Professor Windsor smoothed back Anschlag’s long straight hair from his forehead and running his fingers through the murderer’s hair, began to make an examination.
As the professor was going through the preliminary movements, the brute trembled and turned color several times. During the examination Professor Windsor would explain as he went along, and when finished, kindly gave the reporter the following written report:
Anschlag’s head measures twenty-two inches around the base of the brain and fourteen inches across the crown. His nature is peculiar in the fact that the organs of the brain which deal with property values, and the ability to make a living by ordinary transactions, are almost entirely idiotic. He shows a fair development of memory and perception, but his ability to reason upon moral questions of right and wrong, property and the rights of others, and the consequences of his own acts, is almost absolutely wanting. He is, in all respects, a moral idiot, and it is a noteworthy fact that the most atrocious crimes are committed by this class of criminal idiots. The great difficulty in his case is in getting the public or a jury to believe that a man may be capable of reasoning on one point and displaying absolutely no power to think correctly on the moral side of the question. The physical fact remains, however, that to give Anschlag correct judgment on any question involving property, ethics or the consequences of his own acts to himself or others, his head would have to be enlarged at least an inch in the occipital region and the posterior part of the crown.
ANSCHLAG’S MENTALITY.
A Scientific Estimate of the Murderer’s Brain—What Prof. William Windsor, LL. B., the Eminent Phrenologist, Says of his Mental Caliber—He Calls Him an Idiot—No More Moral Sense Than a Dog—The Fault His Ancestors’.
[From the Los Angeles (Cal.) Tribune].
Prof. William Windsor, LL. B., the phrenologist whose lectures, in Los Angeles, last January, excited such general interest, returned to the city yesterday, en route for San Diego. He visited the jail yesterday and made an examination of Fritz Anschlag, the noted murderer of the Mr. and Mrs. Hitchcock. A representative of the Tribune called on Professor Windsor at the St. Elmo and requested him to give the readers of this journal the results of his examination of the man whose atrocious crime has absorbed the attention of the public ever since its committal.
“Anschlag is a moral idiot,” said Professor Windsor, in answer to the first interrogatory of the scribe. “He belongs to a class of beings who, from the circumstances of birth and education, are destitute of the requisite amount of sense necessary to form a correct judgment on moral questions as well as many others.
“It is a popular error to suppose that phrenology depends upon ‘bumps,’ so called, or protuberances or hollows in the conformation of the skull. The conclusions of the phrenologist are based upon estimates of brain fiber, their quality and length from a point in the base of the brain directly between the ears, to the surface. This measurement in different heads will show a comparative difference of three or four inches in many cases, though the heads may be smooth in contour and destitute of ‘bumps.’ Just look at these two skulls, for instance,” placing two ghastly objects on the table, which, by actual measurement, differed more than three inches.
“Does Anschlag’s head resemble either of these?”