The subject of this little book is, as its title shows, Cesare Lombroso, the man and the investigator; it makes no attempt to deal adequately with Lombroso, the reformer of criminology and criminal sociology. To do justice to Lombroso’s work in the latter respect would be impossible, without at the same time writing the history of the Italian school of “positive criminal jurisprudence” and that of the influence of that school upon important tendencies of the public life of all the leading civili

I take this opportunity of expressing my grateful acknowledgments to Mr. Havelock Ellis, who read my translation in manuscript, and made many valuable suggestions as to terminology....

Cesare Lombroso was born in Verona, as an Austrian subject, on November 6, 1835, and was the second child in a family of five. His father Aron sprang from a Venetian mercantile family, whose origin can be traced back to a colony of North African Jews, trading with Leghorn, Genoa, and Venice. Again and again members of the Lombroso family settled in one or other of these ports. The branch to which he himself belonged had lived for several centuries in Venice and the Venetian territories on the ma

A. Affecting the Skull. Cerebrogenous. ( a ) Direct Cerebrogenous. 1. Frontal submicrocephaly (expressed in the relative and absolute smallness of the brain, especially in the transverse diameter). Criminals, 41 per cent. 2. Narrowing of the cranio-facial angle at the base of the skull, leading to prognathism. Occurrence: In all primates, in negroes, Papuans, Australian blacks, etc. Criminals, 60 per cent. 3. Receding forehead. Occurrence: According to Lombroso, in 19·4 per cent. of 4,244 crimin

In the first fierce campaign against criminal anthropology two objections are repeatedly encountered. One of these points out the absence of distinctive anthropological characters in female criminals; the other contests the conceivability of the anthropological unity of a social group whose sole link of union consists of a concept so variable in time and place as is the concept of crime. The latter of these two objections was, of course, controverted by Lombroso in part on purely conceptual grou

Lombroso’s life-work was by no means confined to the highly specialized field of criminal anthropology. For more than thirty years he was engaged in the description and elucidation, in a very large number of monographs and handbooks, of various social ills—crime, prostitution, alcoholism, pellagra, anarchism, revolts, anti-Semitism. It was as pathologist and anthropologist that his attention was, in the first instance, drawn to these matters; and it was his aim to show that these phenomena—toget

The true significance of criminal anthropology is a matter with which few outside Italy have any real acquaintance, and least of all do those understand it who have most forcibly attacked Lombroso’s methods of work on account of their alleged defects. What is, then, the real significance of this doctrine? It is not merely that it is the starting-point of the reform movement in criminal procedure, in penal methods, and in the theory of jurisprudence; this, indeed, accounts for its practical signi

Lombroso’s occupation with the problem of criminals and crime extended far beyond the bounds of criminal anthropology. He was led in this direction, in part by the need for the establishment of a purely anthropological characterization of the world of crime, and in part by his controversies with lawyers, philosophers, and psychiatrists, by which he was enabled to study other categories of criminal than the “born criminal”—categories whose existence he had never denied. Opportunities for investig

I remarked before that almost every one of Lombroso’s books might have as its title, “The Cause of, and Prevention of ——.” One exception must, however, be made to this generalization, or perhaps two. The first of these relates to his book upon “The Man of Genius,” [49] and the second to his work “ Pensiero e meteore ,” [50] in which were collected his researches into the cosmic and telluric influences that determine human actions. To speak first of the last-named work, we learn from it, as also

During the correction of the previous chapters I have read Lombroso’s final and posthumous work, and I feel that it is expedient to append a brief account of Lombroso’s dealings with the spiritualists, which were, indeed, characteristic of his peculiar personality, but are without significance in relation to his more important investigations—those which interest us and will interest posterity. It was about the year 1890 that throughout Europe the investigations of psychiatrists, neurologists, an

Paola e Gina Lombroso : Cesare Lombroso, Appunti sulla vita . Turin, 1906. C. Lombroso : Writings, 1854–1909. C. Lombroso : Archivio di psichiatria, Scienze penali ed Antropologia criminale. Turin, 1880–1909. Enrico Ferri : Sociologia criminale. Turin, 1902. Frassati : La nuova scuola di diritto penale. Turin, 1891. M. Ceccarel : Della vita e degli scritti di Paolo Marzolo. Treviso, 1870. L. Bianchi : L’ Opera di Cesare Lombroso nella scienza e nolle sue applicazioni. Turin, 1906. Mario Carrara