In Plates I.-VI. will be found a series of convicts' heads--concerning which information may be found in Appendix A--illustrating in a very remarkable manner many of the peculiarities noted in this and subsequent sections. They are reproduced from sketches made by Dr. Vans Clarke, formerly governor of Woking Prison. The thirty-six here reproduced I have selected from 111 of a similar character in Dr. Clarke's note-books. They are, as Dr. Clarke remarks, exceptional rather than typical heads; but as he discontinued making the sketches after he had seen about a thousand men, the specimens given are evidently by no means very exceptional. They represent at the least 10 per cent. of the criminals examined. "My sketches," he writes, "were taken at the 'model prison' of Pentonville, where the duty of filling up the medical history-sheet of every convict on his arrival devolved upon me, and I was prompted to use my sketch-book during the physical examination, on the observation of remarkable peculiarities in many of the heads and faces of the criminals. The portraits were necessarily taken in haste, but they were true, and were considered to be successful as likenesses. I may say that I was compelled to make a selection rather from want of time than the lack of material. In a less marked degree the instances of misshapen heads and repulsive facial characters were very common." Some of the cranial and facial characteristics noted by criminal anthropologists are brought out in these sketches in so well-marked a form that it may be as well to say that they were taken some years ago, before the publication of Lombroso's work, and it was therefore impossible for Dr. Clarke to have been unconsciously influenced by any preconceived notions on the subject.
As far back as 1836 Lélut weighed ten brains of criminals, and his results show, according to Topinard, a result below that of the normal. Bischoff, in 1880, published the results of an important series of observations he had made on the weight of the brain in criminals. He weighed the brains of 137 criminals and 422 normal persons. He found that small-sized and medium-sized brains were about equally common in criminals and in normal subjects; while among the heavier brains, weighing from 1400 to 1500 grammes, the criminals were in the proportion of 24 per cent., the normal persons of 20 per cent. Topinard, putting together the results of several series of observations on the weight of the brain in criminals, and comparing them with those of Broca for ordinary individuals of the same age, finds that in criminals there is an inferiority of some 30 grammes. There is some reason to suppose that the weight of the cerebellum in criminals is often decidedly superior to the normal savage. It is clear, on the whole, that little importance attaches to the weight of the brain in criminals, a conclusion which harmonises with such a fact as that Gambetta's brain resembled in weight that of a microcephalic idiot.