Henry Herbert Goddard

“ The question of heredity is one of vital concern to every living being, and any light thrown on the subject by scientific investigations and experiments is of momentous interest to the human race. It is therefore of the utmost importance that every one should have some knowledge of the theories advanced by those who believe in the immutability of the laws of heredity, and also how far these have been proven modifiable by environment and education. ”

“ At times she works hard in the field as a farm hand, so that it cannot be wondered at that her house is neglected and her children unkempt. Her philosophy of life is the philosophy of the animal. There is no complaining, no irritation at the inequalities of fate. Sickness, pain, childbirth, death—she accepts them all with the same equanimity as she accepts the opportunity of putting a new dress and a gay ribbon on herself and children and going to a Sunday School picnic. ”

“ Jean being an imbecile, it is entirely possible that he had no premeditation of murder at all, that he not only did not grind that knife for the purpose, but that he did not have the monkey wrench in his pocket for the purpose. On the contrary, it is possible that as he walked up the hill with Lida Beecher he had no more thought of killing her than of committing suicide. ”

“ The foregoing charts and text tell a story as instructive as it is amazing. We have here a family of good English blood of the middle class, settling upon the original land purchased from the proprietors of the state in Colonial times, and throughout four generations maintaining a reputation for honor and respectability of which they are justly proud. Then a scion of this family, in an unguarded moment, steps aside from the paths of rectitude and with the help of a feeble-minded girl, starts a line of mental defectives that is truly appalling. ”

“ If we wish to save our teachers from the possibility of being murdered by their pupils or our daughters from being killed by their wooers or business men from being struck down by the blows of feeble-minded boys, we must be on the watch for symptoms of feeble-mindedness in our school children. ”

“ It should have been made very clear to the jury that what was wanted was to save the commonwealth the shame of officially putting to death a person who had only a child’s intelligence. In an ideal state such a person should doubtless be kept in an institution for the feeble-minded under a life commitment, unless his impulses are such that he proves to be dangerous to the other inmates, in which case a different kind of institution should be provided. Until we arrive at a condition where we treat such persons ideally, one cannot object to the state prison for life for the imbecile manslayer. ”

“ The whole family was a living demonstration of the futility of trying to make desirable citizens from defective stock through making and enforcing compulsory education laws. Here were children who seldom went to school because they seldom had shoes, but when they went, had neither will nor power to learn anything out of books. The father himself, though strong and vigorous, showed by his face that he had only a child’s mentality. ”

“ It is perfectly clear to any one who studies the confession of Pennington that he must have told a straight-forward story. As already stated, he would not have incriminated himself as he did if he had been falsifying. He is not the type of person that runs on in an imaginary tale without regard to the facts. In short, his testimony bears every evidence of being entirely credible. ”

“ Such facts as those revealed by the Kallikak family drive us almost irresistibly to the conclusion that before we can settle our problems of criminality and pauperism and all the rest of the social problems that are taxing our time and money, the first and fundamental step should be to decide upon the mental capacity of the persons who make up these groups. We must separate, as sharply as possible, those persons who are weak-minded, and therefore irresponsible, from intelligent criminals. ”

“ Failure to make this distinction had much to do with the verdict in the case of Pennington.
Another element in the result was the failure to make clear to the jury the precise situation, the real point at issue. The defense in the case had no desire to free Roland Pennington from all the consequences of his deed. It was not a case of the electric chair or freedom. The imbecile, especially one who has shown the tendency toward crime or willingness to be led into crime, should never be at large where it is possible for him again to go wrong. ”

“ To-day if this young woman were to leave the Institution, she would at once become a prey to the designs of evil men or evil women and would lead a life that would be vicious, immoral, and criminal, though because of her mentality she herself would not be responsible. There is nothing that she might not be led into, because she has no power of control, and all her instincts and appetites are in the direction that would lead to vice. ”

“ For some reason unaccountable to a great many people, the jury accepted the view of the defense.
Not infrequently have verdicts in murder trials been unacceptable to the populace. In that respect this verdict is not an exceptional one, but from other standpoints it is remarkable. Probably no verdict in modern times has marked so great a step forward in society’s treatment of the wrongdoer. For the first time in history psychological tests of intelligence have been admitted into court and the mentality of the accused established on the basis of these facts. ”

