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
A short distance farther on, she came to the home of another brother. The
hideous picture that presented itself as the door opened to her knock was
one never to be forgotten. In the first home, the type was no lower than
moron. One felt that when winter was over and spring had come, the family
would expand into a certain expression of life--but here, no such outlook
was possible, for the woman at the head of this house was an imbecile. In
one arm she held a frightful looking baby, while she had another by the
hand. Vermin were visible all over her. In the room were a few chairs and
a bed, the latter without any washable covering and filthy beyond
description. There was no fire, and both mother and babies were thinly
clad. They did not shiver, however, nor seem to mind. The oldest girl, a
vulgar, repulsive creature of fifteen, came into the room and stood
looking at the stranger. She had somehow managed to live. All the rest of
the children, except the two that the mother was carrying, had died in
infancy.
* * * * *
The following is a story of Guss, whose position will be found on Chart
IX, section A.
When young, he married a normal girl who belonged to a decent family, but
had no education. After a few months the mother of our Deborah came to
visit them. She was then a young girl, ready to associate with any man who
would look at her. The two behaved so badly that the wife turned her out.
This was the first knowledge the wife had of the character of her husband.
She lived with him ten years or more. In that time he did not average
three months’ work out of twelve, so she had, practically, to support him
and her ever increasing family. She knew that he was untrue to her, but
there was no way to prove it. At last she seemed to grasp the situation.
She began to believe that there was something wrong with him
mentally,--wrong with the whole family,--so she decided to leave him. She
took her six living children, rented another house and turned him adrift.
He went at once to live with a feeble-minded girl belonging to a low-grade
family of the neighborhood. Soon after this girl’s child was born he left
her, becoming promiscuous in his relations. At one time, he and two of his
cousins spent the best part of two days and nights in a tree to elude the
police, who were searching for them and another man, all of whom had been
accused by a girl then in confinement. When the other man was caught and
made to marry the girl, they came down.
In 1904, this scion of the Kallikak family, Guss, went off with a gypsy
camp and was married to one of the women. For some time he stayed with the
camp, following them into another State. In the neighborhood where they
located, a murder was committed which was fastened upon the gypsies and
finally settled upon him. A great sensation was raised in the papers about
it. He was arrested, but finally cleared of the charge, though not until
he was effectually cured of his love for gypsy life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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