Criminal Man, According to the Classification of Cesare LombrosoLombroso, Gina
Science
Criminal Man, According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso
Lombroso, Gina
Criminal anthropology; Criminology
L... a morally insane subject, age 16, native of Turin, the son of an
aged, but extremely respectable man. Height 1.50 m., weight, 46.2 kg.,
with abundant hair, and down on the forehead, incisors crowded
together, excessive development of the canines, and exaggerated orbital
angle of the frontal bone. He was entirely devoid of affection for his
family, remarking cynically that he was fond of his father when he gave
him money and did not worry him. Sometimes he kicked the poor old man
and otherwise abused him. When unable to obtain money, he would smash
all the furniture in the house, until, for the sake of economy, his
family gave him what he wanted. In order to get a five-pound note from
money-lenders he would sign promissory notes for ten times that amount.
He changed his ideas from one hour to another. Sometimes he wanted to
enter the army, at others to emigrate to France, etc. When only fourteen
he frequented houses of ill-fame, where he played the bully.
Although this case may be regarded as a typical instance of moral
insanity, there were apparently no symptoms of vertigo or convulsions.
At the age of sixteen, however, while suffering from rheumatism, this
subject tried to throw himself from the balcony of his bedroom at the
same hour three nights running. After this he seems to have suffered
from amnesia.
These frenzied attempts at self-destruction, which seem to have taken
the place of the epileptic seizure, were related to my father casually
by the boy's mother; but in other cases, similar incidents, although of
the utmost importance to the criminologist, often pass unnoticed.
In the _Actes du Congrès d'Anthropologie_, Angelucci describes another
typical case of epileptic moral insanity. E. G. (brother a criminal
epileptic, father a sufferer from cancer) was sentenced several times
for assaulting people often without motive. Tattooed with the figure of
a naked woman, microcephalous (39.2 cubic inches = 589 c.c.), having
cranial and facial asymmetry, he was vain, deceitful, and violent, and
made great show of scepticism although he wore a great many medals of
the Virgin. This subject was over twenty-five when the first epileptic
seizure took place.
The connection between epilepsy and crime is one of derivation rather
than identity. Epilepsy represents the genus of which criminality and
moral insanity are the species.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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