So far as exact evidence on the colour of the hair goes, it points chiefly
to a relative deficiency of red-haired persons among criminals. This may
perhaps be accounted for. There seems to be a lessened power of resistance
to disease among persons of brilliant pigmentation. The extensive
anthropological statistics of the American War showed a very marked
inferiority on the part of fair persons. These statistics have been
criticised by De Candolle, who believes, however, that even with
deductions they may probably still be accepted. Our evidence as to the
proportion of bright-haired people in lunatic asylums seems to point in
this direction. These red-haired people, with their “sanguine” temperament
of body, are peculiarly susceptible to zymotic disease; they take scarlet
fever, for instance, very easily, and suffer from it severely. Among the
manifold risks of a criminal life the brightly pigmented person, with his
sensitive vascular system, seems to be soon eliminated.
§ 4. _Criminal Physiognomy._
The science of physiognomy is still in a vague and rudimentary condition,
although the art has long been practised with more or less success. There
are, for instance, a large number of proverbs in which some of the most
recent results reached by the criminal anthropologists of to-day were long
ages back crystallised by the popular intelligence. Such are the Roman
saying, “Little beard and little colour; there is nothing worse under
heaven;” the French, “God preserve me from the beardless man;” the Tuscan,
“Salute from afar the beardless man and the bearded woman;” the Venetian,
“Trust not the woman with a man’s voice.”
Many of the old physiognomists, especially the two greatest, Dalla Porta
and Lavater, tell us how they immediately recognised criminals, although
they sometimes ludicrously failed; and Lavater once mistook the portrait
of an executed assassin for Herder’s. A criminal anthropologist of to-day,
Professor Enrico Ferri, declares that out of several hundred soldiers whom
he examined, he found one, and one only, whom his face declared to be a
murderer; he was told that this man had, in fact, been found guilty of
murder. Garofalo, the Neapolitan jurist, observes that he is scarcely
deceived twice out of ten times. Nor is this acuteness of perception by
any means confined to skilled observers. It is very commonly found among
women. Many persons, on first meeting an individual, are conscious of an
unfavourable impression which they succeed in out-living, but which is
subsequently justified. Sometimes the revealing glance is found, perhaps
with a shock of horror, in a face already familiar. It is a mistake to
attempt to stifle such instinctive impressions as irrational. They are
part of the organised experiences of the race, and, subject to
intellectual control, they are legitimate guides to conduct.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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