Chapter 17

_EXAMINATION OF CRIMINALS_

Criminal anthropologists are unanimous in insisting on the importance of the results to be gained from a careful examination of the physical and psychic individuality of the offender, with a view to establishing the extent of his responsibility, the probabilities of recidivation on his part, the cure to be prescribed or the punishment to be meted out to him; but besides furnishing the magistrate with a sound basis for his decisions, the anthropological examination will prove of great assistance to probation officers, superintendents of orphanages and rescue homes and all those who are entrusted with the destinies of actual offenders or candidates for crime. I have therefore decided to devote this part of my summary to a minute demonstration of the methods to be employed in these examinations, which should be conducted on the one hand with the scientific precision that distinguishes clinical diagnoses of diseases and on the other with special rules deduced from the long experience of criminologists in dealing with criminals and the insane, between whom there is so much affinity.

ANTECEDENTS AND PSYCHIC INDIVIDUALITY

The examination of a criminal or person of criminal tendencies should, if possible, be preceded by a careful investigation of his antecedents. Questions put to relatives and friends often bring to light facts relating to his past life, and give an idea of the surroundings in which he has grown up and the illnesses suffered by him during childhood (meningitis, typhus, convulsions, hemicrania, giddiness, _pavor nocturnus_, trauma). The prevalence of disease in the family (parents, grandparents, uncles, cousins, etc.) should be elicited and note taken not only of nervous maladies, but of arthritic, tuberculous, pellagrous, and inebriate forms, including a tendency to morphiomania. Even goitre should not escape notice, since it may indicate cretinism or any other form of degeneration. The existence of criminality in the family is of still greater importance, but it is extremely difficult to obtain any information on this head, either from the patient himself or his relatives. A certain amount of strategy must be used in eliciting facts of this kind, by suddenly asking, for instance, whether a certain individual of the same name, already deceased or confined in such-and-such an asylum or prison, is any relation of the patient.

Next should be ascertained whether he is single or married, and in the latter case, whether his wife is still living; also what profession or professions he has exercised. In this connection it should be observed that although criminals are generally successful in everything they undertake, they are incapable of remaining constant to one thing for any length of time.

Many persons, cooks, tavern-keepers, confectioners, etc., exercise callings that have a deleterious effect on the nervous centres and encourage an abuse of alcohol; others like bakers, have night work, which is equally harmful. Professions which bring poor men, servants, secretaries, cashiers, etc., into close contact with wealth, are sometimes the cause of dishonesty in those who in the absence of special temptations, would have remained upright; others provide criminaloids with opportunities or instruments for accomplishing some crime, as in the case of locksmiths, blacksmiths, soldiers, doctors, lawyers, etc.

The time of the year and other circumstances under which the crime takes place should be elicited, and it should be borne in mind that the vintage season in countries of Southern Europe and extremes of heat and cold are favourable to seizures of an epileptic nature.

When the subject under examination is a recidivist, care should be taken to ascertain at what age and under what circumstances the initial offence was committed. Precocity in crime is a characteristic of born criminals, and puberty and senility have their peculiar offences, as have the extremes of poverty and wealth.

_Intelligence._ As we are not dealing with an ordinary patient, who is generally only too ready to talk about his troubles, but with an individual who has been put on his guard by constant cross-examination, his suspicions should first of all be allayed by a series of general questions on his native place or the town in which he is now living, his trade, etc. "Why did you leave your native town? Why do you not return? Are you married? How many children have you?" etc. Then an attempt should be made to gain an idea of his intellectual powers by asking easy questions: "How many shillings are there in a pound? How many hours are there in a day? In what year were you married?" etc.

_Affection._ The affections should be tested in an indirect way. "Is your father a bad man?" or "Are your neighbours worthless people? Do they treat you with due respect? Has any one a spite against you? Are you fond of your parents? Are you aware that your brother (or mother) is seriously ill?" Questions concerning relatives and friends are of special interest, because they enable the examiner to ascertain whether they cause the patient emotion of any kind, whether he has any real affection for those beings to whom normal persons are attached, but towards whom born criminals and the insane in general do not manifest love. In the absence of instruments, we must judge of the feelings of patients by their answers and the facial changes caused by emotion, but medico-legal experts naturally prefer a scientific test by means of accurate instruments, by which the exact degree of emotion is registered. These instruments are the plethysmograph and the hydrosphygmograph.

