The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness — John Shaqi
The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-MindednessGoddard, Henry Herbert
Science
The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness
Goddard, Henry Herbert
Heredity, Human; Mental retardation; People with mental disabilities
An investigation of one hundred of the Juvenile Court children in the
Detention Home of the City of Newark showed that 67 per cent of them were
distinctly feeble-minded. From this estimate are excluded children who are
yet too young for us to know definitely whether the case is one of
arrested development. This point once determined would unquestionably
swell the percentage of defect.
An examination of fifty-six girls from a Massachusetts reformatory, but
out on probation, showed that fifty-two of them were distinctly
feeble-minded. This was partially a selected group, the basis being their
troublesomeness; they were girls who could not be made to stay in the
homes that were found for them, nor to do reasonable and sensible things
in those homes, which fact, of itself, pointed toward feeble-mindedness.
The foregoing are figures based on actual test examinations as to mental
capacity. If we accept the estimates of the mental condition of the
inmates made by the superintendents of reformatories and penal
institutions, we get sometimes a vastly higher percentage; _e.g._ the
Superintendent of the Elmira Reformatory estimates that at least 40 per
cent of his inmates are mental defectives.
Indeed, it would not be surprising if careful examination of the inmates
of these institutions should show that even 50 per cent of them are
distinctly feeble-minded.
In regard to prostitutes, we have no reliable figures. The groups of
delinquent girls to which we have already referred included among the
numbers several that were already known as prostitutes. A simple
observation of persons who are leading this sort of life will satisfy any
one who is familiar with feeble-mindedness that a large percentage of them
actually are defective mentally. So we have, as is claimed, partly from
statistical studies and partly from careful observation, abundant evidence
of the truth of our claim that criminality is often made out of
feeble-mindedness.
Mr. Winship in his comparison of the Jukes and Edwards families has
strengthened our claim in this respect. In all environments and under all
conditions, he shows the latter family blossoming out into distinguished
citizens, not primarily through anything from without but through the
imperious force within. Since we may conclude that none of the Edwards
family, who are described by Dr. Winship, were feeble-minded, therefore
none of them became criminals or prostitutes. But here again his argument
is inconclusive because he does not tell us of all the descendants.
With equal safety it may be surmised that many of the Jukes family
(perhaps the original stock, indeed) were feeble-minded and therefore
easily lapsed into the kind of lives that they are said to have lived.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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