Some Cases of Criminality.

I have here brought together a few cases of fairly ordinary and representative criminality, chiefly in order to show how such cases are generally investigated. It has not seemed desirable to lay down any definite system of examination. Elaborate schemes have been prepared; it is more difficult to settle on a definite scheme on a small scale. At present it seems best to leave much to the judgment of the individual investigator. The six cases here given will serve to show how criminality is usually investigated, and may be useful as a guide.

I.—B. A., aged 18, carpenter; weight, kilog. 69.3; height, m. 1.77. Complexion pale. In various parts of body scars from wounds by knife, dagger, stones, and glass, received in various quarrels. Head also covered by scars. Hair on head very abundant; entirely without beard. Prominent superciliary arches. Enormous frontal sinuses, lower jaw voluminous; lemurian appendix present; forehead low and narrow; head normal.

Esthesiometer: left, 1½ right, 1¼; tongue, 1½. Dynamometer: left, 42; right, 40½. Tendon reflexes normal. General sensibility: right, 52; left, 50. Sensibility to pain: right, 28; left, 30. Slow to distinguish colours.

Drunkard; began at age of 12, led on by his mother. Has thieved frequently, but only found out once at the end of two years, and condemned. Is irreligious.

When he is drunk feels melancholy. Has epileptic convulsions, in which he falls down, and is frequently wounded. He has had similar fits for six years; they are followed by complete amnesia. The first came on in an educational institute, after being compelled to take a cold bath in January.

Three or four hours before the fit he is so stupid that he cannot reckon two coppers that he holds in his hand; and that he cannot recognise the people around him, though he may have known them for some time.After the fit he does not know where he is, and for two or three days cannot drink water or bathe, on account, he says, of the cold bath that brought on his disorder.

Is not easily affected; has no aspirations; does not concern himself with politics.

Cannot say anything of his parents, except that his mother was a drunkard. (V. Rossi.)

II.—D., age 18, of Turin, smith. A woman’s head tattooed on his right arm, and the beginning of a name (record of love); in epigastric region a transfixed heart (to recall a revenge to be accomplished). A scar in left frontal region; cannot, or will not, say how he got it, but has ever since suffered from giddiness.

Complexion very pale; vasomotor reaction more marked on the left; pupils react slowly; facial asymmetry; ears prominent. Hair sparse, dry, and very dark. Fingers very long and slender. Has tremors; suffers from hypertrophy of heart. Head acrocephalic, flattened at the nape.

Cranial measurements: longitudinal diameter, 177; transverse, 151; longitudinal curve, 360; transverse, 300; maximum circumference, 530. Dynamometer: both hands, 34; right, 14; left, 17. Esthesiometer: right, 1.8; left, 1.2; tongue, 0.4. Topographic sensibility erroneous in both hands. General electrical sensibility: right, 49; left, 43. Sensibility to pain: right, 20; left, 27. (Normal person gives: general, 53; to pain, 38.) Temperature in axilla, 37°5. Slow to distinguish colours.

Vicious from a child; very precocious sexual habits.

At eight years commenced at school to steal certificates of merit in order to get a prize. At fourteen, at the invitation of a friend who was a thief, robbed a jeweller; from that time committed numerous robberies whenever he could. Willingly gets drunk, but his chief passion is travel.

In politics he would prefer a Republic, but without police or prisons; but confesses that in winter, when work is scarce, “it is not bad in prison.”

His parents affirm they are honest, but not the other relations. Mother suffers from palpitation of the heart. One sister is leading a bad life; another is very religious. A maternal cousin was in prison. (V. Rossi.)

III.—Certa Fil, condemned to four years’ imprisonment for thefts of fur cloaks and similar articles. Age 56. Circumference of head, 545. Right eye placed rather low. Tendon reflexes normal.

From a child she has suffered from illness caused by fear, owing to a fall into the water. From fifteen to thirty suffered from frequent headaches. Eight years ago, about three years before thefts, had typhoid fever, and also contracted syphilis from her husband. She had frequent and severe pain in the temples. No children. Her mother suffered from arthritis, which caused melancholy, which is said to have contributed to her death. She had fourteen children, mostly twins, who all died at birth except one, who is very extravagant and dissolute.

