TRANSMISSION OF CRIME.

Patea Mail, Volume 1, Issue 8, 8 May 1875, Page 3

TRANSMISSION OF CRIME.

One of the most remarkable examples | of the transmission of criminal tendencies to succeeding generations, and of the hcriditary dispositions to crime, is told in a series of statistics collected by ; Dr Harris of New York, and lately pro- ! dneed by him at a meeting of the State : Charitable Aid Association. There is a | country at the Upper Hudson where the proportion of crime and poverty, compared with the entire population, is so great, being about one criminal or pauper to every 10 inhabitants, that on discovering this extraordinary and abnormal state of things, Dr. Harris set himself to discow r the cause, if that were possible. He examined the criminal records, and also those of pauper relief and charitable aid institutions. Here he observed a curious recurrence of certain names, and this led him to make genealogical investigations, which he followed up with care and perseverance until he was enabled to arrive at a conclusion which shows in a most surprising degree what generations of criminals, paupers, and lunatics may spring from a very small beginning. This is the story, as told by Dr. Harris; —Seventy years ago, a child, having no other name than Margaret, was a vagrant about the locality. There was no almshouse, and it seems the girl lived as a waif, occasionally helped by the charitable, but never educated and never given a home. She gave birth to children, who became paupers like herself; they increased and multiplied until, up to the present time, nine hundred descendants of the friendless woman can be traced. Of this immense progeny, extending through six generations, two hundred of tiie more vigorous are recorded as criminals, and a large number as idiots, lunatics, prostitutes, and drunkards. In one single generation there were twenty children, three ot which died young, and the balance survived to maturity; but nine were sent to State prisons for aggregate terms of fifty years, and the rest were constant inmates ol penitentiaries, gaols, and almshouses. — If ever there were reasons for inculcating the necessity of providing means of succour, reclamation in the present, as preventives of crime, pauperism, lunacy, and drunkenness in the future generations, tlie.se reasons are given with great force on the statements made by Dr. Harris, and it is one which merits the attention of legislators and philanthropists.—“ Cross.”