Chapter III Criminal Anthropology (Physical)
§ 1 Cranial and Cerebral Characteristics
Considerably greater importance was formerly attributed to the shape and measurements of the head than we can now accord to them, although the subject still retains much interest. A vast quantity of data has accumulated concerning the heads of criminals; some of the results are contradictory, but certain definite conclusions clearly emerge.
The average size of criminals’ heads is probably about the same as that of ordinary people’s heads; but both small and large heads are found in greater proportion, the medium-sized heads being deficient. The same is true, as Tigges and others have shown, of the insane, though among these the larger preponderate to a greater extent. Thieves more frequently have small heads; the large heads are usually found among murderers.
Nothing very definite can be said of the cephalic indices save that they are frequently an exaggeration of those of the race to which the criminal belongs; those of long-headed race being sometimes very long, and those of broad-headed race sometimes very broad; the Corsican criminal being often very dolichocephalic, and the Breton criminal often very brachycephalic.
There is a generally recognised tendency to the pointed (oxycephalic) or sugar-loaf form of head. Though this form is probably, as Benedikt points out, an effort at compensation, it is an effort that testifies to defective organisation. The opposite defect of low or flat-roofed skull is also found among criminals, and is characteristic of degeneration. Lauvergne, in his old book on criminals, has a vivid and picturesque sketch of a variety of this kind of head, which he called the satanic type, and which he found among many of the worst criminals: “Such are the heads which painters throw into their pictures, and call ‘heads of the other world.’ I have recognised them in mediæval pictures, and in all the museums in which the products of early art are preserved. You will see them on old cathedrals, in which devils play a part, or wherever the artist has received some diabolical inspiration, as in the Campo Santo at Pisa. One cannot, indeed, better represent the genius of evil, Satan, the fallen angel, than by giving him such a head.... Behind the frontal bones the head seems to have been tied with a band to compress it around and to force the swelling of the hemispheres upwards and backwards. It is the head vulgarly called sugar-loaf. When it is complete, that is to say, when it presents a prominent base supporting an inclined pyramid, more or less truncated, this head announces the monstrous alliance of the most eminent faculty of man, genius, with the most pronounced impulses to rape, murder, and theft.” Benedikt regards the bilateral elevation of the sagittal suture as, though rare, “significant of profound perversity of brain function.” He also regards disproportionate development of the occipital part of the skull as a characteristic mark of degeneration.17 It appears that the posterior half of the skull varies much more in different individuals than the anterior half.
The orbital capacity has been noted by Lombroso and others to be frequently larger than normal (as among birds of prey and some savages), especially among thieves. There is marked exaggeration of the orbital arches and frontal sinuses which may be related, at all events in the cases of individuals living in the country, with energy of the respiratory system.
Receding foreheads, very commonly observed among criminals, have always been regarded as evidence of low mental and moral organisation, not without reason, though it must be remembered, as Ten-Kate and Benedikt point out, that the breadth, vaulting, and general size of the head must be taken into consideration. Many men of marked intellectual power have had receding foreheads.
Tenchini has pointed out (and the observation has since been confirmed) that the frontal crest is often stronger and more prominent in criminals. In normal skulls he found it 3-4 millimetres in length; in criminals frequently 5-6 mm. It is also larger in the insane and lower races, and relatively larger in orang-outangs. It may signify precocious union of the two parts of the frontal bone with consequent arrest of brain development.
The presence of a median occipital fossa has been specially noted by Lombroso, sometimes in connection with hypertrophy of the vermis of the cerebellum, as among the lower apes, in the human fœtus between the third and fourth months, and in some lower races.
Lack of cranial symmetry is one of the most marked features of the criminal skull, although it has not often at present been subjected to exact measurement.18 It must be remembered that every skull, criminal or non-criminal, is deficient in strict symmetry (and, indeed, every part of the body likewise), and that statistics therefore are here of little value; it is simply a question of the amount of asymmetry; and two observers going over the same series of skulls would almost certainly come to different conclusions. They would probably, however, both find the proportion of asymmetrical heads greater in the criminal than in the ordinary series.
All these cranial abnormalities are found occasionally in ordinary persons; very rarely are they found combined in normal persons to the extent that they are found among instinctive criminals. Thus Lombroso, when he examined the skull of Gasparone, a famous brigand of the beginning of the century, whose name still lives in legends and poems, found microcephaly of the frontal region, a wormian bone, eurigmatism, increase in the orbital capacity, oxycephaly, and extreme dolichocephaly. Mingazzini found that out of thirty criminals eight presented brains and skulls of a weight and capacity only found in submicrocephalic subjects; that several of these showed, either in brain or skull, or both, the union of several anomalies; and that in the skulls of other six the abnormal appearances were so manifold as to present an aspect which might be called “completely teratologic.”19 Most of these anomalies are found much more frequently in the male than in the female skull. If, however, the criminal woman is compared with the normal woman, she is found to approach more closely to the normal man than the latter does; while the corresponding character (feminility) is not found so often in the criminal as in the normal man, except among pæderasts and some thieves. It may also be mentioned that nearly all these anomalies are much more rarely found in the insane.