Sensibility.—With esthesiometer: on the hand, 3 mm. on left, 2 mm. on right; head, 16 mm.; tongue, 9 mm. With faradic current: general sensibility, 70 mm.; on the hands, while a student has pain on palm at 55, on dorsum at 60, she has pain on right palm at 50, left at 50; right dorsum at 60, left at 55. Strength with dynamometer slight: right, 28 cg.; left, 38 cg.; with both hands, 58 cg.

Psychological Examination.—Married at age of nineteen, she lived happily with husband for twenty years, i.e., until age of thirty-nine. Then the husband began to lead a dissolute life, and infected his wife with syphilis. Driven wild by her husband’s continual ill-treatment, she began to steal furs and other articles from a neighbouring shop. She was always afraid of being discovered, and experienced remorse which took away sleep and appetite, and she planned methods for restoring the things without being discovered.

During her four years of imprisonment she did not learn the gergo or prisoner’s slang, would not associate with her companions, and was always crying. She blushed slightly when questioned concerning her periods.

Diagnosis.—This woman, under the stress of illnesses and need of money, was drawn to theft; she was not, however, predisposed to crime, and (excepting the dissolute conduct of one brother) there were no marked signs of hereditary degeneration. When we add that she was never given to orgies, that she did not care to associate with her criminal companions, that she did not learn the gergo, that she blushed when spoken to without due consideration, we must conclude that she is an occasional criminal. If she had been in a comfortable social condition, and in good relation with her husband, she would probably not have become a delinquent. (Giuseppe Abradi, Archivio di Psichiatria, vol. x. Fasc. I.)

IV.—R. S., of Naples, age 23; height, m. 1.68; weight, kilog. 82.5. Soldier.

Traces on skin of wounds from fire-arms and knives; one on the abdomen given him by a woman.

Colour of skin is dark.

Tattoo marks on legs and arms: initials, daggers in memory of revenges to be accomplished, arrows as records of love; on his hand a sun; also bears the signs of the camorra, of which, but only as a great secret, he revealed the significance.

He declares that for him, and for the camorrista in general, tattooing is “a passion, an ambition, like that, for example, of students for their collars and ties.” “The more one is tattooed,” he said, “the more one is esteemed and feared by comrades, because it shows how far one has gone in the road of crime.”

Hair on head thick and dark; complete absence of beard. Prognathism: forehead small and narrow (165 × 48), lower jaw voluminous; eyes small and very mobile; frontal sinuses prominent. Has a certain air of bonhomie in his face which contrasts with the cynicism with which he narrates his criminal achievements.

Cranial measurements: longitudinal diameter, 187; transverse, 150; longitudinal curve, 364; transverse, 310; maximum circumference, 557. Dynamometer: with both hands, 84; with right, 54; with left, 43. Supports with extended arm a weight of kilog. 5 for fourteen minutes. Esthesiometer: right, 3.5; left, 4.5. Electrical sensibility: right, 40; left, 45. Sensibility to pain: right, 0; left, 0. Slow to distinguish colours, confusing blue and green. Thermometer: right, 37°5; left, 37°9.

Fond of wine; vicious since he was a child. Natural and unnatural sexual habits.

Except venereal disorders and a cyst, which he had as a child, has never been ill.

He has indeed been sent to a hospital as insane, but it was feigned, as he was then under trial, in order to obtain “attenuating circumstances.”

By him and his family religion is regarded as merely imposture, and politics does not exist. In the newspapers he only reads the police news, as that which alone concerns him.

At age of 10 was “sent to college” (i.e., house of correction), because he was found taking the impression of a lock. There he was initiated in the camorra, exercised by the lads clandestinely.

On coming out, he committed numerous offences, of which more than one remained unpunished. He wounded a prostitute whom he found with another lover. Thieved with dexterity, and was once condemned to twenty-five months’ imprisonment. He robs from houses, and when opportunity offers picks pockets. At a penal establishment he joined with others to rob the director. He confesses that in his family, except one sister who is honest, all are rogues of his own stamp.

Maternal grandfather died at 60 in the hospital. Mother is healthy, but drinks; lost all her hair at 50; condemned for fraud and wounding. Father had five years’ imprisonment for attempting to wound his brother, a priest, who refused to give him money; also drinks, and when drunk is very lively. A paternal uncle was condemned for “qualified” robbery. The maternal uncles are all camorristi.

He has five brothers and one sister. One, G., was four times in hospital, because when he committed a grave offence he feigned madness; so far this game has always succeeded, and he has been acquitted or punishment diminished. When he has money he is an angel, says R. S., but when he has none, he flies from him like the plague, for he becomes furious. He is a drunkard, and once when drunk severely wounded his mistress without cause.