=FIG. 28 Criminal's Ear=

It is well known that any emotion which causes the heart-beats to quicken or become slower makes us blush or turn pale, and these vaso-motor phenomena are entirely beyond our control. If we plunge one of our hands into the volumetric tank invented by Francis Frank, the level of the liquid registered on the tube above will rise and fall at every pulsation, and besides these regular fluctuations, variations may be observed which correspond to every stimulation of the senses, every thought and above all, every emotion. The volumetric glove invented by Patrizi (see Fig. 25), an improvement on the above-mentioned instrument, is a still more practical and convenient apparatus. It consists of a large gutta-percha glove, which is put on the hand and hermetically sealed at the wrist by a mixture of mastic and vaseline. The glove is filled with air as the tank was with water. The greater or smaller pressure exercised on the air by the pulsations of blood in the veins of the hands reacts on the aerial column of an india-rubber tube, and this in its turn on Marey's tympanum (a small chamber half metal and half gutta-percha). This chamber supports a lever carrying an indicator, which rises and falls with the greater or slighter flow of blood in the hand. This lever registers the oscillations on a moving cylinder covered with smoked paper. If after talking to the patient on indifferent subjects, the examiner suddenly mentions persons, friends, or relatives, who interest him and cause him a certain amount of emotion, the curve registered on the revolving cylinder suddenly drops and rises rapidly, thus proving that he possesses natural affections. If, on the other hand, when alluding to relatives and their illnesses, or vice-versa, no corresponding movement is registered on the cylinder, it may be assumed that the patient does not possess much affection.

=FIG. 25 A VOLUMETRIC GLOVE (see page 224)=

=FIG. 26 HEAD OF A CRIMINAL Epileptic=

Thus when Bianchi and Patrizi spoke to the notorious brigand Musolino about life in his native woods, his mother, and his sweetheart, there was an immediate alteration in the pulse, and the line registered by the plethysmograph suddenly changed, nor did it return to its previous level until some time afterward.

My father sometimes made successful use of the plethysmograph to discover whether an accused person was guilty of the crime imputed to him, by mentioning it suddenly while his hands were in the plethysmograph or placing the photograph of the victim unexpectedly before his eyes.

_Morbid Phenomena._ When examining a criminal or even a suspected person, who is nearly always more or less abnormal, it is advisable to investigate the more common morbid phenomena he may be subject to, on which he is not likely to give information spontaneously because he is ignorant of their importance. He should be questioned about his sleep, whether he has dreams, etc. Mental sufferers nearly always sleep badly and are frequently tormented by insomnia and hallucinations. The inebriate imagines he is being pursued by disgusting, misshapen creatures, from which he cannot escape. Epileptics, and frequently also hysterical persons have peculiar obsessions. They fancy they cannot perform certain actions unless they are preceded by certain words and gestures.

The susceptibility of the patient to suggestion should also be tested, to determine what value can be attached to his assertions. Sufferers from hysteria and general paralysis are like children, highly susceptible to suggestion, not necessarily of an hypnotic nature. If you tell an hysterical person with conviction that he suffers pain in a certain part of his body, is feverish or pale or something of the sort, he will inform you spontaneously after a few minutes that he feels pain or fever, etc. After a crime of a startling nature has been committed by some unknown person, it not unfrequently happens that some hysterical subject, generally a youth, who imagines he has been accused of the crime by the neighbours or his acquaintances, becomes convinced that he is really guilty and gives himself up to the police.

_Speech._ Special attention should be directed during the examination to the way in which the patient replies to questions and his mode of pronunciation. There may be peculiarities of pronunciation and stammering, characteristic of certain forms of mental alienation, or at any rate of some nervous anomaly; or articulation may be tremulous and forced, as in precocious dementia and chronic inebriety. In other cases the words are jumbled and confused, especially if long and difficult. In the first stages of progressive paralysis the letter _r_ is not pronounced. To test this anomaly, which is of great importance in the diagnosis, the patient should be requested to pronounce difficult words, such as, corroborate, reread, rewrite, etc.

