Insistence on the feline aspect is very frequent among those who describe
criminals. Thus, for instance, Professor Sergi:--“I have had occasion
lately to observe a homicide, aged fifteen, who three months before
committing this murder had attempted another, and at another time showed
his ferocious nature by attacking a cow with a bill-hook and wounding it
in several places. He has been condemned to eleven years’ imprisonment, is
well developed for his age, and apparently has no morphological
abnormalities, but he is prognathous, his nose is depressed, and all the
lower part of the face, from the upper jaw down, has a savage cast. What
most distinguishes him is his look; his eye is cruel and feline in the
true sense of the word. Reserved, taciturn, even when he was free, now
that he is in prison he has the appearance of a wild beast, the glance of
a tiger.”
An interesting point in connection with the criminal physiognomy is that
it is to a large extent independent of nationality. The German criminal is
not very unlike the Italian, nor is the French unlike the English
criminal. M. Joly remarks, “I should say that in M. A. Bertillon’s office
I was shown nearly sixty photographs of Irish, English, and American
thieves. It would have been difficult in many cases to discern the
Anglo-Saxon rather than any other physiognomy.”
There is, in the opinion of many of the Italian criminal anthropologists,
a special physiognomy for different crimes, though this statement is
qualified by the well-known fact that quite different crimes may be
committed by the same person. Dr. Marro, in his _Caratteri dei
Delinquenti_, describes no fewer than eleven different classes of
criminals, though the distinctions are not all physiognomical. Professor
Lombroso’s descriptions are however the most vigorous and picturesque,
though it is scarcely possible to receive them without qualification.
Thieves he describes as frequently remarkable for the mobility of their
features and of their hands; the eyes are small and very restless; the
eyebrows thick and close; the nose often crooked or incurved; the beard
thin; the forehead nearly always narrow and receding; the complexion pale
or yellowish, and incapable of blushing. In those guilty of sexual
offences Lombroso finds the eyes nearly always bright; the voice either
rough or cracked; the face generally delicate, except in the development
of the jaws, and the lips and eyelids swollen; occasionally they are
humpbacked or otherwise deformed. Sometimes in incendiaries Lombroso has
noted a peculiar delicacy of the skin, an infantile aspect, and abundance
of hair, occasionally resembling a woman’s. The eye of the habitual
homicide is glassy, cold, and fixed; his nose is often aquiline, beaked,
reminding one of a bird of prey, always voluminous; the jaws are strong;
the ears long; the cheek-bones large; the hair dark, curling, abundant;
the beard often thin; the canine teeth much developed; the lips thin;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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