Another brother, G., is a camorrista and sharper.

Another brother, E., does the elegant, and steals from “aristocrats”; suffers from dizziness, especially in summer, or when near a fire.

A brother, N., calls himself an artist, takes impressions of locks, and makes false keys, for which he demands a more or less elevated price, according to the amount of the booty. Also studies padlocks, and makes facsimiles; does not rob on his own account, nor is he camorrista; and does not use the knife even when drunk.

The last of the brothers, Gia., has been condemned more than once for robbery and picking pockets. Is camorrista. (V. Rossi.)

V.—The following carefully-taken case (by Professor Angelo Zuccarelli, of Naples) of incorrigible insubordination in a soldier is translated from L’Anomalo of January 1889, and is a model of careful and systematic examination:—

Habitual conduct in the army, from 1881-1888, both on and off duty, is reported as bad; frequently guilty of theft, insubordination and destruction of military effects. [Details here given of 59 offences, with resulting punishments, during this period.]

The following facts are all that can be obtained as to his family and previous history:—

Among the ancestors of his parents some eccentricity.

Mother hysterical, with nymphomania, and deafness due to chronic otitis.

Father, a drunkard and irascible.

One sister imbecile, and another scrofulous.

A brother, instinctive thief, imprisoned for “qualified” theft.

All the family given to thieving.

Our subject, now 28 years old, had no education from his parents; was a shoemaker at Stilo (Reggio, Calabria), his native place, where he had a bad reputation for idleness and thieving.

PHYSICAL EXAMINATION.

Head.

Inspection and Palpation.—A considerable depression in the lambdoid region.

External occipital protuberance scarcely perceptible.

Markedly plagiocephalic on the right side, anteriorly; with plagio-prosopia on the same side.Ears small; the right planted further back.

Prognathism of the superior maxilla.

Absence of the two upper middle incisor teeth, from a fall in childhood. Inferior dental arch, with parabolic and oblique margin to the right; depressed on the right.

Colour of face, yellowish, pale.

Beard thin.

Trunk and Limbs.

Body slender. Height medium.

Left mammary region depressed, and nipple lower than on right side. Posteriorly the left base of the thorax rather less developed than the right.

Hands thin, with long and pointed fingers.

Tattoo marks on the two fore-arms: on the right a transfixed heart, a woman’s head, the letters F. and B.; on the left two stars, one large, the other small, the letters L. and A. (his initials), a cross, and nearer the wrist an indistinct sign ending in a B.

On the feet the two little toes are small, especially the left, out of proportion to the development of the rest of the foot.

Hair sparse.

Superficial veins healthy, but varicose in left popliteal region. Genital organs little developed.

PHYSIOLOGICAL EXAMINATION.

Dynamometer.—Right hand, 90; left hand, 85.

Tactile sensibility.—On the tongue the two points of the esthesiometer are perceived only at a distance of five mill. In general the sensibility is very feeble. Localisation very inaccurate; impressions on one side often referred to the other.

Sensibility to pain.—Advanced hypoalgesia, while reiterated punctures fetching blood are felt as slight touches. Burns with a lighted cigar are little if at all felt; but there is some dissimulation on the part of the subject.

Thermal and meteoric sensibility.—Apparently abolished.

There has been no opportunity for electrical examination.

Sight.—Does not distinguish colours well; sees red best. Pupils react imperfectly.

Hearing.—On the right side says he cannot hear a watch in immediate contact; on the left only at a short distance. In other ways his hearing has been found to be defective.

Smell.—Does not distinguish odours, of which in many cases he has no knowledge. Ammonia alone, deeply inhaled for a few seconds, causes slight lachrymation on the right side.

Taste.—Perceives vinegar, but not salt, bitter or sweet substances. On offering him half a glass of decoction of cinchona, and telling him that it is wine, and then another of vinegar, he swallows it all eagerly without any indication of disagreeable sensations. On giving him a bitter substance, and telling him it is sweet, he repeats that it is sweet, and vice versÂ.

Appetite voracious; digestive functions normal. Circulation and respiration weak.

PSYCHICAL EXAMINATION.

Ideas very limited. No imagination or Æsthetic sense. Memory very weak, limited to the most elementary and primitive cognitions. Will feeble, in the absence of any morbid impulse.

