In Plates I.-VI. will be found a series of convicts’ heads--concerning
which information may be found in Appendix A--illustrating in a very
remarkable manner many of the peculiarities noted in this and subsequent
sections. They are reproduced from sketches made by Dr. Vans Clarke,
formerly governor of Woking Prison. The thirty-six here reproduced I have
selected from 111 of a similar character in Dr. Clarke’s note-books. They
are, as Dr. Clarke remarks, exceptional rather than typical heads; but as
he discontinued making the sketches after he had seen about a thousand
men, the specimens given are evidently by no means very exceptional. They
represent at the least 10 per cent. of the criminals examined. “My
sketches,” he writes, “were taken at the ‘model prison’ of Pentonville,
where the duty of filling up the medical history-sheet of every convict on
his arrival devolved upon me, and I was prompted to use my sketch-book
during the physical examination, on the observation of remarkable
peculiarities in many of the heads and faces of the criminals. The
portraits were necessarily taken in haste, but they were true, and were
considered to be successful as likenesses. I may say that I was compelled
to make a selection rather from want of time than the lack of material. In
a less marked degree the instances of misshapen heads and repulsive facial
characters were very common.” Some of the cranial and facial
characteristics noted by criminal anthropologists are brought out in these
sketches in so well-marked a form that it may be as well to say that they
were taken some years ago, before the publication of Lombroso’s work, and
it was therefore impossible for Dr. Clarke to have been unconsciously
influenced by any preconceived notions on the subject.
As far back as 1836 Lélut weighed ten brains of criminals, and his results
show, according to Topinard, a result below that of the normal. Bischoff,
in 1880, published the results of an important series of observations he
had made on the weight of the brain in criminals. He weighed the brains of
137 criminals and 422 normal persons. He found that small-sized and
medium-sized brains were about equally common in criminals and in normal
subjects; while among the heavier brains, weighing from 1400 to 1500
grammes, the criminals were in the proportion of 24 per cent., the normal
persons of 20 per cent. Topinard, putting together the results of several
series of observations on the weight of the brain in criminals, and
comparing them with those of Broca for ordinary individuals of the same
age, finds that in criminals there is an inferiority of some 30 grammes.
There is some reason to suppose that the weight of the cerebellum in
criminals is often decidedly superior to the normal savage. It is clear,
on the whole, that little importance attaches to the weight of the brain
in criminals, a conclusion which harmonises with such a fact as that
Gambetta’s brain resembled in weight that of a microcephalic idiot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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