In Plates I.-VI. will be found a series of convicts’ heads—concerning which information may be found in Appendix A—illustrating in a very remarkable manner many of the peculiarities noted in this and subsequent sections. They are reproduced from sketches made by Dr. Vans Clarke, formerly governor of Woking Prison. The thirty-six here reproduced I have selected from 111 of a similar character in Dr. Clarke’s note-books. They are, as Dr. Clarke remarks, exceptional rather than typical heads; but as he discontinued making the sketches after he had seen about a thousand men, the specimens given are evidently by no means very exceptional. They represent at the least 10 per cent. of the criminals examined. “My sketches,” he writes, “were taken at the ’model prison’ of Pentonville, where the duty of filling up the medical history-sheet of every convict on his arrival devolved upon me, and I was prompted to use my sketch-book during the physical examination, on the observation of remarkable peculiarities in many of the heads and faces of the criminals. The portraits were necessarily taken in haste, but they were true, and were considered to be successful as likenesses. I may say that I was compelled to make a selection rather from want of time than the lack of material. In a less marked degree the instances of misshapen heads and repulsive facial characters were very common.” Some of the cranial and facial characteristics noted by criminal anthropologists are brought out in these sketches in so well-marked a form that it may be as well to say that they were taken some years ago, before the publication of Lombroso’s work, and it was therefore impossible for Dr. Clarke to have been unconsciously influenced by any preconceived notions on the subject.
As far back as 1836 Lélut weighed ten brains of criminals, and his results show, according to Topinard, a result below that of the normal. Bischoff, in 1880, published the results of an important series of observations he had made on the weight of the brain in criminals. He weighed the brains of 137 criminals and 422 normal persons. He found that small-sized and medium-sized brains were about equally common in criminals and in normal subjects; while among the heavier brains, weighing from 1400 to 1500 grammes, the criminals were in the proportion of 24 per cent., the normal persons of 20 per cent. Topinard, putting together the results of several series of observations on the weight of the brain in criminals, and comparing them with those of Broca for ordinary individuals of the same age, finds that in criminals there is an inferiority of some 30 grammes. There is some reason to suppose that the weight of the cerebellum in criminals is often decidedly superior to the normal savage. It is clear, on the whole, that little importance attaches to the weight of the brain in criminals, a conclusion which harmonises with such a fact as that Gambetta’s brain resembled in weight that of a microcephalic idiot.
There is more evidence in favour of attaching some importance to the shape of the brain, to its relative development, to the condition and relations of its convolutions. Broca, Topinard, and many other eminent anthropologists and anatomists have attributed great value to these relations. Gall was perhaps the first to suspect their significance. Benedikt, in 1879, published some interesting generalisations on the brains of criminals which he had examined. He found special frequency of confluent fissures; that is to say, according to his own description, if we imagine the fissures of the brain to be channels of water, a swimmer might with ease pass through all these channels. Benedikt also found in the brains of his criminals that the frontal lobe frequently presented four convolutions, a peculiarity which he considered as a reversion to the carnivorous type; the investigations of Hanot and Bouchard confirmed these results. But Benedikt neglected to make an adequate comparison with the normal brain, and Giacomini, Corre, Fallot, and Féré have shown that these peculiarities are not very rare in ordinary subjects. The question of confluent fissures had before this time attracted the attention of Broca, and his conclusions may probably still be accepted:—“One or more of these communications,” he said, “do not prevent a brain from being at once very intelligent and very well balanced, but when they are numerous, and when they affect important parts, they indicate defective development. They are often seen in the small brains of the weak-minded and idiots, very frequently also in the brains of murderers, with this difference, that in the first case they are related to the smallness of the convolutions and of the brain generally; while in the second case they coincide with convolutions for the most part ample in size, and bear witness to irregularity in cerebral development.” Flesch studied the brains of fifty criminals, and found that every one presented some anomaly, sometimes of a remarkable character, as incomplete covering of cerebellum by cerebrum. He found two kinds of deviations common, one characterised by less richness of convolution than is found usually in ordinary brains, the other characterised by much greater richness of convolution than he had ever observed in normal brains. On the whole we may agree with Hervé, that “what the brains of criminals present, not characteristically but in common with those of other individuals badly endowed though by no means criminals, is a frequent totality of defective conditions from the point of view of their regular functions, and which renders them inferior.”20
Although a very considerable mass of evidence is now accumulating, we know considerably less of the brains of criminals than of their skulls. This is in large measure due to the fact that there is at present insufficient evidence regarding the condition of the normal and healthy brain, and unless controlled by careful series of observations on normal persons, observations on criminal brains cannot be interpreted.
The important matter of the vascular supply of the brain in criminals has yet received little attention, but a variety of pathological features have been found in the cerebral substance and membranes—pigmentation, degenerating capillaries, cysts, thickened and adherent membranes, the vestiges of old hyperæmia and hæmorrhages. Some of these conditions are found with great frequency, much oftener than in the insane; meningitis, for instance, being found, according to Lombroso’s experience, in 50 per cent. of the cases examined; while Flesch has obtained very similar results. The frequency of meningitis was noticed in some of the answers to my Questions, especially by one prison surgeon who wrote of “well-organised adhesions between the dura mater and vault of cranium, localised but more extensive than one would expect to find.” Unfortunately, he was unable to supply exact figures as to the frequency of such signs. It must be added, as a point of considerable importance, that in very few cases have these pathological lesions produced any traceable symptoms during life.