“ If the Jukes family were of normal intelligence, a change of environment would have worked wonders and would have saved society from the horrible blot. But if they were feeble-minded, then no amount of good environment could have made them anything else than feeble-minded. Schools and colleges were not for them, rather a segregation which would have prevented them from falling into evil and from procreating their kind, so avoiding the transmitting of their defects and delinquencies to succeeding generations. ”

“ These are days of prevention—in medicine and in morals. The most important part of our problem is yet to be discussed. It is true we must come to some decision as to what is to be done with these persons who now infest society and who, because of their imbecility which is unrecognized, may become criminals. But vastly more important, because more far-reaching, is the problem of how to prevent imbeciles from becoming criminals. We may save the Gianinis and the Tronsons and the Penningtons from murdering any more people, but how much better if we save them from killing anybody. ”

“ The reader must remember that the type of feeble-mindedness of which we are speaking is the one to which Deborah belongs, that is, to the high grade, or moron. All the facts go to show that this type of people makes up a large percentage of our criminals. We may argue a priori that such would be the case. Here we have a group who, when children in school, cannot learn the things that are given them to learn, because through their mental defect, they are incapable of mastering abstractions. They never learn to read sufficiently well to make reading pleasurable or of practical use to them. ”

“ It is hard then for many people to accept the [Pg 15] verdict that Jean Gianini is an imbecile, largely because they do not realize what a high-grade imbecile is.
A second reason is found in the fact that we insist upon believing the unbelievable. We view a crime like the one under discussion and say frankly, “It is unbelievable that any reasoning, intelligent person could commit such an atrocious act,” and yet we believe that this boy did; we believe that such a grade of villainy exists and that it can suddenly appear in a boy who never before manifested anything approaching it. ”

“ We should not forget, however, that one fourth of his grandchildren would be feeble-minded and that two other fourths had the power of begetting feeble-minded children. We must not forget, either, that these are averages, and that for the full carrying out of these figures there must be a large enough number of offspring to give the law of averages room to have full play. In other words, any marriage which, according to the Mendelian principle, would give normals and defectives in the ratio of three to one might result in only one child. ”

“ One simple thought having failed to materialize, without planning further he goes back home, acts as no one but an imbecile could under such circumstances,—goes to bed, sleeps soundly, gets up the next morning, and goes to work. Then he makes another effort to get away. But how crude an effort it is. He walks quietly along the railroad track and, as already stated, makes no attempt to hide, but passes the trackman and goes into the station at Newport. When he meets a person from his own town, comes promptly and quietly back home. ”

“ We have come to the point where we no longer leave babies or little children to die uncared for in our streets, [92] but who has yet thought of caring intelligently for the vastly more pathetic child-man or child-woman, who through matured sex powers, which they do not understand, fill our land with its overflowing measure of misery and crime? Such thoughts as these filled the mind of the field worker on the ride home.
Arrived at B——, her first care was to obtain an interview with the doctor who had attended Guss’s wife when she died. ”

“ It certainly is no great loss to society if Tronson is put out of the way. The same is true in varying degrees of Gianini and Pennington. It may be very successfully argued that the matter of responsibility is a fiction and that all persons should be treated alike, either all executed or none executed. Nevertheless, at the present time, we do draw the distinction, and many feel that the person who has full power over his action, who knows the nature and quality and wrongfulness of his act, should [Pg 102] be executed, while those who do not know should not be executed. ”

“ We have claimed that criminality resulting from feeble-mindedness is mainly a matter of environment, yet it must be acknowledged that there are wide differences in temperament and that, while this one branch of the Kallikak family was mentally defective, there was no strong tendency in it towards that which our laws recognize as criminality. In other families there is, without doubt, a much greater tendency to crime, so that the lack of criminals in this particular case, far from detracting from our argument, really strengthens it. ”

“ It is perfectly clear that Roland Pennington was under strong suggestion and that any vague concepts that he might have had of the wrongfulness of murder or of killing a man were very carefully allayed by the man who had the influence over him and who had the motive for this homicide.
The whole statement shows that Roland recognized George as a superior, as one in authority over him and at the same time as a friend, as one on whose word he could absolutely rely. It is a perfect picture of the child following the man. ”

