New School of Criminal Anthropology (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: (from The American Anthropologist For July, 1891.] THE NEW SCHOOL OF CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY. BY ROBERT FLETCHER, M. D. History revels in the description of a battle. The slaughter of the combatants is carefully summed up, the ghastly total announced with judicial gravity, and the glory of the successful commander is proportionally resplendent. In the cities, towns, and villages of the civilized world, every year, thousands of unoffending men and women are slaughtered; millions of money, the product of honest toil and careful saving, are carried away by the conqueror, and incendiary fires light his pathway of destruction. Who is this devastator, this modern " Scourge of God," whose deeds are not recorded in history? The criminal ! Statistics unusually trustworthy show that if the carnage yearly produced by him could be brought together at one time and place it would excel the horrors of many a well-contested field of battle. In nine great countries of the world, including our own favored land, in one year, 10,380 cases of homicide were recorded, and in the six years extending from 1884 to 1889, in the United States alone, 14,770 murders came under cognizance of the law. And what has society done to protect itself against this aggressor? True, there are criminal codes, courts of law, and that surprising survival of the unfittest, trial by jury; vast edifices have been built as prisons and reformatories, and philanthropic persons have formed societies for the instruction of the criminal and to care for him when An address delivered April 21, 1891, before the Anthropological Society of Washington, as its retiring President. his prison gates are opened. But in spite of it all, the criminal becomes more numerous. He breeds criminals; the taint is n the blood, and ...