THE JUKES IN 1915 
Huge and Notorious Clan Brought to Light by Dugdale Is Now in Its Ninth 
Generation—Members Have Moved to Good Environments but in 
Many Cases No Improvement in Their Character Is Visible—In 
Other Cases, by Eugenic Marriages, They Have Taken 
Places in Respectable Society 
A REvIEw! 
York merchant? who was interested 
in prison reform, made a tour of the 
counties to study jail conditions. 
In one mountain county he found six 
blood relatives in prison for various 
offenses, and undertook a study of their 
heredity. The result was the publica- 
tion, in 1877, of his study of the story? 
of their clan, to which he gave the 
fictitious name of “Juke.’’ Ever since 
then, it has been regarded as the 
example par excellence of bad breeding. 
Its origin was commonplace enough. 
“Into an isolated region, now within 
2 hours’ railroad journey of the nation’s 
metropolis, there drifted nearly a cen- 
tury and a half ago'a number of persons 
whose constitutions did not fit them for 
participation in a highly organized 
society. This region was the frontier 
of that day and those who went there 
had many of the characteristics of our 
western frontiersmen of a century later. 
Some of them were hunters, some were 
extreme nomads (tramps), and like 
practically all extreme nomads were 
addicted to drink; some were miners 
and found at this place opportunity to 
make a living at an occupation that 
requires no capital and which may be 
readily abandoned or resumed; some 
were neurasthenic, found muscular ac- 
tivity and persistence in work irksome, 
and craved stimulants to lighten the 
labor of even minimum activities; 
some were feebleminded, and had found 
1The Jukes in 1915. 
s 1874, Richard L. Dugdale, a New 
By Arthur H. Estabrook of the Eugenics Record Office. 
that Nature makes fewer demands on 
intelligence than does organized society; 
and still more were feebly inhibited and 
had either already so violently offended 
the mores, as to flee the ‘revenge’ of 
society, or had found that there was 
less tendency to repression of their 
intermittent, instinctive outbreaks 
where the arm of organized society was 
not yet long enough to reach. For all 
of such socially inadequate this retired, 
well-wooded and well-watered valley. 
afforded a haven of refuge at a day 
when the system of state ‘institutions’ 
had been little developed. 
“That there should be such strains 
in a colony that had been founded only 
three or four generations before is not 
strange when we recall that the emigra- 
tion of criminals and ne’er-do-wells, 
among others, to this new country was 
assisted, in order to relieve the congested 
centers of Europe, of some of those 
whose presence was incompatible with 
the development of high civic ideals. 
It is the descendants of such people, 
among others, that came to the region 
which the Juke family made notorious. 
THE EARLY JUKES 
“Here are some of the migrants or 
their immediate progeny: Max, the 
hunter and fisher, the jolly, alcoholic, 
ne’er-do-well; Lem, the stealer of sheep; 
Lawrence, the licentious, free with his 
‘gun.’ Here, too, were found Margaret 
and Delia, the wantons, and Bell, who 
Pp. 85. 
Published by the Carnegie Institution of Washington, September, 1916. 
2 Dugdale was born in Paris, of English parents, in 1841. 
In 1851 the family came to New 
York City. Dugdale acquired a competence in commercial life and then devoted himself to 
philanthropy. He died in 1883. 
3 The Jukes: 
A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity. By R. L. Dugdale. 
New York and London, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1877. 
The book has gone through four editions. 
469 