Moral and affective sentiments almost entirely absent.

No disposition to occupy himself in any way; tendency to idleness and vagabondage.

Unrestrained onanism, to which he formerly gave way four or five times a day, now only about twice a day, because, as he says, he is no longer strong enough. He confesses this without the least shame, with complacency, almost with pleasure.

He is not without a certain shrewdness, which is, however, easily discovered. He seems to have learnt from fellow-prisoners to pretend to feel nothing, and to be ready for anything.

He is capable of dissimulation, and of simulating at certain moments a state of feebleness beyond what he feels.

In his cell he usually walks up and down with short, bent head, and surly look. He is only aroused in moments of anger and violent impulsion.He is often discontented with his food, and throws it away, breaking out into howls rather than cries, and destroying everything—table, stools, etc. In this condition any opposition only renders him more savage. Gentle methods often succeed better, especially when the stage of exhaustion sets in.

At other times the cause is some limitation to his tendency to free vagabondage. The animal-like howls are set up; then comes the destruction of everything that surrounds him, and violences of all sorts.

When he is interrogated in his calmer moments as to the reason of this, he replies that it is what they do in his country.

DIAGNOSIS.

Advanced physical and psycho-physical degeneration. Phrenasthenia. Moral idiocy. Instinctive criminality.

MEDICO-LEGAL AND SOCIAL CONSIDERATIONS.

This is the case of an instinctive criminal, a person fatally and immutably impelled to vagabondage, theft, and violence.

He bears the characters, physical and psycho-physical, of degeneration, of aberration, of constitutional abnormality, sufficient for recognition. Especially noteworthy are the lambdoidal depression, the marked plagiocephalia and plagio-prosopia, the superior prognathism, and the inferior dental irregularities, the thoracic asymmetry, the pallid complexion, the hypoalgesia, the weakness and perversion of some of the special senses, the unrestrained onanism, the predominant love of vagabondage, the furious and animal-like anger, the destructive tendencies.

It is clear that all the admonitions and punishments inflicted during seven years, besides failing to produce any good effects, succeeded in exercising, so to speak, the natural mechanism of his violent impulses, and thus brutalised him still further. He is, therefore, incorrigible.

Of this the Military Tribunal of Naples were, as the result of this examination, convinced, declared that our subject is irresponsible, and acquitted him.

But does the duty of science end here? Is this verdict sufficient for order and social security?

Surely not.

This individual, thus constituted, must be regarded as a perpetual source of danger. It is therefore necessary to adopt a mode of treatment which, instead of brutalising him, will endeavour to obtain from him the maximum social utility of which he is capable, while at the same time it will render it impossible for him to injure other persons who are unlike himself.

For this purpose sequestration is necessary, the method of moral treatment and the watchful care obtained within a criminal asylum.

VI.—The following report, by O. Hotzen (here abbreviated), appeared in the Vierteljahresschrift fÜr gerichtliche Medicin, and in the Archivio di Psichiatria for 1889, fasc. 2.

Maria KÖster died at the age of 22 of tuberculosis; at the age of 18 she had killed her mother with a hatchet; sixty wounds were found in the mother’s body, some of them penetrating the skull.

As until then the girl had always been of good character, quiet and hard-working, and on account of her youthful age, she was examined by medical experts in order to ascertain if any morbid conditions had limited her free will.

No mental alienation was recognised, especially at the time of the deed, but certain preceding morbid phenomena and other subsequent circumstances led the experts to an opinion which resulted in the commutation of the death penalty to which she had been condemned.

Among her maternal ancestors, and in the mother herself, there had been extreme avarice; they were most eager of money, and possessed by the fury of gain; it was proved that this impulse had in some members of the family paralysed the sentiments of equity and honesty.

The father was a drunkard.

The girl had a certain amount of education; she wrote, in an exact style, a diary of her impressions. She had acted as a servant, as an assistant in a printing-office, as a sempstress. She was thin, and slightly developed; menstruated at 19; had a very high opinion of herself.

Apparently of tranquil disposition, she was declared by some to be envious, a liar, and a thief.

Notwithstanding simulated indifference, she coveted the savings which her mother had scraped together; she cherished hatred against her parents; continual quarrels and unworthy calumnies revealed a heart apparently good, in reality selfish and depraved.

There was slight asymmetry of the face, due to flattening on the right side; there was no perceptible lack of cranial symmetry.

The right pupil was larger than the left; both movable and perfectly sensitive.

