The Jukes : a study in crime, pauperism, disease, and heredity / by Robert L. Dugdale ; with a foreword by Elisha Harris ; and an introduction by Franklin H. Giddings.

Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Jukes : a study in crime, pauperism, disease, and heredity / by Robert L. Dugdale ; with a foreword by Elisha Harris ; and an introduction by Franklin H. Giddings. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    25/149
    'N,it i!?^S l>on v %>«*! is*' “C.? ,, “Primi- 1 e”' are a. ind p«cC!H^ Elective Z***** KwJ,Hte^ . rmines limits!/ enron- Nation of soriph,,, , S0ciety automatically 3nSC10us ^ nevertheless con- wes. The discover)' of n»i. 1 ish models to h grouped in the following diagram which, however, is not offered as a generalization. Consanguinity. Prostitution. a .§ Exhaustion. O Disease. Illegitimacy. Intemperance. Extinction. Not Consanguineous. In other words, fornication, either consanguineous or not, is the backbone of their habits, flanked on one side by pauperism, on the other by crime. The secondary features are prostitution, with its complement of bastardy, and its resultant neglected and miseducated childhood ; exhaustion, with its complement intemperance and its resultant unbalanced minds ; and disease with its complement ex- tinction. The habitat of the “ Jukes.—The ancestral breeding-spot of this family nestles along the forest-covered margin of five lakes, so rocky as to be at some parts inaccessible. It may be called one of the crime cradles of the State of New York ; for in subsequent examina- tions of convicts in the different State prisons, a number of them were found to be the descendants of families equivalent to the “Jukes,” and emerging from this nest. Most of the ancestors were squatters upon the soil, and in some instances have become owners by tax-title or by occupancy. They lived in log or stone houses similar to slave-hovels, all ages, sexes, relations and strangers “ bunking ” indiscriminately. One form of this bunking has been described to me. During the winter the inmates lie on the floor strewn with straw or rushes like so many radii to the hearth, the embers of the fire forming a centre towards which their feet focus for warmth. This proximity, where not producing illicit relations, must often have evolved an atmosphere of suggestiveness fatal to habits of chastity. To this day some of the “Jukes” occupy the self-same shanties built nearly a century ago. The essential features of the habitat have remained stationary, and the social habits seem i