4 FOREWORD. 



soil from which spring the majority of the criminals, there, also, 

 chiefly grow up the vagrants and paupers the ignorant, vicious 

 and incapable. The prevention of crime requires the same 

 comprehensive knowledge and treatment of the sanitary and 

 physiological, the domestic and social, the educational, industrial 

 and religious interests of the common people, as must be applied 

 to prevent diseases and their entailment. Mr. DUGDALE'S inquiry 

 into the lineage of perhaps the largest family of criminals and 

 paupers ever studied, and his subsequent prosecution of a similar 

 investigation in the State prisons, are well designed to establish 

 a sound basis for the effectual repression of the causes of crime; 

 for in all that relates to human society and the wants of mankind, 

 !< the determination of evils is the first step of their remedies." 



Rarely has such a patient and philosophical inquirer as Mr. 

 DUGDALE penetrated the social hades of the dangerous classes, 

 and in their own abodes so photographed them as vagabonds, as 

 offenders, as the out-door poor of a country, as felons and mis- 

 creants, that their unvarnished picture is recognized by all who 

 ever saw these " Jukes " or any of their kind. It is a duty for me 

 to bear testimony to the scrupulous and exhaustive methods of 

 investigation adopted by Mr. DUGDALE in his researches into the 

 physical and social condition of this great group, which, as well 

 in ancestry as hereditary out-come, presents a complete physio- 

 logical and moral record of the degeneracy which fills prisons and 

 almshouses and mocks the almoner of out-door and way-side relief. 

 A more enlightened student of social conditions than the author 

 of this record has probably never before set about investigating 

 the natural history of crime and pauperism; and as the individual 

 and family histories which he gleaned and grouped in this inves- 

 tigation were laid before me progressively verified, and his 

 inquiries were made under official appointment by the Prison 

 Association, as one of its executive committee, every assurance is 

 given respecting the correctness of this study of ruined generations. 



ELISHA HARRIS, M. D., 

 Corres. Sec'y. Prison Association of N. Y. 



