Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond LifeFlynt, Josiah
History
Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond Life
Flynt, Josiah
Tramps
it as that of a long resident in a penitentiary. Prison life, if taken
in large doses and often enough, will give the most moral men in the
world prison features; and it is no wonder that men who make a business
of crime and are so much in prison possess them. Even men who are busied
in the detection of crime have more or less similar facial
characteristics. I have never met a detective who had been long in the
service that did not have some features or habits common to the
criminals he was engaged in hunting down; and I know several detectives
who have been taken for criminals by criminals, simply because of their
looks.
In regard to other abnormalities, such as absence of hair on the face,
remarkable eyesight, length of certain fingers, insensibility to pain,
unusual development of the lower jaw, high cheek-bones, fixed eyes,
projecting ears, and stooping shoulders, which are said to differentiate
the criminal from the ordinary human being, I can only report that I
have not found them to be any more noticeable in the criminal class than
among normal people. In the majority of cases the criminal can grow a
beard, and is glad that he can do so. Without this ability to change his
looks he would be greatly handicapped in his business; and, as I know
him, he usually has a beard once in two years. It has been said that his
habit of tattooing is evidence of his obtuseness to pain; but it is not
easy to see why. At the worst, it is not a trying ordeal; and the little
suffering that it does occasion is as much felt by the criminal as by
any one else. Moreover, those that I know are not so prone to be
tattooed as is reported. Indeed, it is considered a mistake to have
marks on the body, for they naturally aid detection.
On all these questions of the senses, criminologists have relied
altogether on what the criminal himself has told them. They give him
something to taste or smell, or prick him with a needle, and his reply
is noted down as scientific evidence. How do they know that he has not
some object in view in telling them what he does? He may want to appear
degenerated or queer, or is perhaps simply mischievous and says the
first thing that comes into his head. Until instruments have been
invented which can discover the truth quite independently of the
criminal's personal testimony, nothing really positive can be known
concerning whatever freaks of the senses may have been wrought in the
criminal's organization.
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