270 Biology in America 



poses for the amelioration of social ills and the building of 

 a better human race. The cases of the Jukes and the Kal- 

 likaks on the one hand, and the family of Jonathan Edwards 

 on the other, are classics and have been cited so widely as 

 to require no repetition here. An equally instructive case is 

 that cited by Goddard from his studies of the inmates of the 

 New Jersey Training School for the Feeble-minded. The his- 

 tory of this case is described by Goddard in the following 

 words : ' * Here we have a feeble-minded woman who has had 

 three husbands (including one 'who was not her husband'), 

 and the result has been nothing but feeble-minded children. 

 The story may be told as follows: 



"This woman was a handsome girl, apparently having in- 

 herited some refinement from her mother, although her father 

 was a feeble-minded, alcoholic brute. Somewhere about the 

 age of seventeen or eighteen she went out to do housework 

 in a family in one of the towns of this State (New Jersey). 

 She soon became the mother of an illegitimate child. It was 

 born in an almshouse to which she fled after she had been 

 discharged from the home where she had been at work. 

 After this, charitably disposed people tried to do what they 

 could for her, giving her a home for herself and her child 

 in return for the work which she could do. However she soon 

 appeared in the same condition. An effort was then made 

 to discover the father of this second child, and when he was 

 found to be a drunken, feeble-minded epileptic living in the 

 neighborhood, in order to save the legitimacy of the child, 

 her friends (sic) saw to it that a marriage ceremony took 

 place. Later another feeble-minded child was born to them. 

 Then the whole family secured a home with an unmarried 

 farmer in the neighborhood. They lived there together until 

 another child was forthcoming which the husband refused 

 to own. "When finally the farmer acknowledged this child 

 to be his, the same good friends (sic) interfered, went into 

 the courts and procured a divorce from the husband, and 

 had the woman married to the father of the expected fourth 

 child. This proved to be feeble-minded, and they have had 

 four other feeble-minded children, making eight in all, born 

 of this woman. There have also been one child stillborn and 

 one miscarriage. 



". . . This woman had four feeble-minded brothers and 

 sisters. These are all married and have children. The older 

 of the two sisters had a child by her own father, when she 

 was thirteen years old. The child died at about six years 

 of age. This woman has since married. The two brothers 

 have each at least one child of whose mental condition noth- 

 ing is known. The other sister married a feeble-minded man 



