The female offender / by Cæsar Lombroso and William Ferrero.

  • Lombroso, Cesare, 1835-1909.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The female offender / by Cæsar Lombroso and William Ferrero. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    inferior to the male as 1,657 t° 3>4T4> but the female maniacs (especially furious maniacs) are as 1,843 to 1,836. If among the minor criminals, who form the largest proportion of the incarcerated, there is but little mad- ness, the contrary is the case among the worse sorts of criminals. Salsotto studied the cases of 409 female criminals in the prison of Turin, and found that 53, or I2’9 per cent., out of the number were affected as follows : Epilepsy 11 (2'6 per cent.), hysteria 19 (4*9 per cent.), alcoholism 13 (3*1 per cent.), and idiotcy 10 (2*5 per cent.). The proportion of the different crimes to madness was as follows (adding the figures given for male criminal lunatics by Marro):— 26 p. c. in murderesses (130) — male criminal lunatics 40 p. c 25 >> poisoners (20) — 5 5 > J 3° wounders (10) — y y 26 ,, 20 ,, guilty of assault (10) — ,, yy 23 „ 15 » swindlers (20) — yy 23 j y 80 ,, incendiaries (4) — y y 85 „ 16 ,, guilty of rape (25) — yy 33 „ 0 ,, thieves (90) — yy 3i „ Here there is an evident prevalence of madness among the worse criminals, and a certain parallelism with the males.1 1 The various species of mental disorder were distributed as follows :— Out of 130 murderesses— 5 epileptics, being 4 per cent. 9 hysterical, ,, T 2 yy 6 drunkards, „ 5 y y 1 somnambulist, „ 0-9 y y 2 cretines, „ i*8 y 9 2 idiots, „ i-8 yy 1 religious maniac, „ 0-9 yy