§ 3 Anomalies of the Hair
The beard in criminals is usually scanty. As against 1.5 per cent. cases of absence of beard in normal persons, Marro found 13.9 per cent. in criminals, and a very large proportion having scanty beard. The largest proportion of full beards among criminals was found by Marro in sexual offenders.
On the head the hair is usually, on the contrary, abundant. Marro has observed a notable proportion of woolly-haired persons, a character very rarely found in normal individuals. The same character has been noted among idiots. In contrast with what is found among the insane, baldness is very rare. Among criminal women remarkable abundance of hair is frequently noted, and it has sometimes formed their most characteristic physical feature, accompanied by an unusual development of fine hair on the face and body. Salsotto, who has given special attention to criminal women, finds a considerable distribution of hair between the pubes and the umbilicus (as in men) in 10 per cent. of the forty women he examined as to this character; such distribution among normal women only occurring (according to Schulze) in 5 per cent. cases. Salsotto also found abundant hair in seven out of the forty around the anus, a part in normal women rarely supplied with hair. The excess of down on the face is found with special frequency in women guilty of infanticide. It is worth while pointing out that (as Dr. Langdon Down notes) there are frequent anomalies in the development of hair among idiots. Some are hirsute over the entire body; 11 per cent. have continuous eye-brows.
This abundance of hair seems to be correlated with the animal vigour which is often so noticeable among criminals. It may at the same time be to some extent explained by arrest of development or atavism leading to the deficiency of beard which in its fully developed form marks, with few exceptions, only the highest human races. Strong sexual instincts are but the effervescence of this animal vigour; hence, perhaps, the connection between the presence of an unusual amount of hair and infanticide. In the case selected by Bucknill and Tuke as a typical example of insanity in women due to repressed sexual instinct, the chief physical characteristic noted was the amount of hair on the body; and in a case recorded by Dr. H. Sutherland (West Riding Asylum Reports, vol. vi.) of a girl whose illness and subsequent death were in his opinion due to “unsatisfied sexual desire,” the long fair hair, which she delighted in letting flow down to her knees, was specially noted. It was observed of the French writer, Restif de la Bretonne, of whose extraordinary and abnormal sexual proclivities, even at an early age, he has himself left ample evidence in his autobiographical book, Monsieur Nicolas, that his body was remarkably hairy.
In regard to colours, the proportion of dark-haired persons is considered greater among criminals than among the ordinary population in England, Italy, and Germany. An exception to this general rule in the case of sexual offenders (rape and pæderasty) appears to be well marked in Italy; though, so far as I have been able to ascertain, it has not been frequently observed in England. Marro associates the fair hair of sexual offenders with the precocious puberty of fair-haired women, as shown by the investigations of Professor Pagliani. The researches of Marro and Ottolenghi over a very considerable field give the following results for North Italy:—
| Chestnut Hair. | Fair. | Black. | |||||||
| Normal persons | (900) | 90.78 | per cent. | 9.22 | per cent. | ||||
| Criminals | (1620) | 93.83 | ″ | 6.17 | ″ | ||||
| Sexual offenders | (100) | 81.85 | ″ | 16.67 | ″ | 1.48 per cent. | |||
Ottolenghi notes that the prevailing fair colour is reddish.26
Grey hair was found by Ottolenghi to be vastly more frequent at an early age among ordinary working men and peasants than among the 200 male criminals he examined: thus, between the ages of 30 to 33 it was 60 per cent. for the former, only 12 per cent. for the latter. This does not hold true for criminal women, who become grey more quickly than ordinary women. The male criminal in this respect resembles the epileptic, and especially the cretin, in whom grey hair is seldom seen. Baldness, Ottolenghi shows, is very rare, comparatively, in the criminal, in relation not only to the normal man but even to the epileptic and the cretin. In this respect the criminal differs greatly from the ordinary professional man, in whom baldness is frequently found.27
To the existing statistics of the colour of hair among criminals, taken as a whole, it is not possible at present to attach much value. There is no uniform system of description and nomenclature; it is difficult to make full allowance for ethnic divergence, and there rarely exists an adequate standard of comparison for the normal persons of corresponding race. Of 129 persons “wanted” at Scotland Yard, I find that 45 have “dark brown” hair, and of these 17 (i.e., 37.7 per cent.) are described as “dangerous,” “desperate,” “expert,” or “notorious”; 46 have “brown” hair, and of these 14 (i.e., 30 per cent.) are “dangerous,” etc.; 11 are “dark” (9) or “black” (2), and of these 3 (i.e., 27.2 per cent.) are “dangerous”; 27 are described as “light brown,” “light,” “sandy,” “fair,” “auburn” (one, a woman), “red” (one, a man, who is “dangerous”), and of these 9 (i.e., 33.3 per cent.) are “dangerous,” etc. This gives a proportion of red-haired persons about the same, according to my observations, as is found among middle-class men in the city, but considerably lower than is found, according to Dr. Beddoe, the chief authority on this subject (in his Races of Britain), among the lower classes in London—i.e., about 4 per cent. This is the class from which the criminals in question were chiefly drawn, but they do not exclusively belong to London; many come from the northern towns, and in many of these, Leeds, for instance,28 according to my observations, the proportion of red-haired persons is decidedly larger than in London, and certainly not smaller.
It is interesting to compare these statistics of the hair of London criminals with a body of statistics concerning the colour of the hair of 1220 insane persons (omitting the grey-haired) in the New Brunswick Asylum; although as the racial mixture is certainly not quite identical, and the nomenclature probably varies, no strict comparison is possible. Of these 1220 insane persons the hair of 1050 is described as “dark,” “dark brown,” “brown,” while 170 have “light,” “auburn,” or “red” hair. One person in seven among the insane persons has fair hair, one in five among criminals; one person in fifty among the insane has red hair, one in 129 among the criminals; one in forty among the insane has auburn hair, one in 129 among the criminals. So that while the proportion of fair-haired is distinctly smaller among the insane, the proportion of red-haired and auburn-haired is very decidedly larger than among the criminals.
So far as exact evidence on the colour of the hair goes, it points chiefly to a relative deficiency of red-haired persons among criminals. This may perhaps be accounted for. There seems to be a lessened power of resistance to disease among persons of brilliant pigmentation. The extensive anthropological statistics of the American War showed a very marked inferiority on the part of fair persons. These statistics have been criticised by De Candolle, who believes, however, that even with deductions they may probably still be accepted. Our evidence as to the proportion of bright-haired people in lunatic asylums seems to point in this direction. These red-haired people, with their “sanguine” temperament of body, are peculiarly susceptible to zymotic disease; they take scarlet fever, for instance, very easily, and suffer from it severely. Among the manifold risks of a criminal life the brightly pigmented person, with his sensitive vascular system, seems to be soon eliminated.