2l6 died in prison, as did also her sister MarieRose, whither both had been sent for theft. The remaining daughter, Victorine, tiiarried a man named Lemarre; the son of this cou ple was sentenced to death for robbery and murder. This hideous and sad record of whole gen erations being impelled as it were heredita rily to crime, is paralleled by the case of the notorious Jukes family, whose doings were long matters of comment amongst the legal and police authorities of New York. A long and carefully combined pedigree of this family shows the sad but striking fact, that in the course of seven generations no fewer than five hundred and forty individuals of Jukes blood were included amongst the criminal and pauper classes. The account appears in the Thirty-first Annual Report of the Prison Association of New York (1876); and the results of an investigation into the history of the fifth generation alone, may be shortly referred to in the present instance as presenting us with a companion case to that of the somewhat inaptly named Chretien family. This fifth generation of the Jukes tribe sprang from the eldest of the five daughters of the common ancestor of the race. Gne hundred and twenty-three indi viduals are included in this generation; thirtyeight of these coming through an illegitimate granddaughter, and eighty-five through le gitimate grandchildren. The great majority of the females consorted with criminals; sixteen of the thirty-eight were convicted, — one nine times, — some of heinous crimes; eleven were paupers, and led dissolute or crim inal lives; four were inveterate drunkards; the history of three is unknown; and a small minority of four are known to have led respectable and honest lives. Of the eighty-five legitimate descendants, only five were incorrigible criminals, and only thir teen were paupers or dissolute. Jukes him self, the founder of this prolific criminal community, was born about 1730, and is de scribed as a curious, unsteady man of Gipsy
descent, but apparently without deliberately bad or vicious instincts. Through unfavor able marriages, the undecided character of the father ripened into the criminal traits of his descendants. The moral surroundings being of the worst description, the begin nings of criminality became intensified, and hence arose naturally, and as time passed, the graver symptoms of diseased morality and criminal disposition. The data upon which a true classification of criminals may be founded are as yet few and imperfect; but Mr. Gatton mentions it as a hopeful fact, that physiognomy and the general contour of the head can be shown to afford valuable evidence of the grouping of criminals into classes. This method of investigation, however, it must be noted, is by no means a return to the old standing of phrenology, which, as all readers know, boasts its ability to mark out the surface of the brain itself into a large number of dif ferent faculties. The most that anthropolo gists would contend for, according to the data laid down, is that certain general types of head and face are peculiar to certain types of criminals. Physical conformation of a general kind becomes thus in a general manner related to the mental type. The practical oiltcome of such a subject may be readily found in the ultimate atten tion which morality, education, and the State itself may give to the reclaiming of youth ful criminals, and to the fostering, from an early period of their history, of those ten dencies to good which even the most de graded may be sho,wn to possess. If it be true that we are largely the products of past time, and that our physical and mental con stitutions are in great measure woven for us and independently of us, it is none the less a stable fact, that there exists a margin of free-will which, however limited in extent, may be made, in the criminal and debased, and under proper training and encourage ment, the foundation of a new and better life. — Chambers'Journal.