“ The most that one can say is that if such a family is allowed to go on and develop in its own way unmolested, it is pretty certain not to improve, but rather to propagate its own kind and fill the world with degenerates of one form or another. The formerly much discussed [54] question of the hereditary character of crime received no solution from the Jukes family, but in the light of present-day knowledge of the sciences of criminology and biology, there is every reason to conclude that criminals are made and not born. ”

“ We need nothing more to convince us that the diagnosis of imbecility was correct. It remains only to point out two facts. First, that this man has been an imbecile at least since he was twelve years of age, that he could have been recognized as an imbecile and cared for, and thus this atrocious murder prevented. Second, that there are hundreds of just such persons, now in their youth, who are potential criminals. Unless their mental condition is recognized and they are cared for in such a way as to make crime impossible, many of them will repeat the career of Tronson. ”

“ Half a dozen towns in New Jersey are named from the families into which Martin’s descendants have married. There have been no feeble-minded among them; no illegitimate children; no immoral women; only one man was sexually loose. There has been no epilepsy, no criminals, no keepers of houses of prostitution. Only fifteen children have died in infancy. There has been one “insane,” a case of religious mania, perhaps inherited, but not from the Kallikak side. The appetite for strong drink has been present here and there in this family from the beginning. ”

“ Of all persons in the world, the criminal imbecile should be placed in custody under conditions that will forever make it impossible for him to repeat his offense. The man who commits murder in a fit of insanity may recover from his insanity and be a useful citizen for the rest of his life. The man who commits murder under a strong impulse of anger or in calm meditation as the result of perverted reasoning may recover normal reasoning and be a useful citizen. ”

“ Suffice it to say that every institution in the land has a certain proportion of inmates who not only earn their own living, but some who could go out into the world and support themselves, were it not for the terrible danger of procreation,—resulting in our having not one person merely, but several to be cared for at the expense of the State. ”

“ Defendant requests your Honor to charge that if the defendant acted without any reasonable or rational motive or object, but against every motive and object, which it would appear should have been influential with him, that fact in itself raises a presumption that the defendant was of such unsound mind that he could not distinguish between right and wrong or know the nature or quality of his act. ”

“ We are thus face to face with the problem in a practical way and we ask ourselves the next question, What can we do? For the low-grade idiot, the loathsome unfortunate that may be seen in our institutions, some have proposed the lethal chamber. But humanity is steadily tending away from the possibility of that method, and there is no probability that it will ever be practiced.
But in view of such conditions as are shown in the defective side of the Kallikak family, we begin to realize that the idiot is not our greatest problem. ”

“ The fact that he was the last person seen with her, that the monkey wrench at one time seen in his pocket was found at the scene of the deed, that he left his place of work and went down the railroad track toward Newport, was sufficient to arouse suspicion. It is more than doubtful whether the evidence could have resulted in an indictment by a grand jury, and practically certain it never could have resulted in a conviction. The absence of any real motive for the act would have been fatal to such an attempt. The absence of evidence of a prearranged plan is also a serious lack. ”

“ After Deborah’s birth in the almshouse, the mother had been taken with her child into a good family. Even in this guarded position, she was sought out by a feeble-minded man of low habits. Every possible means was employed to separate the pair, but without effect. Her mistress then insisted that they marry, and herself attended to all the details. After Deborah’s mother had borne this man [65] two children, the pair went to live on the farm of an unmarried man possessing some property, but little intelligence. The husband was an imbecile who had never provided for his wife. ”

“ In other words, when a boy does not get along in school, even though it is evident that he does not study, the strong probability is that he does not study because he has not mind enough to appreciate the work, to understand it, hence to have that highest of all incentives to work, success. The fact that the majority of boys do get their lessons and get along well in school should be a strong argument that there is something seriously wrong with those that do not succeed. ”

“ That we are dealing with a problem of true heredity, no one can doubt, for, although of the descendants of Martin Kallikak Jr. many married into feeble-minded families and thus brought in more bad blood, yet Martin Jr. himself married a normal woman, thus demonstrating that the defect is transmitted through the father, at least in this generation. Moreover, the Kallikak family traits appear continually even down to the present generation, and there are many qualities that are alike in both the good and the bad families, thus showing the strength and persistence of the ancestral stock. ”