{"id":6920,"date":"2018-03-13T20:56:02","date_gmt":"2018-03-14T01:56:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=6920"},"modified":"2023-12-10T17:08:25","modified_gmt":"2023-12-10T23:08:25","slug":"mfdj-03-13-18-criminal-stigmata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=6920","title":{"rendered":"MFDJ 03\/13\/18: Criminal Stigmata"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Unenlightened Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/h3>\n

Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, expressed his fear about the demise of the upper classes and of the “highly evolved” white race in his first major book,\u00a0Hereditary Genius<\/a><\/em>, published in 1869. He held the belief that the ancient Athenians were the human ideal (albeit an extinct one), and considered the aristocratic English to be closest to them, although he feared they were in danger of losing their elevated position. However, Galton’s contemporaries, including Darwin, were skeptical about applying ideas from\u00a0The Origin of Species<\/em><\/a>\u00a0to human eugenics, as Galton proposed.<\/p>\n

Galton also thought that composite photography could be a useful tool for visualizing types such as the tubercular, the prize-winning racehorse, and the criminal. He was fastidious enough to classify portraits by the type of crime committed by their subjects; according to him, violent offenders looked different from nonviolent ones. Yet Galton’s pictures are neither threatening nor frightening. Since they are abstractions, they now appear uncannily beautiful. He admitted as much himself:<\/p>\n

It will be observed that the features of the composites are much better looking than those of the components. The special villainous irregularities in the latter have disappeared, and the common humanity that underlies them has prevailed. They represent, not the criminal, but the man who is liable to fall into crime.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\nTop: Criminal Composites (1870s)
\nBottom: Jewish Composites (1870s)<\/em><\/p>\n

Galton’s theories on eugenics persisted, however, and in photography reemerged with a vengeance under the Nazi regime in the 1930s. This is reflected in anthropological photographs from that era, which depict the German ideal racial types and their antithesis: Jews and other “criminals” – including gypsies, homosexuals, socialists and felons – who were imprisoned in Auschwitz.<\/p>\n

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\nMr. Barton, Resident of Bethlem Asylum (1870s) by Galton<\/em><\/p>\n

Galton’s ideas on the inborn properties of race and the racial anthropology of the criminal were further developed into the study of criminal anthropology by an Italian, Cesare Lombroso. In his treatise on the subject, originally published as\u00a0L’Uomo delinquente<\/em>\u00a0in 1876, and later as\u00a0Criminal Man<\/em><\/a>, Lombroso considered the criminal an example of biological atavism, a throwback to an earlier stage in man’s evolution – although he later was forced to recognize that some criminals were not of this subhuman type. Although Lombroso’s importance has waned, he was the first to seriously address the biological aspect of crime, calling attention to certain causes of crime not subject to the Enlightenment ideal of free will. He claimed that most criminals were mentally deformed (he determined that they had an abnormal skull formation similar to that found in rodents) and that epileptics were often criminals. Lombroso referred to what he saw as innate criminal traits as “stigmata” which explained,<\/p>\n

… the problem of the nature of the criminal – an atavistic being who reproduces in his person the ferocious instincts of primitive humanity and the inferior animals. Thus were explained anatomically the enormous jaws, high cheek-bones, prominent superciliary arches, solitary lines in the palms, extreme size of the orbits, handle-shaped or sessile ears found in criminals, savages, and apes, insensibility to pain, extremely acute sight, tattooing, excessive idleness, love of orgies, and the irresistible craving for evil for its own sake, the desire not only to extinguish life in the victim, but to mutilate the corpse, tear its flesh, and drink its blood.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lombroso was also convinced that tattoos were a sign of deviance and savagery, and documented both pornographic and anarchistic tattoos as significant indications of “criminal” behavior.<\/p>\n

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\nEpileptiques, plate XV of the book Criminal Man (1887)<\/em><\/p>\n

Culled from:\u00a0Police Pictures: The Photograph as Evidence<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Unenlightened Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, expressed his fear about the demise of the upper classes and of the “highly evolved” white race in his first major book,\u00a0Hereditary Genius, published in 1869. He held the belief that the ancient Athenians were the human ideal (albeit an extinct […]<\/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-6920","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\/6920","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=6920"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10974,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6920\/revisions\/10974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}