200 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



We begin our inquiry by seeking for an explanation of the act 

 by means of a study of the person of the murderer in conformity 

 with the rules of the anthropological school. 



Luigi Luccheni is the illegitimate son of a Parmesan servant now 

 living in America, and her master, who lived in the Parmesan ter- 

 ritory, a priest, unbalanced and intemperate, who sent her when she 

 was pregnant to Paris to be confined. There she abandoned her 

 newborn babe to a foundling asylum. The child was sent thence 



to his native country and 

 placed, till he was nine 

 years old, with a Parmesan 

 family named Monici, of 

 whom the father was a 

 shoemaker, very poor and 

 intemperate, and the moth- 

 er immoral. 



After he was nine years 

 old he was put with a fam- 

 ily named Mcasi, good peo- 

 ple, but very poor peas- 

 ants, or rather mendicants, 

 so that he too became a 

 mendicant, wandering with 

 his comrades through the 

 streets and pilfering till he 

 was thirteen years old. It 

 appears from what Dr. 

 Guerini, of Parma, writes 

 me that during this time 

 he had epileptic fits. When twelve years old he went to school, 

 where he appeared bright but impulsive, and on one occasion in his 

 anger destroyed the portrait of the king. 



From the age of fourteen to that of nineteen he was a servant, 

 and had two masters, and wandered in Liguria, Switzerland, and 

 Austria, where he was arrested, sent back to his country, and pro- 

 hibited from showing himself in the east. He then entered the 

 military service, where he conducted himself very well, incurring 

 only light punishments for assaulting a comrade and for helping a 

 sergeant get out of the barracks at night. He was so liked by his 

 superiors and comrades that when, three years afterward, in 1897, 

 he left the army, Captain the Prince de Vera engaged him as his 

 servant. In this service he exhibited great affection for children, and, 

 what is strange, he was so good a monarchist that he was scandalized 

 that at the commemoration of the deceased Cavolotti, in Naples, the 



FIG. 1. Ltrioi LUCCHENI. 