In order not to lose such valuable indications, in cases where personal examination is impossible, phonograph impressions of conversations between the patient and some third person will serve as a substitute.

The inquiry may reveal still more serious anomalies in the ideas, intelligence, and mental condition of the patient. Sometimes the answers given are sensible but are followed by nonsense. Other patients, especially when afflicted with melancholia, speak unwillingly, as if the words were forced from them, one by one. Idiots, cretins, and demented persons are sometimes incapable of expressing themselves. Some patients who have had apoplectic strokes substitute one word for another, "bread" for "wine," etc., or elide one part of the sentence and only repeat the last word.

_Memory._ To form an idea of the memory of the subject, questions should be put to him concerning recent and remote personal facts and circumstances, the year in which he or his children were born, what he had for his supper on the previous evening, etc., etc.

_Visual memory_ may be tested by giving the patient a sheet of paper, on which are drawn various common objects, letters, or easy words. He should be allowed to look at these for five or ten seconds and requested to enumerate them after the paper has been withdrawn. In order to test the memory of sounds, the examiner should utter five or six easy words and ask the patient to repeat them immediately afterwards.

To test sense of colour, a picture on which various colours are painted is placed before the patient, as well as a skein of wool of the same shade as one of the colours in the picture, which he is requested to point out.

_Handwriting_ is very important, particularly in distinguishing a born criminal from a lunatic, and between the various kinds of mental alienation.

Monomaniacs and mattoids (cranks) who give the police the most trouble often speak in a perfectly sane manner, but pour out all their insanity on paper, without an examination of which it is not easy to detect mental derangement. They write with rapidity and at great length. Their pockets, bags, etc., are always full of sheets of paper covered with small handwriting, sometimes scribbled in all directions. The matter is generally absurd or simply stupid, consisting of endless repetitions.

Individuals in the first stage of paralysis make orthographical errors, which coincide with their mistakes in pronunciation, like _Garigaldi_, instead of _Garibaldi_. Care must be taken to test this defect thoroughly. If the patient is fairly well-educated, his signature, which is the last to alter, is not sufficient; nor are a few lines a satisfactory test, since he can easily concentrate his attention on them, but he should be requested to write a page or two and be exhorted to make haste.

Alcoholism and paralysis generally give rise to tremulous handwriting with unsteady strokes, as in old people. After epileptic seizures and attacks of hysteria the writing is shaky. The slightest trembling of the hand is detected if Edison's electric pen be used.

In progressive general paralysis and some forms of dementia shakiness is so excessive that it becomes dysgraphy, with zigzag letters. The handwriting of persons subject to apoplectic strokes has often the appearance of copper-plate. Monomaniacs intersperse their writings with illustrations and symbols. They write very closely in imitation of print, as do mattoids, hysterical persons, and megalomaniacs, and use many notes of exclamation and capital letters. Their writings are full of badly-spelled words, scrolls, and flourishes.

Criminals guilty of sanguinary offences generally have a clumsy but energetic handwriting and cross their _t's_ with dashing strokes. The handwriting of thieves can scarcely be distinguished from that of ordinary persons, but the handwriting of swindlers is easier to recognise, as it generally lacks clearness although it preserves a certain uniformity. The signature is usually indecipherable and enveloped in an infinite number of arabesques.

_Clothing._ The manner in which a patient is dressed often gives an exact indication of his individuality. Members of those secret organizations of Naples and Sicily, the Camorra and Mafia, are fond of dressing in a loud manner with an abundance of jewelry. Murderers, epileptics, and the morally insane, who lead isolated lives, attach no importance to dress and are frequently dirty and shabby. (See Fig. 26, A. D., a morally insane epileptic, the perpetrator of three murders.) Swindlers are always dressed in faultless style, the cinædus is fond of giving his costume a feminine air, and monomaniacs trick themselves out with ribbons, decorations, and medals: their clothes are generally of a strange cut. The cretin and the idiot go about with their clothes torn and in disorder and not infrequently emit a strong odour of ammonia.

PHYSICAL EXAMINATION

Having carefully investigated the past history of the subject and made a minute study of his abnormal psychic phenomena, the expert should proceed to the examination of his physical characters.