She had hysterical attacks, which became rare before the deed, and were interpreted as a sexual neurosis of puberty. These attacks began with prÆcordial anxiety and oppression of breathing, and usually ended with a strong desire for movement, to which she yielded with only partial consciousness. She was sometimes for hours in a semi-conscious condition, with extravagant movements, vociferations, senseless talk, etc. Sometimes she exaggerated the attacks; at other times opposed them. From papers that she wrote in prison, it appears that some of these attacks were entirely simulated.

The sexual functions were very irregular; she pretended a want of inclination towards the other sex; the hymen was found lacerated.

She wrote a romance of her life, leaving out everything that might cause disgust, and expressing penitence for the attacks that she confessed to be simulated.

On her death-bed she developed attacks which were certainly not simulated.

She was very excitable, and her life was overspread by nervous tempests which, in spite of herself, she was not able to dominate.

She had little love for her mother, who was avaricious and hard-hearted, and refused her the slightest help.

In one of her papers, dating from the time of her most severe hysterical phenomena, there are religious expressions marked by undoubted sincerity; but when religion did not afford the consolation she expected, her zeal cooled and she went to the opposite extreme.

After a brief mental struggle, she quietly selected the necessary instruments, and studied her criminal design to its smallest details, taking care to avoid discovery. After having formed her plans, she passed the night in quiet sleep, and on the following day committed the deed.

In appearance everything was the work of premeditation and clear consciousness. After the deed she astutely made insinuations against her father, who was entirely innocent of complicity; on her knees, by her mother’s body, she declared her own innocence.

She carried simulation to a fine point of art, displaying during these days an energy and resolution astonishing in a person so weak. It is clear that her deed had for the time raised her above herself.

She had a strange avidity for her mother’s goods. Her great desire was separation from the paternal house and an independent position.

After the deed she said that she was no longer in the hands of Satan.

In prison she lived for more than three years without giving any sign of mental or of physical disease. She bore herself in an unchanging, composed manner, depressed, free from all eccentricity; it was a consolation to her to know that her father and her sister had forgiven her.At the end of 1886 appeared signs of rapid tuberculosis, to which she succumbed. She died penitent, feeling sure of reconciliation with God.

At the autopsy advanced tuberculosis was found in both lungs, also in the kidneys; this was the cause of death.

The brain could not be examined immediately, and was therefore preserved.

The dura mater, adherent to the cranium externally, was white and lacking in lustre; internally there were bright spots with red maculÆ as distinct as in hemorrhagic pachymeningitis.

The brain was soft, humid, and very anÆmic. Its weight, after the serum in the cavities had flowed away, was 1164 grammes. The occipital lobes did not entirely cover the cerebellum.

The form of the brain was elliptic. The sulci appeared deep and large. The parietal and temporal lobes were very large, with great development of the convolutions and numerous atypic clefts. The frontal lobe was small compared to the parietal, and its convolutions compressed. The frontal and occipital convolutions were not atypic except by their slight development.

There was scanty development of the frontal and occipital lobes, especially on the left side.

Conclusions.—We have here a real atrophy of the cerebral cortex, which has the characters of a congenital hereditary degeneration. This atrophy is manifested in the insufficient development of the frontal and, still more, the occipital convolutions, in the smallness of the convolutions, in the incomplete covering of the cerebellum by the cerebrum, and by the number of atypical segmentations in the cerebral cortex, representing (at all events in the opinion of Benedikt) a true aplasia.

These sulci were not the result of superior development; in their neighbourhood there was no increase in the cerebral substance; they are connected with a true atrophy of the cerebral mass. It is impossible to admit the idea of atavistic regression. The connections found between the frontal and inter-parietal fissures cannot be considered as the re-crystallisation of the primitive convolutions and the longitudinal fissures which characterise especially the carnivorous type. All these deviations are found separately in brains which have for the rest a normal structure. That which gives the morbid character is the extraordinary amount of irregularity.

It cannot be denied that the left hemisphere was the most irregular, although there was no cranial asymmetry; facial asymmetry only being recognisable.

This matricide suffered from a grave neurosis at puberty, which left traces up to near the time of the homicide; her judgments of life were affected by a permanent and powerful morbid influence.We cannot put into exact causal relation the degenerative changes in Maria KÖster’s brain, and the perturbations of her psychical activity during life, but we are justified in considering her not completely responsible for all her actions.