A Plea for the Criminal: Being a reply to Dr. Chapple's work: 'The Fertility of the Unfit', and an Attempt to explain the leading principles of Criminological and Reformatory ScienceKayll, James Leslie Allan
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A Plea for the Criminal: Being a reply to Dr. Chapple's work: 'The Fertility of the Unfit', and an Attempt to explain the leading principles of Criminological and Reformatory Science
Kayll, James Leslie Allan
Chapple, William Allan, 1864-1936. The fertility of the unfit; Crime; Criminals; Reformatories
It will be understood that the influences of which M. Moleschott speaks
are not of an hereditary nature, that is, they are not transmitted
through the blood; but they are influences which are present from the
first moment of consciousness. They are quite sufficient to account for
the criminal type being found in the physiognomy of a person born and
reared among such surroundings. It is a very popular error to suppose
that a person's physiognomy never changes, and therefore that if the
criminal cast of countenance is seen it must be a faithful witness to
some innate depravity transmitted from an ancestry. The expression plays
such an important part in the moulding of the countenance, that of two
brothers very much alike in youth, one, afterwards given to crime, will
still retain his resemblance to his brother; but will display the
criminal type as well. It is thus that we have the different types in
murderers, assassins, thieves, swindlers and sensualists. They are all
criminal or vicious but their forms of criminality and vice are so
diverse that a different expression results from the different kinds of
thought passing through their minds. In their theories, few people
acknowledge that the symmetry of the facial features may change, and yet
it is a matter of common observance that they do. In the cases of
persons becoming insane or persons who have suffered from long and
painful illnesses it is very remarkable. Likewise in the case of the man
who has fallen into crime, it is also most noticeable. Of course there
are limits to the changes which the expression may produce, but these
changes are nevertheless very great and sufficiently so, not perhaps to
produce Lombroso's type in any given face, but to give that face at
least a distinctly criminal cast.
The appearance then of this criminal cast upon the features is not
sufficient evidence to account for an inherited tendency towards crime.
Dr Manouvrier insists that Lombroso's theory that the criminal is born
and not made is based upon the exploded science of phrenology, and
declares that all the anatomical distinctions and physicological
characteristics quoted by Lombroso are to be found among honest men as
well as among criminals. The fact that a greater proportion are found
among criminals to his mind proves nothing.
[There is not vast difference between normal and abnormal persons
possessing these peculiarities. In Lombroso's work "The Female Offender"
he notices:--
Normal Women Criminal Women
Receding foreheads 8 per cent. 11 per cent.
Enormous lower jaws 9 " 15 "
Projecting cheek bones 14 " 19.9 "
Murderesses 30 "
" ears 6 " 9.2 "
Flat nose 40 " Thieves 20 "
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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