In looking through the large number of photographs in Lombroso’s great
work, _L’Uomo Delinquente_, very few pleasant faces can be found. The two
or three attractive ones are those of women in whom the glow of youth,
plumpness, and abundant hair serve as a disguise to features that will
scarcely bear examination. The proportion of good-looking faces among the
excellent photographs in Inspector Byrnes’ _Professional Criminals of
America_, is much larger. As the able chief of the Detective Department of
New York, who, however, distinctly recognises a criminal type of face,
remarked to a visitor: “Look through the pictures in the Rogues’ Gallery
and see how many rascals you find there who resemble the best people in
the country. Why, you can find some of them, I daresay, sufficiently like
personal acquaintances to admit of mistaking the one for the other.”
Those, however, belong to the aristocracy of crime; they are criminals by
calculation; they have achieved a certain amount of success, and a
passable face is part of their stock-in-trade. Yet even among these the
proportion of faces that will bear examination is by no means large.
Émile Gautier, who was with Prince Krapotkine in the Lyons prison, remarks
that he is not acquainted with the anatomical peculiarities of criminals,
but that he knows that prisoners are not like the rest of the world.
“Their cringing and timid ways, the mobility and cunning of their looks, a
something feline about them, something cowardly, humble, suppliant, and
crushed, makes them a class apart. One would say, dogs who had been
whipped; hardly, here and there, a few energetic and brutal heads of
rebels.”
A curious fixed look of the eye has often been considered a characteristic
mark of, more especially, the instinctive criminal, a mark which cannot be
disguised. “I do not need to see the whole of a criminal’s face,” said
Vidocq, “to recognise him as such; it is enough for me to catch his eye.”
Lombroso finds that the eyes of assassins resemble those of the feline
animals at the moment of ambush or struggle; he has often observed it
when the man has been making a muscular effort, as in compressing a
dynamometer. Sometimes this feline and ferocious glance alternates with a
gentle, almost feminine gaze; this combination giving them a strange power
of fascination which has often been exercised on women.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account