8 THE JUKES. 



being the contriver of crime, they its executors. The daughter of this 

 woman, the girl aged eighteen above mentioned, testified at the trial 

 which resulted in convicting her uncle and procuring his sentence 

 for twenty years to State prison, that she was forced to join him in 

 his last foray ; that he had loaded her with the booty, and beat her 

 on the journey home, over two miles, because she lagged under the 

 load. When this girl was released, her family in jail and thus left 

 without a home, she was forced to make her lodging in a brothel 

 on the outskirts of the city. Next morning she applied to the judge 

 to be recommitted to prison " for protection ' against specified 

 carnal outrages required of her and submitted to. She has since 

 been sent to the house of refuge. Of the two boys, one was dis- 

 charged by the Grand Jury ; the other was tried and received five 

 years' imprisonment in Sing Sing. 



These six persons belonged to a long lineage, reaching back to 

 the early colonists, and had intermarried so slightly with the emi- 

 grant population of the old world that they may be called a strictly 

 American family. They had lived in the same locality for genera- 

 tions, and were so despised by the reputable community that their 

 family name had come to be used generically as a term of reproach. 



That this was deserved became manifest on slight inquiry. It 

 was found that out of twenty-nine males, in ages ranging from fif- 

 teen to seventy-five, the immediate blood relations of these six per- 

 sons, seventeen of them were criminals, or fifty-eight per cent ; 

 while fifteen were convicted of some degree of offense, and received 

 seventy-one years of sentence. Fuller details are shown in the ta- 

 ble opposite, the name "Juke" standing for the blood relations of 

 those found in the jail, the capital "X" for relations by marriage 

 or cohabitation. 



The crimes and misdemeanors they committed were assault and 

 battery, assault with intent to kill, murder, attempt at rape, petit 

 larceny, grand larceny, burglary, forgery, cruelty to animals. With 

 these facts in hand, it was thought wise to extend the investigation 

 to other branches of the family, and explore it more thoroughly. 



The sheriff communicated the names of two gentlemen life- 

 long residents of the county, one of them 84 years old and for many 



