{"id":4813,"date":"2014-03-23T16:23:02","date_gmt":"2014-03-23T21:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=4813"},"modified":"2016-01-03T00:07:39","modified_gmt":"2016-01-03T06:07:39","slug":"morbid-fact-du-jour-for-march-23-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=4813","title":{"rendered":"Morbid Fact Du Jour for March 23, 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Today&#8217;s Wide-Jawed Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In 1876 Cesare Lombroso, a forty-year-old former army surgeon and the medical superintendent of a lunatic asylum at Pesaro in northern Italy, published a treatise on criminal man,\u00a0<em>L&#8217;Uomo Delinquente<\/em>, which claimed that his lifetime study of more than 6000 criminals had shown that they tended to possess certain well-developed physical characteristics. \u00a0In Lombroso&#8217;s view, habitual criminals tended to have wide jaws, high cheekbones, long arms, and large ears (approximately square in shape), as well as an unusually narrow field of vision. \u00a0He even claimed to be able to point to characteristics that were associated with particular types of criminal activity. \u00a0Fire-raisers, for example, had small heads; highwaymen had thick hair; swindlers and conmen were usually heavily built, with wide jaws and strong cheekbones, while pickpockets had usefully long hands and were often tall and dark-haired. \u00a0At the time his theories were convincing enough to prompt others to invent instruments to measure these essential indications of criminal tendencies. \u00a0A ball on a string was swung like a pendulum to test a suspect&#8217;s field of view, for example, and a &#8220;craniometer&#8221; was developed to trace the shape of a head onto paper. \u00a0But there has never been any real evidence of anything more than a random connection between physical appearance and criminal behavior.<\/p>\n<p>Culled from:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1552094839\/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1552094839&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=theasylumeclecti\">Hidden Evidence: Forty True Crimes and How Forensic Science Helped Solve Them<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=theasylumeclecti&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=1552094839\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>And should you find yourself in Turin, Italy, don&#8217;t miss the Cesare Lombroso Museum! \u00a0Lombroso&#8217;s own head is on display in a jar!<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4815\" style=\"width: 221px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/lombroso.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4815\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4815\" src=\"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/lombroso-211x300.jpg\" alt=\"I am the head of Cesare Lombroso!\" width=\"211\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/lombroso-211x300.jpg 211w, https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/lombroso.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 211px) 100vw, 211px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4815\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">I am the head of Cesare Lombroso!<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s Wide-Jawed Yet Truly Morbid Fact! In 1876 Cesare Lombroso, a forty-year-old former army surgeon and the medical superintendent of a lunatic asylum at Pesaro in northern Italy, published a treatise on criminal man,\u00a0L&#8217;Uomo Delinquente, which claimed that his lifetime study of more than 6000 criminals had shown that they tended to possess certain well-developed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4813"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6212,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4813\/revisions\/6212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}