BE YOUR OWN DETECTIVE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 388, 23 June 1928, Page 26

BE YOUR OWN DETECTIVE

Are you an unrepentant thief? Then there's an English sculptress who is looking for you. She is Mrs. Dorothy Dick, who has modelled most of the famous crowned and uncrowned heads of Europe, and —no connection between this and royalty, of course—she knows her rogues’ galleries. She seeks the impenitent thief for the third figure in a Calvary which she is modelling. Knowing her rogues' galleries, Mrs. Dick knows also her criminal types. She differs absolutely with ultramodern psychologists who say the “criminal type” does not exist. The criminal type does most emphatically exist, Mrs. Dick says. The low criminal type may be known by his ears and his finger nails. He has ears practically without lobes, sometimes with no lobes at all. His linger nails are stubby, ill-formed, and often short, as if he'd been biting them. Frequently he does bite them. Look at his hands. They are blunt, badly shaped, and no matter how much he washes them he can't hide these items. Look at his neck. It is short at the back; his head joins his body abruptly. His nose is coarse, his lips are badly formed and frequently too Heavy for the size of the head. His eyebrows probably meet in the middle. And he has a distinctive walk.

The apache walk which you see on the stage is true to life. An actual or a potential criminal, through some twist in his psychology, adopts a slouchy or slinky gait. I suppose the criminar type skulks because its thoughts are on furtive things most of the time. Habits of mind mould the features and the gait, as sculptors and physiologists know. The slant-forehead, no-neck criminal is, of course, the lowest grade. He strongly approaches the gorilla. But there is another criminal type, less easy for a novice to pick out. This is the criminal with intellect. He’s very different from the other. He very likely has breeding and can without effort pass as a man of culture. What gives him away is his eyes. If you observe closely you’ll see that his eyes are shifty. And if you know correct head proportions you'll see that his eyes are a trifle too near together. Conversely, it is easy for a sculptor to pick out from a crowd the man of honesty and refinement, whatever his degree of education may be. He has clean-cut features. The ears—for ears are very important in analysing types —are not too large, they have distinct

lobes and. like the nose, lips hands, they are well formed. forehead is High: or “highbrow” j, more than a figure of speech, \icefi shaped hands indicate a keen int s j. lect; artistic people have long Sngm highly intellectual people have stijj longer fingers, and for some which I’ve never been able to sob* engineers invariably have pi nn , hands. Not stubby, but plump. A serious sculptor knows as nt lc j about the character of the model as, physician knows about the body ot the patient. On the. train, on the street, 1 cm "spot” the lawyer, the philosopher the engineer, the clergyman, the artist, no matter how they may t* dressed or disguised. And at a glance I can pick out the person of criminal tendencies. There’s no mystery in it it is simply a matter of concentrate training. Whether the criminal mind is entirely healthy Mrs. Dick is not sun There may be a twist in it; a literal twist in the brain. But of one thins she is very sure: it is far easier to pick criminals from a crowd in Europe than in the United States. “You’ve no idea how much more difficult it is to ‘spot’ an American crim. inal,” she says, “unless he happens to be of the lowest, the gorilla type. So often he isn’t! In the United States crime often marries virtue and one consequently doesn't know where to look for the criminal class. Still, more than once I’ve been edified to behold a distinctly criminal face calmly imbibing tea in a London drawingroom. “Some people are criminals,” she adds, “because of a too vivid imagination. This, I think, is true of a certain large class of swindlers and burglars. They imagine themselves to be what they are not; as important personages, heroes, millionaires, supermen of extraordinary cleverness. Sometimes they deceive themselves, which, of course, is a good first step toward deceiving their victims. “Watch the eyes of the next plausible person you meet who ‘talks big' Look out for him if his eyes are too •near together or if they are shifty. The shiftiness comes from one or tvo things or even from both—a desire to hide the inner thought or a use 0! drugs. Under the scrutiny ot a sculptor or of anyone trained to observe physical characteristics the criminal reveals himself fully. A signed confession couldn't do it better.”