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Excerpt from The Mentality of the Criminal Woman: A Comparative Study of the Criminal Woman, the Working Girl, and the Efficient Working Woman in a Series of Mental and Physical Tests The earlier criminologists, led by Lombroso, developed the idea of a criminal type. The "born criminal" was supposed to be characterized by a typical and unmistakable physiognomy, and much was said and written of the criminal nose, the criminal ear, and the like. The later developments of criminology showed that Lombroso and his followers had been carried away by the enthusiasm of the pioneer and had fallen victims to the fallacies of hasty generalization. In recent years the analysis of criminality has been directed, and rightly, more definitely upon the mental traits of the criminal; it has become evident that the mind is more significant than the face, that the composition of motives underlying conduct is more significant than the contour of the mouth, that the presence of feeble-mindedness is more significant than the presence of feeble bodily constitution. It is but natural, then, that the rapid development of mental tests should include their application to criminals of various types with the idea of discovering empirically in what ways their responses to these tests might differ characteristically from the responses of normal, law-abiding citizens. In the present monograph Dr. Jean Weidensall publishes the results of an extensive investigation in which the responses of a group of women at the Bedford Hills, New York, Reformatory are compared, step by step, with the responses to the same mental tests previously gathered by Dr. Helen T. Woolley and Mrs. Charlotte R. Fischer in the Bureau of Vocational Guidance connected with the public schools in Cincinnati, Ohio. The results are of prime importance both to workers with mental tests and to practical penologists who seek to individualize punishment in such a manner as to meet the needs of the offender as well as the needs of the offense. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Cesare Lombroso is widely considered the founder of the field of criminology. His theory of the “born” criminal dominated discussions of criminology in Europe and the Americas from the 1880s into the early twentieth century. His book, La donna delinquente, originally published in Italian in 1893, was the first and most influential book ever written on women and crime. This comprehensive new translation gives readers a full view of his landmark work. Lombroso’s research took him to police stations, prisons, and madhouses where he studied the tattoos, cranial capacities, and sexual behavior of criminals and prostitutes to establish a female criminal type. Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman anticipated today’s theories of genetic criminal behavior. Lombroso used Darwinian evolutionary science to argue that criminal women are far more cunning and dangerous than criminal men. Designed to make his original text accessible to students and scholars alike, this volume includes extensive notes, appendices, a glossary, and more than thirty of Lombroso’s own illustrations. Nicole Hahn Rafter and Mary Gibson’s introduction, locating his theory in social context, offers a significant new interpretation of Lombroso’s place in criminology.