The young malefactor : a study in juvenile delinquency, its causes and treatment / by Thomas Travis ; with an introduction by Ben B. Lindsey.

  • Travis, Thomas.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The young malefactor : a study in juvenile delinquency, its causes and treatment / by Thomas Travis ; with an introduction by Ben B. Lindsey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    Cheshire County Prison and Almshouse, and the White Chapel region of London proved to the writer that these juveniles more nearly approached a degenerate type than did those in the United States. The children had the ap- pearance of the parents, and the inmates of the almshouse and prison were more abnormal in aspect and more nearly members of a class than any observed here. For example, in the slums of England and France the writer saw little barefooted waifs whose pallid faces and pitifully crooked bodies were not merely under-developed but mal-developed, and that from birth. They suggested successive layers of crookedness — the heritage of close inbreeding due to a static state of the little society in which they lived. They differed as much from the ordi- nary child as one white race differs from another. They could be picked out in a crowd. These intermarrying with their kind produce a degenerate class, yet they are not all criminals by any means. There was often a beautiful loyalty among them. One girl of ten was foster-mother to several younger. She was