Lombroso, Cesare

Four items of correspondence, 1880-1888, sent by Lombroso to Dr. Amadei, the Director of the Asylums of Cremona and Imola:

1 two-page letter on a single sheet dated 1880, written in a secretarial hand, signed by Lombroso;

1 three-page letter dated 1885 written on a single sheet in the handwriting of Lombroso;

2 postcards dated presumably 1888, both minutely written by Lombroso, one addressed jointly to Dr. Amadei and Dr. Tonnini.

These letters were aquired in 2009 at the same time as: Genio e follia. Prelezione ai corsi di antropologia e clinica psichiatrica presso la R. Università di Pavia, by Cesare Lombroso. Milan, Chiusi, 1864. This volume is available in the Wellcome Library, Rare Books Collection.

Cesare Lombroso was born into a wealthy family in Verona in 1835. His initial studies, at the universities of Padua, Vienna, and Paris, were of literature, linguistics, and archæology; however, he subsequently changed course and studied medicine, becoming an army surgeon in 1859. He was appointed a visiting lecturer at the University of Pavia in 1866 and in 1871 he took charge of the asylum at Pesaro. In 1878 he became professor of forensic medicine and hygiene at the University of Turin, holding the posts of professor of psychiatry (1896) and criminal anthropology (1906) at the same institution.

Lombroso argued in a series of books that crime is not an inescapable part of human nature, and nor is it an entirely free choice: rather, that certain persons are innately predisposed towards criminal activity as a result of biological factors. Morality, social awareness and self-control are depicted as the products of evolution, whilst criminals are described as individuals in which the evolutionary process has gone into reverse, in whom degeneration has taken them to a "lower" point in the evolutionary scale. Lombroso identified a series of physical markers for this degeneracy, a moral state expressed through the shape of the skull, ears, mouth, nose or other features. Different races were also placed in a hierarchical relationship, with the white race at the head of the list. Although he continued to refine these theories making use of statistical analysis, his methods were flawed in that deductions were made from small samples without blind testing. As his theories removed some of the element of choice (and thus culpability) from the criminal, he argued for humane treatment and rehabilitation rather than retribution.

In the English-speaking world he is perhaps best-known for being mentioned in Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent, in which one of the characters is a follower of his doctrines (whilst ironically having features that would brand him a degenerate in Lombroso's classification).

He died in 1909, in Turin. His work was continued by his daughter, Gina Lombroso Ferrero (1872-1944).