What are we to do? Why, sterilize the wife of the defective. As the criminal is most harmful of all defectives he is summoned to come forward first and to bring his wife with him, when behold, the man turns up alone. Where is his wife? Why, he hasn't got one. Has Dr Chapple considered this fact? Did he know, when he made the statement that it was a matter of common observation that the criminal was among those who had the largest families, did he know then that the criminal rarely married? It cannot be said that the criminal's wife is as rare as the Great Auk's egg, but Havelock Ellis states that "among men criminals the celibates are in a very large proportion." And Féré further supports the value of the statement for our present purpose by saying that "criminals and prostitutes have this common character, that they are unproductive. This is true also of vagabonds, and of the idle and vicious generally, to whatever class they belong."
Two years' experience as a prison chaplain may not be of much value, but it certainly conveyed the impression that the majority of the criminals were young men who were unmarried.
But Dr Chapple adduces evidence. He tells us of a family in which there were 834 persons the descendants of one woman. Of this family 76 were convicts, 7 were murderers, 142 were beggars, 64 lived on charity. Among their women 181 lived disreputable lives, and in 75 years this family cost their country £250,000 in alms, trials, imprisonments, etc. What family is this? If the following comparison is conclusive in its results then it must be the "Jukes" family.
If it will be allowed that the agreement in these nine lines of statistics establishes the identity between the two cases, then the evidence may be examined.
In the first place, the "Jukes" family is the most exceptional one known in the history of crime, and it must be treated as an exception and not as an example. In the second place, these 834 persons were not descended from one woman in 75 years but from FIVE women who were the legitimate and illegitimate daughters of an old Dutch back-woodsman who lived in a rocky part of the State of New York and who is known to criminologists as "Max Jukes." My authority for declaring that there were five female ancestresses during the period reviewed as against one, stated to be the case by Dr Chapple, is Mr R. L. Dugdale, who made a close personal investigation of the life and records of the family. He himself collected the statistics that are given above and which are identical with those given by Dr Chapple's authority, Prof. Pellman, and therefore one must conclude that Prof. Pellman has studied the case at second hand and, in this important detail, is in error.
That 834 persons should have descended from five persons in 75 years covering five generations, exclusive of the 5 ancestresses, does not strike us as evidence of an exceedingly prosperous birth-rate. If there had been another thousand descendants it would not allow for an average of 3 children to grow up and marry in each family. We may then set aside the contention that the "Jukes" were enormously prolific.
Still the "Jukes" were an enormous cost to their country, and surely we should prevent such a family ever appearing in our midst. The answer to this is that the "Jukes" have only appeared once, and, so far as our community is concerned, our social progress makes their reappearance absolutely impossible. The "Jukes" were a tribe of vagabond outlaws. They gained a livelihood by fishing, hunting, robbery, and intermittent work. They lived in a rocky, inaccessible region in the lake country of the State of New York. Their criminals were able, with a considerable measure of success, to defy the police, and travellers very rarely approached the vicinity of their habitat. Some drifted into the towns and villages. A proportion of these supported themselves by honest industry, and a proportion became a burden upon the rates; Such nests of criminals can exist only in partially civilized countries. The advance of civilization extinguishes them. Nowhere in New Zealand could such a tribe prey upon and defy society for a period of two weeks together. The criminals that we have to deal with are those which society produces not those which it extinguishes.
But if the "Jukes" were at all reproductive what is the difference between them and other cases of criminals? Principally this, that the "Jukes" formed a little society of their own in which marriage and co-habitation was the rule. Of their women 52 per cent. were disreputable; but Dugdale refuses to call them prostitutes, but rather harlots, indicating that their marital relations were of the order of a progressive polyandry and by no means unproductive. Under these conditions, a fairly large natural increase is not to be wondered at.
No such family has, nor could, exist in the midst of our civilization, but as the case is advanced, not to show a distinct species of criminality, but rather as an example of the rate of natural increase that may be expected of a criminal family, we will examine and compare the conditions of life existing among the "Jukes" and the criminal that we have to deal with and thus discover features among the latter which militate against a large birth-rate; but which are not present among the former.