and has suggested so many more, that it has everywhere been received as marking a new epoch. He was, as he has himself expressed it, the pollen-conveying insect, and the new science which he fecundated has grown with extraordinary rapidity. A continuous stream of studies—from books of the most comprehensive character down to investigations into minute points of criminal anatomy or physiology—is constantly pouring forth. It is still impossible to gather up this mass of investigation, often necessarily discordant, into more than a tentative whole, but its existence is sufficient to prove the vitality of the new science. It has of course met with fierce antagonism, and Lombroso himself has declared that perhaps not one stone will remain upon another, but that if this is to be the fate of his work, a better edifice will arise in its place.
Two other Italians must be mentioned with Lombroso. Enrico Ferri, Professor of Penal Law at Rome and a Deputy in the Italian Parliament, while doing valuable work as a criminal anthropologist, has at the same time studied the social bearings of criminality in his best-known book, Nuovi Orizzonti del Diritto. He has occupied himself less with the instinctive than with the occasional criminal, and his clear and philosophic spirit has placed him at the head of criminal sociologists. Garofalo, a Neapolitan lawyer, accepting generally the conclusions reached by Lombroso and Ferri, has become the most distinguished jurist of the movement, the pioneer in that reform of law through the methods of natural science which must eventually become so fruitful. His Criminologie (the new and enlarged edition is written in French) is marked by luminous yet careful generalisation, and it contains many suggestions of wise reform. Garofalo has brought into clear relief the inadequacy of legal maxims founded on antiquated and unscientific conceptions, and he has shown that not the nature of the crime, but the dangerousness (temibilità) of the criminal constitutes the only reasonable legal criterion to guide the inevitable social reaction against the criminal. This position is now generally accepted as the legitimate outcome of the scientific study of the criminal.
Among Italian workers in the department of criminal anthropology proper, a very high place belongs to Dr. Antonio Marro, formerly surgeon to the prison at Turin. I Caratteri dei Delinquenti (1887) contains the results of a carefully-detailed and methodic examination of more than five hundred prisoners, men and women, and of over one hundred normal persons together with an investigation into their ancestry and habits. All the data are presented in tabular form, and his excellent methods and judicious moderation in drawing conclusions impart great value to his work. His exactness and impartiality have been admired even by those whose instincts and training have led them to dread the invasions of this department of science. Dr. Marro has made interesting contributions to the differentiation of various criminal types, and he has brought out very clearly the disastrous tendency to degeneration among the children of parents who have passed middle age. Other Italian studies, among many that might be mentioned, are Virgilio’s, dating from 1874, Dr. P. Penta’s elaborate studies, the various works of Zuccarelli, the energetic Neapolitan professor and editor of L’Anomalo, V. Rossi’s work, Studio sopra una Centuria di Criminali, Salsotto’s on women delinquents, and Ottolenghi’s investigations into the senses of criminals. The Archivio di Psichiatria, a rich storehouse of elaborate observations, founded in 1880, directed by Lombroso, Ferri, Garofalo, and Morselli, edited by Rossi and Ottolenghi, remains at the head of journals of criminal anthropology.
The first suggestion of an international congress of criminal anthropology arose in Italy, and dates from the year 1882, when Salvatore Tommasi published an important article in the Rassegna Critica. The first congress, that of Rome, was not, however, actually held until 1885. It was attended by all the most distinguished criminal anthropologists, criminal sociologists, and jurists of the “positive” school, chiefly Italian, French, and German, and its Actes are of great interest. The second international congress was held in August 1889, in Paris. It was of a more cosmopolitan character than the first, and of even greater interest.[14]
France has always been a laboratory for the popularisation of great ideas, and Tarde’s La Criminalité Comparée is among the best of such attempts. M. Tarde is a juge d’instruction, not an alienist or an anthropologist; he touches on all the various problems of crime with ever-ready intelligence and acuteness, and a rare charm of literary style, illuminating with suggestive criticism everything that he touches. This easily accessible little volume of the Libraire de Philosophie Contemporaine is the most comprehensive introduction for those who would go down to the città dolente by a rose-strewn path. Lacassagne, the eminent medico-legal expert of Lyons, and editor of the valuable Archives de l’Anthropologie Criminelle, stands perhaps at the head of French criminal anthropologists, although beyond his monograph, Les Tatouages, he has published little. The judicial qualities of his mind, and his power of expressing just and large conceptions in felicitous and memorable phrases, impart value to all that he writes, and his forthcoming work on the criminal man will, it is probable, for all practical purposes, supersede other works. De la Criminalité chez les Arabes, by A. Kocher, a pupil of Lacassagne’s, is a book of great interest, and the names of Manouvrier, Bournet, Corre, Laurent, etc., are well known in connection with criminal anthropology in France, while Féré ably represents the French school which explains criminality by degeneration alone.
In Germany the serious study of the criminal may be said to have begun with Krafft-Ebing, the distinguished professor of psychiatry, now at Vienna, who, by laying down clearly in his Grundzuge der Kriminal Psychologie (1872), and other works, the doctrine of a criminal psychosis, and pointing out its practical results, deserves, as Krauss remarks, to be regarded as an important precursor of Lombroso. Knecht studied over 1200 prisoners anthropologically. Dr. A. Krauss, who began with investigations into criminal psychology, has since done much solid work in criminal anthropology. Flesch made important observations on the morbid pathology of criminals; Benedikt, known in connection with various interesting investigations in criminal anthropology, began in 1879 with a remarkable study of the criminal brain, in which he observed frequent confluence of the fissures, as among some lower races, and also an additional convolution in the frontal lobe, which he assimilated to that of the carnivora. His conclusions in this difficult field of research were, however, considerably shaken by Professor Giacomini, of Turin, and others, who showed that similar anomalies are found, although not so frequently, in normal persons. The brilliant Viennese professor has in his recently-published Kraniometrie und Kephalometrie shown himself the most original and suggestive of living students of the architecture of the skull.