The criminal / by Havelock Ellis.

  • Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The criminal / by Havelock Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The next paper was by MM. Taverni and Magnan on the childhood of criminals, and the natural predisposition to crime. M. Taverni had made a number of investigations on children in reformatories—a study which he called pedagogic biology—and had traced backwards the childhood of criminals, and forwards the career of unpromising children. The chief indications he had found in the childhood of criminals were inaptitude to education, resistance to family order, and the revolt against social conventions. Among adult criminals one found in child- hood the same characters of inaptitude and resistance. For M. Magnan the child was often already a complete criminal, as the result of physical and moral degeneration, due to nervous, insane, or alcoholic heredity. He regarded the matter as a purely clinical one (following Moreau, of Tours, and Morel). He brought forward many interesting examples, and pointed out that in all of them sexual aberration played a very pro- minent part. An interesting discussion followed. MM. Motet, Dalifol, Roussel, and Herbette regretted that the State did not undertake the care of children at an earlier age, when there was greater hope of the favourable influence of physical, moral, and intellectual education. M. Lombroso, while expressing his great esteem for M. Magnan (the Charcot of alcohohsm, as he called him), was not able to agree with him. What he had himself said about children was founded on the obsei-vations of Perez, Taine, and Spencer. Moral sense was often lacking in the child. He was an embryonic criminal. MM. Moleschott and Van Hamel spoke in defence of the child who is uncon- scious. He was not chaste, because he had no ideas of modesty. He had no respect for truth, and the destructive instinct IS strong in him. M. Moleschott referred to the anecdote in which Goethe recorded the delight with which, as a child, he once produced a terrible carnage among the crockery But we must not confuse a phase of evolution with the con- ditions of disease or criminahty. M. Rollet, the advocate who pleads before the tribunals at Paris the cause of all children who are arrested (about 20 to 30 boys and 8 to 10 girls every day), said that he always pleaded irresponsibility, and demanded an acquittal. The child was then either handed over to its parents, or to the philanthropic society of which Th. Roussel IS president. If the child appeared vicious, he demanded that he should be sent to a reformatory until the age ot 20 He judged by the physiognomy and tlie history, but thought It would be a great advantage to have the competent advice of a criminal anthropologist. This wish was immediately satisfied. M. Manouvrier offered to come to the Palais de Justice every day. Mme. Pigeon said that in her experience she had never met a child of five or six, however perverted and VICIOUS, who was refractory to education. It was, however a